The Main Harbour at Valtura, painted by Feterino

A Stranger in Valtura

Marek

In the fishing village of Valtura, on the coast half a day’s journey from Estasea, the sea dictated life’s rhythms - fishing in the early morning, mending nets in the afternoon, and huddling around the fireplace when a gale of wind swept in. It was a simple life, with a strong sense of community. The fishermen knew every tide, wave, and current, and they were used to extending kindness to strangers who arrived by land or sea.

Such a stranger arrived one evening. His name was Marek, a tall man in his late fifties with the look of someone who had spent years at sea. Marek came from Estasea with a trader’s satchel brimming with rare goods—exotic spices, amber nuggets and a pearl the size of a small egg. The villagers were impressed with his charm and his knowledge of the wider world, but he said very little about himself. He took a room at the Sailing Gull, the village’s only inn with rooms to rent, whose owner, Ina, took to the stranger with the generous nature.

 

One evening, as the tide pulled out and everything was wrapped in a salty night fog, Marek told the villagers at the inn a story. He told of a hidden cove not far from Valtura where, he said, ancient sailors had buried a king’s ransom in silver. He described the cove’s high cliffs and treacherous  rocks and waves, a place where few dared to sail. The story stirred something in the younger men of Valtura - for generations, they had lived by fishing and just about surviving.

None of them was more taken than Rurik, Ina’s son, a strong lad who was known to be calm and brave on the rough seas. His mind filled with dreams of finding the hidden treasure and changing the future for his mother and himself. After hearing Marek’s story, Rurik started preparing his small fishing boat, The Wild Wind, and convincing two of his friends to join him in the search.

 

They set off at dawn the next morning, the wind whipping against their faces as they sailed out to the cove Marek had described. As they rounded the point, the seas began to get even rougher, the boat pitched and swayed, and a thick fog rolled in, concealing the rocky coast. Rurik could see that these were treacherous waters, yet he pushed onward, convinced by Marek’s vivid description.

Back in Valtura, Ina grew worried as days passed without any sign of her son. She looked for Marek, but he had slipped away quietly, leaving his room at the Sailing Gull empty except for some money to cover his bill. In the village, some people said that he used his charisma to trick honest men into disaster, and that he had sent Rurik into the unknown with dark intentions.

 

 

The famous artist Feterino helped to establish an artists' colony in Valtura - some of his paintings of the town are shown here

High Summer in Valtura by Feterino

The Artist and the Vintner at Valtura by Feterino

Lady on the Beach by Feterino

Sunset at Valtura by Feterino

 

Rurik and his friends finally emerged from the fog, having discovered no treasure, only the harshness of the sea and the very limit of their endurance. As they rowed back to shore, exhausted and empty-handed, Rurik thought about his place in the world and in the village that had always been home.

Ina welcomed him back and the villagers gathered at the inn, glad to see him safely home. The village elders said that nothing good could have come from the search - Rurik listened, but he saw it differently. His adventure had taught him something about himself and a life he had taken for granted.

And Marek? He was never seen in Valtura again, though some claimed he’d been spotted in other coastal towns.

 

Years later, a visitor was sitting in the Sailing Gull having a quiet glass of wine. The only other customer that afternoon was a very old man, who had lived in Valtura all his life. They got talking, and the old man told the visitor the story of Rurik and his fruitless quest.

"I'm a bit confused", the visitor said, "what was Marek's dark intention then? What on earth did he have to gain by sending Rurik to the cove?"

"Nothin'," said the old man, "'e didn't 'ave no 'dark motivation' - 'e were a nice feller, and 'e just told a tall tale to pass away a cold winter evening and 'e was 'orrified when 'e 'eard that Rurik and his friends 'ad actually taken 'im at his word.

That's why 'e left Valtura in a 'urry - 'e were just embarassed, thas all."

Lighthouse at Valtura by Feterino

Milk and Clay

 

 The sky was still pale pink when Maris set out her pottery dishes and bowls, their smooth glazed form catching what early light there was. She had been working late into the night, and her fingers bore the trace of it — stained at the cuticles, roughened at the edges.

Across from her, a stall creaked open. Linen cloths were pulled back to reveal baskets of round, wrapped cheeses, jars of cream, and earthen crocks packed with golden butter. An older woman with strong shoulders and wind-reddened cheeks began to arrange them. She moved with quiet purpose, and her hands were steady as she tucked a folded cloth beneath each jar. Their eyes met.

"You're new," the woman said. Her voice was low and rich. “I don’t know your pots.”

"And I don’t know your milk," Maris replied, brushing a lock of hair from her cheek. “So perhaps we’re even.”

A small smile. “I’m Lenna. From the eastern fold of the river.”

“Maris,” she said. “My clay and I come from the southern hills.”

They both stood in that moment of silence that sometimes settles between people who have just recognized something — a rhythm, perhaps, or a kindred solitude. From somewhere behind the stalls, a child began to sing a street rhyme and a busy market day began.

The next morning came and was a little colder, though the sun was out and gilding the rooftops of Danfelgor with a false warmth. Maris arrived before dawn again, her cart creaking as she pulled it over the cobbles. She had brought fewer pots this time, but finer ones — small drinking bowls glazed in warm tones, and a single tall vase with a thumbprint pressed at its base.

Lenna was already there. She nodded in greeting as she laid out her goods — thick yoghurt sealed with wax, a wheel of soft cheese wrapped in herbs, a jug of milk that looked like ivory in the light.

“Not so many today,” Lenna said as she came over, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes lingered on the vase.

“Some were a bit rushed,” Maris replied. “I’d rather bring three good ones than ten careless ones.”

Lenna grunted her approval. She lifted the vase, turned it in her hand. “Feels good. Solid but not stiff - like something natural that grew.”

Maris blinked. “Most people don’t notice that.”

“I churn my own butter and handform my own cheese. You get to know what your hands mean.”

They stood and chatted like that for a little while — the vase between them, the city starting to stir around them and then a customer came and called Lenna away. That evening, as stalls were folded and carts were loaded, Maris lingered longer than usual. She was winding twine around her pots when Lenna appeared at her elbow.

“You walk home?”

“I do.”

“Let’s walk together then - I always go home along the river.”

They strolled in companionable silence, boots scuffing the edge of the path where the market turned to reed and the dusk settled in.

“You said you came from the hills,” Lenna said after a while.

“Yes, but there’s not much there now though - the clay’s still good, but the kilns need fuel, and there’s not much left up there to burn. Last year’s wildfires took nearly all of it”

“I came here when my uncle’s dairy farm got broken up after he died,” Lenna replied. “My mother used to say milk tastes lonelier in the city.”

“That’s a strange thing to say.”

“She was a strange woman, but she’s dead now, bless her.”

They both laughed, softly, as two gulls spiraled overhead, circling down toward the marsh.

It was a damp morning when the inspector came — not the usual clerk with a loose seal and looser tongue, but a new man. Tall, pressed like a newly ironed shirt, with a ribboned badge pinned to his chest and boots too finely oiled for muddy fields.

He moved down the line of stalls with a little notebook. Everyone stiffened as he passed — even old Gunter, who sold eggs and never cared for authority. Maris was adjusting the cloth beneath her wares when she heard the voice:

“You’ve no license for glazed goods in Zone Two.”

She looked up. The inspector was frowning at her pots.

“I was told potters could sell anywhere in this stretch,” she said, careful with her tone.

“Unglazed pots, yes. Glazed ceramics fall under guild inspection. Zone Two is for approved merchants only.”

“I’m not in the guild,” she admitted.

“Precisely. This will be noted.”

He scribbled something. Lenna stepped forward from her stall.

“She’s not doing harm,” she said. “Just selling what people like.”

“It’s not about harm. It’s about order, and following the regulations. The Merchants’ Guild, who I would remind you, control this market and issue the necessary permits, are very strict about their regulations being followed. To the letter.”

He moved on, but the tension lingered. Maris felt heat rising in her chest. Lenna put a hand lightly on her arm.

“Don’t let him push you out,” she said. “He wants people to be frightened.”

“I’m not frightened. Just tired of being made to feel small.”

Lenna nodded. “Then let’s not be small. Not today.”

The Dragon tavern sat just off the western arch of the market square, with a narrow doorway and mullioned windows glowing amber in the dusk. It was where craftsmen and market stallholders went after the market closed when their feet ached and the rain started. Not rowdy, not too refined — just warm and welcoming.

Lenna pulled the door open, and Maris stepped in. The place buzzed with quiet conversation, the scrape of chairs on flagstones, and the hum of fiddle music from the hearthside. Inside, the tavern smelled of woodsmoke, cooking, and ale. The two women found a corner table and ordered two mugs of warm spiced wine.

“That man today,” Lenna said, “he made everything feel... brittle.”

Maris nodded, blowing steam from her mug. “He made me feel like I didn’t belong. Like it was borrowed space I had no right to.”

Lenna’s eyes were soft. “You do belong - as much, or more than most. Those pots matter to people and they carry stories, even if the inspector doesn’t see it.”

Maris smiled faintly. “You’re good with words.”

Lenna shrugged. “I read a lot. Old songs and poems - as a child, I got teased for it.”

“Do you write any of your own?”

A shy smile. “Not much…  Well, sometimes I write when I can’t sleep.”

They sat quietly for a moment. Someone was tuning a dulver at the back, and a trader’s son was boasting too loudly at the next table.

Maris leaned in, her voice low. “Do you think we could... make a kind of corner in the market that’s our own?”

Lenna looked at her — not just at her face but at the thoughts behind it.

“I think we could try - but I don’t think they’ll like it very much if we do.”

“Let them not like it,” Maris said, smiling for the first time that day. They clinked mugs, so it was agreed.

By midweek, a quiet ripple moved through the central market. The potter and the dairy-seller were doing something - their stalls were now side by side, though they'd kept their permits separate. The colours of the stalls echoed each other: pale cream cloth above Lenna’s cold jars of butter and buttermilk, earthen red and slate grey at Maris’s table, where her cups and bowls now rested in simple wooden racks carved with cows, vines, and curling smoke.

They’d started to package small bundles: a shallow clay dish with a round of white cheese or a pitcher with a scrap of linen wrapped around it, knotted and painted with milk runes. Maris’s kiln-marks — once abstract — now curved like horns or stalks of barley. A butcher from the south arcade paused one morning and muttered to his boy, “What are they playing at?”

“They’re selling, or trying to, I reckon” the boy said, voice cracking, trying not to giggle.

But others saw something else. Old Fraska of the pickle stall grinned every time they set up. “They're weaving,” she told a baker’s apprentice. “That’s what it is. Clay and cream — weaving stories into goods. Folk want stories again these days.”

Not everyone approved. A rather pompous dried-fruit seller near the Merchants’ Guild House sniffed and said it was “performative rusticity.” The spice vendor behind her muttered, “It’s clever. That pottery makes the milk look like something really special.”

Guild scribes took notes. A young merchant approached Maris with an offer to scale up the operation — she declined, laughing. “We’re still deciding what we are.”

Lenna overheard someone say, “They’re getting ideas above their place in this market.”

She said nothing and just rearranged a set of cups to catch the morning light in a new way — and smiled when she saw Maris watching. The Festival of the Danfel  came with the first blossom on the river almonds — a time of thaw and return, of things hidden in the earth rising again. The central market was transformed. Stalls were draped in white and gold, musicians played dulvers and pipes, and the Merchants’ Guild Hall unfurled banners from its stone balconies.

For the first time, Lenna and Maris prepared something together for the celebration. Maris made a set of wide, pale dishes etched with the image of the rising sun and filled them with coarse salt, almond petals, and tiny folded scrolls with short blessings written in clay ink. Lenna brought sweet cream and elderflower cheese wrapped in soft waxed paper, stamped with a sunburst. They stood side by side, quiet but pleased before the crowd arrived.

But the market was changing. A new deputy from the Merchants’ Guild — a young man with pale gloves and a hard voice — walked the stalls flanked by two silent aides. “Consolidated licensing,” he told the Market Traders Guild representative. “Unregulated partnerships cause confusion, so all goods must be marketed under a single permit. We cannot allow larger concerns to take over stalls in this market - this market’s charter from the Merchants’ Hall allows for sole traders and sole traders only.”

He stopped at Lenna and Maris’s table.

“This is new,” he said, not kindly. “You're operating as one?”

Lenna said, “We sell together. But our work is our own.”

Maris added, “We’re not in the Guild. We're not even a shop.”

The deputy gave a thin smile. “Then you’ll need to separate your goods — and your earnings. Or submit a joint petition, with fees.”

