A polished-looking man in the gold robes of Osirion's priesthood walks in. He doesn't shop; he has a notebook. He is writing down prices.

"...Ah, Cicerone?" asks the cashier. "Can I help you?"

The glass-polisher looks over his shoulder and blinks at the priest.

"I'm just looking," he says. "Though if you could step aside," he adds to the glass-polisher.

He gets out of the way, then stands there awkwardly, holding his rag.

"Maybe go in the back," the cashier says.

"I don't want to interrupt..."

"- yeah," she acknowledges.

Notes notes notes. 

"How many do you have at this price," he asks, pointing at one ring.

"We have three of those at - no, two, the other one came out slightly prettier and he priced it fifteen higher, but just fifteen. If... you need a lot of them then he takes commissions but that's marked up if you want them quickly...? Cicerone."

"How many would he take a commission for?"

She goes and has a look at a book behind the counter. "One moment, I need to do some figuring... uh, if you can wait six months for the order to finish he can do ten but I'm not authorized to book more than that since it'd delay other orders, you'd need to talk to him after he's out of the workshop for that."

Nod. "When will that be?"

"Fourteenth bells, Cicerone."

He writes down the rest of the prices in the store and leaves.

At fourteenth bells the cashier's changed shifts, and the proprietor is sitting next to window-polishing guy behind the counter near her; they're murmuring to each other very softly.

The priest comes back. 

"Cicerone," says the proprietor politely. "Isam Alnahhat, what can I do for you?"

"Good day! I'm just here to indulge my curiosity. These are spectacularly good prices."

"They'll go back up if you're ordering in bulk, paradoxically enough, I haven't got volume that good yet. But the girl wasn't sure that was what you had in mind."

"Why do this and not sell spells? You'd make three times as much for less effort."

"I''m not a wizard. Is it really three times? Who bothered to invent sticking the magic to rings at that rate?"

"Saving it up for situations where you might need a lot at once," he says, and "- then how are you making them?"

"I've only tried to explain it to jewelers before. There's a knack to it - I spent a lot of time looking at the wizard kind, too, used to make them inert to get enchanted later, they look a bit different after -"

- nod. "Do you suppose it could be taught?"

"Oh, it can, I've got an apprentice managed it for the first time last week."

" - huh! How long did that take?"

"He's worked for me coming up on a year and a half, but I poached him, the ones I got without any experience I imagine will be a bit longer about it."

"I think it might change the world quite a lot, magic items that don't need magic-users to make."

"I only know how to do jewelry, but maybe someone will figure it out for other things."

"Are you looking for investment?"

"I wasn't shopping for it. If some lands on me I'd snap up some more girls and get them trained - they're less likely to go off into business themselves, see, fellow who got something to work last week is already threatening it, the girls'll put inventory in Trilliant till I can't pay them more than their nanny wants to watch their kids."

"Huh. And they can learn as fast?"

"Seem to."

"The church might invest. Are you a member?"

"Sure, we go to the one at Market and Third."

"How much could you take on, right now?"

Isam pokes his tongue out the corner of his mouth, thinking. "If I bump his wage so he'll stay, and have him teaching... rent the upstairs... assume I can find five more promising girls since unaccountably no one copies me yet... upfront for materials to train them on that they'll wreck will be a fair bit..." He does the sum on paper, turns it for the priest. "I can soak up yea much unless you just want your magic rings in larger carats for no practical reason."

"Not particularly. When would you want to drop by to discuss details -"

"Half past fourteenth tomorrow? I don't like to skip days working, I'm still fastest at production and the schedule assumes I don't take off unless I've got the plague."

"All right. I'll talk this over with some people and have terms for you then."

"Lovely. Do I meet you here or at the temple, Cicerone...?"

"Merenre." Which is, of course, the pharaoh's brother, the last pharaoh's grandson, the director of the church in Sothis; the robes did not communicate this.

- Isam elbows his brother, when he's a moment slower than Isam or the cashier to get on his knees.

"I don't mean to disrupt your work," he says. "Let's meet tomorrow at your church; it'll be easiest to get all the compliance people in the same room. Good luck."

"Thank you, your grace," says Isam.

He's at Market and Third sans brother or cashier the following evening, accounting books under his arm.

The prince is there, along with half a dozen other people. He introduces them by department - investing, underwriting, magic.

Isam, from the floor, nods along and tells them it's good to meet them.

"Please sit down," the prince says, "and we can talk through terms, if you're still interested.'

He sits. "I am. - Also, I'd bump up the upper bound on how much I can absorb, I'd thought my lapidary wouldn't want to go in-house but it turns out he might."

"Do you have statistics on sales volume, in your store and at competitors -"

"Mm-hm." He opens up his book and flips through to the data he has. "I have to get info on the competition on the sly, so that might not be all right, but here's my guesses - inert stuff, magic stuff - customer demographics -"

"Oh, excellent," he says, his eyes shining. "This'll go really quickly, then. - may I - all confidential, of course -"

He hands it over.

He reads through it, rapt. "How did you get all this -"

"Mostly I have girls go shopping. Especially new ones nobody's seen working for me yet."

"You hire women?" one of the underwriters asks.

"Preferentially, though not exclusively. They're cheaper, nobody's picked them over for talent, they aren't going to take what they learn and go rent their own storefronts and steal my customers, you can even do most of the work pregnant if you're not a moron and those I won't hire, and all that for it being slightly annoying to arrange that they're never alone with me or one of the other men in the back and sending my brother to walk them home if they stay late finishing something up. Some of the lady customers love it, they'll coo over the turquoises with the shopgirl and she can send them home with a whole set."

