Chapter 1707 – A Harder Kind of Sale

It wasn’t easy for Merchant to get in touch with people from the Church of the Path. It wasn’t easy for Merchant to find someone willing to admit that such a person even existed on Green Mountain.

Which was so obviously absurd, with them having an entire cathedral dedicated to the faith in there, that she honestly respected their dogged refusal to speak.

Of course, that didn’t mean it was impossible. What Merchant knew, better than anyone else in the Colony, was what money was, and most importantly, what it could do. Mistress Enid hadn’t shied away from teaching her student about the… darker possibilities of the marketplace.

Money was an incredible thing. It held value so much greater than its practical use, or even its scarcity. It could be used to buy goods and services, but that was the most basic, most simple of its applications.

Money had hands. It could open doors and windows that would otherwise remain shut, creating new possibilities and opportunities.

Money had ears. It could buy information and knowledge that would otherwise remain totally inaccessible. Locked lips were everywhere in the world, but money was a master key.

Perhaps most importantly of all, and least understood, money could speak. It could be a whisper, a murmur, dropped in the right place, at the right time. Or it could be a shout, a deafening burst of sound that commanded attention and respect, drawing the light and focus away from other, less deserving things.

Understanding money and how to use it was how Merchant knew where the Grand Priest Alir Vinting was staying. It was also how she knew that a message had been delivered to the Priest this morning, hidden on the tray under his cup of tea.

Knowledge she shouldn’t have possessed. Access she wasn’t supposed to have been granted.

It was also how she found herself in a warehouse on the dockside of Green Mountain, seated behind a table in the far corner, sipping her own tea, and waiting.

The people who had smuggled her in hadn’t really known what they’d done, only that they’d been well paid not to know. Ignorance and silence. Just another two things that many did not realise were on the market.

Perhaps she should have felt in danger, taking such a risk, coming to such a hostile place. Yet, she didn’t. Not at all. Safety, after all, was always for sale, even for her, even in a place like this.

When a man emerged from the darkness, she wasn’t surprised, and when he sat down at the table across from her, she wasn’t afraid.

“Alir Vinting, Grand Priest of the Path. Welcome,” she said.

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Although she had never met him before, she was confident this was him. There weren’t many allowed to wear those robes, and none of the others in the Mountain who were had any reason to be here, speaking with her.

“This was not something I expected,” the man said, as he drew back his chair and sat down. “A civil discussion, with one of your kind?”

There was something about the eyes that Merchant had learned to identify. Some people were open with their distrust of monsters. They shied away, or their lip curled with disgust. She didn’t mind that. Obvious reactions for people with deep-seated distrust for a kind of being that they had lived in fear of from the moment they grew old enough to learn they existed.

She could work with those people, try to bridge the gap, try to create tenuous bonds that could strengthen over time. Or she could try to make them see her as something else, something other than a monster.