The joy of the day had soured, and at the end of the day, they packed their things in silence

They did not speak of it for two days. The market quietened down again after the Festival — the petals swept up, the pipers gone, the banners furled again against the spring winds. Maris returned to her workshop behind the stone terrace of the square. Lenna went back to her early-morning routine, her head bowed and the cream sloshing in the churn as she walked. But the warmth between them hadn't faded. If anything, it had grown into something new - a fragile feeling like a thread  being stretched. On the third morning, Maris appeared beside Lenna’s stall just after sunrise, cheeks flushed from the kiln.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said without preamble. “We don’t need to break any regulations. We just need to present things differently.”

Maris raised an eyebrow.

“You register the stall,” Maris continued. “Officially, it’s yours. But I supply you — wholesale. No law against milk served in clay, is there?”

Lenna blinked. Then her mouth lifted into the beginning of a grin. “You’d sell it to me?”

“You’d pay me as a supplier,” Maris said. “And if they check the books, everything adds up.”

Lenna folded her arms. “I don’t like lying.”

“It’s not lying,” Maris said. “It’s adapting. Clay is flexible, you know. You have to fire it to make it last — but before that, it yields.”

They went ahead with the plan, and fortunately the paperwork passed without any trouble. The Merchants’ Guild man barely glanced at it — milk was milk, pottery was pottery, dairy products were being sold in pottery containers, and none of it seemed threatening.  But in the market, people noticed that the dishes were now labeled Maris & Clay, a brand that caught on faster than either expected. The two were seen often sitting together now — before the rush when the market opened, after the close, sometimes during quiet times in the working day. When asked, they gave no explanations - only nods and smiles that showed the quiet kind of confidence that needed no defending.

One morning, a letter came, hand-delivered, bearing the crimson seal of the Guild Of Merchants.

“A routine audit of newly registered market stallholderships will be conducted at month’s end. All documentation and records must be presented. Failure to comply or inconsistencies found will result in revocation of stall rights and possible fines.”

Lenna read it twice, then folded it slowly. “They’re not just looking for numbers in a ledger,” she said. “They’re looking for a reason, and a way to exert their authority over the market.”

Maris’s hands were clenched so tightly the parchment of the letter crinkled. 

“We’re not breaking the rules, exactly,” Lenna said, too quickly. “I’m listed as a dairy-seller. You’re listed as a supplier, but what if they come and see and someone says it’s not about milk or pots, it’s about... us. And that we are really working and trading as a partnership…”

Neither of them spoke.

 

They stayed late in the workshop, Lenna collecting together old receipts, Maris checking glazes that hadn’t fully cooled.

Maris said quietly, “If this goes wrong, I’ll lose everything. I’ve no family to fall back on.”

Lenna looked up. “Do you think I do?”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“I thought we were careful,” Maris said.

“We were,” Lenna answered. “But careful’s not the same as safe.”

 

The inspectors arrived on a grey morning. Not one, but three — two young clerks with ink-stained cuffs, and a woman in a cloak of red wool whose gaze took in everything. They asked questions, measured shelves and took notes. Lots of notes.

“Who made this?” one clerk asked, lifting a curved serving jug.

“I did,” Maris answered.

“And who sold it?”

“I did,” Maris said. “Wholesale to Lenna. Clay vessels for milk, labeled and priced according to the market code.”

“And the business is separate?” the woman in red asked. “There is no co-ownership?”

“No,” they said, together.

A pause. Then the woman laid the jug down gently.

“And yet you’re always seen together. Working. Eating. Drinking.”

Lenna’s heart thudded. “Is that in breach of market law?”

The red-cloaked woman looked at her for a long moment. “No,” she said at last. “Not so far as I can see.” And then she turned and left.

The tension lingered long after the inspectors left, but the next day, Maris and Lenna noticed something. The next morning, there were more smiles in the market, more nods of greeting. The vendors, the fishmonger, the baker, even the spice seller whose cart always seemed to smell of mystery and heat — they all greeted them with an almost conspiratorial air. One afternoon, Lenna overheard a conversation between two women near her stall.

“I heard they’re giving trouble to the potter and the dairy-seller,” one woman said, her voice low but carrying. The other woman looked over, then leaned closer. 

“Trouble or not, I’ll buy my cheese where it’s good and pots where they’re fired with care.”

Lenna’s breath caught. Then, with a glance, the second woman came over to her and slipped something small into her palm — a metal disc with an unfamiliar engraving.

“You don’t need to ask. It's from all of us - we all remember how you helped when the floodwater rose, and how you helped to make sure the storehouses were all sandbagged. Let them do what they can - we will stand with you.” 

Lenna nodded slowly. There were no words, but her heart was lighter for  the other woman’s gesture.

The next day, as the inspection deadline loomed, an unexpected visitor arrived. It was a man dressed in a dark green cloak, the kind worn by those who frequented the guilds and city halls. He approached their stall with purpose, his boots clicking on the cobblestones. Lenna and Maris exchanged a look before Lenna straightened and greeted him. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m not here to buy - in fact I have something for you both,” the man said, his voice low and steady as he held out a sheet of parchment. Maris frowned, taking the parchment carefully. The seal on it was unfamiliar, but the words inside were unmistakable.

“This business is not to be considered a threat to any other trader or craftsman. Consider this notice a formal declaration of Guild support. At the time of the inspection, please present this to the market authorities.”

“Who sent this?” Lenna asked, her mind racing.

“The Guild of Craftsmen. And a few others who prefer to remain unnamed,” he said with a sly smile. “You’ve made something of real value here, both of you with your partnership - not that we must call it that, of course - and we intend to ensure that the city knows it. The Merchants are always trying to show how powerful and in control they are, but we have to resist them when we can. They are not going to make an example of you two if the Crafts Guild can help it. ”

Lenna took the paper, feeling the weight of it in her hand. “What do you want in return?”

“Nothing,” the man said. “Sometimes the city needs a little nudge in the right direction. Sometimes people like you need someone on the inside.”

Before they could respond, the man turned and disappeared into the bustling marketplace, leaving them with more questions than answers, but also quite relieved.

The day of the final market audit came, but when the inspectors arrived, something was different. They were met by a crowd of curious onlookers, all wearing the same quiet defiance that Lenna and Maris had felt the day before. The fishmonger, the baker, the spice seller, and others from the market all stood nearby as the inspectors began their rounds. The woman in red, who had led the first inspection, raised an eyebrow when she saw the gathered crowd.

“We’re just here for routine paperwork,” one of the clerks muttered, clearly unsettled by the presence of so many people. The woman in red studied the scene, then turned her attention back to Lenna and Maris. “You’ve ensured all proper records are to hand and available to us, I hope?”

Lenna nodded, silently offering the letter they had been given. The inspector’s eyes flickered over it, then slowly back to the crowd. For a long moment, the market was silent, save for the background soft murmur of voices. The woman’s expression changed very slightly.

“This will be reviewed,” she said quietly, her tone not as sharp as before. “But you have not violated any regulations so far as I can see. The matter is therefore... suspended.”

And with that, the woman turned and walked away, her footsteps clearly audible in the quiet.

 

In the days that followed, Lenna and Maris found their market stall more crowded than ever. The crowd wasn’t just there to buy - they were also there to show solidarity.

“I heard you two were going to be shut down,” a young man from the bakery said as he handed over a small basket of warm bread rolls. “So, I thought I’d stop by and show my support. Have these for your lunch with my compliments. And anyway, your milk makes my pastries taste better.”

The crowd around them nodded in agreement, some raising cups of cider in silent toast.

“It’s the way the market should work,” said the fishmonger. “We all need to help each other out. What you’ve done here is really good - just the kind of fresh idea the market needs to keep people coming back”

Lenna’s eyes met Maris’s, and they shared a brief, quiet moment of pride. 

It had been a long winter — not as bitter as some, but long enough to make folk grateful when spring returned and the city’s rooftops were no longer covered with frost or snow each morning. By the time the crocuses flowered in the cracks of the cobbles, Maris and Lenna had secured something they had never thought possible - a contract with The Three Crowned Stars and Three Eagles, one of the city’s oldest and most famous taverns.

The innkeeper, a fastidious woman named Mistress Denra, had come to the market herself one morning late in autumn. She’d said nothing for a long time, just tasted the almond milk Lenna had flavoured with honey and cinnamon , and looked at a handled cup of Lenna’s—glazed in ocean green, the glaze pooling like river silt at its base.

“These are very good,” she said at last. “Not showy, but honest - I’ll need a hundred sets for our banquet chamber and twenty of these large vases. And we will be ordering this flavoured milk regularly from now on. I’ll talk to our chef and let you know quantities tomorrow.”

That commission changed everything - with the earnings, and some subtle encouragement from their friends in the Crafts Guild, Maris and Lenna leased a corner shop on the northern edge of the central market. It was a wedge-shaped space with green shutters and a large side window where the morning light struck the glazed pots perfectly.

The front room opened onto the street, and was filled with clean lines of shelves for clay wares and a cool, shaded corner for milk urns sunk in stone counters to keep them fresh. Behind a counter carved with curling vine-work, Lenna would stand in the morning hours, humming softly, while Maris shaped the clay in the back room, where a high window let in as much light as she needed.

In late spring, on a quiet afternoon scented with lilac and lavender, a letter arrived — folded with care, sealed in gold wax, and delivered by a boy in the red-and-blue livery of the Crafts Guild Hall.

It read:

“To Mistress Lenna of the Potters’ Circle and Mistress Maris of the Dairy Makers' Fellowship —
By unanimous vote, and in recognition of your excellence, innovation, and service to the community of Danfelgor, the Guild of Craftsmen offers you full membership.
You are invited to the midsummer gathering to take your places among the circle of makers.”

They stood together reading it in the fading light, Maris’s hand resting against Lenna’s arm, neither quite ready to speak.

“You’re crying,” Maris murmured.

“Only a bit,” Lenna admitted, eyes shining. “We built this. And now we’re... part of the Guild - something bigger and older than just us. That’s all.”

“That's not all,” said Maris softly. “We made something that lasts.”

he Crafts Guild Hall was not ostentatious — but it was in reality far more elegant than the overdone opulence of the Merchants’ Hall. Its walls were of grey stone flecked with green, and was roofed in copper that had turned the colour of old coins. Inside, candles glowed in iron sconces, and long oak tables lined the chamber known as the Circle Room, where new members were welcomed.

Maris wore a soft linen robe the colour of ripened wheat, whilst Lenna’s was slate grey with clay-red cuffs, a potters’ costume. When their names were called, the Guild folk clapped, and when the Guildmaster of the Craftsmen’s Circle — a stooped man named Helric Daan — pressed the iron seal of the guild into their hands, they bowed and were formally welcomed.

“Let your quiet work speak,” was all Helric said. “And let your hands do honour to the city and to our Guild. Welcome.”

As autumn mellowed the trees of Danfelgor down into golds and russets, Maris and Lenna’s shop became more than just a storefront — it became a meeting point. Young apprentices from the potters’ quarters came asking questions, and young cheese makers brought their curdled failures to ask Lenna for advice. Even a city scribe came, asking Maris to shape a new style of ink-jar designed to ease steady-handed work.

Their voices, once quiet and careful, were now sought out in Guild meetings. Maris was asked to join a standards committee — a body that oversaw the quality and fairness of guild production. Lenna was invited to speak to a gathering of city healers, after her orange-infused whey began to be used to treat scurvy in the lower districts. Before, neither woman had sought influence, but now, they attained a steady voice — not loud or political, but clear.

At the close of the year came the Festival of Stalls — a market tradition older than even the Guild itself, when stalls were draped in fancy cloth and displayed lanterns and all trades celebrated their wares with pageantry and small gifts to the people. Maris created a line of clay lanterns etched with wildflowers and constellations. Lenna made a drink of full cream milk, honey, and cardamom, offered in little glazed cups meant to be taken away and kept.

Their stall stood on the west side of the market — not the grandest, not the largest, but the one of those most visited by families, fellow craftsmen, and by those who remembered them from before. Children tugged at their mothers’ hands to go see the “milk-and-clay ladies.” An old baker gave them a coin he said had belonged to his grandfather and Mistress Denra from the Three Crowned Stars came by to simply nod, place more orders and say: “Well done.”

When it came it was not an easy decision. The cows had been part of Maris’ life for as long as she could remember — their patient eyes, the steady rhythm of milking, and the animal warmth in the winter dawn. But the routine of the shop was different now, and the market's needs had shifted. The final calf had been weaned and the barn was quiet. Maris found her one morning sitting on a stool beside the empty pen, a pail of feed untouched at her feet. Lenna looked up and simply said, “It’s time.” They sold the herd to a cousin of her’s from the northern pastures where the cows would be well looked after. Part of the space they freed up became a garden for herbs and hives.

The first wax pots were an experiment — jars shaped like folded flower buds and inside, the beeswax burned slowly and clean, infused with crushed petals from the herb garden and a thin thread of cinnamon.They sold out before noon, so Maris crafted new moulds, her glaze subtly altered to take on the warm shimmering honey colour. Lenna tended the bees and began writing tiny verses on folded parchment to place inside each candle pot: “For the dark corner — a little light.” or “Patience as the hive teaches.”

