So: using the extensive network of sailor acquaintances that Crassus' sea people cultivated while human, the Whale can confirm that the recipient of the grains is a man, Matthias, whose merchant credentials are deeply, suspect. The commercial relationship is new, dating, curiously, to just around the time when the Hand took over supervising the Hive agricultural clusters. Crassus' people have never known him or obtained a protection fee from him, but they recall a Matthias walking Ephes around the time of the Hand's creation. He was noteworthy for being... entirely unremarkable, so much so that no one even recalls his face — and yet, he met with Caius Justus, and apparently gave him some manner of counsel that later influenced the making of the Hand.
no subject
So: using the extensive network of sailor acquaintances that Crassus' sea people cultivated while human, the Whale can confirm that the recipient of the grains is a man, Matthias, whose merchant credentials are deeply, suspect. The commercial relationship is new, dating, curiously, to just around the time when the Hand took over supervising the Hive agricultural clusters. Crassus' people have never known him or obtained a protection fee from him, but they recall a Matthias walking Ephes around the time of the Hand's creation. He was noteworthy for being... entirely unremarkable, so much so that no one even recalls his face — and yet, he met with Caius Justus, and apparently gave him some manner of counsel that later influenced the making of the Hand.