“I think they’ll need it if they’re to make good on the credit we’re selling,” Cithrin said.
Isadau turned her smile on Cithrin and nodded once.
“We should arrange that, don’t you think?”
Cithrin had been in Vanai when the Antean army came in conquest. This was the same, and it also wasn’t.
She remembered being the only one among many who had feared the coming battle in Vanai. The others had seen it as an evil and an inconvenience and prepared themselves for Antean rule with an air of resignation and the sense that whether it was the prince in the city or the king in Camnipol, taxes would be taxes and beer would be beer and not much call to worry about it. Even Magister Imaniel had been more concerned with keeping the wealth of the bank away from the prince than with fleeing the city himself. He was dead now. They were all dead now, burned with their city.
Suddapal, on the other hand, knew its danger. The fear bloomed in the market houses and the streets, on the piers and in the coffee houses. The whole city waited with bated breath for runners from Inentai with news of the siege, perched to fall on any scrap of information like carrion crows. Every rumor spread through its citizens, ripples in a pond. The debates in the taprooms changed from whether Sarakal would fall utterly to when, from why Antea wouldn’t march on Elassae to whether. The very rich who could afford it and the very poor who were no worse off anywhere left first, some by ship, others on foot. The governor and the council repaired to their estates, pretending to be in conference, though no one expected them to return. The stores of silver and gold, tobacco and spice, silk and gems and rare books filled the storerooms of the compound, and letters of credit left Isadau’s private study, written in cipher and sewn with knots as individual as a written chop.
Cithrin watched it all with dread, but also a strange sense of relief. At least this time, she wasn’t the only one worried. At least Suddapal understood.
The work of the bank also quietly shifted. Depositors came to withdraw their wealth, often arriving at the compound late in the evening rather than coming to the market houses. Even these were often taken as letters of credit rather than the actual coinage, but some coin did spill out. Isadau, on the other hand, began buying debts. If a taproom owed its brewers three months’ payments for their beer, Isadau paid the brewers half the full price today. If the taproom made its payments, the bank’s profit would be massive. If it burned, its owners and workers dead under Antean blades, the money would be lost utterly. Once, Cithrin had chafed under the timid strategies of her notary, Pyk Usterhall. Now she watched Magistra Isadau buy as much as she could of a city doomed to be conquered, and the risk of it took her breath away and left her giddy. It was optimism forged out of silver coins and paper contracts. A statement that Suddapal might change, but it would not be destroyed, that business done now, in the face of disaster, had meaning. It was banking as patriotism, and something more. Faith, perhaps.
But along with it, Cithrin noticed new entries in the books. Payments and expenditures marked with Isadau’s personal chop. Money given quietly without expectation of return to men and women whose names were not recorded. Subsidies paid to the weak and vulnerable to help them escape before the storm. The beginnings of a network of ships, farms, businesses, warehouses that might also last beyond the arrival of the Antean army and give those many, many people who didn’t or couldn’t leave some hope of escape. The city, and with it the bank, had become a thing of hope and desperation and calculated risk.
It was late at night, and Cithrin was in her room tracing through the connections that Magistra Isadau was building when the scratch came at her door. The sound was so soft, so tentative, that at first she thought she’d only imagined it. Turning the page of her ledger was louder. But it came again.
“Come in?” she said, still half expecting no one to be there. But the latch lifted and the door swung open. Roach stood framed in the doorway, his leather cap in his hand. His scales—light brown when he’d first come to work for the bank, had darkened with age and the summer sun. He looked older and slimmer. He nodded.
“Magistra,” he said. “I was wondering … That is, I was hoping for a moment of your time.”
Cithrin closed the ledger’s cover, but kept her thumb between the gently pinching pages to mark her place. Roach stepped in and closed the door behind him. His nictitating membranes opened and shut rapidly as a bird’s wing and he held his hands at his side in fists. Cithrin wanted to call him by his name as a way to reassure him, but she couldn’t remember it. Harver or Hamil. When she saw him, all she could think of was Roach.
“What seems to be the trouble?” she asked, trying to put the comfort into her voice the way Magistra Isadau did.
“I was hoping, Magistra, that you might be able to help arrange a meeting with Merid Addanos. For me. With me.”
Anxiety radiated from him while Cithrin racked her brain. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t recall where she’d read it. Or no. Not read. Heard. Not one of the depositors, she didn’t think. Roach cleared his throat.
“Magistra Isadau’s cousin,” he said. “Merid. Maha’s mother.”
“Oh,” Cithrin said, and then a moment later. “Oh.”
“I can resign if you like.”
Cithrin withdrew her thumb. The pages of the ledger closed over the gap like water. She put her palm to her forehead, pressing gently while she gathered her thoughts. Roach wasn’t one of the few who knew Cithrin’s past and secrets. He thought she was considerably older than she actually was, and likely assumed she had more experience than he did. That was a mistake on his part.
“How … ah … how serious is the situation.”
“It’ll need a priest,” Roach said. “And a wedding cup.”
“Oh. Well then.”
“I’m very, very sorry, Magistra Cithrin.” Roach’s voice was shaking. “I know that becoming involved with a member of the household was a betrayal of your trust in me and a failure of my duty. And I can just hope that you … that you can …”
“Oh stop. Let me think.”
She would have to speak with Isadau first. And Yardem. She wished she knew how the pair of them would take the news. Certainly it wasn’t the first time in history that a young woman and a professional soldier had found themselves possessed of an unexpected third party. Cithrin thought for a moment about the pregnancies she’d been lucky enough to avoid and shuddered.
“Give me a day or two to lay the groundwork,” she said. “I will do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Roach said, and turned to go.
“Wait, Ro—Wait. A moment.” He paused. Cithrin gathered herself. “Isadau and I may be shifting some of the capital from Suddapal to Porte Oliva. The ship will be heavily guarded, of course, and I’ll want someone from my branch there to oversee it. Make sure nothing goes missing between here and home.”
“Ma’am?”
“It will get you and Maha out of the city.” She could see the struggle in his expression; leaping hope fought with shame. She thought she understood. “I would have needed to send you or Enen regardless. All you’ve done is make the choice of which a bit simpler.”
“Yes, Magistra.”
After he left, the door closing quietly behind him, Cithrin let her forehead sink to the table. Her personal guard was getting the magistra’s family pregnant. How lovely. And, in the shadow that was falling over them all, how obvious. Cithrin put on her cloak and walked out through the corridors. The compound was emptier than she was used to. There was music, but it came from a long way off, and it wasn’t the bright, lively sound of dancing. She felt a knot tying itself in her gut and knew that her choices were to drink herself to the edge of sleep or stay awake until morning. Neither appealed, but they were all she had.