Shadow

Copis sighed. 'My partner here was a special courier for the Falx house, so anybody who tries to rob us will end up feeding the crows. For the same reason, I wouldn't dare to run off with his money, and he won't run out on me because he's in love with me.' (That was news to Poldarn, but Velico Sudel seemed to accept it as a valid argument, so he stayed quiet.) 'And as for the third point, I promise you on my father's grave that we'll take special care crossing rivers. Also,' she added, as Velico Sudel made dissatisfied noises, 'naturally we won't be taking all twelve thousand buttons with us every time we go out; probably no more than a thousand at a time, which means that even if one of these dreadful things does happen, there'll still be more than enough buttons left to cover your rotten three hundred. Satisfied?'

Velico Sudel didn't look satisfied in the least, but he did look like someone who'd willingly pay three hundred quarters to get Copis out of his life. 'And Potto Ilec recommended you?' he said.

Copis nodded. 'He said there's a lot of thieves and lowlifes about who'd try and gouge us for five per cent on a simple loan like this, but you weren't like that, you'd be quite happy with two. Oh, he said you'd pretend to make a fuss,' she went on, as Velico Sudel pulled a horrified face and opened his mouth, 'but that's just force of habit. So,' she said, 'have you got the money here, or do you need a moment or so to fetch it?'

Velico Sudel was staring at Copis as if she were some fearsome legendary monster he'd never actually believed in but who'd suddenly appeared in his office and started building a nest. 'You haven't even told me your names,' he said, clearly aware how feeble that sounded but entirely incapable of thinking up anything better.

'I'm not sure I remember you asking,' Copis replied. 'My name's Copis Bolidan, and this is my cousin Balga.'

'Copis Balga?'

'Balga Bolidan,' Copis corrected him. 'We're from Torcea, we do names differently there.'

'And you said he's your… oh well, never mind.' Velico Sudel had gone a dark red colour. 'That's up to you, I suppose, nothing to do with me. And it's beside the point,' he realised, looking up sharply. 'I still can't see how I could possibly lend you three hundred quarters secured on your stock in trade alone.'

But he was fighting a losing battle, and all three of them knew it. To his credit, he kept the discussion going for another quarter of an hour before agreeing terms-three hundred quarters for two months at two per cent, secured on the buttons. When eventually he surrendered and sent a clerk for the money, Copis gave him the bill of sale so that he could endorse his loan on the back. He took a long time sharpening his pen, and his writing was tiny.

'What the hell was all that about?' Poldarn asked, as they left the building.

'It worked, didn't it?'

Poldarn shifted the bag of coins to his left hand. 'Yes,' he admitted. 'But surely you aren't allowed to do that-put something up as collateral when you haven't paid for it yet.'

Copis yawned. 'You could well be right,' she said. 'Which is why I had to rattle him. I think I succeeded.

'You certainly rattled me,' Poldarn replied. 'So now what?'

'We take this money to the Potto house-if there's one thing I can't stand, it's knowing I owe money to someone-then we buy a cart, come back, load up what they've got in stock, and work out where we visit first. No point in hanging about, is there?'

Potto Ilec was surprised but pleased to see them again, and made out a warrant to his storeman for the buttons. 'I wish I could tell you exactly what we've got in stock and what we haven't,' he said, 'but right now I can't, the stock books are at the factory.' An unmistakably wistful expression crossed his face. 'I don't suppose you'd like to see the factory,' he added.

'Delighted,' Copis said quickly, before Poldarn could refuse. 'If we're going to be selling your buttons, we really ought to see the factory.'

Potto Ilec beamed. 'Splendid,' he said. 'Right then, we'll go there straight away.' Before you can change your mind, he didn't need to add. The smile did that for him.

It took over half an hour of brisk walking, down narrow alleys and passages where the eaves of the houses on either side almost met in the middle, and Potto Ilec didn't stop talking until they reached the factory gate. Neither Copis nor Poldarn could make much sense of what he was saying; most of it was abstruse mechanical details of the new pattern of lathes and sawpits and mill gears he'd just had built, interspersed at very long intervals with a few oblique comments about how much he cared for his workers' welfare and how they were more like family than servants to him. Poldarn kept trying to catch Copis' eye so that he could scowl at her for getting them involved in such a monumental waste of time, but she had a knack of looking the other way at exactly the right moment.

'Here we are,' Potto Ilec announced, halting abruptly in front of a grey, split wooden door in the wall of a particularly dark and narrow alley. 'Our factory, and probably the best facility of its kind north of the bay.'

He banged on the door three times with his fist. Nothing happened. 'They probably can't hear me over the noise of the machines,' he explained. 'Can't complain, it means they're all keeping busy and concentrating on their work.' He hit the door a fourth time. A small splinter of wood fell off and landed at his feet.

Poldarn was getting bored and bad-tempered. 'Here,' he said, 'let me try,' and he gave the door a kick that would've broken a man's ribs. Something gave way and the door flew open. Potto Ilec gave him a startled look and plunged through the doorway, like a duck pitching on water.

Inside it was very dark, even darker than the office in the Potto house. 'Mind your head,' Potto Ilec said, bending almost double to avoid a very low beam. 'Oh, and watch your feet, too. An untidy shop is a busy shop, that's what I always say.'

They passed through another doorway into a large hall. It was slightly less dark; some light was managing to get through the long, thin vertical slits about two-thirds of the way up the walls that served as windows. The hall was crowded with men, women and children, most of them sitting cross-legged in rows on the ground in front of a wooden stake or stump driven into the damp clay floor. Between the rows there were duck-boards, raised on bricks. The smell was repulsive: rotten meat and burned bone, sweat, urine and some kind of sweet oily smell that coated the tongue in seconds. Every surface was covered in fine white dust, like snow.

'This is it,' Potto Ilec said proudly. 'I only wish my father could've lived to see it.'

Poldarn peered at the closest squatting figure, which he was eventually able to identify as a man. In his left hand he held a button. In his right was a stick made up of plaited reeds. He was polishing the button with it.

'Horsetail rushes,' Potto Ilec explained, following Poldarn's line of sight. 'They're sharp and abrasive, just right for polishing out sawmarks, and they're free; we just send someone down to the reed beds to cut a wagonload.'

Next to the man's left knee was a large earthenware jar, full of unpolished buttons. There was another jar just like it by his right knee, half full of polished ones. Poldarn noticed that the man's fingers were cracked and bleeding.

'Over here,' Potto Ilec went on, clumping along the duck-board towards the far wall, 'we've got the saw benches, where we cut the bone into narrow sheets. Absolutely wonderful, these new saws. All it takes to run them is three men: one turns the handle, one feeds the bones into the hopper, and the third one runs them through against the fence. There, see.'

Some show of interest was obviously called for, so Poldarn took a step or so closer to the nearest saw bench. In spite of himself, he found it rather fascinating. A tall, bony child was turning a crank (he had to stand on tiptoe to bring it up to top dead centre), which powered a complicated-looking nest of gearwheels, which in turn spun the round sawblade at an astonishingly high speed. The blade was two-thirds buried in a massive wooden bench, and parallel to it was a deep keyway running the length of the benchtop, in which rode a shuttle, fitted with wooden screws and clamps artfully designed to grip various shapes and sizes of bone. A bald man in a frayed red shirt pushed the shuttle forward into the sawblade, which shot out a jet of fine white dust, like a fountain-Poldarn noticed that he was missing half the thumb of his left hand and most of the middle finger of his right-while behind him a short, fat child clamped another bone into another shuttle. The smell of friction-burned bone was sickening.