Stellara Brevaine was currently sitting in Seris’s study.
She had the posture of a woman who expected all furniture to have been made with her in mind. Her legs were crossed, her wine glass held at the stem with two fingers, and her smile hadn’t wavered since she’d walked through the front door.
"I heard about the unpleasant business with Signore Cabrian," Stellara said, tilting her glass gently. "These central kingdom traders can be so aggressive. I wanted to check in personally and see how you and Brynn were managing."
She said "personally" like it was a gift. Like the Signora of House Brevaine showing up at your estate was itself a form of generosity.
[Yeah, right. You wouldn’t visit a lesser house unless you wanted something from it or wanted it to know you were watching.]
Katarina was betting on both.
And yet, Seris received her with her usual polished warmth. Tea was served. The good wine that Stellara had brought, a vintage from the Brevaine private reserve, was opened and praised. The conversation was civil, measured, and full of careful nothing.
But, to Kat’s eyes, it was clearly two women sizing each other up and pretending they weren’t.
Brynn was in the corner, sitting with her arms folded. Yeah, she couldn’t be bothered wiht this. She’d shaken Stellara’s hand at the door and said, "Nice carriage." Stellara had smiled and said, "Thank you, I’ll tell the builder," and that was the extent of Brynn’s contribution so far.
Katarina was on the small couch by the window with a book open on her lap that she wasn’t reading.
"The southeastern district has been volatile," Stellara continued. "Human traders pushing further into Valdari markets every year. Houses like ours need to look out for each other."
[Houses like ours. She said that with a straight face. Her house does ten times our revenue.]
"I couldn’t agree more," Seris said. "The Montecardi have always valued good relations with House Brevaine."
"And we’ve always admired the Montecardi spirit. Your family has a proud history." Stellara sipped her wine. "I was telling my people just the other day how impressed I’ve been with your recovery. Five years ago, well, we were all a little worried. But you’ve turned things around remarkably."
[You weren’t worried. You were waiting. You had your people watching us for the exact moment we went under so you could swoop in on the port tariff rights.]
Katarina turned a page she hadn’t read.
Suddenly, the businesswoman’s eyes landed on her.
"I didn’t know you’d had a daughter, Seris. How lovely."
The smile she gave Katarina was warm and genuine, but Katarina did not trust a single part of it.
"Katarina," Seris said. "Say hello to Signora Brevaine."
Katarina looked up from her book with the polite, slightly shy expression of a thirteen-year-old who was definitely not running a threat assessment.
"Hello, Signora. It’s nice to meet you."
"What a well-mannered girl. And those eyes." Stellara looked at Seris. "She has your coloring."
"She has Brynn’s stubbornness," Seris said lightly.
"That’s true," Brynn said from the corner. "She won’t quit."
[Mother, please. Just sit there. Look strong and pretty and don’t—]
"She argued with the vineyard foreman for an hour last week about irrigation spacing," Brynn added, grinning. "She’s thirteen."
Stellara’s eyebrow rose a fraction.
"Is that so?"
[MOTHER! AAAAAAAH!]
"Brynn," Seris said, still smiling, "would you get our guest some more of those olives?"
"Sure." Brynn stood, clapped Stellara on the shoulder like they were old drinking buddies, and walked out.
Stellara watched her go with a small, thoughtful smile that Katarina didn’t like at all.
[She just told the head of House Brevaine that I argue about irrigation spacing. She just told the woman who’s been watching our house for years that their thirteen-year-old daughter is involved in operations.]
Seris’s smile hadn’t changed. But Katarina noticed her fingers tighten around her wine glass for just a moment.
[Damage control later. Eyes forward.]
Stellara’s laugh, when it came a few minutes later at one of Seris’s deflections, was beautiful, practiced, and exactly the right duration.
[You’re very good at this. I want to see your books.]
The visit lasted forty-five minutes. Stellara said all the right things about cooperation and mutual benefit and the importance of strong regional houses. She complimented the estate, asked about the vineyards, and mentioned twice that House Brevaine was always open to partnership discussions, should the Montecardi ever find themselves in need of support.
When she left, her carriage pulled away quietly. She’d gotten exactly what she’d come for, which was a look at them up close.
Seris closed the front door and stood there for a moment.
"She’s very fancy," Brynn said.
"She’s very dangerous," Seris replied.
"Oh come on. She was nice! She liked the olives."
"Brynn, she didn’t come here for the olives."
