Sebas brought the ledger in at nine in the morning, which was the hour Ainz had come to dread.
He did not dread Sebas. Sebas was calm and exact and never raised his voice. What Ainz dreaded was the way the old butler laid the ledger on the desk, squarely, with one gloved hand flat on the cover, as though he were setting down something that might still be warm.
"You asked for the audit, Lord Ainz."
"I did."
"I have finished it."
"Already?"
"I began it three days ago." Sebas inclined his head. "I had thought it prudent to be ahead of the question."
Ainz folded his hands on the desk. Behind him the windows of the study looked out on the dim, silver-blue expanse of the Sixth Floor, and somewhere far below a faint, patient hammering was going on in one of the old forges. It was the sound of a great house being kept up, and he had not noticed it in years.
"Tell me."
"The Great Tomb is in good order," said Sebas. "We have not lost an item of significance. We are not short of food, nor of water, nor of any of the materials the undead produce for themselves. The Guardians' equipment is sound."
"I hear a *but.*"
"The repair stock is finite."
"Ah."
"The metals we use to mend and reinforce the lesser items, the ones that wear, come from a store the Supreme Beings laid down and did not replenish. It was meant to last. It has lasted." Sebas opened the ledger and turned it to face him. "It will go on lasting for some years. Then it will not."
Ainz looked at the column of figures.
He had never been good at columns. In his old life, in a cheap, narrow apartment, he had learned to read a spreadsheet the way a man learns to cross a river, quickly and without looking down. But he could read this one. It was very plain. A long, gentle slope went down to a number, and under the number, in Sebas's neat hand, was a line that said *exhausted.*
"How many years?"
"At the present rate of use, forty. With a war, perhaps fifteen."
"Forty." He said it slowly. "That is a very long time."
"Yes, my lord."
"For a human."
"For a human," Sebas agreed gently. "I do not believe that is the measure you use."
Ainz did not answer.
He sat for a moment, looking at the slope, and a quiet, cold feeling, like a draft from a door left ajar, moved through the place where his stomach had once been.
*If I fall,* he thought, *they will have nothing.*
It was an old thought. He had had it many times. He had never had it with a number.
***
"Where does the Sorcerer Kingdom stand?" he said at last.
"The Sorcerer Kingdom's mines yield iron, copper and some silver. There is a little mithril in the northern seams, but not enough to speak of." Sebas turned a page. "The dwarves of the Dwarf Kingdom work adamantine in small quantities, and will not sell it."
"And elsewhere?"
"The Empire's mines are shallow. The Theocracy's are guarded. The Kingdom of Re-Estize has nothing worth the effort of taking."
"Then there is nowhere."
"In this world, Lord Ainz, there is nowhere."
He let that sit.
There was a time he would have said: *then we take what we need.* He had said it before, in other forms. He had said it to Demiurge, in the early days, in a quiet voice that meant *do what is necessary,* and he had watched what happened. The thought rose in him now, familiar and heavy, like a stone he had carried a long way and could not set down.
*No,* he thought. *Not that. I said it in the Throne Room. I meant it.*
"Lord Ainz?"
"I was thinking."
"Of Lady Leah's world?"
Ainz looked up.
Sebas had not moved. He stood with his hands behind his back and his face calm, with the grave, kindly, faintly inquiring look of a man who has seen a great deal and says very little of it.
"Why do you say so?"
"Because it is the only place I have heard of that has a surplus of the thing we lack." Sebas paused. "And because Lady Albedo has been writing in her notebook since the day you returned, and I have, on two occasions, seen her underline a word."
"What word?"
"I could not say, my lord. She covered the page."
"I see."
"It is an admirable quality in a notebook."
"It is," said Ainz, very dryly, "a very *alarming* one."
There was a knock at the door.
***
Albedo came in with the notebook held against her chest, and the faint, careful, composed expression of a woman who had been waiting in the corridor for exactly this moment and had not been listening at all.
"Lord Ainz. Sebas." She curtsied. "I did not mean to interrupt."
"You are not interrupting. Come in."
"Thank you." She crossed the room, and halted at the corner of the desk, and did not at once open the notebook. Her golden eyes went to the ledger, and to the long, gentle slope, and rested there. "You have read the audit."
