Pax tests the guild feed, proves it caused coal fever, and offers honest prices to the town miller before the hatc...
By dawn, Pax had learned that seven hungry hatchlings could make bankruptcy sound personal. They scraped claws along the stone bays, rattled empty troughs, and hissed whenever the Brass Wing feed sacks came too close. The coal-scaled smallest one had crawled onto Pax's boot and fallen asleep there like a hot brick with opinions. Lina set three bowls on the workbench: guild mash, plain mountain oats, and a clean ember mix she had improvised from cracked barley, salamander salt, and the last honest charcoal in the shed.
"Do not guess," she said. "Dragons die when merchants guess." Pax placed a pinch of each feed on warmed slate. The guild mash smoked gray and left a bitter crust. The oats browned. The ember mix released a steady red glow that made the hatchlings go silent. Cinder, because Pax had named the coal-scaled one after the burn mark on the deed, lifted his head. His fever sparks changed from green to orange. "That is admissible in a feed dispute?" Pax asked. Lina gave him a look. "It is admissible in a living throat."
Master Vey arrived with two debt riders before the hatchlings finished the test. "Inspection," he said. "Your collateral appears distressed." Pax pointed to the smoking slate. "Your feed appears fraudulent." Vey smiled. "A failed trader's opinion." Pax held up his pawn ticket instead of arguing. His trade rings, the last polished proof he had ever belonged in merchant halls, were now worth three sacks of clean barley and a delivery promise from Coalstep Mill. "Not opinion. Replacement cost. I will post the numbers in the market."
"You cannot undercut guild feed without route rights," Vey said. "I can buy grain at the gate and carry it on my back if I must." Lina snorted. "He will die on the second hill." "Then sell me a cart." "With what money?" Cinder solved the discussion by coughing one clear flame over the ember mix and then biting the bowl so no one could take it. The other hatchlings surged forward. Pax and Lina worked shoulder to shoulder, spacing bowls, cooling overheated snouts, and moving the weakest away from the frantic wingbeats.
The pawn broker made him remove the trade rings one by one. Pax had worn them after every failed venture because polished failure still looked like belonging from a distance. The broker weighed them with less ceremony than the market used for onions. "Bad week?" she asked. Pax looked through the shop window toward Lina's cart, where Cinder hissed at anyone who came too near the clean feed sacks. "Possibly the first honest one." He took the coins and paid for barley, salamander salt, and two cracked heat tiles no sane merchant would buy. The receipt hurt more than the rings. It was the first bill that pointed toward survival instead of display.
The miller inspected the ember mix with a baker's seriousness. "Too much salamander salt and they burn hot, not long." Pax wrote that beneath the cost line. A cheaper mistake was still a mistake if it left wings shaking at altitude.
By noon, Coalstep's miller stood at the hatchery gate, arms crossed over a flour-streaked apron. "You want credit after losing three caravans and buying a dragon ruin?" "I want feed at an honest price, posted publicly, paid from first delivery revenue." The miller looked past him to Cinder, whose fever had dropped enough for the hatchling to glare. "Can those little monsters fly medicine over North Pass by noon?" Pax looked at the cracked warmstones, the hungry bays, and the guild riders waiting for him to fail. "Not today," he said. "But give me a sack, a cart, and one hour, and I can prove why they will."