Chapter 12 #3
She felt like a wolf walking into a herd of sheep. The 18th was there to take advantage of these people, sell poppies, demand payment and tribute. She had to ignore the sick feeling in her gut.
Then they entered the largest building yet.
It was oddly shaped, built around a few particularly large trees, and this room wasn’t bare.
Shelves and hooks with woven baskets filled with goods covered the walls, leaving a path just wide enough to walk around.
Iryana saw berries and wild onions, basket after basket of food that could be easily harvested from the forest. The closest shelf had bottles and small boxes labeled with simple remedies.
A few people were slowly walking through, picking up an item from one basket only to add something else to another.
It was some kind of trading market.
“Put everything here to be sorted,” Vaneshta advised her, dropping her sacks into one of the open corners.
She was glad to be rid of them, but her eyes lingered on the lumpy linen sack Darish had carried. She couldn’t help but wonder how many contained poppies.
Katashta passed Darish. “I will go get the payment.” She sounded tired.
Iryana found herself hoping the payment the brigade demanded wasn’t too high. Then she noticed something on the shelf next to Darish that caught her eye.
The label said it was a blood-clotting agent.
Surely with such access to water-imbued medicines and treatments, the village wouldn’t need to resort to the poppy.
Perhaps they took in addicts? She shook away the image of a whole room of patients tied to their death beds as water-forged healers attempted to help them recover.
Focus. But still, such access to water-imbued medicine…
“Do they sell to us, Captain?” she asked hopefully.
Darish laughed. “Take anything you want.”
“That’s stealing,” she said before she could catch the words from flying off her tongue.
“We give them plenty, don’t worry about it. I don’t.”
Iryana wanted to tell him what she thought of that, but she knew doing so would be idiotic.
Her hands clenched around the straps of her pack.
Taking more from people that were already being forced to pay was disgusting.
The village had seers, they could keep themselves safe.
The brigade was just greedy and power hungry.
Darish dipped his head toward her, expression hard.
“We manage all the trade for these villages, taking their medicines far further than they could ever safely travel. We bring back blankets and clothes, farming tools, things they couldn’t get otherwise.
Look around at these little tree houses.
None of this would exist without us enabling their isolation. ”
Iryana ground her teeth. “Yes, Captain.” But it wasn’t the entire story; it couldn’t be.
But as she retreated from him and circled the room, she realized she couldn’t deny that there were a lot of things they wouldn’t have had access to.
Lumps of ore from deep in the mountains, cloths woven on looms far too big to fit in one of their buildings, even plants she knew didn’t grow anywhere close.
The village clearly benefited from trade, but that didn’t mean the military wasn’t taking advantage.
She found herself standing next to the goods they had delivered, staring down at the pack Darish had sat down. Its presence seemed to pull her in, taunting her. Ignore it, she pleaded with herself.
It was a sick sort of masochism that seemed to drive her hands as she reached down and opened the mouth of the bag wide. She froze, staring at the contents. There were no poppies. Just dark gray fabric.
Iryana scrubbed her hands over her face, taking a few large steps from the pile of supplies. She must have imagined them or misinterpreted what she’d seen, which was a worrying thought. She needed to keep it together.
A cackling sound made her look up to see a woman hobbling her way into the market. She was hunched with age, leaning heavily on a twisted cane.
“Oh, Vaneshta!” the old woman called. “I made a huge batch of rhodiola spirits a few weeks ago; let’s get you a bottle.” The older woman beckoned to Vaneshta, who had been searching through the wares.
“If it’s half as good as the last one, you’ll give me two,” Vaneshta demanded, but it sounded more like a jest.
Iryana couldn’t help but stare. How was Vaneshta so friendly with them?
Vaneshta wasn’t even that friendly with other soldiers.
Iryana couldn’t imagine anyone from her family treating someone from a military gang so kindly.
Every time a representative came to the Dovaki post, her family was in an awful mood for days, even when there were no direct threats.
She had expected to be helping Darish strong arm the settlements. She had expected to be hated, but things didn’t seem to be that simple. Some of the people definitely seemed upset at their visit, but others welcomed them in and traded willingly.
Iryana looked around and noticed Vabihn and Shahn were talking to a group of young men from the village. They were laughing like longtime friends.
This wasn’t how the brigades interacted with outsiders everywhere; she had heard plenty of stories to the contrary. Still, she clearly didn’t understand how things worked as well as she thought she did, and that was a problem.
It was important to understand one’s enemies.
Iryana grabbed the jar of clotting agent and put one of her spare daggers on a shelf of small weapons. It was more than a fair trade. Stowing the jar away carefully, Iryana grappled with the unsettled feeling in her gut.