Shadow

Chapter Seventeen

Vague images, changing too quickly to be meaningful, leaving only impressions, like the flashes of colour behind your eyelids when you've looked directly at the sun. Early memories, formed before he'd had the words to shape them with: lying on his back in a basket as the sky and the horizon flickered around him, feeling frightened by the jostling, wondering why his mother was running; lying in a dark place with his mother's hand clamped over his mouth, trying to pull her fingers away; a man's face directly overhead, so big that his nose and mouth and moustache seemed to fill the world, and the instinctive knowledge that something was wrong; some years later-he was standing, looking down-being shown a long rectangle of newly turned earth that looked like a freshly dug flowerbed and wondering why they'd planted his mother in the ground. Then another early one: sitting up in a cot or something of the sort, waving his hands to try and scare off the big, cruel-looking black bird that was perched on the side rail, examining him with round black empty eyes. Vague images, but for once he knew that he was there, that the eyes he was watching through had been his own: a three-legged cat crossing a paved yard, an old man with a white beard pointing at the sky, an endless journey over bumpy roads in a cart He woke up and opened his eyes. It was dark. He was lying on his back, just as he had been in the dream (already very nearly drained away; a few pictures clinging to his mind like limpets on a rock, but meaningless without context), and he could hear somebody breathing in the room with him.

Then he remembered. The woman lying beside him was Copis, of course, and there was nothing sinister or bad about her being there; arguably, quite the opposite, or so it had seemed at the time. Now she was lying on her left side, one arm underneath her (how can anybody sleep like that? It must be really uncomfortable), not snoring exactly, but making a gentle snuffling noise every time she breathed in-not loud at all, but once noticed, impossible to ignore. He lay still for some time, listening for the little noise, counting out the interval between. Her hair smelt like rainwater.

He closed his eyes, made a conscious effort not to listen for the noise, which was naturally self-defeating. Did this feel natural, he wondered, sharing a bed with someone? It must be something you learned how to do, the knack of keeping to your own space, like the knack of not rolling off the edge and landing on the floor. If he'd learned the knack, did he have a wife somewhere, or had he had one once? He concentrated, fishing in the dark for a face. There wasn't anything there, needless to say; the dream was long gone, and even Copis, the only woman he knew now, was hard to call deliberately to mind, so that he had to build up her face out of composite memories, eyes and nose, contours of cheeks, the radius of her forehead, the faint lines at the sides of her mouth. It occurred to him that when they'd both slept in the cart she hadn't made the snuffling noise (but they'd never slept together in a bed, so perhaps she only did it when she had a mattress and pillows, or when she was making space for someone else in a bed). He let his thoughts stray, and after a while he found himself looking for something that wasn't there, a curved line that should have been visible in the air, a circle.

If he had to lie awake thinking, he told himself, it'd be a better use of the time to consider the implications of all this, the effect it must inevitably have on the way he approached the future. He was fairly certain that he wasn't in love with Copis, and that she wasn't in love with him. Love wasn't an issue here, nor was passion or pleasure or even affection. He considered the term companionship, but rejected that, too. Association (what language was he thinking in? He had no idea) was closer to the mark; there was a distinctly businesslike feel to this relationship, something to do with a contract or agreement sealed with some formal sign of utmost good faith, required precisely because neither of them trusted the other. Then there was obligation, as if they were the last two of their kind left in the world, making a mating necessary. Still no affection, unless perhaps it was the instinctive bond between two soldiers who meet for the first time on the battlefield, as they stand next to each other in a hastily formed line or square after a desperate retreat has been halted and turned into a last attempt to hold back the enemy; arguably nothing more than a common purpose, a shared and expedient need for help and support in the face of a danger that can't be dealt with alone. Comrade-in-arms, joint venturer, ally in adversity, fellow creature, joined by a shared need but still just outside the circle, or touching it without breaking through; such delicate geometry, and all done instinctively, in their sleep.

