“Eli, you look thin,” Nassim observed. “Like this.” He sucked in his cheeks, making the hollow beneath his strong cheekbones more pronounced. Next to them, a railway station clerk blew a whistle, and the shrill sound cut right into Elias’s brain.
“I fucked too much and ate too little,” he said to Nassim.
Nassim’s brows flew up and he barked a laugh in shocked surprise. “Well done,” he said, and slapped Elias’s shoulder. “Much better than the other way around.”
Their exuberance attracted covert glances from fellow travelers.
Elias grabbed Nassim’s hand. “Come.”
They made their way out of Oxford’s railway station, followed by a clerk who pushed Nassim’s groaning luggage cart. The small carriage yard was busy and owing to the number of Nassim’s suitcases, they would queue awhile for a large enough vehicle.
“What are you taking home?” Elias asked. “Half the port?”
Nassim tilted his head, his expression turning vague. “Gifts.” After a pause. “Some pieces for the factory.”
“Pieces?”
“A prototype with some of our specifications,” Nassim said with a shrug.
“Nassim.”
“Fine. A modified steam box that can both steam and then hot-air-dry cocoons. It could save us up to three days in the drying process per batch and raise profits by a few percent.”
“By four percent.” Elias glared at the luggage cart. “That was my calculation—that box was my suggestion. And it isn’t just days saved, it’s the improved quality of the cocoon if we dry them that way.”
Nassim nodded. “I thought so; it sounded like something you would think about.”
Elias’s head felt hot. “Yet he wrote to you to bring the prototype. I heard nothing.”
Him being Khalo Jabbar.
A four-wheeled carriage with a closed roof pulled up, and Nassim waved at the driver.
“He’ll never hear some of us as clearly as he hears some of the others,” he said while the luggage was hoisted up onto the carriage roof. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t hear you.”
Elias shot him a sardonic glance. “He hears me, Nassim. He hears me, and then he uses my suggestions and makes profit with hardly an acknowledgment of my contribution.”
Nassim squinted. “But if it’s good for the family, isn’t it good for you, too?”
It was true, it was why he tolerated it. He didn’t like it, though, and it didn’t work the other way around, either—when he took a misstep, the shame was squarely his. It wasn’t the first time Jabbar had done it, either. A few years ago, Elias had calculated that their competitiveness was hampered by time and quality lost from manually twining ripped silk threads together, and he had suggested an alteration to their reeling technology that had greatly improved their statistics. The alteration had been dismissed at first, then been quietly made after all, months later.
“It won’t make a difference, in the end,” Elias said after the carriage had pulled away from the station. “We are merely buying time. In ten years, Europe will purchase only Chinese silk, not ours.”
“I’ve heard you say this before,” Nassim remarked, and the set of his mouth said he wasn’t keen on it.
“Have you seen our forests?” Elias asked.
“No.”
“Exactly. Because they are disappearing. They’ll be gone. We don’t have coal to fuel the boilers. Now make a profit calculation with imported coal, brother, and tell me what you see.”
Nassim’s hazel eyes sobered. Whatever was on the balance sheet before his mind’s eye made him go quiet. “Since when have you known?” he asked.
“A while.”
Nassim tutted. “Always three moves ahead, aren’t you, Eli. What is your recommendation?”
The carriage parked. Elias looked outside at the ancient wooden doors of St. John’s. A group of young women walked past below the carriage window, their heels clacking, their laughter floating in.
“Eli?”
“New horizons.”
They stored half of the suitcases behind the desk at the porter’s lodge, a favor that porter Clive afforded the foreign visitor as a special courtesy. Elias promised they would be gone on Monday. On the way out, he stole a glance at the Campbell pigeonhole. Empty.
Nassim took a while to refresh himself and change into a day suit. When he emerged from Elias’s bedroom, freshly groomed, he drummed a quick rhythm on his stomach with his hands.