Shadow

Copis stepped forward and smiled pleasantly. 'Yes,' she said. 'We're looking for Potto Ilec.'

'That's me,' the man said. 'What can I do for you?'

'We'd like to buy some buttons, please.'

Potto Ilec sighed. 'Yes, of course,' he said. 'Any idea of what you want? Size, style, how many?'

'Various sizes and styles,' Copis replied, 'and we'll start with twelve thousand.'

'Oh.' It was as if the patient, put-upon Potto Ilec had vanished into thin air and been replaced by a totally different person who happened to be wearing the same clothes. Even his face was different; cheerful, welcoming, enthusiastic. 'No problem,' said the new Potto Ilec. 'Perhaps you'd care to follow me, my office is just through here.'

He pushed open the door he'd just come through, and led them down half a dozen steps into a large, dark room that smelt of damp, dust and cheese. There was one small window, high up in the wall, and the floor was covered in flagstones.

Potto Ilec messed around with a tinderbox for a while and managed to light a fat brass lamp and a tall, thick candle. 'Please,' he said, waving at a couple of spindly-legged stools, 'sit down, make yourselves comfortable. Can I get you something to drink?'

He didn't wait for an answer, and filled two stubby horn cups from a clay jug. There was dust in the wine, and it didn't taste very nice.

'Now them,' Potto Ilec went on, sitting on the edge of what was presumably his desk. 'Twelve thousand buttons. Yes, I'm sure we can help you out there. Would you like to see some samples?' Again, he didn't wait for a reply; he vanished behind and under the desk, and reappeared a few moments later with what at first looked like a book, but which turned out to be a slim, flat, hinged wooden box that folded open into two trays. Inside it were about twenty rows of buttons, a dozen or so buttons to each row, pinned to the box with fine brass tacks. Most of the buttons were yellow with age, suggesting that the Potto house didn't hold with gratuitous innovation in its designs.

Poldarn stared at the buttons for a while, trying to think of something appropriate to say. To him, they looked like buttons, nothing more or less. If there was anything to choose between them, he certainly couldn't see it. Copis' approach was better. He was sure she knew roughly as much as he did about buttons, but that wasn't the impression she gave; she quickly inspected each row and then let her face sag just a little, disappointed but hardly surprised, like a small child who's just been told she isn't going to be allowed to stay up late for the party after all. After holding this face for a moment she looked up, with just a glimmer of hope still smouldering in her eyes. 'Are there any more we could see?' she asked.

'I'm sorry,' Potto Ilec replied awkwardly. 'That's all the designs we carry.'

'Oh.'

'It's the best selection you'll find in Sansory,' Potto Ilec said defensively. 'And I don't suppose you'd do much better in Weal or Boc, or even,' he added with obvious insincerity, 'Torcea. Of course, if you wanted a large enough quantity, I'm sure we could turn up something to your own specifications.'

Copis shook her head. 'That's all right,' she said. 'After all, it's quantity we're after, and continuity of supply. We might as well start with, say, fifty of each pattern and see how we go from there.'

Poldarn kept quiet during the negotiations that followed. Copis appeared to be doing a good enough job on her own, though of course neither of them had a clue as to what would constitute either a stupendous bargain or a merciless fleecing (and where Copis had got the number twelve thousand from, he had no idea). The outcome, good or bad, was that they ended up with twelve thousand assorted buttons for five hundred quarters.

'Have we got five hundred quarters?' Poldarn asked anxiously once they were out in the street again.

'We should be so lucky,' Copis replied. 'How much did you say you'd be likely to get for that sword?'

'Maybe a hundred,' Poldarn replied. 'And I've got a hundred. What about you?'

'In ready money,' Copis replied, avoiding his eye, 'clear and uncommitted, bearing in mind all the other expenses we've got to cover, at least thirty. But it's all right,' she added quickly, as Poldarn made a rather frantic noise, 'payment's not due for another ten days. Plenty of time.'

'Plenty of time? To raise two hundred and seventy quarters?'

'Yes.'

Poldarn frowned. She appeared to be absolutely confident about it. Then again, she'd seemed absolutely confident when she'd been haggling with Potto Ilec. 'Fine,' he said. 'How?'

She smiled. 'Come with me and find out,' she said.

Neither of them said anything until Copis suddenly stopped outside a thoroughly magnificent house in a row of equally magnificent houses and knocked sharply on the sallyport. When the porter's head appeared through the gap, she told him that she wanted to see Velico Sudel, immediately. The porter stared at her as if she had an extra eye in the middle of her forehead and opened the door.

'Wait here,' he said, shooing them into the lodge. 'What name?'

Copis raised one eyebrow just a little. 'Oh, tell him we're from the Potto house. He'll see us.'

Velico Sudel's office was quite different. Behind the main desk was a long table, with a dozen clerks sitting round it. Beyond that there was a huge counting-board, as big as the bed of a cart, and another dozen clerks were leaning over it swishing counters backwards and forwards with long-handled rakes. All the walls were lined with pigeonholes stuffed with rolled-up papers, most of them stowed in brass or silver tubes. Velico Sudel turned out to be a thin, silver-haired man in a heavy-looking thick wool coat. He had gold rings on all eight fingers, and a massive lump of some red gemstone, carved with his seal and set in gold, on his left thumb. He looked at them carefully, as if trying to decide whether to buy them.

'Potto Ilec sent you?' he asked.

'In a manner of speaking,' Copis replied, in an incongruously cheerful, even playful voice. 'He suggested you'd be the best person to take up the loan we're raising.'

'I see,' Velico Sudel replied. 'Why?'

'I was assuming he owed you a favour,' Copis said, 'or maybe he just likes you. Now, we need to borrow three hundred quarters for two months. Can you manage that?'

'What makes you think I'd lend you three hundred quarters?'

Copis frowned. 'You're a banker,' she said.

'True. But I don't lend money to just anybody. What about security?'

'Oh, that.' Copis produced the bill of sale Potto Ilec had given them. 'Take a look, and you'll see that we've just acquired twelve thousand best-quality bone buttons from the Potto house, for five hundred quarters. Will that do you?'

Velico Sudel's manner changed slightly. 'Twelve thousand?' he said. 'What were you planning to do with twelve thousand buttons?'

'Sell them, of course,' Copis said, with somewhat exaggerated patience. 'In the towns and villages. Rock-solid proposition.'

The expression on Velico Sudel's face suggested he had his doubts about that. 'All right,' he said, 'so you own five hundred quarters' worth of buttons. Suppose you do manage to sell them. That's my security gone.'

'Ah,' Copis said, with a suffering-fools-gladly look on her face, 'but we'll use the money we get from the buttons to pay you back, and then you won't need any security. It's really quite simple when you think it through.'

Velico Sudel looked like a man trying to argue with a child who's too young to realise that the reason Daddy hasn't got an answer to his questions is because there is no answer, not because Daddy's an idiot. 'Yes, but what happens if you're robbed on the way home, or if one of you runs off with all the money? Or supposing-' He frowned, flexing his imagination like an old man stretching his legs after he's been sitting in the same chair for too long. 'Supposing you're trying to cross a flooded river, and your cart's washed away. Where's my security then?'