The Glittering Trap

The find is barely six hours old, and already your private chamber feels too small for the news it's holding. Vinter got here first, of course — the gnome practically lives in the lower gallery these days, and he still has mine-dust in his beard from where he knelt to dig the crystals free with his own hands. He sets them on the map table, between your tax ledgers, like he's not quite ready to let go of either one. Two crystals, each about the size of a plum, glowing faint blue even in daylight. "Raishi," he says. "Two, not one — and a true vein behind them, not a stray pocket. I'd wager my whole crew hasn't seen the bottom of it yet." "There's mithril too," Vinter adds, quieter now. "A thinner vein, but real — enough to matter on its own, if it were the only thing we'd found today." He hesitates. "Truth told, my liege, a find like this, this deep — I'd rather not learn what else is down there before we've decided how far we're willing to dig." You don't need him to explain what that means. Nobody in the province does. You also don't need him to say what everyone in the room is already thinking: two is not the same problem as one. Two means choices that one alone never would have allowed. Fubuto arrives next, and he's already thinking three moves past the crystals themselves — you can see it in the way his eyes go to the door, then the window, then back to Vinter's dust-covered hands. The orc doesn't sit. "Word travels faster than we can dig," he says. "Bandits would burn half the valley for a vein this size. And bandits are the easy problem." Devon is last through the door, unhurried as ever, and he doesn't need to be told what's on the table before he's already calculating what it costs you. The elf inclines his head toward the crystals, then toward you. "Lord Shinjo will hear of this within the week regardless of what we do," he says. "He will not simply let a find like this sit in a vassal's hands. And with two crystals on this table instead of one, he may not settle for gratitude alone — he may expect both, gifted outright, and think it generous of him to leave you the mine." "And he won't be the only one asking," Fubuto adds. "The Tellari have ninja in these hills more often than anyone likes to admit. A vein of Raishi is worth more to them than anything they've been paid to steal in years." Devon lets that settle before he speaks again. "There are four paths open to you, as I see it. Consume one yourself, and you would be the first mage your family has ever produced — no small thing, for a mining house. Gift them, to Shinjo or elsewhere, and you buy protection you may need before the season's out. Sell them — and Raishi this pure would fetch a price few merchants in the province could match — but do that without Shinjo's blessing, and he may take it as an insult sharper than if you'd never found them at all. Or use them for a match — the Shinjo have three children of marrying age, the Tellari two standing close to the chief, and a Raishi crystal is a dowry no house in the province could easily refuse. Two crystals, my liege, might even let you do more than one of these at once." "For what it's worth," Devon adds, "the mithril may serve you regardless of what you choose. Let that be the story the valley hears — a mining house that struck good metal. No one outside this room needs to know the rest of what came up with it." Three advisors, three warnings, and none of them agree on what you should do next. Vinter wants to know how deep the vein runs before anyone else finds out. Fubuto wants the gallery sealed and guarded before nightfall. Devon is waiting — patiently, the way he always does — to hear what you intend to do with what you've found.