He was beginning to get cramp in his left leg, and needed to shift. He couldn't think of how to move without disturbing her, not consciously and deliberately, executing a move like a fencer or a wrestler. That thought hung in his mind for a moment, and somehow turned into the shadow of a memory, of something learned so hard, so grimly that it was no longer his to lose. Only the finest master can match the skill of the novice; whatever that was supposed to mean. He gave it some thought; was it something to do with the notion that before you learn how to do something in the correct, approved manner you do it instinctively, without thinking, and that the essence of skill is to recapture that instinctiveness through endless practice and perfection of technique? Quite possibly, though what that had to do with turning over in bed he wasn't really sure.

He opened his eyes again, and this time they were used to the darkness, and he could make out the shapes of the room, the graduations of depth of shadow. This was the upstairs room in Copis' house (Copis' house, paid for with his lump of gold; who the lump of gold really belonged to was neither here nor there). They'd come here because it was raining; they'd gone to look at a cart, of all things, which Copis was interested in buying, she protesting that she didn't really know about carts and needed an expert opinion. It had turned out to be a wreck, the ghost of a cart, some scraps of plank and corroded steel strip held together by the memory of once having been a cart… Copis reckoned it could be fixed, and it'd be cheaper to buy an old dog and do it up as and when she had some money. It had taken him a long time over a quart jug of nasty red wine in a tavern to show her the error of her ways, and by then it was pitch dark and the rain was coming down sideways, hard enough to forge iron, and the Falx house was on the other side of town, whereas Copis' place was just round the corner. Then, properly speaking, she'd seduced him… but with a gravity and seriousness of manner and purpose that made him think of a craftsman undertaking an important job just inside the threshold of his competence. It would have been churlish to refuse, he told himself. And now here he was, and presumably something had changed; one set of options had been closed off, another set had opened to replace them.

It was still raining, and for some reason he found that the sound of the rain on the roof both soothed and upset him, as though it was tugging him towards a memory it knew was there but couldn't get into any more. He yawned and wiggled his toes. Absolutely no chance of going back to sleep now, but here he was in someone else's house. Probably there was some sort of etiquette or protocol governing this sort of situation, which every man of his age in the world knew, except him-under what circumstances is it permissible to leave the woman's bed before she wakes up, is it mortally insulting to get up, go downstairs, light a lamp and read a book or darn a hole in your coat sleeve-subtle points that could easily do permanent damage, at a critical point in his life where everything was suddenly in a state of flux. One moment, here and now, could change everything that followed (and for better or for worse, let's not forget that). It'd be so much simpler if he could go back to sleep, and allow his instincts and reflexes to guide him through these reefs to the safety of morning…

He was just trying to convince himself that she'd never know if he got up and went downstairs for a while when he opened his eyes and found them full of daylight, which was swamping the room and flushing away the shadows; he'd fallen asleep after all, and in such a way as to do serious damage to his neck and shoulders.

'Ah,' Copis said. She was up, dressed, sitting in front of a small, cheap-looking dressing-table. 'You've finally woken up, then. I was going to give it another hour and then send for the undertaker.'

He groaned and sat up. 'What time is it?' he asked.

'Four hours after sunrise,' she replied. She had her back to him, but he could see her face reflected in the mirror. 'Does Falx Roisin let you all sleep in like this? He must've got soft in his old age.'

She made it sound like she knew him; better not ask how. 'Damn,' he said. 'I was supposed to be starting out an hour after dawn. We're taking a cart out to Deymeson-'

'Left without you by now, I expect,' Copis replied. 'Was it important?'

He shrugged. 'No idea,' he said. 'Nobody tells me, and that suits me. I mean, yes, it must've been fairly important or it wouldn't need to go by special courier-'

'Special courier,' Copis mimicked, not particularly accurately. 'You do realise that's just street Weal for "someone dumb enough to take the job"-all right, all right, no need to scowl at me like that. I was just saying, that's all.'

'I wasn't scowling,' Poldarn replied, pulling a face.

She adjusted the position of her mirror so that she could see him. 'I stand corrected,' she said gravely. 'Anyway, I expect Falx Roisin's found another special courier, so you might as well take the day off. In fact-'

He braced himself. The previous night, over the wine, she'd been dropping hints heavy enough to use as anvils 'No,' he said. 'Absolutely not.'

