The Brindleford Trade House smelled like ink, river damp, and old coin.
The main hall was big enough to park all of Greyfall's wagons inside and still have room for a dance. Ledger shelves lined one wall, lockboxes and strongrooms another. A long counter ran across the center, scarred by generations of elbows, spills, and hasty calculations.
Behind that counter, a man in a dark green doublet with neatly trimmed beard and eyes like a hawk's was shouting.
"I don't care what the Hanyue clerk wrote, Bran, I care what passed through my doors!" he snapped. "If they say eight crates and I only see seven, someone along the road is either stealing, lying, or both, and I don't pay for ghosts!"
"That's why I brought him, Factor," Selene said smoothly, stepping in front of Al before he could be mistaken for part of the furniture. "So we can make sure you don't have to pay for ghosts."
The man shifted his glare to her. It softened slightly. "Mistress Arkwright. You're late."
"We arrived alive and intact," Selene said. "You can't be both on time and alive every season any more, not on the western road."
The factor made a noncommittal noise. "You brought the boy."
"I brought a boy," Selene said. "Whether he's the boy you wanted is your problem to decide."
She nudged Al forward.
The factor looked him up and down. Al tried not to fidget.
"Name," the man said.
"Al Greyfall, sir."
"Greyfall," he repeated. "You're the one who caught the double-listed wagons last harvest."
Al blinked. "Selene caught those. I just…noted them."
"If she did all the work, she wouldn't have written your name in the letter," the factor said. He flicked his fingers toward the stack of papers on the counter. "Pick up the top three, read me the cargo lists, and don't leave anything out."
Al obeyed. His hands were still dusty from the road; the parchment felt rough and familiar.
He read.
"Six crates dried fish, three barrels Greyfall grain, two bales tanned hides, one crate mixed herbs and resin, condition intact. Seven sacks rock salt from Caelbrun, one barrel lamp oil, two crates iron tools from Veltmark, three bolts linen from Central. Five cages mixed fowl, one broken and culled en route, yield noted—"
"Stop," the factor said. "Now tell me what isn't written there that I care about."
Al swallowed. "Uh…there's no notation about dates. If we don't know how long the fish have been unrefrigerated, we can't predict spoilage. And the lamp oil barrel is only listed by count, not weight. If it's short-dipped, we'll lose money and have no proof to press the supplier. The tools say 'from Veltmark' but not which forge—if it's Black Anvil goods mixed in with honest stock, you'll want to know where the contamination happened so you don't pay twice for bad iron."
The factor's brows rose, just slightly.
"And?" he prompted.
Al glanced down again. "The caged fowl note assumes the culled ones were unusable, but if the drover took them as 'wastage' and sold them in a village along the way, technically that's theft unless your contract allows it. It's not clear."
Selene's mouth tilted in a tiny, smug smile.
The factor drummed his fingers once on the counter. "You write like a Greyfall boy," he said. "Plain, crooked, a little smudged. You think like a man I might not regret paying."
He thrust out a hand. "Orren Falst. Factor of Brindleford. If you steal from me, lie to me, or make me look like a fool in front of my partners, I'll have you hauling fish guts on the docks until your fingers fall off. If you save me coin, time, or face, I'll remember it."
Al shook his hand, surprised by the strength in the grip. "Yes, Master Falst."
"Good," Orren said. He jerked his thumb toward a side door. "Bran will show you your corner. Don't touch anything that isn't parchment for the first week."
Bran, the pinched assistant, sniffed, but motioned Al after him.
Selene clapped Al's shoulder once. "Try not to drown in paper. I'll be in the guest room at the Grey Keg if you need something. For a few days, anyway." She lowered her voice. "And Al? Remember: people will underestimate you because of where you're from. Use it. But don't start lying to yourself to make it easier."
He nodded.
Inside the side room, the chaos was more…organized.
