Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

world, some of which could be conveniently fitted to human use. There were Elderglass scavenging guilds in several cities, capable of filling special needs in exchange for exorbitant fees.
    Within the cylinder was something Locke could only describe as a
copperfall
—it was a sculpture of a rocky waterfall, taller than a man, in which the rocks were shaped entirely from silver volani coins, and the “water” was a constant heavy stream of copper centira, thousands upon thousands of them. The clatter within the soundproof glass enclosure must have been tremendous, but for those on the outside the show proceeded in absolute silence. Some mechanism in the floor was catching the stream of coins and recirculating it up the back of the silver “rocks.” It was eccentric and hypnotic…. Locke had never before known anyone to decorate a room with a literal pile of money.
    â€œMaster? You presume that I have one.”
    â€œYou know I mean Requin.”
    â€œHe would be the first to correct your presumption. Violently.”
    â€œA private audience would give us a chance to clear up several misunderstandings, then.”
    â€œOh, Requin will certainly speak to you—
very
privately.” Selendri snapped the fingers of her right hand twice and the four attendants converged on Locke. Selendri pointed up; two of them took firm hold of his arms, and together they began to lead him up the stairs. Selendri followed a few steps behind.
    The seventh floor was dominated by another sculpture within an even wider Elderglass enclosure. This one seemed to be a circle of volcanic islands, again built from silver volani, floating in a sea of solid-gold solari. Each of the silver peaks had a stream of gold coins bubbling from its top, to fall back down into the churning, gleaming “ocean.” Requin’s guards maintained a pace too vigorous for Locke to catch many more details of the sculpture or the room; they passed another pair of uniformed attendants beside the stairwell and continued up.
    At the heart of the eighth floor was a third spectacle within glass, the largest yet. Locke blinked several times and suppressed an appreciative chuckle.
    It was a stylized sculpture of Tal Verrar, silver islands nestled in a sea of gold coins. Standing over the model city, bestriding it like a god, was a life-sized marble sculpture of a man Locke recognized immediately. The statue, like the man, had prominent curving cheekbones that lent the narrow face a sense of mirth—plus a round protruding chin, wide eyes, and large ears that seemed to have been jammed into the head at right angles. Requin, whose features bore a fair resemblance to a marionette put together in haste by a somewhat irate puppeteer.
    The statue’s hands were held outward at the waist, spread forward, and from the flaring stone cuffs around them two solid streams of gold coins were continually gushing onto the city below.
    Locke, staring, only avoided tripping over his own feet because the attendants holding him chose that moment to tighten their grip. Atop the eighth-floor stairs was a pair of lacquered wooden doors. Selendri strode past Locke and the attendants. To the left of the door was a small silver panel in the wall; Selendri slid her brass hand into it, let it settle into some sort of mechanism, and then gave it a half-turn to the left. There was a clatter of clockwork devices within the wall, and the doors cracked open.
    â€œSearch him,” she said as she vanished through the doors without turning around.
    Locke was rapidly stripped of his coat; he was then poked, prodded, sifted, and patted down more thoroughly than he’d been during his last visit to a brothel. His sleeve-stiletto (a perfectly ordinary thing for a man of consequence to carry) was confiscated, his purse was shaken out, his shoes were slipped off, and one attendant even ran his hands through Locke’s hair. When this process was finished, Locke