The Dragon’s Path (44 page)

Accidents of wind and current made the island nation of Narinisle the easiest end port for ships from Far Syramys, and if a trade ship could exchange its cargo and money for a load freshly arrived from those distant lands, an investor might triple her money. If not, she risked seeing her trade ship return from Narinisle with only what could be bought from the local markets, making a much smaller profit, assuming prices went with her. Or the ship could be lost to pirates, or it might sink and everything either lost entirely or ransomed back at exorbitant rates and glacial slowness from the Drowned.

And when the ships returned to their southern ports and the fortunes of those who had sponsored them rose or fell, the sponsorship of this fleet of gold and spice that sailed together without alliance and answered to no single flag reshuffled. A house that had placed its wager on a single ship and did well might make enough to hire half a dozen the next year. Someone whose ship had been lost would scramble to find ways to survive in their new, lessened circumstances. If they had been wise and insured their investment, they might gain back enough to try again by appealing to someone like Cithrin.

The ships would already have left Narinisle. Soon, the seven that had set out the year before from Porte Oliva would return, and not long after that, someone would come to her and ask that the bank insure them to sponsor a ship for the next year’s work. Without knowing which captains were best, without knowing which families were best positioned to buy a good outgoing cargo, she would be left with little better than instinct. If she took all those who came to ask, she’d be sure to take too many bad risks. If she took no one, there would be no chance for her bank to prosper and nothing to show the holding company when they came. This was the species of risk that her life was built on now.

Betting on pit dogs seemed more certain.

“A few insurance contracts, maybe,” Cithrin said, as much to herself as to Cary and the others. “Part sponsorship in a few years, if things go well.”

“Insurance. Sponsorship. What’s the difference?” Smit asked.

Cithrin shook her head. It was like he’d asked the difference between an apple and a fish; she didn’t know where to start.

“Cithrin forgets that we didn’t all grow up in a counting house,” Cary said and drank down the last of her coffee. “But we should go.”

“Let me know when the new play’s ready,” Cithrin said. “I’d like to watch it.”

“See?” Smit said. “I told you we’d have a patron.”

They left through the alley, transformed from mysterious woman of business and her guards back to seafront players. Cithrin watched them go through her thin window, the glass distorting them as they went. A patron. It was true she wouldn’t be able to go and lead the crowd with Cary and Mikel anymore. She probably wouldn’t be able to go out to a taproom with Sandr. Cithrin bel Sarcour, head of the Medean bank of Porte Oliva, drinking with a common actor? It would be terrible for the bank’s reputation and her own.

The loneliness that came with the thought had little to do with Sandr.

When, an hour later, Captain Wester arrived, Cithrin was out on the street, sitting at the same table where Cary had found her. He nodded his greeting and sat across from her. The sunlight brought out the grey in his hair, but it also brightened his eyes. He handed a sheet of parchment across to her. She looked over the words and figures, nodding to herself as she did. The receipt looked fine.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“No problems,” he said. “The tobacco’s at the seller’s stall. He argued over a few of the leaves, but I told him he either took all of it or none.”

“He shouldn’t have done that,” Cithrin said. “He should be negotiating with me.”

“I may have mentioned something like that. He accepted the delivery. The pepper and cardamom goes out tomorrow. Yardem and a couple of the new men will take that.”

“A start,” Cithrin said.

“Any word from Carse?” Marcus asked. The question sounded almost casual.

“I’ve sent a dispatch,” Cithrin said. “I used Magister Imaniel’s old cipher, and a slow courier, but I expect they’ll have it by now.”

“And you said what?”

“That the branch had placed its letters of foundation and was beginning trade as Magister Imaniel and I had planned,” Cithrin said.

“Not telling them the truth of it, then.”

“Letters go astray. Couriers take extra payment to unsew and copy them. I don’t expect anyone to intercept it, but if they do, it will look exactly like what it’s supposed to be.”

Marcus nodded slowly, squinting up into the sun.

“Any reason you picked a
slow
courier?”

“I want time to put things in order before they come,” she said.

“I see. There’s something we should—”

A deeper shadow than the cloud’s fell over the table. Lost in her conversation, she hadn’t seen the man approach, and so now he seemed to have sprouted out of the pavement. Taller than Captain Wester, but not so tall as Yardem Hane, he wore a wool tunic and leggings, a blue-dyed cloak several
layers thick against the spring cold, and a bronze chain of office. For the most part his features were Firstblood, but slight and fair enough that he might have had a grandfather among the Cinnae.

“Forgive me,” he said, his voice scrupulously polite. “Am I addressing Cithrin bel Sarcour?”

“You are,” Cithrin said.

“Governor Siden sent me,” the man said.

Fear punched the breath out of her. They’d discovered the forgery. They were sending the guard. She cleared her throat and smiled.

“Is there a problem?” she asked.

“Not at all,” the messenger said, and produced a small letter, the smooth paper neatly folded and the sides sewn and sealed. “But he did suggest I wait in the event that you wished to reply.”

Cithrin held the paper, uncertain where to look—it, the man, the captain. After what seemed entirely too long, she shook herself.

“If you’ll let Maestro Asanpur know you’ve come on my business, he’ll see you in comfort.”

“You are very kind, Magistra.”

Cithrin waited until the man disappeared into the café before she pulled the thread. It cut through the paper with a rattle. Trembling a little, she pressed the opened page onto the table. The script was beautifully shaped, the work of a professional scribe.
To Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice and agent of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, I, Idderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva by special commission of Her Royal Highness
and on and on and on. Her fingertips slid down the page.
I request your private attention as a voice of trade and a citizen of Porte Oliva concerning certain matters central to the health and vigor
of the city
and on and on and on. And then, near the bottom of the first page, she stopped.

