'The Eighteenth?' said Moist. 'There are another seventeen of you?'
'Not any more, sir,' said Shady, grinning.
'Mr Shady is the hereditary foreman, sir,' Bent supplied.
'Hereditary foreman...' Moist repeated blankly.
'That's right, sir,' said Shady. 'Does Mr Lipwig want to know the history, sir?'
'No,' said Bent firmly.
'Yes,' said Moist, seeing his firmly and raising him an emphatically.
'Oh, it appears that he does,' sighed Bent. Mr Shady smiled.
It was a very full history, and took some telling. At one point Moist was sure it was time for an ice age. Words streamed past him like sleet but, like sleet, some stuck. The post of hereditary foreman had been treated hundreds of years before, when the post of Master of the Mint was a sinecure handed to a drinking pal of the current king or patrician, who used it as a money box and did nothing more than turn up now and again with a big sack, a hangover and a meaningful look. The foremanship was instituted because it was dimly realized that someone ought to be in charge and, if possible, sober.
'So you actually run it all?' said Moist quickly, to stem the flow of really interesting facts about money.
"That's right, sir. Pro tern. There hasn't been a master for a hundred years.'
'So how do you get paid?'
There was a moment's silence, and then Mr Shady said, like a man talking to a child: 'This is a mint, sir.'
'You make your own wages?'
'Who else is going to, sir? But it's all official, isn't that right, Mr Bent? He gets all the dockets. We cut out the middle man, really.'
'Well, at least you're in a profitable business,' said Moist cheerfully. 'I mean, you must be making money hand over fist!'
'We manage to break even, sir, yes,' said Shady, as if it was a close-run thing.
'Break even? You're a mint!' said Moist. 'How can you not make a profit by making money?'
'Overheads, sir. There's overheads wherever you look.'
'Even underfoot?'
'There too, sir,' said Shady. 'It's ruinous, sir, it really is. Y'see, it costs a ha'penny to make a farthin' an' nearly a penny to make a ha'penny. A penny comes in at a penny farthin'. Sixpences costs tuppence farthin', so we're in pocket there. Half a dollar costs seven pence. And it's only sixpence to make a dollar, a definite improvement, but that's 'cos we does 'em here. The real buggers are the mites, 'cos they're worth half a farthin' but cost sixpence 'cos it's fiddly work, their bein' so small and havin' that hole in the middle. The thruppenny bit, sir, we've only got a couple of people makin' those, a lot of work which runs out at seven pence. And don't ask me about the tuppenny piece!'
'What about the tuppenny piece?'
'I'm glad you asked me that, sir. Fine work, sir, tots up to seven and one-sixteenth pence. And, yes, there's one sixteenth of a penny, sir, the elim.'
'I've never heard of it!'
'Well, no, sir, you wouldn't, a gentleman of class like yourself, but it has its place, sir, it has its place. Nice little thing, sir, lot of tiny detail, made by widow women according to tradition, costs a whole shilling 'cos the engraving is so fine. Takes the old girls days to do one, what with their eyesight and everything, but it makes 'em feel they're bein' useful.'
'But a sixteenth of a penny? One quarter of a farthing? What can you buy with that?'
'You'd be amazed, sir, down some streets. A candle stub, a small potato that's only a bit green,' said Shady. 'Maybe an apple core that ain't been entirely et. And of course it's handy to drop in the charity box.'
And gold is the anchor, is it? Moist thought.
He looked around the huge space. There were about a dozen people working there, if you included the golem, whom Moist had learned to think of as part of a species to be treated as 'human for a given value of human', and the pimply boy who made the tea, whom he hadn't.
'You don't seem to need many people,' he said.