Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 854

Chapter 854: Merchant’s business(1)

Things were going well. Ivaylo had no doubt.

As so often before, his instincts had proven true. Betting on the youngling of this fractured princedom had been the right choice, as he had known it would be.

Others of course had the same idea, but most of them either did not have the stomach or the coin to go through.

Poor little things, so close on mind and yet so far on means.

Some even called him reckless for staking coin on untested blood, among them his eldest son when he had discovered the terms for the lease.

Damn fool, with a pumpkin for a head.

But Ivaylo’s nose for profit had never led him astray.

His father had built their merchant house on stubborn labor and luck, but it was Ivaylo who had transformed it into an empire. He was the one who saw opportunity where others saw ruin, who smelled silver where others only scented ash.

The worst in recent years had already passed. When the routes to the eastern provinces closed, wine unable to flow north, furs unable to flow south and grain north, many a merchant house had drowned in debt.

Families once proud were left destitute, stripped of their ships and caravans, begging for scraps like dogs. Ivaylo’s own house had weathered the storm, though barely, clawing through the red line by wit and ruthless cutting. Survival was not glory, but survival always came first.

He had hoped, once, for an heir worthy of the empire he had built. A son of sharp teeth and sharper mind, who could smell gold in rot as he did.

The gods, it seemed, had not granted him such fortune. His firstborn was all appetite and no patience or wit, his second soft as butter. His third son, at least, was tolerable, sturdy enough, not wholly witless, a lad who would not bring the roof crashing down when he would take the rein.

That alone was reason to leave him the lion’s share of holdings. One does not wait forever for miracles.

For the entirety of his life, Ivaylo had swum in a shark-filled sea. Romelia was no place for weak men. Every plot of land, every ship, every guild charter was either held with claws or stolen with teeth. What you did not take, another would. Even what you already had was never truly yours, only leased from fate until a stronger rival came to snatch it away.

And yet here, in this young princedom, in this tender little court where ambition had not yet curdled into war, here he had found something rare. Not an ocean of sharks, but a lake. Still waters, shallow predators. All that was required was to chew slowly, swallow carefully, and wait.

He had to make himself a gold-laying hen. After he proved to the prince and his council that he could maintain the fields and keep the workers paid, he was granted leave to open three more vineyards.

He needed more.

Now he held fifty-five acres of vine, nine acres of dye production, and ten more of olives. Much of it was still young, saplings and shoots, years away from ripening into profit. But Ivaylo had never been a fool rushing for the first coin. Too-eager merchants ended up with empty purses and shallow graves. He was willing to bleed for a season if it meant silver rivers later.

Already, he could see it. Once production began in earnest, wine casks would flow down the rivers and across the seas, dye vats would stain the robes of princes and priests alike, oil would line the tables of nobles. The silver would roll in like tidewater, steady and unstoppable.

Silver was never just silver, it was favors, leverage, whispers in court. It was power.

And perhaps, just perhaps, if he played his hand well enough, he might gain more than wealth here. In Romelia, the fight was always for survival. Here? There was room for something greater.

Political power. Influence that outlasted coin.

Calmly, steadily, and with great patience, Ivaylo had shifted the heart of his business away from Romelia and into Yarzat. It was not a sudden decision, but a slow redirection.

Romelia, for all its wealth, was a sea too crowded with sharks, every harbor filled with rivals waiting to bleed one another dry. Yarzat, by contrast, was an open lake, untouched, virgin waters. And Ivaylo had every intention of diving deep, of being the first to taste its riches.

He found the place pleasant beyond expectation. The climate was warm, the land generous, and the air carried a quiet promise of growth. He had even bought himself a summer mansion overlooking the vineyards he owned its balconies washed in sunlight and its gardens humming with cicadas.

To some men, arousal was flesh. To him, it was his legacy. To each his own kink.

The journeys themselves were smooth, far more so than anything Romelia could boast. The Magna Strata, funded by the young prince’s purse, was a godsend. A broad, well-laid artery of stone, it could be walked safely at any hour of day or night.

Safe as on the Crown’s road, was one of the saying that went with the villages that lived near the great road.

Banditry, once a plague upon every traveler, had all but vanished there.

Thought those that took their place, did not look much better.

He had seen with his own eyes the “wolves on horseback”. They drank the wine offered to them, took the bows of peasants with little more than a nod, and passed on like shadows. But Ivaylo knew what they truly were: the prince’s enforcers.

Some fools, drunk on their own greed, had tried to test the wolves. He recalled the tale of a band of highway scum had welcomed the riders to a fire one night, hoping to lure them into complacency, then strike for their horses and steel. Two riders fell, yes, but one escaped. Four hours later, the bandits were taken. One day later, they were hanging upside down from a great oak by the road. Castrated, raped, their skin branded with the word bandits.

They lived like that for five days before thirst ended them. A week later, their corpses were finally cut down,likely only after word of their punishment had traveled far south to the capital.Still their head held no hair, as they were scalped.

It was said the one who did the castrating was not a common soldier but the infamous Butcher of Aracina himself, who happened to pass there.

The prince was a just and educated man, but gods he sorrounding himself with the worst…. brutes, men who carried out punishment with a savagery that could not be mistaken. Mercy was not the language of Yarzat’s roads. Security was. And to merchants like Ivaylo, that distinction was worth its weight in gold.

In truth, Ivaylo thought the prince deserved to be hailed as a patron saint of merchants. Never had he known a ruler so keenly aware of coin’s flow. Every edict, every stone laid in the Magna Strata, every privilege extended to traders showed a mind that understood wealth was not hoarded, it moved, it multiplied. Ivaylo swore to himself that if ever he had the honor of meeting the man, he would kneel and kiss his feet.

Perhaps, in time, with the right connections and bribes greasing the right palms, he might even arrange such an introduction.

But there was little time to linger in daydreams. He had business to conduct, cargo to oversee, agreements to secure. The more days he spent here, the more convinced he became: Yarzat was the future. Romelia would devour itself with its endless feuds, but here? Here was order, stability, and opportunity, all answered to the crown.

Here was a prince who, unlike so many others, did not despise merchants as parasites

“Mh, sir?” The meek voice of the coacher broke Ivaylo from his reverie. “We have arrived.”

Ivaylo blinked, pulling himself back from his thoughts of princes and roads and futures yet to be bought. He gave a slow nod, the faintest smile tugging at his lips. “Good. Thank you. Wait here for me.”

The servant dipped his head quickly, eager to obey, and Ivaylo pushed open the carriage door. Warm air spilled in as he descended the step, the leather of his boots clicking against the cobbled street. Behind him, one of his household slaves struggled to follow, arms laden with the boons he brought..

Ivaylo did not spare the man a glance. His eyes were fixed ahead, on the building that had birthed it all, the modest office from which his ventures in Yarzat had first sprouted.

The facade was unremarkable to anyone else, a simple front of timber…well now it was of stone, in a city swelling with new trade houses.

But to Ivaylo, it was a monument of beginnings