Dumping
Trade opened, and a great standing board went up before the shop.
The going rate in the Gerona slave market ran thirteen to fourteen gold, so this was a price beaten down by nearly thirty percent. Eyes had already been fixed on the place since morning, and the effect showed at once. From first light the slave quarter of the central market was jammed with the incoming press, so thick there was nowhere left to set a foot.
"Don't push!"
"I called that one first!"
"So what if you called it! Whoever puts the money down first owns it! You think shouting dibs is enough?"
"Here! Here, take the coin first!"
"Me too—two of them. No, three!"
Marco alone could not hold the Sahara Merchant Group's crowd, and so Maximus, the IS slaves, the blonde, and the rest of the child slaves all had to be put to work as extra hands.
"Line up over there!"
"The line begins here. Those who came late will have to enter from this side."
"Wheeeet—no cutting in, I said!"
"If you've finished your purchase, come this way, settle the bill, and collect your goods on the way out."
The queue of customers seeking the Sahara Merchant Group filled the market's central road and still was not done; a long tail of it stretched on past the shops next door. The staff of those neighboring houses came out in protest, of course.
"What are we supposed to do if your line spills all the way in front of someone else's shop!"
"Hey! Is the whole market yours now? Huh!"
Merchants from the nearby houses swarmed in and raised a fierce complaint. The staff were already half out of their minds coping with the flood of customers, so I stepped forward myself.
Moments like this were exactly when a title and a rank earned their keep. Fresh-minted or not, I was a baron, and the men across from me were nothing but common house hands. I lifted my voice so the whole street could hear.
"Hey! Who told the customers to spill over? Huh! They're lining up that way on their own—what do you want us to do about it!"
"Even trade has its code of conduct!"
"If you let customers overflow into other people's shops like this, what are we supposed to do?!"
"We all have to mind what's ours!"
"There's a line you're meant to keep, isn't there!"
"And if I don't keep it, what are you going to do! Huh! Say whatever you like to these people! Why are you throwing a fit in front of somebody else's shop!"
"This is really too much!"
"Are you actually looking for a fight, or what!"
"We're saying it nicely. You're making fools of us!"
Worn smooth by years in the trade, the house men raised their voices as if they might lunge at any moment.
"What! Try it, then. Want to go a round!"
The moment I came on as if I truly meant to fight, they were the ones who lost their nerve and fell back. Having Maximus planted behind me no doubt counted for something. So, surely, did the rumor that I had all but wiped out an entire thieves' guild.
And so, while the other houses were driven to the brink of a standstill, the slaves the Sahara Merchant Group put out sold the instant they reached the stall. In only a brief stretch of the morning, more than two hundred were gone. The houses that had lost every customer, by contrast, could do nothing all morning but come up empty.
Shaken by a morning of pure waste, they came back to protest once more. Unlike the morning, this time the masters themselves arrived, dragging great numbers of their people behind them.
"Now see here. There is no such way of doing business!"
"This is beyond too far, is it not! Even trade has its proper path."
"Is this some plan for all of us to go down together, or what!"
I looked over the masters who had crowded in and answered with a flat, bored air.
"And what seems to be the trouble?"
"Even in business, one is supposed to keep a reasonable line between houses!"
"If you must cut a price, cut it within measure! Done this way, it is nothing but a bid that we all die together."
"Quite so. This appears to be your first time in trade. Carry on like this and it ends badly for everyone. This world only works when we adjust our interests against one another, do you hear? Slash the price all by yourself, out of nowhere, and what becomes of the order of the market?"
"I'm not sure I follow any of you. Shall we ask the people who actually came?"
I turned my back on them, looked down the long line of waiting customers, and called out at the top of my voice.
"Heeey, honored customers—these gentlemen from the other houses are lodging a protest with us. The trouble, they say, is that we alone are selling far too cheap, and it's interfering with their trade. If those of you still waiting would be so kind as to indulge them, we were thinking of raising the price by three or four gold, up alongside the other houses. Would you happen to agree~~?"
The words were barely out of my mouth before the crowd erupted like a swarm of wasps.
"What kind of nonsense is that! I've been standing in this line for hours, since morning! And now you mean to raise the price! Are you joking!"
"Those bastards are nothing but robbers! If they can't sell, they ought to lower their own prices! Why are they throwing a fit in somebody else's shop!"
"What business is it of yours whether I buy here or not! Get lost, the lot of you!"
"Why take your own dead trade out on someone else's shop! Clear off!"
"Those swindling sons of bitches! See if I ever buy from your houses again! Get out of here!"
Under the curses and roars of several hundred people, the masters and their men startled and vanished as if in flight.
