Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

Rigg set the jewel on the table, well back from the edge. “I realize you are not a jeweler, sir, and that your valuation of this stone must depend on what consultants tell you. But I believe you are experienced enough with all forms of collateral to know what you are looking at.” Because I certainly am not, Rigg thought—but did not say.

Before Mr. Cooper could sit in his chair, Rigg deftly slid it back out of reach of the table. “Let’s not have the back of the chair blocking any of the light,” he said.

As a result, Cooper was forced to sit on a stool at the side in order to examine the stone in the light, while Rigg sat in the chair. Thus Cooper’s strategem of keeping his visitors in a lower, supplicative position was quite reversed. During Cooper’s examination of the stone, Rigg glanced at Loaf and Umbo and saw that Loaf was only barely suppressing a grin, for Mr. Cooper was shorter than Loaf and no taller than Umbo, and at his age looked even more absurd sitting on the stool.

The moment Cooper stood up again, Rigg also rose from the chair and slid it back into place. What could be taken as perfectly natural during the examination of the light-blue jewel would be insolence if Rigg remained in the chair when the need had passed.

Mr. Cooper cleared his throat and spoke. “If this is what it seems, and I have no doubt of it, you understand, then you do my little banking house great honor, sir.”

“It is the honor due to all good men of business,” said Rigg, “when a matter of great trust is in hand.”

“Do you wish me to advance you against the value of the stone, while I pursue its sale on your behalf?”

“I am not pawning the stone, sir,” said Rigg, pouring contempt on the very idea that a young man of his means would bring forth a treasure like this to get some amount of pocket change. Though in fact that was what he was doing. “Your note of receipt will be enough, I’m sure, with a statement of probable value.” In effect, such a note would serve to win them credit with the loftiest of lodges, though it would be meaningless at ordinary public houses.

“Yes, of course, I didn’t mean to—may I recommend a lodging house where you will be most happy with the food and bed?”

“You may recommend three,” said Rigg, “and we will think kindly of you when we make our choice.”

Cooper now moved, not with the ponderous whispered dignity he had shown at first, but with al

acrity bordering on eagerness. He rushed to a shelf, took down a book and a box of paper, then rushed back to get a pen and inkbottle, and sat in the chair to write. Meanwhile, Rigg returned to his pack, took out Father’s letter to the bankers that Nox had given him, and brought it to lay in front of Cooper so he could spell Rigg’s legal name correctly.

Rigg did not watch him after that, but instead wandered the room, looking at the shelves to see what kinds of books the man kept about him. Many books had no lettering on the spines, but only numerals that corresponded with months and years—account books all. The others, the ones with titles on them, were in so many different languages that Rigg suspected that Cooper had bought them for the fine, aged bindings, and had no notion what was inside. Either that or he was a consummate linguist with a dozen languages at his command.

Which led Rigg to realize that Father was such a linguist, and in teaching Rigg to read and speak four languages besides his native tongue, and make sense of several others on the page, and know the history of the speakers of the tongue, and why their writings were of worth, he had made such a linguist of Rigg as well. He had often complained that all these languages were useless, and Father had only said, “A man who speaks but one language understands none.”

“Your commission, Mr. Cooper,” said Rigg, not turning back to look at Mr. Cooper. “I think under the circumstances, I will raise the normal half-percent to three-quarters, to be taken immediately upon the sale.”

Mr. Cooper said nothing, merely continued scratching with his pen, and Rigg was quite sure he had intended some absurd commission like three percent or even higher. When Rigg returned to the table, he saw that on the contract of agency, Cooper had crossed out “one-half of one percent” and replaced it with “three-quarters of one percent” in the space above it. Whether he had really written the regular commission before Rigg spoke, or wrote it afterward and then crossed it out to give a false impression, he would learn from Loaf soon enough, for Loaf was watching everything Cooper did.