It was the Three Crowned Stars and Three Eagles that commissioned the first exclusive batch - larger pots with a burnished glaze inlaid with silver flecks and bearing their crest beneath the glaze. They had asked for deeper-toned wax, scented with pine resin and the pots were delivered custom-wrapped in linen -  favoured patrons were able to take them home as keepsakes.

Years passed, and the small shop that had once sold milk and curds now glowed golden even in midwinter, warm with beeswax light. People came not just to buy, but to pause and browse the shelves that were lined with candle-jars, carved bees, little ceramic amulets with lines of poetry tucked inside. Their work was no longer just goods, but offerings — a little gentleness sold among the clamour. Lenna still shaped clay each morning and Maris still smelled of thyme and wax - they no longer called themselves milk-seller or potter, but simply makers.

And when the Guild convened for the spring meeting, it was Maris and Lenna who lit the ceremonial lanterns. No speech was made — only light, and the scent of honey, and the long silence of a room that understood.

 

 

 

The first week in Valtura passed in a wash of salt wind and gulls screeching, the cries of the city and the market long behind them. The former harbour pilot’s house stood squat and whitewashed behind the sea dyke, its roof mended and its shutters painted pale blue by Lenna’s steady hand. Maris had built a low stone wall around the courtyard and set the beehives there, where they caught the morning sun.

They were strangers in the village, though not unwelcome. The old fishers nodded to them, and the new visitors—dandies from Estasea, landscape sketchers, minor merchants in country linen—regarded them with curious neutrality. It was clear to all that the two women were not holiday-makers, nor idle dreamers. Everyone could see that they worked hard. By day, Lenna shaped pots with a new look — gentler, more fluid. Maris poured beeswax into them late in the afternoon, her hands golden. The honey they sold to the innkeeper of the Whale’s Watch down by the quay, and the candles — scented with lavender, pine, and salt — began to draw notice in the apothecary’s window.

One morning, early, with sea mist still touching the tiled roofs, a man in a broad hat and paint-smeared coat paused before the little display outside their door. He lifted one of Lenna’s pots, glazed in sea-green and ink-black swirls, touched the rim with one paint-stained finger, and set it down again with something like reverence.

“You don’t sign them,” he said.

Lenna, who had come to sweep the stoop, looked up. “No. They’re only meant to burn candlewax.”

He turned to her. “Burn beautifully,” he said. “May I buy one?”

“You may have it,” she said, not unkindly, but not coy either.

He took off his hat and bowed low. “Feterino.”

“I know,” said Lenna. “You paint the sea as if it were a sorrowing god.”

He laughed softly. “And you trap light in clay.”

That was the beginning. He returned later that week with brushes and a suggestion. “Let me try one. Just one. You glaze it, I’ll paint it. We’ll see.”

It was a strange collaboration at first. Lenna liked symmetry, earth tones, and quietness. Feterino brought bold lines, floral forms, and stories without words. But something happened on the surface of the clay — a conversation between them that needed no speaking. When the first painted vase sat in the window at the Three Crowns and Three Eagles, a minor noble from Estasea bought it before it could cool from the sun. Within a fortnight, there were five more. The inn commissioned a dozen.

In the third year of their life in Valtura, the winds changed. The sea stayed the same — blue-grey and patient — but the village’s rhythms were different. New shutters gleamed on old cottages, and window boxes bloomed in unnatural profusion. Cafés sprang up in former net stores, selling rose-petal cordials and fancy pastries. A theatre company from Estasea took the old sail loft and turned it into a playhouse, with oil lamps and velvet chairs, whilst the fishmonger started selling  smoked scallops in jars labelled heritage.

Lenna and Maris, who had come with tools and bees and love, watched quietly as their quiet harbour grew louder. It wasn’t what they had meant for it. But their painted pots had become tokens of taste, their courtyard became a stop on walking tours, and the Three Crowns and Three Eagles displayed their work in glass cabinets, priced high and proudly. Feterino’s name drew patrons from across the bay.

But other names began to disappear. Old Marta, who had kept chickens and baked barley loaves, sold her house and wept quietly into the hearth before leaving. Her son could no longer afford the rent on the old fishing boat. The tavern down by the dyke doubled its prices and stopped serving salt cod stew — it wasn’t “refined enough,” said the new owner, a man with scented hair.

Local hildren vanished from the quay. No one played skimming stones anymore. Maris noticed it first. She went to buy lamp oil from the chandler and found it had been replaced with scented candles from Estasea — her own competitors. “Imported wax,” said the boy behind the counter. “No mess.”

Lenna’s hands gradually grew slower at the wheel.

“It’s not our fault,” she said one evening, low-voiced, brushing clay dust from her apron.

“No,” said Maris. “But we helped it happen.”

The Main Harbour at Valtura by Feterino

 

They began to ask: who is this village for now? The irony wasn’t lost on them — two women once outsiders, now fixtures in a place that no longer felt quite theirs either. They started speaking more with the fishermen, the old glassblower’s widow, the man who played fiddle by the boats and listened to what was being lost. They invited the local children to paint pots with them on Sundays, using the leftover glaze. Feterino, too, had begun to retreat. “They want beauty without memory,” he muttered, and began drawing in charcoal again, sketching the edges of things. But the pots told a different story now - Lenna began etching village scenes into the clay — a hand hauling in a net, a black cat on a warm roof, Marta’s chickens. Maris added candle scents that only locals recognised: smoke from sea-driftwood, the warm scent of tar and old ropes.

The days grew slower, and the pots fewer. Lenna’s hands ached in the mornings. Maris rose later than she used to. The bees still hummed behind the old pilot’s house, but someone else cared for them now — a local girl named Jorra, steady-handed and keen-eyed, who had learned under Maris’s care. They had given up the Danfelgor shop a year before, passing it to a young couple who made pottery of their own — rougher work, perhaps, but honest. The Guild had placed their names on the Wall of Steady Makers: not the highest honour, but one that meant endurance, trust, craft well given.

And now, in late summer, they sat beneath the lean fig tree in their courtyard, a breeze rising from the sea. The tide was out. The boats lay long and bare on the wet sand. Feterino had come with a couple of bottles of old wine from Prodelkrebu and three cups made long ago in Lenna's Danfelgor kiln.

None of them spoke for a while.

Then Maris said, “It’s not the place we came to, is it?”

“No,” Lenna said, “but it’s still the place where we made something good.”

Feterino poured the wine. “Everything beautiful is dangerous. Even art - or beeswax and barley bread. You don’t mean to change the world, but the world changes to meet you - and not always for the better.”

They drank, and the wind played with the fig leaves. Across the lane, one of Lenna’s early pots sat in a window — the one with three swallows sweeping low over a field of barley. A little cracked now, but lit from within. Children’s voices echoed faintly from the quay and someone was playing a fiddle in a way that no visitor knew, but the old Valtura folk still remembered. Maris leaned against Lenna’s shoulder. “We did well, didn’t we?”

“You did,” said Feterino softly. “You both did. Even in a town that now seems to have forgotten itself a little bit.”

The sun fell lower. The bees quieted. And in the quiet, the three old friends raised their cups again — to milk and to clay, to wax and to paint, to the lives they made, and the things they could not hold onto.

 

Copyright © Rod Jones 2024. All Rights Reserved.

Self Portrait by Feterino

Return to Valtura

The storm passed and the now-gentle wind carried the scent of salt and pine over the quiet docks of Valtura. The sea calmed, relaxing its rhythmic slapping on the weathered timbers of the old quay and in the distance fishing boats swayed with the passage of time, their crews preparing for the night’s work.

Cassar Velm had arrived that morning and the village had begun to notice him - he walked with the air of someone used to being looked at, or perhaps it was the bearing of an artist used to wandering and observing. His hair was longer than was fashionable in the capital, and his clothes—dark velvet, with an open shirt—hinted at someone who lived through paint and canvas rather than the everyday world.

He had come at the invitation of Feterino, the celebrated painter whose house perched above the village, near the cliffs. Feterino was a friend, an old confidant from the days when he had painted for the courts of the nobility, and who had now made a home in Valtura

The village was busy, with locals walking along the cobbled streets, their voices carrying on the breeze. In the windows of the small cottages, women paused to watch the stranger with interest —foreign visitors were frequent enough, but Cassar was different, marked by the charisma that surrounds great artists.

It wasn’t long before Adria Thalen, laden with crates from her father’s warehouse, passed along the dock and noticed him. She had little time for tourists or visitors, but something about the stranger caught her attention, and she could sense that this man was not just a holidaymaker. Her gaze lingered briefly before she turned her attention back to the task at hand, but it wasn’t to be the last time their paths would cross.

 

 

Later that day, the sun was low enough to cast long shadows across the room, where the scent of waxed oak and linseed oil hung in the air. The walls of Feterino’s house were lined with landscapes—lush valleys, vine-covered hillsides, and seascapes—all in his distinctive style. Between these works were other, half-finished canvases leaning against the walls. Cassar Velm, sitting in a worn leather chair beside the hearth, swirled a glass of velvety red from the Prodlekrebu vineyard. The wine was smooth, its deep colour catching the last of the light as he brought his glass to his lips. It was a luxury Feterino had shared with him more than once, and Cassar  appreciated the quality of the wine as much as the friendship that came with it.

"You always manage to find the best,” Cassar said, setting the glass down with a gentle clink. "Your friend certainly knows how to produce decent wine."

Feterino chuckled from his place at the easel, addressing a canvas with the hand of someone who had long lived by brush and colour. He was older now, his beard gray, but his eyes were sharp and full of the kind of confidence that time and success could bring. "Daric knows his trade, but it’s the way he can match the wine to the moment that’s his real gift and that’s why I love to go and visit him. I’ll take you over to Prodlekrebu if you fancy it."

Cassar nodded and leaned back, his gaze shifting over the room’s furnishings—paintings and tapestries, trinkets from foreign shores. “Still the same,” he said with a smile. "Always the collector."

“And you? Still collecting faces, I presume?” 

Cassar's face curled into a wry smile. "Faces are the easiest thing to find. Especially in a place like this. I mean, I saw a woman on my way up, down by the dock—really striking.”

Feterino’s eyes flicked to his friend for a moment, then returned to his canvas. His expression remained unreadable, though there was a subtle change in his tone. "Which one? There are several women like that in Valtura."

“No, no,” Cassar’s voice took on an almost playful edge, “This one had the kind of look I haven’t often seen before. She’s… bold. Not shy about being seen. A good model, I think.”

Feterino stopped what he was doing and turned, his face expressionless. "Is that so? Is she like the others, a muse for your brush, or are you thinking of something else as well?" 

Cassar raised an eyebrow, sensing a shift. "I haven’t even spoken to her, Feterino. It’s only the first time I’ve ever seen her. But she stood out, even if she was just stacking crates - she didn’t look my way, but there was something about her. Something a little bit, I don’t know, wild."

Feterino nodded, then raised his glass again. “Wildness can be good, but it can also be dangerous. Be careful, my friend - the world has a way of eating you up if you’re a bit unguarded.”

Cassar chuckled, swirling his wine again. “I’ve been to far worse places than this. What could possibly happen here?”

Feterino didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he studied Cassar’s expression, then breaking the silence with a quiet laugh. "Perhaps you’re right. But you’re not here just for the scenery, are you? I know you too well."

Cassar’s eyes met his old friend’s. A small smile tugged at his lips, but the implication of Feterino’s words lingered.

"Let’s just say I’m here for more than just your excellent wine, my dear Feterino.

 

 

Early the next day, Cassar ventured into the marketplace to take his first real look at the village. The morning was misty, with thin fog making the sea appear like a soft wash of grey. Cassar wandered down the winding streets, trying to blend in, but his appearance meant he didn’t go unnoticed - the locals’ eyes were on him as he passed. As he rounded a corner, he spotted Adria hauling crates from a dockside cart, her hair blowing back as she worked. She was conversing with a young man from the shipyard, but as Cassar approached, their voices dropped to a whisper.

She was even more striking up close as she had been from a distance. Her angular features, framed by unruly brown hair, were like something sculpted. The way she carried herself was almost too commanding for a place like Valtura.

"Excuse me," Cassar’s voice broke the silence. It was soft at first, but with enough confidence to make her glance up. "You’re the one who…” He faltered. The phrase had trapped him.

Adria raised an eyebrow. “The one who what?”

"The one who doesn’t seem to mind hard work,” he improvised, gesturing to the crates she was unloading.

She gave him a look that suggested she was used to strangers—too used to them in fact. "And you, sir, are the one who’s come to ‘discover’ Valtura, I expect. What’s your name?”

