“He insisted on seeing you. Something about spirit coins, I think.”

“Tell him if he wants to see me, he can come here.”

“I did,” Pochard said, drawing a snort of laughter from Lucian.

“I would love to see that gangly moppet in the Fortress,” Lucian said, then stared out the of the window-wall. “And now I have.”

“You’re kidding,” Pochard said, following Lucian’s gaze.

“He actually came,” Lucian laughed. “Good for him.”

Pochard groaned. “I hope he doesn’t make it a regular occurrence.”

Lucian chuckled at Pochard’s reaction as they watched the long-limbed Clive Standish navigate the fighting pit’s viewing stands. It wasn’t crowded in the early afternoon, yet the awkward man in the wildly-out-of-place scholar’s robe seemed to get in the way of every person he passed. Finally he reached the viewing room, opulent in its wooden construction. Lucian and Pochard looked at each other as they heard a polite knock.

“Shove off!” Pochard yelled, prompting a belly-laugh from Lucian.

“Uh, sir?” a voice came through the door.

“Don’t just stand out there, Standish!” Lucian bellowed, and the door was pulled nervously open.

Clive Standish was rather tall, but his narrow frame and hunched posture made him seem lanky and awkward. He wore voluminous scholarly robes, possibly to make him seem less narrow, but they dangled off him like they’d been hung out to dry. In the fighting pits of the Fortress, he looked as out of place as any man Lucian had seen. This was good for Clive, as it left Lucian in a better mood than Clive normally found him.

“Pochard tells me you have some kind of spirit coin problem,” Lucian said.

“Not exactly a problem, sir,” Clive said. “More like a curiosity that I believe warrants further inquiry.”

Clive rummaged through his robes to produce an iron-rank spirit coin.

“This coin and several others like it have been found in circulation over the last couple of weeks. You’ll note the unusual embossing of a man holding up his thumb,” Clive said.

Pochard leaned over to peer at the coin in Lucian’s hand.

“On the back,” Clive continued, “there is an inscription. Thus far, we have failed to identify the language.”

“Don’t you have a translation ability?” Pochard said.

“I do,” Clive said, “although that only tells us what it says, not the language in which it says it.”

“So?” Lucian asked, impatiently. “What does it say?”

“It reads, ‘product of Jason,’ and ‘good day, friend.’ The second part is contextualised as a greeting.”

“It’s certainly odd,” Lucian said. “It’s a real coin?”

“I’ve had every coin we’ve found tested, sir,” Clive said. “They’re all real.”

“You checked it against the registry?”

Clive nodded. “It definitely didn’t come from a registered spirit coin farm.”

“You think someone’s set up an unregistered farm?” Pochard asked.