Rigg and Cooper both signed the relevant documents: the agency contract, which would tell a jeweler that Cooper was authorized to enter into a contract and receive the funds for the sale of the gem; and the note of receipt, affirming that the house of Cooper had possession of an item of value not less than one purse, belonging to Rigg Sessamekesh, the son of Mr. W.M. of High Stashi.

His own full name still seemed like something foreign to Rigg. But he wrote it out carefully and clearly. It was his signature now.

Since a purse was worth 210,000 fens at the official rate in Aressa Sessamo, and even more upriver, there would be no trouble getting lodging—in the mayor’s own house, perhaps, if Rigg were impudent enough to introduce himself and ask the favor.

To Loaf, the word “purse” had some meaning, as a vast amount that only the rich would ever see; to Umbo, it was not a coin at all, but rather a bag you kept money in. Rigg, however, had been trained to convert purses, spills, glimmers, counts, and lights as readily as ordinary people could figure kingfaces, queenfaces, jackfaces, and pigfaces—or fens, shebs, pings, and lucks, as Rigg had learned they were called downriver. Rigg knew that for a purse, a man living upriver could buy an estate with a fine house and land enough to feed three hundred souls. The income from such an estate would support a household with a dozen servants, as well as horses to draw a fine carriage. A family could remain wealthy forever from such a place, if they didn’t divide the lands.

And that was what a single purse was worth, if anyone had ever minted such a coin; Father said that sums that large would exist only as abstractions in the records of banks and the treasury, or as writing on notes of value.

One thing was certain: Father did not acquire these gems by being frugal with the money from the pelts they sold.

Rigg remembered spilling his money on the counter at Loaf’s tavern, and wondered what Mr. Cooper would think if Rigg showed him the other gems and asked what he thought the aggregate was worth. But of course he would not do it; Rigg doubted that any jeweler in town would have the means of buying even the single gem for ready money. Instead, they would give Cooper something on deposit, the rest to be paid when they sold it to a jeweler in Aressa Sessamo.

But the contract with the jeweler would be enough for Cooper to advance Rigg any amount of ready money he might reasonably ask for—perhaps a pair of glimmers. It would be too much to ask for a banker in O to give him a spill, and where would he spend it? The rest of the value would be marked on a letter of credit that Rigg would take to the bankers in Aressa Sessamo. There Rigg would divide his funds among several reputable banks, and appoint bonded agents to buy and manage lands and businesses for him.

He had learned all this as a series of intellectual problems; the thought of actually doing it, with real cost to him if he did it badly or someone cheated him, was daunting. Is this how I am to spend my life? Looking after managers and bankers, checking on them to make sure they stay reasonably honest, deciding other men’s futures by my whim of what to buy and when to sell? It’s the forest that I love, not rooms like Mr. Cooper’s lair, however bright it is with windows.

When all was copied, all copies signed, the papers folded, and the light-blue jewel placed in a little box, Mr. Cooper looked almost radiant. Rigg suspected that at a stroke, this gem would triple—at least—the assets of the Cooper bank. Most of the funds would soon enough be passed along to banks in Aressa Sessamo, but every hand that touched the money or the jewel would make a good profit, and Mr. Cooper would rise in the estimation of everyone doing business in O, for the tale of it would spread. Cooper himself would see to that, and the jewelers would be his witnesses.

“I don’t mean to hasten you on your way,” Mr. Cooper said, “but I must be off to get the bids from the jewelers, and to do that I will close the bank and take my guard, Beck Brewer, with me through the streets.”

“Is that unusual?” asked Loaf, ever careful. “Will that alert people that you have something worth stealing?”

“It’s prudent of you to ask,” said Mr. Cooper. “But I always take him with me when I’m out during the day, and everyone knows I take no money with me when I leave the bank for the day, or come in the morning. It will be safe enough—at least until one jeweler blabs.” Then Cooper’s face reddened a little, because “blabs” was not a word a man of his dignity should have used.

Well, no matter, Mr. Cooper, thought Rigg. We’re all posers here.