“Straight to her?” Yardem asked, gesturing at the private stair that led to the rooms that were now exclusively Cithrin’s. Marcus shook his head.
“When we’re ready to go,” he said.
Once, the thick wooden door had opened onto a common area with a high counter on one end. The counter was gone now, and the chalk marks on the slate weren’t offered odds, but the names of Marcus’s new guards and their duty rotations. All four were waiting now where the gambler’s clients had been, looking out the narrow, barred windows and making crude jokes about the people passing by on the street. When Marcus entered, the laughter stopped, and the new guards—two Firstblood men, a Kurtadam woman, and a Timzinae boy Marcus had taken on a hunch—stood to attention. He’d need more. Overhead, the boards creaked where Cithrin was pacing.
“Bag ready?”
“Yes, Captain Wester, sir,” the Kurtadam woman said.
Marcus nodded at her, his mind suddenly an embarrassing blank. She had broad shoulders and hips, and arms as thick as her legs. Her pelt was a glossy black, darker even than the Timzinae boy’s scales. And her name was… Edir? Edem?
“Enen,” Yardem said. “You carry the coin. Barth and Corisen Mout take forward and back. Captain and I will take flanks.”
“And me?” the Timzinae boy asked. The nictatating membranes of his eyes opened and closed in a fast nervous tic. He was easy enough. Whatever his name was, everyone called him Roach.
“You’ll stay here and wake the others if anything interesting happens,” Marcus said. Roach deflated a bit, so Marcus went on. “If anyone’s going to make a play for the strongbox, they’ll do it when most of us are away. Keep the door barred, and your ears sharp. You’re going to be in more danger than we are.”
Roach saluted sharply. Enen stifled a smile. The two Firstblood men went to the weapons chest and started arraying the most vicious weapons that the queensmen would let them carry through the streets. Marcus turned and went back out toward the private stairway, Yardem at his side.
“I’m never going to remember all these names,” Marcus said.
“You always say that, sir.”
“I do?”
“Yes.”
“Hm. Good to know.”
The rooms that had seemed so small and cramped when it had been just him, Yardem, Cithrin, and the piled wealth of Vanai had become a respectable private residence for the new head of the Medean bank. It was little more than a room in the back with her bed and desk and a meeting room at the front with a small privacy closet to the side, but Cithrin had put together a hundred small touches that transformed it: fine strips of cloth that hung over the windows, a small religious icon nestled in a corner, the short lacquered table presently covered with old shipping records and copied bills of lading. Taken together, they gave the impression of the home of a woman twice her age. It was as much a costume as anything Master Kit and his players sported, and one that Cithrin wore well.
“I need someone from the Port Registry who’ll talk to me,” Cithrin said instead of hello. “The trade ships from Narinisle should be coming, and I need to know better how that works. It looks like half the trade in the city happens when those ships come in.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Yardem said.
“Where to today?” Marcus asked.
“A brewer’s just outside the wall,” Cithrin said. “I met her at the taproom. Her guild’s letting her replace her vats, but she doesn’t have the coin to afford it.”
“So we’re loaning it to her.”
“Actually, she’s not permitted to accept loans at interest,” Cithrin said, pulling a light beaded shawl across her shoulders and arranging it the way Master Kit had taught her. “Guild rules. But she is permitted to take money from business partners. So we’re buying part of her business.”
“Ah,” Marcus said.
“If she comes short, we’re in a position to take her shop in hand. If I cultivate a relationship with a cooper and a few taphouses, I can arrange the kind of mutual support that makes everyone very happy for a very long time.”
“Long time,” Marcus said, tasting the words.
“And anyway, breweries are always good investments,” Cithrin said. “Magister Imaniel always said so. There’s never going to be an off market for ale.”
Cithrin looked around the room, pursed her lips, and nodded more to herself than to them. Together, they walked back down the stairway, Cithrin stopping to secure the door behind them. In the street, a half dozen children were playing a game that involved kicking an old wineskin and screaming. Cithrin turned toward the entrance, almost bumping against a Kurtadam man. Marcus silently added the construction of an interior door to his list of things that ought to be done. Having to walk outside to go from one set of rooms to the other had been pleasant enough when they were hiding. Now it was just an unnecessary risk.
The Firstblood men, Corisen Mout and Barth, were laughing with each other but sobered as the three of them came in. Enen was ready, a small leather bag strapped across her shoulders, her hands free and ready. She wore a curved dagger and a weighted baton on her hips. When they walked out to the street, the six of them fell into an easy formation. Despite the close, crowded streets, their path was always clear, the citizens of Porte Oliva standing aside to let them pass. Curious gazes followed them, but only a few especially bold beggars attempted the approach, and they tried for Cithrin. No one came near Enen and her burden of coin. They moved north, through the great wall, and to the spillover buildings of the city beyond it. The press of bodies was more than Marcus liked. The smells of sewer and sweat were thicker here, the streets both more crowded and wider than behind the wall in Porte Oliva’s center.
The brewer’s, when they reached it, was a two-story shop built around a narrow courtyard with its own well. Wide doors stood open to the yard, the vats and barrels squatting in the yeast-stinking shadows. The brewer, a Cinnae woman so thick about the body and face she could almost have passed for Firstblood, came out to meet them, grinning like they were family.
“Magistra Cithrin! Come in, come in!”
Marcus watched as Cithrin and the brewer kissed one another’s cheeks. He nodded to Enen, and she shrugged off the bag of coins and presented it to the girl as if Cithrin were what she appeared to be. None of the new guards thought the bank was anything different than it claimed. There was no reason that they should.
Cithrin took the bag and gestured to Marcus that he and the others should stay in the yard. He nodded once, and Cithrin and the brewer took one another by the hand and walked into the dim recesses of the brewery, talking like old friends. A Cinnae boy no older than Roach came out wearing a thin leather apron and bearing mugs of fresh ale. It was sweeter than Marcus liked, but with an almost bready aftertaste that he could learn to enjoy. Marcus let the three new guards settle themselves on the stone wall of the well before he met Yardem’s eyes and glanced across the yard. The Tralgu drank down his ale, belched, and ambled along at Marcus’s side.
“Decent ale,” Marcus said.
“Is.”
“What do you think of this scheme of hers?”
Yardem’s ears flicked back, then forward again, considering. Marcus knew that just by asking he’d changed the Tralgu’s answer. What Yardem thought about a scheme that Marcus hadn’t questioned was a different thing.
“Seems to be working,” Yardem said. “Still more jewelry than I’d like in the basement, but we’ve got enough swords to scare off stray knives. I don’t know much about it, but it seems she’s likely to earn back the money she’s spending or near to it.”
“So that when the big men from Carse swoop down here, they’ll find it all more or less intact,” Marcus said. “She can hand it over to them, wash her hands, and there’s no harm done.”
“That’s the plan,” Yardem said carefully.
“Do you see her handing it back to them?”