Renegade on Kara: The Great Basin, Chapter 15 Berm

Roger meet humans beyond where he thought he would.

Roger’s impression that no humans live mountainward was wrong, dead wrong.

You are stressed! I will come!

You most certainly will not! Eves drop all you like, but be quiet and stay there. I need to figure out what to do without interruption.

Yes Roger.

It took only moments to narrow down the human auras emanating from the cluster of small buildings, which would be this city’s version of the slums. Avoiding them might be the smart thing, but understanding why they were here and if he would run into more seemed more important.

He climbed off the seat, took a mule by the halter, and led the team that way. It was far easier than trying to thread that traffic using the reins.

A bearded man, his mage senses put at roughly thirty, stepped out of a tiny place as he brought the mules to a stop. Every other human aura inside this town came from inside that same building. “Can I help you?”

While the words were polite, the tone was not. Roger dropped the scarf over his face and gave the man a smile. “I don’t know the town. I need an agent here that can get me good prices, for a small percentage of the profit. Is that you?”

The hostility vanished, but not the caution. He stroked that longish beard and said, “I know a few that always give me fair deals. Just what’re we talking.”

Touching the man’s shields, Roger found a lot of power in them, but they were not well made. He instantly understood why the man was cautious the moment he slipped behind them. As a teenager, he’d kill the man that raped his sister. Then, after fleeing the Confederation with her, fathered two of the three children inside their hut. The two were under sentences of death, bounties on them. So far, no one had been willing to piss off the locals enough to try and collect.

Walking around to the back of the wagon, Roger said, “I’ll put together a list of what I want. Show you what I have, you pick out what you think will cover it and you profit. If I think it is fair, I’ll accept. The second part is a bit harder. You make up a list of what is here for trade you think I would like, and the price you can get me for it, from the stuff I have, and I’ll go through that list and choose.”

“Let see this list, and if it’s even available.”

He opened the back door. “The list is mostly livestock and food. There may be a problem resupplying in the next town mountainward, so I want enough to get me past that one, and maybe enough meat to get me past the next.”

Just then, the taste of blood and fur filled his mouth as Joshua got a rabbit. He’d thought it would be longer before he hunted again when he gave him that goat.

“That is going to be expensive,” the man said, bringing him back to what he was doing. Then, his eyes lit on the things the Ikerid had loaded his wagon down with, “but it looks like you can afford it.”

Roger opened a mold and handed him a jar. “You know where I can get two good filling meals for that, one now one later.”

Tilting it this way and that, trying to figure out how it was changing color without magic, he said, “I think that we can feed you to your satisfaction while you are here if this is going to be the pay. I’m Ed,” he said, holding out his hand. Roger already knew his name was Ken.

“Tim,” Roger said, taking it.

**

Using magic to watch how Ed-Ken handle stuff was an education in local politics and business dealing. Powerful house stewards got deals where he took losses before he ever approached anyone else. Only after they got their sweet deals did he settle down to serious bargaining with other people. He was right, all that livestock and grain was expensive, but he got far better deals on it than Roger possibly could. Nor did he detect any hint he was cheating, either. He had a third of it by evening meal.

On opening his door, Ed-Ken grabbed a kitten, trying to escape.

“Damn. Have t renew the door spell again, she figured it out.”

“You have a cat?” exclaimed Roger. He hadn’t even known they had been introduced here.

Ken held the orange struggling ball of fur up for him to see, took a deep breath, and let it out. “Yes. Daughter seen her in the live food market. Demanded I buy her.” He shook his head. “Didn’t know cats can do magic. She’s constantly undoing the door spell.”

In Roger’s opinion, giving cats the enhancement that let them do magic was one of the dumbest things New Gate has done in a long line of dumb things. They have been nothing but trouble there for centuries.

Looking at the things the man had enchanted, he said. “I might know one she can’t get by.”