Chương 32: Ardark Trading House

The Ardark city guards were surprised when an entire merchant caravan rocked up to the southern gate. They couldn't remember the last time someone had successfully traveled the road from Lorelark without being robbed of their horses and their wagons and being forced to make the rest of the journey on foot. The situation had gotten so bad that it had been weeks since the last time someone tried. From Amberlin's perspective, it had been a great success.

Not a single person or animal on their side had died, and most of the goods had survived too. A few wagons and carriages had been lost, and the shipments destroyed in the ambush had all been of the class she considered luxury goods—spiced rum, cigars, wig powder, pomade, polo sticks. All covered by insurance, and the only downside was that the nobles were going to have to be sober when they stared at each other's messy hair.

The important thing was that nobody would have to go without their arthritis medication this week. The captured bandits were dutifully handed over to the watch. Havlo had spent the last day interrogating them for everything they knew about the kidnappers, which turned out to be very little. Amberlin didn't believe it of course. The kidnappers—who she supposed should be called traffickers now—had to travel by the same road as the merchants.

There was no way they could bring all those people and cages from Lorelark to Ardark without the bandits knowing. She hoped that the watch was going to be more effective at extracting intel from those bandits than her apprentice was. The caravan unloaded at the Seven Songs warehouse. She sent Havlo and Maelle off to find a nice inn, taking Boots with them, while she met with the owner. She was excited to complete her first real adventuring job.

Alder was the second youngest of the Song brothers, followed only by his brother Basil who operated the branch in Lorelark. He felt sorry for his baby brother. Lorelark was a tough market to break into because it already had two major trading houses, and the population wasn't quite big enough to support three. But the city had been projected to grow and the timing was ripe. Had they waited, another rival could have slipped in before them.

So the decision had been made to set up the branch with the expectation that it would require extended financial support, which they were fully prepared to provide. Then Ygg Latten Bay happened. He didn't know the details of what was going on down there, but they'd pulled all the knights from the region. This allowed bandits to thrive in the Lorear Hills, effectively strangling Lorelark's commercial lifeline.

Yes, deliveries could still be made by way looping around along the coast, but the route was longer and more circuitous, greatly adding to the costs. The other problem was the closure of the bay itself. That cut off Lorelark's only other natural trading partner and all the markets that could be accessed by ship. With all of these challenges, anyone would have struggled. The fact that Basil had managed to stay solvent this long was a testament to his talent—as Alder had tried to tell him many times.

Though he wasn't sure how many of his letters had actually reached Basil. If goods weren't getting through reliably, then neither was the mail. Which was why he was surprised by the arrival of this caravan. The first he ever became aware of it was when a clerk came running excitedly into his office, telling him to come out to the warehouse. It was a flurry of activity the likes of which they hadn't seen in months. He wasn't about to let his brother's efforts go to waste.

He mobilized every available worker to the job. The warehouse and caravan crews working side by side filled up the space as fast as his managers could find more, and they had to reshuffle some of their old stacks. Meanwhile the clerks were going around checking everyone's contracts and preparing the money to pay them. Alder shook hands with every crew member and adventurer personally. Anyone capable of completing a job like this was a good worker, and it was his job to make them feel appreciated.

Running a trading house wasn't all about the money—the people were important too. A young lady with hair of copper and gold approached him. She didn't look like one of the staff, nor was she carrying a weapon. He guessed that she must have been a passenger, as traveling with the well-defended caravan was the safest option for someone who wanted to get to Ardark fast.

"You must be Basil's brother," she said.

"I can see the resemblance."

"I'm Alder," he introduced himself.

"May I ask your name?"

"You can call me Amberlin."

"What can I do for you, Amberlin?"

"I have something to sell," she said.

"I was going to talk to your brother about it, but I was running late that morning and didn't have the time."

"I'd be happy to take a look at it," he said.

"Would you mind waiting for a bit? I want to make sure all the workers are taken care of first."

"Of course." He finished seeing to all the workers and then checked with the clerks that there was enough cash on hand to pay everyone before returning to Amberlin. She'd found the warehouse mascot and was playing with him. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Does this little cutie have a name?" she asked while scratching the cat's neck.

"The workers call him Scruff," he replied. After giving Scruff a couple more scratches, Amberlin reluctantly tore herself away from the cat, and they got down to business.

"It sounded like you've done business with my brother before," he said politely.

"I sold something to him. Didn't get as much as I'd hoped for it, but not bad for something I found lying around."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. He gave me ten gold for it. I asked for fifteen, but he said no."

"My brother drives a hard bargain," he agreed, though he revised his assessment of Amberlin on hearing this new information. Only a noble would have something worth ten gold just lying around. Had he known that, he wouldn't have left her unattended. Though she didn't seem too bothered by the wait, thanks to Scruff.

"How has my brother's business been doing?" he asked as he showed her into his office.

"He didn't seem to be doing too bad to me," she replied. That was a relief to hear.

"I've been worried as news from Lorelark is hard to come by. The last letter I received from him was all doom and gloom, so I feared he may have had to shutter his doors."

"Nope, still open. He was even doing business with a noble. Got insurance for the caravan and everything."

