The grain ships arrived on schedule, their holds filled with enough wheat and rice to feed the affected provinces for three months.
I watched from the harbor as they unloaded, dozens of workers coordinating the massive operation. Beside me, dressed in simple merchant clothes to avoid drawing attention, stood the last person I'd expected to see.
The Merchant Prince himself.
"You're younger than I imagined," I said, studying him. He looked perhaps forty, with silver-streaked black hair and eyes that calculated everything they saw. "And bolder, coming here personally."
"I'm thirty-seven," he corrected with a slight smile. "The silver is premature—stress of managing continent-spanning trade networks. And bold? No. Strategic. I wanted to see firsthand whether the empire I'm betting on deserves that bet."
"What have you observed so far?"
