The man set down his quill and blotted the document before him, then pushed back his chair. He knocked on the door beside the desk, then went through and quickly shut it behind him. Ebbin waited, rubbing his fingers nervously over the sweat-stained leather strap of his shoulder bag.
The door opened and the secretary brusquely waved him forward. Smiling and nodding, Ebbin edged in past the fellow, who closed the door so quickly he almost caught Ebbin’s fingers. The room within was quite large — it might have originally been a main bedroom, or private salon. Tables cluttered it, each burdened by great heaps of documents and folders. Maps covered the dark-grimed walls. Ebbin recognized schematic drawings of mineworks and street maps of Darujhistan, some very old indeed. One map on a far wall appeared remarkably ancient and he was about to head for it when someone spoke from where light shafted in from a bank of dirty windows. ‘Scholar Ebbin! Over here, if you please.’
‘Master Measure,’ he replied, squinting and bowing. ‘Good of you to see me.’
The master of Eldra Iron Mongers, rumoured to be the richest man in all Darujhistan, stood at one of the tables, his back to a window, studying a folder. He was rather short, going to fat. His northern background was evident in his black curly hair, now thin and greying. Ebbin recognized the folder in the man’s hands as his original project proposal.
‘So,’ the master announced, ‘you are here to request further funding, I take it?’
Ebbin’s throat was as dry as the dust swirling in the light shafts that crossed the room. His heart was hammering, perhaps reverberating with the pounding of the forges. ‘Yes, sir,’ he gasped weakly.
‘This would be your …’ he sorted through the papers, ‘third extension.’
‘Yes … sir.’
‘And what do you have to show for my investment?’
Ebbin struggled with the clasp of his shoulder bag. ‘Yes, of course. I have some shards that hint at decorative styles mentioned in the earliest accounts …’ He halted as the master curtly waved a hand.
‘No, no. I’m not interested in your knickknacks, or your odds and bobs. What have you
Ebbin let go of his shoulder bag.
Humble Measure dipped his head in thought, pursed his lips. He started out from behind the table. ‘A brave claim, scholar. Isn’t it orthodoxy that such an age is mere myth? Whimsical wish fulfilment of those yearning for some sort of past greatness?’
The master had walked to the centre of the room. Looking back at Ebbin, he added, ‘As the honoured members of the Philosophical Society point out: surely there would be evidence?’
‘Unless it was expunged with the last of the Tyrant Kings.’
The ironmonger crossed to a table bearing great heaps of papers, yellowed maps and dust-covered volumes. He picked something up and turned it in his hands, a card of some sort. He spoke while peering down at it. ‘One and the same, then? Scholar? The Tyrants and the city’s place as the true power of these lands?’
Ebbin nodded, said, ‘I believe so, yes. Back then.’
‘And what gives you reason to believe you may be close to such proof?’
‘The artistic style of the decor. The architecture of the burial chamber itself. Associated artefacts above from the earliest years of the Free Cities period. All evidence points to this conclusion.’
‘I see. And this vault?’
‘It looks undisturbed.’
‘And … just the one?’
Ebbin’s brows rose in surprise and appreciation at the astuteness of the query. ‘Why, no. One of twelve, in fact.’
‘Twelve,’ the master repeated. ‘Such a weighty, ill-omened number for Darujhistan. The twelve tormenting daemons come to take children away.’
Ebbin shrugged. ‘Obviously some ritual significance of the number goes back even to the time of the Tyrants. Those old wives’ tales of the twelve fiends merely reveal how far we’ve fallen from the truth of the past.’
The Cat native glanced sharply back at him then, over a shoulder. ‘Indeed, scholar. Indeed.’ He returned to studying the card. ‘You shall have your funding. I will provide labourers, draught animals, cartage. And, because what you find may be valuable, armed guards as well.’
Ebbin now frowned his confusion. ‘Master Measure, there is no need for such measures — ah, that is, for such expenditures. Such a large party would only attract the attention of all the thieves and pot-hunters on the plain.’
‘Thus the armed guards, good scholar. Now, I own a warehouse close to the Cuttertown gate. My guards will know it. You will bring whatever you find there.’
‘But, sir. Really, it would be best if I made the arrangements-’ The ironmonger had raised a hand, silencing him.
‘I will protect my investment, scholar. That is all. Wait without.’
Over the years Scholar Ebbin had not begged and scraped for monies from this man, and many others like him, without learning when to argue and when to obey. And so, in an effort to salvage some modicum of dignity, he bowed and left.
Alone, the ironmonger Humble Measure returned to studying the card. It was an ancient artefact of the divinatory Dragons Deck. The single surviving example from an arcana of an age long gone. He held it up to the light and there, caught in the slanting afternoon rays, it blazed pearly white, revealing an image of one of the three major cards of power, rulership and authority … the Orb.
*
There is a steep gorge amid the hills east of Darujhistan that all the locals know to avoid. To some it is the lair of a giant. To those who have travelled, or spent time talking to those who have, it is merely home to a displaced Thelomen, or Toblakai, of the north.
Here he had lurked for nearly a year. And though several people had complained to the tribal authorities, no one had organized a war band to drive him out. Perhaps it was because while sullen, and an obvious foreigner, the giant had not actually killed anyone as yet. And the woman who was sometimes with him did eventually pay for the animals he took. And he did seem gruffly affectionate towards the two children with him. Or perhaps it was because he was a giant with a stone blade that looked taller than most men.
In any case, word spread, and the gorge came to be avoided, and developed an evil reputation as the haunt of whatever anyone wished to ascribe to it. The local tribes became comfortable with having someone conveniently nearby to blame every time a goat went missing or a pot of milk soured. A few unexplained pregnancies were even hung upon him — charges the foreign woman with him laughed off with irritating scorn. As she also did their subsequent angry threats to skin the creature.
In time, some locals claimed that in the dim light of the re-formed moon they had seen him crouched high on the hillside, glaring to the west, where one could just make out the blue flames of Darujhistan glowing on the very horizon.
Had he been cast out of that pit of sinfulness? Or escaped the dungeon of one of the twelve evil magi who clan elders claimed secretly ruled that nest of wickedness? Did he plot revenge? If so, perhaps he deserved their tolerance; for the destruction of that blot of iniquity was ever the goal of the clan elders — when they weren’t visiting its brothels, at least.
And so an accord of a sort was established between the clans of the Gadrobi hills and their foreign visitor. The elders hoped that flame and sword was what the giant held in his heart for Darujhistan, while the war band fighters were secretly relieved not to have to face his stone blade.
As for the creature himself, who could say what lay within his heart of stone? Had he been thrown out of the city as an irredeemable troublemaker and breaker of the peace? Or had he turned his back on that degenerate cesspool of vice and nobly taken up station in the hills, far from its corrupting influence? Who could say? Perhaps, as some elders darkly muttered, it merely depended upon which side of the walls one squatted.
