"Not immediately. I'm cut off from most of my tools. And they need some infrastructure, that one is using stored energy that will last a few days at best. I'm not familiar with the markets here, but I would guess that a month's wage's worth of materials and a week or so of effort would be enough for me to start making more."

"Have you got any business sense or are you one of those head-in-the-clouds inventor types?"

"Er, sorry, I'm still learning Cirth. I'm not sure what you're asking."

Kaja repeats the question, voice overlaid.

"Thank you, Kaja. I think I know business well enough. I was a trader of sorts before I ended up here by mistake."

"At this point you are only affecting your interest rate, not whether you get money at all," says the moneylender, "so take the high rate if you prefer, but would you tell me about your trading?"

"I owned a ship, and I traveled between places exchanging commodities along the way. I didn't settle into one particular route because the ship was specially designed for long range and low maintenance. Most often I would carry things like furs, food, lumber, other raw materials. Many businesses in my homeland are very particular about the way they distribute finished goods, so I didn't even bother with those most of the time."

"Particular?"

"I'm not quite sure why, but few places are willing to sell or buy finished goods in any kind of bulk outside of a long-term contract. It'd be too much hassle to be a travelling supermarket, keeping track of every little thing and where I bought it and what it does, so I just stick to commodities and tinkering."

"Are you going to operate your own storefront or sell through third parties here?"

"Ideally the latter, so I have more time to focus on actually making the things. And other devices, many of which you would find equally useful. I would like to point out that the application I'm thinking of is installing fixed lights in a building, not necessarily making more portable lights. That's going to be easier to scale up because I don't think lithium is for sale around here, and lithium is a critical component of any reasonably efficient power-storage device."

"I can't understand your jargon," says the moneylender.

"It's much easier and cheaper to put lights in roofs and walls and run wires to them, than to make more that can be carried around. I predict that most of my business will be installing them in buildings and powering and maintaining them after that."

"I assume the sister isn't going to follow you around helping you with your Cirth forever; are you going to hire help?"

"Another device that would take a while to explain is teaching me Cirth. Within a few days I will be reasonably fluent."

"The question stands."

"I'll hire help if and when I find that I need it."

"But you don't currently plan to?"

"I do expect to hire help eventually, but not for a couple of weeks when I have some finished products to present to people. Sorry, I'm not trying to dance around the question, I'm trying to be clear and failing at it."

"Hmmm." The moneylender steeples her fingers. "How much did you say you wanted?"

"Two months' wage to produce a proof-of-concept. If you're impressed with the viability of that, perhaps four times more again to fund an initial spurt of production and sales. You know people are going to want this, candles are terrible compared to what I can produce. And once electric light takes off, I can make machines that produce ice whenever you want, powered by the same source. And half a dozen other things besides."

"Whose wage, though?"

"A dockworker's or farmer's or some other low-skill thing. I literally arrived here this morning, Kaja rescued me from a lich, I don't even know what the currency is called but I know I can make it work."

"All right. I'll give you fifteen gold - in mostly silver so people will make change - at fifteen percent annually to be collected in six months unless you can repay sooner. Or, I'll give you thirty at twelve, if you hire my grandson, who I know will not steal from you and who can make sure you don't do anything obviously stupid."

"I'm thinking the latter, if he won't want a ridiculous excessive wage. I'll need some copper to use as raw material, if you use copper. And how will the twelve percent annually be compounded? For that matter, this country uses twelve months in a year, correct? Some places don't."