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“A viable suggestion,” Rysn said as Nikli set her at her desk. She immediately began digging through the notebooks in the bottom drawer. Chiri-Chiri lethargically peeked out of her box and chirped in concern. “However, I feel we need another solution.”
She pulled out a specific notebook, then nodded to Nikli, who bowed and withdrew with his assistant to stand outside. The Lopen remained, lounging beside the door as it clicked closed. She glanced at him. He acted so relaxed all the time; he seemed easy to underestimate.
“This isn’t about just our lack of food, gancha,” he guessed.
“An astute observation,” Rysn said, flipping through her notebook. “One of the biggest dangers at sea is letting your crew get away from you.”
“Like that crew from the ghost ship,” Lopen said, “who seem to have gotten away from everyone . . .”
“I wasn’t referring to anything so dramatic,” Rysn said. “But our situation could quickly turn dangerous if the crew starts to think I’ve brought them on a suicide mission.”
It was one of the conundrums of maritime life. Sometimes good crews, well trained, would mutiny. Her babsk had talked about it, and she’d found herself reading story after story. Spending so long on the ocean, isolated, the crew’s emotions fed off one another. Things that were irrational during brighter days started to seem reasonable. Emotions could take on a life of their own, like spren, and suddenly good crews would become hysterical.
Your best defenses were discipline and swift action. She searched her notebook for notes from a specific trading expedition she’d taken with Vstim several years ago. She’d been a brat back then—but at least she’d been the kind of brat who wrote about how annoyed she was.
There, she thought, finding the entries. An expedition into the wilderness of Hexi. Vstim had purchased wormy grain out of Triax for mere chips, and she’d thought him insane. Who bought grain with worms in it?
But as with all things he’d done, there’d been an explicit lesson in Vstim’s actions. Trade wasn’t only about buying things and selling them, he’d reinforced to her time and time again. It was about finding a need that wasn’t being fulfilled. It was a kind of Soulcasting: taking scraps and transforming them into the brightest of gemstones. He’d made her write down a list of locations. . . .
“Fetch the captain for me,” Rysn said absently, unrolling one of her maps.
She didn’t realize until after he’d gone that she’d given an order to a Knight Radiant. Would he be insulted? But when the Lopen returned with Drlwan, he didn’t seem the least bit offended. Merely curious as he looked over her shoulder at the map.
“Rebsk?” the captain asked.
“We need to take a short detour,” Rysn said, pointing at the map.
Rysn made certain the entire crew was on deck to watch as she invited the Hexi nomads on board. A quiet folk, uninterested in the politics of the world, they kept their hair in braids and smelled faintly of the animals they kept as sacred beasts. Their priestly class did not eat flesh, as they’d taken oaths forbidding it—but they considered grubs and insects to be plant, not animal.
They were one of six groups Vstim had made her write down as people to whom she could sell wormy grain. To initiate the trade, Rysn read off the phrases that Vstim had required her to record. The nomads sifted through the grain and found it to be good, barely eaten by the worms—which were plump and fat.
Careful not to take advantage, Rysn negotiated briefly, but firmly. The end result was a large stock of jerky, made by the nomads from the dead of their animals and kept specifically for trades like this. The blankets—given as a gift to Rysn, with the phrase “For an Honored” because of her respectful language—would sell for a good bit as well. The nomads left with the barrels of grain, singing their farewell.
“They actually bought worm-filled grain,” the captain said, scratching her head. “I’ll admit, Rebsk, I hadn’t believed you until just now.”
“Vstim never brought you here, I take it,” Rysn said.
“Ah. This did smell of one of his schemes. I wonder why this isn’t common knowledge. This place should be swarming with traders trying to offload their old grain for profit.”
“You’d think that,” Rysn said, “but that’s not what I learned from Vstim. The Hexi tribes must be approached carefully, and their language is difficult to learn. Act arrogant, and you’ll turn them away. Plus, the grain needs to be fresh good grain—though with worms. They won’t buy something that has festered and is full of decayspren.”
“Still,” the captain said.
And she was right. This was a mostly untapped market. But who wanted to trade wormy grain when there were fine rugs and jewelry to show off? Who wanted to visit the Hexi wilderness when the grand bazaars of Marat were so close?
Only someone who understood need and the true soul of a trader. Thank you, Babsk, she thought as she surveyed her crew and saw far fewer anxietyspren than before. This had mollified them. These last few days had been tense, but the crew were more jovial as they returned to their stations.
Rysn had, hopefully, inverted the omen. That was the traditional way to disperse such a thing: to derive a good turn from it. To those who followed the Passions, this showed that fate was on your side, even when an omen tried to darken the way. You could always defeat gloomy Passions with optimism and determination. Even the worst highstorm dropped fresh water.
It was all nonsense, she’d come to believe—but it was the most intriguing kind because of the underlying truth. Omens weren’t real. But the way people reacted to them was very real. Inverting that was all about perspective. Like how a barrel full of worms was worthless or of great value, depending on your perspective.
Nikli picked her up at her request; for simple transfers like this, he brought her in a cradle-carry rather than using his sling, which she could sit in. As he walked toward the quarterdeck, a couple of the sailors waved to him and called out a good-natured joke, at which Nikli smiled.
“It worked, I see,” she said as he deposited her in her seat beneath the sunshade. “You seem to have made a few friends on board.”
“I . . .” Nikli bowed his head. “I guess I shouldn’t have doubted. Yes, Brightness. They eat with me now, ask about my homeland. They are not so prejudiced as I thought.”
“They are and they aren’t,” she said. “As I said, sailors on a ship can be a tight-knit group. But these here on the Wandersail chose this duty, preferring long-distance voyages that take them new places. They’re not the type to dislike someone solely because he looks a little different—at least, no more than they distrust anyone else who isn’t part of their ship family. You merely needed to join that family.”
Nikli knelt beside her chair as she buckled herself in. “You are also different from what I expected, Brightness. I thought working for a merchant would involve . . . Well, thank you. For the way you treated those nomads earlier, and the way you treat me. For your wisdom.”
“I wish it were my wisdom, Nikli,” Rysn said. “I was trained very well by a teacher I didn’t deserve, and can never live up to.”
“Brightness,” Nikli said, “you seem to be doing a fine job, in my estimation.”