"Huh."

"Seems fine to me," says the prince. "How long have you been at this?"

"I've had Trilliant for three years, before that I worked for Kosai Zaki's outfit, he trained me."

"You have a license, three years of accounting and sales records, so on?"

"License through this very church. I didn't bring all my records to this meeting but I have them."

The underwriters have more legal questions. The prince has more business operations questions. So many business operations questions, actually. What his research project is like, which spells he thinks he can replicate, what kind of scale he could eventually work at...

Isam's getting faster but most of the scale improvements will be from training more people. They do have to be really good at making jewelry, wrapping some wire around a chunk of malachite for fifteen minutes won't do it, but it should still scale faster than turning the same people into wizards. He's managed stuff that calls for this list of spells, might be able to get fancier with more practice, he's got most of his career ahead of him yet.

Eventually one of the prince's advisors will say very quietly that they have more than enough for the loan.

He stops. "Of course. - I very much appreciate your patience."

"It's no trouble, I appreciate the interest."

"This is my favorite part of my job," he says very sincerely.

Isam laughs. "Well, may lots of people issue suspicious-looking discounts for you to investigate, then, I suppose."

"That'd be really good news! What hour is it -"

       "Sixteenth bell, your grace."

"I'm sure you have a lot of work to do but you'd be welcome to join us for dinner."

"I'd want to send someone to tell my brother not to expect me, sometimes he doesn't eat if I don't come home."

"Of course. We're eating at Empire, three blocks from here, do you know it?"

"Haven't been. Do you have someone I can send, or should I just nip home and tell him myself -?"

"I can send someone." There's a guard at the door. "He's at your store?"

"No, he'll be home by now, he walks one of the girls who lives near us end of the day."

He reads his home address off the paperwork to the guard.

"What's the message?"

"Mm... 'Khalil, his grace invited me to dinner. Drop in on the Abazas if you're not up to fixing something, they've said they'd be glad to have you over any time - just cross the street and knock.' - you can't leave that part out, sometimes it matters."

He seems to puzzle over that for a second. He nods at the guard. The guard leaves. 

"Thank you for joining us."

"The pleasure's all mine, your grace."

They can walk over to the restaurant. It is the sort of absurdly expensive restaurant that sensible people don't eat at even if they're quite well-to-do. Maybe for a very special occasion. 

He asks him business questions the whole way.

Isam is cheerful about answering business questions!

How does the commission market work differently than the over-the-counter sales? He's heard you can make five times as much for wedding jewelry, is that right? Why'd he decide to undercut everyone by so much, as opposed to just being slightly cheaper? Are all forms of jewelry equally straightforward to make magic with his technique?

Commissions vary a lot - usually the customer looks over the inventory and winds up saying they want a blend of this style with that rock, or something, but some people like surprises - those are fun - and some people think they're jewelry designers and will go over and over the design trying to figure it out themselves, and for surprises and for micromanagers he needs payment up front. Five times is an exaggeration - the styles people like for wedding jewelry are fiddly and delicate and matchy-matchy, and now and then an engagement breaks off and you have all this matchy-matchy wedding-looking stuff you have to hold till someone wants a bargain wedding. Isam won't sell wedding jewelry to a groom without talking to a bride, he won't have someone going around wearing jewelry she doesn't like and telling all her friends "yes, this jewelry I hate came from Trilliant". The discount was going to be temporary to see if it drove more foot traffic - he was specifically hoping for adventurers on the cusp of settling down and loading up their brides with wedding jewelry, in fact. And no! For some reason rings are much harder! Isam has no idea why that is but he only figured out rings a few months ago. He can do bracelets and necklaces and headbands and earrings and anklets and all sorts of piercings and hair clips and bejewelled spectacles and has attached spells to all of those but rings in particular were a tough nut to crack.

" - huh, wizards also have to learn rings separately. General jewelry and then rings, they're separate classes and the skill doesn't transfer. I guess that implies that in some way you're doing the same thing they are."

"It's bizarre. I'm good at rings, I've known how to make them for years. Couldn't get anything to stick till recently. Sold all my duds, though."

"The fact you can do it at all is going to ruin lots of peoples' theories of how magic items work." He sits down and studies a menu.

"They can watch over my shoulder as long as they don't interrupt, when I get interrupted I break a prong or squash a link and have to back up very annoyingly." What is on this here menu?

Miscellaneous interestingly foreign foods.

How about this fish thing, that sounds edible.

"I've never been here before," he says, "but the reviews were good." He will get a different interesting fish thing. 

"I live about forty percent on falafel from the place down the block from my shop, this'll be a nice change of pace."

"It is an enormous production for me to go out to eat but restaurants are nearly all really interesting as businesses, they're some of my favorites."

"I don't know much about the industry, what's interesting about them?"

"The economics are very different even for two restaurants right across the street from each other, depending who they hire and where they're sourcing and what they sell and how much table spae they have and what hours people come in, and you have levers to change each of those things but these are mostly small businesses, right, often run within a family, often making odd tradeoffs because they're not paying for labor, they don't typically have the management capacity to change all of those levers and some of them are much easier to track than others, so the typical restaurant isn't run anywhere near optimally but on the other hand possesses the odd stability of a business with lots of levers to pull should the situation necessitate pulling them. You'll see the amount of labor people put in fluctuate wildly but the profits remain the same, because they're optimizing for a certain level of profit not for a certain return on the labor."

