Free Irons in the Fire by Juliet E. McKenna

wondered what the merchant made of his ungainly awkwardness and hesitant speech when Tathrin was so tall, fresh-faced and straight-limbed. While he sat concealing the pains it cost him to stay motionless, lest any but the most trusted see the tremors that often shook him. Did Gruit realise Aremil was Tathrin's elder by barely five years? Between the trials of his condition and his inadequate eyesight, Aremil knew his own face was thin and lined. It would not have surprised him if the merchant took him for ten years older than Tathrin.
    "Are you congratulating me for making our countrymen feel miserable and guilty?" Gruit castigated himself rather than challenging Aremil.
    "Tathrin says a number appeared to agree with you." Tension worsened the pains in Aremil's back. "Only they could see no way forward. So I have a suggestion for you and your fellow merchants."
    "Do you indeed?" Gruit raised bushy white brows, halfway between hope and scepticism.
    "Our countrymen send money to their kith and kin, to enable them to pay the dues the dukes demand in lieu of taking their sons to serve in the militias." Aremil felt a bubble of saliva at the corner of his mouth and paused to swallow. "But these remittances merely throw fuel on the smouldering fires of Lescari strife. As soon as a duke can wring sufficient silver out of his subjects, he hires mercenaries to try to impose his rule over all the rest."
    "If there was no money, there could be no warfare," Tathrin said bluntly.
    Gruit shook his head. "The dukes would draft men from the villages into the militias at spear-point. At least foreign blood stains the battlefields if such dishonourable men choose to risk their lives for silver."
    "The dukes couldn't leave the fields untended," Aremil countered, "if they had no coin to buy Caladhrian grain to keep bread on their tables."
    "The dukes and their families will be the last to go hungry," retorted Gruit. "Their hired swords would just seize what they wanted from the peasantry."
    "If they're not being paid, there will be no mercenaries to do such plundering," Aremil insisted.
    "If they're not being paid, mercenaries will go looting on their own behalf," Gruit said promptly. "Good coin is all that can buy peasants relief from such predation."
    "You were calling on the merchants to stop selling them the arms and goods they need." Tathrin was annoyed. "How is denying them coin so different?"
    "I lost my temper last night, lad. Once I went home, my blood cooled." Gruit's face sagged, discouraged. "I realised that if every Vanam merchant born or wed to Lescari blood refused to trade with the dukes, all that would happen is the smiths and clothiers and provender merchants in Peorle and Col and Selerima would grow richer."
    "You don't think Vanam's example would unite the Lescari-born in all the towns of Ensaimin?" Tathrin asked.
    "You think everyone would agree? That no one would break ranks to enrich themselves when prices offered in Lescar would rise with every passing market day?" Gruit shook his head. "Besides, if every Lescari-born merchant from the Ocean to the Great Forest spurned the dukes' gold, Caladhrians wouldn't turn their noses up at it, nor would Tormalin traders."
    "If the flow of coin to the dukes is cut off, they could not pay those Caladhrians or Tormalin," Aremil said as swiftly as his recalcitrant tongue allowed.
    "Only till the dukes go to Col's moneylenders," Gruit retorted, exasperated.
    "Col's bankers baulk at lending to any man, common or noble, who can't show sufficient income to promise repayment of principal and interest," Aremil pointed out. "If the exiles stop sending money, the dukes' revenues will dry up like a winter stream in summer."
    "It would be an impossible undertaking." Gruit ran a gnarled hand over his white head. "There would be no point starving one, two or even three dukedoms of funds. They would just be overrun by whichever other duke could still find the coin to pay for arms and