We had a long walk following the carts through the streets later, where I found a much shorter and more direct way to get to Emborin and Sons than the one I'd taken yesterday. I talked to Ravia as we went, asking him his opinions on the local bars, eateries, bakeries, doctors, Deadspeakers, and anything else to fill the time as Multaw and Cyuw once again followed behind me.

"They have doughstrands?" I said intently as we passed one in particular that seemed both strangely empty and yet strangely wealthy, with a low stone façade, well-made wooden walls, and even a colorful painted sign.

"Yes. It's not cheap, but as you can see they get enough business to be doing very well," Ravia said, looking amused at my reaction. "Other places have tried serving it as well, but everyone agrees Engario's is the best in the demesne. They've done very well with using what ingredients are available in their dishes."

I solemnly swore that I would eat there before we left.

After a lot of walking that made my feet ache, we were back at the merchant house.

They offered to let us wait at the bargaining tables—and even brought out some warm buns of bread and water for freshments—but despite the men's hungry glances, I had to decline, and instead asked if I could watch as they inventoried the skins and weighed the salt. Thankfully, Ravia didn't look insulted by the insinuation. I suppose I wasn't the only one who liked to keep their eyes on their goods until the payment came in.

I thought that the Mentalist was going to lift the canvas that the salt was on to move it, and was slightly disappointed when workers instead just shoveled all the salt into the merchant house's own barrels. Thankfully, a cursory examination showed that the barrels were, if not exactly, at least very close to the volume of the ones we'd used, so shortly after arriving the salt was once more packed into five wooden barrels.

"Each barrel is measured so we know how much it weighs when empty," Ravia explained as we followed the barrels, which were now being pushed on wheelbarrows specially shaped for the purpose. "When we weigh them on the scale, we know how much to subtract to get the correct weight."

"Clever," I said as I watched one of the barrels be moved onto the short arm of a large scale. Once it was in place, weights were moved along the long arm until the arm the barrel rested on rose and the scales became level. I left unspoken that the thing could be rigged with short weights. That would have been rude. Besides, I came to Emborin and Sons because they had a reputation of being scrupulously fair. While they could, of course, just be very good liars… well, I wasn't Lori. Reasonable precautions aside, I trusted people until there was reason not to, and they usually repaid my trust—especially when they saw I wasn't so trusting that I hadn't taken precautions.

Living any other way was just too sad for me.

The salt came down to 725 sengrains, 726 if rounded up, which Ravia was willing to do since it was in bulk. Since they were buying salt for 14.71 bead-tani per sengrain, and factoring in how much we were getting for the skins and furs which was at 15.25 bead-tani per sengrain…

Well, it was a lot of beads.

It also showed me that I had perhaps priced the wispbead I'd sold yesterday just right, perhaps even undersold them a little.

I glanced over the receipt appended to the contract that Ravia had passed me, looking over each item, and comparing it to the other copy. I nodded, signing my name at the bottom of both and keeping one copy for myself. "Thank you, Ravia. Once more, it's been wonderful dealing with Emborin and Sons. I'm surprised you're not bigger."

"We've been wanting to expand, but finding a location for a new house has been difficult," Ravia said. "There are considerations we need assurance on."

"Like proper dragon shelters?" I said knowingly.

"Among other things, but yes, that is a primary consideration. Even the oldest surviving demesne outside of Covehold don't really have the resources to protect more than their population in the event of a dragon. Until that changes, we are limited to this location."

"Well, I hope things get better for you soon," I said, thinking of the measures that Lori had taken for River's Fork's dragon shelter. "Now, about our wager…" I held up a mican. This time we had a small sack of the things with us. We probably didn't need it for lunch, but it was delicious, so why not?

Ravia nodded. "If you'll follow me upstairs? I believe a private room would be more suited for this discussion."

"Lead on then," I said, getting to my feet and gesturing Multaw and Cyuw to follow me.

The merchant said nothing about their presence as we followed him towards the stairs, where he paused a moment to speak to the guard there before gesturing for me and the men to follow him. The guard eyed us as we went up, but it was a professional eyeing so he'd remember who we were. I gave him a smile and a nod, and he nodded back perfunctorily.

The floor upstairs was a large, open room full of tables serving as desks. Various men and women were working with papers, pens, styluses and other implements, probably doing accounting and inventory things. On three of the desks, the people were just grabbing sheets from one pile, quickly looking over it, then putting the paper into another pile, occasionally taking a break to write something every dozen sheets or so. Mentalists most likely, putting their memory to use as computers for the merchant house, as opposed to working as couriers or lifters. People glanced up as we passed, but apparently it wasn't too unusual to have people up here, because they quickly went back to work after the brief interruption of the mundanity of their day.

From the dimensions I could see, this was only a third of the second floor. On opposite ends of the room were doors, and we headed towards one. There was no guard on it, and from how Ravia just opened it the door wasn't locked either. Beyond it was a hallway lined with doors, with another door at the end. There were guards here, two at the end of the hallway on either side of the door there and, as I realized when I looked to either side, two on either side of the door we'd come in through. Ravia nodded at them, then led us towards the nearest door to the right.

Inside was a room with a table that was larger and was more decorated than the one downstairs. The chairs around it were heavier and had a seat cushion this time, which was quite frankly seemed almost indulgent now after months of sitting on benches and stools.

