“I didn’t forget,” Cithrin said.
“Give us a moment, Isadau,” Komme said, still squinting at the paper and rubbing his thumb along its violet edge. Isadau and Cithrin exchanged a silent glance, and the Timzinae woman uncurled her arm from Cithrin’s. Her footsteps faded as she walked into the shade of the house. A sparrow flew past, grey-brown wings fluttering in the air. Somewhere outside the compound, a man shouted. Komme sighed and turned to her.
“You’re the worst voice of any bank I’ve ever seen,” he said, and then lifted his palm to her, commanding silence. “I don’t want to hear any damned explanations of why you had to do it this way or how the scale of the thing justified cutting me out of my own business. You crossed me. You know it. And you meant to do it.”
Cithrin’s belly went tight and she nodded. “I did.”
Komme’s smile had no mirth in it. “Well, at least you’ve got the balls to admit it. You did this the wrong way, Cithrin. You should have come to me. We should have talked the plan through. You and me and Paerin and Chana. Nison and Isadau. You have a brilliant mind for finance, but you don’t have the only goddamned mind there is. You’ve managed to insult everyone on the company. Did you think about that?”
“I… No. Not really.”
“You see? That’s the problem with you. You’ve been pretending to be a grown woman long enough you’ve forgotten you’re a girl. Get married, have a couple of children like I did, get some perspective on what risk is, and you’d be ready to run a bank the right way. You were raised badly.”
“I was raised by your bank.”
“The irony’s not lost,” Komme said, limping forward to the next yellow sheet. He reached up, running his fingers along its edge like a farmer judging a crop. “This doesn’t happen again. Ever. You’ve made a practice of stepping outside your authority, and you’ve gotten away with it. It’s given you the wrong impression of what authority is and what your role in the bank should be.”
“I apologize.”
He turned back to her and grunted in pain, leaning on his cane. “You’ve tied my hands for now. I could throw you on the street. Strip you of your place. It’s within my rights. You don’t even have a branch any longer. But since the bank’s just embarked on this scheme you’ve created, it would look odd to cut ties now. The bank has to seem more solid than thrones now. Getting back lost confidence is harder than stirring cream out of coffee. Besides which, you’re friends with a dragon. There’s a certain romance in that, and people like romances when the world’s uncertain.”
“I’ll speak to you first next time,” Cithrin said. “I promise.”
“Next time,” Komme said, shaking his head. “And with you, there may be a next time.”
He moved on to the next string, but his gaze was skating over the yellow papers now. Cithrin walked half a step behind him and to his left.
“You’ve heard the news from Narinisle,” he said over his shoulder.
“No.”
“Word of your agreement with Tracian’s spread. It’s precedent. Narinisle’s asked for the same arrangement. Herez will too, though I haven’t had it formally yet. They’re asking why Northcoast is favored over them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Me? Who am I? I just have a holding company. It’s the branches who’ll make that call.”
“Yes, but what are you going to do?”
“Give it to them,” Komme said. “Start trading your letters of transfer as widely and commonly as I can. Sell Herez’s debt to Northcoast and Narinisle’s to both of them until the three are so entwined it’s impossible to say who owns what or where someone would go to change these things back to coin. Anything to make the essential lie at the heart of this harder to see.”
“Good,” Cithrin said. “That’s excellent.”
“Or it’s my ticket to dying in gaol. Either way, I thought you’d want to know you’d drawn even with Palliako.”
“How do you count that?”
“He took Asterilhold, Sarakal, and Elassae. You’ve taken Northcoast, Herez, and Narinisle. I call Birancour a split,” Komme said, and spat into the bushes. “Cithrin bel Sarcour, secret queen of the world.”
Entr’acte Captain Karol Dannien
The mountains in the north of Elassae were black crags. The great slabs of stone lay one against the other like some titanic act of violence had been petrified mid-cataclysm. They channeled even the gentlest wind into howling gusts that came from any direction, or all of them. There were just enough wild goats surviving on the low grey scrub to attract a healthy population of mountain lions. The tracks and paths through the sharp valleys were challenging for pack mules, and anything wheeled was worse than useless. The water tasted sharp and mineral.
Karol Dannien had fought in the flatlands of the Keshet and at the Bloody Gate of Lôdi, the swamps south of Kaltfel and the iced-in harbors of Hallskar. In almost thirty years of paid violence, only the Dry Wastes had been a less hospitable stretch of land and worse ground for a battle of any size. But God hadn’t asked his opinion, and so there it was.
The aftermath was mostly confined to a pair of slightly less steep inclines. The Anteans, spurred on by the shouting and hectoring of their priests, had charged the high ground, and Karol had had his men roll rocks down at them to break their ranks, following with a charge of his own. It had worked, but it hadn’t been anything like pretty. The first clash had come just after dawn, and Karol’s men were still hunting down the last of the fleeing Anteans when dark came on. He wasn’t worried about a counterattack. The mountain lions could pick up the slops for all he cared. Probably be a nice change from goat meat.
Cep Bailan, his second this godawful endless campaign, stepped out of his tent and stretched his arms out to the sky like the Haaverkin was gathering the whole world to his fat, tattooed belly. Karol hunched deeper into his coat.
“Heat’s finally breaking,” Cep said. “And past time for it.”
“You’re too far south. Your kind should stay north of Sarakal.”
“That’s only true,” Cep said and slapped his massive chest. “But sometimes you sad little bastards need our help.”
Karol sighed. Cep was a brilliant man in a fight and a good leader before a battle, but the long months in the dark halls of Kiaria had been too long in close company. Every night had ended in another volley of insults and crudeness, and after a half season in the dark hearing the man rain abuse on Karol’s imagined mother, sisters, and lovers, it was hard not to think some of the joking had teeth.
“Do we have to do the first part again?” Cep asked, plodding after Karol. “I don’t know why you do this. It isn’t like they don’t know they’re hurt. Not like you’re going to tell them anything different.”
“They’re my men,” Karol said.
“If you need to keep saying it, it starts not sounding true,” Cep said. Karol promised himself for the thousandth time that he’d never work with a Haaverkin again. “You go on ahead. I’ll meet you with the prisoners. The men don’t like it when I see them injured.”
“You laugh at them.”
“They’re funny.”
“Go be sure Chaars has enough men to set up a watch.”
Cep scowled, the tattoos on his face warping. He stamped off down the incline, intentionally making his way across the paths of the black-chitined Timzinae soldiers still carrying the wounded and the dying from the battlefield. Karol sighed. The man truly was a child. But he was good at being sure the other side fell and his own didn’t, and that forgave a lot.