Bjarni did not quite know how to improve the opportunity at first. He decided on a gambit of innocent raillery.
“Yes, we’re ready to weigh it now, I suppose ... that is, of course....”
Sera Daniel looked searchingly at him, unwilling as yet to take any definite step himself.
“What are you paying this season?”
“Sixty-five for best white, forty-two for black and mixed.”
Sera Daniel glanced at him with a curious smile. “Is that—ah—the ordinary price, or what you are paying Ørlygur à Borg?”
The trader’s face flushed violently; the hand holding the glass trembled a little. Without waiting for an answer, Sera Daniel made another shot.
“Or perhaps you are thinking of paying the same price to all—for once?”
Bjarni eyed him awhile in silence. He seemed to be turning over something in his mind. The priest felt the glance, and knew what lay behind it, but evinced no discomfiture. On the contrary, he met the trader’s eyes with a smile of irritating calm.
At last Bjarni spoke.