The Dragon's Path

Chapter 24

Marcus
Be careful," Marcus said.
"I am being careful, sir."
"Well, be more careful."
Seven previous attempts lay on the floor between them: contracts and agreements between dead men over burned wealth, meaningless now. But, as Cithrin had said, each of them bore the signature and bloody thumbprint of Magister Imaniel of Vanai. The trick was to dip the parchment into the wax so that it covered the name and thumb, but nothing else. Then the page could be set in a wash of salt and rendered oil to loosen the ink. After a day in the bath, they could use a scrivener's stone to scrape away the ink, then a wash of urine to bleach away any remaining marks. In the end, they would have a blank page, ready to take whatever carefully practiced words Cithrin put on it, already signed and endorsed by the former head of the bank. A man, the story would have it, who foresaw the coming death of his city at Antean hands and concocted a scheme to refound his branch in Porte Oliva with Cithrin as his agent.
Provided they could put the wax in the right spot. Marcus leaned forward, fingers reaching toward the side of the document.
"If you just - "
"Sir?"
"Yardem?"
The Tralgu's ears sloped backward, set so close to his head that the earrings rested on his scalp.
"Go over there, sir."
"But I - "
"Go."
Marcus tapped at the air just before the parchment, grunted, and turned away. The boxes in the small rooms above the gambler's stall had been shifted and rearranged, making what had been one small room into two tiny ones. Outside, a warm spring wind hissed, rattling the shutters and making the world in general seem uneasy and restless. It had been a long time since Marcus had broken the thaw in a southern port, and the rich salt-stink of the bay reminded him of yesterday's fish. Cithrin sat on a stool, dressed in her carter's rough, with Cary squeezed in close beside her. Master Kit stood a few steps away, his arms crossed over his chest.
"That was better," Master Kit said, "but I think you've gone a little too far in the other direction. I don't want you to seem burdened. Instead of thinking of weight, imagine how you would move in a heavy wool cloak."
Cary put her hand to Cithrin's back.
"You're too tight here," Cary said. "Relax that and put the tension up here."
Cithrin frowned, tiny half moons appearing at the corners of her mouth.
"Like your breasts were too heavy," Cary said.
"Oh," Cithrin said, brightening. "Right."
She rose from her stool, took a step toward Master Kit, turned, and sat back down. Marcus couldn't have said what had changed in the way the girl moved, only that it was different. Older. Master Kit and Cary smiled at each other.
"Progress," Master Kit said. "Unquestionable progress."
"I think we're ready to walk down to the square," Cary said.
"With my blessing," Master Kit said, stepping back until he was almost pressed to Marcus's belly. The two women made their way across the thin strip of floor to the head of the stairway, hand in hand.
"Lower in the hips," Master Kit said. "Sink into them. Don't walk from your ankles."
The creak of boards descended until the pair were out in the street and gone. The wind gusted up the stairway, and the door at the bottom slammed shut. Marcus blew out his breath and sat on the newly vacant stool.
"I think she's quite good," Master Kit said. "Not much natural sense of her own body, but no particular fear of it either, and I find that's half the work."
"That's good," Marcus said.
"It seems the cuts on her thumbs are scarring nicely. I expect she'll have a good callus when that's through. Like she's been signing contracts for years. Did you put lye in the wounds?"
"Ash and honey," Marcus said. "Just as good, and it doesn't tend to go septic."
"Fair point. I thought that calling her three-quarters Cinnae was a good choice. If she's nearer full-blood, the Firstblood thickness may read more as years than parentage."
"I've always thought Cinnae look to be about twelve anyway," Marcus said. "Terrible in a fight. No weight behind the blows."
Master Kit leaned a shoulder against the wall. His dark eyes flitted across Marcus as if the actor were reading a book.
"And how are you, Captain?"
"I hate this," Marcus said. "I hate this plan. I hate that we're forging documents. I hate that Cithrin pulled you and yours into it. There's nothing about the entire scheme I don't hate."
"And yet it seems you've chosen to come along."
"I don't have a better idea," Marcus said. "Except fill our pockets and walk away. That's still got some charm."
"So why don't you do that? The boxes are here. I'd say you've more than earned your pay."
Marcus let out a mirthless chuckle and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. From the far side of the room, Yardem made a satisfied grunt. The wax dip had worked this time.
"There are going to be consequences," Marcus said. "She can't just say it's all hers now and make it true. It's like walking into Cabral and casually announcing that you're the new mayor of Upurt Marion, and all the port taxes go to you now. And what's it going to upset? We don't know. By the end of the season, every trading house and royal court is going to have a theory of what exactly Komme Medean is signaling by investing in Porte Oliva. It's going to mean something about the relationship of Birancour and Cabral, and whether the freight from Qart-hadath is landing here or there. Why isn't there a branch here already? Is it because the queen warned them off? We might be violating half a dozen treaties and agreements right now, and we wouldn't know it."
"I agree with all of that," Master Kit said. "The risk seems real."
"We're about to be the bold, unexpected move on the part of a bank with a great deal of money and influence, and don't think for a moment that they'll appreciate our putting our hand to the tiller."
