CHAPTER 40: EMERALD OPPORTUNITY

  The convoy through Belrania was a civil if not exactly social arrangement. As agreed to by Sultan Atakan, well-armed vessels funded by The Graystone Company led fleets of traders back and forth through the Dry Ridge Mountains, including The Sapphire Spirit (and occasionally The Sleeping Sparrow, though their schedules never seemed to overlap). They had joined the convoy on their way to Azir, and a few days later—flying a little heavier with their quarterly shipment of spices and black powder—they joined it again, this time in the opposite direction.

  The convoy succeeded in its purpose: no pirates dared attack it, and thus trade through Belrania resumed, as efficient as it had been before the civil war that still apparently had not settled on a winner, if it ever would.

  But despite their close proximity to other traveling vessels—many, though not all of them, traders from Sailor’s Rise—The Sapphire Spirit’s four-person, one-cat crew found company only in one another. The sky between the dozen or so ships heading home may as well have been a mile wide.

  Voyeurism filled the void of conversation as sailors inevitably took to their telescopes, scoping out their companions over the course of the afternoon, or perhaps it was their competition.

  For Elias, at least, it was definitely the competition.

  Edric Graystone himself was traveling home on a large yet sleek (if somewhat indulgent-looking) company-branded airship. At one point, Elias was quite certain that Edric had peered back at him through his own brass telescope.

  This brief exchange more or less summed up their entire relationship to date.

  When Elias was not obsessing over his would-be rival, he traded dull cuts and ringing parries with his new sparring partner. Briley was probably the better swordfighter, but Elias’s hereditary advantage evened the odds, as well as the score. Bertrand, not one to be left out, perched himself on a wooden crate and offered unsolicited advice, some of it helpful. He knew nothing of swordplay, of course, but he fancied himself a keen natural judge of things.

  They had also hired Iric to help with the long voyage, and not for the first time since meeting the man in Saint Albus. Iric was worth two men at least, and he struck an imposing figure from a distance, an added benefit for when they weren’t flying under the protective wing of the convoy, though he was more of an “axe man himself,” adding that a skinny rapier would never be a northerner’s weapon of choice. You could not chop wood with a flimsy sword, and Iric was, in the spirit of his people, a practical sort.

  “How’s Alma doing?” Bertrand asked him as they seated themselves at the long table in the great cabin, their stomachs grumbling for the hearty dinner Iric had prepared that evening. Alma was the sister with whom Iric was staying in Sailor’s Rise.

  “She has become a restless woman,” Iric answered, sitting down last. “I have noticed your city turns its inhabitants into restless people.”

  Briley savored an audible slurp of stew and inquired, “Has it turned you yet?”

  “I fear I am fighting a losing battle,” the grizzled northerner admitted. “In Saint Albus, everyone is too depressed to be restless.” He shrugged. “Maybe it is one or the other.”

  She chucked at that, shoveling food with one hand as she reached over with her other, scratching their furriest dinner companion (though Iric was notably hairy). Islet had formed a recent habit of sitting directly on the table whenever they ate dinner, seizing any opportunity to stand eye level with her crew.

  “You were staring through that telescope pretty intensely,” Briley mentioned after a quiet moment of spoons clinking bowls, her eyebrows raised toward Elias. The convoy had dispersed an hour earlier, and they were once again sailing alone over safer skies.

  “I was just checking out our company,” Elias replied.

  “You mean you were checking out Edric Graystone,” she clarified.

  He sighed into his stew and said, “That privileged bastard keeps outbidding us on small contracts simply out of spite—contracts The Graystone Company shouldn’t even care about, at prices that are barely profitable for them.”

  “And yet here we are, stronger than ever,” Bertrand reassured them, or tried to. “Consider the bigger picture: we’re a profitable venture now. We have two large clients and a few other regulars. Edric can spite us all he wants, but at the end of the day, we won.”

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  “Did we?” Elias wondered. “Is this winning?”

  “If not this, then what?”

  It was a question Elias knew in his heart but was afraid or embarrassed to admit aloud. He needed to ascend, for one, and that meant a lot more relics. But more than this, he still clung to that youthful dream drawn in the pages of his pillow-tucked notebook: to build the greatest business empire Sailor’s Rise had ever known—to one day serve as council chair. Anything less, he felt, would never be enough.

  Elias opted for a more practical justification: “We still can’t afford an office, and fancy clients don’t want to visit a ship parked in Lowtown.”

  Briley looked like she was weighing something in her mind. “There is this… opportunity,” she said. “Only it’s not really an opportunity because we can’t afford it.”

  Go on, their looks all seemed to say, even Iric’s. The northerner had grown increasingly invested in their business affairs, much as one is drawn into a rousing theater performance.

