The northern iron merchants were, to put it mildly, robbing the fortress blind.
I sat at the massive, dark oak desk in the Warlord's solar, staring at a stack of incredibly disorganized parchment ledgers. Quartermaster Koji stood at attention on the other side of the desk, his scarred face looking genuinely stressed as he watched me drag a finger down the column of ink.
"Quartermaster," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "Why are we paying a forty percent premium for coastal salt when we control the only iron trade route that the coastal merchants need to supply their shipyards?"
Koji swallowed hard. The seasoned warrior, who had regularly faced down corrupted beasts and capital assassins without blinking, looked terrified of my index finger.