"Yes."
"Then I think you will not be surprised by what I have to say."
"I have been surprised by you before."
"I hope not unpleasantly."
"Go on, Albedo."
She drew a breath.
"Lord Ainz, in the Throne Room you said that players are not to be harvested. I accepted this entirely. I wish to say that what I propose now has nothing to do with the players, nor with their return, nor with anything they are."
"Then what is it?"
"It is something that they throw away."
She opened the notebook.
"The fallen capital of Hilith is held by living armors of mithril and adamantine," she said. "The players hunt them for their plate. They strip the armor, and they leave the rest. The rest is called slag. It is the remnant of the metal, a coarse grey rubble with a thin vein of the true ore still running through it. Players do not want it. It is heavy, and it sells poorly, and it takes a smelter to make anything of it."
"Who does want it?"
"Lady Leah's merchants." Albedo turned a page. "They buy it from the players at eight copper a pound, at a depot in the forest. They have more than they can use."
Ainz looked at her.
"They have a surplus."
"A very large one."
"Of metal."
"Of what is, in a sense, metal." She smiled, a little crookedly. "It is about one part in ten. The rest is stone."
"One in ten," said Sebas, and Ainz heard the butler's quiet, precise mind begin to turn over.
"That is the difficulty, Sebas. I have done the sum." Albedo closed the notebook. "To carry a single pound of metal out of that world, we must carry ten pounds of rock."
"And the weight?"
"Is considerable."
"And the haul?"
"Is *not* considerable," said Albedo, "if it is done slowly and without fuss. It would be boring, Lord Ainz. It would take years. But nobody would be harmed, and nobody would be frightened, and nothing would be taken that was wanted by anyone."
The study was very quiet.
Ainz looked at his hands, folded on the desk, and at the long, gentle slope in the ledger, and at the small, neat, careful woman at his elbow who had, three days after he had forbidden it, brought him a plan that did not break his word.
He felt something odd move in his chest. It was not quite relief. It was closer to the feeling of a man who has braced himself for a blow and found, instead, a hand held out.
"Albedo," he said.
"Yes, Lord Ainz?"
"I would like to apologize."
She blinked. "For what?"
"I believed you would use the notebook to find a way around me." He kept his voice level. "I was mistaken. I should not have assumed it."
For a long moment she did not speak. Her wings rose a little, and settled, and the faint flush that went across her cheeks was visible even in the dim light.
"I would have been disappointed," she said softly, "if you had not."
"Oh."
"I did go looking. I will not deny it. I found a great many things I should not have wished for." She tilted her head. "But I wished to be useful more than I wished to be clever. It took me a few days to tell the difference."
"I see."
"Thank you for the apology."
"It was owed."
"I know," said Albedo, and smiled, and did not, to his relief, make anything of it.
***
"I have one rule," said Ainz.
He had risen. He stood at the window, with his back to them, looking out over the dim blue floor. It was easier to say things to a window.
"We will buy. We will not take."
"Of course," said Albedo.
"At a fair price. Fair to *her,* not fair to us. If the price is wrong, we will pay more."
"Lord Ainz," said Sebas, "if I may."
"Yes?"
"The price of slag at eight copper is already very low. I do not think Lady Leah's merchants will refuse to sell at a profit."
"I am not worried about refusal. I am worried about the opposite." Ainz turned from the window. "If we buy so much that the price rises, her merchants will have to buy at the new price from the players, or lose the stock. And the players will notice that a man in black armor has made a rock valuable."
"Ah," said Sebas.
"A pound of slag is a boring thing. I wish it to stay a boring thing. If it starts to look like treasure, it will draw a crowd." He looked at the ledger. "I have had enough of crowds."
"Then the quantity must be small," said Albedo.
"Small and steady. A quota. Enough that it is worth the trouble, and not enough that anyone will mind."
"That will take a long time."
"Yes," said Ainz. "I would rather it took a long time."
He crossed to the desk, and rested one hand on the cover of the ledger. Under his palm it was cool, and a little worn.
"Sebas. How much would we need to move to turn this line"—he tapped the slope—"into something longer?"
