Islands in the Sky

3.19

Sema didn’t know quite what to say to that. It was oddly like the approach she had taken with the dock-manager, but turned back against her. It was her approach, but from a stronger position, and that made it quite confusing.

It almost didn’t make sense.

She thought a little more, and decided it really didn’t make sense. Quen Tosal had the information she needed, so he should be demanding a high price.

He wasn’t, and that unsettled her.

“Why?” she said in the end. “Why not just tell me a price I have to pay.”

“Neither of us have any idea how much this business will be worth. Not yet. Once you start the business, then we will know, and then you will also know how valuable my help has been. Until then it is a waste of time to bicker about money, so we may as well just not.”

Sema nodded. It made sense when explained that way. It made sense, but it still didn’t seem quite right.

“But shouldn’t we talk again?” Sema said. “After I have made a few trips. Because what if I decide an amount, but I don’t give you enough?”

Quen Tosal smiled. “Whatever you think is fair. That will be enough.”

“But what if it isn’t. What if you… I don’t know, resent me?”

“It will be enough.”

“But why? How do you know?”

“Because you will want to do business with me again. Or at least, I hope you will. You will have other ideas, other trades to make, and you will realize you need my help.”

Sema thought about that. It made sense, she supposed, at least when assuming what Quen Tosal was assuming, that she would find other trading she wished to do. In an odd way it was like what she would have expected at home, she thought. It was the same way of behaving as that. You didn’t demand too much from a neighbour in need, because you had to see them every day afterwards, and because next year you might be in need yourself. It was like that, but with their trades-to-be making her and Quen Tosal neighbours, rather than living beside one another.

It was actually quite clever she thought. It seemed sensible once she understood.

Sema stood there, thinking, and decided what Quen Tosal was doing made sense. And probably also, she thought a little ungenerously, it would gain him a better payment, too. Because of this conversation, because she now knew what he intended and she had this hope for future trades, then, when it came time for her to pay him for the first loads of firewood, she would be overly cautious, overly generous, and give him more than she should.

That might also be why he wanted to trade that way, too, she thought, and that was also quite clever, if it was so.

All of that made sense, she thought. That part about not knowing how much the business was worth made sense, and the reason why Quen Tosal wanted to be generous did as well, if she accepted his assumptions. His assumptions were the part she didn’t understand, though, or quite how he had come to them. The assumptions, the part about all the future trading they would do, that she didn’t understand at all. She didn’t understand why Quen Tosal was so certain she would want to trade again, or that she was even capable of having other ideas. She had come in here for one small trade, to ask for directions to a single island, but she seemed to be leaving with a lifelong commitment in trade, and she wasn’t quite sure what had happened.