'Oh, go on. You'd be helping me out-'

'No.' He shook his head, sharp movements to either side. 'My career as a god is definitely over.'

'You only did it once,' she pointed out. 'And you weren't exactly wonderful at it then.'

'Fine,' he said, finding himself unexpectedly put out by the criticism. 'In that case you won't want me to do it again. Which is just as well, because I won't.'

'You bloody well should.' He recognised the key change, from wounded to angry; synthetic, both of them. She was much better at angry. 'If you hadn't gone and killed my perfectly good god-'

'Perfectly good.' Poldarn laughed unkindly. 'He was a jerk. You were only too glad to be rid of him, before he cut your throat and sold your body to a tannery.'

She was about to step into his circle and fight, but she stopped and smiled. 'True,' she said. 'Which is why I need somebody who won't let me down or rob me or do anything horrible, and the only person like that I can think of is you. Please?' she added.

Somehow he found it extremely difficult to refuse.

'No,' he said. 'But,' he added quickly, before she had a chance to dodge and counterattack, 'if you're looking for a partner in an enterprise that doesn't involve gods in carts, I'd be interested in that. Like,' he went on, knowing he had her attention, 'that idea you told me about the other day.'

She didn't seem as pleased as he'd expected. 'Oh,' she said. 'That.'

Poldarn nodded. 'You wanted me to put money into it,' he said.

'That was before…' He got the impression she hadn't meant to say that, or at least not in that way. 'I've been thinking about that,' she went on. 'Maybe it's not such a good idea after all.'

'I think it's a great idea,' Poldarn said, making an effort to sound upbeat and enthusiastic. 'Buttons. Everybody in the world needs buttons, and the biggest button factory in these parts is right here in Sansory. We buy buttons, load them on a cart, go round the villages and sell them. On the way back, we buy bones to sell to the factory. Brilliant.'

She shook her head. 'I don't know anything about bones,' she said. 'I don't even like them.'

Poldarn laughed. 'I don't think it's absolutely necessary,' he said. 'Look, I don't know anything about bones either. Or buttons. But we can learn.'

'I don't know' She looked away, and Poldarn found himself wondering whether he wasn't being double-bluffed, and if this wasn't a clever way of manoeuvring him into the button trade. If so, he decided, he didn't mind, because it was a good idea, even if it was one of hers. 'I just don't know,' she said. 'I don't think I'm cut out to be a trader. I haven't got the patience.'

Poldarn moved so he was facing her. 'If you can pretend to be a priestess,' he said, 'you can sell buttons. Being a priestess was hard work, and the pay was lousy.'

'Yes, I know.' She frowned and bit her lip-the latter struck Poldarn as just a little too self-conscious, inclining him towards the manoeuvring theory. 'I can't decide,' she said. 'What if we accidentally go to one of the villages where I did the god-in-the-cart routine?'

'We'll make a special effort not to.'

By now he was convinced. 'All right,' she said, 'what do you think? After all, it's your money.'

He couldn't help smiling at that. 'I think I've had enough of the bodyguard business, and we've both had enough of the god business. And buttons are as good a thing to sell as any.'

'Quitting to go into a nice, safe, good business with a rich woman who's crazy about you,' Eolla said, examining the blanket. 'You must be off your head.'

Poldarn frowned. 'I didn't say she was crazy about me,' he replied.

'Stands to reason, doesn't it?' Eolla replied. 'Otherwise, why'd she take you in? I mean, you got no money, you don't know spit about buttons or bones-'

'Neither does she.'

'Proves my point,' Eolla said, smirking. 'If she wasn't crazy about you, she'd be looking to find someone who did know the business. Bloody good luck to you, my son.' He peered closely at the blanket. 'This tear wasn't here before,' he said. 'That'll be a quarter, dilapidations.'

If it had been anybody else, Poldarn would have had his doubts. But he could well imagine that Eolla did know every square inch of every blanket in his stores, in the same way that a god knows the names of every man and woman in his world. He paid.

'That's the lot, then.' Everything he'd been issued by the Falx house, all the possessions considered necessary, in a neat, folded pile; except for two.

