Chapter 437: Follow The Coin

By the end of the week, the inspections had become almost routine. Guild workers no longer stopped what they were doing whenever another group of officials entered the Grand Complex, and Sage had given standing orders that every lawful inspection was to be accommodated without unnecessary argument.

Irene kept copies of every notice, every correction and every request for records, while the various Guild facilities maintained their own accounts of what inspectors examined.

The pressure hadn’t disappeared, but whoever had expected the constant visits to throw the Headquarters into disorder had underestimated how quickly an organization built around hundreds of thousands of members could learn to deal with paperwork.

Sage’s attention had already moved elsewhere. He was sitting in his office that evening when Pax arrived carrying a leather satchel swollen with papers.

Pax began to explain that his people had identified several officials connected to the recent complaints, but Sage raised a hand before he could continue and asked only one question. "Who benefits?"

Pax went quiet. Sage leaned back in his chair and explained what he meant. He didn’t care which clerk carried which complaint or which inspector had been ordered to visit which building.

Those people were pieces in a much larger game, and chasing each one individually would waste time. Someone wanted the Guild inspected repeatedly. Someone wanted merchants questioning the Exchange.

Someone wanted officials wondering whether the Mana Tower was safe.

"So forget who delivered the complaints for a moment," Sage told him. "If the Guild slows down, who benefits?"

Pax stared at him for several seconds before a slow smile appeared on his face. He gathered the papers he had prepared, pushed them back into the satchel and said that Sage had just ruined two days of work. Sage told him to consider it an opportunity to do better work.

Three nights later, Pax returned after midnight.

This time he didn’t come alone. Two young men Sage recognized as runners from his intelligence network carried rolled sheets of parchment behind him, while another brought a wooden case filled with smaller notes.

Pax ordered the large meeting table cleared and began covering it with information. He placed a rough map of the Royal Capital at the center, but instead of roads and districts being its main feature, dozens of names had been written around it.

Some belonged to merchants, others to officials, mercenary captains, noble households, lenders and warehouse owners. Thin pieces of dyed string connected several names together.

Sage stood over the table for a long moment before asking Pax what exactly he was looking at.

"The answer to your question," Pax replied as he moved a candle closer. "Or the beginning of it."

He started with the inspections. The second warehouse inspection had been triggered by a complaint submitted through a merchant named Toben Rusk, who owned two storage yards near the western commercial quarter.

Nothing remarkable there, except Rusk owed a substantial amount of coin to a lending house that had financed his expansion three years earlier. Pax traced the lender across the table with one finger.

That lending house, in turn, received much of its capital from several wealthy investors, one of whom was Edmund Krail. Sage asked whether that meant Krail had ordered Rusk to file the complaint, but Pax shook his head. "No. It means there is a road between them. A road isn’t proof someone traveled it."

The Mana Tower inspection followed a different road. The concern had passed through the office of Councillor Bertram Sohl, whose clerk had forwarded several petitions regarding dangerous mana facilities.

Bertram had no known connection to Krail, Iron Fang or Black Banner. Pax’s people had nearly abandoned that trail until one of the beggars who regularly watched a gambling house recognized the councillor’s eldest son.

The young man owed enough coin to embarrass his family, and the person quietly purchasing portions of that debt was a moneylender whose guards occasionally worked alongside Black Banner Mercenaries.

Again, Pax stressed that the connection proved nothing by itself. It did, however, give someone a possible means of persuading a councillor’s household to become unusually interested in certain complaints.

Sage moved around the table as Pax continued. Another official had a sister married to a merchant who supplied Iron Fang with preserved food.

A clerk involved in forwarding questions about the Exchange had received a payment from a merchant house two months earlier, although the payment could have been legitimate because his family had sold property to that house.

One inspector had no suspicious connections whatsoever and appeared to have simply been doing his duty. Another had inspected three competing inns during the same week he visited the Guild hotel, making his presence almost certainly routine.

Pax hadn’t simply gathered every name and declared them enemies. He had separated coincidence, ordinary business and relationships worth investigating.

That impressed Sage more than a list of supposed conspirators would have.

"How did you get all this?" Sage asked.

