Inside Rainwood, the red marks on FireStorm's wheels acquired an audience at every corner. Soldiers did not seize a barrel; they watched anyone who appeared interested in one. The market town remained noisy until the Ashenblade wagons approached. Shopkeepers stepped back into doorways. A smith stopped hammering, recognized the marks, and resumed with unnecessary force. Stable hands looked toward Gareth's men before offering water. Morton rode beside the first carriage with the accounts beneath his cloak. "They let us enter so every buyer can be seen."
"Then we make being seen less lonely."
Arlan stopped outside the Drunken Stag, the largest tavern on the market street. Its painted sign showed a stag above a drinking cup. Hammond, the scar-faced owner, met him at the door before Wayne could unload anything. "My lord, I cannot buy from you. Gareth will close this place."
"I have not asked you to buy." Arlan placed three silver stags in Hammond's palm. "Room, tables, ordinary ale for the guards, and the right to show lawful goods."
Hammond looked across the street. Two Caron officers stood beneath an awning with a clerk and a fresh page. The tavern keeper closed his fist around the silver. "Showing may prove expensive."
"That is why I paid before entering."
Wayne carried one barrel of Red Sun Flame inside. Two guards followed with a crate of ribbed glass bottles and the sealed control sample from the same batch. Morton placed the ledger beside them rather than setting out cups immediately. The taproom quieted.
A mercenary captain with a scar through one eyebrow came first, though he stopped short of the table. "Is that the drink that blinded men?"
"It is the drink someone copied badly enough to make the accusation useful," Arlan said.
Morton held up a genuine bottle. Eight shallow ribs circled the base, the wax bore the same number as the barrel, and a strip of linen remained trapped beneath the seal. He opened the ledger to the matching line: rye, date, workers, receiving vessel, carrier, and retained sample.
The counterfeit jug from Gareth's visit had been painted with a sun, sealed in pine pitch, and filled with cloudy spirit cut by oil, herbs, and water. Hammond held the ribbed bottle toward a lamp. No sediment moved through the clear liquid.
"A mark can be copied," the mercenary said.
"Then inspect more than one mark," Morton replied. "Break the wax, compare the number, hold it to light, and smell it before you pay."
The captain considered the instructions, then nodded toward the barrel. Morton drew a measure from the sealed tap and poured the same amount from the retained bottle. The color and smell matched. Only after the comparison did the man drink. The spirit struck hard enough to make him lower the cup and breathe through his nose. Laughter rose from the nearest table. He ignored it, took a smaller second taste, and set one silver stag beside the ledger.
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"Ten bottles, with those seals."
That purchase mattered more than a roomful of praise. The Caron clerk across the street wrote the captain's name. He saw it happen and did not retrieve his coin.
A caravan guard approached next. He asked whether sealed bottles would survive a sea journey and whether FireStorm replaced a vessel whose wax arrived broken. A tavern keeper wanted a lower price by the dozen. Another man asked which batch had been accused and whether any buyer had become sick from numbered stock.
Morton answered what the ledger supported and refused what it did not. No illness had been tied to an intact FireStorm seal. Broken seals ended FireStorm's responsibility unless the damage occurred under a carrier named in the account. Large orders received lower transport cost, not a different quality of drink. The questions shifted from fear toward use, resale, and risk.
Hammond stopped watching the door long enough to taste from the control sample. His face reddened. "My ale will taste like ditch water after this."
"It did before," the mercenary captain said.
More laughter followed, and the tavern keeper charged him for another cup.
Coin began reaching the table, but Arlan refused to let one conspicuous buyer carry the whole wager. Orders were divided among taverns, caravan captains, and resellers. No man received exclusive stock, and Morton placed the names on one witnessed page so each buyer knew the others had also paid. Gareth could punish one shop quietly. Twelve separate seizures, all tied to the same recorded sale, would look less like ordinary enforcement and more like a market being dismantled.
The arrangement did not make anyone brave. It made retreat more expensive for men who feared a rival taking the profit they abandoned.
The tavern door remained open. The smell of Red Sun Flame reached the street whenever someone entered, and people outside could see coins beside a ledger rather than whispered promises in a back room. Servants began arriving for masters unwilling to show their own faces. Within half an hour, the first barrel had commitments attached to most of it. Morton opened a second page and required every servant to name the buyer before accepting a deposit. Wayne stationed two guards beside the money, leaving the others near the door and wagon.
The Caron officers entered when the crowd became too large to ignore. "These goods remain subject to inspection," the senior man said.
"Inspect this bottle," Arlan replied.
Morton compared its seal and number before opening it in the officer's presence. Hammond tasted the measure and signed beneath a line stating where the bottle had been opened. The mercenary captain added his mark as witness. The officer refused to drink. Seizing the barrel after a public comparison would require him to contradict the men whose names now stood beside his own inspection. He ordered the bottle resealed and warned that every sale could still be reviewed.
"Then review the same record twelve times," Hammond said, surprising himself more than anyone else.
The officer looked at him long enough to promise future inconvenience, then left.
One cloth merchant asked for his deposit back before the door had fully closed. Morton returned it without argument and struck the name from every copy. The man left under the clerk's gaze, ashamed and visibly relieved. A coastal factor stepped into the empty place before the ink dried and ordered twice the quantity, not from courage but because a competitor had surrendered it.
Hammond then confirmed what the quiet streets had already suggested. Harlan remained in Caron custody, his house searched and two carters missing. The buyers around the table could not rely on one smuggler to carry every bottle. They began comparing storehouses, roads, and shared carts among themselves, each revealing only enough to keep his own order possible. FireStorm had entered Rainwood seeking a market and found the beginnings of a network no single arrest could close.
Conversation returned slowly. Buyers did not forget the soldiers outside, but each new name made the next less isolated. Fear remained in the room and had to compete with silver already paid.
Arlan waited until the liquor had established demand on terms FireStorm could defend. Then he nodded to Wayne. "Open the crate."