"Cork?"
"It muffles all sounds."
"Didn't that cost a great deal?"
Silk nodded. "But we made it all back during the first week we were here by managing to keep certain negotiations secret." He reached into an inside pocket and took out a large brass key. "Let's see if I can catch Dolmar with his hands in the cash box," he half whispered.
"Why? You already know that he's stealing from you."
"Certainly I do, but if I can catch him, I can reduce his year-end bonus."
"Why not just pick his pocket?"
Silk tapped the brass key against his cheek as he thought about it. "No," he decided finally. "That's not really good business. A relationship like this is founded on trust-"
Garion began to laugh.
"You have to draw the line somewhere, Garion." Silk quietly slipped his brass key into the lock and slowly turned it. Then he abruptly shoved the door open and jumped into the room.
"Good morning, Prince Kheldar," the man seated behind a plain table said quite calmly. "I've been expecting you."
Silk looked a bit crestfallen.
The man sitting at the table was a thin Melcene with crafty, close-set eyes, thin lips, and scraggly, mud-brown hair. He had the kind of face that one instantly distrusts. Silk straightened. "Good morning, Dolmar," he said. "This is Belgarion of Riva."
"Your Majesty." Dolmar rose and bowed.
"Dolmar."
Silk closed the door and pulled a pair of chairs out from the brown, cork-sheathed wall. Although the floor was of ordinary boards, the way that all sounds of walking or moving pieces of furniture were muted testified to the thickness of the cork lying beneath.
"How's business?" Silk asked, seating himself and pushing the other chair to Garion with his foot.
"We're paying the rent," Dolmar replied cautiously.
"I'm sure that the baker downstairs is overjoyed. Specifics, Dolmar. I've been away from Mal Zeth for quite a while. Stun me with how well my investments here are doing."
"We're up fifteen percent from last year."
"That's all?" Silk sounded disappointed.
"We've just made quite a large investment in inventory. If you take the current value of that into account, the number would be much closer to forty percent."
"That's more like it. Why are we accumulating inventory?"
"Yarblek's instructions. He's at Mal Camat right now arranging for ships to take the goods to the west. I expect that he'll be here in a week or so -he and that foul-mouthed wench of his." Dolmar stood up, carefully gathered the documents from the table, and crossed to an iron stove sitting in the corner. He bent, opened the stove door, and calmly laid the parchment sheets on the small fire inside.
To Garion's amazement, Silk made no objection to his factor's blatant incendiarism. "We've been looking into the wool market," the Melcene reported as he returned to his now-empty table. "With the growing mobilization, the Bureau of Military Procurement is certain to need wool for uniforms, cloaks, and blankets. If we can buy up options from all the major sheep producers, we'll control the market and perhaps break the stranglehold that the Melcene consortium has on military purchases. If we can just get our foot in the door of the Bureau, I'm sure that we can get a chance to bid on all sorts of contracts."
Silk was pulling at his long, pointed nose, his eyes narrowed in thought. "Beans," he said shortly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Look into the possibility of tying up this year's bean crop. A soldier can live in a worn-out uniform, but he has to eat. If we control the bean crop -and maybe coarse flour as well- the Bureau of Military Procurement won't have any choice. They'll have to come to us."
"Very shrewd, Prince Kheldar."
"I've been around for a while," Silk replied.
"The consortium is meeting this week in Melcene," the factor reported. "They'll be setting the prices of common items. We really want to get our hands on that price list if we can."
"I'm in the palace," Silk said. "Maybe I can pry it out of somebody."
"There's something else you should know, Prince Kheldar. Word has leaked out that the consortium is also going to propose certain regulations to Baron Vasca of the Bureau of Commerce. They'll present them under the guise of protecting the economy, but the fact of the matter is that they're aimed at you and Yarblek. They want to restrict western merchants who gross more than ten million a year to two or three enclaves on the west-coast. That wouldn't inconvenience smaller merchants, but it would probably put us out of business."
"Can we bribe someone to put a stop to it?"
"We're already paying Vasca a fortune to leave us alone, but the consortium is throwing money around like water. It's possible that the baron won't stay bribed."
"Let me nose around inside the palace a bit," Silk said, "before you double Vasca's bribe or anything."
"Bribery's the standard procedure, Prince Kheldar."
"I know, but sometimes blackmail works even better." Silk looked over at Garion, then back at his factor. "What do you know about what's happening in Karanda?" he asked.
"Enough to know that it's disastrous for business. All sorts of perfectly respectable and otherwise sensible merchants are closing up their shops and flocking off to Calida to enlist in Mengha's army. Then they march around in circles singing 'Death to the Angaraks' while they wave rusty swords in the air."
"Any chance of selling them weapons?" Silk asked quickly.
"Probably not. There's not enough real money in northern Karanda make it worthwhile to try to deal with them, and the political unrest has closed down all the mines. The market in gem stones has just about dried up."
Silk nodded glumly. "What's really going on up there, Dolmar?" he asked. "The reports Brador passed on to us were sort of sketchy."
"Mengha arrived at the gates of Calida with demons." The factor shrugged. "The Karands went into hysterics and then fell down in the throes of religious ecstasy."
"Brador told us about certain atrocities," Garion said.
"I expect that the reports he received were a trifle exaggerated, your Majesty," Dolmar replied. "Even the most well trained observer is likely to multiply mutilated corpses lying in the streets by ten. In point of fact, the vast majority of the casualties were either Melcene or Angarak. Mengha's demons rather scrupulously avoided killing Karands -except by accident. The same has held true in every city that he's taken so far." He scratched at his head, his close-set eyes narrowing. "It's really very shrewd, you know. The Karands see Mengha as a liberator and his demons as an invincible spearhead of their army. I can't swear to his real motives, but those barbarians up there believe that he's a savior come to sweep Karanda clean of Angaraks and the Melcene bureaucracy. Give him another six months or so, and he'll accomplish what no one has ever been able to do before."