Moonlight flowed like water, falling over the long river, clear and bright until all seemed one. Campfires flickered, lighting the flat riverbank and the busy crowd as well.
Crocodile King Quin stood on the riverbank with four hundred Maya warriors, personally watching the scene of the trade. Hundreds of Maya laborers lowered their heads, bent their backs, and carried broad bamboo baskets, letting themselves be driven like obedient worker ants. Basket by basket, they piled all sorts of numerous and precious goods on the riverbank before the longboats. Dozens of kingdom sailors also carried sack after sack of costly gemstones and placed them on the other side of the bank.
"The Main God bears witness! One sack of gemstones trades for twelve baskets of salted fish. Trades for ten sacks of cacao, eight bolts of cotton cloth, six sacks of tobacco, or four jars of honey."
The Maya merchant Tikalo knew the ropes, calling out the prices of the goods and presiding over the trade between the two sides. Before long, baskets and panniers of goods were carried onto the boats, while sack after sack of stable-quality Lake Gems flowed into the hands of the Maya nobles.
Hearing such favorable prices, Crocodile King Aayin beamed from ear to ear, quite satisfied. Red Lake Town lay downstream on the Red River and was a trade node for dozens of Maya city-states upstream. The Maya nobles of every state sat high above, never overthrown by common folk. Over hundreds of years, they had accumulated vast wealth, so much that they had nowhere to spend it. And the nobles' intense demand for gemstones had never once been satisfied!
The Lake Gems were of excellent quality. They could decorate walls, be made into divine statues, be inlaid on clothing and teeth, worn around necks