“Cassar Velm,” he replied, offering a polite bow, though the formality of it struck him as out of place in a fishing port with its gulls and seaweed.

"Ah, the famous Cassar Velm," she said, her voice cool. "I’ve heard of you. Should I be flattered by your attention? What do you think?"

Cassar smiled, would-be charm in his eyes. “I don’t know - but most people are not quite so… indifferent to my work. A refreshing change.”

Adria didn’t smile back. "I’m more interested in the ships you’re likely to be painting. The sea’s the only thing worth studying round here, in my opinion."

There was a pause - Cassar glanced at the crates, then back at her, an idea beginning to form in his mind. "Would you consider… posing for me so I could paint you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Posing?”

"Yes. I’m here to paint, after all,” he said with a shrug. "And you would make a perfect subject."

“I don’t pose for painters -or anyone else” she said flatly, her gaze dropping to the crates. "And anyway, I’ve got work to do."

She turned away, trying to avoid further conversation. But Cassar stepped forward. “It wouldn’t take long and I could make it worth your while. Just a few hours.”

She stopped, a sharp turn of her head toward him. "Do you think I need money from you?"

Cassar blinked, taken aback. “I wasn’t suggesting that.”

“You were certainly implying it,” she retorted, folding her arms. "What makes you think I would pose for some artist who is looking to capture - what? What is it you want? To paint me like some cliched ideal? I’ve heard it all before - there was a Danfelgorian who told me he could see the wind in my heart and the sea in my eyes. I’m not your symbol of a “simpler way of life”, and I’m not your muse, Cassar Velm. Not yours or anyone else’s. You’d better find someone else.”

And with that, she strode into her father’s warehouse, leaving him standing in the street.

The merchant's office was tucked away in an alley just off the Great Marketplace, just far enough from the eyes of casual visitors. It was a quietly strategic location—close enough to the activity of the market and the guildhouses but discrete enough to deflect attention from the questionable aspects of his business.

Renato Valris was a man of considerable superficial charm. His tall frame, neatly trimmed beard, and easy smile were the tools of his trade—he was a man who could sell anything, whether it was a shipment of fine wine, embroidered silk or a hand-carved chair. His business dealings, however, went far beyond what might be expected from a middle-aged merchant with a veneer of respectability. Valris was a smuggler and privateer, a man who had long exploited both the official trade routes and the Shadow Trade, an underworld network of contraband runners and corrupt captains.

He was  sitting behind a heavy mahogany desk, scanning a ledger that may have seemed too neat and well-kept for someone in his line of work. His thoughts were on the latest shipment of contraband goods he had en route, due to arrive within the week. Alongside his legal business, Valris had long been moving contraband past the Merchants’ Guild’s tariffs with the aid of his partner, Vareon Dirik, a leading figure in the Shadow Trade.

Valris had been operating this way for years. By day, he was the charming, well-liked figure who could be found at the Guild Hall or the Cargo tavern, mingling with the more affluent residents of Valtura. Women flirted with him, and men trusted him— he was a man who could make things happen, and always with a smile. But his network was far more extensive, and dangerous, than any casual observer would guess. Today, his office was visited by one of his informants, a sharp-eyed man whose job was to oversee Valris’ affairs at the Danfelgor end and keep an ear open for any news in the docks.

"Everything in place?" Valris asked, his tone as even and warm as it always was.

The other man nodded, looking around him. "Yes, the shipment is secure. But there's something you should know."

Valris leaned forward. "Go on."

“There are rumours, probably leaked," he continued, lowering his voice instinctively, "about the Guild tightening their grip on trade routes. They’ve been watching the coast more closely lately, and it’s being suggested that they may crack down on local smugglers... even force some of the smaller merchants to turn in their own to save themselves.”

Valris raised an eyebrow, unruffled by the news. "Let them try - we’ve survived worse than that." His fingers drummed against the edge of the desk, his mind already working through the implications.

"You might be right, but there’s another problem," the other man said, hesitating for a moment. "A contact of mine has told me that Spymaster Gitcni is sending someone to Valtura to root out any connections to the Shadow Trade. What if they find out about some of your dealings?"

Valris’s eyes flashed for the briefest moment, and then he chuckled, his calm demeanor returning. “Gitcni’s spies have always had more ambition than brains. Let them come - they won’t find what they’re looking for. Anyway, why is he doing that?"

The informant hesitated. "He wants what Gitcni always wants - control. He wants all trade to go through the legal channels, in other words, the Guilds. It’s his job to protect the Guild’s interests, and… let’s say it’s in his own personal interest too. Gitcni’s people might have someone already in Valtura, hidden in plain sight."

Valris considered this for a moment. “Well then we’ll just have to be better than them, won’t we?” He leaned back in his chair, his smile broadening. “And if they think they can disrupt my business, they’ll soon realise they’ve made a mistake.

 

 

 

The Cargo Tavern was located just beside the Merchants' Guild Hall in Danfelgor—a place where intrigue and politics mingled with trade, and deals were made under the table. The air was thick with the scent of spiced ale and the clinking of tankards - the sound of low, murmured conversations and soft music made it impossible to eavesdrop discreetly. It was the perfect place for Renato Valris to meet his partners in both his legitimate business and his illicit dealings.

Today, he sat in a private booth set away from the bustle of the larger rooms and bars - the sunlight through the tavern windows highlighting the sharpness of his features. He was alone, and his well-tailored coat of deep maroon and gold thread gleamed in the sunlight. He was a man who knew how to dress well, and how to move through the world with easy confidence.

A young woman with dark hair slid into the seat across from him. Her quick glances around the room told him she was on edge, but Renato offered her his signature smile, calm and assured.

“Tell me what you have, Mira.” 

She handed him a folded piece of parchment. “Everything is in place and the goods will be unloaded tomorrow night. The ship has already docked at Valtura —there’s a diversion in place to keep the Guild off the scent, and the appropriate, er.. payments have been made.”

Valris unfolded the parchment slowly, his eyes scanning the details, then nodded. “Good. And the delivery to the river boats?”

“Done. The men are ready. We’ll be able to move the goods through the back channels as soon as we’ve got them off the ship.”

A low chuckle escaped Valris as he leaned back in his chair. “Good. You’ve done well.”

Mira looked uneasy. “But there’s something else. The Guild’s been putting pressure on everyone round the docks, Valris. The Shadow Trade is starting to attract too much attention, and some of the merchants, especially the ones on the Guild’s council, are asking a lot of questions.”

Renato’s smile faded for a moment, but only for a moment. He gave her a reassuring glance. “I’ve heard something about this, but let them ask. If they don’t like what they find, they can try to stop us.”

There was no trace of concern in his voice, but Mira still seemed uneasy. “What if they have someone already watching you?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Valris waved his hand to dismiss the idea. “Let them watch. No one’s going to find anything unless I make a mistake. And that’s not going to happen. The Shadow Trade has always been one step ahead, Mira - that’s why we’re still here.”

He paused, thinking for a moment - his relationship with Vareon Dirik, the leader of the Shadow Trade, was built on mutual respect and also a vision of wealth and freedom. Dirik always operated covertly, which suited Valris perfectly, but with the Guild becoming more assertive, he needed to ensure that one of the many moving parts of their operation did not slip.

Renato took a long sip from his wine glass, swirling the deep red liquid against the candlelight. His mind wandered to the network of river boats he used to smuggle contraband up the Danfel River. These boats, seemingly innocuous, carried hidden compartments built into their hulls—designed to hold crates of smuggled goods such as fine wine, rare dyes, carpets, spices, and silks. The boats could move silently in the night, moving through the fog and the currents of the river as they passed between Danfelgor and Estasea.

"You know, my dear" Valris said with a soft smile, his gaze focused on the table in front of him, "the beauty of these river boats is that no one even notices them. By the time anyone realises what’s been moved, it’s already long gone."

Mira nodded, her unease lessening slightly under his confident assurance.

“You’ve earned yourself a reward for this, Mira,” Valris said with a nod of appreciation, his smile returning as he handed her a purse of silver coin. “Take a couple of days  - go to see a show at the new theatre, or visit the coast. But when you come back, be ready - there’s always more work to be done.”

She smiled and stood to leave, but as she reached the door, she turned back to him. “In Valtura, I’ve heard that you’ve become friendly with some of the artists.”

Valris raised an eyebrow. "Friendly?"

She smiled knowingly. “Let’s just say you’ve made quite an impression on some of them. I hear a lot about one who visits, called Cassar, apparently he thinks he’s a ladies’ man, but really he’s nothing but trouble.”

Valris’s smile never faltered, but the thought which came to him - that artists and dealers, much like smugglers and merchants, shared similar traits, such as creativity, ambition, and the desire to control how they were perceived - intrigued him. But there was something else - Valris had heard something of Cassar's reputation, and soon he would be in Valtura, rubbing shoulders with people who had more to hide than they let on.

“Well then - in Valtura we’ll see what kind of trouble he really is,” Valris replied, his voice low and thoughtful.

 

 

It was a brisk morning when Renato Valris arrived in Valtura, his coach rolling along the streets, the horses’ hooves clipping rhythmically on the cobblestones. He had come not as a merchant but as a man seeking rest by the sea, enjoying the coastal scenery and the artistic atmosphere of the growing resort.

However, beneath his leisurely air, there was a clear purpose to his visit. Valris had learned that an old contact of his—someone with information that could potentially make or break his underground dealings—was staying in Valtura. The meeting, carefully arranged and shrouded in secrecy, was a matter of great importance, and a short break in  the coastal town was the perfect cover.

Valris’ carriage came to a halt outside one of the little town’s recently refurbished cottages—the kind that housed those who were becoming regulars in Valtura. He stepped out of the carriage, adjusting his long coat, and cast a glance at the sea as it sparkled in the distance. With the flourishing artists' colony, the fine weather, and all the other things the town had to offer, Valtura was the perfect place for a holiday, and perhaps, for more.

His first stop was the old Sailing Gull inn down by the fisherman’s harbour, where he knew he’d find some of the locals and also some of the artists who’d become regular visitors to the area. It was a good way to settle into the town, listen to some gossip, and pass the time before his meeting.

 

 

Jannis Brueh,

Later that evening, after a pleasant afternoon mingling with the artists and the locals, Valris arranged for a private dinner with his contact—the meeting was to take place in a small, inconspicuous tavern by the docks, away from the centre of town.

Renato Valris wasn’t entirely blind to the risks of his situation - the Guild's watchful eye had been growing sharper, and the rumors about the Spymaster General’s agents coming to Valtura had made him particularly cautious. He didn’t plan to stay longer than a few days - the meeting with his contact would be swift and private, and after two or three days he’d be on the Danfel River boats, back to Danfelgor, overseeing the next shipment. 

The tavern clung to the edge of the harbour like a barnacle, low-roofed and dimly lit, its beams dark with years of wood smoke. Known as the Oyster Catcher, it was very different from the cheerful artists’ cafés or the polished tea salons where wealthy visitors gathered. This was a place where deals were made in murmurs, and where fishermen drank early and smugglers late.

Renato Valris sat at a narrow table tucked in a back corner, facing the door but shadowed by the slant of the low ceiling. Across from him sat Jannis Brueh, a lean man with eyes and hands that never stopped moving. His nerves were understandable—what he was about to share could end his career or his life, depending on who overheard.

They were halfway through their second bottle of wine, and had finished their main conversation, when Jannis leaned in and said in a very low voice,

“The Guild Council meets again in ten days’ time. There’s a proposal backed by the Estaseans—a  tariff reset,with some reciprocal trading rights. Trade barriers will be lifted in principle, but only to certain merchants—ones with ‘special privileges’—will get full port access. Quiet sales of port permits have already begun.”

Valris didn’t blink, but his fingers tightened around the stem of his glass.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“I saw the draft myself,” said Jannis. “They’re calling it a ‘pilot scheme’—only a few of the docks at first, and only for those with Guild certification. But everyone knows what it is. The Shadow Trade’s now recognised as a rival to the legitimate trade, and the Guild intends to stop it once and for all.And make some extra money on the side. Of course. ”

Valris swirled the wine, pretending to contemplate the colour. “And who’s selling these permits?”

Jannis gave a tight smile. “Your friends on the Guild Council. Same men who’ve denounced smuggling in public. Hypocrites, every last one one o’ them.”

A pause followed, filled by the sound of a net being hauled in at the quay. Valris leaned back, satisfied.

“You’ve earned your payment,” he said.

They both laughed, quietly - the deal was struck. Valris now had a very short opportunity to adjust his operations, contact his partners, and begin manoeuvring for port access—openly or otherwise.

Later, as Valris stood at the bar preparing to leave, he raised his empty glass and asked the tavern keeper:

“You've got a good nose for wine. Where’s this from?”

