“Ah, here’s my father now,” Varaile said.
She clapped her hands and instantly a liveried servant entered by a door to the left, carrying a chair so elaborately inlaid with jewels and rare metals that it seemed very much like a throne; and at the same moment, through a door at the opposite side of the parlor, Simbilon Khayf entered briskly, offered curt nods to his unexpected guests, and took the noble seat that had been provided for him. He was uglier even than Prestimion remembered from the one quick glimpse of him he had had during Coronation week: a hard-faced little man with a big nose and thin cruel lips, whose most conspicuous feature was a great excessive mound of silvery hair that he wore absurdly piled up atop his head. He was dressed with pretentious formality, a maroon waistcoat shot through with glittering metallic strands over close-fitting blue breeches trimmed with red satin braid.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands together in what was perhaps the involuntary gesture of a hungry tradesman scenting a deal, “so there’s been some confusion about an appointment, is there? Because, I tell you plainly, I can recall nothing whatsoever about having agreed to see three merchants of Gimkandale this evening at my home. But I didn’t get where I was by turning away honest business out of false pride, eh? I am at your service, gentlemen.—My daughter has been treating you well, I hope?”
“Magnificently, sir,” said Prestimion. He raised his glass. “This wine—the best I’ve ever tasted!”
“Of the Coronal’s own cellars,” replied Simbilon Khayf. “The finest Muldemar, it is. We drink nothing else.”
“How enviable,” said Prestimion gravely. “I am named Polivand, sir; my partner to the left is Simrok Morlin, and over here, sir, is Gheveldin, who comes originally from Piliplok.”
He paused. This was a tense moment. Simbilon Khayf had attended the coronation banquet; since he had been in the company of Count Fisiolo that day, he must have been seated reasonably close to the high dais. Could the thought be dawning in him that the three merchants before him in his parlor were in fact the Coronal Lord Prestimion, the High Counsellor Septach Melayn, and the Grand Admiral Gialaurys, all of them tricked out in ridiculous disguise? And, if he had seen through their false whiskers, was he even now on the verge of blurting out some stupid question about their reasons for this remarkable attempt at deception? Or would he hold back to see what hand the Coronal might be playing?
He gave no clue. He looked complacent and even a bit bored, as a man of his stature in the world of business might well be when finding himself in the uninvited and unanticipated presence of such a trio of nobodies. Either he was a superb actor—which was altogether conceivable, considering his astounding ascent to immense wealth in just a few years—or he did in fact believe that his visitors were what they claimed to be and nothing more, earnest businessmen of Gimkandale with a proposition to set before him, and that they did indeed have an appointment with him that he somehow had forgotten.
Prestimion proceeded smoothly onward. “Shall I tell you why we’re here, good Simbilon Khayf? It is that we have developed a machine for keeping business accounts and other financial records, a machine far more efficient and swift than any now available.”
“Indeed,” said Simbilon Khayf, without much display of interest. He rested his hands on his belly and steepled his fingers. His eyes, which were icy and unpleasant, showed the beginnings of a glare. Evidently he had come to an instant appraisal of the prospects that these visitors offered, and found not much here to interest him.
“There’ll be immense demand for it once it’s on the market,” Prestimion continued fervently, with a show of eager need. “Such immense demand that great quantities of borrowed capital will be required to finance the expansion of our factory. And therefore—”
“Yes. I see the rest. You have brought with you, of course, a working model of your device?”
“We had one, yes,” said Prestimion, sounding stricken. “But there was an unfortunate accident on the river—”
Septach Melayn took up the tale. “The boat which we hired to take us from Vildivar Quay to a landing nearer to your house came perilous close to overturning, sir, in a collision that we almost had with a great ship of the river that charged right down upon us, giving us no room, no room whatever,” he said, with such hayseed earnestness that it was all Prestimion could do to keep from bursting into laughter. “We might have drowned, sir! We clung hard to our seats, sir, and managed to stay inside the boat and save ourselves; but two pieces of our luggage went over the side. Including, sir, I am most regretful to tell you, the one—”
“That contained the model of your device. I see,” said Simbilon Khayf drily. “What an unfortunate loss.” There was little sympathy in his tone. But then he chuckled. “You must have had an encounter with our mad Coronal, is what it sounds like to me. A great garish ludicrous-looking yacht, with lights all over it, was it, that tried to run you down in the middle of the river?”
“Yes!” cried Prestimion and Gialaurys, both at once. “Yes, that’s it exactly, sir!”
“True enough,” added Septach Melayn. “It come a foot or two closer to us and we’d have been smashed to smithereens. To utter absolute smithereens, sir!”
“The Coronal is mad, is that what you said?” Prestimion asked, evincing an expression of the keenest curiosity. “I fail to take your meaning, I think. The Coronal Lord, surely, is atop Castle Mount at this moment, and we have no reason to believe his mind’s in any way impaired, do we? For that would be a terrible thing, if the new Coronal should be—”
“You must realize that my father’s not speaking of Lord Prestimion, now,” Varaile put in smoothly. “As you say, there’s every reason to believe that Lord Prestimion’s as sane as you or I. No, this is a local madman he means, a young kinsman of our Count Fisiolo, whose reason has entirely fled from him in recent weeks. There’s much insanity loose in Stee these days. We had a dreadful event ourselves a month or two ago, a housemaid losing her mind and leaping from a window, killing two people who happened to be passing by below—”
“How awful,” said Septach Melayn, with an exaggerated gesture of shock.
“This kinsman of the Count,” Prestimion said. “He’s deluded, then? And it’s his particular delusion that he’s our new Coronal?”
“That it is,” Varaile replied. “And therefore can do as he pleases, just as though he owns the world.”
“He should be locked in some deep dungeon, no matter whose kinsman he might be,” Gialaurys said emphatically. “Such a man should not be loose on the river to the endangerment of innocent travelers!”
“Ah, I quite agree,” said Simbilon Khayf. “There’s been a great disruption of commerce lately, as he rampages up and down with that gaudy ship of his. But Count Fisiolo—who is, I should tell you, a dear friend of mine—is a merciful man. Our lunatic is his wife’s brother’s son, Garstin Karsp by name, whose father Thiwid died suddenly not long ago in the full flower of health. His father’s unexpected death quite knocked young Garstin from his moorings; and when the word came forth that the old Pontifex had also died and that Prestimion would be Coronal after Lord Confalume went to the Labyrinth, Garstin Karsp let it be known that Prestimion was not in fact a man of Muldemar, as was commonly given out, but actually one of Stee. And that indeed he himself was Prestimion, who as Coronal would make his capital here in Stee, as Lord Stiamot did in the ancient days.”