Closing a popular brothel? Geder led the force. Turning the widow and children of a loyalist out of their hovel? Geder. Arresting a prominent member of the local merchant class?
“May I ask the charge?” said Magister Imaniel of the Medean bank in Vanai.
“I’m sorry,” Geder said. “I’m ordered to bring you before the Lord Protector, willing or no.”
“Ordered,” the small man said sourly. “And parading me through the street in chains?”
“Part of my instructions. I’m sorry.”
The house of the Medean bank in Vanai was in a side street, and little larger than a well-to-do family’s home. Even so, it seemed somehow bare. Only the small, sun-worn magister and a single well-fed woman wringing her hands in the doorway. Magister Imaniel rose from the table, considered the soldiers standing behind Geder, and then adjusted his tunic.
“I don’t imagine you know when I’ll be able to return to my work,” he said.
“I’m not told,” Geder said.
“You can’t do this,” the woman said. “We’ve done nothing against you.”
“Cam,” the banker said sharply. “Don’t. This is only business, I’m sure. Tell anyone that asks there’s been a mistake, and I’m speaking with the very noble Lord Protector to correct it.”
The woman-Cam-bit her lips and looked away. Magister Imaniel walked quietly to stand before Geder and bowed.
“I don’t suppose we can overlook the chains?” he asked. “My work depends to a great wise on reputation, and…”
“I’m very sorry,” Geder said, “but Lord Klin gave-”
“Orders,” the banker said. “I understand. Let’s be done with this, then.”
A crowd had gathered on the street, word of Geder’s appearance at the house traveling, it seemed, faster than the birds could fly. Geder walked in the middle of his guardsmen, the prisoner in his clinking iron just behind him. When he looked back, the man’s leathery face was a mask of amusement and indulgence. Geder couldn’t say if the man’s fearlessness was an act or genuine. All along their route past the canals and down the streets, faces turned to see the banker in chains. Geder marched, his walking stick tapping resolutely against the streets. He kept his expression sober, to hide the fact that he didn’t know why he was doing the things he did. He had no doubt that by morning the whole city would know he had taken the man in. That it was clearly Klin’s intention didn’t reassure him.
Sir Alan Klin met them in the wide chamber that had once been the prince’s audience hall. All signs of the former government were gone or else covered over by the Antean banners of King Simeon and House Klin. The air smelled of smoke, rain, and wet dogs. Sir Alan rose, smiling, from his table.
“Magister Imaniel of the Medean bank?”
“The same, Lord Protector,” the banker said with a smile and a bow. His voice was amiable. Geder might almost have thought Klin hadn’t just humiliated the man in front of the city. “It appears I may have given your lordship some offense. I must, of course, apologize. If I might know the nature of my trespass, I will, of course, guard against it in the future.”
Klin waved a hand casually.
“Not at all, sir,” he said. “Only I spoke with your former prince before he left in exile. He said that you had refused to fund his campaign.”
“It seemed unlikely that he would repay the debt,” Magister Imaniel said.
“I understand,” Klin said.
Geder looked from one to the other. The tone of the conversation was so calm, so nearly collegial, it confused him. And yet there was a hardness in Klin’s eyes that-along with the chains still around the banker’s wrists and ankles-made everything he said a threat. Klin walked slowly back to the table where the remains of his midday meal were still sitting on a silver plate.
“I have been looking over the reports of the sack,” Klin said. “I saw that the tribute to King Simeon taken from your establishment… Well, it seems surprisingly light.”
“My former prince may have an exaggerated opinion of my resources,” Magister Imaniel said.
Klin smiled. “Is it buried, or have you smuggled it out?”
“I don’t know what you mean, my lord,” Magister Imaniel said.
“You wouldn’t object to my factor auditing your books, then?”
“Of course not. We are pleased that Antea has taken the authority that rightly belonged to it, and look forward to doing business in a more friendly and ordered city.”
“And access to your house?”
“Of course.”
Klin nodded. “You understand that I will have to hold you until I find the truth of all this? Whatever money your bank holds here is now subject to Antean review.”
“I expected as much,” Magister Imaniel said, “but I trust you won’t take offense that I had hoped for better.”
“It’s a fallen world. We do what we must,” Klin said, and then to the captain of the guard at Geder’s left, “Take him to the public gaol. Put him on the lower level, where everyone can see him. If anyone tries to talk with him, take note of what they say and detain them.”
Geder watched as the small man was led away. He wasn’t sure whether he was intended to follow along or not. But Klin wasn’t glaring at him, so perhaps he’d been meant to stay after all.
“Did you follow that, Palliako?” Klin asked when the banker and guards had gone.
“The bank had less money than expected?” Geder said.
Klin laughed in a way that left Geder unsure whether he was being mocked.
“Oh, it’s there,” he said. “Somewhere. And from what the prince said, there was quite a bit of it. Enough to pay the mercenary forces to outlast a siege. Enough to buy the Maccian forces twice over. Maybe more than that.”
“But he kept it from his prince,” Geder said.
“Not out of loyalty to us,” Klin said. “Bankers answer to no throne. But if they drowned the money, someone will have helped cart it to a canal. If it’s buried, someone held the spade. If it’s smuggled, someone arranged it. And when that person sees the head of the bank in gaol, they may panic and try to buy their way free.”
“Ah,” Geder said.
“You’re the man associated with the arrest, so you’ll need to be available these next few days,” Klin said. “Approachable. And whatever you hear, you bring to me.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Excellent,” Klin said. The silence between them stretched, and Geder realized that he’d been dismissed.
He walked back out to the square, found a stone bench under a black-barked tree almost bare of its leaves, and sat. His leg ached, but there was no coolness on his thigh where fresh blood or pus had leaked. Across the street, a group of youths-Firstblood and Timzinae mixing together as if the races were at perfect ease-pretended not to watch him. A flock of crows conversed among themselves in the branches of the trees and then rose like winged smoke into the air. Geder tapped his walking stick against the pavement, the little shock against his fingers oddly reassuring.
For the next few days, he was bait on a hook. He understood that. Perhaps the banker’s conspirators would take the chance to buy themselves the good opinion of Antea. Or perhaps they’d stay quiet. Or, quite possibly, they’d arrange an accident for the man most associated with the problem. Klin had put him in danger without so much as making the threat he was under explicit.
And still, it was a handful of days that Geder could make his way through the streets and markets and call it Klin’s order. His squire had brought him rumor of a bookseller in the southern quarter. He could make his way there at last. And if he had to go armed and under guard, at least he could go.
For two days Geder wandered the streets and cafes and beer halls of Vanai, but carefully. In church, with the voices of the choir spiraling in the wide air above him, he was still careful not to let anyone sit too near him in the pew. At the fresh market, he picked through the half-rotten volumes in a bookseller’s cart, but with a soldier at his back. Then on the third day, a carter named Olfreed came to his rooms with talk of a caravan organized by a well-known ally of the Medean bank called Master Will.