Chapter 154: Three Grandsons

Coin had written on the board behind the counter, under the soup of the day.

AN HOUR WITH HUSH. PRINCES, 1,000. OTHERS, ASK.

"Hobb Marrin told it in four taverns last night." Coin stood back, pleased with his board. "Seventeen on a Hide, with Veil sand, and a Veil signing for glass in front of the Bureau. By noon it’ll be a song. Half the fee to you, half to me." He tapped the chalk on the counter. "I’ve already sold the first hour."

"Who to?"

"Prince Varek. Prince Lucan. Prince Theo." Coin beamed. "The second bell, all three. An hour is an hour, my friend. It doesn’t get shorter because more people sit in it."

’Fifteen hundred crowns for one hour of my time. And three princes at one table, all looking at each other instead of at me.’

"And when they find each other on your stairs?"

"Then they’ll know what everyone else is paying. That’s worth a thousand on its own."

Aren went into the back room among the ledgers and put up the hood and the strip of grey cloth.

Varek came first, bent almost double under the low arch, and every spoon in the Kitchen stopped. He left his two men on the stairs, ducked through the curtain and sat down across the old table from the hood. The chair complained.

[Varek. Rank A. Hostility: 0%.]

Lucan came a breath behind him, in Sarkhane colors, with a basket of wine and an apology for the stairs, and stopped in the curtain when he saw his cousin’s back.

[Lucan. Rank B. Hostility: 0%.]

"Varek. I was told the hour was mine."

"So was I." Varek did not turn round. "Sit down or go away. You’re letting the soup in."

Lucan looked back over his shoulder. "Brother Coin, you sold me an hour."

"And you’re in it, Highness," Coin called from the counter.

Lucan sat. He put the wine on the floor, well away from Varek’s boots.

Theo came last, alone, in a green coat too good for the stairs, with a bronze band on his shoulder and no guards at all. He saw both cousins at the table and gripped the curtain so hard its rings rattled on the rod.

[Theo. Rank C. Hostility: 14%.]

Coin put his head through the curtain behind him. "Prince Theo! The hour is a thousand."

"I know." Theo looked at his hands. "I haven’t got it."

Lucan smiled at the ceiling. "They’ve let the sheep in."

Coin looked at the hood.

"Take his thousand out of my half," the hood said.

Theo took the last chair, the one with the short leg, and sat down carefully.

Varek rested both elbows on the table. "I don’t bid. Bidding is for men who can’t take things."

He laid his hand over Hush’s hand on the boards and pressed it flat. He didn’t squeeze. He only leaned, like a horse on a fence.

"A pill-maker needs both hands. Thirty thousand crowns tonight, and the pill never goes near the Treasurer’s hall."

Aren let the hand stay where it was. His Endurance held the bones, and he kept his breath slow.

’He’s holding back, like on the gravel. He wants me to feel how much.’

"Thirty thousand," the hood said. "Noted. Now take your hand back, Highness. I press with it."

Lucan laughed softly. "Thirty, for a pill you’d crush in your fist." He took two papers out of his coat and laid them on the table beside his cousin’s elbow. The first was a note on the Sarkhane bank for fifty thousand crowns. The second was a warrant with a ship on its seal. "Maker to the Sarkhane fleet, Master Hush. A pill house on the Ninefold Quay, with your name over the door. Deliver the pill to my steward tonight, sealed, and you never stand in that hall at all."

’Varek wants it kept out of the hall. Lucan wants it in his steward’s hands for one night. A night is enough to grind a little blood into something.’

"No," the hood said. "To both."

Varek leaned harder. The table cracked under their two hands, a long split down the middle of the boards.

Coin put his head round the curtain again. "That’s my good table, Highness. Eighty crowns."

Varek took his hand back and tossed a purse onto the split boards without counting it.

Aren opened and closed his fingers under the table until they worked.

"It goes from my box to the Treasurer’s glass. Nobody holds it in between." He turned the hood to Varek. "Buy it in a cellar tonight, Highness, and by morning your cousin tells your grandfather you fed the bride something a ghost sold you in the dark. Then he asks the Cardinal to read it."

Lucan inclined his head, as if he’d been paid a compliment.

The hood turned to Lucan. "And your steward has it for a night, and your cousin tells the Emperor what Sarkhane blood looks like in a Marrow. The whole First Ring already knows."

Lucan picked a thread off his cuff and said nothing.

"In the long hall, the Treasurer reads it on his own glass in front of the court, and puts it in the winner’s hand himself." The hood looked from one prince to the other. "And the loser watches him take it. That’s the only way either of you can be sure the other doesn’t have it."

Neither cousin said anything for a moment. Lucan looked at the warrant. Varek looked at Lucan.

Theo cleared his throat.

