Leah opened the boulder with a yawn.
It did not so much open as admit her. A seam ran down the grey stone, a narrow dark line that Ainz would never have noticed in daylight, and the near half of the rock swung inward on a hinge so smooth it made no sound at all. A warm yellow glow spilled out across the moss. Leah stepped into it in a brown house-cloak, with her hair in a loose knot and a half-eaten flatbread in one hand.
"Ainz," she said, around the flatbread.
"Lady Leah."
"It's the middle of the night."
"It is dusk."
"Dusk is the *middle of the night* if you've been up since five." She swallowed, and blinked at him, and then at Narberal, and then at the small brown parcel in Narberal's hands. "Is that a gift?"
"It is," said Narberal gravely. "From Lady Albedo."
"Oh no."
"She selected it herself."
"Oh *no,*" said Leah, with deep and genuine apprehension, and took the parcel as one takes a live thing out of a trap. "What is it?"
"Tea."
"Just tea?"
"Exactly as good as it ought to be," said Ainz.
Leah looked at him. Then she began, quietly, to laugh.
"You rehearsed that."
"I did not."
"You *did.*" She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Okay. Okay. Come in. Not the knights, they can stay in the trees, I don't have the headroom. Just you and Nabe."
"They are waiting at the gate."
"Good. Bring your own cushion."
He did not have a cushion. He found, after a short and faintly humiliating search, that Leah had a great many.
***
The room beyond the boulder was small, round and green.
It was cut into the roots of something very old. The ceiling arched in knotted, glowing wood, and the walls were hung with dried herbs and strings of small blue lanterns, and in the middle of the floor there stood a low table with a copper kettle that had been boiling, by the sound of it, for some time. There were three cups already laid out.
"You expected us," said Ainz.
"One of my cat girls saw you come through the gate, about ten minutes ago." Leah folded herself onto a cushion and poured. "I thought, either he wants something or he's lost. Neither one is a good time to be standing in the cold."
"I want something."
"I figured." She slid a cup across the table to him. "Go on. Say it plainly. Nabe told me you'd practiced, but I'd rather hear the rough version."
Narberal, kneeling at his shoulder, did not move a muscle.
Ainz accepted the cup with both hands. It was warm. It smelled of mint and something dark and smoky. He realized that he had been gripping the helmet under his arm so tightly that a dent had begun to form, and set it down very carefully on the floor.
"Lady Leah," he said. "I wish to buy some rock."
There was a short, distinct pause.
"Rock," said Leah.
"Slag. From the fallen capital." He kept his voice level. "The refuse that players leave behind. I understand your merchants buy it at eight copper a pound, and keep a stock at the depot in the forest. I should like to purchase some of that stock."
Leah put down her cup.
"How much?"
"A little at a time. A quota, for as long as you will allow it."
"And what do you want it for?"
"The metal in it."
"Slag's one part in ten. You know that."
"I know."
"You're going to carry nine parts rock home to get one part metal."
"I am aware of the arithmetic," said Ainz, with dignity. "My Guardians have explained it to me in some detail."
She stared at him.
Then, slowly, her whole face changed, and he saw something loosen in her shoulders that he had not known was tight. She leaned back against the wall of roots, and put one hand over her mouth, and for a moment he thought she might be ill.
"What?" he said.
"Oh my gosh," said Leah, through her fingers. "I thought you were going to ask for the *plate.*"
***
"Why would I ask for the plate?"
"Because it's the good part! Because it's what the players take! I've been trying to think all week what you'd want, and everything I came up with was worse." She lowered her hand. "I had a whole speech ready. I was going to say no and feel terrible."
"You would have refused?"
"Yes."
"And I would have accepted it."
"Would you?" said Leah, very quietly.
He considered the question.
It was, he realized, a fair one. He turned it over slowly, in the green light, with the cup warm in his hands, and what he found in himself was not an answer so much as a sort of honest discomfort.
"I would have been displeased," he said. "I would have had a long conversation with myself. But I think I would have accepted it."
"Why?"
"Because it is yours," said Ainz. "It is your people, and your plate, and your world. If I took it by force I should be exactly the kind of thing I told my Guardians I would not be."
"Huh."
"It is not a grand principle. I only discovered it a week ago."
"Those are the best kind," said Leah.
She picked up her cup again. She drank, and set it down, and for a moment she only looked at him with her chin in her hand and her head on one side.
"Okay," she said. "Let's talk about the rock."
***
They talked for two hours.
It was not at all the negotiation Ainz had expected. He had prepared for it as for a siege. He had brought arguments, and counter-arguments, and a small, hard, carefully reasoned speech about the Sorcerer Kingdom's strategic position. He did not deliver any of them. Leah did not ask. She sat on her cushion and asked him, instead, about *weight.*
"How do you plan to move it?"
"By wagon. The Death Knights can pull."
"Through what? Not the gate. The gate's not wide."
"I do not yet know how wide it opens."
"You don't know?"
"I have never tried to push a wagon through."
"You should find that out," said Leah, "before you buy ten tons of anything."
"I shall."
"And where are you going to smelt it? Not here. I don't have a furnace and I'm not letting you build one."
"At home."
"Where's home?"
"Somewhere quiet," said Ainz. "I would rather not say."
She looked at him sharply, and then, to his relief, let it go.
"Okay," she said. "Fair. Price?"
"Whatever you ask."
"Don't say that. That's how people get robbed."
"Then what do you ask?"
"I'd sell it for what I paid. Eight copper."
"That is not enough."
"It's *rock,* Ainz."
"It is rock that you purchased, and stored, and guarded, and carried." He set down his cup. "You will charge a margin. I insist."
"I'm not charging you a margin on *rock.*"
"I will not pay less than you would charge a stranger."
