The fishmonger’s name was Renza and she had opinions about everything.
"Brevaine? Oh, she’s been busy." Renza gutted a fish with a single pull and tossed the innards into a bucket without looking. "Bought out the Corvo warehouse lease last month. The big one on the north pier. And before that, she picked up the Faldini distribution rights. You know, the grain contracts?"
"I didn’t know that," Katarina said, which was true as of thirty seconds ago.
"Nobody does. She’s quiet about it. Doesn’t announce anything, doesn’t make a fuss. Just shows up, signs papers, and suddenly she owns another piece of the harbor." Renza pointed her knife at Katarina. "Your mothers should be paying attention."
Katarina bowed respectfully.
"I’ll let them know."
And she moved on.
After that, the baker told her about two supplier contracts that had changed hands in the last six months, both now routed through Brevaine-controlled intermediaries. The woman who ran the rope shop near the dry docks mentioned that her lease had been bought by a holding company she’d never heard of, and when she’d looked into it, the holding company was registered to an address in the Brevaine district office.
An old woman who repaired nets on the south pier didn’t know anything about contracts, but she knew that three independent warehouses had been quietly acquired over the past year and that the new owners all used the same carriage service. Brevaine’s.
Katarina sat on a crate by the harbor and let the picture assemble itself as she looked at the southern ocean.
[These people don’t understand. She’s not buying businesses. She’s buying infrastructure.]
Warehouse leases, distribution rights, supplier contracts, intermediary networks. The boring, invisible architecture that made trade possible in the first place.
Nobody noticed because none of it was flashy. And back on Earth, nobody would have to worry about this too much because there were laws in place to protect against this exact scenario.
After all, if you controlled all of the infrastructure in a given location, you effectively ruled that location. That’s what the whole "banana republic" fiasco was all about.
[While everyone here only cares about how hard you can punch and how well you can... you know, Brevaine is taking everything right from underneath them.]
Stellara wasn’t acquiring rival houses or making dramatic moves. She was buying the roads and the bridges and the pipes, and when she owned enough of them, every house in the district would be paying rent to move their goods whether they knew it or not.
[Pure evil. I mean, to be fair, this is exactly what I would do. But still!]
Still, the auction catalog sat in Katarina’s bag. She pulled it out and flipped through the lots again with fresh eyes.
The Venturi estate liquidation wasn’t just a bankruptcy sale. It was the last batch of independent assets in the southeastern district. Warehouse leases, route licenses, distribution contracts, all of it unattached and up for grabs. And Stellara Brevaine was going to walk in and sweep every lot that mattered because nobody else in the district had the capital to outbid her.
Katarina closed the catalog.
[The auction isn’t a shopping trip. It’s the last chance for anyone in this district to own a piece of the infrastructure before Brevaine locks it all down.]
She stood up, put the catalog back in her bag, and walked home with her hands in her pockets and the math already running.
Vessa showed up that evening with a bag over her shoulder, a fig in her mouth, and a question.
"Do you think I’ll look good in the dress my mom got me for the festival?"
Kat had no clue what festival she was talking about but there was no point in asking which one. There was always a festival of some sort happening around here.
"I’m sure it’s fine," she said, without looking up from her work.
A pillow hit the back of her head with enough force to scatter two pages off the desk.
Katarina turned around. Vessa was standing by the bed with her arms crossed.
"It’s not fine. It’s blue. With embroidery. My mom spent two weeks on the embroidery."
"Then I’m sure it’s lovely."
"You didn’t even look at me when you said that."
"I’m looking at you now."
"Too late. The moment is dead. You killed it."
A second pillow hit the back of her head.
[I probably deserve that.]
"Vessa."
"What."
"I’m sorry. Show me the dress tomorrow and I’ll give you a real answer."
Vessa considered this. Then she unfolded her arms, walked to the desk, and looked at the catalog over Katarina’s shoulder.
"This is the auction stuff?"
"Yeah."
"You’ve been staring at it for three days."
"It’s important."
"Is it more important than my dress?"
"... Different categories. Incomparable."
"That’s a yes."
"It’s a diplomatic non-answer and you should respect it."
Vessa kissed her cheek, dropped her bag by the bed, and kicked off her shoes. She flopped onto the mattress and pulled the blanket over herself. She had a preferred pillow at this point and she went straight for it.
"I’m staying. Don’t stay up too late."
"I won’t."
"Liarrrrr."
Within twenty minutes, Vessa was asleep. She slept the way she did everything, completely and without reservation, curled on her side with one arm tucked under the pillow and her dark hair fanned across the sheets.
Katarina looked at her for a moment. Then she turned back to the catalog.
Lot 47 was the Greypass trade route license. Three years inactive, bandit territory, two previous holders who’d given up, and a reserve price so low it was practically free.
Stellara wouldn’t bid on it. The risk profile didn’t match her strategy. She was buying safe, proven infrastructure, not speculative routes through contested territory.
She’d look at Lot 47, see the history of failure, and move on to the warehouse leases and distribution contracts that she could integrate into her network immediately.
That was Katarina’s opening. She would ask Seris to buy her that trade route as a gift. She could get the route license for the reserve price, maybe less, and she’d have the one asset in the catalog that Stellara didn’t want.
... But would that be enough?
If Stellara swept everything else, the Montecardi’s recovery stalled anyway. It didn’t matter if Katarina had a trade route license if every warehouse, every distributor, and every supply contract in the district was Brevaine-controlled. She’d own a road with nowhere to load and nowhere to unload.
[Ideally, I wouldn’t just buy the route. I would need to stop her from sweeping the rest.]
She didn’t have the capital to outbid Stellara. The Montecardi treasury was healthier than it had been in years, but "healthier than catastrophic" and "able to compete with the largest house in the district at auction" were two very different things.
[We can’t outbid her.]
She looked at the numbers. She looked at the lot descriptions. She looked at the names of the other houses in the district, the ones she’d been tracking for years, the ones who were all in the same position as the Montecardi: too small to compete alone, too proud to ask for help, and too stubborn to notice that the ground was being bought out from under them.
[Fine. Then, I’m going to have to make this one trade route so essential, so pivotal to our economy, that Brevaine won’t stop drooling over it. Now... How to do that?]