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“Where are we going? What is happening?” Ellyn asks as soon as you push through the crowds leaving the port district.
“Does it matter?” you say. She says nothing, so you toss a glance her way and see poorly concealed fear. Her horror at the auctions was evident as well. It occurs that she might’ve thought she was to be the next item. No doubt the language barrier didn’t assuage her fears.
“Getting paid. You saw the parchments and coins. You can read, is it not so?” you ask her.
“Well enough. We keep a library at Hallowgrove,” Ellyn cautiously replies. “I mean to ask, why am I here?”
“For the pleasure of your company. Why else?” you answer.
“That would be sweet were it true,” she tells you as you pull her out of the masses of the main thoroughfare and down a side alley.
“It is true enough,” you assure.
“Then where are we going?” she asks again.
“Selling and buying,” is all you offer. You feel a tug on your arm as she stops in her tracks in the alley.
“Selling?” she repeats. “Selling who? Surely not me, ser?”
“Not you. The boy to a smith and the Jeyne woman to a pleasure house,” you tell her, curious to see her reaction and more curious in seeing it.
“Oh. Good,” she sighs in relief and continues walking.
“Good? That is all?” you ask.
“My thanks?” Ellyn cautiously supplies. You laugh and continue on. She calls out in askance over your laughter, but you see little reason to explain your amusement over her lack of thought for the others.
It is no exaggeration to state it takes a good deal of walking to reach your destination. Craftsmen of Tyrosh worth patronage do not wallow about the flood prone port. Smiths, seamstresses, cordwains, jewelers, vintners, even the occasional engineer. All have found their places in the quaint weaving roads further uphill where structures are less like to share walls and most shops have terraced homes resting atop. Your own family takes residence in one such building, though further to the northwest by your reckoning. Your homecoming and visit to them is sorely overdue, but you’re less than thrilled to return to them looking much the same as before you left with naught but a small purse of gold to speak to the success of your adventures.
Your father had a brief stint selling his sword in his youth and warned you of the folly in it. In Tyrosh, the merchant is nobler than the swordsman anyway, and you’ve been told you have a good head for making coin. There was no place for you in the family’s trade, though, and your older brother was newly wed. The woman you were bedding at that time was a merchant’s daughter but with better prospects and little desire to thin her wealth through wedding you. As you were too prideful to beg for loans or apprenticeships, there were few other palatable options left for you but to seek wealth by the sword. It was your time to move on.
