Entori's house was almost invisible from the street, hidden behind its high wall and skirts of wall-front shops. The front door crouched at the end of a shallow alley between a potter's and a rug merchant's. Small spy-windows flanked the plain doorway, one of them opening when Zeren pounded on the blank, bronze-sheathed door. Omis and Sulun traded worried glances while Zeren bawled out his name and business at the barely visible doorman. What manner of house was this, they wondered, that hid itself from all sight and disguised itself in a screen of the houses and bodies of the poor?
The spy-window snapped shut and the door creaked grudgingly half-open. Zeren, Omis, and Sulun stepped from shade to shadow, into a dim bare corridor scarcely wider than the door, smelling faintly of dust and mold. The doorman, a palsied ancient in a threadbare tunic worn as grey as the rest of him, hurried to close the door behind them. In the deepened gloom, the pale sunlight at the far end of the corridor beckoned like mirage.
Sulun and Omis traded looks again. They hadn't known what to expect of the house of Entori the Infamous: perhaps furnishings of boastful, overwhelming, barbaric splendor; perhaps manacles and whips mounted on the walls, or portraits of all the victims Entori had brought low in his long career. The last thing they could have imagined was this vast, quiet, dusty barrenness.
"Stay here," Zeren barked at the servant. "I know the way." He led the others boldly toward the dim light.
All the way down the corridor they heard no sound but their own footsteps, saw no decorations or lamps or god-shrines of any kind, met no other living thing but a single wayward moth. Sulun felt oddly grateful for the presence of that moth; without it, he might have imagined that he was walking into a tomb.
The room led out into a small courtyard with a square rain-pool in its center. The surrounding walkway, its walls interrupted by closed doors and curtained windows, was covered with slanting tile roofs that aimed toward the pool.
Entori the Miser wasted not even rainwater.
"Is the whole place a silent warehouse?' Omis muttered, under his breath. "How can people live like that?"
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.
"Know, oh most wise and honored host, that this is but a small version of that which might be." Pray it so, or ten desperate people might soon be out in the street again. "As you see this little globe rests, like a wheel, upon an axle whereby it might spin." And hope the water boils soon! "Within it lies a small quantity of water, easily replaced."
But how would one replace the water at a steady rate in order to keep the globe spinning? Design problem: deal with it later.
"The fire heats the water, making it boil unto vapor." Boil soon, dammit! "This vapor, being closer to that divine state of the spirit than is mere fluid or gross earthly matter, seeks to rise toward heaven."
Seeks to expand, actually, and spirit has nothing to do with it, but this is not time to argue with common misconceptions.
"Yet it must escape this imprisoning globe, and what escape may it find save through these three identically curved little pipes?" Nudge one of them, encourage the fool toy to spin. "Thus, escape it does, so fiercely seeking its freedom that in leaping outward toward the free air it doth thrust backward against the door of its former prison."
There, is that a faint wisp of escaping steam? Please? "Even as a sailor, stepping from a small boat to the dock, doth thrust the boat away from him with his lattermost foot . . ."
Yes! Steam at last!
"So this backward thrust presses the pipes away from the direction of the escaping steam, er, vapor . . ." Move, dammit! "And as the pipes are firmly affixed to the globe, which in turn rests upon its axle, the globe hath no choice save to . . ."
There it goes!
" . . . spin."
Sure enough, the little globe spun: slowly at first, then faster, whirling merrily in its soft halo of escaping steam.
Entori peered closer, fascinated, his dark eyes very wide and round. Quick now, before the water ran out or the man's normal suspicion reasserted itself.
"Consider, milord, a much larger globe spinning thus. Picture it standing upon the deck of a ship. Picture the axle extended over the sides of the vessel, and wheels attached. Picture the wheels rimmed with oars reaching into the water. Consider, oh most wise and far-seeing, how fast and steadily such a ship could go—regardless of the vagaries of winds or fatigue of rowers."