  And so, shaking her head for even suggesting this, Briley went on. “As you know, I was back in Hamford a couple of weeks ago, visiting old friends, and naturally I brought up our business. This guy I’ve known since we were kids, Grayson, mentions he recently inherited his father’s paper mill. The problem—and the opportunity—is that Grayson doesn’t want to run a paper mill, even a small one. He doesn’t know what he wants, frankly, but he’s quite certain he doesn’t want his inheritance. He’s an emotional sort, which would be to our advantage as he’d rather sell his newly acquired business to an old friend.”

  A more selfish thought snaked its way into Elias’s mind: had he neglected the business benefits of old friends?

  Briley paused. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  Elias asked for good news as Bertrand lingered on the bad.

  Iric broke the tie: “The good news.”

  “The good news is the opportunity makes a lot of sense for us,” she said. “Not only would Grayson sell us his business at a discount, but we’re also well set up for it, at least in one respect. Most of their clients are publishers and printers in Sailor’s Rise. They currently outsource shipping, but we could do it ourselves and potentially improve profit margins. In one fell swoop, we could diversify our business model and effectively double our overall revenue.”

  “And the bad news?” Bertrand waited for it.

  “We can’t afford to buy them, even at a discount.”

  “Surprise, surprise.” He did not appear surprised.

  But Elias was more interested in information than excuses: “What would it cost us?”

  “Thirty thousand relics, and like I said, that’s a bargain. The company is already profitable, and we could theoretically make it more so by moving shipping in-house. Unfortunately, Grayson can’t wait forever. While he prefers a familiar buyer, he also possesses a strong case of wanderlust.”

  “How much do we have right now?” It was Elias again.

  “Five thousand, three hundred, and two relics, last I checked our bank account,” she informed them. “Not enough. At this rate, it would take us a few years to save what we need, and other buyers are bound to come knocking before then.”

  “What about a loan from the Trader’s Bank?” Elias insisted. “You said the company is already profitable. It could pay for itself.”

  Elias seldom shied away from risk, though Bertrand, stiffening his posture at the suggestion, had inherited his father’s aversion to debt.

  “With current interest rates on a loan of that size, that’s not a guarantee,” Briley replied. “Besides, the Trader’s Bank isn’t going to loan us that much money. We simply don’t have enough standing. If we were The Graystone Company, sure, but we are not The Graystone Company. We are The Two Worlds Trading Company.”

  “We do have the better name, though, you have to admit,” Bertrand added.

  Elias wavered between looking half-deflated and half-invigorated, trying to fill himself like a hydrogen balloon with too many holes. “We just let this pass us by, then?”

  “Like a mirage in the Azirian desert,” Bertrand mused. “There’s simply no path forward here, Elias. How would we ever acquire thirty thousand relics in, what, a few months?”

  “Months or weeks,” Briley clarified, running fingernails through her hair. “This is why I didn’t mention it before.”

  “I suppose we just need to win The Emerald Cup.” Bertrand chuckled at his own reference, but it was not one everyone was familiar with.

  “What is this Emerald Cup?” Iric raised a hand.

  “A joke,” Bertrand said flatly.

  Elias’s knowledge of the event was somewhere between Iric’s and Bertrand’s. “That’s that airship race, right?”

  The Emerald Cup was, indeed, an airship race. Not only an airship race—but the greatest airship race on the whole Great Continent. Ships from all over the known world gathered every spring in Sailor’s Rise, raring to compete for glory and, of course, a lucrative prize.

  “What is the reward for winning this year?” Elias asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bertrand said. “The entry fee alone is all the money we have. And we’re not airship racers, besides.”

  “Fifty thousand relics,” Briley jumped in. “That’s the prize.”

  “It’s more than enough to buy your friend’s paper mill.” Elias scratched his chin.

  “And it’s five thousand to enter,” Bertrand inserted, “more if we wreck our ship in the process. The Emerald Cup isn’t some peaceful jaunt through a meadow. It’s dangerous—deadly, even. You want to put everything we built on the line? I know we have a fast ship, but so will everyone else in the competition. And they’ll have something we don’t: racing experience.”

  And yet, contrary to Bertrand’s fair assessment of the situation, they also possessed something those other, more experienced racers would not have: Elias’s gift of sight. Though he wondered if he truly would be the only one with that advantage, the only collector. Did the Valshynar ever enter The Emerald Cup?

  “Well, it’s not a bad idea, Bertrand,” Elias concluded.

  “You’re joking, right?” Bertrand traded glances between them—and Iric, who shrugged. “It is absolutely, categorically a bad idea.”

  “I thought there were no bad ideas.” He snickered as Bertrand tried to gauge his friend’s sincerity. “I have that dinner next week at Bartholomew Grimsby’s estate,” Elias mentioned. “Maybe I can find us a rich investor.”