And yet being able to do work with her own hands was deeply appealing.
Fleur took a quiet breath, then nodded definitively.
“But you’ve got to listen to my advice. Is that understood?”
He’d boosted his spirits and made her happy only to drive the nail down. But if she turned displeased here, it would mean failure for her.
Fleur took to heart what she had learned. “But of course!” she said.
“Then God’s blessing be upon you,” said Olar quietly as he closed the ledger. And then, as though having waited for just the right moment, Bertra returned from the marketplace.
Former nobility. The noble in name only. The true nobility.
Whatever their nature, those who strode grandly about, ready to give their famous names at any moment, were less uncommon than one might think.
Most of them clung to the past or used their name to eke out a living. Of course for those like Fleur, whose failing houses were bought up by wealthy merchants, name and all, only to have those merchants fail in turn—their names wound up being only a burden.
So Fleur hid her face behind a scarf and rarely gave her name. She relied on Olar’s old connections for work, and while she was occasionally recognized, most people spared her some measure of sympathy and kept quiet.
This time, however, Fleur had received an introduction to Milton thanks to her own hard work, so the fact of her former nobility had presumably remained a secret.
And yet.
“Haven’t we met? At a banquet, I think,” said Milton Post, immediately after shaking her hand upon receiving her for their meeting.
The young man’s blond hair was neatly combed, with clothes that were none too fine. But it was clear that some effort had gone into their arrangement, and had he not walked two steps forward to take her hand, no one would have had any trouble believing him to be from a good family.
It occurred to Fleur that her hands no longer had the pure white softness of someone who wore only silken gloves. Compared with Bertra, of course, they still obviously belonged to a maiden who only ever picked flowers, so surely her hands alone had not given her away.
Fleur was flustered and at a loss for words, so Milton continued. “Ah, that’s right. At Lord Milton’s banquet.”
“Ah—” she blurted, since that was the name of the nobleman who had hosted one of the few banquets she’d attended.
“We only met the once, though. It seems you don’t remember.”
Young girls of marriageable age who attended banquets shook hands more often than they reached for bread. Even if the touches were light ones, their hands were red and swollen by the time they returned home in the evening.
“I suppose it’s no surprise, though. Your attention was always so hoped for.”
This had all happened when her family still held the manor, before their fortunes had declined too far. Back when she was just the sort of girl whose hand in marriage might be sought.
“As I recall, your name is—”
“Fleur Bolan.” She hadn’t given her name in so long, the sound of it was at once nostalgic and tinged with shame. The shame was less from the name itself as it was having spoken it here, in a tavern facing the docks.
“That’s right. The daughter of the Bolan family—the one who that famously nasty Lady Duan slapped.”
“Ah!” She gave clear voice to her surprise, but fortunately this was not a formal dining hall. Her voice was immediately swallowed by the bustle around them, and all that remained was Milton’s smile.
“I seem to recall many an apprentice knight seeking your favor after that. Perhaps you didn’t know?” Milton brought some roast beans to his mouth, perhaps to disguise the smile there that just wouldn’t disappear.
This consideration on his part only served to intensify her embarrassment, and even with the scarf around her head, Fleur wanted to slink off into a corner somewhere and hide.
“Still, what happened after that…I can’t help but be sympathetic. Though there were some who spoke ill.”
Fleur could tell he was not talking about her holing up and crying for a week. Underneath her scarf, she composed herself, took a deep breath, and nodded.
“After all, we can’t decide our own fates. The only ones who can do that are the ones sitting in far more fortunate positions than we have.”
Fleur looked at Milton’s hand as he poured wine into her cup; the hand was too rough for a nobleman. And yet it wasn’t the rugged hand of a knight who spent his days jousting. They were more like the hands of a mischievous nephew.
“My entire house—” Fleur began.
“Hmm?” Milton replied, his cup raised to his lips.
“My entire house fell from such a position. And yet against all odds, it seems there’s a place for me in this world, though I would never have imagined it would be working as a merchant.”
Milton nodded, looking out toward the port and squinting from the brightness. “I was the third son of the second mistress, so as you might expect, when I left the house I received nothing but a tiny scrap of land, a bit of coin, and the Post name. I don’t have the horse and armor I’d need to spend my days jousting and make some noble girl my own, nor the wit to make my way reciting ballads. But I expected as much, so this was not any great shock to me.”
“And then you went into trading?” Even if his house hadn’t fallen, he could easily have been one of the many who were cast out and not welcome back.
Milton brought another bite to his mouth, perhaps to hide the pained smile. “Fortunately, the Post name opened many doors for me. And I loved good food, good wine, and idle chatter, so I turned up at many a table around the land. As I wandered around, I would hear talk of where a man like me might be needed, so it’s true—you can find surprising places for yourself.”
When the man who had bought Fleur to be his wife died, her house falling to ruin and the manor sold off, Fleur had earned the servants’ respect by remaining calm. But that was not because she was a particularly strong girl. Life had simply washed her away, so she gave herself up to the flood.