Now hit the conclusion good and hard.
"A ship driven by such an engine would be mistress of the seas, fearing no storm nor dead winds, nor pirates.
"How wealthy would her master be?"
Entori nodded slowly, a smile spreading widely across his face, as the vision took hold. "Tell me," he murmured, "did Shibari commission the building of such a ship?"
"No, milord. He considered it too newfangled and undignified." Well, that was half the truth anyway. "Also, he would not spare the time required to build it, preferring to gamble on quick profits with existing ships." That, too, was part of the truth.
"Shibari was a fool." Entori sat back, folded his hands, and turned his attention back to Zeren. "I agree, Captain, that there are possibilities here. Yes, I'll take in these craftsmen of yours. When we have ships of the sort that will interest the officers of the Imperial Navy, I will certainly inform you."
Zeren gave him a smile and a slight bow. "I have no doubt that there will be other such profitable developments," he purred. "I'll send the craftsmen and their assistants to you before the day is out."
"I'll have rooms prepared," Entori murmured, reaching for a stylus and tablet. "Good day, Captain."
Omis and Sulun suppressed sighs of relief as they turned and followed Zeren out the door. Only when they were out in the corridor did Omis dare to speak.
"We're out of the cookpot, but maybe into the fire. Sulun, it will take months to build a big steam engine, much less mount it on a ship, test it, get it seaworthy. And there are certain design problems. And when will we have time to work on the bombard?"
"We'll manage," Sulun promised. "At least now we'll have the tools, and a roof over our heads."
"I wish," Zeren muttered, "that you'd had a model of the bombard instead. Sabis needs land defense more than fast ships."
The little company arrived, bags and baggage, children and all, shortly after noon. The porter let them in at once, led them down a different set of gloomy corridors and into their new quarters chattering all the way, quite garrulous now that there were none but other Entori house servants to overhear.
"Well, well, well, so you're the new craftsmen of the house! All of you, then? Hah, I didn't think so. Can't quite see the babies hammering iron, eh?"
"Give them time," Omis huffed.
"Oh, yes indeed, yes indeed. Meanwhile, best keep them out of the master's sight, or else put 'em to sweeping floors or some such harmless work, keep 'em looking busy. Master doesn't like to pay for useless mouths. Clever idea, though, claiming four apprentices instead of a wife and three children; he set aside full three rooms for your lot, and as much for goodman Sulun and his. How d'ye like the furnishings, eh?"
Omis and Vari surveyed the first of the three cubicles, and bit their respective tongues.
"Not much cabinet space," Vari dared to comment.
"Eh, well, you can always get more cabinets out of your pay. Don't go borrowing bits of furniture from storage without the mistress's express permission now, tempting as it looks. Always remember Master Entori may run the business, but Mistress Eloti runs the household. 'Tis a fine point in your favor that she likes you."
"Likes us?" Sulun put in. "I didn't know she'd even seen us."
"Oh, she did. She has her ways. Heh-heh! Yes. Master wanted to hire you, right enough, but the expense worried him, so he talked to Mistress about it. When he stopped for breath she put in a word. 'Hire them,' she said. 'Good investment,' she said. Then he went back to talking and rattled on for another good half-hour, and finally concluded by saying he'd go ahead and hire you all. Then it was a question of what to pay you."
"Really?" Sulun said. He hadn't dared bring that up himself; it wasn't seemly for an unemployed craftsman to bargain with a master who was graciously consenting to save him from begging on the street. Zeren hadn't dared to bring up the subject either; it would have seemed out of character, considering his argument for Entori hiring the lot of them in the first place. "And what did they decide?"
"At first Master rattled on and on about the expense of feeding ten new mouths, plus added costs of lamp oil and laundry soap and all like that, and said you should be grateful enough for that and allowance for materials—"
Behind them, Arizun snorted, loudly.
