Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett [39]
Anyway, it seemed to Amschat that when Esk was with him he always got a very good price. There was something about a small child squinting determinedly at them from behind his legs that made even market-hardened merchants hastily conclude their business.
In fact, it began to worry him. When a market broker in the walled town of Zemphis offered him a bag of ultramarines in exchange for a hundred fleeces a voice from the level of his pockets said: “They’re not ultramarines.”
“Listen to the child!” said the broker, grinning. Amschat solemnly held one of the stones to his eye.
“I am listening,” he said, “and they do indeed look like ultramarines. They have the glit and shimmy.”
Esk shook her head. “They’re just spircles,” she said. She said it without thinking, and regretted it immediately as both men turned to stare at her.
Amschat turned the stone over in his palm. Putting the chameleon spircle stones into a box with some real gems so that they appeared to change their hue was a traditional trick, but these had the true inner blue fire. He looked up sharply at the broker. Amschat had been finely trained in the art of the Lie. He recognized the subtle signs, now that he came to think about it.
“There seems to be a doubt,” he said, “but ’tis easily resolved, we need only take them to the assayer in Pine Street because the world knows that spircles will dissolve in hypactic fluid, yesno?”
The broker hesitated. Amschat had changed position slightly, and the set of his muscles suggested that any sudden movement on the broker’s part would see him flat in the dust. And that damn child was squinting at him as though she could see through to the back of his mind. His nerve broke.
“I regret this unfortunate dispute,” he said. “I had accepted the stones as ultramarines in good faith but rather than cause disharmony between us I will ask you to accept them as—as a gift, and for the fleeces may I offer this roseatte of the first sorting?”
He took a small red stone from a tiny velvet pouch. Amschat hardly looked at it but, without taking his eyes off the man, passed it down to Esk. She nodded.
When the merchant had hurried off Amschat took Esk’s hand and half-dragged her to the assayer’s stall, which was little more than a niche in the wall. The old man took the smallest of the blue stones, listened to Amschat’s hurried explanation, poured out a saucerful of hypactic fluid and dropped the stone in. It frothed into nothingness.
“Very interesting,” he said. He took another stone in a tweezer and examined it under a glass.
“They are indeed spircles, but remarkably fine specimens in their own right,” he concluded. “They are by no means worthless, and I for example would be prepared to offer you—is there something wrong with the little girl’s eyes?”
Amschat nudged Esk, who stopped trying out another Look.
“—I would offer you, shall we say, two zats of silver?”
“Shall we say five?” said Amschat pleasantly.
“And I would like to keep one of the stones,” said Esk. The old man threw up his hands.
“But they are mere curios!” he said. “Of value only to a collector!”
“A collector may yet sell them to an unsuspecting purchaser as finest roseattes or ultramarines,” said Amschat, “especially if he was the only assayer in town.”
The assayer grumbled a bit at this, but at last they settled on three zats and one of the spircles on a thin silver chain for Esk.
When they were out of earshot Amschat handed her the tiny silver coins and said: “These are yours. You have earned them. But—” he hunkered down so that his eyes were on a level with hers, “—you must tell me how you knew the stones