Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [11]
“Oh, there you are,” said the slightly taller creature. “Eir Stegalkin, I presume. I’m Master Snaff of Rata Sum, asura genius. I’ve been told you’re the best.”
“Told by whom?” Eir asked. Asura. Of course they would be asura. Short, smart, and irritating.
Snaff smiled, bowing. “I cannot reveal my sources.” The younger asura shot him an annoyed look, as if he often revealed his sources. Unperturbed, Snaff continued, “This is my associate, Zojja, genius-in-training.”
She also bowed, but her scowl only deepened.
“We’ve come for a commission,” Snaff said.
“I’m not accepting commissions,” Eir replied.
The little man wandered into the workshop, glancing sidelong at the statues that towered all around. “Really? What are all these, then?”
“I mean, I’m no longer accepting commissions.”
Garm trotted up behind the male asura, who reached only his shoulders. The wolf snuffled the creature’s greatcoat, which smelled of swamp water and fern spores.
Snaff seemed none too concerned with having a big black wolf hounding his steps. “Well, that’s a shame, an artist of your caliber no longer taking commissions. There are only three possible reasons: One, that you are retired, which clearly you cannot be, given your age and the bits of stone and wood all over your floor; two, that you’ve somehow gone haywire, which your hair does seem to indicate—”
“I just got up!”
“Or three, that you have found your subjects of late unworthy of your genius, which judging from this rogues’ gallery of puffed-up posers, I would guess to be the reason.”
“You have guessed well, little master.” Eir stepped into a pair of trousers and drew them on beneath her nightshirt. “I am tired of watching fools go to their deaths.”
Snaff smiled, spreading his hands. “We’re not fools.”
“But she just said she liked fools,” said the apprentice.
“I didn’t.”
Zojja dragged a finger through a pile of shavings on the floor. “You said you are tired of watching fools go to their deaths. If you hated them, you would never tire of this. Ergo, you must like them.”
“You may have something there,” Eir conceded.
“Well, then I suppose,” Snaff replied, looking askance at his apprentice, “I would be wise to say that we are fools. Except that fools aren’t wise, in which case my apprentice’s inquisitiveness has once again landed us in a conundrum.”
“Once again,” Zojja said almost pridefully.
A grin was fighting its way onto Eir’s face. “Hypothetically speaking—”
“I love hypotheses!” Snaff broke in.
“—if I were taking commissions, whose image would you want?”
Snaff’s grin grew from Eir’s own. “My assistant’s, of course.”
Eir looked at the petulant young asura and asked, “Why?”
Snaff shrugged. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders. And that’s all I want. A head and shoulders.”
“Well,” Eir said, “that’s a pretty small statue. I’m a pretty-big-statue maker. Maybe you’ll want to find a smaller sculptor.”
“Except that her head needs to be five times taller,” Snaff said.
Zojja shot him a look of annoyance.
“I suppose that is a commission worthy of my talents, but it’ll cost you. Twenty silver.”
“A bargain,” said Snaff, reaching beneath his greatcoat to grasp a bag on his belt. “This will be a bust in stone, of course.”
“In wood, of course,” Eir clarified. “It’d be twenty gold for stone.”
“Ah,” said Snaff, reaching to the other side of his belt. “Then gold it will be. Twenty, did you say?” He opened the bag, a pile of coins shimmering within the burlap.
Eir’s eyes widened as she peered at the bag.
She snagged her leather apron, mallet, and chisel belt and led the way outside into the courtyard. The others followed. She guided them along her stock of boles and boulders. “This one is