"But then Mistress pointed out that unpaid hirelings tend to steal, and unpaid craftsmen tend to pad their budgets for materials, and that better paid servants tend to keep their mouths shut about their master's business. Master thought about that for a bit, and suggested that two silver pieces a month should buy proper secrecy—"
This time it was Doshi who did the derisive snorting.
"But Mistress pointed out that there's many who would pay far better to keep so valuable a secret as that steam powered ship engine, and she argued for a full gold piece per month. Master ranted and raved a bit, then thought it over, and finally agreed on one gold for each master and eight silvers for each apprentice, which isn't too shabby, especially for so . . . ah . . . economical a household as this one."
Sulun shrugged. No, that wasn't too shabby for this household, and he could make up the differences needed by padding his requests for materials.
The apprentices were already unloading their personal gear in their assigned cubicles, already arguing over who got which bed, which drawer, which clothespress.
"Now, the workshops are down this way."
"This way" led down another corridor, past rooms choked with piles of furniture, parchment, household furnishings, odd tools, clothing, bags of grains, sealed jars of wine, oil and spices, assorted arms and armor, crates and sacks and barrels of unidentifiable goods—loot from unnumbered debt foreclosures. Omis found the sight infinitely depressing, while Sulun took notes.
Then out into a back courtyard near the wall, a courtyard filled with larger spoils, heavy equipment, bigger tools: and to one side of the tangle sat Omis's forge and anvil, and Sulun's lathe. Omis fell upon the anvil with a cry of joy, and hugged it to his muscular chest. Sulun only frowned.
"It'll take days of work to make a proper workshop out of all this mess," he pointed out. "Just clearing space. And where can we put all this other junk? And there's no roof. We'll need to set up a canopy—"
"I'm sure ye've enough apprentices to do it," the porter sniffed. "And there'll be room for storage in the eighth room down the hall, once Master sells that lot—say, another two days."
Sulun and Omis looked at each other. Plainly they'd be given no help settling in or setting up. On the other hand, they'd be left alone to arrange the workshop as they pleased and, incidentally, to explore the other tools and engines in that pile.
"Very good." Sulun put on that polite, politic smile that was becoming easier with practice. "We'll set up the rooms tonight and start on this after breakfast tomorrow. How long until dinner?"
Dinner was at sundown, in the chill formal banquet room lit with a few sullen lamps. The half-seen statuary lining the walls seemed alternately to glower or smirk in the uncertain light. At the high table sat Entori, still wearing his fur-collared robe, and his sister Eloti, to his left, wearing another, equally subdued, dark dress. The entertainment consisted of harp-twanging by a skinny youth who, so Vari whispered for her husband to pass on, spent the rest of the day as a sweeper. A scullery maid doubled as server to the high table.
At the lower table sat Omis and his family, Sulun and his apprentices, the porter, a disturbingly slender cook, another slatternly maid, a sour-faced elderly woman who described herself variously as housekeeper/seamstress/lady's maid, a drowsing ancient dressed in the robes of a third-level mage, and three burly, inexpressive men whose duties were not described but who wore heavy truncheons at their belts. The food was plain, so was the servants' livery, and conversation was subdued.
Noting all the covert glances his party got from the other servants, Sulun could barely wait for the dinner to end, the master and mistress to depart, and the usual after-dinner servants' gathering to begin. There was much he needed to learn here.
He noted that the servants were dawdling over their food.
Dinner seemed interminable, though the master of the house ate fast. Entori gulped at his food like a well-trained but hungry watchdog, with no spattering or notable haste, but with no wasted motion. Mistress Eloti ate with a similar economy, but with less speed. Entori finished well before her, and sat rattling his fingers on his winecup as if debating whether or not to have more wine. Eloti, if anything, slowed down. Entori gave up and had his cup refilled. They finished their last mouthfuls at almost the same moment, and Sulun wondered which of them had timed it that way. Entori stood, obliging the rest of the household (except the harper) to rise too, then swept out the door with his sister on his arm.
