"Ah, Batasin. I've come full circle, back to where I started as a merchant."
The carriage bearing Count Cadman's crest rolled slowly toward the city now rising into view. Inside, Lady Blanche Palien Fedor gazed out at the unremarkable scenery with profound emotion.
It had been only a little over two months since she last visited this small city on the Transian border, yet it felt like a lifetime ago.
The dizzying ups and downs of life had even made this shrewd, capable merchant feel wistful, like some sheltered young lady. But she had been born in the bitter cold of Ice Bay and had grown up amid migration and hardship. It didn't take long for her to pull herself together and focus on the important task at hand.
She needed to negotiate a series of preliminary agreements with the northern smugglers here, then ultimately bring about a major deal between the Count and the occupying forces of Nordtov's Winter Wolf Legion.
The success of this business venture would directly determine whether Count Cadman's domain could weather the coming winter. It would also determine her future under the Count.
Though she was nearing forty, the ambition in Lady Palien's heart had been rekindled by Murphy's "evil secret arts."
She was a pure-blooded Nord. If she remained free of illness and misfortune, she could live to a hundred and forty. She hoped that by the time she was eighty, she would have everything she had dreamed of in her youth—and that, before growing old, she could leave her two lovely daughters enough wealth to change their station and their lives.
And now she still had forty years.
Perhaps she could take a chance and make up for the wasted first half of her life, twice over!
"First, I need to meet