The city has un-factory-tainted air, short buildings, steep narrow streets, and brown-skinned humans who seem to find him exotic. There are horses and market stalls and houses and shops and occasionally fountains.

"...Why, sir, what does it look like?"

"It looks like you and all these other people are being sold. As slaves. Is this a common occurrence here?"

"Yes, so I'm not sure why you're so surprised. Sir."

"Yes, and, probably. Got in there somehow. Though, if that's meant to be an explanation for much of anything, it'd be the first time I ever heard of any magic that wasn't a cheap trick or silly superstition."

"...Maybe the magic took your memory," suggests Ayabel.

"I do have a full set. Just of...not here. I suppose you haven't heard of America?"

"No."

"What place in particular?"

"Whoever it is who would be able to stop all this and hasn't."

"Do you mean the person who operates the particular slave reseller I belong to right now, or do you mean, for instance, the king?"

"The king's name is Oreled and he lives in Alerene."

"I can't run. I fall over if I try."

"And if the reseller's out of the picture first? If we're lucky, some of your burlier colleagues and I might be able to lay him out without raising an alarm."

"I'd still have to get to Tsopix or similar, without papers and with a heel tattoo."

"There's still the question of how I will physically depart the premises when everyone knows that no such transaction took place."

"He has an office, but he also has security guards. Stealing me is a dicey proposition unless you came out of the magic with magical powers of some relevant kind."

"I don't know what those are."

"Magical powers of some relevant kind, I suspect. They're a type of weapon; I make them professionally. How long are you likely to be unsold if I try to come back later better equipped?"

"I'm sixteen, healthy, literate, well-behaved, and underpriced. Days at most."

"I don't know his sleeping arrangements but imagine he doesn't have guards standing over him all night. But he'll contest the validity of the papers and since they would in fact be forgeries I would bet on him if it came to it."

"So he just has to be unavailable for comment until you've a head start on your way to Tsopix?"

"...Yes. Although I'm also not sure you'll be able to make them look right if you came out of a magic with no locally appropriate memories."

"Hm. Well, with enough samples of how he records routine purchases and sales, one more sale should be doable? If not, I can try to show it to you before passing it off as genuine, if there's a way to get away with that."

"We're in closer quarters overnight. It would be hard to avoid waking other slaves."

"In that case, gambling on forgery might be the safest bet if nothing else comes up. Or at least the least risky."

"Maybe. I'm willing to try it if you are, anyway."

"I can tell you where to find someone who collects curiosities from magics. He pays more than my asking price for ones that are useless; one that's functional too you could get that and quite a bit of slush fund."

"Does it need any maintenance or have any irritating secondary properties?"

He winds it a half turn. "It stops if you don't do this for too long, but it's easy to reset and I can show the buyer how."

"And it doesn't scream or squirt blood at you or need to be fed fried eggs?"

"Those are things that can happen? Good God, it's a clever invention not a demon. It's as well-behaved as any other device."

"You did walk out of a magic with inexplicable memories," Ayabel says. "And an unprecedented timekeeper. But if it hasn't screamed, squirted blood, or stopped working until you fed it a fried egg so far, that will probably be good enough for the collector and you can probably get at least five hundred, maybe twice that."

"No pocket watch has ever done any of those things, and they've been around for hundreds of years. At any rate, where's this person I'm selling it to?"

"Look, whatever your memories tell you, you walked out of a magic with that thing and they haven't existed for hundreds of years here. Best just to say it's from the magic and is merely oddly well-behaved. You're looking for Chayer Terunone, and he lives twenty minutes' walk north of here in the gaudy green mansion, and you can probably have a two-hour hold on me with no collateral if you ask the proprietor nicely and don't say anything crazy."

"Thank you."

He stops to talk as briefly as possible to the proprietor, and then heads north.

He observes a lack of "no soliciting" signs, and heads doorward to knock.

He is answered by a young lady. The front hall has a lot of bizarre curios in it. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for a Mr. Terunone; I've been informed he buys things retrieved from magics?"

"He does, yes. Can you wait for a short while?"