"And that's why you dislike the plan?"
"Yes," Marcus said.
Master Kit looked down. The wind stilled, then gusted again, pressing against the little rooms and stirring the air.
"Why do you dislike this plan, Captain?" the actor said.
He felt a stab of annoyance, and then the cool, almost sick feeling of the right answer swimming into his mind. He scratched his leg, feeling the tooth of the cloth against his fingertips. His hands seemed older than they should. When he thought of them, they still looked like they had when he'd first been on campaign. Strong, smooth, capable. Now there was as much scar to them as skin. The nail of his right thumb had been cut half off once, and it hadn't grown back quite right. The knuckles were larger than they had been. The calluses had more yellow to them. He turned them over, considering his palms as well. If he looked closely, he could still make out the dots of white where a dog had bitten him once, a lifetime ago.
"She knows the risks, but she doesn't understand them," Marcus said. "I can say everything to her I just said to you, and she'll answer me back. Argument for argument. She'll say the regained capital justifies the decision. That the holding company isn't liable for her, nor are the other branches, so anything they make back is a step above where they were when the money was simply lost."
"And yet," Master Kit said.
"I know how to protect her from thugs and raiders. I know how to fight pirates. I don't know how to protect her from herself, and hand to God, that girl is the worst danger she'll ever face."
"It can be hard, can't it? Losing control," Master Kit said.
"I don't control her," Marcus said.
"I think you do, but I'm open to being proven wrong. What are three decisions she's made before this? In the time you've known her, I mean."
Yardem Hane loomed up behind the actor, wiping oil from his fingers onto a bit of grey cloth. For a moment, Marcus thought it might offer distraction, but the Tralgu's passive expression told him that he'd come to listen to the conversation, not to end it.
"She got that dress of hers," Marcus said. "And she chose to go to your performances."
"Two, then?" Master Kit said.
"She picked the fish for dinner," Marcus said.
"And how would you compare that with other contracts you've had?" Master Kit asked. "I don't believe you have thought of Cithrin as your employer so much as the little girl who'd swum out near the riptide. Has she paid you?"
"She hasn't," the Tralgu rumbled.
"You can stay out of this," Marcus said. "She couldn't. She didn't have any money of her own. All of this belongs to someone."
"And now," Master Kit said, "it seems she might be able to offer gold. And make decisions of greater weight than whether to have fish or poultry. Or what dress to buy. If this scheme of hers works, she'll be choosing where to live, how and whether to protect herself, and all the other thousand things that come with her trade. And I suspect you'll be here as well, at her side and protecting her. But only as her hired captain."
"Which isn't what I've been doing all along?" Marcus said.
"Which isn't what you've been doing," Master Kit said. "If you had been, you'd have asked Cithrin before you killed Opal."
"She'd have told me not to."
"And I think that's why you didn't ask. And why you dread the time when you have to ask, and you have to defer to her judgment even if you think she's wrong."
"She's a little girl," Marcus said.
"All women were little girls once," Master Kit said. "Cithrin. Cary. The queen of Birancour. Even Opal."
Marcus said something obscene under his breath. Outside in the street, the gambler's man called out. Great fortune could be theirs. Odds offered on any fair wager.
"I am sorry about Opal," Marcus said.
"I know you are," Master Kit said. "I am too. I knew her for a very long time, and I enjoyed her company for more than half of that. But she was who she was, and she made her choices."
"You were her lover, weren't you?" Marcus said.
"Not recently."
"And she was a part of your company. She traveled with you. She was one of your people."
"She was."
"And you let me kill her," Marcus said.
"I did," Master Kit said. "I believe there is a dignity in consequences, Captain. I think there's a kind of truth in them, and I try to cultivate a profound respect for truth."
"Meaning this is Cithrin's mistake to make."
"If that's what you heard me say."
Yardem flicked an ear, his earrings jingling against each other. Marcus knew what the Tralgu was thinking. She's not your daughter. Marcus set his foot against the wall of boxes. The wealth of a city that didn't exist anymore. The gems and trinkets, silk and spices traded to let the lucky escape the flames. All of it together wouldn't buy back one of the dead. Not even for a day.
So what was the point of it?
"Her plan isn't bad," Marcus said. "But I have the right to hate it."
"I can respect that position," Master Kit said with a grin. "Shall we prepare the oil bath for the future foundational documents of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva before the women come back?"
Marcus sighed and rose.
When the morning came, Marcus walked beside her. The mornings were still cold, but not so much that he could see his breath. Men and women of the three predominant races of the city passed one another as if the differences in their eyes and builds and pelts were of no particular concern. The morning mist drifted through the great square, greying the dragon's jade pavement. The condemned of the city shivered in the cold where all could see. Two Firstblood men hung as murderers. A Cinnae woman sat in the stocks with chains around her ankles as a recalcitrant debtor. A Kurtadam man hung by his knees and barely able to draw breath. Smuggling. Marcus could feel Cithrin pause. He wondered what the penalty would be for what they were about to do. It seemed unlikely to have precedent in the judges' tables.
