“Will it affect the branch?” Isadau said, as she accepted the plate of sausage and onion that Yardem was offering her. The three of them were at the booth at the rear of the taphouse, half hidden from the common room by a sheer curtain of blue cloth with silver bells sewn to its edges.
“Not directly,” Cithrin said. “The money will come in like a tide, and that will lift us as much as anyone. But Pyk’s too frightened of risk to sponsor a ship. We might hold some insurance on cargo, but even that I imagine she’d keep to a minimum.”
“You sound as though you disapprove,” Isadau said.
“I do. But then she’d say I’m too reckless, so I suppose we’re even. At least we annoy each other.”
“Likely she was wise this year,” Yardem said. “The trade ships may not come at all.”
“That would be a pity,” Cithrin said. “Why not?”
“Pirates,” Yardem said. “Rumor at the gymnasium is they’ve elected some sort of king.”
“I thought that would be the king of Cabral,” Cithrin said bitterly. “God knows enough of the pirates have got noble blood.”
Yardem shook his head. “This is someone new. Came in and began organizing. Word is the pirates are halfway to being their own fleet.”
“Well-disciplined pirates?” Isadau said. “What’s the world coming to? Next we’ll have stones heading up in the sky like birds.”
The Timzinae woman was thinner than when Cithrin had first met her. The blackness of her scales was duller than it had been, and the inner eyelid stayed closed longer and more often than it had. She smiled and she laughed, but Cithrin could see the weariness pressing her like an illness. If there had been a way to lighten her burden, Cithrin would have done it, whatever it was, however much it cost her. Of all the refugees of Suddapal, Magistra Isadau was surely among the luckiest. The Medean bank was in cities across the world, and so Isadau had a place here, and in Northcoast and Narinisle and Herez. It wasn’t her own situation that dulled her eyes and sharpened her laughter. It was the war and what it had done to her race, her city, her home. It was the siege in Kiaria, still dragging on. It was Geder Palliako and the spider priests who drove him.
Cithrin felt the same.
“How did the governor’s dinner go?” Isadau asked.
“I pled a sick headache,” Cithrin said, then took a drink of her beer. It was stronger than the brews of Suddapal or Camnipol, and that was what she liked about it. It warmed her belly a little and loosened the knot there that kept her from sleep. In truth, she’d drunk herself to bed half the nights since she’d returned to Birancour, but it didn’t matter. She was always awake just after dawn, and if it had blunted her mind a little, it wasn’t as though Pyk’s covert and vicious control left much demand for her wits. She wiped her mouth with her cuff. “If I’d gone, it would have been true. The governor’s a terrible little man.”
“There might have been news,” Isadau said, her voice careful.
Cithrin hunched with guilt. “I’ll attend next time.”
In the common room, a boy cleared his throat and began a slightly off-key warble while an older man, clearly his father, hauled out a pair of puppets. The song was an old romantic ballad, but the words had been changed here and there to make the romantic conquests of the hero into something more martial. The puppets were a seducer and his prey, but they were also Imperial Antea and… well, and whoever got in its way, Cithrin presumed. Every now and then, she caught the singer’s gaze cutting back toward the little cove where she and Isadau sat. The piece had been chosen with them in mind, then. Know your audience, Kit would have said. Know them, and know how to flatter them. The piece told Cithrin something about how the city saw her. She tried to ignore it.
Isadau did not. Her gaze fastened on the little mannequins on their strings, and her eyes filled with tears. When she spoke, her voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “If he comes, he will kill us both.”
“All three,” Yardem said. “I’ll go first. Captain’d want it that way.”
Halvill stepped through the front door and shook the rain from his shoulders, blinking into the dim as his eyes adjusted. Cithrin took the opportunity to watch the other patrons watch the young Timzinae man. The truth was that Halvill had been in Porte Oliva at least as long as Cithrin had, and likely longer, back when they had called him Roach. But he was Timzinae, his new bride and their nearly arrived child natives of Suddapal. There was distaste in the keep’s expression, a distrust that had not been there before. Geder and his armies had changed what it meant simply to be a Timzinae. After all, no one liked to share cake with a leper.
It was hard to reconcile that Geder with the frightened man she’d hidden with in the days of the failed Antean coup. It was also very, very easy.
Halvill caught sight of the three of them and stepped to the booth. The little curtain jingled as he pushed it aside.
“Magistra Cithrin. Magistra Isadau. Yardem,” the guard said, nodding to each of them in turn. “The man from the holding company’s arrived.”
Paerin Clark sat in the counting house, leaning back on his stool. The slate on the wall behind him had marked odds back when the building had been a gambler’s stall. Now it listed the guard rotation. Pyk was just pouring a fresh cup of water for him when Cithrin and Isadau came in. The pale man smiled and nodded to them both.
“Paerin,” Isadau said, walking to him.
“Isadau,” he said, standing and taking the woman in his arms as a brother or dear friend might. “Ah, it’s been too long.”
“You should have come to Elassae more,” Isadau said, releasing him. “You look fatter. Chana has been seeing you fed.”
“She does watch after her investments. Cithrin.”
For a moment, Cithrin thought he might be about to embrace her too, and her body went stiff and awkward. But Paerin only nodded and smiled and sat back down. Pyk grudgingly poured out water for Isadau and Cithrin as well and then took her own low, sturdy seat. Cithrin sipped at the water to have something to do with her hands while Isadau sat across from Paerin. Paerin was Komme Medean’s son-in-law, and third in command of the holding company. Isadau was the voice of the Suddapal branch, which no longer existed. Pyk was nominally Cithrin’s notary, but under instructions to run the Porte Oliva branch. Cithrin had no clear idea where she stood in the hierarchy of people in the room.
“I’ve just come from Sara-sur-Mar,” Paerin said, “and a very short audience with her majesty the queen followed by a very long meeting with her master of coin.”
“That can’t have been pleasant,” Isadau said.
“It wasn’t,” Paerin said. “The opinion of the throne appears to be that the bank has filled her cities with impoverished refugees and brought her the displeasure of Imperial Antea.”
Pyk cleared her throat and spat. “Clear grasp of the obvious, that one.”
“Yes,” Paerin said. “It was hard to argue the facts. The more interesting issue was what remedy we intended to offer her.”
Cithrin’s belly went tight. “Handing me back to Geder won’t stop him.”
“That wasn’t on the table.”
“Bullshit.” Pyk chuckled.
“I took it off the table,” Paerin said. “It was never a serious proposal. If we started handing over our people, we wouldn’t have anyone manning the branches before long.”
“She wants a payoff, then?” Pyk said.
“Her master of coin was kind enough to call it a loan, but that’s what it comes to, yes,” Paerin said, and in Cithrin’s memory, Magister Imaniel said, We never lend to people who feel it is beneath their dignity to repay.
When Isadau spoke, her voice was tight and passionate. “If we spent every coin we have from every branch standing against those bastards, it would be cheap.”
Paerin Clark’s eyes were soft. He sipped his water, leaned forward, and let his stool’s legs return to the ground. “With respect, Magistra Isadau, the bank doesn’t see it that way.”