Free The Black Star (Book 3) by Edward W. Robertson Page B

tapping into a Galladese spy network the lakeland merchants had embedded in the capital over the course of years. Maybe even generations. Even if he'd asked, she wasn't the type to answer.
    Together, they settled on their mark: Lady Carraday of Rollen, an estate overseeing the iron mines in the hills south of the city. Blays made contact with her man in the palace, who in turn relayed the proposal to Carraday, who sat on the query for several days before replying that yes, she would agree to receive Lord Pendelles five days hence. Blays rolled his eyes at the delays and spent the intervening days casually feeding rumors into the great gossip machine of the palace.
    The mines at Rollen had been active for centuries and may well have been responsible for Old Gask's ongoing expansion into the Gaskan Empire, churning out more hard iron than Gallador, Narashtovik, the Western Fringe, and the Norren Territories had been able to keep up with. The hills no longer produced as they had in their heyday, but even now, hundreds of years and dozens of wars later, they continued to provide their heirs with one of the empire's greatest fortunes.
    Carraday was not the ideal target. Her relations with Moddegan were actually quite tepid. But her holdings were so vital to the operations of Gask that if Blays were able to hamstring them, even temporarily, the entire kingdom would be left limping.
    On the appointed date, he rode south with his driver and porter. Carraday lived even further from the capital than Dilliger, and though the carriage departed at dawn, it didn't arrive until dusk. Rollen was more of a fort than a chateau: though the structure's ancient center had been embellished with fanciful cornices, pillared decks, and so on, it remained your typical great big glob of impenetrable stone. A thing meant to keep the barbarians away from the silver. Carraday's ancestors had been flush enough to have rebuilt it at any point over the centuries. The fact they'd stuck with the brutally practical told Blays a little something about the woman he was about to attempt to do business with. And that her nickname—the Iron Maiden—was more than a reference to the source of her wealth.
    Inside, he was shown to a sitting room and served the customary tea by a man who let slip that he was Carraday's nephew and thus capable of representing her; by high Gaskan tradition, guests were supposed to be poured tea by a significant member of the household. Blays thanked him and sat.
    Most other nobles would have stretched such a visit over two or three days, if not a full week, but Lady Carraday summoned Blays to dinner within an hour of his arrival. They dined in a tower with a view of the south, the hills outlined by moonlight.
    Carraday had been married thrice, two divorces bookending a widowing, but she wasn't yet fifty and remained handsome. A wavy strand of dark hair looped over her forehead. She wore a thin steel necklace, a simple blue dress with a high collar, and the casual command of someone used to being listened to.
    "To your liking?" she said.
    "It's food," Blays said, upping the gaiety a bit without pushing it into insincerity; he'd found it easiest to make Pendelles an exaggeration of himself instead of a whole new creature. "Thus it's to my liking by default. This particular meal, however, would exceed my standards even if they were as lofty as the Dundens."
    "Witty."
    A smile crept up on him. "You've caught me red-handed."
    "Have I? I hadn't even had the chance to bring around the hounds."
    He nodded gravely. "And yet you've found me reaching into my bag of tricks for my false wit. One of the many tools I use to hammer the wealthy into giving me some of what they've got."
    The lady snorted. "Isn't 'refreshing bluntness' a tool as well?"
    Blays bowed his head and tipped an imaginary cap. "Caught me again. Why can't I quit this infernal dance?"
    "Because my colleagues demand you put on a display for them. They know your title doesn't come from