She sensed a similarly defeatist strength from Milton, the man in front of her.
“I hear tell your business is going well.”
“Ha-ha. It’s a bit embarrassing hearing someone say as much to my face, but I do have a certain amount of confidence.”
There were many who used their family influence as a shield, claiming the achievements of their underlings as their own. The man before her, Milton, even having left his home to sell goods for a trading company, seemed to be of a very reliable disposition. He could not very well stay away from the common people, especially not when his wings had been clipped this way, sending him tumbling to earth.
Fleur honestly envied how firmly Milton’s feet were planted on the ground, which is why the words that came out of her mouth next did so mostly unbidden.
“What’s your secret?”
Olar had once said that anyone who gave away their methods was unfit to be called a merchant. Fleur remembered this the moment she asked the question, and regretfully wondered if it had been a stupid one.
Milton actually looked down, a forced-looking smile on his face. But the moment Fleur was about to take the question back, Milton looked back up and spoke. “It’s stubbornness.”
For a moment she didn’t understand and simply stared into his clear blue eyes.
“Stubbornness. There are lots of people in the same business as me, but once they’ve sold something to someone they know, they stop there and can’t sell any more. That’s because they are in the same place as the people buying the clothes. The first sale they make is because the buyer feels sympathy for them. But that’s not how I work. I remind them that the Post name will open doors for them, that it’s nothing more than the first foothold in making the most of a business opportunity. Having done so, they may laugh at me, they may scorn me. I praise their taste and recommend my wares’ finer points, and make the sale. And of
course, I never move poor clothing. So it sells.”
The flood of words from Milton’s mouth suddenly stopped, and he smiled pleasantly.
“Enough that my business partners find me useful, anyway,” finished Milton, drinking his wine, then ordering another cup.
Fleur had not interrupted him, but not because she was overwhelmed by his monologue. Her chest had simply tightened upon seeing his stubborn resolve, and she had been unable to speak.
“Ha-ha, was that a bit too pretentious?”
“N-not at all…”
“Still,” Milton continued, giving a silver coin to the innkeeper who brought his wine, “that was all because I have a goal.”
Hearing this, Fleur could practically see the image of a fetching town girl standing behind Milton. But that was not at all what he was getting at.
“I want to rub my family’s face in it.” Again he ate the beans to hide his smile.
Fleur watched him do so with a steady gaze.
“It’s a bit different from proving I’m not some shame upon the Post name. It’s more like showing that even though I’ve been cast out, I can still succeed. It’s about pride. If I can keep that, I don’t care how many times my knees hit the floor when I bow my head—I’ll be doing it as a merchant.”
His determination was unwavering.
Fleur rested her hand upon the plain wooden table, and she found it hard to keep it still. If this had not been a noisy tavern, and if the rough table had been covered by a fine white tablecloth, she might very well have extended her hand out to cover his.
The only thing that stopped her was the fact that this was not a noble ball or dance floor.
The person before her had decided upon his goal and was moving straight toward it, and he had embraced his role as a merchant, which meant that what Fleur needed to do was not to take his hand in hers, but rather speak these words.
“So, you are…”
“Yes?”
The words caught in her throat, and she drew her chin in, bracing herself. “…Looking for capital, I hear.”
It was a matter of course for merchants to be able to change their attitude in response to circumstances. Fleur considered Milton as a merchant and chose her words accordingly.
Milton smiled thinly—Fleur was sure it wasn’t her imagination. “That’s right.”
She took a breath. “How much?”
Milton named a figure that for Fleur, at that moment, was not an impossible amount.
The soup had plenty of bread in it, along with beans, onion, and the leftover meat from the previous night—two big bowls of it and one would be able to skip meals for two days. On top of such hearty fare had been laid a generous amount of roasted cheese.
Such a dish would not have been out of place coming from the large kitchen of a fine manor somewhere, but it was very like Bertra to manage the feat shorthanded and with a much smaller kitchen.
And since the house of Bolan operated on such a meager budget, she had become quite adept at making do with cheap ingredients. Even the seasoned merchant Olar had been stunned into silence when told how much they had cost, which was no mean feat.
When it came to cooking, none wielded a ladle the way Bertra did.
“The bread was rejected by the town inspector, so I got them to sell it cheap. It was stale and hard and couldn’t have been eaten the way it was, but look what happens when you put it in soup. I got the onions from the lady of the house three doors down—traded her some herbs I grew for them. The meat came from a chicken I found wandering about the garden.”
As a child, Fleur had always been forbidden from wandering into the yard behind the manor, and when she had learned that this was because of the traps set to catch ingredients for dinner, she was quite impressed.
Of course, those traps had been set by the elderly gardener, but Bertra had evidently been watching and had imitated him, so both Fleur and Olar were perfectly aware that the chicken had not been simply “wandering about the garden.”
