Woven Steel

CHAPTER 4: A Civilized Meal

"The Bearded Axe." Guidall said, holding the weapon aloft.  The clerk was examining it in the amber light that came in through his office window. The fact that he had good light at this early hour was evidence of his relative place in the bank's bureaucratic hierarchy. Apprentice scribes ruined their eyes down on the lower floors, fighting fierce wars over the narrow slivers of good light. Guidall, by contrast, had a huge window of clear glass, north-facing to catch the sun all year round. This window was set in the wall of an office on the seventh floor, high enough to remain out of the massive shadow of the Old Emperor's fort.

He was a thin, insubstantial man, with a head of neatly combed and prematurely gray hair. He had a set of spectacles with multiple movable hinged lenses, each with different magical properties. As he looked over the axe, turning it back and forth, he flipped some lenses up and others down. The axe kept up a string of unintelligible and indignant prattle as Guidall leered at it.

"Does it ever shut up?"

"You have to cover it." Yon said. He was sitting across the desk from the clerk, crammed onto a stout bench next to his brother, the huntress Kestrel, and the illusionist Zalia. It was a very similar arrangement to how they had passed the night, slumped together on a bench in Oarsdowne Park. None had slept except Yon, drowsy from the effects of either poison or antidote. Kestrel had insisted that Zalia not sleep, and thus recharge his powers. Hither had stayed awake to watch them both and keep guard of the axe.

All four now looked the worse for it, with drawn exhausted faces punctuated by sunken groggy eyes. Hither's drooped closed and he leaned heavily into Kestrel, who elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

"Hmm." The clerk said, laying the axe on his desk and flipping a tiny lens down. "Such an interesting example of the ancient wizard's art. Today, crafting this would require at least three different disciplines.  If it could be done at all. It must have been made by one of the greats. And for what? To create something of no practical purpose whatsoever."

"It was Gerol the Braided." Zalia said, his voice thick, almost drunken with weariness. "You can see his maker's mark on the handle." Guidall flipped one corner of the canvas up and frowned, displeased with himself for missing it.

"It was commissioned by the first Lord Hael." Zalia continued. "It was supposed to be an advisor, a confidant to all of his successors. Passed down generation to generation, a living repository of the family's knowledge and lore. Only he ran out of gold before it could be finished, and Gerol just walked away. So instead of being an advisor, it's just a drunk old uncle who tells bawdy jokes and long nonsensical stories. And even those are in a language no one has spoken in six hundred years."

"All that work, by one of the greatest pre-moonbreak artificers, to create a parrot. A parrot you could chop wood with, I suppose." Guidall said.

"Hardly." Yon scoffed. "Skin off a little kindling, maybe."

"You would know better than I." The clerk said, giving the big man a cursory look. He opened the central drawer of his desk and removed a large black ledger and a small tag on a string. He wrapped the tag around the handle of the axe, then opened a hatch in the wall behind him. He placed the weapon inside the hatch and closed it. He rang a small brass bell mounted on the wall.  The sound of trundling ropes rattled through the wall as the axe was whisked away to somewhere in the depths of the bank. Guidall  flopped the big ledger open, turned a few pages and drew a quill from his inkwell.

"The payment for the item, at the standard rate of five per cent of the appraised value, comes to seventy cavaliers. How would you like it?"

"We'll need part of it in squires." Zalia said. "To make an even four-way split."