Thrown Out of the Hero Summons for a Worthless Haggling Skill, He Struck a Deal With the Dragon novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The North Bridge

Ryota pulled the nail out of the door, folded the notice and held it out to Gautier.

"I'll pack tonight," he said. "If I'm gone, they've got no reason."

Gautier didn't take the paper.

"The crown gave me this charter twenty-nine years ago," he said. "Nobody's ever taken a thing off me in this street, and a bald man with ink on his fingers isn't going to start."

"They'll shut you down."

"They'll try." Gautier jerked his head at the door. "Get inside. You're letting the heat out."

He'd watched his mother keep Kishibe Shoten open through two recessions and a flood.

She never argued with the landlord. She just made sure he couldn't afford to lose her.

He went in and read the contract board top to bottom.

One paper had been pinned there so long it had gone yellow and curled at the corners.

"The north bridge," he said.

The whole hall groaned.

"There's a troll sitting on it," said the older archer brother. "For a month. The grain carts can't cross the gorge."

"That's why bread's three coppers now," said the candle-seller.

"Two Iron parties went up with swords," Gautier said. "One man came back with his arm in a sling."

"The guild master holds your charter, right?"

"Right."

"Then he has to choose between the Temple being annoyed and the guild being the people who opened the north bridge." Ryota pulled the yellow paper off the board. "I want to make that choice easy for him."

The north bridge was an old stone arch over a gorge so deep the river at the bottom made no sound.

A line of grain carts stretched back along the road, a hundred at least, with their drivers sitting on the wheels.

Somebody had hung washing on a cart shaft, which told Ryota how long they'd been waiting.

In the middle of the bridge sat the troll.

It was the size of a hay wagon and the color of wet granite, with moss in the creases of its arms.

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