Chapter 113: What It Is Worth

Chapter 113: What It Is Worth

The collection log was a ledger on Harth’s folding table, and the entire legal process of owning moss took about two minutes.

"Silver-thread moss, raw," Harth wrote, reading over the box. "Three living pads on loose cladding, approximately hand-sized. One small bundle loose growth. Collected from the open half, east service court, under the hood." She looked up. "Anything else?"

"No," Silas said.

"Then it’s yours." Harth turned the ledger round for him to sign, then stamped a small square of card and tucked it into the box’s lid. "Keep that with it until you’re home. If anyone asks, it’s logged."

Silas signed. He looked at the card in the lid and felt more satisfied by a piece of stamped cardboard than he had any right to.

***

The teams gathered by the coaches as the sun climbed, everyone tired and dusty and talking too loudly. Silas stood a little apart with the box open on a crate, checking that none of the pads had shifted on the walk back.

A shadow fell across the box.

"That’s silver-thread," Leander said.

He was standing at Silas’s shoulder, looking down at the pads with the same careful attention he’d given the gallery map. He didn’t sound surprised exactly, more like someone recognizing a word in a foreign language.

"You know it?" Silas asked.

"My family’s estates buy cultivation incense by the case. I’ve seen the ingredient lists." Leander bent closer, not touching. "It’s one of the base materials in the lower grades. I’ve never seen it growing." He straightened. "It doesn’t do anything like this, does it? Raw."

"Nothing at all," Silas said. "It has to be dried and cleaned and compounded by someone who knows how. I can’t tell you the yield, or what grade it’ll make, or whether it’s any good."

"Nor can I." Leander looked at the box a moment longer, then at Silas. "There’s a broker in the academy market district, near the east gate. Corwen’s. They handle cultivation ingredients and they assess what they buy before they quote a price. The stewards who supply my family’s incense deal with them. If you want, I’ll write you an introduction."

Silas had been wondering whom to ask. Leander could save him several fruitless visits, but he wanted to be clear about what he was accepting.

"Would I have to sell them the whole lot?" Silas asked.

Leander’s eyebrows went up a fraction. "No. They’ll assess a sample and tell you what it is. What you do after that is your business." A small pause. "You want to keep the living pieces."

"I want to grow more," Silas said. "And know what I’ve actually got before I sell anything."

Leander glanced at the carefully propped lid, then back at him. His interest seemed to sharpen.

"I’ll write the introduction tonight," he said. "Corwen’s. Tell them I sent you." Then, with the faint edge of a smile: "If it turns out to be worth anything, I’d like to know. I’d hate to have been beaten to the only interesting thing at Harrowglass and never find out what it was."

"You’ll hear," Silas said.

Leander nodded and went back to his own team.

Silas looked at the box again. A buyer who assesses first, he thought. And a prince who’s just decided I’m worth watching. He wasn’t sure which of those to be more pleased about.

***

Alden and Dagna came over a few minutes later, carrying their packs.

"Was that about the dirt?" Alden asked.

"It was about the dirt," Silas said. "Leander knows a broker. He’ll write me an introduction."

"Good," Dagna said. "Then someone can tell you whether we spent two days on something real."

"About that." Silas closed the lid of the box to its crack and looked at them both. "You two did half of this. Alden held the slabs. You held the board. Neither of you had to come into the court at all. So if any of this turns into something I can sell, after the assessment and whatever it costs to refine, I want to split the first proceeds three ways."

Alden blinked. "You don’t have to."

"I know I don’t have to," Silas said.

Dagna looked at him with her head slightly on one side. "And the growing bits?"

"Stay with me," Silas said. "Someone has to keep them alive, and I’ve got the windowsill for it." He shrugged. "If they grow, there’s more later. But the first money, if there’s any, three ways."

"If there’s any," Dagna said.

"If there’s any," Silas agreed. "It might be worth nothing."

Alden grinned. "Then a third of nothing is still fair."

"Agreed," Dagna said, and that was that.

***

Ferrow held the debrief in the shade of the coaches, standing on the step of the first one so everyone could see him.

He went through it team by team, quickly. When he came to Team Nine, he looked at his slate.

"Galleries, near end. Assignment complete, all salvage intact. Glassback nest disturbed under the warm bed, contained." He looked up at Silas. "Rooke noticed the nest before the lift. That’s why it was contained instead of crossing three frames of loose glass with all of them underneath. He kept the path behind them clear, so there was somewhere safe to move to. And he gave a plan the other two could follow without stopping to have it explained." He paused. "Cross adjusted to the skitter’s movement and finished it. Korr held cover and changed it on a call she didn’t have time to check. All three of them made decisions that worked."

That was all. He moved on to the next team.

Silas stood very still in the shade and tried not to look as pleased as he felt.

Near the end, Ferrow added, "Kest’s team carried every piece of brass out of the boiler yard without dropping one. Somebody learned something in that retrieval assessment."

Across the crowd, Rovan’s ears went up.

***

The road home was quieter than the road out.

Everyone was tired. Dagna fell asleep within ten minutes, upright, with her arms folded and her chin on her chest, and didn’t move again for an hour. Alden stared out the window at the scrub becoming pasture becoming farmland, with the box on Silas’s knees in the corner of his eye, and Silas kept one hand on its lid every time the coach hit a rut. Nim, in the pocket, had arranged himself somehow so that sitting no longer squashed him, and said nothing at all, which Silas suspected was a sulk about the moss.

Halfway home, Alden said quietly, so as not to wake Dagna, "Can I ask you something?"

"Go on," Silas said.

"The way you moved that clip. And the slabs, this morning. You barely touched them." He turned his hands over in his lap. "When I broke the slab off you in Carrow Hall, I knew exactly where the mana had to go. But I don’t know how to put it somewhere small. Everything I do is big. I’d like to learn to do it small." He hesitated. "Could we practice together? Fine control. You could show me what you do."

Silas had been hoping to get Alden through his door. Now his friend was asking for help, and the thought of the empty slot arrived before his answer.

Yes, I want the Talent. I can still make the afternoon useful for him.

"Come to my room," he said. "Once my mother’s visit is settled. I’ll make tea, and we’ll try it with something light."

"Your room?" Alden asked. "Have you got space?"

"For something light," Silas said. "Leave the sword in its case."

Alden smiled. "All right."

Silas took out his communicator and wrote to Mara.

On the coach home. All in one piece. Brought something back from Harrowglass. Tell you properly when you’re here.

Her reply came quickly.

Eat something before you sleep. And don’t put whatever it is on the coach floor.

He looked down at the box on his knees and grinned.

It’s on my knees, he wrote. It’s been on my knees for half a day.

Good boy.

***

The academy came into view in the late afternoon, its towers gold against a darkening sky. Silas leaned forward to look. He was thinking of a hot bath and a place to set the box where he wouldn’t have to catch it at every rut.

To his mild embarrassment, he was already thinking about who he wanted to tell first.