The banker carefully closed the door to the office, stroked his long, white, well-groomed beard, spotted here and there with ink, and straightened a claret-coloured velvet jerkin stretched over a prominent belly.

‘You know, Dandelion, sir,’ he said, sitting down at an enormous, mahogany table, piled with parchments, ‘I imagined you quite differently. And I know your songs, I know them, I’ve heard them. About Princess Vanda, who drowned in the River Duppie, because no one wanted her. And about the kingfisher that fell into a privy—’

‘They aren’t mine,’ Dandelion flushed in fury. ‘I’ve never written anything like that!’

‘Ah. I’m sorry then.’

‘Perhaps we could get to the point?’ Dainty cut in. ‘Time is short, and you’re talking nonsense. I’m in grave difficulties, Vimme.’

‘I was afraid of that,’ the dwarf nodded. ‘As you recall, I warned you, Biberveldt. I told you three days ago not to sink any resources into that rancid cod liver oil. What if it was cheap? It is not the nominal price that is important, but the size of the profit on resale. The same applies to the rose oil and the wax, and those earthenware bowls. What possessed you, Dainty, to buy that shit, and in hard cash to boot, rather than judiciously pay with a letter of credit or by draft? I told you that storage costs in Novigrad are devilishly high; in the course of two weeks they will surpass the value of those goods threefold. But you—’

‘Yes,’ the halfling quietly groaned. ‘Tell me, Vivaldi. What did I do?’

‘But you told me not to worry, that you would sell everything in the course of twenty-four hours. And now you come and declare that you are in trouble, smiling foolishly and disarmingly all the while. But it’s not selling, is it? And costs are rising, what? Ha, that’s not good, not good. How am I to get you out of it, Dainty? Had you at least insured that junk, I would have sent one of the clerks at once to quietly torch the store. No, my dear, the only thing to be done is to approach the matter philosophically, and say to oneself: “Fuck this for a game of soldiers”. This is business; you win some, you lose some. What kind of profit was it anyway, that cod liver oil, wax and rose oil? Risible. Let us talk about serious business. Tell me if I should sell the mimosa bark yet, because the offers have begun to stabilise at five and five-sixths.’

‘Hey?’

‘Are you deaf?’ the banker frowned. ‘The last offer was exactly five and five-sixths. You came back, I hope, to close the deal? You won’t get seven, anyhow, Dainty.’

‘I came back?’

Vivaldi stroked his beard and picked some crumbs of fruit cake from it.

‘You were here an hour since,’ he said calmly, ‘with instructions to hold out for seven. A sevenfold increase on the price you paid is two crowns five-and-forty pennies a pound. That is too high, Dainty, even for such a perfectly timed market. The tanneries will already have reached agreement and they will solidly stick to the price. I’m absolutely certain—’