'There's the sword,' Poldarn pointed out. 'And the other book.'

To his surprise, Eolla shook his head. 'Keep 'em,' he said. 'The book's no good; there's a page missing-two hundred and forty-eight-and a big brown stain all down the outside. More trouble than it's worth to put it back into inventory.'

Poldarn had noticed the stain all right; given where everything in Sansory came from, no prizes for guessing what it was. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'Thanks. What about the sword?'

Eolla frowned. 'Don't want it,' he said. 'Just superstition, really. Bad luck.'

'Bad luck? Why?'

'Just a feeling. You get that sometimes, with things, in this job. I wouldn't want it in the rack, in case it's catching.'

Poldarn didn't like the sound of that, but he wasn't going to argue. He'd seen one just like it on a stall in the Irongate marked at two hundred quarters, and even if the buying price was only half that, it'd still be a useful sum for the business. 'Thanks,' he said. 'Right, that's everything, then.'

Eolla nodded. 'That's everything.' He turned away and started putting things back in their proper piles, chests and racks. 'Probably a good thing, really,' he said. 'For a start, you lasted longer in the job than some, and you're the only one who's left it who didn't leave in a box. And the lads-' He scratched his head. 'Nothing personal to you, of course.'

'Just superstition.'

'You know how it is. I mean, if you were them, would you want to ride with you?'

Poldarn smiled bleakly. 'I'd sooner quit,' he replied.

'There you are, then.' Eolla picked up the boots and wiped the toes with his sleeve. 'I'll tell you this and you can take it any bloody way you want. If you think you can hide in the button trade, you're kidding yourself. You're a nice bloke, always been straight with me, and I'm glad for you; you'll never come to any harm, no matter what. But God help anybody who takes up with you.'

Poldarn didn't say anything for a long time; then he opened the door. 'Thanks for the book,' he said.

'You're welcome. Mind how you go.'

The Potto house stood in the middle of a small square, almost exactly in the middle of Sansory. It was typical of the city that its middle wasn't its centre; all the markets and temples and public buildings were on the west side, in the old town, and the middle was where the second rank of merchant houses were to be found. It was the closest you'd get to a quiet, respectable neighbourhood; there weren't many fights and robberies during daylight hours and hardly anything caught fire or fell down because of the vibrations from passing carts. Potto Ilec's father had built the house forty years ago, when he'd made enough money from the button trade to get out of the north side for good. He couldn't afford to build it all at once, of course, but he had a firm idea of what he wanted in his mind, so he started on the left, with the kitchens, stables and servants' quarters, and worked his way gradually to the right as time and money allowed. When he died, twenty years later, his men were just about to fit the frame for the front door. His son Dec had done well for himself, far better than his father, and it could only be a matter of a few years before the house would be completed with the addition of the family quarters and the master bedroom. Until then, Potto Ilec and his family slept on mattresses in the hall, while his servants, workers and clerks each had a room of their own, with a balcony. Poldarn, on hearing the story, decided that the Potto family's chief characteristic must be patience and determination. Copis' interpretation was that they were idiots.

The main door was open when they approached, and there was no porter in the lodge. They hung about for a few minutes waiting for somebody to show up, but the house and yard all appeared to be deserted, like the ghost town they'd passed through on the moors. Poldarn kept expecting to see crows. Eventually Copis' impatience got the better of her discretion, and she walked into the house. Muttering under his breath, Poldarn followed her, and they arrived in a beautifully proportioned inner courtyard-cum-cloister, with a granite fountain in the middle of a carefully trimmed lawn. The effect was spoiled rather by a large pyramid of bones heaped up in the northern corner. There was nobody about.

'Just once,' Poldarn said, 'I'd like to go somewhere and it'd all be straightforward and simple. Does that sort of thing ever happen, or am I being naive?'

Before Copis could reply, a small door opened in the cloister wall and a nondescript-looking man in a long green coat came out, holding a ledger. He looked at them for a moment and frowned. 'Can I help you?' he said.

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?'

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.

'Over here,' Potto Dec said, 'we've got the drilling benches. Another wonderful innovation; you won't see anything like this anywhere in the world, I'm convinced of it.'