"A stranger'd pay twelve."
"Then I will pay twelve."
"Fine," said Leah. "Twelve. Happy?"
"Fifteen."
"What?"
"If it is fair to you that a stranger pay twelve, it is fair that a friend pay more, since a friend will be more trouble." He straightened. "I will pay fifteen."
Leah put her face in both hands.
"You can't *haggle upward,*" she said, in a muffled voice.
"I have just done so."
"That is the single most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."
"Narberal," said Ainz, "was I wrong?"
"No, Lord Ainz," said Narberal, with perfect composure. "I thought it was very well done."
Leah laughed until she had to wipe her eyes.
"Fifteen," she said at last, gasping. "Okay. Fine. Fifteen copper a pound. I'll have the cat girls write it up."
"In what coin?"
"Gold, by weight." She sniffled. "I don't care whose face is on it. Gold's gold. They'll put it on the scale."
"That is very reasonable."
"I'm a very reasonable person." She picked up the kettle, found it empty, and put it down again. "Now. Conditions."
***
She held up one finger.
"One. A quota. Not a ton a week, not a ton a day. We'll set a number, and you don't go over it, even if the stock's piling up. If the price at the depot moves because of you, I cut you off."
"Agreed."
Two fingers.
"Two. Only slag. Not plate, not ore, not anything my retainers wear or carry. If it's something one of my people made, it's not for sale."
"Agreed."
"Three." She lowered her voice. "No lending. No borrowing. My retainers aren't loans. I'm not going to hand you an ant or a golem or a cat girl to run an errand, and I'm not going to take one of yours. Whatever you've got at home, it stays yours. Whatever I've got stays mine."
"That is my own rule."
"I know. I'm saying it out loud so we both heard it."
He looked at her for a moment, and then inclined his head. It was, he thought, the nearest thing to a vow he had been offered in some time.
"Agreed," said Ainz.
Four fingers.
"Four. If something goes wrong, you tell me. Before you fix it. Before you cover it up. Before you do anything clever."
"Anything clever?"
"You and your guardians. I watched Albedo take notes in my control room, and I think I know how clever you can be." She looked at him over the rim of her empty cup. "I'd rather hear *'I made a mistake'* than *'I handled it.'*"
For a moment Ainz said nothing.
It was a strange thing to be told. He had been in command of people for a very long time, and he could not remember the last time anyone had asked him to be *less* clever on purpose. He found, to his own surprise, that he did not mind.
"I will tell you," he said.
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"Okay." She dropped her hand. "That's all. Four rules. It's not a lot."
"It is exactly enough."
"I thought you'd argue."
"I considered it," said Ainz. "Then I considered how little I wished to."
***
"One more thing," said Leah.
They had come to the end of it. The kettle had been refilled twice, and the little blue lanterns had burned low, and somewhere above their heads, in the roots, something very large and very patient was making a slow, creaking, contented noise. Narberal had fallen into the quiet, folded stillness of a woman who was listening very hard and had decided not to look as if she were.
"Ask."
"The players." She hesitated. "They're everywhere. Lifestyle players, tourists, streamers. They sit on logs and eat sandwiches and film everything. You can't walk through Lieb without being on somebody's channel."
"I have seen the forum."
"Then you know. A black knight dragging a wagon of rocks down the road is going to get noticed."
"I have thought of that."
"And?"
"I intend to be dull."
She looked at him. She looked, in order, at his black armor, his great sword, the dent in his helmet where he had been gripping it, and the faint dim glow of two points of light somewhere in the dark of his visor.
"That," said Leah, "is not going to work."
"It will."
"You are the least dull person I have ever seen."
"I am a merchant," said Ainz.
"You are not."
"I have decided on it."
"You... *decided?*"
"It is a very good decision," said Ainz. "I made it in a study."
Leah closed her eyes.
"Oh, I'm going to regret this," she said. She opened them again, and looked at him, and there was something in her face that was neither a laugh nor a frown. "Okay. A trading company. I'll have my cat girls register it. A tag, a number, a ledger, the whole thing. You'll look like a real guild."
"I would be grateful."
"Nobody checks them. It just has to be there." She drew a long breath. "Come back in the morning. I'll have the tag. And you can tell me what you want to call it."
"Momon's Trading Company."
"Oh, that's the *worst* name."
"It is a reasonable name."
"It's a name that says *look at me, I'm hiding something.*"
"It is the name of a man with nothing to hide," said Ainz, with great firmness.
"Ainz."
"Yes?"
"I like you," said Leah. "Please don't make me regret it."
He did not know what to say.
He sat for a moment in the small green room, with the cup between his hands and a ridiculous warmth in the place where a heart had once been, and found, a little to his embarrassment, that the helmet at his feet was still dented from the way he had gripped it.
"I shall endeavor not to," he said.
***
They walked back through the dark.
The wood was very quiet. The moon was up, small and pale over the leaves, and the path glimmered faintly with dew. Ahead, at the gate, two black shapes stood waiting in perfect stillness, with the moonlight on their shoulders.
Narberal walked at his side, a pace behind.
"Lord Ainz," she said.
"Yes?"
"Lady Leah said she liked you."
"She did."
"I wished to say that I am glad."
He glanced at her.
She was looking straight ahead, with her usual composed, courteous face, and she did not turn her head.
"She asked me to be nice," said Narberal, after a moment. "To the players. Before we left the room. I said I would try."
"That was good of you."
"I did not say *how hard.*"
"No," said Ainz. "I noticed."
They walked on.
Somewhere behind them, in the roots of an enormous tree, a woman in a brown cloak was blowing out a row of small blue lanterns, one by one, and thinking about a black knight with a dented helmet and a trading company named after a man who did not exist.
She did not regret it.
She was, however, a little afraid of what she had agreed to.