‘From us, fifty,’ said the Prince, immediately. ‘My mother is Kemptian.’
‘Cousin Charls!’ said Charls. But before he could object—
‘Can you outmatch fifty lei?’ The Keeper looked back at Makon.
‘Forty five’ said Makon.
‘Forty,’ said the Prince.
‘Thirty five,’ said Makon. Charls felt faint. This was far below cost. Whoever won the contract would take an enormous loss, and if it was him—
Everyone in the chamber looked at the Prince, expectantly. He had paled a little. ‘I’m afraid we cannot go any lower, even for Nestor of Kalamos.’
That was all it took—the Keeper gestured, and the silks were being re-wrapped and the samples cleared, as quickly and efficiently as market stalls closing at the first hint of rain.
‘You have our contract,’ said the Keeper to Makon. ‘And a seat next to Nestor at the feast tonight, in acknowledgement of your new position.’
‘Keeper,’ said Makon, inclining his head in regard, as the Keeper and his servants withdrew from the chamber.
‘You must want to establish a trade line here very much,’ said the Prince to Makon. They stood beside each other.
‘Dear Charls. Whatever will you do with your own Kemptian silk? It will spoil on the road.’
‘We aren’t carrying any Kemptian silk,’ said the Prince.
It took a moment for those words to be understood, and then Makon’s expression changed.
‘Oh, did you think we were? I’m afraid you undercut yourself for no reason.’ A look of fury had appeared on Makon’s face. The Prince said, ‘A little healthy competition.’
Dinner was glorious. The seating arrangements did not detract at all from the delicious smoked pork and leek, the caramelised onions and the full flavoured regional wine. Each story that Cousin Charls told seemed to cast Charls in a subtly favourable light. And when Nestor leaned in and complimented Cousin Charls on the colour of his red brocade, Charls only had to mention that they carried similar stock, and the deal was made—a contract!
Charls slept blissfully on the narrow bed, and woke buoyed by good spirits, optimistic about his northern expedition, until he came down to the stables, dark in the pre-dawn, and saw the activity there.
Guilliame was holding a torch, the flames illuminating the interior of the stall. The Prince was on his knees in the straw with his hand on the neck of one of the draught horses, the piebald with the huge feathered hooves. It was lying on its side, its breathing laboured. It was dying. Meat for the hunting dogs, the stablehand said. The Prince said without rising that he didn’t think that was a good idea.
Guilliame said in a low voice, ‘It was poison. It was in the feed. Lamen noticed a dead field mouse near the grain stores. If not for that warning, we’d have lost all the horses. Not just this one.’
The Prince stayed with the horse while Lamen touched him on the shoulder, then arranged for a horsemaster to put the horse down. The Prince only rose when the horse was dead.
The sun was very bright when they all emerged from the stables into the courtyard, where Makon’s five glaring wagons were assembled ready to leave.
Makon himself was dressed in a stately white chiton, his eyes dropping to the Prince’s ruined silk, the patches of dirt and straw on his knees.
‘Horse trouble?’ Makon’s voice was mild.
‘These things happen in trade,’ Charls told the Prince, as they readied their own wagons, much later.
‘I taunted him,’ said the Prince, his voice level, like his acetous blue gaze when he turned it on Charls. ‘I was enjoying it.’
With only a single draught horse pulling a two-horse wagon, they had to travel more slowly, and stop often. There was no chance of outpacing Makon now; he was well ahead of them. Wherever they went, he would arrive first, to snatch up their trade and foment rumours.
Yet if not for the Prince, Charls would already have a name synonymous with treason in this region. If not for Lamen, he’d have ten dead horses rotting in the stables instead of one.
He didn’t say any of that, as they trundled slowly onward. He thought of the Prince on his knees in the stables, and the piebald, lying on its side, blowing air through its nose in the straw.
It was very late when they arrived at the inn, and two dozen sets of hostile eyes watched them walk in.
The village of Halki was small and the inn was smaller, a rectangular wooden building with outside seats underneath hanging grape vines, and an interior with a dirt floor where locals—and sometimes their livestock—took repast or shelter for the night.