“’Practice.”
Velvet added several items to Garion’s growing list, and Polgara several more. Silk looked at the list as they walked down the long, echoing hallway toward the main part of the palace. “I wonder if Brador would lend us a pack mule,” he murmured.”
“Quit trying to be funny.”
“Would I do that?”
“Why were we talking with our fingers back there?”
“Spies.”
“In our private quarters?” Garion was shocked, remembering Ce’Nedra’s sometimes aggressive indifference to the way she was dressed ‑or not dressed‑ when they were alone.
“Private places are where the most interesting secrets are to be found. No spy ever passes up the opportunity to peek into a bedroom.”
“That’s disgusting!” Garion exclaimed, his cheeks burning.
“Of course it is. Fairly common practice, though.”
They passed through the vaulted rotunda just inside the gold‑plated main door of the palace and walked out into a bright spring morning touched with a fragrant breeze.
“You know,” Silk said, “I like Mal Zeth. It always smells so good. Our office here is upstairs over a bakery, and some mornings the smells from downstairs almost make me swoon.”
There was only the briefest of pauses at the gates of the imperial complex. A curt gesture from one of the pair of unobtrusive men who were following them advised the gate guards that Silk and Garion were to be allowed to pass into the city.
“Policemen do have their uses sometimes,” Silk said as they started down a broad boulevard leading away from the palace.
The streets of Mal Zeth teemed with people from all over the empire and not a few from the West as well.
Garion was a bit surprised to see a sprinkling of Tolnedran mantles among the varicolored robes of the local populace, and here and there were Sendars, Drasnians, and a fair number of Nadraks. There were, however, no Murgos. “Busy place,” he noted to Silk.
“Oh, yes. Mal Zeth makes Tol Honeth look like a country fair and Camaar like a village market.”
“It’s the biggest commercial center in the world, then?
“No. That’s Melcene ‑of course Melcene concentrates on money instead of goods. You can’t even buy a tin pot in Melcene. All you can buy there is money.”
“Silk, how can you make any kind of profit buying money with money?”
“It’s a little complicated.” Silk’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know something?” he said. “If you could put your hands on the royal treasury of Riva, I could show you how to double it in six months on Basa Street in Melcene ‑with a nice commission for the both of us thrown in for good measure.”
“You want me to speculate with the royal treasury? I’d have an open insurrection on my hands if anybody ever found out about it.”
“That’s the secret, Garion. You don’t let anybody find out.”
“Have you ever had an honest thought in your entire life?”
The little man thought about it. “Not that I recall, no,” he replied candidly. “But then, I’ve got a well-trained mind.”
The offices of the commercial empire of Silk and Yarblek here in Mal Zeth were, as the little man had indicated, rather modest and were situated above a busy bake-shop. Access to that second floor was by way of an outside stairway rising out of a narrow side street. As Silk started up those stairs, a certain tension that Garion had not even been aware of seemed to flow out of his friend. “I hate not being able to talk freely,” he said. “There are so many spies in Mal Zeth that every word you say here is delivered to Brador in triplicate before you get your mouth shut.”
“There are bound to be spies around your office, too.”
“Of course, but they can’t hear anything. Yarblek and I had a solid foot of cork built into the floors, ceilings, and walls.”
“Cork?”
“It muffles all sounds.”
“Didn’t that cost a great deal?”
Silk nodded. “But we made it all back during the first week we were here by managing to keep certain negotiations secret.” He reached into an inside pocket and took out a large brass key. “Let’s see if I can catch Dolmar with his hands in the cash box,” he half whispered.
“Why? You already know that he’s stealing from you.”
“Certainly I do, but if I can catch him, I can reduce his year‑end bonus.”
“Why not just pick his pocket?”
Silk tapped the brass key against his cheek as he thought about it. “No,” he decided finally. “That’s not really good business. A relationship like this is founded on trust‑“
Garion began to laugh.
