At the far side of the rainwater pool, in a narrow bar of sunlight, sat a woman in a plain dark dress, reading a book-sized scroll. She glanced up, frowning slightly, as the trio approached.
Zeren, having no idea who she was, but noting that she didn't strike the usual posture and attitude of a servant, gave her a polite, half-formal salute and repeated the party's names, titles, and business. Omis noticed that she had a most intriguing face: the straight dark hair, almost black eyes, delicate bones, and pointed chin usually associated with the old Sukkti blood; not a young or conventionally pretty woman, certainly, but interesting. Sulun peeked at the book in her hands, and saw that it was a treatise on ancient history by a respectably honest author; it was the most encouraging item he'd seen so far in Entori's house.
"My brother is in his study," the woman said, waving a languid hand toward the mouth of another corridor behind her. "Second door on the right." Her eyes were already straying back to her book.
Sulun glanced back at her as the three resumed march. He hadn't known that Entori had a sister, much less that she was of a scholarly turn of mind. He just might have a possible ally in this place.
The next corridor led into the formal dining hall, a vast and shadowy room filled with enough banners, tapestries, lamps, cabinets of ancestral busts and bits of statuary to have furnished all the rest of the house they'd yet seen. Zeren rolled his eyes at the clutter, searched his way to an ornate door on the right, rapped on it, and announced the party for the third time.
"Enter, enter," snapped a dry, gravelly voice.
Zeren pushed open the door, which did not creak, and led the others into Entori's lair. Sulun and Omis stifled a gasp of surprise at the sheer amount of parchment: countless sheets and scrolls of it, filling and jamming the cubbyhole cabinets that climbed the walls, cluttering the massive table that commanded the center of the room, intermixed with clay tablets, wax tablet-books, weighing scales and weights of assorted sizes, stylus shafts, pens, inkwells, and an abacus or two—enough for the records room of a small tax-office. A large strongbox behind the table completed the illusion, though Sulun guessed that the bulk of Entori's ready money was concealed elsewhere.
The room was lit by thin sunlight through the window behind the table, and by a single bronze oil-lamp set like a wave-washed rock in that parchment sea. The flickering yellow light picked out a circle of account records, a pair of thin hands resting on them, a heavy carved chair, a thick fur robe, the bald head and blinking dark eyes of an indeterminably-aged man who could only be Entori the Miser. The thick white ruff of the fur robe, much too heavy for this weather, gave his thin bald head and narrow hands the unflattering suggestion of a vulture.
"Yes?" His voice added to the impression.
This, Sulun thought, is he who destroyed our master and all his house.
Zeren pulled out his own bit of parchment and opened it with a flourish. "You are Entori, Yeshinan's-son, creditor of the late Shibari to the amount of 27,382 silvers?"
Entori blinked. "Yes . . ." He quickly added, "And I did not recover the full amount of the debt."
"But you did recover—" Zeren pretended to check his sheet of parchment again, "one blacksmith's forge and anvil, with sundry related tools, one mechanics lathe, with sundry related tools, plus several mechanical devices in various stages of completion. Not so?"
"Er, yes . . ." Entori rattled his fingers on the tabletop, clearly dying to see what else was on that list. "But that doesn't begin to cover the debt! Those things are of no use to me, and where can I sell them? And when? And for how much? A pittance, five hundred silvers at best—no, no, they don't begin to cover the amount of the debt."
Omis squirmed, biting back considerable words. Sulun elbowed him still.
Zeren tucked the parchment back in his belt and leaned forward, smiling. "Still, I think there may be a way to give you some satisfaction," he purred. "You know, we're trying to settle this business as thoroughly as possible for all concerned."
"Satisfaction?" Entori asked, edging further into the lamplight.
"Shibari did leave so many debts unsettled, especially with the house burned and its contents largely destroyed. We're trying to give the creditors as much value as possible, you know—"
"Satisfaction?" Entori nudged.
Spring the trap, Sulun thought, biting his lip.
"As you said, the tools are useless to you." Zeren straightened, snapping out the words like numbers in an account list. "Likewise, Shibari's displaced craftsmen are useless without their tools—like farmers without land, or land without farmers to tend it."
Entori blinked again, registering the truth of the analogy.
"Now, put the craftsman and his tools together, and one might see some profit out of this lamentable business." Zeren leaned closer. "I have it on good authority that these particular craftsmen were working on some most valuable devices when Shibari made his ill-advised sea trade venture. Some of them—" He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "—were of . . . interest to the military. They might still be so, if properly developed. Do you take my meaning, good sir?"
Entori took the hint, at least. One hand slid upward to rattle thoughtful fingers on his chin. "And of course," he murmured, "the officer who presented these . . . profitable devices . . . to the right eyes could expect some expression of gratitude from them?"
Zeren smiled like a tradesman closing a deal. "I see that we understand each other."
Entori nodded thoughtfully, and rolled expressionless eyes toward Sulun and Omis. "I assume these are the craftsmen in question?"
"The two masters," Zeren corrected. "There are also their assistants."
Omis crossed fingers for luck behind his back. Technically, the apprentices all belonged to Sulun. Only a long stretch of the imagination could label Vari as a blacksmith's assistant, to say nothing of the children.
Entori's eyes narrowed. "Just how many extra mouths will I be taking into my household?" he asked.
"'Will be taking' . . . ? Sulun dared to hope.
"Hardly extra," Zeren snorted. "A grand total of ten—"
"Ten!"
"And a bargain, at the price of their keep." Zeren shrugged with elaborate unconcern. "Of course, if you'd rather not gather the harvest for the price of the seed, I'm sure Shibari's other creditors—"
"Not so fast, not so fast." Entori raised a birdlike hand. "I didn't say I wasn't interested. . . ." He cocked a cold eye at Sulun and Omis. "But of course, I wish to know what value I can expect to receive for taking on this . . . seed money expense."
"But of course." Zeren waved theatrically toward Sulun and Omis, and stepped aside.
At the cue, the two bowed formally. They straightened, whipped two large baskets out from under their cloaks, and opened them together. Sulun pulled out the little bronze steam engine model and placed it on the clearest section of the table. Omis produced a small brass firecup filled with treated charcoal, and slid it under the globe of the engine.
"My design," Sulun intoned, pointing at the assemblage.
"My workmanship," Omis echoed.
The words sounded natural and unforced, as well they should after yesterday's hours of practice. Omis even managed a suitably impressive flourish as he whipped out his flint and steel striker and lit the charcoal.
The distilled wine fumes caught at the first strike, shooting up impressive yellow and blue flames. Omis tossed a really unnecessary cue-glance at Sulun, and stepped back. Now for the distracting patter while waiting for the water to boil. If only he could manage this without fumbling his lines. Gods, why should I have to play an actor, too? Sulun complained to himself as he struck an orator's pose and began.