The first thing Poldarn noticed about the drilling bench was the row of what looked like miniature gallows-an upright post, about as long as his forearm, with two bars sticking out at right angles, one a hand's span above the other. There was a hole bored in the end of each of these bars, in which rode a wooden spindle with a brass collet holding a tiny flat-bladed drill mounted on the end. Five or six turns of cord were wrapped round the middle of the spindle; the ends of the cord were fastened to the nocks of a wooden bow, which a worker pushed and pulled backwards and forwards, spinning the drill in its bearings. The second man on each drill pressed down on the top of the spindle with a pad of rag or, as often as not, the bare palm of his hand, thereby pushing the drill down into the workpiece-a square of bone pared off one of the long, thin slices produced by the saw bench, held in position by two wooden clamps tightened by thumbscrews. After each hole had been drilled, the presser-down slacked off the thumbscrews and turned the bone square in its jig, ready to drill the next hole, the result being four holes in a precise square, in the very centre of the piece of bone.

'I can see your colleague shares my passion for fine machinery,' Potto Ilec told Copis happily. 'I'm just like him, I could stand for hours on end just watching.'

Poldarn, looking at the drill bench, had his back to Copis and therefore couldn't see the expression on her face, but the little grunting noise she made was enough to give him a fairly unambiguous idea of what she thought about that.

'The next process is really clever,' Potto Ilec declared, leading the way rather too quickly for comfort across the unstable duckboards. 'Our chief engineer's idea, though I must confess that some of the refinements are mine. See if you can guess which.'

Poldarn had no intention of doing anything of the sort; but the machine-for making the square blanks round-was clever enough, in its way. Mostly it was a lathe; a boy cranked a flywheel, transmitting power by means of belts and flywheels to a spindle in a sturdy oak headstock, in the centre of which was a boss with four pins sticking out of it in a square. These went through the holes in the button and located into matching holes in a revolving faceplate mounted in the tailstock. As the boy turned the handle the spindle spun round at a quite incredible rate, and the turner applied the edge of a chisel rested on a toolpost to the corners of the bone square until they'd been chipped away, leaving a perfectly circular button. This only took a few moments, after which the tailstock was drawn back, the rounded button dropped into a jar, and a new blank fitted. When the jar was full, Poldarn supposed, it was taken away and put in front of one of the polishers squatting on the damp floor. He asked Potto Ilec why he hadn't built a machine to do that job as well.

Potto Ilec looked very sad. 'God knows, I've tried,' he said. 'But the problem's holding the button. We tried modifying the pin-chucks on the lathes, but even when we found a system that worked, we could only polish the edges, and the insides still had to be done by hand, so it wasn't worth it.' He sighed. 'I mean,' he went on, 'if you can think of a way of mounting the button on the spindle I'd love to hear about it. But I don't think there is one.'

Poldarn could see one obvious solution-a shallow collet in the headstock that would grip the edges of the button, allowing the abrasive reed to be applied to the face-but somehow he wasn't inclined to mention it. 'Well,' he said, trying to sound enthusiastic, 'thanks for showing us round. Knowing how they're made makes me look at them in a whole new light.'

'Delighted,' Potto Ilec replied, then added, 'My pleasure. Now you know that when I say we can turn out literally hundreds of buttons a day and all of them identical, I'm telling the absolute truth. There's not many men in any trade, let alone the bone trade, who can say that.'

As he spoke there was a loud bang from the back of the shop, accompanied by a piercing scream and followed by some confused shouting. Poldarn spun round and saw that the long leather drivebelt of one of the lathes had snapped; the crank, suddenly freed of its load, had pulled out of the boy's hands, spun round at furious speed and cracked him under the chin, knocking him off his feet. Potto Ilec gasped with acute distress and thundered back down the duckboard, wading through the workers who'd gathered round the boy, past them to the lathe.

'It's all right,' he reported, somewhat out of breath, as he rejoined them a few moments later. 'The belt's past salvaging and the crank handle's bent, but that's all. I was afraid the changewheels might have seized and stripped their teeth.'

