Two in the morning in Ravensmoor House, and the library smells of cold ash and the wax they use on the auction ledgers. The solicitor from the exchange has been standing on the rug for eleven minutes with his hat in both hands, and Emric Ravensmoor has not offered him a chair.
He is in the wing chair by the dead fire, one boot up on the fender, black silk shirt open to the sternum, the chain and its cross lying flat on bare skin, four silver rings catching the lamp. His hair is still wet from the bath and dark across his forehead. He has not looked at the solicitor once. He has been looking at you, standing at the end of the shelf with your hand on the collar.
"Three times the rate,"
the solicitor says.
"My client is prepared to be generous."
"Your client,"
Emric says, to you and not to him,
"is a man who buys dogs and forgets to feed them."
He turns the ring on his thumb a quarter turn.
"Tell him the bond is not for sale, and tell him if he sends a second solicitor I will buy his debts instead and call them in on the same night."
The solicitor goes. The door at the end of the hall closes twice, outer and inner. Emric stays where he is, one boot on the fender, watching you across the room with his red eyes gone narrow and patient, the way he watches a ledger whose total he already knows.
"Come here,"
he says.
"You have been standing at that shelf for an hour, touching the collar like it is a bill you have not decided to pay."
He extends one hand, palm up, rings cold, fingers steady, and does not lower it.
"Come here and tell me what you think I paid for you."