With the meddlers chased off that easily, business opened again. The line had grown so long that from about two in the afternoon we stopped taking anyone else to wait. Even so, the day's trade did not end until late evening.
The front of the shop, where thousands had boiled into a crush, was an utter wreck. I set the slaves to clearing the surroundings, returned to camp, and sat down to the day's reckoning.
Male slaves: 385(Human 259, Orc 126)
Female slaves: 42(Human 9, Orc 33)
Total revenue: 4,210 gold
Four hundred and twenty-seven slaves, gone in a single day. 4,210 gold in all.
Marco, settling the books beside me, looked more than a little shaken by figures he had never seen.
"My word. I truly never thought they would sell this well."
"No?"
"No, sir. Ordinarily the entire slave market moves only a hundred to a hundred and fifty in a day. Our house alone sold three times that."
Watching the surprise on his face was a pleasant thing. At the same time I could picture, without trying, the faces of the other masters.
"The others must have taken quite a shock today."
"Shock doesn't begin to cover it. I caught a word while we were closing up—add together every slave the other houses sold today and it doesn't even reach ten. Right about now every camp is probably clutching its head over how to open tomorrow."
"They will be. Heh heh heh. That's how it should be. That's what I did it for."
"Which is why I mention it—starting tomorrow, the others won't sit still. If things go on like this they'll lose every customer to us, and then the slaves they hauled in from every quarter will all be left as dead stock. One way or another, they'll try to sell their own."
"Is that so? Then we'd better prepare ahead of them. Marco, drop the price again tomorrow."
"Drop it further?! Again!"
"Yes. Down to 7.90 gold."
"Not one gold—two gold at a stroke?! That's far too deep a cut, sir. You don't have to go that far…"
"No. What they'll do tomorrow is obvious. Their goods aren't even markedly better. In the end it's a price fight, and at least one or two of them will match us and come charging in. But come tomorrow, they'll learn who it is they're dealing with."
For an instant a chill raced up Marco's spine. What the guild master had said the evening before suddenly felt real.
In that moment a good line of copy came to him.
"Then, sir—I'll revise the wording on tomorrow's price board as well."
"Oh? Suit yourself on that."
"Yes, sir."
The northern outskirts of Gerona. There the camps of the slave-trading houses, gathered in from every quarter, lay clustered together. As on the day before, the masters assembled in the central tent. The mood, however, was nothing like the previous night's easy warmth. Gloom, anger, and a helpless vexation sat plain on every face. The masters spoke up, each in turn.
"Today's trade was a complete ruin."
"Is that even the problem? The greater trouble is what comes next. Those Sahara bastards have already crashed the price, and the mood of the market is ugly. At the prices we've held until now, selling may well be impossible."
"One bad fish muddies the whole pond, they say. Hah. Where did a lunatic like that even crawl out from."
"And where in the world did the Sahara lot get that many slaves? They left a fortnight ago, did they not? How they gathered numbers like that in the meantime is beyond me."
"I caught a glimpse earlier. A good many of them were Drail slaves."
"Drail? Surely not. By what means does anyone come from there to Gerona in a fortnight?"
"How should I know? I'm only saying that's what it looked like."
"Now, now. What does it matter where they brought them from? Let us discuss how we answer them, starting tomorrow."
"Answer them how? They're selling that cheap. What method is there?"
"He's right. Nothing else will serve. If we mean to face them, we have no choice but to lower the price."
"And how far do you mean to drop it? At that level they're selling with practically nothing left over. They say one ought not deal with a true madman—and this is no different from telling us to suffer for nothing and hand the goods to the customers for free."
"But is there another way? Otherwise tomorrow we'll be swatting flies again, same as today. What do you intend to do? You saw it this morning. The number of slaves they brought. Keep on like this and we may have to turn for home without selling what's left."
It was not that they failed to know. On the contrary, every one of them already knew the answer. They simply could not bring themselves to decide it easily.
"You know what follows if we give ground this time, don't you? Sell at that price and almost nothing remains for us. But we cannot hand him the market whole, not as things stand. The fool is still thrashing about with no sense of the lay of the land—but tomorrow we show him properly. That this trade is not so easy."
At one master's words, the others hardened their resolve as well.
"Very well. So be it. We'll tell ourselves we're taking a bit of a loss. At least it won't be a deficit."
"We'll cut as well. Not to 9.9—straight down to 9 gold. Time we showed that Sahara bastard what for!"
"Good. We'll go to 9 gold too."
"Then it's settled. Let us show him, properly, what business really is!"
The masters put their heads together and settled on the cut. United in the single aim of smashing the Sahara Merchant Group, the houses spent the night in a bustle of preparation for the next day's trade. And so the night passed.