"Huh. I have my brother do odd jobs but I shouldn't extrapolate much from him, that's probably not like having a bunch of children you can set to dishwashing and chopping vegetables."

"With children there's not much opportunity cost, right, a brother you're usually at least aware he could have a paid job instead."

"And probably most of the labor in a kitchen is something you can teach an eight year old to do if they're not a pyromaniacal eight year old."

"Yep. - and you can treat that as a constraint itself, right, only making dishes where most of the work can be done by eight-year-olds. This is related to the theory of how slavery distorts labor markets, but the case of eight-year-olds is more complicated because it's not obvious that society should have a goal of optimally allocating the labor of eight-year-olds. As opposed to, say, discouraging it entirely, or encouraging it only if it's in trades that'll be useful to them as adults."

"I grew up on a farm, and I haven't used any of what I picked up there since I was twelve."

"In your case I'm inclined to say that whatever education system produced this outcome worked fine, but maybe we lost ten of you for every one who makes it."

"Oh, I think you got me only very narrowly. Khalil and I don't get along with our parents, I'm not sure where I'd be if we'd wanted to plan to ever see them again."

"Huh. You could in principle run a business like this from anywhere but I imagine it'd be prohibitively difficult to get off the ground."

"They wouldn't have allowed me the apprenticeship, and there'd be no clientele in our hometown to speak of, people got their brides' wedding jewelry from their mothers half the time and if they didn't do that they went upriver to the next town."

He frowns thoughtfully.

"I suppose I could have left four or five years later, and merely be short the head start."

"Well, I'm very glad you're here."

Isam grins. "So am I."

The food is delicious. He thinks of more details he's curious about - how did Isam pick the place where he apprenticed? Was it immediately obvious he was notably good at it? Is he notably good at jewelry or just the business side? Where'd he get the idea of hiring women?

"I shopped around for a place that'd let me keep a cut of anything I sold, once I had more than one offer based on my sketches. Khalil was holding down a job, but it was dock work and he wasn't doing very well at it even considering - I had to write down all the steps of getting a box off a boat on his arm every morning - and we were squeezed in with too many of his co-workers in a place with rats, but I got a necklace moved right after he let me work in diamond, and that was food for both of us for a month and it was all uphill from there."

"I think it was obvious, and I guess some of the shops I asked at thought so too."

"I'm good at jewelry too, I think that mattered for getting it to turn magic. Less instinct and more hard work, though, it's not something I can just be clever at, I have to actually put things together all day long."

"It's always seemed obvious to me. Even Abadar hires some of them, doesn't He? And if there's only a third as many suited, judging by His assessment, well, there are more than three other jewelry shops out there, not hiring them. I get first pickings and I still do even when everyone can see exactly what I'm doing."

"Is Khalil unwell? Dock work's - not complicated."

Isam looks firmly at his fish. "It's not about how complicated it is. Crossing the street and knocking at the neighbors' is not complicated either. Some days are better than others."

"Have you tried magic items? They can help a lot with complex logic, intuition, that kind of thing."

"He isn't stupid, your grace."

"I'm sorry. I didn't intend an insult. I wear one."

"I do too. He's borrowed it before but we knew in advance it wouldn't help. When he was a kid our grandfather thought it was seizures but it isn't that either -" He shakes his head. "I understand it fine but for anyone I'm not paying to look after him explaining is more trouble than it's usually worth. Does it matter to you?"

"Only in the sense that people and what they are able to do matters to me. I had more business questions if you'd rather not get into it."

"Whatever it is that lets people take what they need to do next and turn that into actually doing it doesn't work for him. I don't know why. Some days he can't figure out how to get out of bed without prompts." He spears a leaf of his side salad. "And our parents think he's faking it to be lazy but with instructions written on his arm and a foreman with half a soul to his name he'd do fourteen hours a day hauling things to keep us fed and housed. And now he doesn't have to."

"Huh. I'm glad. - if you'd like I could tell your parents that I don't think he's faking it."

"I don't think that's called for. They don't know I have money now, you see, and I'd rather keep it that way."

Nod.

"You had more questions about Trilliant?"

Has he thought about how affordable magic jewelry would affect the market for other products? He could place bets in those industries and get a lot of money, or sell the tip to someone who knows how to do that stuff.

"Isn't it a bit late for that now? I didn't know in advance I was going to get it to work. Anyone keeping tabs on the market may've noticed what I'm up to already."

"The rumor I heard was that they were probably deficient and sure to stop working, actually, but once people are persuaded that's not so it'll be too late if it isn't yet."

"Well. Buzz is buzz. I wouldn't know where to sell a tip."

"Do you have reason to think you'll be able to make any magic items wizards can't?"

"Well, they could learn it the same way I did, couldn't they? I might invent something they haven't, so far I've been copycatting, but I don't know about something they couldn't do."

"Do you have any idea how you might aim for specific effects, if you weren't copying?"

"An inkling, why, have something in mind?"

"At their current price point magic items are designed for militaries, the elite and their bodyguards, and adventurers, spell development's focused on things they need. If magic items are going to be accessible to average people they're going to want completely different things, right - things addressing fatigue, repetitive stress injuries - cure spells are disappointing for that - house cleaning, mending - there's not much market for a ring of Prestidigitation at 1000 gold because no one with that kind of spending money does their own mending, but if it were 100 it'd be a wedding present and a good investment, as one."

