Read Online The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold by Peter V. Brett - Free Book Online

or dusk to a Messenger’s career, or crush the fortune of a great house. The guildmaster was at his desk, signing what seemed an endless stack of forms.
    “You’ll have to excuse me if I keep signing while we talk,” Malcum said. “If I stop even for an instant, the pile doubles in size. Have a seat. Drink?” he gestured to a crystal decanter on the edge of his desk. It was filled with an amber liquid, and there were glasses besides.
    Curk’s eyes lit up. “Don’t mind if I do.” He poured a glass and threw it back, grimacing as he filled another near to the rim before taking his seat.
    “Your trip to Duke’s Coal is postponed,” Malcum said. “I have a more pressing assignment for you.”
    Curk looked down at the crystal glass in his hand, and his eyes narrowed. “Where to?”
    “Count Brayan’s Gold,” Malcum said, his eyes still on the papers. Arlen’s heart leapt. Brayan’s Gold was the most remote mining town in the duchy. Ten nights’ travel from the city proper, it was the sole mine on the third mountain to the west, and higher up than any other.
    “That’s Sandar’s run,” Curk protested.
    Malcum blotted the ink on a form, turning it over onto a growing stack. His pen darted to dip in the inkwell. “It was, but Sandar fell off his ripping horse yesterday. Leg’s broke.”
    “Corespawn it,” Curk muttered. He drank half his glass in one gulp and shook his head. “Send someone else. I’m too old to spend weeks on end freezing my arse off and gasping for breath in the thin air.”
    “No one else is available on short notice,” Malcum said, continuing to sign and blot.
    Curk shrugged. “Then Count Brayan will have to wait.”
    “The count is offering one thousand gold suns for the job,” Malcum said.
    Both Curk and Arlen gaped. A thousand suns was a fortune for any Message run.
    “What’s the claw?” Curk asked suspiciously. “What do they need so badly it can’t wait?”
    Malcum’s hands finally stopped moving, and he looked up. “Thundersticks. A cartload.”
    Curk shook his head. “Ohhh, no!” He downed the rest of his glass and thumped it on the guildmaster’s desk.
    Thundersticks , Arlen thought, digesting the word. He had read of them in the Duke’s Library, though the books containing their exact composition had been forbidden. Unlike most other flamework, thundersticks could be set off by impact as well as spark, and in the mountains, an accidental blast could cause an avalanche even if the explosion itself didn’t kill.
    “You want a rush job, carrying thundersticks?” Curk asked incredulously. “What’s the corespawned hurry?”
    “Spring caravan came back with a message from Baron Talor reporting a new vein; one they need to blast into,” Malcum said. “Brayan’s had his Herb Gatherers working day and night making thundersticks ever since. Every day that vein goes uncracked, Brayan’s clerks tally up the gold he’s losing, and he gets the shakes.”
    “So he sends a lone man up trails full of bandits who will do most anything to get their hands on a cartload of thundersticks.” Curk shook his head. “Blown to bits or robbed and left for the corelings. Hardly know which is worse.”
    “Nonsense,” Malcum said. “Sandar made thunderstick runs all the time. No one will know what you’re carrying save us three and Brayan himself. Without guards, no one seeing you pass will think you’re carrying anything worth stealing.”
    Curk’s grimace did not lessen. “Twelve hundred suns,” Malcum said. “You ever seen that much gold in one place, Curk? I’m tempted to squeeze into my old armor and do it myself.”
    “I’ll be happy to sit at your desk and sign papers, you want one last run,” Curk said.
    Malcum smiled, but it was the look of a man losing patience. “Fifteen, and not a copper light more. I know you need the money, Curk. Half the taverns in the city won’t serve you unless you’ve got coin in hand, and the other half will take your