Jemidon glanced around the small room. Neither of the two women could be Augusta, despite the number of years since he had seen her last. And the drab decor was not what he had expected. Simple curtains of cloth hung from the walls to hide the rough wood planking underneath. Candles from a single chandelier overhead added their feeble glow to the filtered sunlight from the windows facing the street on the east. Missing were the fancy divans and tables heaped with fruits and drink. Unlike the other vaults he had passed, there were no laughing women in low-cut gowns to entertain the traders while they waited.
'Tally the account as of the moment.' A door to the rear swung open, and a woman with an armful of scrolls bustled through. 'Trocolar will be here within the hour, and I do not want him to find some petty excuse to move his funds.'
'Augusta?' Jemidon blinked in recognition. She was full-figured, perhaps a trifle heavier than he remembered her. Her face was broad and her eyes wide-set. None would call her a beauty, but few men would ignore her smile. Her hair was clipped short, combed straight back and held in place by tiny combs. She was a year older than Jemidon at most, but already the hint of wrinkles had appeared in the smooth glow of youth.
Augusta frowned at Jemidon and then broke into a smile. 'My somber neophyte!' she exclaimed. 'A happy event on an otherwise miserable day!' She dropped the pile of paper onto the nearest desk and circled around the side. 'Within the hour.' She waved back at the scrolls as they fell.
With a fluid motion, she slid her arm around Jemidon's back and pushed her cheek forward for a kiss. 'You always were the dreamy one. To seek me out after all these years! It is good to think that at least one man is interested in something other than the number of tokens I hoard in the vault.'
Jemidon started to speak, then thought better of it. He followed Augusta back through the doorway into a room scarcely larger than that occupied by the clerks. Slowly he sat on the bench she had cleared with a swipe of her hand.
'Now tell me everything that has happened since we went our separate ways,' Augusta said. 'Do not hold back any detail. I want to hear it all.' She stopped and looked at a water clock dripping on a shelf. 'I want to hear it all, that is, until Trocolar comes blustering forth with his accusations and threats.'
Augusta breathed deeply. She settled in a chair opposite Jemidon and rubbed the frown in her forehead. After a moment, she looked back at him with a weak smile. Jemidon rose and circled behind her. More sleeping memories awoke as he placed his hands on the taut tendons of her neck.
'You are overwrought,' he said as he began to massage the tightness.
Augusta let out a long sigh and patted Jemidon's hand on her shoulder. 'It has been too long,' she whispered. 'Rosimar was the practical one, but his back rubs could never compare with yours.'
'Rosimar!' Jemidon stopped. 'Are the two of you still-'
'A child's entanglement, no more enduring than our own.' Augusta laughed. She wiggled her shoulders for him to continue.
As simple as that, Jemidon thought as he resumed kneading. Rosimar was dismissed with a few words. And he and Augusta were chatting and sharing pleasures together as if they had never been apart-as if there had been no deep hurt, no searing wound that left him so disillusioned. He pushed his thumbs along her spine and arched her shoulders back, digging for the feelings of what had been.
The frustration, the despair, the helplessness had brought him to tears; he remembered them, yes, but now only as abstractions, mere labels for an event which marked his passage into manhood. The fire, the intensity, the overwhelming flood of emotion that had consumed his thoughts-those were hollow voices that spoke no more. And beneath them, the delicate whispers of his first love and the unfolding of his innermost self to share with another were trampled and torn gossamers hidden away in a box as strong as Benedict's. Could he dare to open it again, to hear the broken murmurs and try to make them whole? Jemidon flexed Augusta's shoulders in larger oscillations, watching her gown fall slack and then pull tight across her breasts. And yes, the passion-could that again be as sweet?
'You were going to tell me of your adventures.' Augusta cut through Jemidon's reverie. 'What made you decide to seek me out at last?'
Jemidon hesitated. He was on Pluton for a different reason entirely. Seeing Augusta was only a means to an end.
He wrenched his mind back to why he had come. 'I need an assay, an assay so that I can barter with a divulgent. I had hoped that you might help me for less than others would charge.'
Augusta stiffened. She abruptly stood and turned to face Jemidon. 'So practical,' she said. 'Now, so practical and blunt. You have changed, my dreaming one, you have changed indeed.' She looked at him intently. 'No matter, do not apologize.' She laughed. 'My vanity has withstood stronger affronts. Besides, there is no reason to rush. I am in such a position now that I do not need to seize the first opportunity that presents itself.'
'About your position,' Jemidon said. 'The vault in the grotto-what role do you play?'
'I am the vault,' Augusta said. 'Those who held it previously were foolish where I was wise. Or perhaps it was the luck in speculating in the exchanges. It does not matter. In the end, their choice was to surrender title to me or accompany the mercenaries and their contracting cube. It is not a bad result for one who once thought trailing the robe hem of a master magician would be enough.'
'I saw the cube in the courtyard today,' Jemidon said quietly. 'For what sort of crime would something such as that be used?'
'For debt,' Augusta replied. 'For inability to pay. On Pluton, tokens and life are the same. Without one you cannot have the other.'
'But why the obsession?' Jemidon asked. 'On none of the other islands is there so much focus on one's wealth.'
'Because here it truly can be measured. There are no ambiguities or changes other than those of your own making.'
Jemidon frowned in puzzlement. Augusta smiled and reached for a small bag piled with many others on a cluttered desk. 'It is because of the token,' she said, flinging him the sack. 'You were a neophyte in magic. You know the properties of something created by the craft.'
Jemidon nodded as he reached into the pouch and extracted one of the gleaming disks. He held it in his palm and felt the strong tingling that coursed up his arm. Mirror-flat and unblemished by a single scratch, it vibrated with the magical forces that gave it life. The coin was a geometric perfection that would last forever, long after all around it had returned to dust.
'Yes, 'perfection is eternal.' ' Augusta watched his eyes as he fondled the cold smoothness. 'A token illustrates so well the Maxim of Persistence upon which all magic is based. At first the small guild on the island made them as curiosities, a training ritual for the initiates and nothing more. They were sold as souvenirs to the traders who stopped on their journeys across the sea.
'But the tingle is addictive. Gradually, as more and more people coveted them, the token's true value came to be realized. They are small, lightweight, indestructible, and impossible to counterfeit. The flutter in your palm is unmistakable. Once you have handled a token, nothing else can ever be mistaken for one. And since Pluton saw goods and moneys from many lands, tokens became the standard by which all else was measured. Even more reliable than gold, they are the medium of exchange. With them are balanced the transactions between Arcadia, Procolon, and the other kingdoms.'
Jemidon replaced the coin in the sack and tossed it back on the desk. 'Brandels or brass,' he said, 'it is all the same. The cutpurse or the marauder can take away in a trice what a lifetime has carefully built.'
'And so it was on Pluton,' Augusta agreed, 'until the guilds again exercised their arts, building strongholds both large and small, impregnable havens for the coveted tokens that only a true owner could unlock. With a standard that was unimpeachable and a mechanism that made the possession of wealth secure, Pluton blossomed as a trading center. There is none like it anywhere on all the shores of the great sea.'
'And the obsession?' Jemidon asked.
'As in any land, wealth is a measure of power.' Augusta shrugged. 'But, unlike elsewhere, on Pluton there is nothing else. The stacks of coins hidden away in the vaults are true treasures and forever secure. There is no force that can take that basis of power away. The measure of a man is the size of his assay, not the circumference of his bicep.'
'And hence the price on everything?'
'And hence the price. We have no hereditary rulers in any of our guilds. All is decided by election, with each