"I don't know if I can get it down to a hundred without some other breakthrough in there. Even if I worked in tin. It wants so much precision and I can't have people ready to do it after a six week crash course."

Nodnodnod. "- could you work in tin? The aesthetics don't matter?"

"Well, I'd make aesthetic things in tin. It doesn't seem to mind zircon instead of diamonds, though."

"Huh! I'm surprised I didn't know that. Well, people will get richer and wedding presents will get nicer and we'll get there someday one way or another."

"Amen."

"So you've been in Sothis ten years?"

"Thereabouts, yes."

"Are you happy here?"

"Oh, yes," he grins.

He beams at him. "Oh, good. If anything comes up - or if you think of anything we should be doing - write me, all right? I want to see where this goes."

"Do I just - what, drop a note care of the temple?"

"Or of the palace, yes. Someone obviously sorts it but they know who I've spoken with."

"All right then. Maybe the next time I crank out one of the little things I can make of a morning somebody with theories about magic'll care to watch. I assume if these people are wizards they're not likely to copy, if they can make three times as much selling spells."

"I can connect you with someone I'd trust."

"Sure. I suppose you probably do other things and don't have four hours to watch me fiddle with jump rings."

"I'm tempted, actually. But I don't think I'd get as much out of it, I have only an introductory education in arcana."

"Me, on the other hand, I'm an archmage."

With some effort he restrains a giggle. "You've won me over. When's a good time?"

"In four days by the schedule I'm doing two of those hairpins that nudges you if you're about to do something illegal. Well, not illegal, unLawful, I suppose that's not exactly the same, but there isn't magic for detecting whether something's legal, far as I know. They do all the other bits too but unless someone looks foreign that's not how I advertise them."

"We've funded research in that direction! It has so many contingencies it ends up being nearly unworkable. I guess some would argue that means we need to simplify the laws. I can make that." He nods to one of his attendants.

"One after breakfast and one after lunch, whichever you like but get the girl at the till to tell you if it's a good time to walk in or not."

"You must hire unusually useful people if she'll actually answer that for me. I am frequently misled about whether it's a good time for me to walk in."

"I suppose I didn't screen them for keeping their heads while they're kneeling, did I. I'll get a sign for the door."

Less-suppressed smile. "I'll see you then."

Isam smiles back. Glances at Merenre when the waiter drops the bill on their table.

He presses his ring to it, leaves a magical mark, hands it back to the waitress.

"I don't carry money," he says sadly to Isam. " - I don't need to but I sometimes wish I did. I like money."

"Why don't you?"

"Because twelve years ago some idiot made an attempt on one of my second cousins' lives using change he passed him after a transaction. And my security found 'but I really like the feel of coins, see' an unpersuasive argument."

"Disgraceful. I suppose it's less fun if you never pay for anything with them?"

"I feel like a child on Masquerade Day, except I'm pretending to be a participant in commerce."

"You could let people keep the change."

"What, and go to Heaven? - I guess I would be doing it self-interestedly."

"I'm sure you could kick a puppy occasionally and make up for it."

"- this is probably petty, and self-indulgent, and fairly silly when actually said out loud, but - I don't want Pharasma to someday make a face and do math on her fingers while scrolling down a very long list. I want a list with one item on it. I made this country's economy work better and its people got rich."

"And she will say, ah yes, to Axis with you, where for several reasons no one will assassinate you with a cursed copper."

"And I'll get to use money for the rest of my life," he says contentedly.

"Is that what they call it, life?"

Shrug. "Old habits are hard to break. Have you been?"

"Nah. Maybe later when I'm more firmly established and can take a day off without having the plague."

"You'll have to let me know when the day arrives so I can escort you."

"What's it like?"

"Well-designed, attractive, crowded, well-utilized. Not - unobtainable. Kind of chilly. Maybe go in the summer."

"It's just chilly everywhere?"

"Not in all of Axis. Visitors are only encouraged in Aktun, Abadar's domain, there are thousands and thousands of other parts with different climates along with everything else but mortals might get the laws wrong, if we went wandering, and some of them would definitely commit crimes. Aktun, the day I visited, was a little chilly outside. I was pleased it was not strictly an improvement on home."

"Maybe it's meant to be welcoming to people from cold places."

"I imagine they need more selling on it than Osirians typically do."

"Yes, we rather hear about it all the time."

"Same problem as all other advertising, except with higher stakes - some people have to hear something a lot to start to feel familiar with it, and others start to feel condescended to."

"Oh, I know it's all with my best interests at heart."

"It really is beautiful. They sell so much there. Things I never even dreamed of. Moving pictures and watches with sixteen screens of information you might want tracked alongside the time and a thousand varieties of fruits and drinks and fried foods - stunning jewelry -"

"- can you bring that home? I've never seen anyone advertising souvenirs."

"No," he says sadly. "I gave serious consideration to petitioning for an audience to argue this point with Abadar but I decided against."

"Aw, why?"

"I don't understand it. It's stupid to start an argument when you don't understand something, you want to start an argument once you do understand it and can therefore be confident it's wrong. I've asked some people to look into it since then but I have a lot of other priorities and it might be something it makes more sense to do from the other side."

"Mm, makes sense, I suppose. Can you buy things and put them in safe deposit and collect them if you make it there later? If you don't have any heirs, or something."