"Yes, of course." Making the assumption that the word "short" doesn't mean something drastically different here, but it seems like a fair one.

She shows him inside, invites him to have a seat on any of several drastically mismatched and (in one case) purring chairs, and leaves him be for half an hour, after which time Mr. Terunone comes in. "I hear you have something for sale!"

Mr. Terunone is fascinated by the object. "The chair that purrs we think used to be a cat, actually... The object is fascinating. What do you want for it?"

"Fifteen hundred? There isn't exactly a standard number, inconveniently enough."

"Could I interest you in a trade?"

"Probably not, but it's possible. Did you have something specific in mind?"

"No, I have a wide variety of objects that no longer interest me as much as they did when they were new. What might tempt you?"

"I don't have anything quite like that," he agrees. "I do have a set of animated knitting needles which, depending on their - mood - will sometimes knit things to order?"

"Afraid not; maybe if they worked in metal instead of yarn. I realize objects that do useful things predictably are rare; that's why I thought it more worthwhile to start from money rather than barter."

"They can actually knit wire, although only of a pretty fine gauge... I have an oil lamp that takes water instead of oil and will change the color of its flame reliably on command? A length of rope which, supplied with a drawing and some lint to eat, will tie itself into knots?"

"Neither of those sounds like it would be useful in my enterprise, unfortunately."

"All right, money it is. The piece might be useful, but fifteen hundred seo is a bit much - it's not especially decorative, nor so obvious in its utility that it could make back the cost for me. Shall we say a thousand?"

"Excellent. Will you consider a note for the bank sufficient or would you prefer to hold the object until I can procure coins?"

"Perhaps you could come back tomorrow afternoon, then?"

"I could also give you part of the amount as a note. I do have enough cash to give you six hundred now."

"That would accomplish it. Thank you for the flexibility."

And in similarly short order he is off to retrieve Ayabel.

Who has been held for him. Turns out the outfit will take his writ and give him change in a similar format, if he likes.

Huh. Could have saved lugging the bag for twenty minutes. If that's typical, though, probably better to pay with coins so as to less visibly scream "I'm carrying several human beings' worth of cash" to anyone who looks.

They'll take his coins too. They take thirteen golds and give him a handful of silver back, and Ayabel's collar is unlocked and Hank gets a little sheaf of papers declaring her his property.

She shows him which boxes to fill in and where to sign to manumit her.

And he is no longer a slave owner.

Aya tucks her papers into her shirt. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"That depends. I have a reasonable avenue to take if you don't want any further help from me, but if you do, it's quite possibly a better choice than my default plan."

"I would be glad to have your help if you're offering. I know approximately what the medium term plan looks like, but am completely lacking in information on questions like what kingdom to do it in and what sort of food people eat here and everything in between."

"How much did you get for the timekeeping thing?"

"A thousand. So you'd know better than I how much I can afford to pay you; my only reference points are curiosities and slaves."

"And what's the medium term plan?"

"Start mass-producing as many devices as I know how and become absurdly rich and powerful. For a good cause."

"...How sure are you that the devices you remember knowing how to make will actually work in reality?"

"Some things can be tested more easily than others, but, does boiling water in an iron kettle still make the lid rattle? Unless that is to be a fraud as well, I can make a steam engine."

"Yes, lids on kettles rattle."

"You don't have any more things from the magic to sell, do you? If that's your entire fund it's worth making sure that whatever you do first can pay for itself."

"Apart from some perpetual skirmishes over the Pass out west this is a time of peace."

"I don't have especially clear memories of ten years ago but I remember weeding and raking out grain to dry and so on. It's currently early spring. Your device sounds amazing."

"That depends on how frugally you're willing to live and whether you're trying to support me on the amount too."

"On eight hundred seventy-five you are not rich but you will not be out of money in a week. For maximum frugality, we can sleep in a church attic as charity cases, eat mostly rice at whatever hours the clergy aren't using their stove, and not replace your bizarre outfit. We could probably coast for a year like that if necessary, which it probably isn't. We could also rent either one or two rooms in a boarding house, try not to develop rabbit starvation, and get you normal clothes and me a pair of shoes that cover the heels, and we're probably covered for two to four months."

