Her mind felt fragile, a thing that might fall apart at any little jostle, but she tried to imagine herself as the auditor from Carse. What would he see when he looked at all this? She went through the initial listing of inventory that she’d made. Silk, tobacco, gems, jewels, spices, silver, and gold. The pudgy Antean at the mill pond had stolen some, and her estimate of the loss was included, the numbers in black strokes against the cream-colored paper. So there was the beginning. Now to what she’d done with it.
Turning the pages had a sense of nostalgia. The dry hiss of the paper, and here was another artifact of the golden age that had just passed. The contract and receipt from when she’d bought the rooms from the gambler. The onionskin permit and seal that had marked the opening of the bank. She traced her fingertips over it. It hadn’t been a full season since she’d begun. It seemed more than that. It seemed a lifetime. Then the agreements of consignment from the spicer and the cloth merchants. Her valuation, theirs, and the final income from sale. The jewelry had always been the problem. She found herself wondering if there might have been a better way to be rid of it than the one she’d chosen. Maybe if she’d waited until the ships from Narinisle had come in. Or placed them on consignment with a trading house with a heavy export trade. Then she wouldn’t have been flooding her own market. Well, next time.
Distant thunder rolled softly through the steady tapping of rain. Roach, soaked to his scales, brought up the lockbox from the café, a huge earthenware mug of coffee, and a note from Maestro Asanpur hoping that she would feel better soon and saying that the café felt too large without her in it. It was almost enough to reduce her to tears again, but that would have confused the Timzinae boy, so she forced herself to keep composure.
The best trade she’d worked had been the horizontal semi-monopoly with the brewer, cooper, and taphouses. Each person in the chain of production was in business with the bank, and so as soon as the grain and water arrived at the brewery, every trade benefited her, and put her in the position to guarantee business to the next link. If she could make arrangements with a few farmers for dedicated access to their grain crops, it would be a locked-in gold-producing mechanism.
But that would be for the next person, whoever they were. Cithrin sipped at her coffee. It had been a good thought, though, and well performed. In a year, when the remnants of her parents’ investment in the bank came to her, she would have to see if there was some much smaller version of the same plan. It would be painful, she thought, going from Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour to the bank’s ward again for that last year. But once she reached her naming day, and could enter into business for herself…
The skin on her arm puckered, the fine hairs standing up. Her neck prickled. A feeling of cold fire lit her spine. She closed the books she’d written, shoved them aside, and went back to the older ones, written by other hands now dead. The records of Vanai. The small red-inked notation that marked her arrival at the bank. She closed the book with trembling hands.
Captain Wester had been right.
There was a way.
Dawson
I won’t hear it,” King Simeon said. The months hadn’t been kind to him. His skin was greyer than it had been, his lips an unhealthy blue. Sweat beaded his brow though the room wasn’t particularly warm. “God, Dawson. Listen to yourself. You’re back from exile for one day—one—and already you’re back at it.”
“If Clara’s right and Maas is plotting against Aster’s life—”
Simeon slapped his palm to the table. The meeting chamber echoed with it, and the silence that followed was broken only by the songs of finches and the babbling of the fountain outside the windows. The guards around the back wall remained impassive as always, their armor the black and gold of the city, their swords sheathed at their hips. Dawson wondered what they would have said, had they been asked. Someone must be able to talk sense to Simeon, though it clearly wasn’t him.
“If I’d listened to your advice,” the king said, “Issandrian would be leading a popular revolt against me right now. Instead, he was here yesterday, bending his knee, asking my forgiveness and swearing on his life that the mercenary riot wasn’t his plan or doing.”
“If it wasn’t his, it was someone’s,” Dawson said.
“I am your king, Baron Osterling. I am perfectly capable of guiding this kingdom safely.”
“Simeon, you are my friend,” Dawson said softly. “I know how you sound when you’re frightened to your bones. Can you put it off until next year?”
“Put what off?”
“Fostering your son. Naming his protector. The closing of the court is three weeks from now. Only say that the events of the season have distracted you from the decision. Take time.”
Simeon rose. He walked like an old man. Outside the window the leaves were still green, but less so than they had been. The summer was dying, and someday very soon the green would fade, red and gold taking the field. Beautiful colors, but still death.
“Maas has no reason to wish Aster ill,” Simeon said.
“He’s in contact with Asterilhold. He’s working with them—”
“You worked with Maccia to reinforce Vanai. Lord Daskellin danced with Northcoast. Lord Tremontair is keeping assignations with the ambassador from Borja, and Lord Arminnin spent more time in Hallskar than Antea last year. Shall I slaughter every nobleman with connections outside the kingdom? You wouldn’t live.” Simeon’s breath was fast and shallow. He leaned against the windowsill, steadying himself. “My father died when he was a year younger than I am now.”
“I remember.”
“Maas has allies. Everyone who loved Issandrian and Klin turned to him when they left.”
“Mine turned to Daskellin.”
“You don’t have allies, Dawson. You have enemies and admirers. You couldn’t even keep Palliako’s boy near you when he was the hero of the day. Lerer sent him off to the edge of the world rather than let him take another revel from you. Enemies and admirers.”
“Which are you, Majesty?”
“Both. Have been since you flirted that Cinnae girl away from me at the tourney when we were twelve.”
Dawson chuckled. The king’s smile was almost abashed, and then he was laughing too. Simeon came back and collapsed into his chair.
“I know you don’t approve,” he said. “But trust me that I’m doing the best I can. There are just so many things to balance, and I’m so tired. I am unbearably tired.”
“At least don’t give Aster to Maas. I don’t care if he is the most influential man at court just now. Find someone else.”
“Thank you for your advice, old friend.”
“Simeon—”
“No. Thank you. That’s all.”
In the antechamber, the servants gave Dawson back his sword and dagger. It seemed years since Simeon had insisted on the old formality of coming to private audience unarmed. This was how far they had all fallen. Dawson was still adjusting the buckle when he stepped outside. The air was warm, the sun heavy in the sky, but the breeze had an edge to it. The soft, pressing air of summer was gone. The seasons were changing again. Dawson turned away the footman’s assisting hand and climbed into his carriage.
“My lord?” the driver asked.
“The Great Bear,” Dawson said.
The whip cracked, and the carriage lurched off, leaving the blocky towers and martial gates of the Kingspire behind. He let himself lean back into the seat, the jolts and knocks sending jabs of pain up his spine. First the journey back from Osterling Fells and then the better half of the day waiting for his majesty to clear an audience for him had worn him down more than it once would have.
When he’d been a young man, he’d ridden from Osterling Fells to Camnipol, stopping only to trade horses, arrived just before the queen’s ball, and spent the whole evening until the dawn dancing. Mostly with Clara. It seemed like a story he’d heard told of someone else, except that he could still see the dress she’d worn and smell the perfume at the nape of her neck. He turned the memory aside before his wife’s younger incarnation aroused him. He wanted to walk upright when he reached the club, and while he was old, he wasn’t dead.