"If you wanted to, yes, though it'd be a bit of an odd thing to do unless you found it motivational - you'll be richer then -"

"What, after I die? Not right away, surely?"

"No, not right away, but in short enough order. I think, having known you two days."

"Took me a bit. No one knocked on my door to offer me church investment when I was starting out."

"I think that's supposed to be character building. I confess I have this secondhand, though."

"It had some effects on my character. I don't know if I'd say it built it."

"That sounds like a fascinating story."

"We spent six months living in a two bedroom apartment with four other people. It had rats," says Isam. "It was better than living with our parents and I worked my way out of it and I don't know that it improved me."

- nod. "Starting out with nothing in Axis isn't like that."

"They issue the apartments for free, do they?"

"The districts that really want immigrants will pay you!"

"Ha! What do they want them for?"

"There's lots of benefits to more people! Economies of scale and a deeper talent pool and higher density which makes you a more desirable arrival point for further immigrants and so on."

"Huh. So why doesn't anyone do that around here?"

"Adverse selection, right, even if we'd be delighted to have the average immigrant from Taldor the more attractive we make immigration the less appealing the pool of people who want to immigrate for that reason. Axis pre-selects."

"Not all that hard, you and yours put out very promising statistics."

"You'd be much more excited about ten workers, guaranteed none of them to be criminals, than ten workers, statistically one or two of whom is a criminal, right? Because criminals can destroy a lot of value and the precautions against them eat more."

"Is that guaranteed, though? Does no one land in Axis and say, ah, finally, I'm in, I can run amok."

"I think not. Probably some people find a district with very relaxed laws and do nothing but have extramarital sex and drink for years - but there are places where that's legal, and they do go there."

"Huh. I dunno, though, I'd maybe rather have an employee who was a criminal in some way completely irrelevant to me than one who spent all day desperately restraining the impulse to pocket merchandise."

"Hmmm. I guess we'll have to wait and see if the latter really comes up much."

"I would've imagined you'd know!"

"I've never heard of it! But Axis is a big place, and the only evidence I have besides not having heard of it is that people will pay you to live there when you're newly arrived."

Isam nods.

"It was a delight meeting you," he says as they leave. "I'll see you again in a few days."

"I'll break out the highest-carat gold," smiles Isam.

"Good fortune," he says, and then departs and thereby stops interrupting the flow of traffic into the poor restaurant.

And on schedule Isam does indeed get out his loveliest gold wire, after breakfast, and start assembling a phylactery.

He comes by around lunchtime and checks to see if there is a sign providing insight on whether he can interrupt Isam.

The sign says "come in". He will have to go around Khalil, who successfully knelt without being elbowed this time but was in the way of the door.

Well probably that's solvable without doing anything ridiculous like teleporting. 

He'll step into Isam's office a minute later.

The workshop is a largish open-plan space, drawers of supplies in the back festooned with padlocks, a door to the courtyard in the back where presumably everything that gets hot is kept, and worktables with various appliances and tools scattered on them and mostly women and a couple men and one fourteen year old girl sitting at them. Isam's munching falafel out of a paper packet, critiquing the fourteen year old girl's handling of the kickwheel that she's using to buff the silver backing of a cabochon pendant. "- and now bring the wheel to a stop."

"Was it that bad -"

"No, you had it right but I don't want you to hurt yourself or the necklace when you notice his grace."

"Ack!" Fourteen year old girl and all the other persons who had not yet noticed his grace get down. Isam follows suit.

"You can continue, I'm observing," he says once he has brought the workshop to a standstill. He looks - not exactly apologetic but slightly distressed for the lost productivity. "Good to see you again," he says to Isam.

Isam gets up and smiles at him. "Likewise. Go on then, everyone," he adds. He pops the last falafel into his mouth and meanders over to his own table, closest to the supply shelves. The girl resumes buffing her necklace, looking nervously at Merenre. Everyone else gets back to work too.

Isam unlocks drawers, gets the things he wants all into a divided tray to bring back to the table, calls toward the door for one of the women between tasks to flip the sign. "Didn't bring any wizards?" he asks.

"Something came up," he says regretfully. "They were very intrigued. Perhaps some other day."

"You can tell them all about it, I suppose. Here's the one I made this morning," he says, sitting down and offering a hair pin. "You can fit it under a hat if you don't want everyone to wonder what it does and then think you're not as virtuous as people who do without, though they're quite ornamental and most people don't check their friends' possessions for magic." And then he gets underway on the second one of the day.

He examines the pin and then watches!

And Isam proceeds to spend four solid hours making increasingly tiny adjustments to a similar pin, though he puts different stones in this one than the first.

He has Detect Magic up, so he can see the point at which this works.

Near the end. Pliers go pinch, he makes a couple of final adjustments and holds it up to the light, and then turns in his chair and smiles. "Ta-da."

He applauds. "That's fascinating. You just learned what, specifically, it has to look like, and that's enough once you get it looking like that?"

"I can make it look like whatever, more or less, I could do this as an earring instead. It's more I know what looks different when it's magic from any baseline, which is much harder, if anybody could string three beads on a pin and call it a day this'd be a very different business."

"Wow." He reaches for the pin.

Isam relinquishes it.

He studies it for a while and then hands it back. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." He picks up both pins and heads out front to flip the sign and put them in a display.

"Are you done for the day?"

"On a normal day I stick around for an hour poking my nose into everyone else's handiwork, but I can be done."

"Oh good! I wanted to ask if you'd like to come home with me."

