Chapter 7

Antal woke early the next morning with a weight on his chest and hair tickling his nose. He smiled thinking it was Catalyn who had crawled back on him sometime while he was asleep. After the joyful news was let out of the bag so to speak she seemed to recover from her despondency over the treatment Katta et al. were scheduled to receive and rode him to another very satisfying orgasm. Afterwards she had crawled off and snuggled in beside him. Without opening his eyes he chuckled and brought his hand up to stroke her hair. What his hand found though was a form far too small to be Catalyn's since even at the young age of sixteen she was close to her full woman's body.

His eyes popped open in surprise and he froze with a grunt. It was Piroska curled up on his stomach and chest like a cat holding little Zsotia next to her! She mewled and frowned in her sleep at his movement but didn't wake up.

"Ilona," he called out softly. "Ilona?"

"Hmm," Ilona yawned and stretched from the other side of a softly snoring Catalyn and looked over at him with sleepy eyes. "Yes?" Her eyes popped open when she saw his burden, smiled and chuckled very softly.

"You have a visitor," she whispered.

"You noticed?" he whispered back sarcastically. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I would think a big strong man like you would be able to move a tiny little girl — two tiny little girls — without much trouble," she grinned propping her head up to look at him. Seeing his frustration as he moved his hands around trying to find a good way to get hold of them, she took pity and reached out meaning to stroke the child's face to wake her up. At exactly that time baby Zsotia began fussing and Piroska's eyes popped open wide and she looked around, obviously afraid.

"It's all right, honey," she cooed as she stroked the child's cheek. Piroska shied back from the touch at first looking at the older woman fearfully and then glancing around until she saw Antal looking down at her.

"It's okay," he agreed and smiled at her. "You're not in trouble."

"I think little Zsotia is waking up and will want to be fed soon," Ilona grimaced. "Welcome to the wonderful world of babies."

Piroska nodded and tried to move around without falling off on either Catalyn or Barbala.

"Here," Antal reached up to steady the tiny bundle. "You crawl off the end of the bed there and I'll hand Zsotia to you." The little red-head nodded solemnly and started to ease her way backwards off the bed on her hands and knees. Once she was standing at the foot of the bed Antal handed her the tiny bundle that was crying weakly by that time. Ilona sighed and rolled out of the bed leaving Antal sandwiched in between Barbala and Catalyn.

"Come along, little one," Ilona sighed pushing a slightly resistant Piroska before her. Looking back over her shoulder she asked, "I assume you'll be staying home today?"

"Yeah, I'll be getting up in a minute or two," he answered glancing at the glow from the pale pink morning light striking the curtains over the windows.

"Take your time," Ilona insisted as she stopped at the doorway her hands on Piroska's shoulders. "You need the sleep and Bala has been feeling woozy in the morning lately. Cat could probably use a little extra sleep, too."

"Barbala's been feeling bad?" he asked with dismay. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it's perfect normal for some women to feel poorly in the morning during the first part of their pregnancy," she replied. "Luckily I never did with you and I don't seem to be cursed with it now. She'll be fine but it would be a kindness if you would let her sleep a little later."

"Of course," he said shaking his head. Once Ilona had pushed her charge through the doorway Antal rolled over and spooned up against Barbala's back and reached around to gently rub her stomach.

"That feels nice," she said drowsily. "It doesn't help, but it does feel nice."

"I'm sorry you feel bad," he whispered in her ear.

"You're the only man I know that would give a crap," she chuckled and twisted around to give him a kiss. "Not a very imposing master, if your loving slave might remark. Most masters — or husbands for that matter — would just beat me until I got out of bed and got on with the chores."

"Well that has been noted before," he grinned. "Besides I think we have more than enough hands to do any amount of chores we have around here. In fact the real problem may be finding enough for everybody to do to keep busy. That, and beating you sounds like a lot of work."

"You are very special, my master," she whispered. "I hope I reward you with a fine strong son."

"I hope so too," he chuckled. "This place is fair to bursting with women and baby girls as it is. I wouldn't worry about it though; the last one you had turned out to be a pretty cute little thing so you do a reasonably good job with daughters also." He leaned over and kissed her cheek then slid out of bed looking to take a piss and get some breakfast.

