"And what is this?" Jon asked with an exhausted sigh, pointing towards the sheet of parchment that Darrio had placed on the table the moment he took a seat on the sofa.
After a long difficult tread, that sometimes passed through land and other times through water, they were finally back at the mansion Jon had purchased a while back.
Even if he had not been successful in his venture of getting into an agreement with Gared, and the Company of the Rose, Jon had always known that you can never have enough space, so he had bet big and bought a mansion big enough that he could easily accommodate more than two third of the men in here simultaneously... that is, of course, on the condition that they were willing to heavily compromise on their living space.
But the mansion was mostly empty at the moment, as most of his men along with Gared, The Advisor and Merchant Sam, had gone back to the port after escorting him here, to deal with all the work involving the hauling of goods from the vessels to their warehouses along with other procedures involving docking of their ships.
This left Sam, his Westerosi friend, who sat beside him, Darrio, the banker who sat on the sofa in front of him, and Bran, the commander's son, who stood behind him, and whom Gared had left in charge of his protection along with a dozen other sellswords standing outside the room.
"This is the list of all the people who had contacted me, and Sam over the past weeks, requesting for us to arrange a meeting with you to discuss business," Darrio replied with an apologetic look on his face, as he knew how tiring it was to deal with these kinds of meetings.
"Hm," Jon nodded his head while reading through the names on the list, "I am guessing from their names, that most of them are merchants looking to get back the goods we recovered from Stepstones,"
While some of the loot had been lost or sold off, Ravager had kept most of the goods in pristine condition in his castle.
Jon assumed that Ravager had probably been hoping to make a bigger pot of gold by selling his precious cargo in Slaver's Bay, where there was a lot of demand for goods from the free cities... sadly for him, he died before fulfilling this wish of his, and in the end, the haul that he had spent so many of his men's lives on, landed in Jon's hands.
"A few of them are merchants and nobles wanting to strike a long-term deal with our shipping company, but other than them, yes, most of them are merchants who lost their goods in the naval battle against the Ravager fleet and now want them back,"
"They are not asking us to hand over the goods for free, are they?" Bran asked with a frown on his face, "Because we lost too much time, money, and not to mention lives, for us to be charitable in this,"
"No one is going to be brazen enough to do that, Bran," Jon replied distractedly with his eyes still on the list, but then he abruptly realised what world he was in and immediately looked up towards Darrio with a raised eyebrow, "No one is, right?"
"Actually, yes, there are some who righteously demanded that we hand them back 'their' goods," he said somewhat embarrassingly, "But do not worry, only a few of them are like this, most of them are smart enough to know better, and are willing to pay us the market price to get their goods. In fact, about half a dozen of them do not even want you to transfer the goods, instead, they are willing to hand you the price of the goods as well as whatever transportation charges you demand, hoping that you would do the job that the Bravoosi fleet could not do and deliver the goods to their destination,"
"Good, that's much better," Jon replied simply while nodding his head.
"That seems generous of them," Bran said while scratching his head, "Does it not?".
"Not really," Sam replied while shaking his head, "These cunning merchants usually sell their goods at three to four times their buying price at the destination market, so even if they managed to sell the haul at the minimum price, they would still be able to recover their cost."
"What?! These greedy rats!" Bran exclaimed in an indignant voice, "Doesn't this mean that they are earning money sitting on their asses while we did all the hard work."
"That is usually how those rich merchants earn," Sam replied with a helpless shrug.
"Ah! That is so frustrating," Bran said with gritted teeth as the others looked on with sympathetic smiles, "Oh! Oh! I know! What if we just keep the goods, and sell them in other cities ourselves? After all, we are going to be the ones who are going to deliver them anyways, so we may as well just take all the earnings while we are at it," he said with bright eyes as if he had just come up with a brilliant idea.
"Would that we could, but no..." Jon replied with an amused look on his face.
"What?! Why?"
"Because that would infringe on their profits, and as everyone knows, for a Merchant, his gold is more important than his life. And considering, that these merchants are the ones who control the supply of goods, it would hurt the shipping company in the long term if we estrange so many of them at the same time," Jon replied with a shrug, "Besides I do not care about this little amount of money, anyway,"
"You do not?" Bran asked confusingly.
"No," Jon shook his head with a smile, "In fact, I want them to think that they have all outwitted us, that they have benefitted from us. Because if they make safe easy money from us once, they would quickly come back the next time, and then the next... until eventually, we are the only ones whom they would even think to hand over their goods," Jon said patiently as if imparting some sage wisdom.
"Oh..." Bran replied, scratching as if he understood but did not understand what he understood.
"Darrio, I want you to agree with all the ones who are willing to pay the Braavosi market price for their goods, and as for the others... no need to reply to them," Jon said while handing the list back to him.
