Vardrai set the comb down and touched the necklace that her throat graced. “Pearls are fine to wear,” she observed, “but who can eat them? If you can scarcely move what stock you have in your shop, Master Sandana, how can you realize a profit on such a hoard?”
“Some can be sold quickly,” he maintained. “Not everyone suffers in this abominable climate of trade. Zulio Pandric, for example, waxes fat, and nowadays is my best customer.”
She grimaced the least bit. “And mine, or one of them,” she murmured, half to herself. “I wish I could charge some less than others. A lusty
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The Unicorn Trade
young man would make up for a bloated old moneylender. But he and his kind seem to have all the gold, and I dare not risk word leaking out that Vardrai of Syr can be had cheaply,”
“For the most part, the pearls will have to be held for several years, perhaps as much as a decade, until conditions improve,” Natan admitted. “But conditions will. They must. If nothing else, once Sir Falcovan Roncitar has established his colony overseas, the wealth of the New Lands will begin flowing back to Caronne, and we know with certainty how lavish the gods were when they fashioned that part of the world. Gems will not only command their present rightful price, they will have appreciated enormously. Think, my lady. How would you like a profit of two or three hundred per centum?”
The woman sighed. Her glance strayed to an open window which, from this upper floor, overlooked King’s Newmarket. The breeze that blew in was soft and quiet, for little of the olden bustle stirred on the square; dwindled were the very odors of foodstalls and horse droppings. Cultivated musicality slipped from her voice as she said, in the provincial accent of her childhood, “The trick is to stay alive till then. How much do you need?”
“I bargained him down to four hundred aureates”
Vardrai whistled.
“of which I can provide half, if I pledge sufficient property to Master Pandric,” Natan said. “But we must be swift. Unlike so many
FAIRY GOLD
23
merchant skippers, Haako expects to sell his cargo at a brisk rate, to wholesalers as well as the rich and the noble. Then he’ll be off.”
The jeweler halted before Vardrai’s couch, “My lady,” he pleaded, “I came to you because your trade is still faring well, and it is general knowledge that you are not extravagant, but put money aside. What say you to a partnership, share and share alike?”
Slowly, she shook her lovely head. “I say wonderfulbut impossible,” she told him with regret. “I have not the likes of such cash, nor could I leave it with you to ripen for ten years or so if I did.”
“But,” he protested. “But.”
“I know.” She gestured at those velvet hangings, ivory-inlaid furnishings, crystal chandeliers, fragrant incense burners which decorated the room. She ran a palm down the thin silk which draped her in luster. “I command high prices, because the alternative is to be poor, miserable, and abused down in Docktown or along the canals. But this means my gentlemen are not many. It also means that they expect this sort of environs, and much else that is costly; and it must be often changed, lest they weary of sameness. No, it’s true that large monies pass through my hands, but what remains is scant, hard though I pinch. Besides, as I said, I cannot wait ten years,”
“Why not?”
Vardrai turned her left cheek toward the window and pointed to the corner of that deep-violet eye. A sunbeam, slanting over a roof
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The Unicorn Trade
opposite, brought forth the tiny crow’s-feet as shadows. “I am less young than you may think,” she said quietly. “Time gnaws. I have seen what becomes of old whores.”
Despite his disappointment, Natan felt a tinge of compassion. “What will you do?”
She smiled. “Why, I hope within that decade to have collected the wherewithal to buy a house and start an establishment wherein several girls work, paying commissions to me. That will give me my security and … and freedom.”