“That’s terrible,” Cithrin said.
“Only give him so much sympathy. He’s been known to play the crippled patriot more than once for the joy of the role. The way he’s living now, he’s more likely to die from an angry lover than an old wound.”
“Still,” Cithrin said, her hands rising to her throat. She undid the necklace there, pulled the pendant of the little bird from her chest, and held it out for Isadau to take. The older woman looked at it, shifting the necklace in her hand so that it caught the light. “He wanted me to keep it until the war was over.”
“And it is,” Isadau said, and tucked the bird away, “isn’t it?”
Cithrin smiled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Isadau’s frown was so slight it barely seemed to exist. Cithrin still felt it like a thorn.
“How are you?” Isadau asked.
“I’m fine,” Cithrin said, lightly. And then, “I’m not fine. I don’t know how I am. Everything I had, everything I thought or felt, was bent toward getting here. All the plans brought me here, except the ones about how to handle Geder afterward, and those don’t matter anymore.”
“You’ve won.”
“I have, but I now that I see it, I don’t understand what victory is at all. Somehow, I thought it would mean an ending. That we’d cut away Morade’s priests and all they’d done, we’d stop the armies and the fighting, and then… I don’t know. It would be over. We’d all be together and everyone would be all right. Only that isn’t how it works, is it?”
“It’s not,” Isadau said. “There’s only one utter ending for each of us, and it isn’t one we reach toward. Until then, it’s the next change, and the next change, and the next. And profound change, even when it’s the one you prayed for, is displacing.”
“I didn’t think I’d have to mourn my victories.”
“And now you know something you didn’t.”
Out in the street, a dog barked in excitement and a woman shouted back in anger. In the distance, a murmur of thunder. Cithrin rubbed her hand across the table, feeling the grain of the wood, listening to the sound of her own skin hushing. They let the moment sit with them quietly like a third person until, gently and politely, it left.
“Have you thought about where you want to be next?” Isadau asked.
“I’m not sure. We need to open a branch here, and I’m either the perfect person to do it or absolutely the wrong one, and I’m not sure yet how to tell which. And then there’s Porte Oliva. I know Birancour wasn’t part of the bank’s long-term plan, but my branch there made money. With the damage to the city, there are going to be opportunities.”
“And I think you may not technically have finished your apprenticeship,” Isadau said.
“You must be joking.”
“I am, and I’m not,” Isadau said. “I don’t think anyone can argue that you’re inexperienced at this point, but there are some advantages that another decade of life might offer. A shared branch, for instance. Chana Medean is drawing up proposals.”
“Is she?”
“Between us? I think Komme would be willing to make accommodations with you just from fear you’d start your own competing company. You have a strong position. You should think about where you would be happy.”
Cithrin blinked. Where I would be happy. It was like a language she didn’t know.
“I’ve come for two reasons,” Isadau said. “There’s an ambassador coming from Elassae as soon as the coronation’s done. The common wisdom has it that the bank is the ideal intermediary for forging a real treaty. We’re respected on both sides, we’re seen as neutral, though not by everyone, and the war gold in the west has become something of a fashion. They see promise in it. I’ve been asked by my country to confer with you and bring back anything that would be useful to them.”
“Do they really think you will?”
“They aren’t wrong,” Isadau said. “I love my people, and I will go a very long way to find justice for them.”
“Sorry,” Cithrin said. “That’s fair.”
“The other reason is more complex, but not unrelated. Something strange has happened with the war gold.”
Cithrin felt herself shift forward on her chair. A glimmer in Isadau’s eyes said the other woman had noticed. “What is it?”
“The merchant guilds in Stollbourne have started valuing debt in Carse above debt from Herez. They’re calling it a confidence discount.”
“What?”
“A cargo valued at fiftyweight of gold,” Isadau said, “is being paid with forty-eight if the notes are against King Tracian’s debt. The full fifty if it’s from the Herez contract.”
Cithrin sat back. “But it’s the same gold. Or not-gold. War gold. Why would—”
“Herez is relaxing tariffs on its blue-water trade. Komme isn’t certain yet if Stollbourne’s decision is an attempt to keep Northcoast’s trade where it is, or to call Herez’s letters into question. Either way, a weight of gold isn’t a weight of gold any longer, depending on who it belongs to.”
“Well,” Cithrin said. “That’s… interesting.”
“Komme is thinking of how to stop it, but—”
“No,” Cithrin said. “No, wait. We should look at that first. There may be an opportunity in there. What happens, do you think, when you trade money for money?”
“I’m not sure I even understand the question.”
“I’m not either,” Cithrin said. “Let’s talk this through…”
Cithrin had dinner brought up to them after the first hour passed. Roasted chicken with lemon and rosemary, underripe apples in honey and spice. A bottle of wine that for once she didn’t crave particularly. They talked about money and wealth and value, and how each term meant a different, if related, thing. How the war gold could disconnect them, or make the relationships more flexible. What the bank could accomplish, and what it risked by trying.
When, near midnight, Isadau pled exhaustion, Cithrin walked her to her rooms. Her mind felt like morning light and cool water, and she was sure she wouldn’t sleep. But when she did lie down on her bed, the breeze of the Antean night slipping in at the window like a cat, she found her body relaxed and the pillow comfortable. She played scenario after scenario out in her mind: what would happen if the bank declared that debt couldn’t be transferred between nations; what would happen if it could only be traded at values they set; at values the merchants themselves set; if the bank charged one on the hundred for making the transfer; if the crown did.
As the versions became less and less real, the half logic of dreams spinning out along lines of debt and credit, the phrase came back, as clear as if it had been spoken. And, oddly, it came back in Marcus Wester’s voice, not Isadau’s.
Where would you be happy?
It isn’t where, she thought. Here or in Porte Oliva or Carse. I’ll be happy. Or else I won’t. Even when I’m miserable, I’ll be doing the work I’m best at. That’s better than happiness, and there’s not one person in a thousand who can claim it.
I’ll be fine.
She smiled before she slept.
Clara
On the first day of King Aster’s coronation ceremony, they burned an empty pyre.
It wasn’t something done as part of the ceremony proper. There was precedent for it when someone had died in a way that their body couldn’t be found or brought back for the family, so it was known generally as a sailor’s pyre, but it wasn’t for seamen this time. In an abundance of tact, no one said outright whose absent body the fires consecrated. Those who have fallen in defense of the empire was the phrase most often used. It might have meant the soldiers who’d died in Asterilhold and Sarakal, Elassae and the Free Cities and Birancour. It might have meant the bodies left unburied in the snowdrifts and ice west of Bellin or the governors and protectors of Nus and Inentai and Suddapal, lost now in the uprisings there.