Tapers blazed in half a dozen hanging candelabra, and stood in rows in sconces along the walls. More candles, smaller votive lights the length of a man’s finger, flickered at the foot of the central statue of Areton, the god of war and courage, throwing odd shadows across the statue’s archaic leg armor and making the base of his long spear seem to waver. This was not Eslingen’s favorite incarnation of the god–he preferred the younger shape, dancing, before he turned to war–but he touched his forehead dutifully anyway before turning toward the money changers.
Their booths lined the side walls of the temple, each one marked with familiar symbols–the cock‑and‑hens of Areill, the rose and wine‑cup of Pajot Soeurs–but he made his way to the biggest booth, the one marked with the ram’s head of Areton’s own priesthood. Enough of Areton’s old servants retired from soldiering into banking, drawing on the sense of value and exchange gained over a lifetime’s fighting in every kingdom from the petty lands west of Chadron to the Silklands themselves; their commissions might be higher than some of the others who rented space in the temple, but the rates of exchange tended to be better.
“Wait for me here,” he said to the boys who were standing wide‑eyed, staring at the thanks‑offerings of guns and swords pinned like trophies to every pillar, and took his place in line at the table marked with the ram’s head. The clerk at the next table, a pretty, dark‑skinned boy, smiled at him.
“I can offer good rates, sir, and no waiting.”
Eslingen shook his head, but returned the smile. The clerk’s hands were painted with a pattern of curving vines, black picked out with dots of red and gold, vivid in the candlelight. If that was the fashion in Astreiant now, Eslingen thought, it was a handsome one, though hardly practical. Then the man ahead of him had finished his business, and he stepped up to the table, reaching into his pocket for one purse, and under his shirt for the other. The clerk–greying, one‑eyed, ledger and tallyboard in front of him, abacus laid ready to a hand that lacked part of a finger–looked up at him shrewdly.
“And what do you have for me–sergeant, isn’t it, from Esling?”
“From Esling, yes, but I earned my commission this season,” Eslingen answered, and set the purses on the table.
“Congratulations,” the clerk said, busily unfolding the letters of credit, and Eslingen allowed himself a sour smile. Words were cheap; the ephemeral commission was unlikely to get him an improved exchange rate for the Leaguer coins. The clerk poured out the small horde of coins–the gold disk of the royal crown that had been this season’s wages, warm in the candlelight; the heavy silver square of the pillar that was Barthias’s gift; a pair of Altheim staters hardly bigger than sequins, but bright gold; a scattering of miscellaneous silver, Chadroni, League, and Chenedolliste equally mixed. The clerk grunted, fingering them neatly into the holes of the tallyboard, then spread the letters of credit beside them, bending close to read the crabbed writing. He grunted again and flicked the beads of his abacus, the maimed finger as deft as the others, then chalked something on his slate and flicked the abacus again.
“You have four crowns and three pillars by my reckoning, sergeant–lieutenant–all good coin of Her Majesty. Do you want it now, or do you want to bank it here and gamble on the exchange?”
Eslingen sighed. One did not bargain with the ram’s‑head bankers the way one bargained with other merchants; if one tried, the clerk was as likely to push the coins back to you and send you searching for another broker. The only question now was whether he would take the cash–and its attendant worries, theft and loss–or take a letter of credit on the Astreiant temple and hope that the exchange between the written amount, the monies of account, and actual coin shifted in his favor. And when one thought about it, it was no choice at all.
“How’s the exchange been so far?” he asked, without much hope, and wasn’t surprised when the clerk shrugged.
“Up and down, sergeant, up and down.”
“Give me two pillars in coin,” Eslingen said, “and a letter for the rest.”
The clerk nodded, put two fingers–the undamaged hand–into his mouth and whistled shrilly. A junior clerk came running, carrying a case of seals. Eslingen waited while the letter was drafted, signed, and sealed, then put his own name to it and folded it carefully into the purse around his neck. He tucked it back under his shirt, and watched as the clerk counted out two pillars for him. The coins rang softly against the wood, the heavy disks of heirats, bright with Heira’s snake, the lighter disks of seillings, marked with Seidos’s horsehead, and a handful of copper small‑coin, spiders and demmings mixed. He had been born under the signs of the Horse and the Horsemaster; he tucked a selling with the coppers in his pocket for luck, and knotted the rest securely in his purse.
Turning away from the table, he waved to the waiting boys–they came quickly enough, a little intimidated, he thought, by the bustling soldiers and longdistance traders–and led them over to the locked door of the armory. He gave the keeper his name and the details of his weapons–Astreiant limited the length of blade a person could carry in the streets, and utterly prohibited locks except to their pointsmen– and waited while the old woman laboriously inscribed them in the book. Then he handed them through the narrow portal, first the caliver and then the swords and finally the locked case of pistols. That left him with a long knife, just at the limit, and, tucked into the bottom of his saddlebag, a third pistol with its stock of powder and lead. The keeper gave him the sealed receipt, which he slipped into the purse beneath his shirt, and he turned away, working his shoulders. He felt oddly light without the familiar weight of caliver and swords–freer, too, with money in his purse, and for an instant he considered looking for lodgings north of the river. Then common sense reasserted itself: the northriver districts were too expensive, even with four crowns in the bank. He would take himself south of the river–the Old Brown Dog lay in Point of Hopes, Reymers had said, which meant doubling back west along the Fairs Road and across that bridge–and be sensible.
He looked back at the boys, reached into his pocket for the promised demmings. “Does either of you know a tavern in Point of Hopes called the Old Brown Dog?”
The younger boy shook his head at once; the older hesitated, obviously weighing his chances of another coin or two, then, reluctantly, shook his head, too. “No, sir, I don’t know southriver very well.”
Eslingen nodded–he hadn’t really expected another answer– and handed over the coins, the doubled moon, the old in the curve of the new, glinting in the candlelight. The older boy handed back his saddlebags, and he and his friend scurried for the door. Eslingen followed more slowly, looking around for fellow Leaguers. If anyone would know how to get to the Old Brown Dog, it would be League soldiers–provided, of course, that Reymers was right about the quality of the beer. There were plenty of Leaguers in Chenedolle, for all that League and Kingdom had fought a five‑year war twenty‑five years before; he should be able to find someone… Even as he thought that, he saw a familiar flash of white plumes, and Follet Baeker came into the light of the candelabra, showing teeth nearly as white as the feathers in his broad‑brimmed hat. As usual, he had a knife with him, a sullen looking, leather‑jerkined man who looked uncomfortable inside the Aretoneia–as well he might, Eslingen thought. Baeker was almost the only broker based in the city who took weapons and armor in pawn; despite Baeker’s generally decent reputation, his knife might well worry about protecting him from dissatisfied clients. After all, it would only take one of them and a moment’s carelessness to end Baeker’s career permanently.