“Nor was your uncle,” he said. “Which is why we’re going to see if House Beguine is more forward-thinking than you stick-in-the muds.”
Arna stirred the rest of the bits of paper that were piled in the small soapstone box his friend had brought.
“Careful,” Vidor told him. “They’re designed to be easy to ignite, and that’s all the samples I have at hand.”
Arna withdrew his hand. “So show me. What makes these marketable?”
“Watch,” said Vidor. He took the twist of paper and, with a quick jerk of the wrist, flicked it on the surface of the table. As it hit, there was a thin pop, and the paper blazed up in a tall flame, bright yellow, then blue as the paper crumbled to ash and the flame died. Curious, Arna rubbed the surface of the table with his finger, feeling only a slight warmth and a few grains of grit. There was a faint brown mark where the paper had flared.
“Useful, no?” said Vidor, his freckled face stretched in a grin.
Arna shrugged. “For what? A couple seconds of light? A trick for the children?”
Vidor shook his head. “You’re spoiled from easy living in this monstrous rock of yours. Come on the road with me, or a tenday exploring the wild, or even spend a day or so in a crofter’s hut. Somewhere where a servant isn’t ready at hand to light a fire whenever you want one. You can spend a few minutes striking flints together, and gods help you if they’re wet. Or maybe you have live coals left from the night before, but most likely not. Or if you’re very lucky, you have a spellcaster to hand. Or you might have a box of these, cheap and handy. All you need is a bed of twigs and tinder, and snap! The cantrip’s already spelled on it. Your weary goodwife needs no spells nor skill, just one of these to flick on the hearth. There’s another to sharpen a dull blade, and another to test if your well water is pure. And we’re working on more.”
“Hmm.” Maybe Vidor had a point. Arna took a twist and imitated Vidor’s action, flicking his wrist as he’d seen his friend do. The paper bounced against the table and emitted a weak fizzle. There was a singed smell in the air and the paper was blackened, but no flame showed.
“Ah, yes.” Vidor looked a little crestfallen. “Unfortunately, the success rate of the lots we’ve produced isn’t as high as we’d like.”
“You mean the fail rate’s higher than you’d like.”
“You need a wizard to impregnate the cantrip papers with the spell. Wizards don’t come cheap-none of the ones worth using, at least. Your workaday goodwife or man-for-hire doesn’t have the coin to pay for a box of these. And those with coin often enough have staff to light a fire, or sharpen the knives, or rid the room of fleas. We need to make them cheap enough to sell to market, so the wizard must work quickly. Out of a lot of twenty, one or two, three maybe, are duds. It won’t matter to the goodwife. She’ll just swear and reach for another, for she can afford plenty.”
He replaced the lid of the soapstone box on the little hoard of cantrip papers with a resigned air.
“Five to fifteen percent,” said Arna. “That’s a little high for a middleman to want to deal with. And the big Houses have their reputations to think of.”
“Hypocrite,” returned Vidor. “We all know the fruit seller who, stuck with a crate of spoiled plums, puts one in each basketful he sells, for no one cares about one bad plum, and that way all share the burden and lose nothing. We all do the same to one degree or another. Finding a shipment of cloth not up to standard and with the seller long gone, doesn’t your uncle sell them as ‘rustic-weave,’ and command as high a price as he can?”
Arna laughed. “Fair enough. So your goodwife might have to use flints for her fire, and sharpen her kitchen knives on her own whetstone. But what if the cantrip fails to tell of the bad water, when folk thought it would?”
Vidor flushed. “I had thought of that. I’ve told my cousin that those spells mustn’t fail, even though we must charge more for them. But as for the rest, they’re a way for those without riches to have the conveniences you and I take for granted.”
“It’s a clever idea, I’ll grant you that,” said Arna, distracted. “Vidor, when is it you go to Turmish?”
“I leave with the mule train tomorrow morning and join the Andula caravan that afternoon,” said Vidor, putting the small box with the fire cantrips away in his leather sample pack.
“And you are determined to solicit the Beguines?”
Vidor gave him an odd look. “We need backing and the promise of a substantial market to produce the cantrip papers, especially if we’re going to improve the reliability. House Jadaren has the scope to support the venture, but your uncle’s not interested. House Beguine’s an obvious place to try before I go farther abroad.”
He pulled the strap tight. “I know there’s bad blood between your Houses, but business is business, and you can’t expect-”
Arna laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you not to go to House Beguine. In fact, I’d like to come with you.”
Vidor shouldered his pack. “As far as Sespech, you mean, as before? And have your uncle skin me alive for not nursemaiding sufficiently far from that merrow-den?”
“No,” said Arna. “I mean to go to Nonthal with you, as your assistant, to trade with the Beguines.”
“Funny,” said Vidor, flatly.
Arna hurried behind him as he left Arna’s rooms, through the maze of passageways that threaded the family quarters of Jadaren Hold.
It was many years since Gareth Jadaren had claimed the Giant’s Fist, shed the name of pirate, married the daughter of one of Beredel’s thanes, and exploited the nascent trade routes branching between Erlkazar and the Unapproachable East, and had finally died old and fat and prosperous, surrounded by his descendants and assured that the name of House Jadaren would endure. Between then and now, the tunnels that threaded the monolith like worms through cheese, excavated by some race lost to recorded history, had been cleared out and expanded by Jadaren workers. Caverns at the base of the gigantic rock were hollowed out further, creating shelter for caravans and great chambers to serve as meeting halls and places to feast and entertain. Additional hollows functioned as storerooms for trading goods as well as for supplies to meet the ongoing needs of the household, the servants, guards, and visitors. Tunnels that branched from both the base of the rock as well and the summit were enlarged until they resembled the hallways of some great palace, with steps carved out of the living rock leading from level to level, allowing easy passage from kitchens to banquet hall, bathing chambers to guest quarters, storerooms to the family’s chambers. Here and there large voids in the body of the monolith were broken into, and proved to be mirror-smooth bubbles of obsidian, or chambers full of white and amethyst crystal.
Sometimes in walking through the passageways that generations of Jadaren chatelaines had striven to make both comfortable and magnificent, laying carpets to cushion the feet and tapestries to delight the eye, it was easy to forget that one was in the center of a block of volcanic rock. Only the lack of outside light and the constant light of spellcast torches, flickering in the currents of air that the ventilation holes drilled perpendicularly through the monolith, spoiled the illusion that Jadaren Hold was like any other merchant’s house.
“I’m serious,” Arna told Vidor as they both squeezed against the wall to allow a servant girl bearing an oversize tray of soiled crockery to go by. “I don’t intend any prank or game. I’ve a good reason to see the Beguines for myself. Or at least one Beguine in particular.”
“Why is that?” asked Vidor. The hallway was clear, and he slowed to allow Arna to catch up with him.
“Because I’m supposed to marry her.”
Vidor stopped so abruptly that Arna had to stumble backward to avoid bumping into him, earning them both a glare from a second servant who was trying to balance a load of clean linens on her head. They both muttered an apology and let her pass before they proceeded, Vidor grasping Arna’s sleeve.