“You haven’t been sleeping.”
“Don’t miss that either.”
The inn that had become their home while the bank itself remained under occupation sat at the corner of two of the larger of Porte Oliva’s narrow streets. Its white walls and wooden roof looked cold under the low clouds. As they came near, a man stepped out of the doorway. She saw Marcus become alert without changing his stride. She felt a low burning in her throat.
The man came toward them. One of Paerin Clark’s guards.
“He wants to see me?” Cithrin asked.
“Same as always, miss,” the guard said. “I think he’s finished up.”
Cithrin took a deep breath. The time had come.
“May I bring the captain along?”
“Don’t see why not.”
The walk back to the bank was short, but Cithrin felt every step of it. It occurred to her that the dress she was wearing was the first she’d bought when she came to Porte Oliva, the one she’d invented Hallskari salt dyes for in exchange for a five-coin reduction. The dress of a truly dangerous woman. She tried to take it as a good omen.
A Kurtadam boy walked by selling paper funnels with honeyed almonds, and Cithrin stopped to buy one. She popped two in her mouth, gave one to Marcus. Paerin’s guard waited, and she tipped the paper toward him. Smiling, he took two. So he was willing to accept gifts from her. That meant he was either a cold bastard to the bone, or the news from the auditor was good. No, she thought, it meant the guard believed it was good.
For twenty days, she had been denied her room. Walking back up the stairs, she was prepared to choke down outrage, but when she reached the top, everything was precisely as it had been. Paerin Clark might have been a ghost for all the trace he left of himself.
The man sat at her desk. He was writing now, the illegible symbols of cipher coming from the nib of his pen without need of a code book. He nodded to Cithrin and then to Marcus, finished the line of script, and turned to them.
“Mistress bel Sarcour,” he said. “I had one last question for you. I hope you don’t mind.”
His tone had changed markedly. She could hear the respect in it. That was fair. She’d earned it.
“Of course.”
“I’m fairly sure I’ve guessed the answer, but there’s a sum placed aside in the most recent books. Six hundred twelve weight of silver?”
“The quarter’s profit for the holding company,” she said.
“Yes,” the auditor said. “That’s what I thought. Please, have a seat both of you.”
Marcus gave her the stool, choosing to stand behind her.
“I have to say, I am impressed with all this. Magister Imaniel trained you very, very well. We have, of course, suffered some loss. But in the main, the contracts you’ve made seem sound. The city fleet project was, I think, ill-advised, but since they refused your offer we don’t have to concern ourselves with that.”
Cithrin wondered what it was about the fleet that the auditor found problematic, but he was still speaking.
“I am making my report to the holding company now. My primary finding is that what you have done here was honestly intended to be in the interests of the bank as a whole. We are, unfortunately, obligated to a length of contract in Porte Oliva that doesn’t match what we’d like, but I know you were doing the best you could. And while some aspects of your behavior were certainly outside the law, I see no advantage to seeking any legal redress.”
“He means we got away with it?” Marcus asked.
“He does,” Cithrin said.
“Good to know.”
Paerin tapped his fingertips against the top of the desk, the deep lines of a frown marking his high forehead.
“I don’t want to be forward, and I can’t, of course, make any guarantees,” he said, “but there may be a position for a woman with your talents in Carse. I would need to discuss it with Komme Medean and some of the other directors. But if you would like to make a career as a banker, I think you could find a start there.”
You still have the option of walking away, Marcus had said less than hour earlier. She still did. It was time to burn that hope.
“I would prefer to have a start here,” Cithrin said. “Have you considered my proposal?”
Paerin Clark looked at her blankly. Then, embarrassed for her, he nodded.
“Yes, that. No. We will be putting a recognized member of the bank in charge of the branch until it can be dissolved. Keeping you in your present position isn’t possible.”
Marcus chuckled.
“Does it make me a bad man that I was hoping he would say that?” he asked.
Cithrin ignored him. When she spoke, she sat straight and looked the auditor in the eye.
“You’ve overlooked something, sir. There’s a record book from Vanai that isn’t among these. It’s an old one, though. It doesn’t touch directly on your audit.”
Paerin Clark shifted his chair to face her. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“It is the book that records my status as ward of the bank,” Cithrin said. “It shows my legal age, and the date upon which I can begin to sign legally binding contracts. That would be next summer.”
“I don’t see how that-”
Cithrin gestured to the books, the piles of paper and parchment, the entire mechanism of her bank.
“None of these contracts is legal,” she said. “I am not legally permitted to enter into any agreement. I’m ten months too young.”
Paerin Clark’s expression was the same bland smile he’d worn the first day he’d come. It might only have been her imagination that he was a shade paler. Cithin swallowed to loosen the knot in her throat.
“If the information in that book becomes public,” she said, “the bank will have to resort to direct appeal to the governor to either enforce the contracts anyway or reclaim the sums that were given out. I’ve met the governor, and I think that he is unlikely to take money away from his citizens to give to a bank that’s in a hurry to abandon his city.”
“And the book in question is where?” Paerin Clark asked.
“In a strongbox deposited with the governor under my name privately and separately from the bank. And the key to the box is in the keeping of a man with no incentive to see the bank succeed here. If I tell him what it unlocks, you can burn all these papers to light your cookfires.”
“You’re bluffing. If this comes out, you’re guilty of forgery, theft. Misrepresentation. You’ll be in gaol for the rest of your life, and all we’ll lose is money.”
“I can get her out of here,” Marcus said. “A city’s complement of queensmen half incapacitated from laughing at you? I can get her out of Birancour and in a decent house by midwinter.”
“We are the Medean bank,” Paerin Clark said. “You can’t outrun us.”
“I’m Marcus Wester. I’ve killed kings, and I’m lousy at bluffing. Threaten her again, and-”
“Stop it, both of you,” Cithrin said. “Here’s my offer. Keep the branch as it is, but install a notary from the holding company. We say it’s to help with the workload. I’m the face and voice, but the notary oversees all the agreements.”
“And when I refuse?”
She wanted a drink. She wanted a warm bed and man’s arms around her. She wanted to know for certain that she was doing the right thing.
“I burn this branch to the ground,” she said.
The world balanced on the edge of a blade. The auditor closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair. Ah well, Cithrin thought. Life as a fugitive wasn’t so bad last winter. At least this time I can wear my own clothes. Paerin Clark opened his eyes.
“You sign nothing,” he said. “All agreements are signed by the notary and the notary alone. Negotiations don’t happen without the notary present. If you’re overruled, you accept it. Control rests with the holding company. You’re a figurehead. Nothing more.”
“I can live with that,” she said. And also, unspoken: Until I can change it, I can live with that.
“And you return the missing book with evidence of your age to me. Before I leave the city.”