Huh, would Lori like a cushion for her chair? She probably would, but the question was getting the chair away from her long enough to put a cushion on it…

We'd barely sat down on opposite sides of the table when the door opened again, and an older man walked in. He had the kind of darkened, dry looking skin that came with working out in the sun a lot, and his green hair was sun-bleached to a paler shade. The clothes he wore were sweaty, but no more than mine was. "You called for me, Ravia?" he said, and I blinked at his surprisingly high-pitched voice. Huh. I had honestly expected some variation of gruff, but he sounded like a young singer I'd listened to once.

"Ah, Endlew," Ravia said warmly. "Come in, please. I need you to verify something for me. Hopefully, it will be quick one way or the other. My friend here has a bead that I need you to confirm is real."

"Ah, that's why you said I needed to bring wire," Endlew said, glancing towards me. "Well, I suppose I could use a new bead, but I'm not paying that it used to be worth."

"We can discuss that later, Endlew," Ravia said. "Rian, the bead please?"

I reach into my belt pouch and pop it open, pulling out my handkerchief—yes, I've never really gotten into the habit of using those—and laying it out on the table. Then I dug inside the pouch again to grab a handful of beads. "Here you go," I said, putting the beads on the handkerchief, which managed to keep them from rolling. "Test whichever you—oh, wait, not that one." I grabbed the last large small-mid bead—it was a thinkbead—and put it back in my pouch. "Sorry, grabbed too many."

Endlew narrowed his eyes at the large wispbeads on the handkerchief, their lack of denomination markings clearly visible. He glanced at Ravia, who nodded.

From his pocket, Endlew drew not a wire but slim metal rod—it looked like brass—somewhere between thirty and forty yustri long. Taking one of the beads at seemingly random with another glance at me, a light began to glow on one of his fingers. He pressed one end of the rod to the light, and touched the other end of the rod to the bead.

After a short wait, he grunted. "It's real," he said, sounding surprised. He raised the wispbead up to his face, rough fingers rolling the bead over as he stared at it.

"Could you test the others as well?" Ravia said, gesturing at the other beads on the handkerchief.

One by one, the beads were tested. I already knew what they would find, so I simply sat patiently and waited for them to finish. Ravia, for his part, became more and more expressionless with each confirmation. When the last bead had been confirmed, he let out a deep sigh. "Thank you Endlew," he said as he turned back to me. "Could you please inform father about your findings while I continue speaking to Master Rian here? I believe he'd want to hear this from you directly."

Endlew nodded as he reluctantly put down the last bead. Giving me one last look—I gave him a bright smile and a little wave—he left the room with noticeably more urgency in his step.

"While I understand this might be something the head of the house would want to get involved with, I was hoping to continue dealing with you," I told Ravia once the door had closed. "You're easy to talk to."

"Why, thank you. It's nice to be appreciated," Ravia said. "Well, it seems I owe you a recommendation of a Deadspeaker. If you can give me some specifics about what you're looking for, I'll see about who I can find. "

"I'd say to take your time… but we intend to leave in five days, so… "

"Ah. I shall hurry, then." Ravia took a deep breath. "Your Dungeon Binder has really discovered how to make beads?"

"They're there, aren't they?" I said.

"Yes… I suppose they are…" Ravia mused. "Well. I won't insult you by asking how these are made. If your Dungeon Binder was willing to part with that information, you would be offering that instead."

"The idea of having the monopoly of supplying wispbeads to all the owners of bound tools in the continent did appeal to them, yes," I said. "In time, they expect people to figure out how it's done. But until they do…" I shrugged. "Well, the owners of bound tools can either wait for new double-small beads that are wispbeads to come in on the coming boats and burn through them as they have before… or they can use these." I gestured to the beads on the table. "Uh, could you help me put them back on the handkerchief? I don't want to roll off."

Ravia obliged, and we both put beads back on the cloth. "How much are you asking for them?"

"Ten bead-tani per wispbead," I said. A small mid-large bead for two had been the most I'd been able to negotiate for the beads yesterday, but he didn't know that. Besides, I fully expected to be negotiated down a little.

"Per bead? Surely per sengrain of beads is a more reasonable measure."

"You're assuming we know how many beads it takes to make a sengrain," I said. I'd probably have to find that out for future reference. "Per bead because we know exactly how many beads there are when we conducted our inventory, and this is enough of a high-value product to justify putting a Mentalist on duty to count it. You'd need to do that anyway to verify how much you have available." Still, I relented a little. "Look, how about this. If you can tell me how much the average large wispbead weighs—"

"Twenty-one grains at most, though depending on denomination marks it might be closer to twenty grains."

I blinked. "You just know that off the top of your head?"

Ravia shrugged in that way one does when you finally get to show off a party trick that really isn't all that impressive.

I chuckle "All right. Assuming twenty-one grains is in fact what a large bead weighs—" I'll have to check to be sure, "—give me a moment…"

"Forty-eight beads rounded up," Ravia said innocently.

I gave him a flat look and made a show of stubbornly calculating it myself first, then nodded. "Let's be generous and call it forty-seven and a half, so you'd want two sengrains to get whole numbers of beads. That's 475 bead-tani per sengrain, provided a wispbead does weigh that much."

"You're welcome to borrow our scales to check, Rian," Ravia offered.

"Why, thank you," I said. There were so many possible layers of deception that even if the scales in question were completely accurate a cheat might still happen down the line, but…

Well, it's a terrible way to live, thinking like that. Besides, without denomination markings, our beads would no doubt be heavier than the ones used for legal tender. However, more importantly, if Ravia and his family's trading house were going to be our distributors in this, then they needed to make their own profits too.

I was never going to get ten bead-tani a wispbead anyway. Both Ravia and I knew that. It was just a nice number to work down from.

The door opened.