"- did someone enter me in the lottery without my knowledge, or, ah -"

"That's not actually the only way in - that'd get awfully frustrating -"

"Well, I mean, there's seeing the place but there's -"

"- Isam," says Khalil, from where he's been trying to pry open a delivery box the store has just received, "can you walk me home today, I think Rabab wanted to catch a play with her cousin this evening."

"Of course I can," Isam says, "ah, sorry, your grace."

- nod. "I expect other people might want to come by and watch your work, is there a good time to send them?"

"If they want to see the whole thing, they need to plan to come a day when I'm making something fast, if they just want to watch the last moment I'm expecting to finish a piece eight days from now."

"All right, thank you. Very much."

And he leaves.

Isam pokes his nose into everyone else's work and then walks Khalil home.

He gets a trickle of various intrigued people over the course of the next few weeks, some conveying the prince's best wishes. The prince does not visit again.

It is four weeks later that the prince gets a note care of Isam's church asking for a meeting.

Sure. At Isam's church, the following evening?

That works.

Isam turns up with an opened letter, looking a touch frazzled. He's brought Khalil along. He paces.

When Merenre appears, Isam takes a deep breath and announces, "I'm being blackmailed and not in the legal way where they threaten to tell everyone that I like bad romance novels, and I'm reporting that within my forty-eight hour grace period. Fancied you might want to know."

- he nods. "It's all right. We can get it sorted out. Unless you murdered someone, then we might be able to get it sorted out but I can't make any promises."

"Didn't murder anyone. If we wind up moving to Andoran you want to buy Trilliant off me first?"

"- probably? I'd much sooner you not wind up moving to Andoran, honestly, I couldn't run Trilliant. What happened?"

"Oh, I'd expect you to flip it, I'd just be in a hurry." Deep breath. "- the forty eight hours aren't up as soon as I tell you, right? Wording wasn't unambiguous, I know I have to stop what I'm doing within the grace period but I'm going to have to go shopping and haven't yet - does it cover Khalil, he knew and the blackmailer would've been able to guess he did but isn't explicitly targeting him -"

"Immediate family, yes."

"Right. I'll buy a dress on my way home, then."

This takes him a couple of seconds. Longer, actually, than several of the attendants, who have probably seen more ridiculous situations than he has.

"- you're a woman."

"Ismat Alnahhat at your service," - she - says wryly. "Old roommate must have seen something, looked me up again recently, saw a target. Note isn't signed but we can narrow it down."

" - right, I guess we should try ordinary detective work," he says, letting his holy symbol slip out of his hand. "It's probably very good at this sort of thing. You'd rather move to Andoran than put Khalil technically in charge of the business?"

"I don't think I'll have a very good time retaining my staff, let alone hiring, do you? Perhaps I'll give it a try, but imagine trying to filter for people not being horrid to either of us while I'm swishing around."

- nod. 

"Well. Legally we can... get everything squared away."

"Delighted to hear it." She sighs and runs a hand through her hair and sits. Khalil hugs her.

"I don't want you to leave. - I won't stop you."

"I suppose I don't have to flee in the night. It's going to collapse, though - or at least shrink - not likely to be a good return on the investment but at least I haven't spent it all yet, I can give most of it back."

He shuffles his feet unhappily.

"My condolences."

"It was going so well. Right. Well. Clothiers that make things for women close early. Suppose I'd better get on my way."

"Don't -

You asked for me, was that just so I'd - know what happened?"

"- I thought you might like to know. I'm sorry for wasting your time, I suppose this really didn't need to go through you -"

"No! No, I was just hoping - you might've had some way in mind I could fix it - I can change laws, I can't change who people'll work for - but this is stupid -"

She sighs. "You tried to pick me up, a few weeks back -"

" - yes."

"I'm not sure if you've noticed since everyone has to get on the floor when you're around, if they know who you are, but when you have only recently been around, people who know who you are show up."

"...I would be more than happy to keep ordering from your shop," he says.

"Isam - I mean Ismat -" says Khalil.

"Thank you, I'm sure that'll help," mutters Ismat.

"- I think," says Khalil, "she was wondering if you were interested enough to -"

"Khalil -"

"- marry her -"

"Well, yes! But how does that keep her business open?"

Ismat rolls her eyes dramatically at Khalil and huffs a sigh and says, "It's attention, it looks like endorsement and conspicuously so, it might compensate enough to outweigh the hassle of moving to Andoran."

"Might?" he says, kind of wounded.  " - I'm sorry. Let me -" and he casts a spell on himself, saying the incantation in an unfamiliar language, and then puts a hand to his head and thinks.

"I think it would take some work to come up with an arrangement that didn't impede your operation of your business, but it wouldn't be impossible."

"- I meant in terms of Trilliant, not in -" says Ismat. "- what'd you cast?"

"Wisdom. I apparently need some more of it. 

-you declined because - you didn't want me to realize -"

"It would have gotten to be rather conspicuous!"

" - some people pretend because they'd much rather be a man, not just because then people will treat them better but because they'd just be much happier permanently Polymorphed the other way around - is that it for you, or -"

"I could've afforded that by now if I'd badly wanted to, it would have worked out cheaper than paying the blackmail for even just six months."

Nod. "You'd live in the palace and it'd be an enormous production to get visitors and if a customer throws a paperweight at you it'll be a national incident -"

"Well, no deal if Khalil can't move with me, but I'm not attached to working shopfront, scarcely ever do - and could do most consultations by mail if someone won't tolerate the enormous production."

