The warning Trevalin had given me the night before played in my mind again. The look on her face still stoked the frantic anger building in my chest hours later.
“The Empress is taking extreme measures to ensure her weapons remain unbeatable and that she continues to control every facet of this empire.” The woman had said as she moved behind the desk. She sank into an oversized chair, a complete image of grace and smoothness.
“What do you mean?” I asked, moving deeper into the room with her. My eyes glanced around the room, making sure nobody was hiding in the corners, waiting to strike when I had my back turned.
“I mean, she is doing things nobody ever thought she would. There are rumors, but, well, gossip is for idle women, and neither you nor I are idle.” Trevalin smiled wickedly at the suggestion of her words.
I’d crossed my arms and stared at her, waiting for her to say more. But she never did.
I shook the memory from my mind and left the blacksmith’s stall behind, Sil falling in behind me. The sword went back into my inventory, safely kept away from whatever prying eyes might await us in the cavern as we wandered through the tiers in search of our next destination.
We were looking for a merchant who sold specially imported items from the west. Trevaline had mentioned him, and said that if I could get him to give me one of his most precious items for a good price, then she would trust me with more information. She hadn’t said much else about him, just that he was a hard negotiator and getting anything out of him would take every ounce of charm I had.
I’d had to force myself not to smirk at her choice of words, as I knew my [People Person] skill should provide some enhancement to how charming I was in conversations. It didn’t specifically mention negotiations in the description for the skill, but it was easy to interpret it that way. Negotiations were one of the primary ways diplomats used their charm. And I had centuries of experience running an empire.
We approached the stall to find a lanky man standing behind it. He was young—younger than I’d expected—and his hair was neatly trimmed and pulled back behind his head. From the way Trevaline had spoken, I’d expected an older man more set in his ways.
Instead, he was barely old enough to be considered an adult.
“Good morning,” the young man said, his voice high-pitched and nasally. “Come to purview the wondrous wares of Wilhelm The Grand, have you?”
I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. He was worse than she’d warned me he would be.
“I’ve heard it told that you can get your hands on anything this side of the Irindor.”
A wide smile stretched across his face revealing crooked teeth. “That is true, my lady. Very true indeed. Wilhelm The Grand has the finest wares and can obtain the rarest of wares, too!”
He flourished as he finished the sentence, giving off a flamboyant wave of his hands. Then he leaned in very close. “And what, pray tell, do you seek from the Grandest of Wilhelms?”
The question hung in the air between us, and I let it stay there for a moment. Long enough to watch his smile falter just slightly, just enough to tell me he was the kind of person who preferred to fill silences with noise.
I let my eyes drift lazily across the items arranged on his table. "I was told you carried something extraordinary. But I've heard that word used to describe rather ordinary things so many times I've stopped trusting it."
His chin lifted. Yes, there it was. Pride.
"Ordinary." He repeated the word like I'd insulted his family name. "My lady, there is nothing ordinary about any of the wares I carry. Every item you see before you has crossed oceans, climbed mountains or passed through the hands of people whose names you could not even dare speak because of how far below them you are.”
"Mm." I picked up a small glass vial from the nearest corner of the table and turned it over once before setting it back down with something close to disinterest. “Those are bold words, Wilhelm. Perhaps you can help me settle an argument to prove it.”
"An argument?" He blinked, momentarily thrown off.
This was where Trevalin’s input from the night before would come into play. If she was going to allow me to work with her, then I had to prove I was resourceful enough to get my hands on something someone did not want to part with without resorting to violence or blind intimidation.
She’d called it the art of politics, and now, standing in front of the lanky and overly energetic man, I could see why she’d steered me in this direction.
“A friend of mine insists that no merchant operating out of the city would ever carry a genuine piece of Verathian glasswork. She says the import fees alone make it impossible for anyone to profit on it.” I paused and looked at him with a carefully calibrated between curiosity and mild condescension. “I told her she was being narrow minded.”
Wilhelm The Grand straightened so completely that I thought he might tip over backwards. "Your friend is precisely the kind of person who mistakes the boundaries of her own imagination for the limits of the world,” he said, his voice dropping into something he clearly believed sounded authoritative.
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"Then you have one." I said flatly.
"I—well—" He caught himself, and I watched something behind his eyes. He was trying to figure out how to get himself out of this, I realized. He was smarter than he looked, which wasn't saying a great deal, but it was something.
“I do not discuss the contents of my wares with just anyone. I must know that you are someone of stature and respect before I show you those types of wares. Otherwise, you may choose from the items on the table before you.”
"Of course.” I smiled at him warmly. It was the same smile I used on foreign dignitaries who needed to feel respected before they would agree to anything.
He glanced to his left, almost involuntarily.
"That's exactly what I told my associate. I said that a merchant who understands the beauty and rarity of Verathian glass would never let something that rare sit out on a table, calling to any beggars or thieves that might mistake it for common glass. He would keep it close and safe. Show it only to someone who could genuinely appreciate what they were looking at."
"You know Verathian glasswork?" he asked, and the suspicion in his voice was already softening into something more like curiosity.
