(Didn't have enough mats to give him Sha-Brytol armor right away- phooey!)
Boffra always felt her spine stiffening when Blunchard would arrive and make eye contact without his usual head nod. It felt like his way of putting her signature on the job she'd assigned him, but, just like the last mission she'd sent him on, no signature was forthcoming. "No?"
The corner of Blunchard's mouth twitched into a humorless smirk. "You were right. Mages are nugbrains."
It wasn't the first time a recent lyrium shipment had been forestalled, hijacked, or otherwise made unprofitable. And unfortunately she couldn't blame Blunchard for incompetence, not after having seen him in action as often as she had. If any of her crew was reliable, he was. The conflict between the mages and templars was making honest- or dishonest- trade unbearable.
"So you weren't able to convince them? That's why I send you. You're the one with the strongest persuasion skills around here."
Blunchard knew this was mostly a reference to his maul, but he always appreciated recognition for his previous jobs well-done. In this case, that he got any recognition at all was contenting. "There wasn't any persuading to do. The mages took it and ran... to wherever. And we're not getting it back without more than the handful of Boulders I had with me. If it's any consolation, the Temps didn't demand their sovs back... after I... talked with them. But they want a new shipment."
"It's not on the carta to polish their marble for them. If they want their product they have to meet us halfway."
"Which is what I told them..." Blunchard knew he was going to have "that discussion" with Boffra again, so he just made his position known. "But you know it doesn't look good when we can't maintain our own routes."
Boffra wasn't one to accept defeat casually. "We're supposed to send them double the supplies then? That's what you promised them? How do we even know they didn't just kill Carta agents outright and lie about it?"
Blunchard leveled his gaze at her with his head cocked. "They'd really risk that with the Cadash House?" He had only become a Cadash from marriage to Boffra's younger sister, Drevli, when he'd left Dust Town so long ago, but that also worked in his favor: his earnestness in representing the Cadashes always appealed to Boffra, if not to her general house patriotism outright. And Drevli's loss was also cause for Cadash patriotism.
She had no reply, so he continued, "Besides, I saw the drop point. Temps don't leave blast marks like those. Unless scortched earth and frozen grass are Temp work."
Then Boffra erupted, pacing somewhat around the room as if staking territory, "We lost good Cadashes that day! If the Temps think they can simply ignore our losses and demand a new shipment they're as cloud-addled as the mages! We're not just calling it a slip-up and sending them whatever they please. They want the lyrium- they can go get it! We delivered."
That was when Blunchard knew he'd overplayed the Cadash-card. Not that he didn't agree with her for the most part, but long-term customers were becoming harder to establish in these trying times, so he saw no good in just stone-knuckling every situation. He tried to back-pedal: "I didn't promise them anything."
"Good! Wouldn't have sent you if I thought you would."
Blunchard sighed long, unable to put into useful words what needed to be said. Boffra balked at him, "Do you actually think we're supposed to keep sending lyrium to them? Where's their concern for our people? They couldn't care less! Stupid addicts. We can always find more..."
"Actually," Blunchard began, more hopeful now that she was the one to bring it up. He slowly pulled a gold Templar icon from his coat pocket and reached out to hand it to her. "They helped us recover all the Boulders' goods and exchanged this personal item for one of ours. If anything, it'll go for a few sovs. They want to keep our business."
"Wait a minute. You gave them something from one of our fallen Cadashes?"
Blunchard paused awkwardly as his eyes went dead, anticipating the backlash. "Yes."
"Yes?! You just gave it away for this pathetic Temp trophy?" She swatted the icon from his hand to send it flying, and he slowly returned his hand to his side. "How could you have possibly done that??"
"It was Krevor's beat-up old locket, boss. He has no one back here to give it to anyway."
"Krevor..." Boffra was struggling to find a way to make the loss of the locket more significant. Blunchard was hoping she wouldn't find such a way. "What about cousin Narkra? She doesn't want it?"
"Narkra pissed in his ale just last week, ser. They weren't on good terms."
"Yeah..." Boffra had indeed overplayed her outrage.
"And that icon," Blunchard indicated with a head shift across the room toward the Templar icon without taking his eyes from her, "was from their chief officer who died there as well." He just let the facts sink in.