The innkeeper gave a crooked smile and reached for the cork-stoppered bottle.

“Prodlekrebu vineyard, not too far from here. Old chap runs it now with his niece. Name’s Daric. Used to be something high-up in Danfelgor, I understand, but he don’t talk about it.”

Valris raised an eyebrow.

“Oh yes - I’ve heard of it - this is the wine Feterino drinks, isn't it?”

“Thas right,” the tavern keeper chuckled. “Buys it by the cartload ‘e does. Artists and wine drinkers - one an the same, usually.”

 

 

Cassar Velm’s rented cottage sat on a rise above the western cliffs, the kind of place where the light changed every hour and the sea sounded like breath sucking through the stones. He had already made two oil sketches of the view—one a smouldering sunrise, the other a wind-whipped dusk—but it was not the sea that haunted his thoughts this morning.

He was cleaning brushes when he heard her voice again.

“I didn’t think you artists were early risers.”

He turned. There was Adria, in a sea-green dress with sun-browned arms and eyes that missed nothing. Striking, with sharp cheekbones, unruly dark curls, and a gaze full of wit and challenge. She had appeared as casually as one might stroll by a market stall. 

“I rise with the light,” he said, gesturing towards her. “The muse doesn’t keep regular hours.”

“Is that what you think I am? A muse?” she asked, half-smiling. “That’s quite a title to give someone you’ve hardly met.”

“We’re correcting that now,” Cassar replied. Perhaps she had changed her mind about posing for him. Perhaps he had been too eager yesterday. Perhaps she had over-reacted. Perhaps.

He offered her the seat beside the easel. She did not sit, but circled, appraising the half-finished canvases.

“You paint like you’re trying to catch something which is escaping,” she said. “But none of them are about this place—not really.”

“Not yet, perhaps,” he said.

“Then perhaps you need a better guide.”

He liked her - she reminded him that not all admiration came wrapped in silence and servility. Feterino had called her “too confident sometimes for her own good.” Cassar found her confidence attractive.

“Come for a walk with me tomorrow,” he said. “If you’re not working. Show me the Valtura you know.”

She nodded once, not quite a yes, not quite a no, and left without another word. He watched her go, the line of her back as deliberate as the stroke of a brush across canvas.

Cassar and Adria, drawing by one of Feterino's students

By midday, Renato Valris had transformed. No longer the merchant prince of Danfelgor, he wore loose cotton, a straw hat, and the easy pace of a man supposedly taking the sea air.

He strolled along the quay, watched a troupe of Estasean performers tumble and juggle in the square, and paused to examine a line of paintings hung on the fence. Mostly tourist fare—stormy seascapes, melancholic boats—but one caught his eye: a bright, unfinished portrait, done with bold strokes that suggested rather than declared.

The seller—a sandy-haired young man—saw his interest.

“That’s not for sale. It’s one of Cassar Velm’s. He’s staying here for a few days. I’m just minding it for him till he comes back to finish it later”

Valris said nothing, but this was the second time he’d heard that name recently.

Later that afternoon, in a shady garden where a few artists had gathered for wine and conversation, he saw Feterino, unmistakable with his sun-silver hair and his weatherworn cloak. The old man was seated beneath a fig tree, glass in hand, gesturing grandly about the difficulty of painting anything honest with “these damned tourists blocking the view.”

Valris, recognising a familiar back if not the face, approached slowly.

“Still finding faults in paradise, old master?”

Feterino turned, blinked, then grinned broadly.

“Renato bloody Valris, you old rogue. You come to steal my paintings - or my wine?”

“Both, if there’s time.”

They embraced briefly—equals of different trades, bound by years of shared salons, wine-soaked dinners, and the occasional narrow escape.

“Come here, you old pirate,” Feterino said. “You’ll like this Prodlekrebu red. Daric sent a crate just last week.”

As the wine was poured and introductions made, Cassar arrived late, windblown and distracted, and sat down just as Valris turned to him.

“And who might you be, Sir?”

“Cassar Velm,” the artist said.

“Ah,” said Valris. “Then I owe you some thanks. Your portrait on that stall down by the quay brightened my morning.”

“It’s not finished,” Cassar replied quickly.

“Then I look forward to seeing it when it is.”

They exchanged a brief nod. Across the road, Adria passed without noticing them, basket on her hip, but Cassar’s eyes found her straight away. Valris, following his gaze, noted her in silence.

 

 

Feterino's Garden at Valtura by Cassar Velm

The hills above Prodlekrebu were flushed gold with late sunlight, the vines casting  shadows on the slopes. Daric stood with pruning shears in hand, dressed in his usual rough linen shirt and soft boots. He looked like the gentleman vintner that he was —stooped slightly, eyes narrowed against the sun, sleeves rolled up—but still like a man trained to read rooms and open doors.

Behind him, Liriel emerged from the pressing shed, her hands stained with grape juice. She had tied her hair back with a faded red ribbon and wore the apron of a field hand. To local people, she was Daric’s niece from the upper river country—sharp-tongued and hard-working.

“You’re worried,” she said, watching him snap a dead shoot from the vine with more force than needed.

“Am I?” he muttered.

She wiped her hands on her apron and tilted her head.

“You’re only silent for hours on end when you’re remembering something unpleasant. Let me guess—Gitcni?”

He gave a noncommittal grunt, then pulled a wax-sealed letter from his belt and handed it to her. It bore no official seal, just a small black triangle—the mark of the Office of Public Safety.

She opened it with steady fingers, reading quickly.

“A request,” she said, coldly. “That snake never asks. He threatens - with bad grammar.”

“I tried to teach him how to threaten with some elegance,” Daric said drily. “He’s more direct these days. He says the Office is tracking activity on the lower Danfel - something to do with the Shadow Trade. Smuggling, tariff evasion, privateering—nothing new. But they think someone well known is involved.”

“And they want you to go and sniff it out?” Liriel asked.

“Apparently, I’m still their most discreet bloodhound. You never really leave the Office.”

Liriel folded the message carefully and handed it back. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“They assume that I’m dead, though, don’t they? You told me that, remember, and that they believe that it was the Estaseans who took the money.”

“Which is how I’d like to keep it.”

“Then say no.”

Daric shook his head slowly.

“You can’t say no to the Office. Not really. Not when Gitcni sends a man to bring the message out personally. He waited outside my gate for six hours until I got back, apparently. Didn’t drink, didn’t sit, didn’t speak. Just watched the trees. Wouldn’t deliver the message to anyone but me”

Liriel’s eyes darkened.

“I’m worried they’ll come for me next.”

“They don’t know you’re here, and I’ll keep them busy,” he said. “If I sniff around the Shadow Trade, give them something—anything—convincing, it’ll keep their eyes on Valtura. And they think you’re dead anyway.”

She looked away, jaw set.

“But what if someone recognises me? If they match the face to the archives?”

“Then you’ll have to disappear. Again. But until then, you stay the helpful niece with a keen nose for vintages and a poor head for politics. If you stay here on the estate you won’t be seen. That’s why you’re not coming to Valtura with me.”

A pause. She smiled and wandered back toward the house.

Daric stared after her, troubled. The sun was almost down now, and the rows of vines stood like silent witnesses to Daric’s secrets.

 

 

The narrow road into Valtura curved along a headland scented with salty breezes and pine resin. Daric, dressed in a modest travel coat and soft boots, drove his mule-cart down toward the village, a few crates of  Prodlekrebu vintage packed away behind him. He looked like any other prosperous country vintner - slow and unremarkably dull. He was neither.

The cart creaked down the stony lane past fishermen mending nets and children with wind-tousled hair playing on the quay. Daric returned nods and smiles, taking note of who looked twice and who didn’t look at all. Old spycraft habits died hard.

“Valtura hasn’t changed that much,” he murmured aloud. “But the people coming here have.”

At Feterino’s hilltop house, the painter greeted him, arms outstretched.

“Daric! You bring the sunshine and your good company.”

“And wine,” Daric replied, pressing a bottle of red from the south-facing slope into Feterino’s palm. “A very special bottle for your cellar. Put it away - I’ve got plenty here to drink now.”

The two men walked into the painter’s airy salon. Canvas, wine bottles, and half-unwrapped cheeses competed for dominance on the tables.

“You’ve come to spy on the art crowd, have you?” Feterino said with a grin. “What are you really doing here, you old fox?”

Daric smiled. “You know me—I visit friends. Listen to gossip and see if your former protégé is about to bankrupt you with his good taste.”

“Cassar?” Feterino waved a hand. “He drinks more than he paints these days. But he’s chasing a muse, which is a dangerous pastime for a man his age.”Daric chuckled.

“Let’s open some wine and then we can have a chat - wine tends to loosen tongues.”

“Especially when the wine is from Prodlekrebu,” Feterino said, raising his glass.

 

 

Later that day, Daric wandered down to the Sailing Gull, a low-beamed inn frequented by fishermen, boat captains, and merchants both respectable and not. He took a corner table, ordered a dark Estasean beer, and listened as goods were discussed and prices agreed. One table discussed “new delivery routes” while another muttered about “Guild inspectors getting too close.” A third muttered about “sailing in shadow” and “nets full of stars.” Shadow Trade speak, no doubt about it.

Daric joined in here and there with harmless anecdotes about wine tariffs, casual mentions of harvest delays, questions about shipping up the Danfel. He let people grow used to his presence, allowing the right sort of curiosity to settle in.

“You from the vineyard up at Prodlekrebu?” a weathered captain asked.

“I am,” said Daric. “Just checking who still knows how to appreciate a full-bodied vintage.”

“We do,” the man said. “Especially those of us who’ve had to do some… rerouting, lately.”

The hook had had a nibble. Daric nodded thoughtfully, saying nothing.

By nightfall, he’d gathered a handful of snippets - a merchant recently stopped shipping through Estasea altogether, preferring “river runners”, a local family buying silks that seemed beyond their means, and a freighter captain avoiding the Estasean harbours despite the official lifting of certain trade barriers.

None of it proved anything, but it hinted that the Shadow Trade was mutating and finding new strategies and routes.

 

 

By the second evening of his stay, Renato Valris had settled into the rhythm of Valtura. Mornings were for tea down by the water and developing an interest in local sculpture, even visiting the atelier of a rising young woodworker. Afternoons were for walking along the cliffs or browsing the local market. Evenings were for the real business.

Dressed in a sea-worn coat he’d packed for just such an outing, he stepped into the Cuttlefish Tavern, humming faintly and squinting against the wood smoke and low lamps.

“I was told to ask for the back table,” he said quietly to the barman.

“Aye sir,” the man replied without looking up. “Your friend’s waitin’.”

The back table stood beneath a painting of a shipwreck—an unsubtle metaphor if Valris ever saw one. Sitting there was a compact, red-bearded man, hands ringed with callused fingers, and a sly look behind pale eyes. A freetrader, unmistakable.

“Captain Lors Avanek,” the man said, raising a tankard. “You must be my Danfelgorian patron.”

“Valris,” he replied, sitting. “No titles, no flourishes. I hear you sail under none either.”

“Only under the stars,” said Lors with a grin. “And a good moon. Let’s speak plainly then.”

They did—in low voices over two shared bottles. The tariffs between Danfelgor and Estasea, Lors confirmed, were shifting again. Not publicly, of course. But already the Guild had voted to enforce permits more harshly at Danfel docks, and a new round of inspections was about to begin upriver. “You’ve got about six weeks before your little fleet needs to disappear, or learn to swim faster.”

Valris leaned in. “And Estasea?”

“A new port master's due at the Main Harbour. He’s clean, but his secretary isn’t—and I have his ear. I can get you exclusive access to three berths there for your boat - for the right price.”

They shook on it and the money changed hands. Lors then produced a map, marked with new rendezvous points and backwater channels along the Danfel River and two secret customs checkpoints bribed into blindness. Valris’s mind spun with calculations - routes, cargo, bribes, risk windows.

“And this wine,” Valris said offhandedly, pouring another glass. “Better than most I drink in the capital. Where’s it from?”

“Some vineyard up the coast. Name’s Prodlekrebu, I think.”

Valris paused. That was Feterino’s favourite wine. 

“Interesting,” Valris said. “Very smooth. Not what I expected from Valtura.”

Lors just grinned.

 

 

The House at Valtura by Feterino

 

The wine had been open for hours, but the conversation showed no signs of slowing.

They sat on Feterino’s vine-clad terrace, high above the sea, the scent of thyme and olivewood smoke on the air. Below, the fishing harbour glimmered with the low evening sun and someone was playing a traditional tune on a reed flute down by the quay.

“This light,” Cassar said suddenly, gesturing toward the water. “Do you see how it breaks the horizon? That shimmer—it’s not real light, you know. It’s the eye, trying to make sense of a thing that isn’t there.”

Adria, who had accompanied him, seemed amused. “Isn’t that what artists are supposed to do?”

