Page 59 of A Light in the Dark
“Ruiner of hoards.”
“Just because I insisted that you do not waste any silk does not make me a ruiner of hoards. If you can’t use it before actual pests get into it, you need to unload it or better protect it. Just let me shore the damned house already, you cretin of a father!”
“Maybe if you’d let us pay for it, we might.”
“Pay me in suits.”
“No.”
“Raw silk.”
“Also no. Cash or bust, punk.”
Joel yelled his frustration for the world to hear. “Damn it, Dad. There’s a ten percent surcharge for distance.”
“We can afford it. Cash or bust, punk.” Without waiting for a reply, his father swept into the house.
“Just let him pay for the shoring, and then talk to Yolana and custom order seventy-five percent of their stuff, in the colors and types you want. Make her charge you extra, payable to them. Sure, the government gets a bunch in sales tax, but your cousin gets paid and your father gets what he wants. You eventually return a good chunk of the money, your company gets a good job, and you get to feed some of your employees. You clearly have to pick the cream of the crop to do the shoring work here, so they’ll have to compete with performance reports to get onto the team.”
“I see you are business savvy.”
“I am not. I just have common sense and use it. You do not need to gift your parents with the shoring work,especially if they can afford it. And knowing how much you spent on their silk, I’m pretty sure they can afford whatever work they need.”
Joel pouted at me, put his camera back into his bag, and got up to stretch. “But I want their silk.”
“Why not counter with either full priced shoring or a discounted shoring, but the difference is paid in silk fabric in sufficient quantity to make three suits for every employee working the job, yourself included.”
He eyed me. “That’s not a bad idea. And if he doesn’t bite on the suits, I’ll just buy the materials for the suits.”
“You need to share some of the suits with your employees.”
Judging from the force of his heaved sigh, he found my rules to be particularly heinous. “Must I?”
“I am sure your most skilled employees deserve to own nice suits, a reward for having been in the top five performing employees. There would be six of you working on this house, right? And if the employee happens to be female, then she gets an outfit of her choice in silk.”
Joel eyed the house. “I think we could do the work with six, yeah. I might have to call in one or two extras, depending on the basement and the condition of the roof. It’ll be a big job.”
“Why don’t I negotiate for the contract while you sulk?”
“I wanted to do it for them for free.”
“We can’t always get what we want.”
“You’re merciless!”
I nodded. Before I had a chance to inform him about how merciless I could be, his parents returned.
His mother carried a basket containing red, orange, andyellow skeins of silk yarn. She placed it on the picnic table near my bag. “This is compensation for bringing our son home for a visit.”
I could accept bribery, and if I got silk for dragging Joel to the town, I would be concocting reasons to visit early and often. I set aside the start of my blanket and grabbed the closest skein, fondling it. The texture was silk, but it was a strange silk, smooth and more delicate than any silk I’d handled before. “This isn’t shifter yarn, and it definitely isn’t standard silk.”
“It’s mundane luna moth yarn. Their silk is fragile, so it’s quite the challenge to spin, but once it’s spun, it has a unique texture. Shifter yarn is less fragile, but the texture isn’t quite the same.”
It really wasn’t. I rubbed the skein against my face and determined I would be forever making blankets from luna moth silk. “Not as soft as Shifter Five, but it’s a strong contender.”
Joel stared at me with a rather unamused expression.
Smiling, I turned my attention to Joel’s father. “You may pay cash or accept a discount if you pay the equivalent of the discount in silk. He is no longer allowed to negotiate the contract because he is a biased son. As the common sense currently present, you must decide if you’re paying full price or at a discount with the expectation of providing silk. He will be using the silk to make suits for himself and clothing for the workers who will be doing the sigil work.”
