'Buy? said William. 'How can you buy people?'
'See? Cultural misunderstanding once again, lad. It costs a lot of money to raise a young dwarf to marriageable age. Food, clothes, chain mail... it all adds up over the years. It needs repaying. After all, the other dwarf is getting a valuable commodity. And it has to be paid for in gold. That's traditional. Or gems. They're fine, too. You must've heard our saying "worth his weight in gold"? Of course, if a dwarf's been working for his parents that gets taken into account on the other side of the ledger. Why, a dwarf who's left off marrying till late in life is probably owed quite a tidy sum in wages - you're still looking at me in that funny way
'It's just that we don't do it like that...' mumbled William.
Goodmountain gave him a sharp look. 'Don't you, now?' he said. 'Really? What do you use instead, then?'
'Er... gratitude, I suppose,' said William. He wanted this conversation to stop, right now. It was heading out over thin ice.
'And how's that calculated?'
'Well... it isn't, as such...'
'Doesn't that cause problems?'
'Sometimes.'
'Ah. Well, we know about gratitude, too. But our way means the couple start their new lives in a state of... g'daraka... er, free, unencumbered, new dwarfs. Then their parents might well give them a huge wedding present, much bigger than the dowry. But it is between dwarf and dwarf, out of love and respect, not between debtor and creditor... though I have to say these human words are not really the best way of describing it. It works for us. It's worked for a thousand years.'
'I suppose to a human it sounds a bit... chilly,' said William.
Goodmountain gave him another studied look.
'You mean by comparison to the warm and wonderful ways humans conduct their affairs?' he said. 'You don't have to answer that one. Anyway, me and Boddony want to open up a mine together, and we're expensive dwarfs. We know how to work lead, so we thought a year or two of this would see us right.'
'You're getting married?'
'We want to,' said Goodmountain.
'Oh... well, congratulations,' said William. He knew enough not to comment on the fact that both dwarfs looked like small barbarian warriors with long beards. All traditional dwarfs looked like that.*
Goodmountain grinned. 'Don't worry too much about your father, lad. People change. My grandmother used to think humans were sort of hairless bears. She doesn't any more.'
'What changed her mind?'
'I reckon it was the dying that did it.'
Goodmountain stood up and patted William on the shoulder. 'Come on, let's get the paper finished. We'll start the run when the lads wake up.'
Breakfast was cooking when William got back, and Mrs Arcanum was waiting. Her mouth was set in the firm line of someone hot on the trail of unrespectable behaviour.
'I shall require an explanation of last night's affair,' she said,
* Most dwarfs were still referred to as 'he' as well, even when they were getting married. It was generally assumed that somewhere under all that chain mail one of them was female and that both of them knew which one this was. But the whole subject of sex was one that traditionally minded dwarfs did not discuss, perhaps out of modesty, possibly because it didn't interest them very much and certainly because they took the view that what two dwarfs decided to do together was entirely their own business. confronting him in the hallway, 'and a week's notice, if you please.'
William was too exhausted to lie. I wanted to see how much seventy thousand dollars weighed,' he said.
Muscles moved in various areas of the landlady's face. She knew William's background, being the kind of woman who finds out about that kind of thing very quickly, and the twitching was a sign of some internal struggle based around the definite fact that seventy thousand dollars was a respectable sum.
'I may perhaps have been a little hasty,' she ventured. 'Did you find out how much the money weighed?'
'Yes, thank you.'
'Would you like to keep the scales for a few days in case you want to weigh any more?'
'I think I've finished the weighing, Mrs Arcanum, but thank you all the same.'
'Breakfast has already begun, Mr de Worde, but... well, perhaps I can make allowances this time.'