Later that morning he was sitting in his chair frowning over a duty list while Barbala and Catalyn cleaned up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen. Ilona was instructing Katta in the resizing of a dress while Piroska sat on the floor scrunched up against his legs watching intently as Vrsula suckled both Dorottya and little Zsotia.

"Ilona, you did say this was the latest sheet the Customs Office put out, didn't you?" he asked.

"Yes, dear," she said pausing mid-needle stroke and looking up. "I picked it up yesterday as usual. The funny thing was there seemed to be a lot more of them there than there usually are. Almost like nobody else was picking them up."

"I'm not surprised," he grunted. "If this is correct, they've doubled the duty on everything and added a few new items to the list. With this and the extra bite the Customs Master squeezes out, I doubt if anybody would bother picking one up at all." There was a knock at the door and Ilona nodded for Katta to answer it. A minute later Gyorgy strolled in only looking slightly worse for wear from his night of carousing.

"Hey, these three clean up pretty well," he said looking around at the three new girls. "Hi, Ilona. Oh, I see you got the latest shit right out of the toilet," he grunted waving towards the sheet Antal was holding.

"Yeah," Antal grumbled back. Reaching down he patted Piroska on the head and said, "Little one, you don't have to sit there; it can't be comfortable." Quick as a flash Piroska slid up and into his lap scrunching back into his chest. "Well that's not exactly what I meant," he mumbled. "But what the hell." Ilona and Katta laughed while Vrsula's mouth twitched in what could have been a smile.

Ignoring his new lap cat he looked back at Gyorgy and continued, "If their intention is to shut down all shipping through Eregli this seems like a damn good way to do it. Did you happen to hear anything while you were out fucking your way through the whorehouses?"

"As a matter of fact I did," he sighed as he sat down on a stool and wiped his brow. "I heard plenty and let me tell you ain't none of it good. Leastwise for Eregli, that's for sure; might be some opportunity for us, though, if you know what I mean."

Antal motioned for him to continue.

"Word is there hasn't been a ship from any of the major lines in here for over a week and the scuttlebutt is they ain't planning to come back. Most are bypassing Eregli completely and putting in at either Batumi or Meyisti," Gyorgy continued with a slight smirk which quickly disappeared.

"I don't have to tell you it's going to get ugly out there real quick-like," he said now frowning. "It ain't like Eregli imports its food or anything like that but without it there sure as shit ain't going to be any money to buy it from the farms. Heard tell more than a few of the farmers are holding back from coming to market; the price of food is already starting to go up.

"The only good thing, if you can call it that, is that it looks like there are going to be fewer mouths to feed," he continued. "Seems like there are a lot of people packing up and heading out, either up to Corum, Batumi or even Meyisti."

"That's bad," Antal nodded stroking Piroska's hair absentmindedly. "But it can't be good for Corum either. I wonder how long before they start to feel the effect of this madness."

"I don't think Corum would even notice if all of Eregli packed up and moved in with them," Gyorgy chuckled.

"No, but they will be feeling the effects of shipping costs soon enough," Antal replied absently his eyes staring over their heads but seeing nothing. "Batumi is still in our province but on the other side of the mountains. The cartage alone will be almost triple what it would be from here. Of course that's assuming whoever's pulling the strings on this farce isn't doing the same in Batumi. If they are or start to do it there ... Well, Meyisti isn't even in our province and it's even farther away. A lot of Corum's income comes from transshipping goods on into Eskisehir. If it's going through Meyisti," he paused and shrugged, "I doubt it will end up going through Corum."

"Doesn't the Herceg see this?" Gyorgy asked shaking his head. "Is he so much the fool?"

"I don't know about him being a fool," Antal answered. "But he is young — younger than we are, even. If I remember he reaches his majority soon but I'm not exactly sure when. Still that's only eighteen and while that may seem like a fine age to the two of us it's still pretty young. It may very well be he knows and can't do anything about it or it may be the advice he is getting is ... inadequate.

"Either way that's his problem not ours," Antal sighed and looked back towards Gyorgy. "You were right about one thing: This definitely looks like a golden opportunity for those of us outside the normal shipping channels, so to say. Prices are going to be going way up. Why don't you see if the rest of the Guild members are willing to sit down and talk about this situation, Gyorgy?"

