Viscount's Rise

“And you want my support because?” Braydon was getting tired of men like this. It was not the first of the merchants that had visited him that talked about how much money they made and how many connections they had. That was all well and good but that was not what Braydon was after. If they truly had all of these good connections and made so much money, then they would not need his help to sell to Shuluk. He had previously been selling directly to the ruler of the country without official permission, he doubted that others were not. 

“Er, well you see…” The merchant that he had just cut off mid sentence could clearly see that he had not done a great job at enticing Braydon. The problem was that he had no clue what Braydon was after. Most nobles would have been over the moon to be in Braydon’s position. They would have been more than happy giving out their sponsorship to merchants for an exorbitant fee, and then having nothing else to do with it. Braydon was clearly not one of them. A miscalculation on the merchant’s part and one that he did not know how to fix.

“Er, well you see.” Braydon scoffed, giving the man’s words back to him. This was how he had dealt with the merchants that had failed to do their homework. He had more than enough money to serve his current purposes. If he collected too much, then he might attract the wrong kind of attention. And he was not exactly the kind of person that liked expensive luxuries, at least not to the extent of some other nobles. He had nowhere to spend it.

What Braydon wanted from this windfall were long term benefits rather than a one time pile of denars that would be largely useless to him. The embargo was not going to last forever, Braydon knew that much, but that did not mean that he was not going to get some longer lasting benefits from this.

“You can leave.” Braydon looked down at the list he had written. It was a short list. So far he had seen at least two dozen merchants but his list barely had five names. These were the merchants that had actually looked into his situation and personality before meeting him. Needless to say, they knew that he did not need nor want their money and had tried a different tack. At the very least he was going to have another meeting with these men. He had higher hopes for them than any of the others that he had met.

“The next will be the last.” Braydon spoke to the servant who was about to close the door behind the merchant that had just left in disappointment.

“Yes, Sire.” The servant noted before closing the door.

*sigh*

“I knew this would be tiresome but I at least hoped that more of them would pay attention to details. Their entire livelihood is based on this kind of thing.” Braydon had expected that he would reject a majority of the merchants that came to see him, but he had thought that more than five in two dozen would be worth considering for his purposes.

*knock knock*

“Come in.” It did not take long for the next knock at the door. Braydon looked up to see the first foreign merchant that he had seen in a long while. Considering his red hair, it was not hard to guess his nationality.

“Greetings, my lord.” The man bowed.

“Take a seat. What about me so interests a merchant from Leigh?” Braydon might have understood if his territory was near the capital or a river connecting to Leigh, but he was on the opposite side of Fiveria to anything that might interest a Leighian merchant. Land travel was expensive and it might only be barely worth it to consider going through him if there was not a civil war going on in Shuluk. Any route by sea or rivers to Shuluk from Leigh was far longer and with many more attractive places to sell to on route. Braydon could not understand what was so enticing.

“Haha, I might ask that myself if I were from Leigh.” The man laughed lightly, it was obvious that he had been mistaken for a Leighian on more than one occasion. But that only made Braydon more curious, of any nation on mainland Ezaes only Leigh had any meaningful number of redheads. Even if nearby islands were considered, most redheads lived in the northern colonies, a good part of which was controlled by the Leighian League. Even further away from either Fiveria or Shuluk.

“Oh, then do enlighten me. It is not exactly common to see a ginger not from Leigh.” Braydon looked the man in the eye. This man did not act much like a merchant even if he dressed like one. At least compared to any of the other merchants that he had already spoken to over the past few hours.

“Well, I am not from Ezaes to begin with. Though I am not sure how much the lord knows about my home.” That at least answered Braydon’s questions on the man’s nationality but it did not clue him into why he should be any more interested in a Fiverian lord. 

“One of the lot that Leigh buts heads with up north? Rotfeldia?” Braydon remembered discussing it with Nela when they first picked up Mireille. And then he started to have a sneaking suspicion about why the person before him had come to meet him.

“You know more than I expected. I did not think that anyone other than the Leighians cared enough. But yes that is my homeland.” Despite what he said, the man did not seem at all surprised that Braydon had heard of Rotfeldia.

“This still does not answer my first question though, what do I have that interests you?” Braydon wanted to know what the man had come to see him for. It was evident by now that if he was even a merchant, then he was not an average one.

“You met a pair of Serheshi, yes?” The man asked. It was then that Braydon knew that it was likely that his suspicions were correct. At least the person he was speaking to was not half as annoying as the Serheshi men that had come before him.

Darkwood

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