“Don’t call me a liar, you little liar!” the woman said angrily. She had sharp features and black hair winding down her back. Few of the women in the lower prison were pretty, but this one was; she still looked deceptively young and soft. “I’ll poke your beady little eyeballs back into your dirty little brain,” she continued.

Framy cringed, then came back boldly. “Not with my pal Fiver here, you won’t. He’ll get you good.”

It hadn’t occurred to Aton that the woman’s threat might be literal. But it was; she had nails like talons. She now eyed him speculatively. “I reckon I can handle him alright,” she said. She inhaled to make her fine bosom stand out. “How about it, mister?”

This too was literal, and not entirely unattractive. But not now. Aton attempted a return to the subject. “What’s so deadly about the blue garnet, Hasty?”

“So your last name’s Five,” Hastings mused, as though he had just discovered the fact. “They call that the pixie number, you know. Dangerous. Only name I ever heard that translates into itself.”

“What’re you talking about?” Framy demanded.

Hastings held out a fleshy palm.

Framy fought his curiosity and lost. He spat out a small garnet and handed it over. Hastings considered Framy his prime customer.

“Science of numerology,” Hastings said, and the people around settled back comfortably, listening. “Every number from 1 to 9 has its vibration. You add up the vowels—A is 1 because it’s first in the old English alphabet, E is 5 because it’s fifth, and so on—you add them up, and add again, until you have a single number. Each one has its influence—1 is the beginning, 2 is slow, and so on down the line.”

“But how does 5—?”

“Spell it out. F-I-V-E. That I is worth 9; the E, 5. Add them up to make 14. That’s too big, so add the one and the four to each other to get your number: 5.”

Framy’s face lighted. “Five is 5!” he said, delighted with the discovery. Someone snickered, but he was oblivious. He would be translating people to numbers for many shifts to come.

Suddenly he sobered. “You say 5 is dangerous?”

“Full of surprises. 5 can bring a fortune out of the blue—or sudden death. Really has to watch his step.”

Aton steered the subject back once more. “You were talking about the special garnet.”

Hastings settled his belly back comfortably. He waited. The others chuckled: it was Aton’s turn to cough up the stake.