"Two then," he said.
She couldn't appear to give in too easily. "Two is low," she said. "But I'll let this one go for two if you'll buy a second at the same price."
"I have no need of two."
"None?" she asked coyly. "Your wife wouldn't find a use for a second basket of this quality?"
He frowned again and rubbed a hand over his face. "Four for the pair."
Lici nodded.
"Very well." He quickly chose a second and paid her the four sovereigns, before hurrying away, as if afraid that she might enchant him into buying more.
After that, she did a brisk trade, selling nearly a dozen baskets in the first hour of the morning. As the day progressed, however, business slowed, so that as midday approached she'd only sold two more, and still had ten left. She'd watched from afar as the other villages succumbed to her curse, but she had no desire to be anywhere near C'Bijor's Neck when her magic began to take effect. The city was too large; too many people would be sickened. Not that she didn't want to see, but she feared the outpouring of so much magic. Magic, the likes of which would bleed a Mettai to death. Magic that would leave this entire city in ruins.
"Slow day."
She turned at the sound of the man's voice. He was Qirsi, his white hair tied back from his face, his skin nearly as dark as her own. Fal'Borna. He was an old man for one of their kind. His hair had grown thin, so that she could see his golden scalp between strands of white, and he wore a fine, pale beard that made him appear gaunt as a mountain goat.
"Yes," she said.
"I thought you'd sell everything you brought in the first hour." "I'd hoped to."
"You did all right. Better than most of us."
"I suppose." She eyed him, an idea blossoming in her mind, like a small flame. "Is it usually like this?"
He shook his head. "Usually better. Most days it's as busy as this morning all the way through to dusk. But this weather has people scared. They think it'll be a hard winter, so they're saving their coin, in case the crops aren't enough to see them through."
"You live here," she said. Fal'Borna by birth, but now Y'Qatt.
He nodded and stepped over to her, extending a hand. "Y'Farl. You are?"
"Licaldi."
"Nice to meet you, Licaldi. I'm surprised we haven't met before. Baskets that fine would have attracted the notice of every peddler between here and the Ofirean."
"I'd stopped selling them long ago. I only began again recently."
"Why would you have stopped?"
She shrugged, looking away. This had to be done carefully. "My husband died, and it was all I could do to keep our crops going. But they're mostly in now, and my boys are doing the rest."
"So he died recently?"
She nodded, but said nothing.
"I'm sorry."
Lici shrugged and made herself smile, knowing it would look forced. He'd expect that. Then she knelt and began to pack up her baskets, gathering them together, and placing them slowly and carefully into the larger baskets she used to carry the others.
"You're leaving?" Y'Farl asked.
"I haven't any choice. I have to sell these, but I also need to get back before nightfall, and it's a walk of several hours."
"There are inns here. You could sell the rest tomorrow. You've made enough gold this morning…" Seeing her shake her head, he trailed off.
"No," she said. "I need to get home, and I can't spare even a bit of the gold I have, particularly if the rest of these baskets don't sell."
He watched her pack away the baskets for a few moments longer before walking back to his cart. He said nothing, and for just an instant Lici feared that she had miscalculated. Still, she continued to gather her baskets, and soon he had wandered back her way.
"How much for the lot?" he asked.
She looked up at him and frowned, as if not understanding. "I'm sorry?"
"How much would you sell them for? All the baskets?"
"They all sell for different amounts. How should I know-?"
He shook his head impatiently. "If I were to buy them all, how much would you want me to pay for them?"
"You…? But why?"
"To sell again," he said, surprising her with his candor. "Baskets that fine don't usually find their way to the Neck. They may not all sell today, but they'll sell eventually."
Still she frowned, regarding her wares now, as if uncertain as to whether to part with them. "I don't know."
"It would be gold in your pocket, Licaldi. Perhaps not as much as you would have gotten had you sold all of them yourself." He smiled. "I'd need to make some profit, after all. But it would be more gold than you have now."
"I could have sold them for twenty sovereigns."
"I'm sure you could have. But I won't pay that much. I'll give you ten." "Ten? For the lot?" She shook her head and went back to packing. "That's ridiculous."
"That's what I'm prepared to pay."
For a long time she refused even to look at the man, though she knew he was watching her. Finally, she sat back on her heels and sighed. "Fifteen."
"Twelve. That's as high as I'll go."
She glared at him. "You're taking advantage of me."
"Yes. I'm a merchant. It's what I do."
Lici had to laugh. "Very well, then, merchant. Twelve sovereigns for the lot."
She pulled the baskets out once more and began to hand them to him. He placed them on the table from which he'd been selling his goods-blankets mostly, though also some clothes, blades, and tools. When he had rearranged his table to fit her baskets, he returned and counted out twelve sovereigns into her slender hand.
"If you come back this way with more of these baskets, I'll be interested in them as well," he told her.
"I won't be in such a hurry then," she said. "And I'll expect more gold."
He found that amusing. The fool was still laughing as Lici walked away, her two large baskets tucked under her arms, empty save for the blankets. It was only midday. She had time to retrieve her cart and start making her way to the next Y'Qatt village. She wasn't even certain which one she'd go to next. There were so many. And she intended to find all of them.
Torgan Plye had been a merchant for the better part of ten fours. He'd traded in every part of the Southlands, from Eagles Inlet in
Aelea to the Lost Bay of Senkora Island, from Briny Point, at the southern tip of Naqbae, to these cold, isolated villages near the Companion Lakes. In the course of his travels, he'd done business with Eandi and Qirsi alike. He'd sold wine and delicacies to the Eandi of Tordjanne and Qosantia, as well as to the Talm'Orast and H'Bel; he'd sold weapons to the warriors of Stelpana, and also to the Fal'Borna and T'Saan; and he'd traded horses from the plains of the J'Balanar for fish from the waters off the Aelean coast.
He'd seen fat times and lean, and everything imaginable between the two. Early on, when he was still trying to establish himself as a merchant of some renown, he made the mistake of borrowing gold from a coinmonger in Medqasse, in central Tordjanne, near where he grew up. An older man, another merchant, had promised to sell him a shipment of red wine that he swore was coming from a place called Sanbira in the Forelands. But he needed some gold to help secure the shipment. One hundred sovereigns would do it, he'd said, and one hundred more on delivery. It would sell for three times that amount. The man swore it on the memory of his poor mother. And Torgan, ass that he was, believed him.
He never saw the man again, nor the one hundred sovereigns he'd paid up front. He paid the coinmonger the one hundred he had left, plus another thirty that he'd managed to put away for himself. But by then, with the daily fees accruing, he owed nearly three hundred, and when he couldn't pay, the coinmonger's cutthroats took out his left eye. That was the lowest of the lows.