He found his father in the east field at first light.
Edric was moving through the winter wheat rows with the patient attention he brought to all field work — checking the growth, noting which sections had come in thin, turning the soil at the edge of the irrigation channel with the specific economy of someone who had done this exact motion ten thousand times and had stopped wasting any part of it.
Arthur walked alongside him for a while before saying anything. This was the correct approach for his father in the field.
'The tribes,' Arthur said eventually. 'The ones in the forest. They have almost no access to fresh produce. They hunt and forage but the deep forest doesn't yield much in the way of grain or vegetables or eggs.'
Edric turned a section of soil. 'What do they have.'
'Monster materials. The Oni collect scales and bones and leather from deep forest creatures that we would never reach on our own. The fox tribe knows every herb and medicinal plant in the Veiling Forest — things that aren't in any of the books Lyra has found. The elves have gold and silver and enchanting materials and forest resources that don't exist anywhere else.' Arthur paused. 'They want food. We have food.'
Edric stopped walking. He looked at the field. He looked north, in the direction of the forest.
'How many mouths,' he said.
'The Oni village is thirty-five people. The fox tribe roughly the double. The elven city —' Arthur paused. 'Considerably more. They're a full city. They've been self-sufficient because they had to be, but Aeryn told me their fresh produce situation is a consistent problem. Caravans can't reach them and they won't lower their walls for traders they don't know.'
'But they know us,' Edric said.
'They know us,' Arthur confirmed.
His father was quiet for a long moment, running the arithmetic that Arthur had already run but that needed to come from Edric himself to mean anything.
'I'd need more hands,' Edric said. 'More land under cultivation if they want volume.' He looked at the field. 'The money would let me hire properly. Expand the south field and the river strip.' He turned back to Arthur. 'You can get me there. To meet them.'
'Any time you're ready,' Arthur said.
Edric nodded once, in the way he nodded when a decision had been made and the conversation was transitioning to planning. 'This week,' he said. 'Let me load some wagons first.'
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He loaded three wagons over two days.
Grain sacks. Root vegetables from the cold room in quantities that made Mira raise an eyebrow before Arthur explained what they were for. Preserved meats. A flat of eggs from the flock his parents had purchased in February — twenty hens, good layers — packed carefully in straw. Late-season apples from the orchard. Two wheels of hard cheese.
He transited the wagons through in sections, Shadow handling the heavier lifting at the delivery end, Edric driving and directing and noting everything about the receiving side with the focused attention of a man learning a new market.
The Oni first.
The chief met them at the village gate with the unhurried quality he brought to everything and looked at the wagons with the expression of someone who had been told a thing and was now seeing it and finding the seeing better than the telling. The negotiation was straightforward — Edric at his best was a man who knew the value of things and communicated it directly without posturing, and the chief respected this immediately in the way that people who were also direct respected it in others.
They traded grain and vegetables and eggs for a selection of deep-forest materials that Edric inspected with the care of a man learning a new category of goods, asking questions, noting the answers, building a reference. Boar leather from the stone-plated variety. Scale fragments from a ridge lizard species that Arthur had not encountered. Bone material from a deep-forest creature the chief described in terms that Arthur filed for later research.
The chief's daughter appeared halfway through the transaction, still carrying the spear, and assessed the wagons with the inventory expression that was apparently hereditary. She picked up an apple, ate it in three bites, and said nothing. Then she went back inside.
The chief watched her go. He looked at Arthur.
'She has eaten nothing but that since we traded,' he said. 'I believe she is trying to finish the supply.'
'We'll bring more next time,' Arthur said.
The fox tribe was faster. Saya's mother had clearly communicated the nature of the arrangement in advance and the tribe received the wagons with the easy warmth of people greeting known friends rather than assessing unknown traders. The exchange was herbs and medicinals and specific forest materials that Lyra, who had come for this leg, documented with the focused attention of someone adding to a reference work.
The eggs produced the most enthusiasm. Arthur had not predicted this. The fox tribe's children had apparently never seen a chicken egg before.
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The elven city was the significant conversation.
Aeryn received Edric in the root-walled building near the central tree, and Arthur watched his father assess the city on the walk in with the same focused inventory he applied to everything, noting values and quantities and structural qualities without comment. Edric Voss in a negotiation was a version of Edric Voss that Arthur had not seen many times, and it was interesting to watch.
Aeryn looked at Edric with the mana-reading attention she gave to new people. Her expression was the careful-blank she had produced the first time she looked at Arthur, scaled down — not a limitless abyss but something considerably above what a farmer's baseline should be. The pills and the dragon meat had been working for months.
'Your son,' she said, 'has been generous to our city. The wall repairs, the well, the stonework in the lower district.' She looked at Edric steadily. 'What are you offering.'
'Whatever you need that I can grow,' Edric said. 'At a fair price. Regular delivery — monthly at minimum, more if the crop allows. I want stable customers and you want reliable supply. That seems like a good basis.'
Aeryn looked at the wagons visible through the window. 'The city has eight hundred people,' she said. 'Produce at volume would change our nutritional situation significantly.' She paused. 'What we have that you might want.'
'My son handles the magical materials,' Edric said. 'I'm interested in what you'd offer for practical use. Timber from the ironwood, if there's any to spare. Stone materials if your quarrying produces excess. Any seeds or cultivars from forest varieties that would grow in managed land.'
Aeryn looked at him. 'The ironwood cultivar does not transplant,' she said. 'But there are three forest grain varieties we have cultivated that produce well in managed conditions. We have never had reason to share them.' She considered. 'We do now, I think.'
The negotiation ran for two hours. Edric handled all of it. Arthur sat in the corner and watched his father work and thought about the south field expansion and what three new grain cultivars might do to the farm's production capacity.
They could not give the city everything — they still needed to supply their human trading partners and the household and leave room for growth. Edric committed to sixty percent of the current harvest for the city, sixty percent of the expanded harvest for the same price once the new land came under cultivation. The city would pay in silver and the forest cultivar seeds would come in the first shipment.
Aeryn looked at the final terms.
'Your son,' she said to Edric, 'operates at a scale that is difficult to account for. You operate at a scale that is easy to understand and work with.' She paused. 'I mean this as a compliment.'
'I know,' Edric said, and smiled in the way he smiled when something satisfied him.
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