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‘No better nor worse than any other Trader’s these days, I am sure.

’ She evaded his prying. ‘War, blight and pirates trouble all of us. All we can do is to persevere and wait for better days. And how are you today, Davad?’ She tried to recall him to his manners.

He put a splay-fingered hand on his belly meaningfully.

‘I have been better. I have just come from Fullerjon’s table; his cook has an abominable hand with the spices, and Fullerjon has not the tongue to tell it.

’ He leaned back in his chair and heaved a martyred sigh.

‘But one must be polite, and eat what is offered, I suppose.’

Ronica stifled her irritation. She gestured toward the door. ‘We could take our conversation to the terrace. A glass of buttermilk might help to settle your indigestion as well.’ She made as if to rise, but Davad did not budge.

‘No, no, thank you all the same. I’ve but come on a brief errand. A glass of wine would be welcome, however. You and Ephron always did keep the best cellars in town.’

‘I do not wish Ephron disturbed,’ she said bluntly.

‘Oh, I’ll take care to speak softly. Though, to be frank, I would rather bring this offer to him than to his wife. Do you expect him to wake soon?’

‘No.’ Ronica heard the edge in her voice, and coughed slightly, as if it had been the result of a dry throat.

‘But if you wish to tell me the terms of whatever offer you bring, I shall present it to Ephron as soon as he awakens.’ She pretended to have forgotten his request for wine.

It was petty, but she had learned to take her small satisfactions where she could.

‘Certainly, certainly. All Bingtown knows you hold his purse-strings. And his trust, I might add, of course.’ He nodded jovially at her as if this were a high compliment.

‘The offer?’ Ronica pushed.

‘From Fullerjon, of course. I believe it was his sole purpose in inviting me to share his table this noon, if you can credit that. The little upstart seems to think I have nothing better to do than act as his go-between with the better families in town. Did I not think that you and Ephron could benefit from his offer just now, I’d have told him as much.

As things stand, I did not want to alienate him, you understand.

He’s no more than a greedy little merchant, but…

’ He shrugged his shoulders eloquently. ‘One can scarce do business in Bingtown these days without them.’

‘And his offer was?’ Ronica prompted.

‘Ah yes. Your bottom lands. He wishes to buy them.’ He espied the platter of small biscuits and fruits that she kept at Ephron’s bedside and helped himself to a biscuit.

Ronica was shocked. ‘Those are part of the original grant lands of the Vestrit family. Satrap Esclepius himself granted those lands.’

‘Ah, well, you and I know the significance of such things, but newcomers such as Fullerjon…’ Davad began placatingly.

‘The granting of those lands was what made the Vestrit family a Trader family. They were part of the Satrap’s agreement with the Traders.

Two hundred leffers of good land, to any family willing to go north and settle on the Cursed Shores, to brave the dangers of life near Rain River.

There were few enough willing to in those days.

All know that strangeness flows down the Rain River as swiftly as the waters.

Those bottom lands, and a share in the monopoly on the trade goods of the Rain River are what make the Vestrits a Trader family.

Can you seriously think any Trader family would sell off their grant lands? ’ She was angry now.

‘You needn’t give me a history lesson, Ronica Vestrit.’ Davad rebuked her mildly. He helped himself to another biscuit. ‘Need I remind you that my family came here in the same expedition? The Restarts are as much Traders as the Vestrits. I know what those lands mean.’

‘Then how can you even bring such an offer here?’ she demanded hotly.

‘Because half of Bingtown knows how desperate things have become for you. Look here, woman. You haven’t the capital to hire the workers to farm those lands properly.

Fullerjon does. And buying them would increase his land ownership to the point where he’d be qualified to petition for a seat on the Bingtown Council.

Between the two of us, I think that’s all he’s really after anyway.

It needn’t be your bottom lands, though that is what he’d like.

Offer him something else; he’ll probably buy it from you.

’ Davad leaned back with a dissatisfied look on his face.

‘Sell him the wheat fields. You can’t work them properly anyway. ’

‘And he can gain a seat on the Bingtown Council. So he can vote to bring slaves to Bingtown. And work the lands I’ve sold him with slaves and sell the grain he grows cheaper than I can compete with.

Or you, for that matter, or any other honest Trader.

Davad Restart, use your mind. This offer not only asks me to betray the Vestrit family, but all of us.

We’ve enough greedy little merchants on the Bingtown Council already.

The Old Traders’ Council is barely able to keep them in check.

I shan’t be the one to sell land and a council seat to another latecomer upstart. ’

Davad started to speak, then visibly controlled himself.

He folded his small hands on his lap. ‘It’s going to happen, Ronica.

’ She heard true regret in his voice. ‘The day of the Old Traders is fading. The wars and the pirates bit into us too deeply. And now that the wars are mostly over, these merchants have come, swarming over us like fleas on a dying rabbit. They’ll suck us dry.

We need their money in order to recover, so they force us to sell cheap what cost us so dear in blood and children.

’ For a moment his voice faltered. Ronica suddenly recalled that the year of the Blood Plague had carried off all his children as well as left him a widower. He had never remarried.

‘It’s going to happen, Ronica,’ he repeated.

‘And those of us who survive will be the ones who have learned to adapt. When our families first settled Bingtown, they were poor and hungry and oh so adaptable. We’ve lost that.

We’ve become what we fled. Fat and traditionalist and desperate to hang on to our monopolies.

The only reason we despise the new merchants who have started moving in is that they remind us so much of ourselves.

Or rather of our great-great-grandparents, and the tales we’ve heard of them. ’

For a moment, Ronica almost felt inclined to agree with him.

Then she felt a rush of anger. ‘They are nothing like the original Traders! They were wolves, these are eye-picking carrion birds! When the first Carrock set foot on this shore, he risked everything. He sold all he had for his ship-share, and mortgaged half of whatever he might gain for the next twenty years to the Satrap. And for what? For a grant of land and a guarantee of a share in the monopoly. What land? Why, whatever acreage he could claim. What monopoly? Why, on whatever goods he might discover that would be worth trading in. And where was this wonderful bargain granted to him? On a stretch of coast that for hundreds of years had been known as the Cursed Shores, a place where even the gods themselves did not claim dominion. And what did they find here? Diseases unknown before, strangeness that drove men mad overnight, and the doom that half our children are born not quite human.’

Davad suddenly went pale and made shushing motions with his hands. But Ronica was relentless.

‘Do you know what it does to a woman, Davad, to carry something inside her for nine months, not knowing if it’s the child and heir they’ve been praying for, or if it’s a malformed monster that her husband must strangle with his own hands?

Or something in between? You must know what it does to a man.

As I recall, your Dorill was pregnant three times yet you only had two children. ’

‘And the Blood Plague carried them all off,’ Davad admitted brokenly.

He suddenly lowered his face into his hands and Ronica was sorry, sorry for all she had said, and sorry for this pathetic shell of a man who had no wife to tell him to relace his tunic and scold the tailor for badly-fitting trousers.

She was sorry for all of them, born in Bingtown to die in Bingtown, and in between to carry on the curse-plagued bargain their forebears had struck.

Perhaps the worst part of that bargain was that one and all, they had come to love Bingtown and the surrounding green hills and valleys.

Verdant as a jungle, soil black and rich in the hand, crystal water in the streams, and abundant game in the forests, it offered them wealth beyond the dreams of the sea-weary and draggled immigrants who had first been brave enough to anchor in the Bingtown harbour.

In the end, the real contract had been made, not with the Satrap who nominally claimed these shores, but with the land itself.

Beauty and fertility balanced with disease and death.