Dawson rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Outside, the day was leaning toward night, the sunlight reddening. It was all as he suspected. And Clara was riding into the center of it. The hope she’d offered before she’d left had sounded risky at the time. After this report, it seemed merely naïve. He would have given his hand to have had the banker come a week earlier. Now it was too late. He could as well wish a thrown rock back into his hand.
“Simeon?” Dawson asked. “Is he well?”
“The hard times wear on him,” Paerin Clark said. “And, I think, on his son.”
“I think it isn’t death that kills us,” Dawson said. “I think it’s fear. And Asterilhold?”
“My sources tell me that Maas is in contact with several important men in the court there. There have been loans of gold, and promises of support.”
“He’s raising an army.”
“He is.”
“And Canl?”
“He’s trying to, yes.”
“How long before it comes down to the field?”
“No one can know that, my lord. If you’re careful and lucky, maybe never.”
“I can’t think that’s true,” Dawson said. “We have Asterilhold on one hand and you on the other.”
“No, my lord,” the banker said, “you don’t. We both know I came hoping for advantage, but an Antean civil war won’t profit us. If it does come to pass, we won’t take a side. I’ve done what I can here. I won’t be going back to Camnipol.”
Dawson sat up straighter. The banker was smiling now, and it looked suspiciously like pity.
“You’ve abandoned Daskellin? Now?”
“This is one of the great kingdoms of the world,” Paerin Clark said, “but my employer plays his games on larger boards than that. I wish you the best of luck, but Antea is yours to lose. Not mine. I’m traveling south.”
“South? What’s more important than this in the south?”
“There’s an irregularity that needs my attention in Porte Oliva.”
Cithrin
Cithrin stood at the top of the seawall, the city spread out behind her and the vast blue of sea and sky ahead. At the edge where the pale, shallow water of the bay turned to deep blue, five ships stood. The towering masts were trees rising from the water. The furled sails thickened the spars. The small, shallow boats of the fishing fleet were rushing into port or else out of the traffic as dozens of guide boats raced out, fighting to be the first to reach the ships and take the honor of guiding them in.
The trade ships from Narinisle had arrived. Five ships, arriving together and flying the banners of Birancour and Porte Oliva. When they had left, there had been seven. The other two might have become separated by storm or choice or scattered in an attack. They might arrive the next day or the next week or never. On the docks below her, merchants waited in agonies of hope and fear, waiting for the ships to come near enough to identify. And then, once the ships were in their berths, the fortunate among the sponsors would board, compare contracts and bills of lading, and discover whether profits were assured. The unfortunate would wait on the docks or in the port taprooms, digging at the sailors for news.
And then, once the captains of the ships had answered their sponsors, once the laborers had begun the long business of hauling the goods from ship to warehouse, once the frenzy of trade and goods and the exchange of coin had passed over Porte Oliva like a wind across the water, it would be time to begin the preparation for the next year’s journey. Shipyards would make repairs. The new sponsors would offer contracts and terms to the captains. And Idderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva, would consult with the captains and the masters of the guilds, and graciously accept the proposals to change this from one port city among many to the center of trade for a generation to come.
And in her hand, written in green ink on paper as smooth as poured cream, was the letter that forbade her from being part of any of it. She opened it now and considered it again. It was ciphered, of course, but she had spent long enough with Magister Imaniel’s books and papers that she could read it as clearly as if it had been in a normal script.
Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour, you are to cease all negotiation and trade in our name immediately. Paerin Clark, a senior auditor and representative of the holding company, will attend you as soon as can be arranged. Until that time, no further contracts, deposits, or loans are to be made or accepted. This is unconditional.
It was signed by Komme Medean himself, the old man’s script jagged and shaking from gout. She had shown it to no one. In the eight days since it had come, she’d wrestled with the order. It was the first she’d ever had from the holding company, and precisely what she’d expected. The auditor would come, just as she’d planned at the start. He would recover the bank’s funds, lost from Vanai. All her daydreams of keeping the bank alive, or steering it the way the guide boats were now preparing to lead the trade ships to safety, would end. She would be herself again. Not Tag the Carter, not a smuggler hiding in the shadows, and not Magistra Cithrin. Only without Besel and Cam and Magister Imaniel. Without Vanai.
And so, with respect, she preferred not to.
With a soft breath too slight to call itself a sigh, she ripped the page. Then again, and again, and again. When the pieces were as small as individual numbers and symbols of the cipher, she threw them over the edge of the seawall and watched them spin and flutter.
On the water, the guide boats were crowded around the trade ships. She imagined the voices of the men shouting up to the captains, the captains shouting back. As she watched, the first of the ships began the short, final leg of its annual journey. She turned away and walked back to her bank. The front door stood open to the breeze. As she walked through, Roach jumped to his feet as if she’d caught him doing something. Behind him, Yardem stretched and yawned hugely.
“Where have you been?” Captain Wester said.
“Watching the trade ships arrive, just the same as everyone else in the city,” she said. She felt unaccountably light. Almost giddy.
“Well, your coffee brewer sent three people on from the café so far this morning asking after you. They came looking here.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That you were busy, but I expected you’d be back in the café after midday,” Wester said. “Was I lying?”
“You? Never,” she said, and laughed at the suspicion on his face.
Despite the heat, Cithrin wore a dark blue dress with full sleeves and a high collar to the meeting at the governor’s palace. Her hair was tucked into a soft cap and pinned in place with a silver-and-lapis hairpin that was from the last of the jewelry she had hauled from Vanai. It would have been more appropriate for a cool day in autumn and left a trickle of sweat running down her back, but the thought of something more revealing in front of Qahuar Em seemed uncomfortable. And of course wearing the necklace or brooch that he’d given her would have been inappropriate.
When he greeted her in the passageway outside the private rooms, his bow was formal. Only the angle of his smile and the merriment in his dark eyes gave a hint of their nights together. He wore a sand-colored tunic with black enameled buttons to the neck, and she found herself aware of the shape of his body beneath it. She wondered, now that they weren’t to be rivals any longer, what would become of the attachment. The servant, a pale-haired Cinnae woman, bowed as they went through the doorway.
A single dark-stained table dominated the room, a bank of windows behind it looking out into the branches of a tree. The shifting branches gave the room a sense of shadow and cool that it didn’t deserve. The Cinnae mercenary rose to his feet as Cithrin stepped into the room and sat again when she did. The Tralgu woman and the representative of the local merchant houses didn’t attend.