The wide copper-and-oak doors of the governor's palace were already open, a stream of humanity pouring in and out from the center of authority. Cithrin lifted her chin. Smit had painted her face before they left. Faint, greyish lines around her eyes. Rose-grey blush coloring her cheeks. She wore a black dress that flattered her hips, but the way a matron might be flattered. Not a girl fresh from her father's home. She could have been thirty. She could have been fifteen. She could have been anything.
"Come with me," she said.
"Don't walk from your ankles," he said, and she slowed, taking the brickwork steps one at a time.
Within the palaces, the sunlight filtered through great walls of colored glass. Red and green and gold spilled across the floors, the twinned stairways. It mottled the skins of the people walking through, leaving Marcus with the sense of being in some enchanted grotto from a children's song, where all the fish had been changed to minor political officials. Cithrin took a long, shuddering breath. For a moment, he thought she would leave. Turn on her heel, flee, and leave the whole mad folly behind. Instead, she stepped forward and put a hand on the arm of a passing Kurtadam woman.
"Forgive me," Cithrin said. "Where would I find the Prefect of Trades?"
"Up the stairs, ma'am," the Kurtadam said with a soft southland lisp. "He'll be a Cinnae like yourself. Green felt table, ma'am."
"My thanks," Cithrin said, and turned toward the stairs. The Kurtadam woman's gaze stayed on Marcus, and he nodded as they passed. As a bodyguard, he felt out of place. There were a few queensmen here, scattered among the crowd, but no other private guards that he could see. He wondered if the real Medean bank would have brought him along or left him outside.
At the top of the stair, Cithrin paused, and he did as well. The prefectures were set haphazardly about the room like a huge child had taken up the tables and scattered them. There were no aisles, no rows. Each table stood at an angle to the ones around it, and if there was a system to the chaos, Marcus couldn't see it. Cithrin nodded to herself, gestured that he should stay close, and waded into the mess. A third of the way across, she came to a table covered with green felt where a Cinnae man in a brown tunic sat paging through stacks of parchment. A small weighing scale perched beside him, a row of weights behind it like soldiers at attention.
"Help you?" he said.
"I've come to submit letters of foundation," Cithrin said. Marcus felt his heart speeding up, like the moments before a battle. He crossed his arms and scowled.
"What class of trade, ma'am?"
"Banking," Cithrin said, as if she were doing something perfectly normal. The Prefect of Trades looked up as if seeing her for the first time.
"If you mean a gambling house - "
"No," Cithrin said. "A branch house. The holding company is in Carse. I have the papers, if you'd like."
She held them out. Marcus was certain he caught a whiff of old urine, that the section of the page that the wax had protected showed three shades darker than the rest. The prefect would laugh, call the queensmen, end the game here before it began.
The Cinnae man took the parchment as if it were spun glass. He frowned, his gaze skipping over the words. He stopped and looked up at Cithrin. His pale face flushed.
"The... the Medean bank?" he said. Marcus saw the conversations around them shudder and stop. More eyes were turning their way. The prefect swallowed. "Will this be a restricted license or free?"
"I believe the letter calls for free," Cithrin said.
"So it does. So it does. A full and unencumbered branch of the Medean bank."
"Is that a problem?"
"No," the man said, and fumbled, reading for her name on the papers. "No, Mistress bel Sarcour, only I hadn't been told to expect it. If the governor knew, he'd have been here."
"Not called for," Cithrin said. "Would I pay the fees to you?"
"Yes," the prefect said. "Yes, that would be fine. Let me just..."
For what felt like a day and likely took less than half an hour, Cithrin fenced with the bureaucrat. Payment was delivered from the bank, assayed, accepted, and receipts issued. The man scribbled a note on a sheet of pink onionskin, pressed an inked signet on the page, signed, and had Cithrin put her name over his signature. Then he offered her a small silver blade. As if she had done it a thousand times before Cithrin cut her thumb and pressed her print onto the page. The prefect did likewise.
And it was done. Cithrin took the onionskin, folded it, and slipped it in the purse that hung from her belt. Marcus followed her back down the stairs and out to the square. The sun had burned off the mist now, and the sounds of human traffic were the same low roar he'd become accustomed to.
"We're a bank," Cithrin said.
Marcus nodded. He would have felt better if there had been someone to fight. Or at least threaten. The anxiety of what they'd just done wanted some release. Cithrin took a handful of coins from her purse and held them out to him.
"Here," she said. "That's to hire on more guards. Now that it's my money, we might as well spend it. I'm thinking a dozen men, but use your best judgment. We'll want day and night guards, and then a few to accompany goods when we transfer them. I didn't haul these silks all the way from the Free Cities to have some back-alley thief take them now. I've got my eye on a couple of places the bank might operate from that give a better impression than squatting over a gambling shop."
Marcus looked at the coins. They were the first she'd ever paid him, and so what she'd just said was her first true order. The warmth in his chest was as surprising as it was powerful.
However it unfurled from this, whatever the consequences, the girl had done what damn few would have had the nerve for. This from the half-idiot carter boy he'd met in Vanai last autumn.
He was proud of her.
"Is there a problem?" Cithrin asked, real concern in her voice.
"No, ma'am," Marcus said.