A Firstblood man from her guards—Corisen Mout—came from under the shade of the cathedral’s eaves and lifted the little desk onto his back. Cithrin rolled the parchment into her fist and headed back first for the café and then the counting house and her room. All along the way, the street traffic slowed around her. Kurtadam, Timzinae, Firstblood, and Cinnae all nodded to her or glanced nervously away. Even those who pretended to ignore her were so pointed in their efforts that they might as well have stared. Between Barriath Kalliam’s small pirate fleet and the arrival of Inys, the city had gone almost overnight from seeing her as the goat that led home the wolves to the savior of the city. Even the governor, whose dictates carried the force of law, was second to Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice of the Medean bank. No more stones came through Maestro Asanpur’s window. No one scowled at her in the taprooms. She was fairly certain that no one had been spitting in her beer. Her mornings, she spent with the dragon. Her afternoons, with the bank.
In the café, Marcus Wester and Barriath Kalliam were sitting at a table in the back. Marcus was still thinned by his travels, his cheeks sunken and the skin of his forehead tight across the bone. He looked even older now than he had in Suddapal. Some of that was the burden of carrying the poisoned sword, but some was also time. And what he’d lost from picking up the sword, he might not get back when he put it down. The unease she felt with the thought was how she imagined it would be to have a father and realize he was growing old.
The day’s heat meant that even with the windows open, the air inside felt close. Most of Maestro Asanpur’s customers were sitting outside at the little tables with awnings above them for shade. By putting up with the warmth, Wester and Kalliam had the main room essentially to themselves. Only Asanpur also braved the heat.
“Coffee, Magistra?”
“And if you have any food,” Cithrin said.
The old Cinnae blinked his blind eye, grinned, and walked to the back as Cithrin sat at the head of the table. Wester nodded to her, but didn’t break the thread of his conversation.
“Even if we did, what would it show? He’s as likely to turn against us as them, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” Barriath said. “Now that you put it that way.”
“Put what which way?” Cithrin asked.
“We’re discussing whether to introduce Lord Skestinin to Kit,” Marcus said. “Pull back the gambler’s mat and show him how the pea finds its way to the shell.”
“I served under Lord Skestinin for years,” Barriath said. “He’s a good man. Competent. Smart. He has no more reason to love the priests or Palliako than I do.”
“My point being that if we show him how Camnipol’s under the thumb of magic that bends minds and controls people by trotting out that we’ve got the same thing here, it’s not a guarantee that he’ll see us as precisely trustworthy and free. If he decides we’re all Master Kit’s puppets, we won’t be ahead of where we are now.”
“But your one can convince him,” Barriath said.
“And Geder’s can convince him right back,” Marcus said.
“There’s no reason to keep the truth from him,” Cithrin said. “But we can’t let him go.”
Barriath leaned forward, his fingertips pressing into the surface of the table. “If we could bring him to our side of this. Put him back on his ships, get him his sailors, aim him back toward Antea, it would undermine Palliako like nothing else.”
Maestro Asanpur stepped back into the room with a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of cheese and dried apples in the other. He put them in front of Cithrin with a smile. The salt and cream of the cheese and the sweetness of the apples was better than a feast.
“Or he might be on our side from here to Northcoast and then change his mind and come sink every ship you’ve got,” Marcus said. The younger man scowled, but Marcus pressed on. “Unless we’re willing to send Kit to go on murmuring in the man’s ear every morning, we can’t be sure what he’ll do, and I don’t know about the two of you, but I’m not willing to use him that way.”
“If he would even agree to it,” Cithrin said and sipped her coffee. “He’s been reluctant to use his powers in the past.”
“Well,” Marcus said, “he’ll have to get over that when Palliako’s land forces arrive. If we get a dozen priests with speaking trumpets howling that we might as well give up, he’ll be needed behind the wall convincing us it’s not true.”
“Are we sure they’re coming here?” Barriath said. “The queen’s in Sara-sur-Mar.”
“This isn’t about the queen,” Cithrin said. “It’s about me.”
For a long moment, all three of them were silent. She could see that neither of them wanted to agree with her, but they couldn’t bring themselves to deny what they all knew was true. She popped another bit of dried apple into her mouth.
“I suppose we can ask Kit to do his cunning man’s show in the prison,” Marcus said. “Assuming the governor’s willing.”
“He will be if I ask him,” Cithrin said.
“Do you think he has a command from the queen to take you into custody yet?”
“I imagine he had it before either of you arrived,” Cithrin said. “Having and acting upon are two different things.”
Before she went back to the counting house, she stopped in her rented room in the rear of the café. In the time since Barriath and Inys had arrived, the back payments due to the bank had—mysteriously or perhaps not—started to come in a flood. Coin was flowing into her coffers, but not only from that. People had begun buying letters of exchange. The sea lanes were open now, and the tradesmen and wealthy classes of Porte Oliva knew that war was coming. Spice and tobacco, gold and jewelry had begun to make their way to Pyk’s table, and sealed and ciphered letters handed back across. They would be redeemed at some other branch of the bank—most likely Stollbourne or Carse—at a percentage of their original worth. It was a pattern Cithrin had seen before, a sign of fear and of the coming war. This time, it carried no anxiety for her. The knot in her belly was as lax as it had ever been. Not gone. Never gone. But at its ebb.
When she stepped into the counting house, Pyk and Magistra Isadau were laughing with each other. If the café had been warm, the counting house sweltered. Wide, dark parches of sweat marked Pyk’s armpits and the space under her breasts, but she didn’t seem put out. Isadau sat by the little window and waved her greeting to Cithrin as Yardem closed the door behind her.
“Back from your little squat at the Lizard Emperor’s feet?” Pyk asked, but her words didn’t have even their usual bite. “What wisdom for the ages did the great bastard lay out before you today?”
“He suggested we poke out all our soldiers’ ears before they go on the field,” Cithrin said. “Keep them from losing their fighting spirit.”
“That seems a bit extreme,” Isadau said. Her voice was light, but Cithrin could still hear the strain in it. She wished she could share her relief and calm with Isadau. But perhaps with time it would come.
“Any price is cheap when you don’t value the coin,” Pyk said. “That dragon’s impressive, and no doubt. But the way I see it, he’d trade us all for another of his own kind. But give him this. He’s good for business.”
Cithrin leaned against the wall and lifted her brows. Isadau’s grin brought out one of her own. “More people, then?”
Pyk waved her hands at the table. “Suddenly half the city’s falling all over itself to place deposits with us. Everyone that’s leaving wants letters of exchange. Everyone who’s staying wants to buy their way into our good graces.”
“Are we too heavy with coin?”
“Hell yes,” Pyk said. “And we’ll stay that way until this gets resolved. I’m not making any loans to people outside the city wall, and that’s half the businesses there are. Once Palliako’s army’s shown up and been driven off, we can see who needs help rebuilding. Buys us goodwill from the locals, and opens up the chance to get into some solid partnerships.”