The Smuggler's Guild Antal referred too wasn't an officially sanctioned trade group like the Stonemasons or the Merchants Guild, of course. It was more a loose association of the leaders of the more prominent smuggling clans and higher-profile independents. Antal fit in as one of the independents since he wasn't associated with any of the family clans. His ownership of four of the small smuggling craft was respectable although it didn't substantially compare to a few of the larger families that operated up to twenty of the small craft and the even fewer that used larger mother ships to supply their smaller stealthier vessels.

"Sure, Antal," Gyorgy nodded. "I can't see that would be a problem. There are already more than a few going gold-blind and dreaming about what they're going to buy with their new-found wealth. My guess is they'll want to make sure nobody is going to horn in on their turf and will be more than happy to sit down and split up the pie."

"Yeah well don't start getting that dust in your eyes yourself, friend," Antal cautioned. "The skimmers (a semi-derogatory term used for customs agents by smugglers in reference to their propensity to "skim" the best off the top of any shipment) aren't going to just lie down and disappear and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't end up getting a little extra help once our enlightened rulers see just how much their revenue is going to drop here in the near future."

"Hmm," Gyorgy muttered stroking his chin thoughtfully. "You could be right. So what do you plan to do about it?"

"Not much, actually," Antal admitted. "I plan to keep doing exactly what we've been doing. Making the runs upriver and letting the farmers get the goods back into the city."

"The profit will be much larger if we bring it here directly," Gyorgy pointed out.

"It always has been," Antal nodded as he stroked Piroska's hair like she was a kitten sitting in his lap. "But it's also a hell of a lot more dangerous. Sure, there are a lot of places to pull into that should be out of the way but I'm not liking what I think the new odds are."

The city of Eregli spread out along the Bay of Eregli like the crescent of a quarter-moon. The best facilities and docks along with the Imperial warehouses were at the west end of the crescent next to the mouth of the river's main channel. On the far side of the river channel were the swamps and estuaries through which Antal and his crews did most of their traveling, becoming increasingly poorer and less well patrolled towards the other tip of the crescent where the Eregli fishing fleet and fish markets were concentrated.

Hidden among the multitude of these small craft leaving and returning every day were a fair percentage of Eregli's smugglers. For the most part it was cost-prohibitive and manpower-intensive to make any real attempt to regulate this traffic so it had been the practice of the Customs Master and his agents to turn a blind eye to them.

"If the legit commercial traffic really does start avoiding the Imperial docks — and I have to believe it probably will —" he continued, "you can bet your last copper that they're going to start paying attention to whom and what is coming in with the fishing fleet. It's a big bay but it's not that big.

"Sure you cut out the middleman if you bring it directly into Eregli," he shrugged. "But I'm betting we can still make a good profit upriver and to tell the truth I'd rather be rich and live to enjoy it than filthy rich and dangling at the end of a rope."

"Well it certainly sounds better when you put it that way," Gyorgy grinned. I'm a bit partial to having my neck staying the same length it is right now. So, is that what you're going to tell the rest of them?"

"I'm going to tell them I intend to keep doing what I've been doing and stay out of their way," Antal stated pointedly. "I seriously doubt they give a rat's ass what small-time operators like us do and I'd like to keep it that way. I don't believe many of them will think the upriver trade worth their while; in fact a lot of them can't do it since they draft too much. It would be best for us if they know what we're doing while making it appear they shouldn't care what we're doing."

"You're the boss," Gyorgy shrugged again as he stood up. "I'll start spreading it around that you think there should be a meeting of the Guild. Most of the independents will come, I'm sure, and the other small operators but I'm not too sure about the big clans."

"Don't tell anyone that I'm the one who's asking for it," Antal grinned. "Just let it be known that someone is getting one organized. I'll bet as soon as one of the clans hears about it they'll think it was one of the other clans and start getting it set up to beat them to it."

"You're a sneaky bastard, you know that?" Gyorgy returned the grin. "I'll bet one of these days we'll be one of those clans."

"Let's survive this first, then we'll worry about setting you up on a clan council," Antal returned gravely. Gyorgy nodded and left.