But in a town thick with edible animals like pigs, sheep, goats, and rabbits, no one was going to complain about a missing chicken or two.
Olar’s constant admiration of Bertra’s craft was not unusual.
What was unusual was the way Fleur failed to praise or compliment the dinner’s flavor in any way as she ate it.
“Milady?”
Fleur nearly dropped her spoon at the unexpected address. All their silver had long since been sold, so it was a cheap tin utensil. Bertra would occasionally complain that she missed polishing the silver, but for Fleur’s part she found the tinware easier to use and much preferred it.
“O-oh yes. It’s delicious,” she said hastily, which made Olar and Bertra both regard her dubiously. “Very,” she added. Olar and Bertra shared a look.
Fleur picked up a piece of bread and put it in her mouth. It was hard to chew, but that meant it would be that much longer before she was expected to speak.
“So what did the Post lad have to say?”
Fleur heard the quiet hammering of her heart. She was sure they could hear it, too, but averted her eyes and took another bite of bread before she had finished chewing the first one.
“Oh, have you started working on another trade?” Bertra was preternaturally sharp when it came to housework but could still be rather insensitive.
Or perhaps she did know and was asking on purpose, Fleur wondered as she took a sip of ale.
“A fundamental principle of trading,” Olar said, giving Fleur an appraising look as she stood from her chair, “is to keep your distance from your partners.”
Fleur’s heart was now very quiet. She shot Olar a cold glance, which he did not flinch at.
“For trading to go smoothly, you must deal with many different partners, as it’s impossible to predict when difficulties may arise. You must above all avoid any situation wherein a delivery failing to arrive would mean your ruin.”
Their cold staring contest continued. But Fleur could not match Olar’s ability in hiding any emotion from his face, eyes, and mouth. She finally looked away, picking up her bowl and thrusting it at Bertra. “Another.”
“Chasing profit is a dangerous business. If you dream of great gains, you also expose yourself to great risks. Trading is a long-term enterprise. You must avoid risk,” said Olar, but Fleur could tell his words lacked real conviction.
No doubt he’d already concluded what was to blame for Fleur’s strange mood.
“He’s a trustworthy man.”
“Merchants can wear many masks.”
“He seems a trustworthy man.”
Olar nodded and indicated that Fleur could continue.
“The profit is reliable. I supply the money, and he chooses and sells the clothing. The profit comes to thirty or forty percent, which we split.”
“What of the clothing? Where does it come from and via whom?”
“A famous town across the sea, he said. He’ll use the trading company for the purchase, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
She cut a piece of chicken in two with her spoon and brought the smaller piece to her mouth. The bones had been carefully removed, which made it easy to eat.
“And to whom will they be sold?”
“The same customers he’s sold to before, so there’s no problem there, either.”
The canny old merchant stopped asking questions. Fleur’s face was downcast, and she stole a glance at him with upturned eyes, like a student seeking her tutor’s approval.
Olar put his hand to his forehead, sighing as he rubbed his head, which he often did when he was thinking something over.
Fleur thought back over her conversation with Milton. Her impression was that everything had been planned very carefully, from purchase all the way to sale. After all, they were only continuing with a business that had been conducted successfully all along. The only difference was that the money to buy the clothes would come from Fleur instead of from the company. And doing business at the company??
?s whims meant they kept most of the profit.
By joining up with Fleur, Milton could make more money for himself in exchange for his expertise with clothing and customers.
He had explained his expectations and goals very clearly, and Fleur did not think there would be any problems.
“I see…”
“Is there a problem?” she shot back, stronger than she had intended.
“Well, if you truly wish to know…”
“If there is, spit it out,” she said, then realized how high-handed she was being and looked away. “I’m sorry. If you believe there to be a problem, please tell me.”
Olar sighed, brushing some ale foam off of his beard before speaking. “Can this individual truly be trusted?”
Fleur was not angry at the question, but not because of any particular generosity on her part. For Olar to ask that question meant that there was something that bothered him. And he had said that a top-class merchant could discern surprising facts from only the smallest pieces of information.
“…Is there something suspicious?”
“‘Suspicious’ might be going too far, but it is strange.”
“What’s strange?” she asked, which made Olar look down at his hands, before looking up at her out of the corner of his eye. He made this face whenever he was hesitating over whether to tell her what he was really thinking. He gazed at her like that for a while, mulling something over behind his glassy gray eyes.
He sighed, the signal that he’d come to his conclusion. “Milady, if I may…”
“What?”
“Trade is like that bowl.” He indicated the bowl that was still half full with Bertra’s soup. “Profit is like its contents. Someone skillful like Bertra can extract greater profit than others. But no matter how hard she might try, the bowl can only be filled so much before it overflows, just as every trade has a limit to the amount of profit that can be made from it.”
Opposite Olar, Bertra broke her bread and began to eat. It was very difficult to divert her attention away from anything outside of the house.