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brightened. Barret’s Coffee House was one of the places he wished to visit, and having a social call to make upon one of the solicitors who plied their business there was an eminently acceptable reason.
    They headed to the area of the city known locally as the Merchants’ Quarter, even though it held only a slightly higher percentage of businesses than elsewhere in the city. What marked the Merchants’ Quarter was a high number of very costly homes, many erected behind or above the stores that generated their wealth, the highest concentration of influential men who were not nobility.
    The craftsmen had their guilds—the thieves, too: the Mockers—and the nobility had their rank from birth, but men who pursued their fortune through commerce and trade had only their wits. While a few of them had banded together to create trade associations from time to time, most were independent businessmen without allies but with many competitors.
    So those who survived and became successful had few peers with whom to share their pride of accomplishment, few fellows with whom to boast oftheir good fortune and perspicacity. A few, like a merchant Roo had met named Helmut Grindle, kept their appearance modest, as if to call attention to themselves might bring ruin. But others chose to shout their success to the world by building huge town houses, rivaling those owned by the nobility, throughout the city. And over the years the nature of the Merchants’ Quarter had changed.
    As more and more rich merchants purchased property in the area, the cost of land rose so high that now few businesses in the Merchants’ Quarter were owned by those who lived there; the price of housing was too dear. There were a few modest storefront enterprises, established by the fathers or grandfathers of those tending them now, that continued to provide conventional goods and services to those in the area—a bakery on one street, a cobbler on another—but they were quickly being replaced by shops specializing in luxurious items for these very wealthy merchants: jewelers, tailors of the finest clothing, and traders in rare goods. And those who lived in the Merchants’ Quarter were now almost exclusively these very wealthy businessmen, those with far-flung financial empires elsewhere in the province or in distant cities. In time the last of the modest merchants would sell their property, as the offers to buy became too good to refuse, and relocate to more distant quarters in the foulburg,
that expanding portion of the city beyond the old wall.
    Barret’s Coffee House stood at the corner of a street now known as Arutha’s Way, in honor of the late Prince of Krondor, father to the King—but still called by most locals Sandy Beach Walk—and Miller’s Road, a route that had once led from a millno longer extant to a farmer’s gate long torn down. Barret’s was a tall building, three stories, with two open doors at the corner, one on each street. Standing in each door was a waiter: a man with a white tunic, black trousers, black boots, and a blue-and-white-striped apron.
    The three other street corners were occupied by a tavern, a ship’s broker, and, diagonally across the street from Barret’s, an abandoned home. It had once been splendid, perhaps one of the finest in Krondor, but misfortune had cost its owner dearly from all appearances. It had been neglected long before it was abandoned, and its past glory was now faded by peeling paint, boarded-up windows, missing tiles from the roof, and dirt everywhere.
    Roo glanced at that building. “Maybe someday I’ll buy that house and fix it up.”
    Erik smiled. “I don’t doubt it, Roo.”
    Roo and Erik walked past the waiter standing at the door on Miller’s Road, and entered. The two outside doors opened on a simple receiving area, offering several well-upholstered chairs, but otherwise closed off from the main floor of the