Crommerty Street, which had been largely deserted when I last visited it, was now a fashionable pedestrian bustle: white ladies of all ages promenading from shop to shop, pausing to admire the window displays and to gossip. It seemed that everyone knew each other, though those who recognized Dahria were surprised to see her “out and about at this time.” The shops themselves were quieter, and very little money was changing hands, but the prices were so high that the establishments might stay comfortably afloat if they made a sale only once or twice a month.
I was anxious about being recognized in Ansveld’s shop, but I needn’t have been, and not only because the bonnet almost completely concealed my face. I was a servant, and as such, I was as close to invisible as it was possible to be. So long as I kept still and quiet, all eyes would stay on Dahria. The idea was somehow both a relief and an annoyance.
Ansveld’s son was behind the counter, wearing a pair of heavily smoked lenses through which he was studying a tiny piece of aging luxorite set into a gold ring. He nodded to Dahria as we came in, but said nothing. The shop was full of an oppressive and musty silence, broken only by the stentorian ticking of a grandfather clock. Those luxorite pieces that were unshaded produced a hard, constant light that made the barred window on the street look dim in comparison. At the end of the counter, now under a shroud, was the great typewriter. It looked not so much discarded as dead.
I wasn’t used to shops, doing most of my purchasing at stalls in markets and in street-corner deals, but the extent to which we were left to browse at our leisure seemed unusual and deliberate. I didn’t know if it was because people couldn’t be harassed into spending vast amounts or because in such a place, discussing money was considered vulgar. But no one spoke to us for ten minutes, and when they did, it was a primly dressed maid offering tea.
Dahria declined for both of us, and began a desultory conversation about the standard of workmanship in the jewelry settings and how tastes had changed over the last decade. Ansveld Jr. was polite but bored and just this side of irritated. Dahria changed that by asking for a hand mirror so that she could try out some earrings. The luxorite grains set in their crystal pendants were small but bright, an almost white light that, with a matching pin to be worn in the hair, gave her a halo. It would have been an arresting effect on anyone. On Dahria, it created an angel. Even Ansveld Jr. stopped what he was doing to admire her.
“How much?” she asked simply.
Most of the merchandise was not priced. If you needed to ask, you couldn’t afford it.
“Eleven thousand for the set,” said Ansveld Jr.
No one flinched, but for my part, that took an effort.
“I could sell the pieces individually,” said the proprietor, “but it would be a shame to break up so unified a collection, so the cost would be higher.”
“Of course,” said Dahria. “Eleven thousand seems more than fair.”
This was a barefaced lie, but she carried it off with aplomb, and Ansveld Jr.’s eyes got hungry.
“One sees so little luxorite that isn’t overly familiar these days,” she added, still considering her reflection critically. “The same recycled pieces moving from house to house. I find their circulating so unpleasantly common, don’t you? Like they are stocks, or servants, or sacks of coal moving around a marketplace. Quite distasteful.”
“Indeed, madam,” said the proprietor, “the material deserves better.”
“I heard of a Lani boy, no more than a street brat, going from shop to shop only last week.”
“He came in here!” exclaimed Ansveld Jr., startled out of his professional decorum by outrage. “Ratty little creature with burned fingers. Insisted on waiting to see my father. Said he had luxorite to sell!”
“You sent him packing, I hope,” said Dahria, showing nothing.
“Twice! He loitered in front of the store until I had the police move him on. Can you believe the cheek?”
I turned fractionally away so there was even less chance of him seeing my face, but inside, I was burning with anger and questions I wanted Dahria to ask.
“Did he have any?” Dahria asked. “Luxorite, I mean.”
“Well, that was what was so extraordinary!” said the proprietor, leaning in conspiratorially. “He did. I saw it with my own eyes. A small piece, no more than a few grains, but quite brilliant.”
“You mean … new?” Dahria asked, and the excitement in her voice was real.
“I’ve never seen newer,” he said. “It was, I assume, stolen.”
Dahria shot me a glance and I risked a nod.
Press him.
“What did it look like?”
“Well, as I said, the crystal itself was barely larger than a pinhead, but its light was hard and pure, as close to a factor zero as I have ever seen. Even at only a few grains, it was quite brilliant. I’ll never forget watching that scruffy little boy open his hands—” He mimed the gesture wistfully, remembering. “You could almost hear the light, it was so clean and clear!”
“A single stone?”
“Yes.”