Three long tables, two already occupied. One by a thick-shouldered woman with ink up to her elbows, sorting coins into stacks with terrifying speed. Another by a young man about Al's age, hair tied back, squinting at a ledger with a blot of ink on his lip.
Bran gestured to the third, currently strewn with unrolled scrolls.
"Clear that," he said. "Then we'll talk about filing. And then we'll talk about how much I hate filing, so I don't have to do it and you do."
Al set his pack down carefully in a corner and moved to gather the scrolls.
"Careful!" the coin-stacker snapped. "That one's from the Caelbrun salt contracts. Smudge it and the factor will dock both our pay."
"Sorry," Al said quickly, easing it aside.
The young man looked up, eyeing him with curiosity rather than hostility. "You're the new rat?"
"Apparently," Al said. "Al."
"Perrin," the other said. "From up-river. You ever seen this many numbers in one place?"
Al glanced at the shelves lining the walls, each filled with bound ledgers. "Not yet," he said. "Looking forward to it."
Perrin whistled softly. "You really are from Greyfall."
Bran clapped his hands sharply. "Enough chatter. Listen up, boy. Brindleford isn't some sleepy ash-pit. Ships in, carts out, day and night. We keep track of every crate, every sack, every blast-blasted feather if it's on a contract. We deal with Aurelion coin, Xianwu promissory notes, Beastkin barter, Yamatoan chits. If you write the wrong symbol in the wrong column, we get shorted, or worse, accused of cheating."
"I understand," Al said.
"You will," Bran said. "Or you'll understand why your fingers hurt from scrubbing floors instead of holding quills."
The next hours were a blur of parchment.
Bran rattled off systems: how they dated entries (Aurelion and local calendar both), how they tagged shipments by origin (Veltmark, Hanyue, Yamatoa Isles, Sula), how they flagged anything suspicious in red ink for Orren's eyes.
He made Al copy a page from an old ledger, then graded it: too tilted, numbers too cramped, margin too narrow.
"Again," he said, handing him a fresh sheet.
By midday, Al's hand cramped, his eyes ached, and he hadn't done anything that would impress anyone back home. He'd just…copied.
At the lunch break—a cold stew ladled in the yard from a big pot, eaten standing—Perrin bumped his shoulder.
"You're not doing bad," he said. "Bran yells the same at everyone."
"He hasn't yelled yet," Al said.
"That is him yelling," Perrin said. "He just saves his real voice for when someone loses a manifest for twenty crates of lamp oil."
"Did that happen?" Al asked.
Perrin winced. "Once. The clerk joined the river shortly after."
"Fell?" Al asked.
"You're sweet," Perrin said. "Keep thinking that."
Al swallowed another spoonful of stew and looked around.
The Trade House yard was a crossroads in itself: wagoners arguing prices, dockhands hefting crates, a pair of Beastkin from some northern tribe bartering furs for salt blocks. A small group of Eastern traders in layered robes conferred near a cart bearing lacquered boxes. A short woman with the Gilded Compass sigil on her cloak spoke to a guard, gesturing at a map.
Threads. So many.
"Al!" Bran barked. "Back inside. We've got a backlog from the last run."
He went.
By evening, when the lamplight turned the ledger room golden and his fingers were properly stained with ink, he had copied six pages, checked three older manifests against warehouse stocks, and flagged two discrepancies.
Bran inspected his work with a begrudging squint.
"The '3' in this line looks like an '8,'" he said, tapping with a knuckle. "Fix that. The rest…acceptable."
It was the closest thing to praise Al suspected he'd get for a while.
"Go sleep," Bran added. "You're in the apprentices' loft over the warehouse. Don't snore. The rats complain."
Al climbed the narrow stairs to the loft feeling oddly light.
He lay on the thin straw mattress staring at the beams above, listening to the muffled rumble of the river and the distant shout of a dockhand outside. His hand throbbed. His back twinged.
He thought of Arlen, maybe that very moment hauling himself up a stone path under a much older man's shouted instructions, muscles screaming in a different way.