“Exactly,” he said, beaming at her.

This evening, there was an ease between them, as if the heat of their initial meeting had burned down to something more stable. She was not yet his lover, not yet his model—not yet“You  said you never paint the sea, didn’t you?” she asked.

“It’s too honest,” Cassar said, after a moment. “Too direct. You can’t seduce it—you look at it and it sees through you.”

Feterino chuckled, swirling his red wine. “You’ve tried, clearly.”

“Twice,” Cassar admitted. “It laughed.”

Chatter bubbled among them and Feterino’s housekeeper appeared silently, refilling glasses and leaving a platter of flatbreads, late figs and Estasean cheese.

Adria stood and walked to the edge of the terrace, where the sun turned the sea into molten amber. She could see the little boats pulling in, the outlines of men gutting fish, folding nets. Her father might be down there, still talking timber with the wharf master.

She turned. “You lot talk about beauty like it’s something secret, but the village sees it differently - they live in it. Salt and sawdust and windburn—beauty’s not something they hang on walls. They don’t need to.”

Feterino raised his glass. “To salt and sawdust.”

“To windburn,” said Cassar, toasting her.

In the garden, the moment lingered but somewhere just out of sight, a shadow shifted in the lowering dark—a smuggler’s skiff pulling into a hidden cove, or a courier slipping along the coast road toward the Prodlekrebu vineyard.

 

 

The heat of the day still lingered in the vineyard and the air was thick with the scent of sun-warmed grapes, bees humming among the rows. Liriel moved steadily, pruning back new growth with deft  hands, her linen sleeves rolled to the elbow, her hair pinned up beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat.

From the hilltop, the sky was the deepest blue, framed by cypress and dusty olive trees. Peaceful, idyllic, and quite possibly deceptive.

She paused, wiped her brow with the back of her hand, and leaned against a gnarled vine, gazing toward the stone house at the top of the estate. It was difficult, sometimes, to forget that she had once run field operations for the Office of Public Safety, reporting directly to Daric. Gitcni thinks I’m dead, though. Or imprisoned - scraped up by the Estaseans.

Let him think that, and never suspect the truth—that she’d walked away with the money meant to grease an operation that she had had to abort before she had vanished without a trace. 

Daric hadn’t shown her all of the message that had come, but the slight change in his posture after reading it, the crease between his eyes, the way he looked at her that evening—quiet, thoughtful, as if measuring her worth all over again—that had been enough.

“Request” my backside”, she thought. Gitcni’s requests come with poison between the lines.

She set the shears aside and knelt to clear away dry leaves around the base of the plant. Even now, her movements were efficient and silent—habits drilled in long before she'd ever touched a grapevine. He’ll be fine, she told herself, not for the first time. Daric is no fool. He’s turned the tables on worse than smugglers and free traders. And I… I have money - I can vanish again if I must.

But the comfort of those thoughts wore thin each time she heard a distant hoofbeat on the lane, or a bird cry that became suddenly quiet. Just five days, she murmured aloud, to the vine, the bees, the empty hills. Just let nothing happen while he's gone. A breeze stirred the rows and somewhere on the terrace above, a bottle clinked faintly against another. The sun dipped lower. Liriel stood and walked on, deeper into the vines, trying not to listen for footsteps that weren’t there.

 

 

The shipyard was quiet at this hour—the tools laid down, the workers gone to their evening meals, the scent of pitch clinging to the warm air. The sea murmured just beyond the timber walls, the slow rhythm of the tide slipping in between the pilings.

Adria sat on an overturned crate in the shade of a half-built hull, her back against the curved ribs of the ship. The scaffold beside her creaked a little as it cooled in the dusk. Her sleeves were smudged with sawdust, and one of her boots had a fresh spot of tar across the toe. She didn’t care.She had come here for quiet - but not to think. And yet, she was thinking about Cassar Velm.

That name alone irritated her—too smooth by half, like something pulled from a gallery wall or carved from marble. He wasn’t what she’d expected, when the village first started buzzing about Feterino’s guest. She’d imagined some preening peacock in velvet robes, sighing over the light, and to an extent, he was like that. But at the same time, she thought, he sees things - not just faces, but everything, and he notices people - me. That was part of the trouble - she had caught his eye and now, despite herself, she didn’t hate it.

There had been a flicker of pleasure, stupid and unwelcome, when he stopped to speak with her near the market two days ago. Asked about the fishing boats, the varnish, the way they sealed the seams. He had a way of asking questions that didn’t feel like small talk. He listened, and he seemed genuinely interested in what she said, and that made him attractive.

He wants to paint me, she thought, and that still felt unreal. "You’d make a magnificent subject," he’d said, his tone almost reverent. And yet…she plucked a sliver of wood from the edge of the crate. Posing for him would mean giving him something apart from time and her presence. 

Would I just be another of his painted women? Or something else? She wasn’t naïve. She knew what people thought when a woman became a painter’s muse, and how quickly admiration could twist into possession. How desire could dress itself in flattery. There was something in Cassar—not quite dangerous, but not quite safe either. I’m nobody's fool, she reminded herself. No one makes me do anything I don’t want to do.

She sat forward, resting her forearms on her knees. The sun was going down, and she could hear the faint clatter of crockery from the houses beyond the harbour. She could ignore him of course, but maybe I will let him paint me, she thought, surprising herself. On my terms though - one sitting and no promises about further sessions, and not in his cottage.

 

 

Cassar Velm sat on the veranda of the cottage he’d rented, a thin charcoal pencil balanced between his fingers. Before him, a sheet of fine paper lay on the drawing board, its surface marked by a dozen faint beginnings - arcs of cheek, a line of jaw, something that might have been a collarbone - none of them complete.

He exhaled, leaned back in the wicker chair, and gazed out toward the sea, barely visible now in the dusk. Lanterns glowed down in the harbour like low-slung stars, and the calls of seabirds came from somewhere overhead. She doesn’t quite leave my thoughts, he admitted silently. Even when I’m not drawing her. The way she stood in the shipyard yesterday—arms crossed, hair tied back, no frills or ornament. And still... there was poise. 

Cassar frowned at the sketch again. None of these quick gestures had captured that balance yet. Something was eluding him - the impression of motion just before stillness. He rose and stretched, then walked to the low shelf where he had placed his sketchbooks. One was nearly full—faces of Valtura, fisherfolk and visiting artists alike. But none of his work in Valtura had unsettled him like this.

He didn’t mind being unsettled in this way, though -  it stirred the itch in his fingers. He found the page of sketches he’d done from memory after seeing her in the market—the sweep of her hair, the shape of her brow, the stubborn lift of her chin. Not a likeness, but a start. She’ll say yes eventually, he thought, turning the page slowly. I’ll need to ask her the right way. Not as if I’m just trying to flatter her, but as if I’m looking for a kind of truth she carries and doesn’t even know. He smiled to himself, and turned to mix his pigments for the morning. Perhaps a small landscape by the shipyard first—just an oil sketch, an excuse to be nearby. Let her come to him, or not. He would have to be patient.

 

 

The Artist's Colony at Valtura by Cassar Velm

The sea breeze filtered through the pines as the light of late afternoon warmed the stones of Feterino’s terrace, where a small table had been set under a pergola of grapevines, already tinged with early hints of autumn. Three men sat there—three very different men—drinking from heavy green-stemmed goblets of cool Prodlekrebu white.

Feterino, in a silk robe, was in a state of contentment. Daric, sun-browned and silver-haired, wore plain working clothes, the kind that would belong to a prosperous vintner. Valris, as ever, was in fine linen, his dark eyes bright with interest as he swirled his glass and admired the vineyard’s bouquet.

“This is very good,” Valris said. “Fruity, and not just simple fruit and nothing else either - there’s depth and complexity here. You’ve obviously got someone very clever working your estate.”

Daric smiled modestly. “That would be me, though I do have some good people to help me. Before I ever went to Danfelgor, I worked in my family vineyard. Unfortunately, although my father was good with wine, he was terrible with money and the estate had to be sold to pay off his debts.”

“Well, Feterino’s been singing your praises for years, but I assumed he was exaggerating.”

“I never exaggerate about wine,” Feterino cut in. “Only about love, and even then, never about mine.”

The three chuckled. A moment of shared indulgence passed between them.

Valris leaned back, studying Daric more closely. “So you’re the famous Daric. I didn’t know you had any connection to Valtura.”

“I have a few customers here,” Daric replied. “Feterino’s chief among them.”

Valris nodded. “I imagine Valtura attracts all kinds these days, doesn't it? Artists, poets, sailors - even merchants who need a change of scenery.”

Daric caught the faint note of polite curiosity, laced with something probing.

“And some who hope their past doesn’t come back to bite them,” he said, smiling without warmth.

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy, but it was charged. Feterino clapped his hands once. “Now, now. You’re both clever men, but don’t start fencing with words. This is a peaceful terrace. If you want to duel, paint each other’s portraits badly and call it even.”

That broke the tension and Valris raised his glass. “To painting, then, and to fine wine.”

They drank. A little later, as dusk came on, Valris asked casually, “Can I buy a few cases of this?”

Daric was ready. “I can arrange something, of course. Was it this white you were after?”

Feterino was already dozing in his chair, a napkin over his face. Valris stood, stretching. “Well I may call on you again, Master Daric. There’s a great deal going on in Valtura these days. Seems I’m not the only one looking into certain… developments.”

Daric gave a slow nod. “Indeed.”

As Valris walked back down the garden path toward the village, Daric remained in his seat, watching the sunset. Beneath his calm exterior, thoughts were turning. He hadn’t expected to encounter someone like Renato Valris so soon—it seemed his investigation had just taken on a second layer.

 

 

Orren Vaik

The Whistling Oyster Tavern, tucked just below the bluff where the old quayside meets the waterfront promenade, had a mismatched clientele. On one side, there were tar-stained dockhands and oily fishery workers shouting over their mugs of ale. On the other side, a quieter room with curtains where deals were made with low voices and gesturing hands.

Valris entered unhurriedly, a figure of calm in the lively bar, his sea-grey cloak damp from the evening mist. He nodded once at the barman —who knew better than to say his name aloud—and was directed with a flick of the chin to the back corner.

There, seated with his sea boots on the bench was Orren Vaik, a notorious privateer and free trader and a former Estasean naval officer who had somehow never been convicted of a single offence, despite half the Merchant’s Guild swearing that, at one time or another, he’d robbed them blind. A long scar ran down one cheek like a badly carved signature.

“Renato,” said Orren, voice gravelled with shouting orders and salt air. “I wondered if the sea breeze would bring you in tonight.”

Valris sat, careful not to brush his cloak against the sticky table. “It may be that you’ve been careless, Orren.”

“Careless, or noticed?” Orren poured him a drink from an unlabelled bottle of what was presumably rum.

“The Guild’s onto something. They may not have much detail, but what they do have could be enough to make your next few runs a bit more… athletic.”

“Then it’s a good thing I have strong sea legs.”

Valris didn’t smile. “They’re talking about increased customs checks again. Tariffs changing and ships being stopped midstream. Someone in the Council has leaked it—but only to a few.”

Orren leaned in, “And you’re one of the lucky few, eh?”

“For now.”

The smuggler nodded. “What do you want? A faster route upriver? Or a slower one that looks a bit more legitimate?”

“I want three things,” Valris said quietly. “I want to know who else knows about our little plans. I want to move my stock before the Guild can react. And I want you to be absolutely certain your Estasean friends aren’t playing both sides.”

Orren’s smile slipped.

“Because if they are,” Valris went on, “I’ll burn down every warehouse they’ve ever dealt with, bankrupt them and buy their ships out from under them.”

A pause. Then the freetrader gave a grudging nod. “You haven’t lost your edge, I’ll give you that.”

“No,” Valris replied. “But I’ve come close enough to know I don’t want to find out what happens if I do.”

They drank in silence for a moment. Around them, the tavern throbbed with laughter and song, the surface of the town swirling above the dark current of the sea.

Then Orren said, “You’ll need to be careful. There’s another visitor asking questions about the river trade - comes from out of town somewhere.”

Valris left the Whistling Oyster with thoughts churning round in his head - it seemed the tide was rising faster than he had expected. He leaned against the weathered stone wall above the tide pools, watching the fishing boats roll gently at anchor as the last of the light fell across Valtura’s harbour, leaving only lanterns.

Orren’s words sat uneasily with him. “Someone from out of town asking odd questions—nothing direct, but nosing nevertheless - interested in retired river captains, old runs, where things used to land before the tariffs.” The kind of interest a merchant might feign—unless they already knew what to ask.