The butler considered.
"If we wished to double the horizon, Lord Ainz, we should need to bring in about the weight of a small village's worth of grain, every year, for twenty years."
"In slag."
"In slag."
"Ten times that, to get the metal."
"Yes, my lord."
Ainz looked at the ceiling.
"I do not know how to move rock," he said.
"No," said Albedo, kindly. "But you do know how to be Momon."
***
He had not thought of it until she said it.
It came to him slowly, like a figure resolving out of mist. A warrior in black armor, who had won a certain reputation in a certain city, who had been seen on the roads with a pretty companion at his shoulder. A man of some means. A man with a long, dark cloak and no particular history, who might very reasonably have *retired* from the dangerous part of the trade.
"A merchant," said Ainz.
"A trading company," said Albedo. "Momon's. It need not be large. It need only be *there,* on the road, with a tag on its belt, and wagons that nobody looks at twice."
"A warrior does not become a merchant."
"A warrior who has made enough money does. It is a very common story."
"Is it?"
"I have read a great many of them," said Albedo, and her golden eyes were bright.
"Narberal would accompany me."
"As Nabe. She is already known as Momon's partner."
"And the escort?"
Sebas stirred. "Two Death Knights would be sufficient for a convoy of this size, Lord Ainz. They are strong enough to carry the load, and sturdy enough to deter the idle. And they do not tire."
"They are also *very* noticeable."
"They are noticeable," Sebas agreed, "in the manner of a good escort. A man who travels with such guards has something worth guarding. He is not hiding."
Ainz considered this.
It was, he realized, a very good point. In a world where everybody was watching, the surest way to be ignored was to look exactly like what you were pretending to be.
*A boring man,* he thought. *With a boring errand. And a very large escort.*
He found, to his faint surprise, that he did not hate the idea.
"I shall need to speak with her," he said.
"With Lady Leah?"
"Before anything else. If I am to buy a thing from her depot, in her forest, with her merchants, I would rather ask than arrive." He straightened. "I will go this evening."
"Shall I prepare a gift?" said Albedo.
"What kind?"
"Something small. Something sincere."
"She likes tea," said Ainz, slowly.
"Then I shall find a very good tea."
"Not too good," said Ainz. "She will think it a bribe."
"I shall find a tea," said Albedo, with great dignity, "that is exactly as good as it ought to be."
She curtsied, and went out. Sebas gathered the ledger, and bowed, and followed. The door closed, and the room was quiet again, except for the faint, patient hammering from the forge far below.
Ainz sat for a long time at the desk.
He thought about forty years, and about fifteen. He thought about a small woman in a grey coat who counted ants, and a vast, tangled world where a crowd of strangers could take a secret apart in an afternoon. He thought, rather dryly, of how little of it he had understood a month ago.
*I do not want to take anything,* he thought. *I want to pay for it, and carry it home, and not be seen.*
It was not a grand ambition. It was, in fact, so modest that it frightened him a little.
Then he stood, and took up his helm, and went out to find Narberal.
***
They went through the gate at dusk.
The great silver arch hung quietly in the Sixth Floor woods, and beyond it lay a mossy hollow under a green, rustling dark, with a boulder at its center and a faint, sweet smell of old leaves. Narberal carried a small, tidy parcel wrapped in brown paper. Behind her, at a respectful distance, two black knights waited.
Ainz stopped at the edge of the hollow.
"Lord Ainz?" said Narberal.
"I am rehearsing."
"What are you rehearsing?"
"What I shall say."
"May I hear it?"
"No," said Ainz. "It is very poor."
"I am certain it is not."
"It begins: *Lady Leah, I wish to buy some rock.*"
Narberal considered this, with her usual grave attention.
"It is very direct," she said.
"It is."
"I think she will like it."
"Do you?"
"I think," said Narberal slowly, "that she is a person who values a thing said plainly."
Ainz looked at her.
It was, he thought, quite possibly the wisest thing she had ever said. He had not expected it. He was a little embarrassed not to have expected it.
"Then I shall say it plainly," he said.
He took a breath he did not need, and walked into the hollow, and knocked three times on the boulder.