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adventure,” Noph pressed. “As the son of a nobleman, I read plenty of stories of the briny deep. but have never gotten to sail out on it myself.”
    “Aye.”
    Noph’s demeanor suddenly changed from casual excitement to focused desire. “I want to go to sea.”
    Captain Boaldegg fixed him with a stem look.
    “I wouldn’t need a commission,” Noph said quietly, all the while glancing over his sshoulder. “I know you give officer commissions to some nobles—but I’d be willing to holystone decks and haul sheets.”
    The white-bearded sea dog blinked in consideration, his scarred red face looking for all the world like a hunk of granite. At last, he let go the blue pipe smoke he’d held in his lungs and said, “Deck hands are abundant. We’ve got plenty of them straight from jails and flophouses. They don’t ask much pay, try to avoid trouble, and know their trade. Why should I bump one of them seasoned seamen to take on a load of noble trouble?”
    “Trouble?” asked Noph in an injured tone. “I wouldn’t make any trouble. Besides, I heard there’s going to be need for plenty more hands once … once the trade pact falls through”
    Though before, the seaman’s eyes had seemed glassy and amused beneath his eyebrows, now they were sharp as arrowheads. “What makes you think me pact is jeopardized, lad?”
    Noph returned the man’s steely glare. “I know about what you have planned. I know about… Eidola.”
    Suddenly, the man’s old hand—steel bars and cables—seized Noph’s arm. “You’re coming with me, lad.”
    “Oh, no he’s not,” interrupted Laskar Nesher. From behind his son, he pried the captain’s hand loose. “No son of mine—no heir of mine—is going to waste his life with a bunch of thieves and bilge rats. Get gone, old Boaldegg. Troll the gutters and prisons for your shipmates”
    With that, Laskar Nesher drew his son away from the glowering sea dog. For once, the merchant’s eyes were focused on his son—focused and intent. “What’s this all about, Kastonoph?”
    “You wouldn’t understand,” Noph said truthfully. Laskar managed to look angered, hurt, and understanding, all at once. He gripped his son’s arm harder than had the captain and dragged Noph to the relative privacy of the crying room, behind the narthex.
    “I know you think me a copper-coddling miser, a fool preoccupied with the flash of coins and unable to see true riches,” said the man earnestly. His eyes were feverishly bright. “I often think so, myself. But the reason for it all is that I’m trying to build a dynasty for you. Yes, I am a fool. In the process of amassing a fortune, I’ve made you despise anything you might inherit from me.”
    “It’s all right. Father,” began Noph. “You don’t have to—”
    “But don’t give up on me now. Son. At last, my frugality has paid off, has put me in a place where everything will change for us. And it is all wrapped up in this wedding, in the Lady Eidola herself.”
    The nobleman paused, expecting another interruption, but Noph was as silent and still as a statue.
    Laskar gingerly began again, as if poking at a wound. “I have certain… information about the Lady Eidola—about her past… information she desperately wants to keep from her husband”
    “Father.” said Noph in alarm. The momentary empathy he had felt for the man fled. “Blackmaii? Is this the future you have planned for me?**
    “Don’t think of it as blackmail. I’m not asking her for money—just for the assurance of work. There’s going to be lots of wood needed for bridges and corduroy roads once this trade pact is finished, and I want us to supply that wood.”
    Noph’s usually white face was now blotched with red—disappointment and, worse, pity. “What have you become? You’d commit extortion? And against the Lady Eidola?”
    “It isn’t extortion,” his father blustered. “We’ll be working for every copper we make off this. And if you knew about her what I