Saltmere's price

Yselle offers passage into Saltmere in exchange for help securing a convoy. She has discovered discrepancies between her household's purchase orders and the grain actually delivered. At first, she believes provincial agents are embezzling supplies. She is proud of her competence and slow to imagine that the system she understands might be functioning exactly as its owners intended.

Saltmere contrasts sharply with Cinderford. Warehouses are full. Bread is expensive. Ships wait for export licenses while local queues lengthen outside public ovens. The port council insists that confiscating private stores would destroy trade and make the next season worse. Seris answers that a next season is an abstract comfort to people who cannot survive this one. Pyrrhus must arrange access without turning every commercial faction into a permanent enemy.

Lady Sabine receives the company at a dinner whose abundance is uncomfortable rather than cartoonishly decadent. She explains that crown debt is held not only by wealthy houses but also by guild funds and small depositors. A sudden repudiation would harm people Pyrrhus wants to protect. Yselle initially supports her argument, then notices that one of the supposedly scarce cargoes has been sold through three related firms at increasing prices.

The chapter's conflict is an embargo enforcement battle at the docks. Pyrrhus can protect a negotiated relief shipment, seize a larger cargo at the cost of port cooperation, or expose the fraudulent contract to force a concession. None resolves the entire shortage. What changes is whether the company begins building a coalition capable of feeding towns without Pyrrhus personally standing beside every granary.