Slonage sneered, but doubled his offer. However, Drake, who knew the price of steel, was hardly going to sell the masterwork for 0.2 per cent of its value.
Drake eased open a shutter to let in the cool light of morning. Raising the blade to the light, he blew upon its surface. As his breath condensed upon the steel they both saw the patterns of the forging momentarily snake across the surface of the metal.
Theyla Slonage raised his offering to a hundredth of the sword's value. Drake replied by asking double, and they settled, at length, for a fiftieth.
Drake was not paid off in the shangles and jives minted by King Tor, but in Bankers' Money, the coinage issued everywhere by the Partnership Banks. He got five zeals – small rings of nine-carat gold, stamped on both inside and outside with banker's marks. He got a dozen bronze flothens, circular coins with threading holes in the middle. And he got, as well, a scattering of spings which he did not even bother to count.
There were nine Partnership Banks, each issuing the same identical coinage. And these banks – immensely rich, enormously powerful and intensely secretive – were:t the Orsay Bank of Stokos;t the Morgrim Bank of Chi 'ash-Ian;j the Safrak Bank of the Safrak Islands;t the Monastic Treasury of Inner Adeer, located hard up against the Ashun Mountains in Voice, the retirement city of the rulers of the Rice Empire;t the Flesh Trader's Financial Association of Galsh Ebrek;t the Bondsman's Guild of Obooloo, capital city of Aldarch the Third, the Mutilator of Yestron;t the Bralsh, of Dalar ken Halvar;T the Singing Dove Pensions Trust of Tang;t and the Taniwha Guarantee Corporation of Quilth.
How those far-flung organizations managed to coordinate their activities was one of the larger mysteries of the universe. However, most people – indeed, even most kings, princes, priests and emperors – were unaware that Bankers' Money was accepted in many far-flung places which were largely ignorant even of each other's existence.
The only person ever to ponder this conundrum seriously was the wizard Phyphor; that notable master of the Order of Arl was brooding about it yet again even as Drake emerged into the steadily strengthening sunlight of the dockside morning.
Drake, who was starting to feel a little anxious, settled his nerves with an early-morning beer. His new-found wealth made it hard for him to find the bottom of the beer mug, and it was mid-morning before he emerged again into the hot, raucous bustle of the docks.
He strolled along, hands dug deep in his pockets. He kicked a piece of shining sea-coal. Once. The sudden movement hurt his bruised, swollen testicles. He idled from stall to stall, scarcely listening to the babble of languages assaulting his ears as hoarse-voiced shills screamed the virtues of products as diverse as querns and keflo shell.
Then he saw a couple of big men prowling through the crowds. They wore long robes and carried iron-shod staves. Elsewhere, they might have been mistaken for wizards, but Drake recognized them on sight. They were two of the temple's enforcers. He knew they knew him well. He walked the other way, toward a man who was hawking passages to Androlmarphos.
'. . . 'Marphos today . . . noon sailing . . . 'Marphos today . . . one zeal for the beer-price passage . . .'
Drake made a drunken decision which he would never have made sober, and paid out for a passage to the foreign port, leaving at noon that same day.
6
There was no nonsense about passengers on the good ship
Drake, being battened down below, was unable to hang over the stern rail waxing maudlin as the cliffs of Stokos receded into the distance. He hung over the side of his bunk instead, miserably seasick, and vomited into the pitching gloom. Fortunately, he was on the lowest bunk, with nobody below him. Unfortunately, there were three men in the tiers above, each as sick as he was . . .
By the time Drake had vomited up everything in his stomach, the anaesthetic effects of alcohol were beginning to wear off, and both his body and psyche were suffering. He tried to console himself by eating and drinking, but continued seasickness made both these enterprises counterproductive.
Bad weather stretched the voyage out. Once, the ship was almost wrecked on the shores of Hok, a mountainous coastal province of the Harvest Plains, lying due north of Stokos. Finally, nine full days after leaving Cam,
It was a pale, unsteady youth who finally staggered down the gangplank to the dockside at Androlmarphos, the great trading city commanding the delta of the Velvet River. This was the first time Drake had set foot on the continent of Argan, fabled land of ruined cities, fallen empires, monsters, magic, sages, wizards and worse. He expected immediate amazements – but was swiftly disillusioned.
The bustling docks were much the same in 'Marphos as in Stokos. The ships looked no different; many, indeed, hehad seen before at Cam. And, while the place was a polyglot babble of foreign languages, the dominant argot was the Galish Trading Tongue, which he knew well enough already.
Since Androlmarphos recognized Bankers' Money, Drake had no need to find a money-changer. Anywhere inland, he would have been lesslucky:butin' Marphos a full half-dozen currencies mingled promiscuously. He could even have spent the jives and shangles minted by his own King Tor, had he had any to his name.
Drake bought a fish sandwich and, eating it slowly, watched men lose money to a quick-talking rogue who hid a peanut under one of three little cups, shuffled these, then asked his victims to guess its hiding place. Drake was too canny to risk cold cash on a sucker's game like that, but nevertheless found the sight heartening – it suggested the Demon was worshipped here in Androlmarphos, if not in name then at least in deed.He went to search for a bar.
Seventeen days later, when the last of his money was almost gone, someone tapped him on the shoulder and spoke his name. Turning, he saw it was Yot.
'Why, Sully Datelier Yot!' said Drake. 'What brings you here? Come to enjoy yourself, perhaps?''No,' said Yot, drawing a knife. 'I've come to-'
But Drake, waiting to hear no more, threw half a mug of beer into the boy's face, then grabbed his knifehand. Their struggle precipitated a general bar brawl – it was that kind of drinking establishment, the only kind which would have tolerated Drake's seventeen-day binge. In the end, the Watch broke up the fight.
Yot escaped, but Drake was caught and hauled before a judge. He heard, as others have in his predicament, many fulsome phrases about the need for personal responsibility and the shortcomings of the younger generation. Then heard his sentence:'Ship out or else.''Or else what?' asked Drake incautiously.
'Or else we'll chop off both your feet and sell them to raise funds for charity!' roared the judge, who, having tried three dozen identical cases that day, was losing his sense of proportion.
'I've got no money,' said Drake, who had been stripped of the last of his funds by the Watch.
'Then we'll help you earn some,' said the judge with a pleasant smile, which suggested that something particularly nasty was coming. He had till then been speaking in Galish, but lapsed momentarily into Legal Churl. There was a pause before the translation came:' Twenty days hard.''Hard?' said Drake, in bewilderment.It sounded thoroughly obscene to him.'Hard labour, fool!'
Drake then spent twenty days chained to the oar of a galley, rowing up and down the long sweaty river-
