Chapter 88: The Shifting Ledger
The bidding for the northern iron dagger exploded into a frenzy. Ethandidn't turn back to watch. He adjusted his heavy Medjay linen head-wrap, stepped past the guards at the metalwork vaults, and began climbing the wide stone stairs leading out of the underground tunnels. The suffocating smell of burnt olive oil and wet wool faded slightly. It was replaced by the fresh, cool air of the main trading hall above.
As his boots cleared the top step, the grand hall of the Royal Karum opened up before him.
The space was a chaotic, shouting sea of people buying and selling. Ethan halted near a massive stone pillar, his eyes tracking a sudden rush of motion rippling across the crowd. Dozens of independent scouts and guild agents were throwing themselves toward the main plaster bulletin walls running up to the ceiling rafters.
The columns of fresh black ink were updating live. The prices were going wild.
The description of The Bronze Footstool of Zaphon body shield had only been on the boards for twenty minutes, but the global tin shortage had turned the listing into an absolute panic. A massive, solid bronze shield was a legendary item in the current stage of the game. Two scouts from the Merlion guild—recognisable by the blue emblems stitched into their tunics—were furiously reporting back to their guild offices.
The minimum bid had opened at a steep forty silver shekels. It lasted barely thirty seconds.
A wealthy buyer operating out of the distant Egypt branch in Memphis had flashed an aggressive leap straight to forty-eight shekels. Before the Megiddo scribes could even smooth the clay tablets, a rival guild from the northern ports of Tyre countered, pushing the price to fifty-three silver shekels. The numbers were climbing in jagged, uneven jumps as the big guilds launched a bidding war to lock down the shield before the twelve-hour clock could run down.
Ethan let out a slow, controlled breath beneath his linen wrap. Let them bleed each other dry, he thought, a cold satisfaction tightening his chest. The wealthy players were throwing a massive fortune at his anonymous listing, but he couldn't afford to sit around and watch the bars fill up. Every minute he spent staring at the boards would be time wasted.
He stepped out of the Karum doors. He crossed the threshold into the lower, unpaved back streets of the outer city. He still held a massive, heavy sack of raw material that needed to be sold: six hundred and forty high-purity bronze armor scales packed tightly into the bottom of his rawhide pack.
He didn't make the amateur mistake of listing them at the official auction desks. Scribes audited every single entry. If a massive, continuous volume of un-stamped armor plates repeatedly hit the official books from a hidden seller, the guild would put two and two together and figure out there's a dungeon where bronze scales could be farmed.
Ethan made his way into the deep, dark, soot-caked back alleys of the blacksmith corners, splitting his heavy cargo across three separate, completely disconnected local foundries.
These weren't high-end weapon-smiths working for a king; they were old, independent Canaanite furnace-masters whose fires were dying because they couldn't afford the sky-high cost of copper imports. To them, a private bag of two hundred bronze scales wasn't a military mystery—it was a lifesaver that allowed them to forge tools and keep their shops open for another month.
The old smiths verified the weight of the metal on the stone, reached beneath their forge bellows, and pulled out raw hacksilber—broken bits of old silver rings, shaved wires, and uncoined silver chunks. They dumped the silver fragments onto small bronze balances, matching the physical weight of his metal sheets until the scales sat perfectly level.
Ethan swept the final leather pouch of hacksilber straight into his belt wraps, stepping back out into the crowded, smoky alleyway.
He adjusted his Medjay linen wrap. He didn't plan on sitting idly around the high-traffic market concourse for the next twelve hours while the auction clock ran down. Instead, he forced his boots into a slow, methodical pace, drifting deeper into the secondary districts of the vast stone citadel. Moving through the packed crowds of local garrison soldiers, foreign grain merchants, and traveling caravan drivers, he began to quietly map the city's layouts and gather local intelligence. He needed to understand the true scale of the crisis grip on the city, cataloging gate guard rotations, listening to the murmurs of the supply lines, and tracking how the major guilds were moving their assets through the streets before he made his next move.