Sam didn’t have a chance to respond immediately, because as I finished speaking we arrived at the section of the market that offered a huge variety of scavenged and spare parts for mechanisms such as the ones the girls at the workshop were busied with. He proved to be an extremely adept negotiator, bargaining prices with such an aptitude that I felt it only fair to compliment him on it as we began our walk back to the workshop, the new purchases stowed in a calico bag at my hip. “With a silver tongue like that, you should have been a politician,” I teased. Sam laughed. “I don’t like the current state of the world nearly well enough to want to go into politics. I can effect far more damage and change as a quasi-legal smuggler, I think.” I had to smile at that. “You’re probably right, yes.”