“You have to draw the line somewhere, Garion.” Silk quietly slipped his brass key into the lock and slowly turned it. Then he abruptly shoved the door open and jumped into the room.
“Good morning, Prince Kheldar,” the man seated behind a plain table said quite calmly. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Silk looked a bit crestfallen.
The man sitting at the table was a thin Melcene with crafty, close‑set eyes, thin lips, and scraggly, mud‑brown hair. He had the kind of face that one instantly distrusts. Silk straightened. “Good morning, Dolmar,” he said. “This is Belgarion of Riva.”
“Your Majesty.” Dolmar rose and bowed.
“Dolmar.”
Silk closed the door and pulled a pair of chairs out from the brown, cork‑sheathed wall. Although the floor was of ordinary boards, the way that all sounds of walking or moving pieces of furniture were muted testified to the thickness of the cork lying beneath.
“How’s business?” Silk asked, seating himself and pushing the other chair to Garion with his foot.
“We’re paying the rent,” Dolmar replied cautiously.
“I’m sure that the baker downstairs is overjoyed. Specifics, Dolmar. I’ve been away from Mal Zeth for quite a while. Stun me with how well my investments here are doing.”
“We’re up fifteen percent from last year.”
“That’s all?” Silk sounded disappointed.
“We’ve just made quite a large investment in inventory. If you take the current value of that into account, the number would be much closer to forty percent.”
“That’s more like it. Why are we accumulating inventory?”
“Yarblek’s instructions. He’s at Mal Camat right now arranging for ships to take the goods to the west. I expect that he’ll be here in a week or so ‑he and that foul-mouthed wench of his.” Dolmar stood up, carefully gathered the documents from the table, and crossed to an iron stove sitting in the corner. He bent, opened the stove door, and calmly laid the parchment sheets on the small fire inside.
To Garion’s amazement, Silk made no objection to his factor’s blatant incendiarism. “We’ve been looking into the wool market,” the Melcene reported as he returned to his now‑empty table. “With the growing mobilization, the Bureau of Military Procurement is certain to need wool for uniforms, cloaks, and blankets. If we can buy up options from all the major sheep producers, we’ll control the market and perhaps break the stranglehold that the Melcene consortium has on military purchases. If we can just get our foot in the door of the Bureau, I’m sure that we can get a chance to bid on all sorts of contracts.”
Silk was pulling at his long, pointed nose, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Beans,” he said shortly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look into the possibility of tying up this year’s bean crop. A soldier can live in a worn‑out uniform, but he has to eat. If we control the bean crop ‑and maybe coarse flour as well‑ the Bureau of Military Procurement won’t have any choice. They’ll have to come to us.”
“Very shrewd, Prince Kheldar.”
“I’ve been around for a while,” Silk replied.
“The consortium is meeting this week in Melcene,” the factor reported. “They’ll be setting the prices of common items. We really want to get our hands on that price list if we can.”
“I’m in the palace,” Silk said. “Maybe I can pry it out of somebody.”
“There’s something else you should know, Prince Kheldar. Word has leaked out that the consortium is also going to propose certain regulations to Baron Vasca of the Bureau of Commerce. They’ll present them under the guise of protecting the economy, but the fact of the matter is that they’re aimed at you and Yarblek. They want to restrict western merchants who gross more than ten million a year to two or three enclaves on the west-coast. That wouldn’t inconvenience smaller merchants, but it would probably put us out of business.”
“Can we bribe someone to put a stop to it?”
“We’re already paying Vasca a fortune to leave us alone, but the consortium is throwing money around like water. It’s possible that the baron won’t stay bribed.”
“Let me nose around inside the palace a bit,” Silk said, “before you double Vasca’s bribe or anything.”
“Bribery’s the standard procedure, Prince Kheldar.”
“I know, but sometimes blackmail works even better.” Silk looked over at Garion, then back at his factor. “What do you know about what’s happening in Karanda?” he asked.