“Everything is in the most perfect and efficient order and will so continue. When a time comes that it is said to me, ‘Rano is legally extinct and all which is his demises to kinsmen thrice-removed,’ or, ‘escheats to the Crown Imperial’ — or what or which — ‘so, therefore, Eunuch, stand by and accompt for every drachma, ducat, oboi, groat, stiver, silver, and gold,’ it shall be done. It shall be done.” The man seemed perfectly confident, perfectly content; more, the man seemed happy, too! As happy be defined, or definable: those not-quite-human-eyes….
Still Vergil stared. Then he moved his hand some slight gesture to where some semblance of dark cloud, shaped roughly as an upright finger, tainted, still, the otherwise serene sky. “Are you not in any way sorry for him?” he asked.
“Ah, Wizard mine, and dear. Oh, Master Stones. ‘Sorry for him, am I not?’ But, oh. And ah. But yes. At least, you see” — the man moved a somewhat, the mule began to walk — ”as much sorry as was he for me.”
Vergil watched him again give his respectful salute, watched him ride off at a walk. There lay before him on the saddle a package, that is, some items confined in a net-bag. Their nature was no mystery. There were rolls of new papyrus. There were two, at least two, codex-books, bound in new bindings, red and black. There was, neatly folded, a checkered cloth. And there was also, the last to be identified as the strange gaunt man rode past all peering, what could be no other things than cases of pens. And bottles of ink. And flat sticks for ruling lines. Archimedes had had his circles, Euclid his triangles, Apollonius his cones. This one would have his arithmetics. His.
And Vergil? And the other men and the women in the teeming street? The eunuch had summed it up. Vergil had his stones.