The rumors did not travel along the King's Highway. They bypassed the physical mud entirely, moving through the capital's merchant quarter with the frictionless speed of panicked capital.
By dawn, the cobblestone square of the primary market was buzzing with a low, frantic energy. Men who traded in futures, logistics, and bulk commodities stood in tight clusters near the fountain, their ledgers open, their voices hushed but sharp. The information Vivian von Pendelton had planted the previous afternoon had taken root and blossomed into a financial earthquake.
"Miller's Ridge opens in a week," a spice merchant muttered, scratching out a line on his slate and rewriting a new delivery date. "They finished the shale grading entirely."
