had
promised to let him in on a share of the profits, provided he gave
the merchant a free hand and asked no questions. The Duke was quite
content. He planned on spending the money to increase his collection
of glass birds. He had ten large rooms of the castle glittering with
his fantastic aviary: shining, silent and grotesquely beautiful, all
products of the glass-blowers of the fabulous city of Metzva Moosh,
far, far away across the grassy sea of the Xurdimur.

Green was present when the Duke talked to Miran about it.

"Now, Captain, you must understand just exactly what I do want," warned
the ruler, lifting a finger to emphasize the seriousness of his words.
His eyes, usually deep-sunk in their fat, had widened to reveal large,
brown and soulful orbs. The passion for his hobby shone forth. Nothing:
good Chalousma wine, his wife, the torture of a heretic or runaway
slave, could make him quiver and glitter with delight as much as the
thought of the exquisitely wrought image of a Metzva Moosh bird.

"I want two or three, but no more because I can't afford more. All made
by Izan Yushwa, the greatest of the glass-blowers. I'd particularly
like any modeled after the bird-of-terror...."

"But when I was last in Estorya I heard that Izan Yushwa was dying,"
said Miran.

"Excellent, excellent!" cried the Duke. "That will make everything
recently created by him even more valuable! If he is dead now it is
probable that the Estoryans, who control the export of the Mooshans,
will be putting a high price on anything of his that comes their way.
That means that bidding will be high during the festival and that you
must outbid any prospective buyers. By all means do so. Pay any price,
for I must have something created by him in his last days!"

The Duke, Green realized, was so eager because of the belief that a
part of a dying artist's soul entered into his latest creations when he
died. These were called "soul-works" and brought ten times as much as
anything else, even if the conception and execution were inferior to
previous works.

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