"Is he actually your brother -"

"Yes!" they both say at the same time.

"I would have to ask the pharaoh's permission but I would be very surprised to be denied it."

"Do you have to go through our parents?" Ismat asks.

"It'd really be better to but if you came to the city with him and their permission we could conceivably go through him instead. It makes it look like I'm trying to get away with something, though."

"Does it count as permission if our father told him 'maybe you'll get off your ass and learn to do what needs doing if your baby sister's going hungry over it' and we assume he assumes that's what happened?"

Sigh. "I can take a wife without asking her family at all, I just don't like the look of it. I guess asking questionably the right bit of family's better than that."

"I can deal with them if I have to. It wouldn't be too difficult to turn them down if they came sniffing around for favors, they just would have turned me in."

He nods. "I won't insist but I'd prefer it."

"They're in Qalil Wahah. Our last name's real."

"I should talk to my brother. - he'll want to meet you."

"...suppose that follows."

"I'd say he doesn't bite but that wouldn't be true. He doesn't bite unpredictably. We get along."

"What makes him predictably bite? I did rather commit some crime."

"But not anything you'd normally expect to find the pharaoh involved in handling, right? You fudged some paperwork and confessed under a waiver and the system will handle that normally. You didn't try to murder his family or sell out his country or solicit an invasion from Hell."

"...do people often do that last, that's concerning."

"More often than you'd think. Sincere efforts to destroy the world or a big chunk of it aren't publicized to discourage copycats."

"I suppose that's a good reason."

"The beetle's not dead. The one that left behind the Black Dome."

"- okay. Apropos of..."

"An example of the category we were talking about. It's sleeping. Sometimes people try to wake it."

"I assume that's a secret."

"Very much so."

"Safe with us. - I really do need a dress. I'm not right up against my grace period deadline but it'll be pushing it if I wait till morning."

"Right. Why don't you go, and I'll talk to the pharaoh and come for you in the morning."

"At home? I'd rather not just show up to work in skirts unannounced, I was going to work on things at home and send Rabab in to tell everyone."

"At home, then."

Ismat and her brother get on their way.

In the morning Khalil answers the door, but Ismat is inside, sitting at the kitchen table looking through customer sketches, wearing a nice champagne-colored dress.

"You look very nice."

She snorts. "Thank you."

"I've been telling her that all morning," says Khalil, "and she keeps saying she passed for a man for a decade and is pretty sure that means she does not in fact look nice just by putting on a dress."

"Well, I thought she was a good-looking man, too."

"A fact I appreciate," says Ismat. "How are things?"

"Lovely. The pharaoh'd like to meet you. - so would a lot of other people but we have more of a choice about them."

"...who-all is it?"

"I have five other brothers, four of them in town, and parents. And advisors and so on but all those can wait for the formal announcement."

"Well. I'll see how much meeting the one brother takes out of me, shall I. Bit intimidating."

"Security'll want to talk to you first. Under a truth spell. They'll ask about other illegal activity, secret lovers, so on."

"Oh, I've been squeaky clean apart from the one thing, didn't want anyone to have a reason to look into me."

"I trust you. They don't trust anyone but they won't take too long."

Ismat nods. "Itinerary such that I don't need to bring Khalil to chaperone?"

"Yes. I wasn't sure he'd want to meet the pharaoh."

"Aaaah," says Khalil solemnly.

"All right. You'll be all right by yourself? Your backup prompt's over there if you need to go to the neighbors -"

"I'll be fine, today's pretty good."

Ismat hugs him. And then she goes over to Merenre.

"Thank you," he says to Khalil. "For translating, yesterday."

And he takes her arm.

"You're welcome!" Khalil calls.

Ismat mutters under her breath but attempts to figure out how to correctly put her hand on his arm. "I have," she says, "no practice - not since I was twelve - I don't think I'm going to wander out after dark, I was generally very conscious of myself when I did that, but -"

"It's not really the most important thing to spend your time on, right, I expect it's only worth it for most women because their opportunity costs are really minimal - or to get married, but look, managed that anyway -"

"Not by aiming at it very effortfully, funnily enough. When we left my mother'd been making intimations at a neighbor who didn't come across as very choosy but she'd still tell me to do things because otherwise he'd be put off."

"If you've got a very small pool of prospects then you probably want low-variance strategies but if you've got a large one you probably want a high variance strategy, right, it's better to be someone's favorite than to be indistinguishable from a thousand other people. You see that anytime people are choosing the best of their options instead of satisficing - secretaries don't pursue high-variance secretarial strategies but adventurers sure do -"

"Well, I wasn't envisioning myself as having prospects at all, I was just going to die single, probably irritate Pharasma, and try to get lawfuller from there."

"We should thank your blackmailer."

"I've considered it. Send him a fruit basket, maybe. You have rescued me from my sins, friend, have a pineapple."

"We could coordinate its arrival so that it arrives along with the fine and penalty notice for blackmailing."

"Good idea. Detective work getting anywhere? I left the note he sent at the church with the list of people we lived with before we could afford a place."

"They thought they had a name but were running some more checks, last I heard."

"Maybe I'll order the basket this afternoon, then."

And they head Dome-ward.

It's intimidating. She's intimidated. Holds his arm a bit tighter as they get close.

They don't go to the gate of the Dome, but instead to a side entrance full of guards, who escort them through some stone underground hallways. Then they want to do the security check.