The solicitation and arrangement of joint civic security as concerns the safe conduct of maritime trade in the coming year…

“Good God,” she said.

“What is it?” Captain Wester said. His voice was low and steady. He sounded ready for her to say they had to kill the messenger and flee the city. Cithrin swallowed to loosen her throat.

“If I am reading this correctly,” she said, “the governor is asking us to propose a joint venture with the city to escort the trade ships from Narinisle.”

“Ah,” Wester said. And then, “You know I don’t understand what you just said, yes?”

“He’s putting together a fleet. Fighting ships to see the traders safely up and back. And he’s looking for someone with the purse to fund it.”

“Meaning us?”

“No,” she said, her mind running through the implications with an eerie and cool precision. “He’ll want several parties to make proposals, but he’s inviting us into the fight. He’s asking the Medean bank to make a proposal to underwrite a single-city fleet.”

The captain grunted as if he understood. Cithrin was already miles ahead of him and running fast. If Porte Oliva could make itself a more attractive port than the Free Cities, more ships would contract from here. Insurance rates would drop, as the trade seemed less risky. That would hurt anyone who had been trading on insurance alone. And Maccia would hate it, and Cabral would take it poorly if the escort went that far. She wondered what the chances were of direct retaliation against the escort ships.

“Is that the kind of thing we’d be likely to do?” Wester asked from some other part of the world.

“If we took the commission and did the thing well, we’d have connections all through the south and a thumb on the Inner Sea. We’d have something to give the holding company more valuable than a cartload of gold,” Cithrin said. “They
couldn’t
object to what we’ve done.”

“So it is something we might take on, then.”

The knot in Cithrin’s belly was still there, but something about it changed. She found herself smiling. Grinning.

“Win this,” she said, holding up the pages, “and we win
everything.
”

T
he meeting at the governor’s palace pretended to be nothing. A half dozen men and women sat in a garden courtyard. Queensmen poured out scented water and spiced wine. The governor was a small man, thick-bellied and balding. He treated all his guests with grace and kindness, and as such was practically useless as a guide to who among the assemblage were important. She had hoped to follow his cues, paying attention to the people with whom he spent the most time. Instead, she was left to wonder.

There was an older Kurtadam man, his pelt graying across the face, throat, and back, who represented a chartered collaboration of the shipwrights’ guild and two local merchant houses. A Cinnae man with slightly too much rouge on his cheeks turned out to be the owner of a mercenary company large enough to rent itself to kings. Sitting alone under the spreading fronds of a palm tree, a Tralgu woman drank water and ate shrimp, listening to everything said with a concentration that left Cithrin unnerved. All of them had agendas and histories, interests and weaknesses. Magister Imaniel would have been able to glance across the room and draw
conclusions. Or at least educated guesses. Cithrin, on the other hand, was still a year too young to claim her inheritance. The wine was excellent. The conversation friendly and convivial. She felt like she was swimming in a warm ocean, waiting for something to come up from the depths, take her by the leg, and draw her down to the cold.

It didn’t help untie her knots that everyone seemed to view her with curiosity. The voice and agent of the Medean bank, newly arrived in the city, and throwing off everyone’s plans. None of them, Cithrin told herself, had expected her to be a player in this game. She was badly behind in understanding the politics at play in the courtyard with its brightly colored finches and sun-warmed flagstones, but she had mysteries of her own. The longer she remained a cipher to them, the more she could make sense of the game. She handed her empty glass to one of the queensmen and took another. Wine kept the fear at bay.

“Magistra bel Sarcour,” the governor said, appearing at her elbow. “You were in Vanai, yes? Before the Antean aggression.”

“Just before,” Cithrin said.

“Lucky you got out,” the Tralgu woman said. Her voice was as low as Yardem Hane’s, but it didn’t have the same warmth.

“I am,” Cithrin said, keeping her tone neutral and polite.

“What do you make of the fate of the city?” the governor asked. Cithrin had anticipated the question, and she had her answer at the ready.

“Antea has a long history of military interference in the Free Cities,” Cithrin said. “Magister Imaniel and I were expecting the occupation a season earlier than it came. That the Anteans didn’t intend to hold the city was only clear in the last few weeks before they arrived.”

“You think they always intended to destroy Vanai?” a man behind the governor said. He had the features of a Firstblood, but golden skin with a roughness to it that reminded Cithrin of a Jasuru. His eyes were a shocking green. His name was Qahuar Em, and he spoke for a group part trading association and part nomadic tribe from the north reaches of Lyoneia. From his appearance, she guessed he was half Jasuru, though Cithrin hadn’t known that was possible.

“We had a strong suspicion,” she said to him.

“But why would the Severed Throne do such a thing?” the governor asked.

“Because they’re a bloodthirsty bunch of unmodified northern savages,” the Tralgu woman said. “Barely better than monkeys.”

“The story I’d heard was that the burning was unexpected, even by King Simeon,” the Cinnae mercenary said. “The local commander took the action as some sort of political theater piece.”

“Doesn’t argue against my monkeys-with-swords thesis,” the Tralgu woman said, and the governor chuckled.

“I’m not surprised that there’s more than one interpretation,” Cithrin said. “Still, you’ll forgive me if I’m pleased that I followed the information that we had.”

“I heard that Komme Medean was moving his interests to the north, and Antea in particular,” the graying Kurtadam said. “Damned odd seeing him take an aggressive position in the south.”

Cithrin felt a flutter of concern. If the bank were involving itself in the northern countries—Antea, Asterilhold, Northcoast, Hallskar, and Sarakal—she might well have stepped on toes by founding a branch at the far end of the continent.
It wasn’t something she was ready to address, so the conversation had to be moved away from the issue and quickly. She smiled the way she imagined Magister Imaniel might have.