Indeed there was a riverboat waiting in the section of the quay where private craft were allowed to tie up. It was a small, sturdy-looking vessel of the kind known as a trappagasis, made of grease-caulked planks fastened together not with nails but thick black cords of guellum fiber. At bow and stern it bore weatherbeaten figureheads that might once have been representations of sea-dragons. Its captain—most likely its builder, too—was a sleepy-looking old Skandar whose gray-blue fur had faded almost to white. He sat slouchingly in the stern, looking patiently upward at the darkening sky, with his four arms wrapped about his barrel of a chest as though he were thinking of settling in for a nap.
Gialaurys, who was fluent in the Skandar dialect, went to him to speak about booking passage. And returned, after a brief discussion that did not appear to have gone well for him, wearing a very strange expression on his face.
“What is it, Gialaurys?” asked Prestimion. “Is it that he’s not for hire?”
“He tells me, lordship, that it’s unwise to travel downriver at this time of day, because this is the hour when the Coronal Lord Prestimion usually sails upstream in his great yacht toward his palace.”
“The Coronal Lord Prestimion, you say?”
“Indeed. The newly crowned master of the world: none other than the Coronal Lord Prestimion. The Skandar advises me that he has taken up residence of late in Stee, and makes the river journey every night from his friend Count Fisiolo’s palace to his own. There are some evenings, he says, when the Coronal Lord is in exuberant spirits and pleased to hurl purses full of ten-crown pieces to the boatmen that he passes on the way; but on other evenings, when his mood is more somber, the Coronal Lord has been known to order his pilot to ram into any boats that take his fancy the wrong way, and sink them. No one interferes with this, because he is the Coronal, after all. Our Skandar here prefers to wait until Lord Prestimion has gone past before taking on any passengers. For safety’s sake, he says.”
“Ah. The Coronal Lord Prestimion has a palace in Stee?” Prestimion said, bemused. This was all very curious. “Why, I had no idea! And diverts himself at sundown by sinking riverboats at random?—We need to know more about this, I think.”
“In truth we do,” said Septach Melayn.
This time all three of them went down to the quay. Gialaurys once again told the Skandar they wished to engage his services; and when the Skandar threw both his upper arms upward in a gesture of refusal, Septach Melayn drew forth his velvet purse and allowed the glint of silver-hued five-crown pieces to be seen. The boatman stared.
“What’s your usual fare for the journey up to the next quay, fellow?”
“Three crowns fifty weights. But—”
Septach Melayn held up two bright shining coins. “Here we have ten crowns. That is a tripling of your fare, eh? Will that entice you, perhaps?”
Morosely the Skandar said, “And if the Coronal Lord takes it into his head to sink my boat? Just last Twoday he sank Friedrag’s, he did, and three weeks past it was Rhez-megas’s that went down. If he sinks mine, what becomes of my livelihood, then? I’m not young, good sire, and the task of building boats is far too much for me now. Your ten crowns will do me precious little good if I lose my boat.”
Prestimion made a quick sign, just the littlest flick of his fingertips. Septach Melayn jingled his purse again and a heavy silver coin of impressive size, one that made the five-crown pieces look like trifles, dropped into his palm. He held it up. “Do you know what this thing is, friend?”
The Skandar’s eyes grew wide. “A ten-royal piece, is it?”
“Ten royals, yes. One hundred crowns, that is to say. And look: here’s a second one, and a third. No need to build a new trappagasis, eh? You should be able to buy yourself another one, don’t you think, with thirty royals? That’ll be your indemnity, if the Coronal Lord’s in a ship-sinking mood tonight. Well? What do you say, fellow?”
Hoarsely the Skandar replied, “May I see one of those things, lordship?”
“I’m no lord, fellow, simply a well-to-do merchant come over from Gimkandale town with my friends, here to see the wonders of Stee.—You think the money’s false, do you?”
“Oh, no, lordship, no, no!” A busy fluttering of deprecatory gestures, all four hands touching forehead, came from the Skandar. “It’s only that I’ve never as much as seen a ten-royaler, never once ever in my life! Let alone possessing one. May I have a look? And then I’ll take you where you want to go, sure enough!”
Septach Melayn handed one of the big coins across. The Skandar studied it with awe, as though it were some gem of rare hue: turning it over and over, rubbing his hairy fingers across the faces it bore, the Coronal Lord Confalume on the obverse and the late Pontifex Prankipin on the other side. Then, with a trembling hand, he returned it. “Ten royals! What a sight that is to me, I can hardly tell you! Get in, lordships! Get in, get in!”
When the three of them were aboard, the huge old man rose and pushed out into the stream. But he could not seem to get over having handled a coin of such great value. Again and again he shook his head and stared at the fingers that had handled the shining piece.
As the trappagasis moved out into the river, Prestimion, who like most of the lords of Castle Mount had never had much occasion to handle money, leaned across toward Septach Melayn and murmured, “Tell me, what will one of those coins buy?”
“A tenner? A fine thoroughbred mount, I’d say. Or a few months’ lodging at a decent hostelry, or enough of the good wine of Muldemar to satisfy a year’s thirst, at least. It’s probably as much as our boatman’s able to earn in six or seven months. And probably near as much as this boat of his is worth.”
“Ah,” said Prestimion, struggling to grasp the dimensions of the gulf that separated this Skandar’s existence from his. There were, he was aware, coins of higher denomination even than the tens, a fifty-royal piece and a hundred-royal one also, actually: he had just the other day approved the designs for the whole series of new coins that would soon bear his own visage along with that of the Pontifex Confalume.
One hundred royals, though—represented by a single thick coin that Septach Melayn might be carrying in his purse even now—why, that was an inconceivable fortune for the common folk of the world, who dealt in humble bronze weight pieces and shiny one-crown coins that contained just a bit of silver much alloyed with copper. The royal-denominated coinage might just as well be the money of some other world, for all the bearing it had on the everyday lives of these people.
It was sobering and instructive for him to contemplate that, in view of all the times he had seen the likes of Dantirya Sambail or Korsibar casually wagering fifty and a hundred royals at a time at the Castle games. There is much I still need to learn, he thought, about this world that has made me its king.
The creaking old trappagasis made its leisurely way downstream, the Skandar, in the stern, now and then putting a hand on the tiller to keep it in mid-channel. The river was inordinately wide and almost sluggish here, though Prestimion knew that matters changed beyond the city, where the great stream shattered against the row of low jagged hills known as the Hand of Lord Spadagas and broke up into a multitude of unimportant riverlets that lost themselves in the lower reaches of the Mount.