"The olives were really good, though."
Seris pinched the bridge of her nose. Katarina nearly did the same.
[Finally, my beautiful, airheaded birth mother is leveling up in terms of reading people. I never doubted her!]
Vessa’s head was on Katarina’s shoulder.
They were behind the school, their spot on the stone wall, and Katarina was running her hand up and down Vessa’s side while she talked. She was supposed to be thinking about Stellara Brevaine. She was mostly thinking about how warm Vessa’s waist was under her shirt.
"Ahem, uh... Stellara Brevaine controls the regional wine distribution. She’s been expanding for years, buying up smaller operations, locking in exclusive contracts. The Parenna and Duccetti were both in her territory before Cabrian showed up."
"And you think she sent him?"
"I can’t prove it yet." Katarina’s fingers traced along Vessa’s ribs. She was doing it absently, except it wasn’t absent at all and she was very aware of each rib and the soft skin over them and the way Vessa’s breathing changed when her fingers moved higher. "But the timing is too clean. Cabrian arrives, locks two families into dependency contracts using capital that doesn’t match his company’s profile, and then Stellara shows up at our door the week after we reject the same deal? She’s not checking in on us, she’s checking on her investment."
"That’s scary."
"That’s business."
Vessa tilted her head up to look at her. Their faces were very close.
"You say that like it’s the same thing."
"At a high level, it tends to be."
[I am theorizing about a hostile acquisition while tracing my girlfriend’s ribs. Vivienne Ross would never. Katarina Montecardi apparently does. Wait, are we dating? I don’t know. I still don’t know the rules of courtship around here.]
In any case, she couldn’t prove the Brevaine-Cabrian connection. The Ledger couldn’t fill in what she didn’t have evidence for, and she didn’t have a paper trail linking Cabrian’s funding to Brevaine. But the shape was there, and Katarina had spent two lifetimes learning to trust the shape of things before the proof arrived.
"I need to head home early," she said.
"The auction catalog?"
"Yeah."
Vessa smirked and kissed her jaw.
"You’re going to stare at papers for three hours and forget to eat."
"I don’t do that."
"You did it last week. I brought you dinner and you’d written margin calculations on your own hand."
"T-That was once."
"It was twice. You also did it on your arm."
Katarina stood up, pouting.
"I’ll eat."
"Liar."
Soon, the auction catalog was spread across her desk, a collection of lots from a bankruptcy liquidation. A merchant house called Venturi had gone under six months ago and everything had to go.
Katarina had gotten the catalog through Dalla, who had gotten it from the district clerk, who owed Ottavia’s cousin a favor. Katarina’s intelligence network was powered primarily by one cook’s extended family. She’d work on that.
Most of the lots were what you’d expect from a dead merchant house. Fancy furniture, decorative arrays, a wine collection, warehouse leases in towns Katarina didn’t care about. Flashy stuff that would attract bidders who liked the idea of owning pieces of someone else’s failure.
She flipped past all of it.
Lot 47 was a trade route license.
The license covered a corridor running from two inland towns, Selvarra and Coppiano, down through the Greypass to the coast. It connected agricultural producers directly to port access, which meant whoever held the license controlled a supply line from farm to ship with no middleman.
Nobody was bidding on it. The catalog listed it at a reserve price so low it was practically an insult.
[Why?]
The Ledger answered.
Greypass Trade Corridor:
Status: Inactive (3+ years).
Reason: Route passes through contested territory. Bandit activity. Two previous license holders abandoned operations.
Revenue potential (if secured): Significant. No competing routes.
[Everyone sees a dead route. I see a supply corridor that nobody else wants, which means nobody will bid against me, which means I can buy it for almost nothing.]
The route was dangerous. That was why it was cheap. But dangerous was a solvable problem. You didn’t need to eliminate the danger. You just needed to make the route profitable enough to justify the cost of protecting it.
She pulled out her notes and started running numbers: cargo volume from Selvarra and Coppiano, estimated shipping costs, security escort pricing, port handling fees.
If the route could be secured, it would connect the Montecardi to an inland supply network that currently had no coastal outlet. Every producer in those two towns was shipping overland to the central markets at ruinous cost. Give them a cheaper route to the coast and they’d line up to fill her wagons.
[This is the piece. This is the corridor that turns a single coastal textile route into a real network.]
She looked at the reserve price, wrote it down, and circled it.
[Happy birthday to me. A little late, but I’ll take it.]