"Can the machines run as a proof of concept without a harvest to take?"

"Probably better to have something else propping up your reputation before you try that. The others could be extremely popular, though."

"It's a plan, then. Light bulbs, then telegraphs or combines depending on timing...the next question is where. If there are less terrible countries, I have to think twice before making this one rich."

"Tsopix forbids slavery but I don't speak the language. It would be a reasonable choice for panicked escape but more difficult for economic overhaul on a budget unless the magic taught you Tsopixi. I know less about the other neighboring countries."

"...We're speaking Esevi. You speak perfect unaccented Esevi, and have since you first addressed me. And since you knew my name I assume you also read it. Yenda dan Sudre?"

"...What do you call a shoe with its own feet? An elephant."

"Complete non sequitur. Elephant like the large animal?"

"Yes. How odd. I hope you don't like puns very much."

"Oh, this is definitely an improvement. I think I'll survive."

"...I wonder what happens if you try to make a pun."

"So it's definitely two different languages, and they just sound intelligible because...because of the magic, I suppose. Maybe when there aren't any more important things to do I'll turn some linguists loose on it."

"I'm sure you'd entertain linguists to no end. I'm curious myself, but there are other priorities and now that you are no longer in a magic you can probably expect to keep all your embroidery until a time of greater leisure."

"I don't know of a specific boardinghouse to recommend, but there's a few of them on the Sunrise Row which I imagine fall within our price range."

"Sunrise sounds as good as anywhere."

Ayabel leads the way. Occasionally she pats the location where she stashed the papers to make sure they're still there.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"People who mix various chemicals together while being grotesquely unscientific about it. The materials I was thinking of just now I could make from scratch with oil of vitriol, but if there are people known for working in funny-smelling laboratories with lots of glass bottles then it might be easier to see what's already available."

"I'm... not aware of any such people but my education has been less than systematic."

"We can look into it later. Worst case is it costs some extra time to make things from the ground up."

"What is it you want to make? Do you need it for the harvester?"

"For the light bulb. Glass, magnets, mercury, and wire should be enough to make the thing itself and the power it needs, but the battery—a device for storing the power, you understand—is going to need some unusual liquids."

"Magnets and mercury might be hard to get ahold of in quantity, as might your unusual liquids, but glass and wire are doable."

"How hard? If it's prohibitive, starting with something else is always an option."

"Season is moderately important to the combine harvester's prompt usefulness and sounds less relevant to your other ideas, and unlike the messenger idea doesn't require convincing at least two people to make one sale. I definitely advise starting there so you'll have the leeway and reputation to advance other ideas."

"Explain it?"

"If you prove you invent a thing, the government gives you the exclusive right to make them. No one can copy it without paying you first. The theory is that people will be more likely to invent useful things if they can profit from it more. Not that I invented this, but the point stands."

"I don't think we have that, although no one else is allowed to claim to have invented the thing independently if they didn't. And some people might back off if you loudly assert that Aelare gave you and you alone the design, etcetera."

"How many of these things can you personally produce? Is it even a good idea to have it patented? Some of your ideas sound sufficiently hard to reverse-engineer that you could make most of your profit off those and let the harvester spread wherever people will take them."

"It sounded like it would substantially reduce demand for slaves just by existing. If you only want to sell to free countries we should pick up a few books on Tsopixi and go there."

"But if the harvester can be easily copied and you don't convince anyone to implement patents, then Tayane might just copy Tsopixi harvesters and continue having slavery by all the usual avenues."

"Yes, that kind of thing is only an option if I can keep a monopoly. Otherwise everyone's productivity jumps, which isn't a bad thing, but doesn't directly benefit either us or abolition."

"Incremental freedom is still an improvement. Discourages deliberate slave-breeding and means more children of mixed parentage are born free, cuts financial incentives to tweak the severity of crime for which sale is punishment."

"Hm. What are the main tasks people employ slave labor for? I might have ways to reduce demand for more than just harvesting crops."

"Besides farming, slaves are used mostly for domestic servitude, construction, sex, and miscellaneous incidentals such as scribe work."