That was something I had learned about people early on in my time as Empress. People who loved rare things were often desperately lonely about it. Many spent their days surrounded by people who didn't understand the value of what they carried, and the moment someone suggested they might actually see it, everything fell into place.
"My mother collected it. She had three pieces. A bowl, a stemmed cup, and a navigation instrument she was never entirely sure was authentic. I used to hold them up to the lamp when I was small and watch the light move through them."
It wasn’t a complete lie. The palace did have its own collection of Verathian glass. It was part of a much larger collection of items from civilizations that had perished over the years—long before dragons had come to this land. The Verathian people had once settled the land along the western coast, and the relics of its people had become a historical piece of the world that many higher-end collectors sought.
His expression cracked open like a door falling from its hinges at the confession.
"The color shifts," he said, leaning forward without seeming to realize he was doing it. "Most people think it's blue, but it isn't blue. It's—"
"It changes depending on what's behind it," I said quietly, letting awe fill my voice. "My mother used to say it was because the Verathian craftsmen believed the truth of a thing lived in its past, not its present."
Wilhelm The Grand stared at me for a long moment.
Then, as if finally coming to some grand realization, he reached under the top of the stall and and began to draw out an item wrapped in dark cloth. He unfolded the cloth with the careful reverence of someone who had practiced the gesture many times, smoothing each corner back as though the fabric itself deserved consideration.
What sat beneath the bundle was small. Even smaller than I'd expected. It was a shallow dish, barely wider than my palm, with walls so thin they looked like they might crumble if you breathed on them too hard.
Even in the dim light of the cavern, the piece moved. Colors slid through the glass in slow, lazy pulls, shifting from something close to grey into a deep blue that wasn't really blue, and then into a green that had no name I knew of. The light’s pattern did not repeat itself. Every movement was different from the last.
"How long have you had it?" I asked, keeping my voice soft, trying to match his reverence.
"Eight months. I've had three buyers who could afford it. But not one of them understood what they were looking at. The first one asked if it was enchanted." His lip curled faintly into a mocking smile. "As if it needed to be."
"Some people can't see the beauty in a thing unless someone has told them how to,” I agreed.
He looked at me with the gratitude of a man who had been waiting a long time for someone to understand him.
I let the silence breathe for a moment. I did not reach for the dish or ask to hold it. Both of those actions would have shifted the dynamic of our conversation in the wrong direction. I did not want to be viewed as someone who wanted something. That was the weakest position available in any negotiation I had ever conducted. I needed him to want to give it to me.
"She'll be insufferable about it, you know. My friend, I mean. If I go back and tell her I met a merchant in the city who not only had a piece but clearly knew its meaning and history, she'll find some way to make that into an argument she won."
Wilhelm frowned. "What was her objection, exactly?"
"That the import fees make it impossible." I tilted my head slightly. "Which suggests she thinks the value is purely financial and that the only reason to carry something like this is to eventually sell it."
"Well—" He stopped as I continued.
"I told her some merchants carry things because they're worth carrying. Because having them nearby means something. Not everything is a transaction." I let out a soft sight as I finished.
Wilhelm The Grand looked down at the dish and then up at me. Something moved behind his eyes, his thoughts clearly painted on his features.
"If I were to part with it," he said slowly, "and I am not saying that I would—"
"Of course not."
"—but if I were, I would want to know it was going somewhere it would be appreciated. Somewhere it would be—" He stopped as if searching for the right word.
"Seen," I offered.
"Yes…Seen."
I reached into my coat and produced a coin purse that was filled with just enough coin to be considered reasonable but not overly impressive. It wasn’t so low that he would feel insulted at the offer, but it also wasn’t so high that it would make him feel as if I’d simply purchased it for the sake of owning something pricey.
I set the bag on the table between us with no particular ceremony and watched his eyes move to it and then away again.
"My mother would have liked you. She had very little patience for people who collected things they didn’t actually look at. She always said collections deserved to be seen, not simply owned.”
Wilhelm wrapped the dish back in its cloth with the same careful movements that he had uncovered it with and then held it out across the table.
"See that it finds good light," he told me as I took it.
I nodded slowly and tucked the item away into the satchel I still carried at my side. Once it was out of view, I deposited it into the inventory the System had given me, where it would be safe from any problems.
"Wilhelm The Grand," I said, and I let just enough warmth into the title that it didn't sound like mockery. "I think my friend was very wrong about you."
He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes, too.
“Thank you for giving it a good home.” He said as I turned away.
Quest complete:
Hidden Trades.
You managed to learn more about the rare trades possible in the Bloodshadow Marketplace. You even managed to do so without relying on Woldroff’s sketchy information.
Quest reward: 300 Gold Coins, 1 Tonic of Retribution.
I didn’t say anything else as I walked away from the stall, Sil falling in behind me. When we were a good distance away, Sil finally spoke up, his voice far softer than one might expect from a brutish figure like the one he now wore.
“Was that really all she sent us down here for? A piece of glass?”
I chuckled. “It’s more than just a piece of glass, Sil. It’s a piece of history. One that most regular people forget exists.”
A piece of my world’s history. Just like my father’s empire was. Now I just needed to figure out how to stop that liar before she completely erased it.