Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

“Mr. Cascella, I’m finished. I kept the bars well off to the side, away from the marble.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

“Mind if I ask what you will have to pay for that fifty bars of iron?”

The glare was back. “What’s it to you?”

“From what I heard at the foundry, the man there had been hoping to fill the whole order so he could get three point five gold marks, so, since you got half your order, I believe you will be paying one point seven five gold marks for the fifty bars of iron. Am I correct?”

The glare darkened. “Like I said, what’s it to you?”

Richard put his hands in his back pockets. “Well, I was wondering if you would be willing to buy another fifty bars for one point five gold marks.”

“So, you’re a thief, too.”

“No, Mr. Cascella, I’m not a thief.”

“Then how are you going to sell me iron for a quarter mark less than the foundry is selling it for? You smelting a little iron ore in your room at night, Mr. Richard Cypher?”

“Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?”

His mouth twisted in annoyance. “Talk.”

“The foundry man was furious because he wasn’t allowed to transport your whole order. He has more iron than he can sell because he isn’t allowed to transport it, and the transport companies are all jammed up so they aren’t showing up. He said he would be willing to sell it to me for less.”

“Why?”

“He needs the money. He showed me his cold blast furnaces. He owes wages and needs charcoal and ore and quicksilver, among other things, but hasn’t enough money to buy it all. The only thing he has plenty of is smelted metal. His business is strangling because he can’t move his product. I asked what price he would be willing to sell me iron for, if he didn’t have to transport it—if I picked it up myself. He told me that if I came after dark, he would sell me fifty bars for one point two five gold marks. If you’re willing to buy it from me for one point five, I’ll have you another fifty bars by morning, when you said you need it.”

The man gaped as if Richard was a bar of iron that had just come to life before his eyes and started talking.

“You know I’m willing to pay one and three-quarters, why would you offer to sell it to me for one and a half?”

“Because,” Richard explained, “I want to sell it for less than you’d have to pay through a transport company so that you’ll buy it from me, instead, and, because I need you to loan me the one and a quarter gold marks, first, so I can buy the bars in the first place and bring them to you. The foundry will only sell them to me if I pay when I come to take them.”

“What’s to keep you from disappearing with my one and a quarter gold marks?”

“My word.”

The man barked a laugh. “Your word? I don’t know you.”

“I told you, my name is Richard Cypher. Ishaq is scared to death of you, and he trusted me to get you the iron so you won’t come wring his neck.”

Mr. Cascella smiled again. “I’d not wring Ishaq’s neck. I like the fellow. He’s stuck in a tight spot.—But don’t you tell him I said that. I’d like to keep him on his toes.”

Richard shrugged. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t tell him you know how to smile. I know, though, that you’re in a tighter spot than Ishaq. You have to deliver goods for the Order, but you’re at the mercy of their methods.”

He smiled again. “So, Richard Cypher, what time will you be here with your wagon?”

“I don’t have a wagon. But, if you agree, I’ll have your fifty iron bars right there”—Richard pointed at a spot out the double doors beside where Jori had parked the wagon—“in a pile, by dawn.”

Mr. Cascella frowned. “If you don’t have a wagon, how you going to get the bars here? Walk?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“I don’t have a wagon, and I want to earn the money. It’s not all that far. I figure I can carry five at a time. That only makes ten trips. I can do that by dawn. I’m used to walking.”

“Tell me the rest of it—why you want to do this. The truth, now.”

“My wife isn’t getting enough to eat. The workers’ group assesses most of my wages, since I’m able to produce, and gives it to those who don’t work. Because I can work, I’ve become a slave to those who can’t, or who don’t wish to. Their methods encourage people to find an excuse to let others take care of them. I intensely dislike being a slave. I figure I can entice you to go along with the deal by offering you a better price. We each gain a benefit. Value for value.”

“If I were to go along, what do you plan to do with all that money—go live off it for a while? Drink it away?”

“I need the money to buy a wagon and a team of horses.”

The frown knotted tighter. “What do you need with a wagon?”

“I need the wagon to deliver you all the iron you’re going to buy from me because I can get it for you cheaper, and because I can deliver it when you need it.”

“You looking to get buried in the sky?”

Richard smiled. “No. I just happen to think that the emperor wants his palace built. From what I’ve heard, they have a lot of slave labor down there—people they’ve captured. But they don’t have enough slave labor to do it all for them. They need people like you, and the foundries.

“If the officials of the Order want to have the work progress—and not have to explain to Emperor Jagang why it isn’t—they will be inclined to look the other way. In that narrow crack of need, there is opportunity. I expect I’ll have to bribe a few officials to get them to be busy elsewhere when I come to pick up loads, but I’ve already figured that cost into it. I’ll be acting on behalf of myself, not an established transport company, so they will be more inclined to see this as a way of accomplishing what they need without suspending their morass of restrictions.

“You will be getting iron for less than you pay now, and I can deliver. You can’t even get what you need at the higher price. You will make more, too. We both benefit.”

The blacksmith stared for a moment as he tried to find a flaw in Richard’s plan.

“You’re either the stupidest crook I ever saw, or the… I don’t even know what. But I have Brother Narev breathing down my neck, and that isn’t pleasant. Not pleasant at all. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you know how Ishaq sweats over me? I sweat ten times that much when Brother Narev comes to ask why the tools aren’t ready. The brothers don’t want to hear my troubles, they just want what they want.”

“I understand, Mr. Cascella.”

He let out a sigh. “All right, Richard Cypher, one and a half gold marks for fifty bars delivered by dawn tomorrow—but I’ll only give you the one and a quarter now. You get the other quarter mark in the morning, when my iron is here.”

“Agreed. Who is this Brother Narev, anyway?”

“Brother Narev? He’s the high priest—”

“Did I hear someone mention my name?” The voice was deep enough to nearly rattle the tools off the walls.

Richard and the blacksmith turned to see a man approaching from around the corner of the shop. Here and there, his heavy robes betrayed his large bony frame. His face seemed to pull the gathering darkness into the deep creases of his face. Dark eyes gleamed out from under a hooded brow overspread with a tangle of graying hairs. Wiry hair above his ears curled up from under the edges of a dark, creased cap. The cap sat halfway down his forehead. He looked like a shadow come to life to stalk the world.

Mr. Cascella bowed. Richard followed his lead.

“We were just discussing the problem of getting enough iron, Brother Narev.”

“Where are all my new chisels, blacksmith?”

“I have yet to—”

“I have stone sitting down there with no chisels to cut it. I have stonecutters who need more tools. You are holding up my palace.”

The blacksmith lifted a hand

toward Richard. “This is Richard Cypher, Brother Narev. He was just telling me how he thought he might be able get me the iron I need and—”

The high priest held up his hand for silence.

“You can get the blacksmith what he needs?” Brother Narev snapped at Richard.

“It can be done.”

“Then do it.”

Richard bowed his head. “By your command, Brother Narev.”

The shadowed figure turned to the shop. “Show me, blacksmith.”

The blacksmith seemed to know what the high priest wanted and followed behind him, gesturing for Richard to come along. Richard understood; he couldn’t get the money to buy the iron until the blacksmith first took care of the important man who had just vanished into the shadows of the shop.