Ideally, Maestro Asanpur’s café would become known as a center of banking and business in the city. The better it was known, the more people would come to it, and with them more news and gossip and speculation. Cithrin knew that her own presence was a good beginning, but she likely didn’t have enough time to let things take their course. Sooner rather than later, the legitimate Medean bank would come to investigate their new branch, and when that happened, she wanted it to be wildly prosperous.
Which, in the short term, meant a little harmless dishonesty.
Cithrin saw the reaction to Cary’s arrival before she saw the woman herself. Gazes shifted through the square like wind passing over a field of grass, then away, and then, more covertly, back again. Cithrin drank her coffee and pretended not to notice as the mysterious woman walked across the square toward the great kiosks where the queensmen who administered the Grand Market stood. Cary had chosen the longest approach possible, and it gave Cithrin time to admire the costume. The cut was Elassean, but the silk wrapping and the beaded veil spoke of Lyoneia. The jewels that adorned her came from Cithrin’s own stock, and would have sold for enough to buy the café twice over. Taken together, the design spoke of all the trade of the Inner Sea with an authenticity that came from Master Kit’s travels there. It wasn’t a look often seen in Birancour, and the combination of exoticism and wealth drew attention better than a song. Hornet and Smit walked behind her in boiled leather with the swagger they’d learned on the caravan, indistinguishable from real fighters.
Cary reached the kiosk and spoke with one of the queensmen. They were much too far to hear, but the queensman’s posture was clear enough. He gestured across the square toward Cithrin and the café. Cary bowed her thanks and turned, taking the walk slowly. When she came close enough to speak with, Cithrin rose.
“Enough?” Cary asked.
“Perfect,” Cithrin said. “Come this way.”
She led the actors through the common room, the wooden floors creaking under their weight. The interior of the café was a series of small rooms set off by low archways. The windows had carved wooden shutters that scented the breeze with cedar. A young Kurtadam girl sat in the back gently playing a bottle harp, the soft notes murmuring through the air. In one of the rooms, an old Firstblood man talking animatedly with a wide-eyed Southling stopped to stare at Cary and her guards. Cithrin caught Maestro Asanpur’s eye and held up two fingers. The old man nodded and set to grinding the beans for two small cups. Cithrin meant for anyone paying attention to know that the exotically dressed woman was someone the Medean bank honored. They moved on to the privacy of her hired room.
“So this is all?” Smit said after the door closed behind them, groaning on its leather hinge. “I thought there’d be more to it.”
Cithrin sat at the small table. There was enough room for the others, but rather than sit, Hornet went to the thin window, peering out through the blue-and-gold glass to the alley beyond. As Cary started plucking off the borrowed jewelry, Cithrin pulled the iron lockbox out from under her chair, sliding it on a small red carpet to keep from scarring the floor.
“I don’t need very much here,” Cithrin said. “A record book, a little spare coin. It’s not as if I’ll be handing out large sums every day.”
“Wasn’t that the point, though?” Cary said, handing across a bracelet studded with emeralds and garnets. “To get rid of all that stuff?”
“Not by handing it out like candy,” Cithrin said. “There are only so many good investments to make in a city. It takes effort finding which ones are worth having. This is where I talk with people. Negotiate agreements, sign contracts. It’s all arranged here, but I don’t want to have all the guards standing around intimidating people.”
“Why not?” Hornet said. “I would.”
“Better to put them at ease, I expect,” Cary said, and a soft knock came at the door. Smit opened it to Maestro Asanpur carrying a tray with two small bone-colored cups. Cithrin unlocked the iron box. As Maestro Asanpur presented the coffee to Cary, Cithrin folded the jewelry into soft cloth and put it into the box beside the red leather record book and her purse of small coin. The lock was crude but solid, the key reassuringly heavy on its leather necklace. Cithrin tucked the key away. Cary sipped the coffee and made a small, appreciative sound.
“Another advantage of the site,” Cithrin said.
“We can’t stay,” Hornet said. “Master Kit’s bent on having the Tragedy of Four Winds ready to put on before the trade ships from Narinisle come.”
“Are you going to try to sponsor one?” Cary asked.
“A ship or a tragedy?” Cithrin asked dryly.
“Either one.”
“Neither,” she said.
In truth, the trade ships from Narinisle had been very much on Cithrin’s mind.
The great wealth in the world lay in the patterns of commerce. The Keshet and Pût might have olive trees and wine enough for every city in the world, but no mines there produced gold and the iron was in rough, roadless terrain and difficult to reach. Lyoneia grew fabulous woods and spices, but struggled to grow enough grain to feed its people. Far Syramys with its silks and dyes, magic and tobacco, promised the rarest goods in the world, but the blue-water trade to reach them was so uncertain that more fortunes were lost than made in going there. Everywhere, there was imbalance, and the surest path to profit was to be between something valuable and someone who valued it.
On land, that meant control of the dragon’s roads. No merely human assembly of stone and mortar could match the permanence of dragon’s jade. All the great cities grew where they did because of the arrangements of paths made when humanity was a single race and the masters of the world flew on great scaled wings. Dragons themselves had rarely if ever lowered themselves to travel the roads. They were the servants’ stairs of the fallen empire, and they determined the flow of money for all land trade.
The trackless sea, however, could be remade.
Each autumn, ships in the south loaded themselves with wheat and oil, wine and pepper and sugar, and, paid with gold adventurous or desperate enough, made the trek to the north. Northcoast, Hallskar, Asterilhold, and even the northern coast of Antea would buy the goods, often for less than the same items that had traveled overland. The trade ships might take on some cargo in those ports—salt cod from Hallskar, iron and steel from Asterilhold and Northcoast—but most would take their money and hurry to the open ports of Narinisle to wait for the blue-water trade from Far Syramys. This was the great gamble.
Accidents of wind and current made the island nation of Narinisle the easiest end port for ships from Far Syramys, and if a trade ship could exchange its cargo and money for a load freshly arrived from those distant lands, an investor might triple her money. If not, she risked seeing her trade ship return from Narinisle with only what could be bought from the local markets, making a much smaller profit, assuming prices went with her. Or the ship could be lost to pirates, or it might sink and everything either lost entirely or ransomed back at exorbitant rates and glacial slowness from the Drowned.
And when the ships returned to their southern ports and the fortunes of those who had sponsored them rose or fell, the sponsorship of this fleet of gold and spice that sailed together without alliance and answered to no single flag reshuffled. A house that had placed its wager on a single ship and did well might make enough to hire half a dozen the next year. Someone whose ship had been lost would scramble to find ways to survive in their new, lessened circumstances. If they had been wise and insured their investment, they might gain back enough to try again by appealing to someone like Cithrin.