Valris had shrugged it off at the time, ordered two quarts of ale to chase the rum down, and made a remark about bored old traders playing at being adventurers. But the tone in Orren’s voice had been cautious, and if he was cautious, then it followed that something wasn’t right. A breeze stirred the salt air and Valris glanced toward the path that wound up to Feterino’s villa. He hadn’t seen the old man since his arrival—but maybe he’d go to see him tomorrow. The wine was reason enough for a visit, and Feterino was well connected in ways few people appreciated. Someone from out of town… The phrase echoed again. Not “from the Guild,” not “from the coast”—just from elsewhere. Valris narrowed his eyes toward the darkening horizon. “Too vague,” he muttered. “But too precise to ignore.”

He would send a discreet message to his people in Danfelgor—ask if any names had surfaced lately from the old networks. Meanwhile, he’d stay relaxed, charming, and act as if he was utterly unconcerned. If someone was

watching, they’d see nothing but a merchant on holiday. A well-dressed, wine-loving, discreetly dangerous merchant on holiday.

 

 

In the late afternoon haze, Daric stood beneath the faded awning of a cooper’s workshop on Valtura’s south quay, a small empty cask slung on one shoulder. He looked every bit the travelling vintner—dusty boots, modest clothes, slightly frayed cuffs just visible under his coat sleeves.

He gave the cooper a firm nod and set the cask down gently.
“Your standard barrel, new white oak?”
“Aye,” the cooper replied. “Same as last year?”
Daric nodded and handed over a sealed slip. “Add this to Feterino’s account. He’s promised to host a tasting.”

They spoke of wood prices and the difficulty of getting good apprentices these days for a few moments — enough to satisfy any passersby that it was nothing more than a conversation about casks and contracts. Only when the cooper leaned closer to check the slip did Daric murmur:

“I’m looking to speak to someone who knows the old river routes. Not captains, not Guild men. Someone retired. Someone quiet.”

The cooper didn’t reply immediately. He stood, ran a cloth over his hands, then scratched behind his ear.
“Might know someone - an old friend in Southlane, tends to his bees now, doesn’t talk much ‘cept to them. Might talk to you, though. If I send him word. No harm in me askin’”

Daric raised a small smile. “Send him this bottle of my best wine. And tell him I will trade good vintage for long memory.”

He left the cooper’s shop a moment later, walking slowly, unhurried, as if nothing in the world troubled him. But beneath his calm exterior, his mind was calculating. No names and no direct inquiries - just a seed, planted carefully in Valtura’s soil, left to see who came looking.

 

 

The late sun shimmered on the narrow strip of beach beyond the harbour wall, casting long gold lines across the tide-worn stones. Adria had come there to be alone—her father’s shipyard was nothing but hammering and shouting, and she needed space to think. She carried her boots in one hand, skirts lifted slightly to walk along the lapping waterline, her hair pulled back loosely but already escaping in the sea breeze. She didn’t hear him until he was a few paces away.

“Evening,” Cassar said lightly, his hands behind his back as if he too had just wandered down on a whim. Adria turned, not startled, but cautious. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I swear I’m not following you,” he said, smiling. “Feterino sent me to walk off lunch. Or perhaps he just wanted a nap or the house to himself and his wine collection for a few hours.”

She regarded him for a moment. “I expect he just likes his peace and quiet.”

Cassar glanced out at the waves. “And this is a good place - I never quite saw the charm of Valtura until I came down to the water alone.”

“Most of the charm leaves with the tide,” she said, half joking. “Or when the artists arrive.”

He laughed softly. “Fair comment, I suppose, but I only sketch when it matters now - I’m trying to learn what the painting should try to say.”

There was a pause.

“You really want to paint me?” she asked at last, not coyly, but earnestly. “Not because of my face or my figure, but… me?”

“I haven’t painted anyone in months,” he said. “But I saw you walking by the old wall, head up, like you knew exactly where you were going - that’s the moment I’ve been thinking about since I came to Valtura.”

Adria looked down at her feet, her toes curling into the wet sand.

“And if I say no?”

“Then we can talk once in a while down by the harbour wall, and apart from that I’ll leave you be.”

“And if I say yes?”

“Then I’ll do my best not to disappoint you.”

She looked up at him, studying his face—weathered, clever, touched with lines from laughter and loss alike. 

“Not at the cottage,” she said. “Too close, too quiet.”

“Feterino’s garden,” he offered. “Mid-morning light, with you on one of the benches. We’ll do one first sitting and see how it goes from there.”

She gave a half-smile. “One sitting.”

Cassar inclined his head, as if sealing a contract. “Then one it is.”

They turned together, walking slowly back toward the town as the tide crept in behind them.

 

 

Valris was halfway through a breakfast of smoked fish roe, rye bread and soft-boiled eggs at the Sailing Gull inn when a courier arrived—one of the innkeeper’s boys, barefoot and breathless, bearing a folded letter sealed in wax.

Valris frowned. He hadn’t told anyone outside his most trusted circle that he was in Valtura. Certainly not anyone who would use an ordinary messenger.

The note was unsigned. The script was brisk and unfamiliar -

The Guild grows restless. A hearing has been scheduled in five days’ time to review port license anomalies. The words “Prodlekrebu wine” were overheard in the council’s chamber yesterday, along with your name. Watch your back.

Valris read it twice, then burned it in the little fireplace. He had dressed more carefully than usual that morning. No bold colours. No rings. By mid-morning, he was walking the upper streets of Valtura with one eye on the cheerful visitors, and the other on the dark alleys. 

 

 

In the lanes behind the quay, Daric stood outside the cooper’s workshop, ostensibly discussing a further order of wine barrels. The cooper’s apprentice, a loose-tongued boy named Lemm, took the coins Daric offered and spoke a little too freely.

“…well, everyone knows the shipment’s not really just flour. Not with that much Estasean coin changing hands.” Lemm snorted. “They say Dirik’s men are using the creek mouth near Quarn’s Reach this time. Night barge in two days. Same crew as the Magra job.”

Daric nodded slowly, folding his hands behind his back. “That so? Funny what people say.”

Daric left without another word, passing through the lower town in thoughtful silence. Quarn’s Reach - closer than any major smuggling run had been in years. He would have to tell the Office, and try to learn a little more.

 

 

Tavern Conversation by Cassar Velm

The Whistling Oyster Tavern was half empty at that time of the evening, the low sun filtering through bottle-glass windows, turning the old timbers amber. Valris sat in his usual corner, a heavy glass mug of mellow Prodlekrebu red before him. He swirled it idly but hadn’t drunk. Orren, the freetrader contact, was already half a bottle deep. He leaned across the table, voice low. “That man who asked after the river routes the other day? Came back again.”

Valris raised an eyebrow. “Did he give a name?”

“No, but… he knew too much to be guessing. And he asked after you, in a roundabout way. Said he heard of a Danfelgorian merchant who once hired Captain Drail for a risky passage out of Solbathin.”

Valris’s fingers stilled on the rim of his glass. He remembered that voyage and also remembered how few knew of it.

“Out-of-towner?” he asked quietly.

Orren nodded. “Said he was visiting an old artist friend - Feterino, was it?”

Valris leaned back, the name snapping things into shape like a coin into a beggar’s fist. Feterino… of course. And the Prodlekrebu vineyard. Daric’s vineyard. He glanced down at his untouched wine, smiled lightly and said, “Artists attract the most interesting visitors.”

But inside, he was already reviewing every step of his past few days, every face at every inn, every eye that lingered on him too long. And if Daric was in Valtura to sniff around the Shadow Trade, then it looked like perhaps someone had whispered Valris’s name in the wrong ear. Too soon to act, perhaps, but not too soon to prepare. He finally lifted the glass and drank deeply.

 

 

Adria sat on the low stone wall by the edge of the old harbour, where her father’s shipyard tapered down to the fishermen’s slipways. The late afternoon light lay golden on the water, rippling against the bows of the small boats. She looked round when she heard footsteps on the gravel behind her. Cassar Velm’s voice was soft. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

She looked up, squinting slightly in the sun. “You always say that.”

He smiled. “That’s because I’m hoping you’ll say I’m not.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That sort of thing doesn’t work on me.”

“No,” he said, stepping forward, “I don’t suppose it does”

He sat, not too close, just enough to share the light and the sea breeze. They watched the gulls in silence for a moment. Cassar glanced sideways. “This place… it’s good for the soul, but so not easy for an outsider.”

Adria tilted her head. “Well, you know, that is what you are, I’m afraid”

“I know I’m not a Valturan. I only know this place in sunlight and wine, through Feterino’s laughter and your father’s shipyard. You know it in storms, tide tables and ropes that are stiff with salt.”

Adria looked away, brushing wind-blown hair from her face. “You talk like a painter.”

“I am a painter.”

She hesitated. “Is that why you’re here now? To ask again?”

Cassar shook his head. “No. Not unless you want me to.”

More silence, but easier this time.

“I might,” she said finally. “But not like it’s some kind of transaction.”

He nodded. “Understood.”

Adria leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I’m not afraid of being painted. I just want to be seen properly - to be shown as I really am, not some idealised figure.”

Cassar’s voice was quieter now. “Then I’ll wait until you think I can do that.”

Their eyes met. There was no flirtation in his gaze this time—only curiosity and respect. She nodded once, and that was all. The sun dipped lower behind the rooftops, painting the boats orange and gold.

 

 

Renato Valris sat at a wrought-iron table outside the inn, a half-finished glass of red beside him, and the faint hum of evening cicadas in the lavender hedges beyond. The harbour was quiet now, and a few boats rocked gently in their moorings; their rigging clinking in the breeze. He watched the sky turn from gold to amber, then slowly deepen into violet.

It was hard to believe this was the same world as the alleys around the Cargo Tavern, the whisper-filled council chambers near the Guildhall, or the dank holds of freetrader boats moored by moonlight up river. Here, the air was cool and fresh, and the wine, frankly, was too good for any man to be in a hurry. His fingers tapped lightly on the table, as he was thinking. He always had to be one step ahead, even when no one was chasing him.

He had enough money, he knew that, and the contacts. One last operation and he could retire—it was time, especially if this latest Guild leak proved accurate. The new tariffs would cause chaos and smugglers would be lining up to buy his knowledge - a few decisive shipments, and he could walk away while the others scrambled to adjust. He took another sip of wine and let it linger.

The idea of buying a place here—just outside the village, maybe something with a view of the sea—wasn’t as absurd as it would have sounded even a month ago. A cottage with a study, plenty of bookcases and a decent chair. A good wine cellar. Morning walks to the harbour, evenings with a book and the sound of gulls. He grinned to himself. Was he getting sentimental or just tired?

The smile faded slowly. He thought of the names of people he’d betrayed over the years—some because he had to, others just because it was easier. None of them had come back to haunt him yet but he didn’t believe in luck, he believed in planning. But plans had a way of going wrong. Perhaps it was the wine or perhaps it was the Valturan air, but deep down, he really was looking for a way out. Just one more job, then out for good. He finished the wine and stood slowly, watching the last glimmer of sunlight disappear behind the cliffs. Time to make his next move.

 

 

Daric stood at the edge of the fishing pier, looking like a summer visitor, with a modest satchel hung over his shoulder, and a little wrapped parcel—cheese and smoked fish, bought at the market—rested in the crook of his arm. Below him, the green-grey water slapped gently at the wooden pilings. He wasn’t watching the boats so much as watching who watched them.

A lean fellow with a salt-grey beard and a limp had been posted on the edge of the wharf for two days running, talking to nobody, and a pair of lads ferried crates out to a low-slung sloop that didn’t fly any flag. A woman with dark braids and eyes too alert for a fishwife had taken a curious interest in nothing in particular. Not enough to draw conclusions. But enough to begin to form shapes in his mind.

He turned and wandered back toward the village. Feterino’s house was on the rise to his left and he’d pop in to see him again tomorrow. The painter would graciously accept some of that crisp white he liked and talk idly about light and colour, and Daric would nod along, asking casual questions about other recent visitors. No one suspected a thing, but all the time Daric's mind never stopped moving.

He had no specific orders—Gitcni would never send an agent with his experience written instructions—but he knew what the letter meant. "Cooperation in this matter is not only desirable, but in your interest." It was pure Gitcni - polite phrasing wrapped like lace around a dagger. And of course, there was Liriel - she didn’t know anything yet, and he preferred it that way. She was better off keeping to the vineyard for now. She was experienced in spycraft herself, and would have been very useful, but the fewer people who saw her face, the better.

He took a slow turn past the old customs house—abandoned back when the Guild embargoes had tightened—and caught a glimpse of a familiar figure just turning a corner down by the tavern. It was Valris, so Daric stopped, pretending to adjust the satchel on his shoulder. So the charming rogue had made it down from Danfelgor. Was he just on holiday? Daric wasn’t sure, so for now, he smiled to a passing trader and continued walking. The mask of the affable vineyard gentleman held steady—but behind it, the old agent was quietly mapping connections, names, silences.