"I came to say sorry about the sand." He said it to the hood, as if his cousins were not there. "It was my mother’s house. My mother’s father says a stores clerk at the Bureau did it. The clerk has been sent to the mines."

’Tarquin chose quickly.’

"And I came to ask for something I can’t pay for." Theo took a breath. "I sold my horses and my mother’s pearls. I have twenty thousand crowns that the Veils didn’t give me. Sell me the pill for twenty. Lucan will put his blood in her. Varek will put her in Oros brown." He stopped, and started again more quietly. "I would let her be what she is."

Varek laughed out loud.

"No," the hood said.

Theo nodded at once, as if he had already heard it on the stairs. "I thought you’d say that."

"Bid it anyway. First, before anyone else, all twenty, loudly."

Lucan didn’t look round. "So he can lose in front of the whole court?"

"So the next man can’t raise him by a thousand." The hood didn’t look at Lucan. "Rich men don’t creep up behind a poor man’s whole purse. They jump over it, so the hall can see how far."

Lucan smiled, as if he already knew how far he would jump. Varek only grunted. Theo looked at the hood for a while, then at Lucan, then at Varek. Then he laughed, short and surprised.

"And she’ll see I meant it."

[Theo. Hostility: 14% → 6%.]

Varek stood up and stooped for the curtain.

"The hall, then. Bring it." He looked down at the hood. "If it reads less than you say, Hush, I’ll come to your door, and I won’t knock."

[Varek. Hostility: 0% → 21%.]

Lucan gathered up both his papers and left the wine.

"You’ve cost me a quiet night, Master Hush. In the hall it will cost me more than fifty, and I’ll remember who made me pay it."

[Lucan. Hostility: 0% → 36%.]

When they had all gone, Coin came in and wiped the split boards fondly with a rag. "You gave a thousand crowns to a boy with no horses."

"Kesh drew him as a sheep. Wolves bid higher with a sheep on the bench."

Coin grunted and tucked the rag in his apron. "Now. You’ll be wanting sand nobody poured."

He went behind the counter and came back with a twist of oiled paper no bigger than a thumb.

"Loose Well sand. No seal, no lantern, and nobody ever asks where. Four thousand."

It was every crab core Nil had ever carried up the stairs, almost to the crown. Aren counted it out.

’Fault Line.’

Every speck stayed dark.

Seren had heard about the Bureau before he reached the workshop stairs. She was waiting at the long bench with her arms folded and her notebook open at a page with the corners burned off.

"Glass! Grandfather tested me on that sand when I was nine, and I cried because I read thirty. All my life he’s been cutting everybody’s sand!" She jabbed the page. "The Drum. Bellroot, then the lily, then whatever you put in at the end that I’m not allowed to see. You’re paying for the cores."

[Void Copies.]

Two geese stood in the long room beside him. One sat at the window bench and ground lily. The other fed the boil and skimmed it. Aren stood at the press bowl and held the edge of the bench, because the floor still leaned when there were three of him.

When the mix went dark and smelled of hot iron, he poured in the whole pinch and pressed.

’Fault Line.’

A thin bright line opened across the heart of the mix, where the bellroot pulled against the sand. It grew a little with every push, because his hands moved whenever the floor leaned.

’One twist. If it splits, the auction gets an empty box.’

He let the copy at the boil go. The floor came level. He spread both hands over the bowl and pressed gently, with nothing, until the line went dark.

The flare came up white and went down slowly.

[Drum Pill. Result: Refined. Impurities: 13%.]

Seren read it on her glass, and put the tongs down, and sat on her stool.

"The best Drum my house ever sold read twenty-nine. Lucan paid sixteen thousand for it." She looked at both of him. "Thirteen. Grade seven, on a Heart pill!" She hit the bench with her fist. "Don’t tell me how. I’ll work it out myself."

’Thirteen parts in a hundred, and none of them mine. Furnace, fire and bellroot. My Seal Pill can’t carry even one.’

He folded the pill into white paper and put it in the Deep Purse, beside Nil’s folded plate and the grey blade, where no steward in Aurem could reach it, and let the last copy go.

Two days later the Treasurer’s clerk brought the list down to the Kitchen himself, because Coin’s seat at the makers’ table came with a copy.

Coin read it aloud over the soup.

"Lot one. Hush, maker, of the House. One Drum Pill. Grade to be stated in the hall. The House always sells first, because the Treasurer begins with the people he owes. Bidders at the long bench: Prince Lucan. Prince Varek. Prince Theo."

He stopped, and moved his lips over the last line before he gave it to the room.

"The Lady Vivienne Ashgrave. Bidding against the dowry of House Ashgrave."

’If she buys it, no grandson raised her. She did it with her own gold, and the Choosing has nobody to give her to.’

Coin dipped his bread. "Seven days, my friend. Buy a better hood."