[center][b][h1]Bork[/h1][/b][/center]

In response to the clerk’s question Bork shrugged.  Not his idea, not his fight.    He would simply mention the Captain’s request to the abbot later.  Andrew was Drom’s boss, after all.  If he said she belonged in a hole in the ground tomorrow, she’d better grab a lamp and a mining helmet.  And if he didn’t, well, the Captain would just have to deal with it.  And Bork would be fine either way.  

He would not, of course, tell the abbot more than he had to about the bowl, only that that the cat people had thought it important enough to their well-being to offer a bag of gems for it.  Basically what Kriltra had told him.  The two items interested him from the meeting were the fate of the glassblower and of the drug business.  He had shown Andrew the plants, and apparently the abbot was alright with allowing the trade to go on.  Perhaps that Wehrli lout would be more amenable to picking drug plants for his buddies than he would building a wall for the dwarf and the abbot?  The only thing the engineer would want is to make sure that Pigeon Spit got its “cut”, the one Kriltra had offered him.

Why did the glassblower interest him so?  His costume jewelry idea for one thing.  But more importantly, he had plans for an oil press.  And glass bottles were the best for oil; they could be reused and even repurposed, whereas a clay, wooden, or skin vessel that had once been used for oil could not be safely used for much else afterwards.  And they sold better, too, because they looked better and because people could more easily see what they contained.

And all this gave him ideas for more designs:  a lamp with a reusable glass reservoir, a bottle of a standard size, that fit into the base.  And there could be a peg that one turned to adjust the length of the wick for the kind of oil being used at the time.  This was followed by a sketch of stocks, and leg irons that attached to a staple bolted to a suitably solid stone wall.  Although he did not actually draw it, he amused himself by picturing Werhli locked into them.