 

 

Self Portrait in Feterino's Garden by Cassar Velm

Cassar Velm could not forget the woman he’d seen on his first morning—the shipwright’s daughter, standing beneath the mast-frames with a bolt of sailcloth over one shoulder, her expression daring the wind to challenge her.

Adria had heard who Cassar was, of course. The village buzzed when he arrived—young painters hoped to glimpse him painting, whilst the older folk muttered about scandal and “foreign ways.” Adria had thought him arrogant at first. But then she saw one of his drawings—a charcoal study of an Estasean dancer—and felt the force of his talent.

She thought back to when he had asked to paint her, and how she had initially refused because she didn’t want to be another story in the village taverns. They met again, first by the harbour, then during a gathering at Feterino’s house. Their conversations grew longer - he made her laugh. She mocked his scarf collection - he sketched the curve of her wrist on a napkin. Feterino noticed, and said nothing. Eventually, Cassar proposed something Adria could agree to.

“One sitting in Feterino’s garden - neutral ground. If you don’t like what I do, we’ll burn the canvas and never speak of it again.”

She had narrowed her eyes, then nodded.

“Feterino’s garden. Not your cottage.”

“Feterino’s garden,” he agreed.

They met the next day, mid-morning and the garden was filled with colour—wine-dark roses, lavender, and fig trees bending under their fruit. Adria wore a green dress with no jewellery and the sea breeze fluttered the edges of the fabric like butterfly wings.Cassar painted quickly, intensely, silently. He didn’t speak much or ask her to smile. She looked out to the harbour with a calm composed gaze.

At sunset, he turned the easel toward her. She gasped—not at herself, but at the vision - her hair like dark seaweed, her gaze cutting through both sunlight and shadow. She did not recognise herself, and yet it was her, truer than any mirror.

“You may finish it,” she said quietly. “But only here.”

Over the next week, they met for several more sessions in Feterino’s garden. They spoke little during the sittings, but afterwards, they would walk slowly back through the quiet lanes of Valtura, talking about everything and nothing. The portrait, once completed, which happened months after Cassar had left Valtura, was titled “Adria in the Garden”, and it would hang in a Danfelgorian gallery for decades, and scholars would always say it captured a particular summer light, a particular kind of woman, and a particular artist at the height of his powers and private longing.

 

 

The tavern sat low on the edge of Valtura’s eastern beach, where the fishing boats gave way to salt barges and river-haulers, and where no holidaymakers wandered after sunset. It was called The Narwhal —dim, sour-smelling, and hung with driftwood charms meant to ward off customs men and curses.

Renato Valris slipped in just before dusk, in a coat too plain and shabby for his usual taste - the landlord nodded slightly, signaling that his guest had already arrived. In a back corner, in a booth curtained by a fishing net, sat Helcor Rainn, a wiry man with the weathered face of someone who had seen too many tides. His expression held a dozen meanings, most of them dangerous.

“Didn’t think you’d show,” Helcor said, pushing a bottle and a mug toward him. “Thought the sea air might’ve softened you.”

“It has,” Valris replied, sitting down. “That’s why this will be the last one.”

Helcor chuckled, but it held no warmth.

“You always say that. Then the next job comes along and pays better.”

Valris didn't rise to the bait. He leaned in, eyes sharp now.

“Listen carefully. There’s a lot of changes coming. New tariffs, new inspections, everything tightening up. If the Shadow Trade doesn’t find ways to adapt it’s going to dry up or get burned.”

He laid a parchment on the table - a map of the lower Danfel River routes, with coded marks at key bends, backwaters and inlets. Then another sheet, listing cargo such as rare dyes, Estasean lace, jewels, spices, opium, and fine glasswork - all concealed within the ballast. Items taxed so high under Guild law that even some nobles could struggle to afford them. And as a bonus, sealed packets with Guild stamps faked so precisely that even seasoned port clerks might be fooled, initially at least.

“Three barges. One disguised as a salt haul, two as wine shipments. You get them in place. I’ll handle the permits and distraction upstream.”

Helcor scanned the documents, frowning.

“This is a lot, Valris. Big risk. Big mouths. People notice.”

Valris sipped the strong, dark tavern ale.

“It’s one last job. Then I sell the townhouse in Danfelgor and buy a cottage and some land down here. Plant grapes, maybe.”

“You? Retire?” Helcor scoffed. “You’ll be dead of boredom in a week.”

“Or alive and rich, which is better.”

They exchanged a look of the kind that passed between men who had shared enough risk to understand when it was real. Helcor folded the plans and tucked them into a waterproof packet.

“Alright. But if this goes wrong, you’d better be halfway to the marshlands by dawn.”

“If it goes wrong, I’ll be swimming with the wine barrels.”

He left a heavy coin pouch on the table, enough to oil the palms of river captains and customs inspectors. As Valris stepped out into the wind, he looked back just once—then turned his eyes to the hills above Valtura, toward the vineyards, and the idea that had begun to take root in his mind: a future not built on secrets, but soil and sun.

 

 

Helcor Rainn

 

The days that followed passed in a blur for Renato Valris. Valtura, with its shifting golden light and breezy  air, had settled into him like a slow drug. He took long walks along the harbour wall, sat on sunny café terraces pretending to read Estasean poetry, and visited Feterino once or twice under the pretext of an interest in landscapes. He never mentioned the Shadow Trade, or smuggling, or money.

To the casual observer, he was just another wealthy Danfelgorian enjoying a fashionable coastal retreat. No one noticed the watchfulness in his eye, or how he never walked the same route twice. Then one night—cloudless, and with a moon like a lantern above the water—the contraband passed down the river.

Three barges: one with wine casks from Prodlekrebu, the second with Estasean salt slabs, the third a disassembled sculpture “for a palace commission.” Beneath false bottoms and clever compartments moved a fortune in goods that the Guild would have seized on sight. At every checkpoint, the right seal was presented, and the right amount of coin pressed into the right hand. No alarms, no questions and no sign that Daric, or anyone else, had followed the threads leading to this one last tapestry of deceit.

Two days later, a sealed satchel arrived in Valtura by river courier. Inside was a deed of payment, clean and untraceable. And a single folded note from Helcor:

“Well, we did it. I still think you’ll be back, but in case I’m wrong, don’t plant grapes on the north-facing slopes —frost gets in early.”

Valris smiled faintly at that, and sent word to Danfelgor - within a month, his townhouse had been sold to a rising merchant family, and his possessions were on their way south by barge and cart. He bought a fairly modest stone cottage near the upper edge of Valtura, just beyond the vineyards, not far from Feterino’s villa. It was a place with a view of the sea and a deep cellar ideal for wine. 

When the papers were signed and the keys handed over, Valris sat out on the low terrace as dusk fell. He drank the first bottle from his new cellar — a red from Prodlekrebu, of course — and felt, for the first time in years, that he could breathe without calculating the cost. He didn’t know what Daric had found, or how close danger might have come, and for once, he didn’t want to. The shipment had gone through and the past was behind him.

 

 

The sun had long since begun to sink behind the hills, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. The breeze carried the faint, briny scent of the sea as Valris walked along the beach, barefoot, the cool water splashing against his feet with each step. He was no longer the sharp-eyed merchant dealing in shadowy deals, nor the man with his hand always reaching for the next risk. He was something else now—just a man enjoying his life, one moment at a time.

His steps slowed as he glanced down at the water, letting it lap around his ankles. The surf rolled in rhythm with his thoughts, the sound of it calming, like a secret whispered just for him. His mind drifted back to those last moments with Daric—the tense confrontation that could have undone him. The old game, that one last round - he'd danced circles around Gitcni’s best, slipping away before anyone knew what happened.

He chuckled quietly to himself.

"Gitcni got his best man out of retirement to catch me," Valris muttered to the sea, his voice light but tinged with amusement. "His best man and he failed. I was too quick for him - by the time he'd worked out what was happening, the shipment was already sold in Danfelgor."

A laugh, soft and unhurried, bubbled up from deep in his chest. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder any more or wondering when some disaster would drop. His past was still there, distant, like the echoes of a forgotten storm but it no longer had any power over him.

"Life is very good," he murmured, watching the waves stretch endlessly before him.

Turning away from the water, he started back toward the small town. The tavern awaited, with its warm lights glowing through the windows and the familiar hum of laughter inside. Time for a glass of wine and a moment to savor the simple pleasures. Valris smiled, feeling the weight of the years fall off his shoulders with every step. His life here was just what he had wanted. Quiet. Peaceful. And, most importantly—free.

With that, he turned toward the road, heading for the tavern, the soft sound of the surf fading into the background. The future was his now, and he was content to let it unfold, glass of wine in hand.

 

 

The sea breeze was colder than usual that evening, and Daric had made his way down the familiar road from the vineyards to Valtura. His instincts hadn’t dulled, even after all these years and Valris’s sudden departure from Danfelgor had troubled him. No one just retired from the game, especially not someone like Valris. Daric had been biding his time, watching, waiting for a slip-up, but none came - Valris must have really decided to end the dance.

Daric stood at the door of the stone cottage, a place that spoke of wealth without vulgar display, the kind of place someone who was no longer concerned with impressing anyone might choose. Valris opened the door himself, unbothered by the late hour. A glass of wine in hand, he looked as relaxed as only a man without a care in the world can.

“Good evening, Daric,” he greeted, his tone almost too casual, like they were old friends meeting for a quiet chat. “Come for some good wine?”

Daric stepped into the house, eyes scanning the interior. It was simple, clean and warm with an air of permanence.

“I don’t know how you managed it,” Daric said, his voice low but steady, “but I’m not surprised you had one last shipment up your sleeve.”

Valris chuckled softly and waved him to a chair. “Ah, well. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, can you? I’ll admit, there’s a certain satisfaction in getting one over on the Guild. But this... this was the last one. I’m done.”

Daric raised an eyebrow, considering his next words carefully. “Done? Just like that?” he asked, tapping the side of the glass that Valris had handed him. He wasn’t sure he believed it - Valris had always been slippery, always ready with a plan. Valris nodded, his eyes softening with the weight of what was both an admission and a resignation. 

“I’ve had my run. I’m not a young man anymore, Daric. I’ve sold my townhouse, and I’ve moved here to Valtura. I’m done chasing the shadows.”

He leaned back, exhaling a long breath. “Look, I’m not proud of some of the things I’ve done. I’ve bent rules, I’ve played the game when it suited me, even double-crossed people... but that’s all behind me now. For good.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke and the silence stretched between.

Daric was the first to break it. “And the Shadow Trade? What about that? I know you didn’t just vanish to drink wine and laze by the sea.”

Valris’s smile was almost sheepish, but it was sincere. “I’m not saying I won’t still enjoy the wine, but the game’s over. No more ships slipping through the cracks, no more contraband finding its way up the river. I’m serious.”

He paused, looking directly at Daric. “But you’ve earned something for your trouble. I’ve got information, Daric. And I’m not asking for anything in return except just to be left alone. Just... pass this on to Gitcni, if you will.”

Daric studied Valris, his sharp mind running calculations. It was rare for someone like him to offer up useful intelligence without financial strings attached. Valris leaned forward, his tone dropping to a whisper. “There’s a new shift in trade routes between Estasea and Danfelgor, now that the Guild’s tightening their grip. But there’s a loophole—one that is going to be exploited in the near future. As the Danfel moves and flows and shifts, new backwaters and creeks appear, just as older ones silt up. I had my eye on it, but I’m finished, so the route is wide open for anyone bold enough to move in, and they will. That’s your business now, not mine. Here’s a map, and all the details you’ll need - no names, but you can work them out by yourself from the boats that start using this route.”

Daric nodded, taking in the weight of Valris’s words. The silence returned, but it felt different now—one of understanding, perhaps even agreement.

“Gitcni won’t care how I got this,” Daric said, though his tone had softened. “I’ll take your word for the authenticity of this map and if it proves useful, we’ll let sleeping dogs lie so far as you’re concerned. No one else needs to know the details of how I got the information. But be aware, that there will be consequences if the map proves false.”

Valris gave him a knowing smile. “Good man. I’m serious, Daric - the past is the past. No more shadows for me - the map is good - you'll catch a lot of contraband with that. Promise.”

Daric turned to leave, pausing just before he reached the door. He glanced back at Valris, who had already poured himself another glass of wine, his eyes far away.

“Enjoy retirement, Valris. I really hope I don’t have to come back here. Ever.” Daric said, before stepping out into the cool night air.

The door closed behind him with a soft click, leaving Valris alone with the quiet of his new life, and perhaps, for the first time in years, a feeling of relief. Next morning, and every morning after that, he walked along the beach first thing. And never once looked over his shoulder.

Which was well and good, until one morning it wasn’t and they found his body at the water’s edge with the surf washing over him. Washing away the blood.