Colemenoport
Offices of Tree-and-Dragon Trade Mission
“Trader.” Jes dea’Tolin looked up from her screen with a smile. Dyoli and Mar Tyn were standing one on each side of her desk, faces serious, postures alert.
Padi paused to consider the picture thus made. “Virtue flanked by the guards to her honor,” she said, as one making a call in a game of Tableau. “I hope I’m not to be cast as Wickedness.”
“Far from it!” Jes cried. “You are Fortune Herself!”
This was an unusually gay mood, Padi thought, even as she bowed.
“A much more apt role. I allow it.” She came closer to the desk, noting that the blue light indicating a transmission line to the Passage was open, was lit. She felt a spike of excitement.
“Is it ready?” she asked.
“Only this moment compiled and queued,” Mar Tyn said. “We were about to call you.”
“And here I am.” She opened her arms and caught Jes’s eye. “At will, Qe’andra dea’Tolin.”
“Trader,” Jes murmured, glancing down at her keyboard. She tapped in a rapid sequence.
The transmission light flickered, there was a breathless moment…two…
“We have an ack,” Jes said, and sat back, grinning.
“The Colemeno Whole Port Inventory has been submitted to Master Trader yos’Galan for review. It is done, and, if I may say it, done well.” She rose and bowed as to valued comrades.
“I could not have been more fortunate in my team or in my trade liaison. All of us know that the master trader’s timetable was ambitious in the extreme, and we may take pride, that we met—no! we exceeded—the demands of that challenge. I stand in awe of us, and of our accomplishment.”
“We could not have succeeded so well without your experience, courage, and guidance,” Padi said, producing a bow of her own—honor to the team.
She straightened and considered them: Jes glowing; Dyoli radiating satisfaction; even Mar Tyn alight with pleasure.
“This,” she said, flinging a hand toward the now-dark transmission light, “calls for wine! I invite you all to my office, that we may drink to a challenge well-met, and to our future profit.”