SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

Once Trafalgar stepped back into the corridor, he already knew what he was doing next. The conversation with Vaelis had closed one part of the problem and opened another, but there was no point standing still now.

Too many things were finally beginning to connect. For the first time since arriving in Meraval, the investigation felt like it was narrowing instead of spreading, and one name had been sitting in the back of his head since the night the dome broke.

Emric Varn.

Rhavel had given it to him while bleeding out on broken brick beneath the second ring. The man who used to sign for the warehouse. Trafalgar hadn’t been able to do much with the name then, but now was different.

He had barely made it halfway down the corridor before he noticed the guard behind him. The man wasn’t close enough to be openly intrusive, but he stayed within sight through every turn, and the people they passed were watching Trafalgar too.

’Right. I’m not getting five minutes alone anywhere in this place.’

That meant doing it properly. Trafalgar went back to Ithanne’s office. The clerk at the front desk looked up when he entered again, apparently unsurprised to see him for the second time that morning.

”You’ve finished with Lord Vaelis?”

”For now.”

”What do you need this time?”

”Records on a man named Emric Varn. Property, leases, commercial registrations. Anything the household or harbour offices have on him.”

The clerk wrote down the name. Nobody asked why Trafalgar wanted it, and he didn’t volunteer an explanation. If Meraval was going to record everything he did, then he might as well make sure every step of it was legal.

A short while later, he was given a bundle of copied records and directed to a reading room two floors below. The guard followed him there and took position beside the wall while Trafalgar sat beneath one of the working lamps.

He opened the first file.

”Property administrator,” Trafalgar said after reading the heading. ”That sounds promising.”

The guard said nothing.

”Probably spent half his life arguing about warehouse rent.”

Still nothing.

Trafalgar turned the page and kept reading. He wasn’t speaking because he expected answers. If the man behind him was going to report what he saw today, Trafalgar intended to decide what part of the investigation appeared in that report.

The warehouse appeared several pages later.

Emric Varn had been the registered lessee of the building on the eastern run. He hadn’t owned it directly. The property belonged to a commercial holding, while Varn’s name appeared on the operating lease and several administrative documents attached to it.

Trafalgar studied the dates.

”Looks like a tax arrangement.”

The guard’s eyes moved toward him.

”Merchant houses do this all the time,” Trafalgar continued. ”Put one man’s name between themselves and a property, move some money around, save themselves a few coins.”

He had no idea whether Varn had ever avoided a single coin of tax.

The next document was a death registration.

Trafalgar stopped.

Emric Varn had died roughly a year ago. The record was ordinary enough: illness, registered burial, witnesses attached to the filing. Nothing about the death itself gave Trafalgar a reason to care.

Rhavel hadn’t lied.

The interesting part came several pages later.

The warehouse lease had been renewed after Varn died.

Trafalgar checked the death date again, then returned to the renewal. Several months separated the two documents, but the name was identical.

Emric Varn.

Same commercial identification and position. A signature beneath the renewal.

Trafalgar leaned back in his chair.

”That’s careless.”

For the first time, the guard looked directly at him.

Trafalgar glanced over his shoulder. ”You think so too, right?”

The man remained silent.

”A dead man renewing a warehouse lease. Perfectly normal.”

The guard stared at him for another second before looking away.

’I’m sure he thinks I’m insane.’

Trafalgar almost preferred that to the alternative.

He returned to the records and followed the company behind the property. The commercial holding led to a merchant house called Veyren Maritime, and that looked promising until he found its registration history.

The company had been dissolved years ago.

Trafalgar rested one finger against the page while he considered that. A dead man was signing for a warehouse owned through a company that technically no longer conducted business.

”Inheritance dispute,” he said aloud. ”That would explain it.”

But it explained absolutely nothing really.

The guard gave him another look. Trafalgar ignored him and requested the older commercial filings associated with Veyren Maritime. Those records eventually gave him another name, this time not a person but a place.

A coastal port.

It appeared repeatedly in older cargo records as an administrative origin for shipments handled by the merchant house. Trafalgar had never heard of it, so he requested the current port index and waited until a clerk brought it down.

The name wasn’t there.

He checked twice before going back through the older volume. The port had existed. Ships had registered cargo there, companies had used it and harbour officials had stamped documents carrying its name.

Then the trail simply stopped.

There was no useful current entry to follow. No company waiting at the other end, no active office he could contact and no modern route still carrying the same designation.

Trafalgar looked at the chain again.

Emric Varn.

Veyren Maritime.

A port that no longer appeared in the current system.

Every time he moved one step backward, the thing he reached was already dead.

”So that’s it,” he said.

The guard waited.

”Old customs fraud. Dead merchant, dead company, dead route.” Trafalgar closed the port index. ”Probably has nothing to do with what I’m looking for.”

That was the largest lie he’d given the man all afternoon.

Because Trafalgar understood exactly what he was looking at now.

Emric Varn had never been the person in charge. He might not even have known what the warehouse truly held. His usefulness was much simpler than that.

A dead man couldn’t answer questions. A dissolved merchant house couldn’t explain its business. And a port that no longer existed in the current records couldn’t tell anyone where the cargo had come from next.

Rhavel had already explained the structure to him. Every person in the chain knew the person immediately above them and nothing beyond that.

This was the same system written on paper.

Trafalgar gathered the documents into a neat stack and stood.

”Well,” he said, looking toward the guard, ”I suppose we spent the afternoon investigating a dead merchant with accounting problems.”

The guard didn’t respond.

Trafalgar returned the files, signed the access ledger and walked out with the same man following several steps behind him.

He hadn’t found whoever stood above Emric Varn.

He had learned something almost as useful.

Emric Varn had never been a lead meant to take someone upward.

He was where the trail was supposed to end.