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Chapter 17: Ambassador (Part 1)

“What a rotten place.”

Petrov, emissary of Longsong Stronghold, stepped from his cabin into the grey morning air of Border Town’s dock. The smell hit him first — damp wood, river silt, the particular staleness of a port that had not been painted or repaired in years. The sky sat low and solid overhead, the color of old ash, and the air pressed against him with a damp weight that made breathing feel like an effort.

“You were last here a year ago,” said his assistant, draping a wool coat over the ambassador’s shoulders.

“A year and a half.” Petrov corrected him without turning. “They rotate different men through every season. When I came before it was summer — furs were plentiful, and there was more besides.” He looked at the pier, the moss-furred planks bowing softly underfoot, the wood still holding its shape but not for much longer. “More than stone and fur.”

“What else?” His assistant looked genuinely puzzled.

Petrov didn’t answer. The man was a city hall functionary, capable enough at copying documents and managing appointments. The larger geometry of things was beyond his purview.

The thing beyond his purview was land. Between Longsong Stronghold and Border Town stretched a long corridor of uncultivated territory — the mountain range on one side, the Chishui River on the other, narrow and natural and ready. An outpost that held this corridor held the approach. And the land itself, untouched, needed no recuperation before plowing. Plant it and it produced. The stronghold’s population was growing; the food pressure would only increase. In five years, this untamed land could be feeding thousands.

The nobility of Longsong Stronghold had owned this corridor for decades and seen a mining operation in it. That was all they had seen.

Petrov stepped off the pier onto solid ground.

The terminal yard was empty. No ore stacked in the open. No carts waiting, no loaders. Just gravel and grey sky.

“Where’s the shipment?” his assistant asked.

“We’ll go to the castle.”

They rented horses from the stable at the dock — elderly animals of mixed colours, their coats dull, their gait a slow tremble. Even moving carefully, the animals seemed to consider stopping. Two gold royals as a deposit. Petrov paid without commenting.

On the stone road along the river, he spotted a ship flying Willow Town’s green pennant — a willow leaf on the banner, the waterline high with cargo. Moving downriver.

His stomach sank.

The prince had moved faster than expected. If he was already trading with downstream towns, the bargaining position of the stronghold had weakened by half. Petrov had come prepared to offer thirty percent below market price on the ore, counting on the monopoly to make the discount unavoidable. But a monopoly required there to be no other buyers. That ship suggested there were.

Six noble families shared the mining operation. Without majority agreement, no new terms could be ratified. His own father had confidently dismissed his warnings. The remaining five had been equally indifferent, so certain was everyone that Border Town would come to heel. That was the logic of men who had held a comfortable position for so long they had stopped examining whether it was actually secure.

It was not secure.

Petrov rode slowly along the river road, calculating. Willow Town was further away — higher shipping costs for the prince, lower opening offers, pressure from competition downstream in Dragon Mountain and Red City. The prince would still prefer the stronghold’s proximity, if the price was right. Thirty percent below market was probably just barely right. But only if it could be guaranteed by all six families, immediately, in writing.

Which it couldn’t.

The castle was in the southeast corner of town. The guards saw them coming and went inside. By the time Petrov and his assistant were shown to the hall, the fourth prince was already seated at the head of the table, composed as though he’d been there all morning.

“Mr. Ambassador. Please sit down.”

Food arrived: a roasted chicken, a wild boar leg in mushroom gravy, butter bread, a bowl of vegetable soup still steaming. In the borderland, apparently, the prince had not reduced his standard of living. Petrov, who had spent three days on ship bread and dried meat, did not decline. Years of training held his posture and his utensil technique intact. He noted, with some curiosity, that Roland ate with a pair of small wooden sticks — not a fork. The carving knife for slicing, then the sticks for everything else. It looked, against all expectation, genuinely efficient.

At the end of the meal Roland picked up the sticks and turned them in his fingers.

“What do you think of these?”

Petrov blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“An iron fork costs money. Most people can’t afford one. When you eat with your bare hands it’s easy to put whatever’s on your hands directly into your stomach along with the food. Diseases enter by the mouth.” Roland set the sticks down. “Cut a single oak tree and you have a hundred pairs of these, clean and cheap. I’m going to promote them throughout the town.”

“A very… practical idea, Your Highness.”

“My people don’t get much meat yet.” Roland poured wine. “I intend to change that. Slowly, but genuinely.”

Petrov offered appropriate encouragement and privately thought: let all the common people eat meat. Even Graycastle could not manage this. For Border Town, in this wilderness, it was simply a fantasy. He filed the prince’s remark under eccentric optimism and waited for the conversation to turn to ore.

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