They'd got the boy sat up and were trying to drag his hand away from his face. There was a lot of blood, but Poldarn couldn't see the damage because of all the heads and backs in the way. 'That's all right, then,' he muttered. 'What about the kid? Is he badly hurt?'

'What? Oh, I see what you mean.' Potto Ilec sighed. 'I suppose it depends on where the crank handle hit him. Can't have been the forehead or he'd be out cold, or even dead.' A thought occurred to him that seemed to cheer him up. 'I must have a word with our chief engineer and see if he can't come up with something to dampen the crank axle, just in case something like this happens again. It'd be a pleasing challenge, I think; something with a parallel belt and two drums in suspension on either side of the axis.' He smiled beautifully. 'You know,' he said, 'with a bit of thought we might be able to come up with something we could modify to fit on to the saws as well.'

Getting out of the shop, away from the gloom and the overwhelming smell, was sheer joy. Poldarn made a fairly creditable job of hiding it. Copis didn't even try, but fortunately she was three steps behind Potto Ilec and he didn't see her. 'And now you know everything there is to know about making buttons,' Potto Ilec said. 'Now be honest, it's not a bit like how you imagined it, is it?'

'No,' Poldarn said, and left it at that.

It was dark by the time he and Copis got back to the house. 'I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted,' Copis announced as soon as the door was shut behind them. 'I think I'll go on up to bed, and tomorrow I'm going to the bathhouse. God knows if I'll ever be able to get that stench out of my hair, but I intend to try. Otherwise I'm going to have to cut it all off.'

She disappeared up the stairs, leaving Poldarn sitting in a chair beside the cold hearth. The silence suited him, after the noise of the factory and Copis' statement of what she thought about Potto Ilec and his wonderful machines, which had continued without interruption from the factory gate right up to her own door. Copis thought the button factory was an abomination. He could see her point, though he'd prefer to arrive at it by way of different reasons (she didn't hold with it because of the smell and the damp air, which made her feel dirty and scruffy); on the other hand, there was something about the machines-capable, powerful, inhuman-that appealed to a part of him he wasn't sure he was familiar with. To be able to make thousands of something so that each one of them was exactly the way you wanted it, your idea made real, and with no effort on your part, as the machines and the people who served them did all the work according to your design-thinking about it and trying to imagine what it must feel like gave him just a hint of an idea of what it must be like to be a god. A god, after all, wouldn't squat on the floor, cutting and filing and grinding each life in isolation. A god would have rows and rows of machines, shaping lives by the hundreds of thousands simultaneously (and each machine would be part of him, and no single machine would be the whole), and the essence of his divinity would be the power to build and set up the machines, work out the sequence of processes, fit together the drives and gear trains, so that the strength of a boy's hand on the crank would be amplified into enough power to shear through bone at a touch, and the holes in the work would fit the pins of the chuck exactly, every time, with no thought required, so that once set in motion (by one turn of the crank, one moment of force applied at top dead centre) the sequence of actions and processes would lead to a certain and absolutely predictable end, all while the master's back was turned and he was busy with something else. Gods, he felt, would have that same fierce, absurdly misdirected pride that Potto Ilec had displayed, a passionate love for the process and the product taken for granted, of no interest except for its value in bulk, its place in the chain of processes that moved the buttons from Sansory to the rest of the world and landed them, at the end of one sequence of functions and at the start of another, where they were meant to be, on someone's coat.

He closed his eyes. What if there are some gods who only turn the crank, operating a machine they don't understand or have forgotten about? What if someone were to build a machine and lose his memory, so that he couldn't remember how the machine worked or what it was for? But at least he'd know to turn the crank handle and set the gears and pulleys racing, and probably he'd try and figure out the workings and purpose of the machine by observing it in action, until logic and basic principles made it obvious what the process and objectives were. He worried away at this question for some time, both awake and in brief, obscure dreams, some of them involving crows and battles and men he didn't know, some of them merely mechanical, the pure machine without human hands or faces. It had been a long day and he'd had enough of it, but it didn't seem to want to let go. Bits of it were embedded in his mind, like a splinter of steel from a grindstone lodged in an eye, or the head of a tick that stays in the flesh after you've pulled off its body.