Boffra wasn't letting this go. She stared him hard in his stone-dead eyes. "Would you have handed Drevli's locket over to a bunch of sky-addled idiots too?"
That was a low blow, even as common as low blows usually were around there. Drevli had been killed a few years prior in a raid on a rival carta's warehouse. The raid was successful, but there had been more casualties than anticipated. It had been deemed necessary by numerous Cadash leaders, including Boffra, because that carta was flouting the Cadash name, brazenly out-bidding clients, and daring a response. Given Boffra's role in the death of her own sister, it made the accusation against Blunchard that much less fair, but his only reply was a fairly muted, "No."
"Exactly!"
Blunchard waited a moment for her to bask in her righteousness before venturing, "I'd never have given those sodders anything but the broad side of my hammer."
"Yeah..." Boffra muttered, still pacing, clearly of a somewhat mixed reaction. They both knew Boffra had never been particularly close with Drevli as it was. "Idiot addicts. If only we didn't need them..."
Blunchard wasn't sure how to resolve the matter. The Cadash Carta did need to do something about the lost shipment. He offered, "Maybe that Concrete meeting will make the mages less nugbrained in the future." The term "nugbrain" was Boffra's favorite, so he figured that might make her less hostile... at least to him.
"The what? Oh, the 'Conclave' thing," she pronounced mockingly. "Yeah... Wait, no, now that you remind me of it, we're not going to just wait on them to get their nugbrains straightened out. Someone has to go make sure they get sense in their airy heads..." She turned to face him with her eyes narrowed in an expression intended to let him know he was the one who inspired it, "I'm sending you."
Blunchard blinked. "Me?" He'd been sent to negotiate all sorts of arrangements for the Cadash Carta, but always something relatively local... and carta-controlled. Such a task seemed loomingly outside his skillset. "How will I-?"
"I don't know," Boffra responded dismissively. "Figure something out. But you're going! You figured out how to make nice by giving away Cadash souvenirs to a bunch of Temps, didn't you? Go make the Temps and magical idiots exchange gifts too and call it a draw. I'm sick of this bronto-ass war mucking things up."
She was clearly riding him because she figured she was on the high stone, but Blunchard knew she wouldn't be sending him if she lacked confidence in him, so the digs at him didn't feel quite as much like a scolding. "I'll... do what I can."
"Of course, you will... Besides, at the very least you can report back immediately however the stone turns..." As Blunchard watched, hoping she was taking time to reconsider her order, Boffra had sauntered over to where the Templar icon had landed on the edge of her desk. She picked it up with as much of a disinterested appraisal as she could feign. "I can probably get 5 sovs for it... maybe 6."
Blunchard knew there was no more he could do about it. "I'll do the Cadash family proud, ser."
He hesitated a moment- more a rehearsed gesture to leave his boss a chance to get a line in- then turned to leave, barely able to determine a single way he'd be able to live up to his word. As he started to try to piece together how he'd ever even get anyone at the Conclave to talk with him, much persuade them to give up hostilities, Boffra added, passing over his sentiment as if he'd merely intoned an understood edict, "And get an audience with whoever's in charge over there too. Make sure they... understand what we need."
Blunchard couldn't help but wonder if she was putting him- and the carta itself- in gravel over their heads, but he was never one to question orders much further than simply how to get them done. He was a heavy- all there was to it, and he had skills. There was only one way he wasn't- with his daughter: "And Broska?"
Boffra looked at him with mild surprise, though it was true that she did look kindly on the responsibility he demonstrated for her niece. "What about her? Of course, she'll be taken care of- as always. Why? Worried the nugbrains are going to get you?"
Blunchard had been sussed out: yes, he was worried. But all he could meaningfully reply was, "Nah. I'll handle it." And he started toward the door with his usual well-walked composure of determined swagger before setting out on a mission she'd given him, albeit feeling definitively out of his element this time.
"Yes... you will." Boffra sounded somewhere between insistent and encouraging. Both knew the long-term consequences of the war on business and life for the Cadash House generally.
Blunchard let her have the last word. Boffra always got the last word.
Retour en haut
) that's kept me on the PC.
