Well, I'd more or less given up hope of being able to get my hands on that clay seam, so I reckoned I had nothing to lose. I told him, yes, I knew where to find the right clay, but I didn't have the money to buy the land. He went all thoughtful for a while, then said that money shouldn't be a problem, if I was interested in forming a partnership.
I console myself with the thought that it's not just stupid people who do stupid things. I agreed; he said he'd go away and raise the money. I imagined that'd be the last I saw of him. What he did, though, was go home, all the way back to the Cure Doce. It was a terrible risk, in the circumstances. Things had changed since he went away. Rumors of his various adventures had filtered through, and nobody was willing to cover up for him or risk themselves to keep him out of trouble. But he got home somehow, and persuaded his family to give him at least part of his inheritance. I think it was done through land exchanges and letters of credit; basically, they bought him an estate in either Eremia or the Vadani country, all done in the names of secret trustees, with cunning ways of routing the income through to him without anybody finding out. A lot of merchants were involved at various stages, so I imagine a fair proportion of the money got used up in commissions and expenses. Even so, all the time I knew him he had more than enough for his needs-books, tools, materials, and all the funding I required for my work. He never spent more than he could possibly avoid on food or clothes or anything like that. As far as I can tell, that sort of thing's never mattered to him. Everybody's idea of the unworldly scholar, in fact.
He stopped and looked round. Daurenja, trussed like a bull calf for castration, was stirring. His eyes were closed but his lips were moving around the gag, and his throat quivered slightly.
"Dreaming," Framain said. "If it wasn't for the gag, he'd be talking in his sleep. He does that. I'm told it's quite normal-talking in your sleep, I mean. Loads of people do it. My son did, and my father, too." He frowned, as though annoyed with himself. "When I was a kid, it used to scare me. Most nights he'd fall asleep in his chair, and after a while he'd start talking-quite normal tone of voice, like he was having a pleasant conversation, but none of it made sense. It wasn't gibberish. It came out as real words, proper sentences, but completely meaningless. He's not like that, though," he added, and the frown tightened into a scowl. "He always says the same thing. Probably he's saying it now. It's all the sort of stuff you'd say to your girl when you're seventeen and in love. Soppy, that's the only word for it. You mean all the world to me, I'll always love you, you're the meaning of my life, you're my sun and moon and stars; it's enough to make you want to throw up. Then after a bit he starts calling out a name; Majeria, Majeria, over and over again. Then he either stops and sleeps peacefully or else he sits bolt upright and screams. High-pitched screaming like a girl, you wouldn't think he was capable of making a noise like that. Anyway, he screams three or four times and wakes up. But by then, of course if you've got any sense you're not there to see it, because when he wakes up from a screaming fit, he starts lashing out. He'll still have his eyes shut, and he punches and kicks like a maniac for about a minute; then his eyes open, and he sits there, blinking, mouth wide open. Oh, he's a charmer, Daurenja."
"What was that name again?" Miel asked. "The one he shouts out."
"Majeria. And no, I haven't got a clue who she's supposed to be. I've asked him a couple of times, during the day, when he's awake. He reckons he's never heard of anybody called that."
Anyhow (Framain went on), that's how we came to be partners. His money paid for everything: the clay beds, the house and buildings, equipment and supplies. His trustees opened a line of credit for us, in both our names, so I could buy things without having to ask him first. That's another of his good points. He's really very generous with money.
To start with, we all worked very well together. It was me, him, my son Framea and my daughter there. We got off to an excellent start. He was the one who figured out how to fire the clay to make the porcelain without cracking or distortion. He built the kilns practically single-handed; hell of a job, and you've seen them for yourself, it's beautiful work. I've got to say, all the success we had in the early stages was basically him, not me.
Anyhow; once we'd got the mix and the firing right, we thought we were on the home stretch. All we had left to do was work out how to do the colors for decorating the finished pieces. Nothing to it, we thought. We'd got his book, and there're pages and pages in it about making and applying different colors. We were impatient to get the last details sorted out and go into production.
(Framain was silent for a long time, as though he'd forgotten Miel was there. He was frowning, like someone trying to remember something that's on the tip of his tongue; a name or a date or exactly the right word. Miel cleared his throat a couple of times, but Framain didn't seem to have noticed. Then he looked up sharply…)
All through the early stages (Framain continued), Daurenja had led the way. The truth is, I'm not much good at alchemy, or whatever the word is. I haven't got the mind for it. I can follow instructions, verbal or in a book; I can do as I'm told, better than most. But-well, it's like music. Some people can compose tunes, others can't. I'm a musician who can play someone else's tune on a flute or a harp, but I can't make them up for myself. Daurenja's the creative one. He looks at a problem an ordinary man can't begin to understand, and it's as though he can see things that the rest of us can't. When we were trying to get the consistency of the clay, for example; I was all for working away at it gradually, trial and error. He thought about it for a while, and suddenly came up with the answer. It made sense to him, he'd figured out how it worked. He tried to explain it to me, but I couldn't follow it at all. Not that I minded in the least. On the contrary, I was delighted.
But when we came to the colors, I started to get the feeling that his mind wasn't on it in quite the same way. It started, I think, after an accident. He'd been mixing some things over a fire and there was a bang like thunder and a great spurt of flame-nobody was hurt, luckily, no real harm done, though obviously we were all shaken. At first I thought it was preying on his mind, which was why he seemed so preoccupied all the time. But it wasn't that. If he was worrying about the same thing happening again, afraid he'd get hurt, you'd have expected him to have lost his enthusiasm. But it was the other way about. If anything, he was keener-dedicated, single-minded, almost obsessive-but not in the same way. He went quiet. There were days he'd hardly speak to us, which was pretty unusual. He'd be all day mixing things and boiling things up in big iron kettles, but nothing ever seemed to come of it, and when I asked him how he was getting on, he'd be evasive, guilty almost, like he was doing something wrong. All I could think of was that he'd figured out how to do the colors but didn't want to share with us-which didn't make sense, because even if he'd got the colors, they were no good to him without the clay, and I owned that, it was my name in the lease, so he couldn't go behind my back or anything like that. Even so, it made me suspicious and edgy. My son picked up on the changed atmosphere, and the fact that we weren't making any progress. Pretty soon we were all snapping at each other, quarreling over stupid little things, taking offense and getting on each other's nerves. It was pretty miserable for a week or so; and it didn't help that we were all living on top of each other. It was winter, desperately cold outside. We always get snow earlier than most places, and that year it was particularly bad. You didn't go outside unless you had to, and you tried to stay close to the fire. But Daurenja always had something heating or simmering; he yelled at us if we got close to his stuff, we'd yell back that we were cold, he'd fly into a temper-I suppose I should've been trying to keep the peace, but I was cold and fed up too, so I didn't make the effort. What made it so bad was the feeling that we were so close to finishing. I kept telling myself it wouldn't be for very long, and then somehow we'd be rid of him. We'd start production, there'd be money rolling in, and either he'd move on or we would. I made myself put up with the anger and bad feeling, because I was sure it was only for a little while longer. Also, by then I was sure Daurenja had given up working on the colors, and I knew that without him I wouldn't be able to solve the problem on my own. I needed him but he wasn't trying. That just made me angry. But I didn't say anything or ask him straight out. I went on my own slow, painstaking, futile way-following the book, trial and error, getting nowhere at all. My son and daughter had precious little to do except sit around shivering in the cold, because Daurenja wouldn't let them get near the fire. I don't suppose that helped, exactly.