particularly since his condition, which might be guessed at from his beardless
face and roly-poly fatness, made him indifferent to the age or appearance of his
employees.
The services offered by the scriptorium, and the name of its proprietor, were
clearly described in half a dozen languages and three distinct modes of writing
on the stone face of the building, a window and a door of which had been knocked
into one large entry (at some risk to the stability of the upper floors) so that
clients might wait under cover until someone who understood the language they
required was available.
Jarveena read and wrote her native tongue well: Yenized. That was why Melilot
had agreed to hire her. No competing service in Sanctuary could offer so many
languages now. But two months might go by – indeed, they had just done so
without a single customer’s asking for a translation into or from Yenized, which
made her pretty much of a status symbol. She was industriously struggling with
Rankene, the courtly version of the common dialect, because merchants liked to
let it be thought their goods were respectable enough for sale to the nobility
even if they had come ashore by night from Scavengers’ Island, and she was
making good headway with the quotidian street-talk in which the poorer clients
wanted depositions of evidence or contracts of sale made out. Nonetheless she
was still obliged to take on menial tasks to fill her time.
It was noon, and another such task was due.
Plainly, it was of little use relying on inscriptions to reach those who were