"Wow. I've got to ask him how he managed to swing that." Trust Basil to find a way to make it through the hard times and even land some important connections.

"I wish I was half as resourceful as he is."

"Business has been tough here too?" she asked. He nodded.

"The three other major trading houses have banded together into a merchant cartel. They've been using their market power to squeeze everyone."

"Can't you just undercut their prices?"

"The problem is access to product. They've found a way to create a monopoly, see."

"I don't see," she said.

"They overpay the vendors. Normally when one merchant does this, it doesn't matter because all it does is eat into their own profits. But when they have deep enough pockets to buy out every vendor's stock? That's a monopoly."

"And every vendor sells to them because why sell it to someone else for less money."

"Correct. And once you have a monopoly, the customers have no choice but to buy from you, so you can charge outrageous prices," he said.

"If they can sell it for that much, then so can you," she said.

"Why not just offer the vendors a higher price so they sell to you instead?"

"That's what I've been trying to do, yet I never hear back from the vendors. Well, except one time, which was how I found out that the cartel has thought of ways to further undermine me. For a start, they offer a price match to the vendors, so whatever I offer, they'll beat it by ten percent. Second, the vendors are afraid of getting blacklisted. If they sell any part of their stock to me, they'll have nowhere to sell the rest that I can't take."

"Aren't there smaller merchants who can fill in that gap?"

"That's the other side of their strategy. They've been selling all the common products at a loss. Most of the smaller merchants have been driven out of business this way." He sighed.

"The only reason we've managed to hang on this long is thanks to our exclusivity contracts and our war chest. But it's hard when there seems to be no end in sight."

"All this sounds very expensive," she said.

"They shouldn't be able to keep this up for long."

"They must have been preparing years for this trade war." He looked thoughtfully out at the warehouse stacked high with goods.

"I just hope that traffic between here and Lorelark returns to normal soon. Basil would sell to me no matter how much the cartel offers him. And he'd be able to source from Ygg Latten Bay as well." Turning back to Amberlin, he said, "But enough about that. What do you have for us today?" he asked. She reached into her cloak pocket and pulled out some oddly shaped lumps of metal. It took him a moment to recognize what they were.

"How much can you give me for these troll's teeth?" she asked.

"I don't need them anymore." He didn't even bother to ask why she had troll's teeth lying around. Nobles were known to collect all sorts of weird trinkets. Though these teeth, having come from a rock troll, were anything but useless, often valued for their strength and hardness and coveted by blacksmiths across Kalimor.

"How many have you got there?" he asked and counted them up.

"Ten? Let's say ten gold total, or one apiece."

"Can you do fifteen?" she asked.

"I can go up to twelve."

"Deal." They shook hands, and he called in a clerk to bring the teeth to the in-house appraiser and return with the money once their authenticity had been confirmed.

"I can't believe I ended up getting more for these teeth than I did for the scale," Amberlin said.

"Though I suppose there was some uncertainty about what creature they'd come from."

"That would have affected the price a bit," he agreed.

"There's something I want to ask you," Amberlin said, her tone turning serious.

"I'll help however I can."

"I'm trying to track down a group of kidnappers. Is there anything you can tell me about them?"

"I haven't been aware of any kidnappings in Ardark," he replied.

"It's pretty safe here. The only problem is the bandits in the Lorear Hills, but nobody lives down that way."

"They've been taking people from Lorelark and sending them up here. They must have connections in this city."

"You might have more luck asking the city watch," he suggested.

"They'd be the ones to know about this sort of thing. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."

"I'll go and ask them then," she agreed.

"How do I get there?" He gave her some directions. They were pretty simple to follow. At that point, the clerk returned with the coins to pay for the troll's teeth. Shortly after Amberlin left, another clerk entered Alder's office and handed him the delivery manifest. They'd finished checking off all the items, confirmed with the caravan manager about the loss of products en route, and sorted out the insurance details.

It had been very forward-thinking of Basil to anticipate the bandit attack and arrange insurance ahead of time. Particularly as it looked like most of the losses were in high-value items like spiced rum. He would have to apologize to the clients and refund them with cash out of his own reserves until the insurance claim was settled. Luckily the banks' Bet-on-Wood system meant that a deposit made in Lorelark was accessible in Ardark immediately. The problem was getting the paperwork back to Lorelark to be processed.

But it was all worth it because the goods that did arrive were going to help keep both his and his brother's doors open. One of the mail clerks came in. In all the excitement, he'd almost forgotten that the caravan had also brought with it letters from Lorelark. The clerks had sorted through it and brought him his. There were a couple from Basil. He opened the one marked Urgent: Read Immediately. His brother always had a flair for the dramatic. As he read through the letter, his hands started shaking.

He ran out of his office and yelled to the clerks.

"That girl! Is she still here?"

"The one who sold us the teeth?" one of the clerks answered.

"She ran off." She'd be at the captain's office of the city watch. He could send someone to get her back, but there was no point—the moment had passed. The best way to make up for his mistake at this point would be to send a gift to the inn she was staying in. He hoped Amberlin wasn't the sort to hold a grudge. Had he known how important she was, he'd have given her the VIP treatment.