"Most of the ways I could affect construction would take more startup time, house work and incidentals don't sound like a priority, and...we are going to end this as soon as possible."

"...The upshot for the project being?"

"You can certainly sell a few harvesters before anyone will allow them to be disassembled casually."

"I do remember the name of the fellow who owned me until I was six. And here is Sunrise Row." It is a residential street, containing residences. Some of them have signs advertising rooms and amenities.

"Does it need to be indoors?"

"Preferably, but the importance mainly depends on how likely people here are to try to walk off with a half-finished large object they don't understand."

"The person who sold me to the outfit you found me at was selling off other assets, too, and I know he inherited a small dairy farm and found the goats easier to be rid of than the land. It may still be available. Will that do?"

"Absolutely. Meets all one of the criteria. Contingent on being able to buy it, of course, and still have enough left to hire some smiths."

"It might not pan out, but it's the lead I have. We could also park in the buffer zone near a magic if budgeting for workspace is impractical."

Hank shrugs. "It sounds like a good idea. And the craftsmen aren't going to output pieces of machinery instantly; there's time."

"The buffer zone is rather dangerous if one doesn't know exactly where the magic starts, and sometimes embroidered animals can be destructive and it's likeliest near the magics, but this does mean no one is already using most of it. We'd have to maintain the signage around wherever we were set up, but wouldn't incur other land costs."

"Good to know that's not much of a problem. Even if there are destructive animals, I can get a gun fairly quickly."

"What is that?"

"Think of a handheld explosion, propelling a slug of metal somewhere over half as fast as the speed of sound. Some animals need to be brought down by a bigger gun than others, but animals as a class get far less dangerous."

"Occasionally. Or vice-versa. Usually if there's an earthquake or a flood or a volcanic eruption or something like that."

"...You'll put what on the to-do list?"

"Getting rid of some magics. Doing it by sheer destruction would be very little improvement, but maybe there's one with an easily divertible river nearby. It would have serve some other purposes simultaneously to be worth it, of course."

"They're not doing anything important, are they? Just taking up space and occasionally spewing monsters at people?"

"Sometimes the monsters - or the inanimate objects - or the mysteriously pale and pun-impaired men - are useful or interesting, as with the collection you contributed to. But it's certainly safer to occasionally throw a cat at a magic from a safe distance while prepared to deal with a flying tentacled horror if that's what you get, than to have them at the bottoms of ravines next to the only roads between certain cities. So it would be better for all but the tamest and most convenient magics to be got rid of, if that were doable."

"It would be a major project, but doesn't sound impossible. Maybe one day."

"We don't know how long it'll take until the first sale; might have to use the third one. What do you think?" It'd depend on what other expenses there are likely to be, but one of them is in a better position to guess than the other.

"It's your budget. We could price smiths first if you'd prefer; I don't know how much those tend to cost."

"Can you guess at how many, say, horseshoes would cost about the same amount as a thinking human being? Wouldn't have to be a good guess, just in approximately the ballpark."

"Human beings vary widely in price, but if we're using my most recent price as the baseline, quite a lot. I'd need writing materials to work it out but you could probably shoe a whole stableful of horses at least the once for that much."

"That should be doable."

"I can cook in the boardinghouse kitchen for us both, if you want to buy some groceries."

"Right. Boring everyday things are probably good to remember."

"Yes. Depending on how often you want to send me on shopping trips for food one or two seo should do it and I'll probably get change back."

"You're welcome. Thank you."

"I can. Anything in particular you want?"

And he goes to see about getting the room rented.

It is pretty simple. He gives them money, they give him a key.

A much simpler arrangement than a boarding house might conceivably be, but he gives no sign that he's pleasantly surprised.

He is informed that he may use the kitchen but must not get into fights with other residents or the landlady's sole discretion will be used in sorting out (and if necessary evicting) involved parties, and there are bath facilities (such as they are) in the back, and he is to be quiet after dark and very quiet after it has been dark for a few hours. And he is shown to the room.

Aya appears a couple of hours later with food, which she has apparently just now cooked.