“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.