We're both being hit, he thought, not without humor. Just with different weapons.
He rolled onto his side, eyes half-closing.
He saw, in his mind, the day's patterns: the way cargo had moved from wagon to ledger to warehouse; the way Bran's temper spiked whenever Beastkin consignments were mentioned but smoothed when Central Guild shipments came up; the quiet nods between Orren and the Gilded Compass woman.
Underneath it all, he sensed something like what he'd felt on the ridge in Greyfall—but quieter. The threads here were economic, not lethal. For now.
If someone wanted to hurt Greyfall without ever lifting a spear… he thought.
He traced an invisible line from his village to Brindleford, from Brindleford to Greyreach, from there to Aurelion and Xianwu. Cut a line here, overprice a shipment there, delay a caravan another week…
You could starve a village. Or fatten a lord. Or both.
His stomach fluttered. With fear. And something like excitement.
"Don't start playing at war in your head before you've survived your first month," he muttered to himself. "Selene would rap your skull."
Still, he didn't stop thinking.
He imagined a map drawn not just with roads and rivers, but with flows: of grain, of iron, of Essence items. With colors showing who depended on what. A map of vulnerability.
The idea lodged in his skull like a seed.
He fell asleep eventually, fingers still stained, mind humming.
The next morning, he met his first thief.
Not the slippery shadow he'd glimpsed at the gate—though that, he suspected, would cross his path again. This one walked through the Trade House door at midmorning wearing a merchant's smile and a clean cloak.
"Master Falst." The man spread his hands, all charm. "A pleasure as always."
"Marlo," Orren said from behind the counter, tone like a man commenting on the weather. "You're late."
"Flooded roads," Marlo said easily. "You know how it is. But I have the Veltmark metal you wanted."
He snapped his fingers. Two porters muscled in a crate, setting it heavily on the floor.
Al, sorting scrolls at the side table, watched as Orren signaled Bran. Bran fetched a manifest. Selene wasn't here; she'd left for Greyfall the day before with the returning wagons.
"Contract says twelve bars iron, three bars steel, Veltmark-certified," Bran recited.
"Exactly," Marlo said, too quickly.
Orren raised a brow. "You'll forgive me if I don't take 'exactly' on faith."
He nodded at Al. "You. New boy. Come over."
Al startled. "Me?"
"Yes, you," Orren said. "You've got two hands and eyes that look like they aren't entirely decoration."
Marlo laughed, a shade too loud. "A village rat for inspection? Surely your trust in me isn't that damaged."
"Humor me," Orren replied. "Open it, Al."
The crate lid was nailed but not too deep. Al pried it up with a lever, the wood creaking, the metal smell hitting him first: sharp, oily, with a faint tang that made his nose wrinkle.
He lifted the first bar. It was heavy, dark gray, slick with cling-wax.
"Count," Orren said.
Al counted bars into stacks: one, two, three…twelve bars of iron, three bars of something paler. Steel, presumably.
"Looks right," Marlo said, relieved.
"Weight," Orren said.
Al hesitated. "We don't have a scale here."
"You have hands," Orren said. "You just carried a crate of Caelbrun salt yesterday. You know what twelve bars and three bars should feel like."
Al thought. Salt. The weight biting into his fingers. He hefted one iron bar, then two, then three together.
"These feel…light," he said slowly. "Not by a lot. But."
"Salt boy says they're light," Marlo scoffed. "Truly, what a rigorous system."
"Their surface finish is rougher than your last batch," Al added, squinting. "See here—" he pointed to an uneven knobbly bit—"Veltmark forges usually sand their bars smoother. Selene had me catalog their last shipment. These look like they were rushed. Or made elsewhere."
Marlo's smile thinned. "Your village rat has a good imagination."
Orren's gaze sharpened. "Al. Fetch the old Caelbrun iron sample from the shelf. Top right. The one with the blue wax."