"At last," muttered the serving girl, as the rest of the servants sat down again.
"Hush," the old housekeeper snapped. "Wait."
The others gulped their food but kept quiet, watching the door. Sulun's gang traded bewildered glances.
The harper stopped in mid-note and came over to the table, casting a quick look down the corridor as he passed the door. "They're gone," he said, shoving into an empty seat. "Pass the beans."
"Hell, pass the wine!" rumbled one of the house-guards.
"Amen," mumbled the house wizard, holding out his cup.
The serving girl came over, grinning, and the supper promptly became more lively.
Omis gulped at his refilled cup, and made a face. "Gods! Is this stuff half vinegar, or what?"
The guardsmen laughed. "Entori buys cheap," one of them chuckled. "But don't worry; we've a way to get at the better stuff, once this is gone."
"Hush," snapped the housekeeper again, glaring sidelong at the wizard. "No sense encouraging such things."
"Oh, why not?" Another guardsman laughed. "Let Aobi tell it. Our Terribly Important new friends will find out soon enough, anyway."
"Important?" Vari puzzled in mid-bite.
"Of course," sniffed the housekeeper. "The master hired the whole lot of you at once, and at good money too, after talking privately with a commander of the City Guard. That, from a merchant and moneylender who never parts with a copper bit unless he's weighed it first. We can all make good guesses."
Vari turned a bewildered glance to her husband, who bounced it to Sulun.
"Engine-makers," the wizard hiccupped. "More damned protection for fires—"
"As I was saying," Aobi the guardsman resumed, "the Old Man has barrels and barrels of wine in the cellar, but he hardly touches it himself. Always hoping to trade it for something better, he is. Now the stuff he's had there the longest—and I swear, he has a good lot that's been down there more than four years—might rightfully be expected to have turned sour by this time."
The other servants at the table snickered and grabbed at the wine ewer.
"Now Gipu here—" Aobi nudged the guard next to him, "can tell you about the empty jars he found in one of the storerooms. Enough to hold a barrel's worth of good wine, eh?" He nudged Gipu again, who chuckled mountainously around a mouthful of stew. "Why let the poor things stand about empty, says I. As for the barrel, we refilled it with good wine vinegar, bought with our own pay. Does the Old Man ever tap that barrel, he'll find the wine's turned too sour to drink. Oh, pity. He'll probably sell the vinegar for a better price than we paid."
"Meanwhile," Gipu added, "we get to drink better than this swill. Jug empty yet, Loac?"
The third guard upended the ewer in his cup. "Finished," he announced. "Get the good stuff."
The maid grabbed the jug and ran off giggling.
"So," Aobi purred at Omis, leaning closer, "just what is it that makes your lot so valuable to the Old Man, eh?"
"Ten of you, for such good money," Loac added, favoring Sulun with a thoughtful eye. "A blacksmith, maybe, one could understand. But so many?"
Sulun glanced around, seeing all the servants' eyes on him and Omis's almost desperate look, and realized how close he was to arousing the enmity of his new household. This miserly household thrived on secrets, and he'd best give these people a convincing one. Simply calling himself a Natural Philosopher wouldn't do.
"Engines for ships," he offered in a properly conspiratorial tone. "Ships that can sail against the wind, or outrun pirates. We know how to build them."
The servants traded glances, nodded in understanding, and smiled.
"If you need any help," Aobi offered, "Just ask."
"Forges, fires . . . more damned work," mumbled the wizard. "Where's that wine?"
The maid came back with the ewer full of better-smelling wine, and dumped a generous dollop in Sulun's cup. The other servants promptly clamored for her attention.
Omis took the opportunity to whisper in Vari's ear. She nodded, got up from the table, and began collecting children. "Time the little ones went to bed," she explained to any who might care to listen, then hustled the children and herself safely out and away.
Omis stuck out his cup for a refill, and grimly prepared to make a long night of it.