"I will do as you say," Darrio nodded his head while standing up, but just as he was about to turn around he remembered something, "Ah! And speaking of money, I have the bounty for Ravager's head in my hands. How do you want to deal with it?"
"Huh? They sent the money already?" Jon asked with a startled expression and Darrio nodded, "That is quite surprising... I did not expect them to part with their money so easily,"
"They did not," Darrio replied while shaking his head, "The member of the secret council whose grandson put the bounty on Ravager's head, resisted a lot at first, saying that just because you destroyed the Ravager's fleet does not mean that you killed the Pirate King, and that the Ravager could have just escaped. But sadly for them, my uncle and his allies argued in your favour, using the fact that his grandson had already lowered the reputation of Braavos by losing the fight against the pirates and that if they did not go through with their word now, it would hurt the Iron Bank's face even further, which no one wanted... so in the end that member of council was forced to clear the bounty immediately,"
"Then... you need to thank your uncle for me," Jon replied with a thoughtful look, "And as for the money, you can just add it to the previous funds and order more ships to be made in our shipping company's name,"
"I understand," he replied before bowing his head, "I shall take my leave then,"
"Hn," Jon nodded as the Braavosi man left the room.
"I thought he was supposed to be some big-time banker," Bran asked with a confused look as he took the seat that said banker had vacated, "Why is he so submissive to you?"
"Oh, we just had a slight disagreement during our first meeting," Jon said with a mysterious smile while slacking into the sofa, "And ever since then, he has been working very hard trying to make up for it..."
Bran looked sceptical for a moment before he simply shrugged and decided to forget about it.
"Jon, these two letters arrived a few days ago," Sam said gingerly taking the letters out of his front pocket.
One of them was a pristine white roll of paper tied with a silky ribbon and with a red wax seal closing it, while the other one was a smaller unadorned brown roll of parchment that one normally uses to send messages with raven.
'Ah! More work,' Jon groaned internally as he sat up reluctantly, but the moment his eyes caught the name of the sender written on the fanciest piece of letter he had seen since arriving in this world, all his laziness left his body, "Who delivered this?" he asked in a serious voice while picking up the letter that seems a bit too big for raven to carry across long distances.
"Um, I am not completely sure, but I think it may have been a child," Sam replied with a frown on his face, "A small girl had entered our shop right behind a customer, so I had assumed at first that she was with the man, but then while I was dealing with him, the child had suddenly disappeared leaving only this letter placed on the counter. I thought it was a jest at first, but then I saw the name on the letter, and... I did not dare to dismiss it,"
"Hmm," Jon nodded his head distractingly as he took off the ribbon and opened the letter to read it.
"What does it say?" Sam asked nervously as he saw Jon just sitting there with the letter in his hands with a dazed expression on his face even after a while had passed, "What does the King want with you? Why did he suddenly send you a letter?"
"It is an invitation," Jon replied slowly while placing the letter on the table, "Our dear King Robert Baratheon wants to hold a tourney in my name and award me the honour of being knighted by himself because apparently, I have made him and the Westeros proud by defeating the scrouge of the sea in 'his name',"
"Oh, thank sevens," Sam said with a look of relief on his face, "I had thought for a moment that he was angry with us or something,"
"That would have been much better," Jon muttered with a helpless look on his face.
"What?"
"Nothing, just talking to myself,"
"Oh... so when is the tourney going to take place,"
"The people in King's landing already have a date in mind, and have generously given me six months to present myself in front of the court,"
"You do not seem too enthusiastic about this meeting with the King," Bran asked with a concerned look on his face, "Is there any danger in meeting with him,"
"No, nothing of the sort," Jon denied with a small smile, "It's just... Because of this invitation, I now have to make changes to some plans and bring some things forward, so I was a little miffed, but it's nothing I can't deal with," he replied before he shook his head and picked up the second letter.
"This one arrived from Pentos," Sam supplied when he saw Jon read the letter, "One of our regular 'contacts' delivered it during the weekly reports. I assumed that it was urgent because it kept tapping its beak against the letter," he said the last part in a whisper with a sneaky glance towards Bran, who seemed to be completely oblivious and more interested in the fruit basket placed in front of him, "So what does it say? Is it good or bad news?"
"Oh, it's good news, alright," Jon said with a jubilant smile as he repeatedly went through the same three lines in the letter to make sure that he was reading the information right, "The very best,"
"Really? What happened?" Sam asked curiously.
"Oh, nothing much, I just found a few of my relatives,"
"Huh?"
'It was a good idea to send that warg to Pentos to keep watch,' Jon thought with satisfaction on his face as he closed the letter.
He had always known that they would show themselves sooner or later, but getting the news of their arrival the moment they entered that Fatso's mansion was still a big help for his plans, "It seems things are going to get hectic from now on..."
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