Sly

Chapter Thirty Five

"Grain?" Jexa grunted while lifting a large box. We had all gathered in his little apartment to divide out food bundles from what they got in the forest. The crate in Jexa's hands was going to a family of nine.

"Yes, and likely quite a bit of it," I said.

"How do you know about it?" Dirk asked, his eyes settling on me sharply. He was salting the last of the meat they had caught. Apparently, they had found quite a few rabbits.

I froze, suddenly the excuse of hearing it at the market that I'd planned on using seemed weak in the face of an old rogue like Dirk.

"We heard some of that at the Gilded Swan, right Sly?" Bricker asked.

"Yes." I latched on to Bricker's words quickly. "And I've heard more since then. I want to find some of the grain and get it back into the hands of the people who need it. This morning I saw someone with bags of flour selling it for five times what it normally would go for."

Truth enough, at least about the price of flour. Dirk kept eye contact for another heartbeat, then let it go.

"Alright. Where do you want to start?" Jexa asked.

"Can we check the holdings of a couple families to start with? I have a few names I know have bought a huge excess of flour. I was hoping to . . . relieve them of some." I grinned.

"I like the way you think." Dirk winked. "They were probably going to sell it back at a higher price anyway come midwinter."

"Dirk! That's perfect. We should sell it at the market for what it should be going for. Or less actually, seeing how things are going right now. If anyone else wants to sell flour they'll have to match our prices or get no business." I made a mental note to tell Rorik, maybe he could plant a few more of these grain sellers around Unays.

"Woah now, slow down girl. We can't keep that up for long before we have a bought knife at our throats. Steal from nobles and sell it in an open market?" Jexa shook his head. "That's advertisin' ourselves."

"Davery'd have our skins if he knew we let you do something like this as soon as we lost him," Dirk added.

"We could give a portion of it to the army, have you heard Prince Mason set up a free camp for his soldiers with nowhere to go?" Grahm added. "He's a good one in my eyes."

"As good as a royal can get at least," Jexa scoffed.

I held my tongue.

"The crown should be feeding their own, and from their own coffers," Dirk added.

"The coffers low from war protecting this half of the continent?" Grahm snapped back.

"The coffers we fill with our last copper bits every season," Dirk was starting to raise his voice. "They say war's expensive, you'd think they'd find the budget to feed their own soldiers."

"Shut it," Jexa barked. "Are you really going to start blaming the king right now? The king and not the crack noggins he left us with?" Dirk backed down, but now without a frown, and Grahm just looked away for having argued at all. It was out of character for him. 

Bricker let out a long, loud sigh, drawing our attention.

"Sly, we'll deal with your idea tomorrow. I want to help, I do. I think it would be brilliant to skim the top off a few storehouses. But we have meat, nuts, fruits, whatever we could get our hands on gathered here. Trust me, I'm the one who had to haul our full sacks back each night and not get shanked for the pleasure. We need to deal with all this today." Bricker surprised the room with a moment of seriousness and logic, but it spurred them into action.