Pax rested both hands against the table and explained that the Capital talked constantly if one knew where to listen. Servants knew which houses received visitors after dark. Stable boys knew whose horses waited outside gambling houses.

Tavern keepers heard mercenaries complain about employers. Porters knew which merchant warehouses suddenly received unusual deliveries.

Beggars were ignored beside carriage stops where wealthy men spoke freely because nobody considered the person sitting against the wall important.

Scribes knew which documents crossed their desks, while lenders employed clerks who drank, gambled and occasionally boasted. Pax didn’t need one spy inside every powerful household.

He needed dozens of small pieces from people everyone else overlooked.

His network had grown to twenty-seven trusted beggars who regularly provided information, nearly fifty occasional sources, several street children and young laborers who carried messages, and the handlers who organized what reached Pax.

Most knew only the person directly above them. Sage had expected Pax’s network to become useful eventually, but seeing its reach displayed across the table was different. The man hadn’t built an army of spies. He had built ears.

Pax then shifted to the mercenary companies. Gideon Marholt of Iron Fang and Roderick Halbrecht of Black Banner had met privately after the Guild’s registration numbers began climbing.

Pax didn’t know what was said during that meeting, but both companies subsequently increased contact with merchants whose businesses depended heavily on mercenary work.

Black Banner had longstanding arrangements with three equipment suppliers and two caravan houses. Iron Fang was connected to several monster-material buyers and maintained close relations with merchants who regularly brought large contracts to the company.

Then the strings began converging.

Edmund Krail purchased monster materials from both companies.

His trading house financed expeditions undertaken by Black Banner.

One of his warehouses supplied equipment to Iron Fang at favorable prices.

A merchant representative connected to Krail had submitted concerns about the Guild Exchange.

A lender partly financed by Krail held Toben Rusk’s debt.

And three days earlier, a senior clerk from Krail Trading House had met privately with a Black Banner representative at a wine house in the eastern commercial quarter.

Sage stared at Edmund’s name near the center of several strings. "That’s starting to look less accidental."

Pax agreed, but he still refused to call it proof. Krail was a major merchant. Major merchants naturally had many connections. If they treated every relationship as evidence, they could convince themselves that almost anyone in the Capital controlled everything.

The important part wasn’t simply that Krail knew these people. It was that several connections had become active shortly before pressure against the Guild increased.

Sage nodded slowly. That distinction mattered.

Pax wasn’t finished.

He placed another sheet over the Capital map showing major merchant interests. Some names were marked beside the Guild rather than against it.

Garen Holtweiss had already begun negotiations to supply the Headquarters, while several smaller merchants had seen increased sales since Adventurers started flooding the western districts.

Smiths wanted more Warriors. Food merchants wanted more restaurants. Innkeepers near Guild roads were receiving travelers who couldn’t find rooms inside the Grand Adventurer Hotel.

Caravan masters had begun asking whether Guild missions could be posted against bandit groups troubling their routes. Even among monster-material traders, some disliked Krail’s old agreements enough to welcome the Exchange.

"The Capital isn’t dividing into Guild and everyone else," Pax explained. "It’s dividing according to who gains and who loses."

That was when Sage finally understood what Pax had built on the table.

Until now, the Royal Capital had existed in his mind as districts, walls, streets and important buildings.

The royal grounds stood in one direction, the merchant quarters in another, poorer neighborhoods farther south, and the Guild occupied the old western garrison. It had been geography.

The map before him wasn’t geography.

It was influence.

A merchant could reach an official without ever entering his office because he held his brother’s debt. A mercenary company could influence a trader because it protected his caravans. A noble household could affect a warehouse owner through land rights.

Marriage connected families that publicly competed. Old friendships crossed organizations that appeared hostile. Coin moved through all of them, but so did favors, grudges, obligations and fear.

Sage traced one string with his finger before looking at Pax. "Can you keep expanding this?"

Pax smiled. "I’ve already run out of string twice."

Sage laughed, then told him to continue without confronting anyone. No threats, no exposing debts, no warning Krail that they were watching. He wanted to know where every important connection led before their opponents realized the Guild had begun looking back.

Pax gathered the loose reports but left the great map spread across the table.

For the first time since entering the Royal Capital, Sage no longer saw a city.

He saw a web.