Al did. The bar was tagged with neat script: Veltmark, Lot 192.
"Side by side," Orren said.
Al set the sample next to one of Marlo's bars. The difference was subtle, but there.
"This one's denser," Al said, tapping the tagged bar. "And the grain on the cut end is finer. These—" he lifted one of Marlo's—"have wider grain. More slag lines."
Bran leaned in, squinting. "Cheaper ore," he muttered. "Or worse forge."
Orren's smile went very, very thin.
"Marlo," he said pleasantly, "why is your 'Veltmark-certified' steel behaving like cheap Northern slag run through a drunk's hearth?"
Color rose in Marlo's cheeks. "Now see here—"
"You want me to pay Veltmark prices for this?" Orren went on, voice still light. "Then the Veltmark forges have fallen very far, very fast. Or you swapped bars somewhere between there and here."
Marlo blustered. "Road bandits—"
"Don't swap steel and leave the crate count intact," Orren said. "They take everything and run. This"—he tapped the bar—"is someone changing labels."
He looked at Al. "How much of a loss would we take if we let this pass as stated?"
Al's mind leapt. "For this shipment alone? The difference in quality would knock…twenty percent off the resale price minimum. Maybe more if it fails early in tools and word gets around. Times that across a season's worth of similar shipments…"
"So," Orren said, smile growing teeth, "it would be unwise to treat this as an honest mistake."
Marlo's own smile cracked.
"This is an outrage," he snapped. "I'll take my goods elsewhere—"
"You'll take them wherever will pay for them," Orren corrected. "Which, it seems, won't be here." His gaze cooled further. "And if I hear that you tried to pass this off as Veltmark to some poor fool who doesn't weigh his own bars, I'll send copies of this ledger entry and a sample to both the Veltmark forge guild and the Gilded Compass. They don't like middlemen who foul the roads."
Marlo's mouth worked soundlessly.
"Get out, Marlo," Orren said. "Take your crate. Pray that's the worst that happens."
The merchant glared daggers at all of them, especially Al, then stalked out, barking at his porters.
Bran let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "You just made an enemy," he said to Al.
"Correction," Orren said. "Marlo made an enemy when he tried to swindle me. The boy just gave me faster proof."
He looked at Al. "Good eye."
Al's ears burned. "Selene taught me to look for weight and grain," he said. "And to remember how honest stock felt."
"Selene taught you the tools," Orren said. "You used them. Remember that."
Bran sniffed. "You'll be cleaning ink for a week if you let it go to your head."
Al smiled anyway.
As the day wore on, the incident repeated in whispers among staff. "The Greyfall boy caught it," Perrin said with clear relish at lunch. "Marlo's face—"
"Don't embellish," Bran snapped. "He noticed. The factor fought. That's how it works."
Still. People's eyes on Al were different now. Assessing. A little more…respectful.
That night, up in the loft, he lay awake again—but instead of replaying spears and ash, he replayed bars and weights, contracts and threats.
He realized something important:
What he had done with the wolfkin's spear and the slipped rock—that wild, desperate nudge at the world's threads—had nearly killed him with fear.
What he had done here with a crate of metal had felt…almost the same. Just quieter. Less flashy. Moving a different kind of line: a line of trust, coin, and consequence instead of a line of steel.
If you pulled here, you changed what flowed there.
Maybe he didn't know how to pour Essence into a circle or flood his limbs with heroic Pneuma. Not yet. But he could already do a smaller version of what Edran had warned him about:
He could see where a thing might break. And choose which way.
"That's dangerous," he told the rafters softly.
No one answered.
He rolled onto his back, staring at the dark.
Dangerous, yes.
But in a world where mountains trained blades like Arlen, maybe someone had to learn how to work on the roads between them.
He closed his eyes and let the river's murmur lull him, already thinking about how to draw that vulnerabilities map in his head onto real paper.
Ink as blade. Ledgers as battlefield.
He thought he could live with that.