With the clerk leading, Ebbin wound his way across the busy yards of the ironworks. They crossed rails guiding wooden cars pulled by soot-blackened sickly mules, past great hangars where smoke billowed and sparks showered like glowing rain. They reached a building that looked to have once been a handsome estate house, but now stood almost entirely black beneath countless years of soot. Dead, or nearly dead, vines clung to its facade, some still bearing leaves thick with ash.
Just within the main doors they met some sort of reception secretary, or higher-ranked clerk. ‘Yes?’ the pale fellow asked without so much as glancing up. In answer Ebbin’s guide shoved the letter in front of him. The receptionist’s lips compressed and he took the now soot-smeared vellum between a forefinger and thumb as if it were a dead animal. He gave it a cursory glance, even in the act of tossing it away, then stopped suddenly and slowly flattened it before him. After reading the letter he said, ‘You may go.’ It was not clear to Ebbin whom the man meant. But the young clerk immediately turned on his heel and left without a word. The man blinked up at Ebbin. ‘Follow me.’
The receptionist led him up a wide set of ornate stairs of polished stone. Soot layered the balustrade and the steps were black with ground-in dirt and ash. The man knocked at a set of narrow double doors then pushed them open. Here in a slim but very high-roofed room waited another cadaverous fellow just like this one. The receptionist set the vellum sheet on the man’s desk then returned to the doors. He bowed to Ebbin and made a curt gesture that was somewhat like an invitation to enter. Ebbin did so; the man shut the doors behind him.
The secretary glanced at the letter as he continued writing. The scratching of the quill was quite loud in the upright crypt-like room. ‘You are lucky,’ he said without glancing up. ‘The master is rarely in. If you wait here I will announce you.’
Ebbin hardly trusted himself to speak. A breathless ‘Certainly’ was all he could manage.
The man set down his quill and blotted the document before him, then pushed back his chair. He knocked on the door beside the desk, then went through and quickly shut it behind him. Ebbin waited, rubbing his fingers nervously over the sweat-stained leather strap of his shoulder bag.
The door opened and the secretary brusquely waved him forward. Smiling and nodding, Ebbin edged in past the fellow, who closed the door so quickly he almost caught Ebbin’s fingers. The room within was quite large — it might have originally been a main bedroom, or private salon. Tables cluttered it, each burdened by great heaps of documents and folders. Maps covered the dark-grimed walls. Ebbin recognized schematic drawings of mineworks and street maps of Darujhistan, some very old indeed. One map on a far wall appeared remarkably ancient and he was about to head for it when someone spoke from where light shafted in from a bank of dirty windows. ‘Scholar Ebbin! Over here, if you please.’
‘Master Measure,’ he replied, squinting and bowing. ‘Good of you to see me.’
The master of Eldra Iron Mongers, rumoured to be the richest man in all Darujhistan, stood at one of the tables, his back to a window, studying a folder. He was rather short, going to fat. His northern background was evident in his black curly hair, now thin and greying. Ebbin recognized the folder in the man’s hands as his original project proposal.
‘So,’ the master announced, ‘you are here to request further funding, I take it?’
Ebbin’s throat was as dry as the dust swirling in the light shafts that crossed the room. His heart was hammering, perhaps reverberating with the pounding of the forges. ‘Yes, sir,’ he gasped weakly.
‘This would be your …’ he sorted through the papers, ‘third extension.’
‘Yes … sir.’
‘And what do you have to show for my investment?’
Ebbin struggled with the clasp of his shoulder bag. ‘Yes, of course. I have some shards that hint at decorative styles mentioned in the earliest accounts …’ He halted as the master curtly waved a hand.
‘No, no. I’m not interested in your knickknacks, or your odds and bobs. What have you found?’
Ebbin let go of his shoulder bag. Gods, dare I say it? What if I am laughed out of this office? Well, no more funding regardless … He took a deep breath. ‘I believe I have discovered a vault that may contain proof of the Darujhistan Imperial Age.’
Humble Measure dipped his head in thought, pursed his lips. He started out from behind the table. ‘A brave claim, scholar. Isn’t it orthodoxy that such an age is mere myth? Whimsical wish fulfilment of those yearning for some sort of past greatness?’
The master had walked to the centre of the room. Looking back at Ebbin, he added, ‘As the honoured members of the Philosophical Society point out: surely there would be evidence?’
‘Unless it was expunged with the last of the Tyrant Kings.’
The ironmonger crossed to a table bearing great heaps of papers, yellowed maps and dust-covered volumes. He picked something up and turned it in his hands, a card of some sort. He spoke while peering down at it. ‘One and the same, then? Scholar? The Tyrants and the city’s place as the true power of these lands?’
Ebbin nodded, said, ‘I believe so, yes. Back then.’
‘And what gives you reason to believe you may be close to such proof?’
‘The artistic style of the decor. The architecture of the burial chamber itself. Associated artefacts above from the earliest years of the Free Cities period. All evidence points to this conclusion.’
‘I see. And this vault?’
‘It looks undisturbed.’
‘And … just the one?’
Ebbin’s brows rose in surprise and appreciation at the astuteness of the query. ‘Why, no. One of twelve, in fact.’ And the thirteenth? The central figure? What of him? Shall you mention him? And the floor of skulls? No! Mere excesses of funerary devotional offerings, nothing more. He drew a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his face and the palms of his hands. He felt almost faint with thirst. The slanting yellow rays cut at his eyes.
‘Twelve,’ the master repeated. ‘Such a weighty, ill-omened number for Darujhistan. The twelve tormenting daemons come to take children away.’
Ebbin shrugged. ‘Obviously some ritual significance of the number goes back even to the time of the Tyrants. Those old wives’ tales of the twelve fiends merely reveal how far we’ve fallen from the truth of the past.’
The Cat native glanced sharply back at him then, over a shoulder. ‘Indeed, scholar. Indeed.’ He returned to studying the card. ‘You shall have your funding. I will provide labourers, draught animals, cartage. And, because what you find may be valuable, armed guards as well.’
Ebbin now frowned his confusion. ‘Master Measure, there is no need for such measures — ah, that is, for such expenditures. Such a large party would only attract the attention of all the thieves and pot-hunters on the plain.’
‘Thus the armed guards, good scholar. Now, I own a warehouse close to the Cuttertown gate. My guards will know it. You will bring whatever you find there.’
‘But, sir. Really, it would be best if I made the arrangements-’ The ironmonger had raised a hand, silencing him.
‘I will protect my investment, scholar. That is all. Wait without.’
Over the years Scholar Ebbin had not begged and scraped for monies from this man, and many others like him, without learning when to argue and when to obey. And so, in an effort to salvage some modicum of dignity, he bowed and left.
Alone, the ironmonger Humble Measure returned to studying the card. It was an ancient artefact of the divinatory Dragons Deck. The single surviving example from an arcana of an age long gone. He held it up to the light and there, caught in the slanting afternoon rays, it blazed pearly white, revealing an image of one of the three major cards of power, rulership and authority … the Orb.