There's a couple of spells - to make it hard for her to concentrate on resisting the truth spell, then the truth spell - and then a long string of questions meant to get at whether she is planning or likely to murder anyone or spy for any foreign countries or do any other crimes while she's here, and also whether she is an eligible wife for the prince, which is to say has she been sleeping around and does she have any reason to think she can't bear children and does she understand that she'd really better not sleep around once married and that one cannot divorce a prince and so on and so forth.

He stays to watch and motions them to hurry along whenever they seem to be belaboring something, though it's not clear they are paying him any attention on this.

She isn't going to murder anyone. She's never even been to a foreign country. She isn't tempted by any crimes she didn't confess to yesterday and that one wouldn't work any more, now, would it. She hasn't been sleeping with anyone, let alone enough of them to qualify as "around". She seems in good general health and can probably have kids. She is aware that it is a very bad idea to cheat on royalty and that she's in it for good once she's married.

They are eventually satisfied on these points! They can proceed on in to the palace. 

The interior of the dome is both pretty and a very comfortable temperature; the houses all seem to be striving to outdo each other, but someone enforced reasonably good taste. The palace is the biggest. 

Ismat hasn't been in here before; she walks slowly, taking it in. "You could have warned me it was cooler, I could have brought a coat. I have a reasonably unisex coat."

"But then I couldn't give you mine, which I am led to believe is practically socially obligatory." He does this.

She laughs and slips her arms into the sleeves. "And probably you're used to the climate control."

"I left very infrequently, growing up, it seemed embarrassing to cause everyone so much inconvenience with no way to compensate them."

"Suppose the Cicerone's robes help with that till someone wants your name."

"Yeah. I don't have to stop everyone in the streets, at least."

"Are people going to do that at me, now, I've never seen one of the royal women out."

"They aren't obliged to but I don't know whether they will anyway. The royal women are mostly discouraged from going out. Even more than we are, I mean."

"How far out does that go? It's not like Khalil goes for walks alone but if he did?"

"That's fine. The children'll be discouraged. - less once the pharaoh has children himself but that might be a while."

"How is that to live with, growing up? There isn't a - sky, in here -"

"The winter palace, down the coast, has sky, that helps somewhat. But I don't think it's particularly healthy for children. I think they should grow up in a city and run around and get into scrapes and so on - I might be glorifying it, not having lived it -"

"Well, I'm from a farm, I didn't live like that till I was old enough to apprentice. - ugh, I have no idea how Zaki'll take this when he hears."

"Zaki?"

"Kosai Zaki. He taught me."

"Should you tell him yourself before the news comes out?"

"Probably." Sigh.

They reach the palace. It's made of stone, with columns but few walls.  It has waterfalls and gauzy bits of fabric hanging from the ceiling and plants that wouldn't grow in Sothis. There are men, all guards in uniform, and woman, mostly not wearing much of anything. He leads her up some stairs.

"If there's a dress code I'm going to need you to tell me that now."

"They're servants. You can wear whatever makes you comfortable. - whatever dress makes you comfortable."

"Oh, good. Whose idea was dressing the servant girls up like that, they must be freezing."

"Not the pharaoh's, it's traditional. I think it's warmer than it looks."

"All right."

"If you want your servants to dress differently I doubt anyone'll care."

"I don't have a uniform at Trilliant and don't see why I would here either, I suppose if they need my permission to wear an entire tunic or what have you and that's what they'd rather I'll give it for them."

He smiles fondly at her.

"From the outside the dome is just an obstacle, I don't think about how much space is inside it usually..."

"It's a lot. Used to be like half the city, way back when, and at this rate someday it'll be pretty much just the palace."

"Does the palace eat adjacent plots sometimes?"

"We marry the extraneous bits of royal family out to all the nobles. Keeps everyone - on board with the program. I have family living in most of those houses."

"I suppose it wouldn't have to architecturally eat them to effectively subsume the place."

"There's a lotta extraneous family. Abadar can only do so much so you have to give him a good range of choices in the first place to get anything satisfactory."

"What does he do? Is your brother very different now?"

"The cleric levels, obviously. He talks with the new pharaoh for a while. I don't know what they talk about. My brother's pretty different. I think most of that's the office, the responsibilities. The crown - it grants the best mental bonuses money can buy, a special configuration that lets you access clarity to every part of thought at the same time - and when he's working he'll usually have spells layered on top of that -

- I think it might be somewhat isolating -"

"I guess it could be. Never thought about it like that."

"It's not as if there aren't compensating benefits. But I think on the whole - it helped me understand why the pharaohs are rewarded in Axis by being exactly like everyone else."

She nods thoughtfully.

And then they can reach the floor where the pharaoh is, and kneel, and wait for him.

She did not technically attend school but she used to do Khalil's homework so she doesn't have to just copy Merenre and hope it's the same for her.

"You can look at me," the pharaoh says, and "you can stand", and then he hugs his brother and turns to size Ismat up and smile at her. "I'm pleased to meet you. Surprised, but pleased. I ran a poll last night before the announcement and absolutely no one was willing to bet Merenre would marry before I insisted on it."

"- weren't willing to bet even conditioning on you running a poll about it? Irresponsible," he mutters.

"I pointed that out! So tell me about this company my brother fell in love with," he says to Ismat.

"I'm not sure what you'll already have heard - it's called Trilliant, we make jewelry both inert and magical, the first thing everyone remarks on is -" she suppresses a snort - "that I'll hire women..."