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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 3134322" data-attributes="member: 3448">Lady Sepulva shook her head.  “Such a shame.  I’m glad you had enough sense to stay safe, Brian,” she added warmly as she moved a little closer to him.  From the panicked look in his eyes, she was confident that he wasn’t thinking too much about her questions or whether he should answer them.  “Do you have any idea why the Duke has started charging such high tariffs?  It has to hurt his revenues as badly as anyone’s, with the more marginal merchants getting lost in the wilderness or cutting back on their trips to the Spice Lands.”“I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it has to do with the krif smuggling.  I was approached about participating in the smuggling two years ago, but the danger is laughable.  Smuggling krif carries the death penalty under the Archduchess’s law, and no amount of profit is worth the risk.”“What about Brightspan?  Does he take it as seriously?”“I should say so… he impaled the merchants he caught smuggling it.”Lady Sepulva thought about what she knew about krif.  A nasty narcotic, very addictive, and very rare in Drucien.  “Where did the krif come from?  Can it grow in the Spice Lands?”“That’s part of the strangest thing.  They must have imported it from off Drucien, because it doesn’t grow here at all.  As far as I know, the only places krif can be grown are in the Empire of Krashmere and deep in the south of the Palood in the Shadowlands.”“If they’re shipping it in from Khamista or Zest’qua, do you know what their route is?”“Not for sure, but it must be coming in through the old ports of the South Kingdoms.  Although that’s strange too… I don’t see how the Skaven could be directly involved in the krif trade.  If they were trying to ship a drug north, wouldn’t they use that dust they’re all addicted to?”Lady Sepulva nodded thoughtfully.  “It’s such a relief that you didn’t get involved in any of that, my dear boy.  I assume that the people who did were struggling anyway, relying on other smuggling to get by.”“No, no.  The first one caught was Benjamin Lapelle, whose family had been in the business for centuries.”“Perhaps it was planted, or smuggled by one of his underlings without his knowledge?”“That’s what I thought at first, but he confessed:  it was in his stock.  Apparently didn’t say anything beyond his admission, though.”  Penthorpe shook his head.  “He was the first one impaled, and I presumed we would never hear of it again.  But then two more were impaled, and one shot down after disposing of his stash in a nearby stream, if you believe the rumors.”“Simple greed, perhaps?  You said they tried to recruit you-- they must have offered quite a high premium.”“Oh, they did indeed.  That was the first thing that warned me that something was amiss.  A man approached me in the Spice Lands, when I was conducting my regular purchases, although I had never met him before.  He offered an enormous sum of money to move a small package.  I thought about accepting, but it was too much money for any normal trade, so demanded to know what it was.  When he admitted that it was krif, I told him to find another mark.  And then I guess he found Benjamin.”“Where did he want it delivered?  Were they trying to smuggle it here, or on to Enclaves or some other northern destination.”“I don’t know for sure.  He only asked me to take it to Canberry City.  The strangest thing was where he wanted me to take the package:  to a nunnery, of all places!  I was to deliver it to the Mother Superior herself.”“Scandalous!” gasped Lady Sepulva, although with a glimmer in her eye that suggested this was precisely the sort of scandal she liked to gossip about.  “What order had become so depraved?”Penthorpe thought for a moment.  “I think it was the Order of Blessed Hope.”Lady Sepulva shook her head.  “Shocking.  Such a terrible thing.  Oh, one last thing.  What did the man who tried to hire you look like?  Should I chance to meet him in my trading ventures, I want to know to avoid him.”Penthorpe relaxed at the thought that he would finally be able to leave Lady Sepulva’s grasp.  “He was of medium height, with angular features.  His hooked nose and protruding chin stood out the most, although I also noticed he had reddish hair, which is not common in the Spice Lands.”“Thank you,” said Lady Sepulva, patting Penthorpe’s cheek.  “I’m so glad to have met you, and I look forward to strengthening our friendship in the years to come.”“Yes, of course,” replied Penthorpe, a rigid smile on his face.  As soon as he could, he backed away, dabbing at his nose emphatically with his handkerchief and then practically running up the stairs to his seat.  In his haste to flee, he missed the amused smile on Lady Sepulva’s face.</blockquote>

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