Anya Fromell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Anya spread a worn map across the teahouse table and traced her finger along the coastal route. She needed to know every port where ships docked, every crossroad where merchants stopped to rest. The recruiter office had taught her that information flowed wherever people gathered to trade stories and goods. Now she had to find those places herself. She rolled up the map, grabbed her keys, and headed for the cargo jeep. The forest roads would take her north to the next trading post, where she could introduce herself to the right people and plant the first seeds of her network. The jeep bounced over dirt roads for two hours before she spotted the wooden arch ahead. Bronze plaques covered its surface, listing distant lands she'd only heard about in sailor stories. She stopped the vehicle and walked closer, reading each name carefully. Someone had built connections that reached every place on these plaques. If they could do it, so could she. The arch proved her dream wasn't impossible. Past the arch, she found a marketplace hall with a high wooden roof held up by thick logs. Merchants sat at long tables, arguing about wagon repairs and river floods. A few glanced at her as she walked between the benches. She listened to them share news about blocked roads and new vendors. This was exactly what she'd hoped to find. A place where traders gathered naturally, where information changed hands with every conversation. Near the hall's entrance, a wooden tower stood decorated with a painted ship wheel and a navy flag at the top. It marked another recruiter office, just like the one back home. Anya smiled. Sailors stopped here too, which meant she could find contacts who traveled between this post and the coastal docks. She pulled out her notebook and wrote down three things: the hall's busy afternoon hours, the types of goods being discussed, and a plan to return next week. Her network was starting to take shape, one trading post at a time.