The King's Blood (10 page)

Cithrin had found him charming, his record of delivery impressive, and his confidence in himself so high that he was willing to accept very good terms on the contract. He insured the cargo only.
If I lose my ship, I’ll be dead anyway, and
the money won’t matter
, he’d said. It hadn’t sounded like prophecy at the time.

The ship had wintered in the great port of Stollbourne, sleeping through the winter in the shadow of the floating towers of the Empty Keep. It left Narinisle as soon as the ice broke, heading south for warmer waters and Porte Oliva despite sleet and storm. The journey south was sure and steady. It had joined a group of ships making for Herez and remained in that company for the better part of a week. Then, when the other ships had turned in toward their home ports, it continued south past Cyrin and around the Embers, the sharp stones that rose from the depths of the sea off the cape of Cabral.

It passed Upurt Marion, hailing and being hailed by the captain of another roundship just coming north from Lyoneia. The
Stormcrow
had come that close to home, but never reached Porte Oliva. The other roundship captain said that half a day after the
Stormcrow
had vanished over the horizon, three small, fast ships bearing the colors of no nation had passed by far to the south, leaning toward the open sea.

After that, more guesswork was involved. Without doubt a storm had blown up three days after that last sighting. It made sense, then, to imagine the
Stormcrow
pulling in its sails and nailing battens over her hatches, preparing to endure the high, white-topped waves and the vicious, cutting rain. The captain might have taken the lookout down from the crow’s nest with the very real concern that they might be tossed out by the violence of the weather. If so, the pirate ships could have been almost upon her before she knew they were there; black shapes against dark water.

Against an enemy coming in from the sea, the
Stormcrow
’s defenses had little hope. Pirate ships were smaller and more maneuverable, their rigging unconstrained by the needs of long voyages. Perhaps the
Stormcrow
tried for open water, and was intercepted. Perhaps she turned for shore and was chased down. The wreckage that had been blown ashore stank of linseed oil. Pouring oil on the waters was a well-known trick for boarding ships in rough seas, and it made it seem more likely that the assault had come nearer the land.

When the attackers came aboard, the
Stormcrow
would have had her best and final chance for survival. Hooked chains were the most common tools, but there were also sharptined boots and braces that a skilled man could use to scurry up the wooden sides of a ship like an insect. Likely several of the pirates had died on the way up, their bodies fallen into the raging water and swallowed at once. But more would have gained the deck. Cithrin imagined that last struggle as bloody and long, with the crew overwhelmed by inches, the decks black with blood and rain. Thunder roaring over the war of wind and waves, lightning crawling through the storm clouds overhead. But it was just as possible that the captain had tried to surrender and been thrown to his death. Whatever the case, the timbers of the ship and bodies of the crew had found their way to the shore. Of the cargo, nothing.

Pyk held up a thick-fingered fist. Dozens of pages filled it. Bills of lading, letters of intent, requests that the Medean bank do what it had promised and make whole the eleven merchants and traders who had put their faith in the
Stormcrow
and been disappointed.

“And what the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” she asked.

Cithrin sat on her hands. Outside the little room in the back of the café, songbirds were building a nest. The scent of Maestro Asanpur’s coffee sneaked in through the closed door, calling to Cithrin like the sound of a friend laughing in the next room. She kept her temper in check.

“Make the payments?” she said.

The Yemmu woman rolled her eyes.

“Yes, thank you. I can read the contract. I mean how am I supposed to justify this to the holding company?”

Pyk began putting the papers into stacks like she was dealing out cards in some deeply complex game. Cithrin wanted to take them from her. Seeing the papers there was like a half-starved man standing in a bakery door but not permitted to enter.

“It was a good risk,” Cithrin said.

“Then why am I paying out on it?”

“Even good risks fail sometimes. That’s why we call them risks. If we only invested in certainties, we wouldn’t turn enough profit to eat.”

“You cut thumbs on this contract and took in a hundred standard weights of silver. Now I’m supposed to pay out almost a thousand and call it good? Well, thank God we don’t have more good risks, then.”

“The branch can absorb the loss,” she said as Pyk slapped another page on her piles. It was a yellowed strip with ink the color of rust. Cithrin pointed at it. “Don’t pay that one.”

“What?”

“That sheet. It’s from Mezlin Kumas. He’s got a reputation for claiming more cargo than he bought. Just a list like that in his own hand? Not enough. If it doesn’t have the captain’s thumb, you shouldn’t pay out.”

“Why don’t you go outside and play with a ball of yarn or something,” Pyk said with a sigh. “I’ll take care of this.”

Cithrin’s outrage felt like heat rising from her belly to her throat. She felt the flush of blood in her cheeks. The tears in her eyes were made from frustration and rage. Pyk put down another sheet over the top of the suspect list, licked her thumb, and went back to dealing out the pages. She didn’t look at Cithrin, and her frown drew a hundred thin lines in the flesh of her cheek.

“Why don’t you like me?” Cithrin asked.

“Oh, I can’t imagine, pet,” Pyk said. “Why wouldn’t I like you? Hmm. I’m here to do all your work for you, make all the decisions, take all the responsibility, write the reports, and justify myself to Komme Medean and the holding company. But God forbid that I should actually be the voice of the bank. Because that’s you, isn’t it? You wander around the city playing at being a great lady when you’re not old enough to sign your own contracts.”

“I didn’t ask them to send you here,” Cithrin said.

“What you asked for or didn’t ask for is the least interesting thing in my day,” Pyk said. “It doesn’t change anything. The truth is, no matter what you want or intend, no matter what
I
want or intend, I’m the one who’ll be called to answer for the failure, and you’ll be the one who dines out on the success.”

“You could let me help you,” Cithrin said. “You know I’m smart enough to carry some of the weight.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Pyk put down the papers and turned to face Cithrin directly. The big woman’s expression was steely and cold.

“Because you don’t answer for it. You can come in and play at being a banker, but you aren’t one. No, be quiet. You asked, you can keep your pretty little mouth shut and hear the answer. You’re not a banker. You’re an extortionist who got lucky.”

“That’s not—”

“Now you get the status in the eyes of the city, you get to call yourself the voice of the bank, you get the nice clothes and the food and the shelter, and you get it all on my back. They can’t fire you until all the poisoned contracts you signed are purged and replaced with something we could enforce. It’ll take years. Me, though? They could send a letter and turn me in the streets tomorrow. They won’t, but they could. You get all the carrot and none of the stick, and I do the job. That’s not enough? I need to
like
you too? You want to put your hooks in me like you’ve got ’em in your pet mercenary? Well, tough shit, kid.”

The notary went silent. Cithrin rose. She felt like she’d been punched, her body vibrating from the depth of the notary’s anger, but her head was clear and cold as meltwater. It was as if her body was the only thing frightened.

“I’ll leave you to your work, then,” Cithrin said. “If there’s anything I can do that would help the branch, please let me know.”

Pyk made an impatient click in the back of her throat.

“And, really,” Cithrin said, pointing to the pages laid out on the table, “don’t pay that list.”

C

ithrin walked through the streets in the southern end of the city nearest the port. The puppeteers were out in force, sometimes as many as three working different corners when two of the larger ways crossed. Many were variations on old themes: retellings of PennyPenny the Jasuru with his bouts of comic rage and violence or stories of cleverness and crime with Timzinae Roaches—often with the three black-scaled marionettes tied to a single cross, their movements literally made one. Other times, the stories were of greater local interest. A story of a crippled widow forced to sell her babies only to have them each returned as too much trouble to keep could be just a comic tale with a few bawdy jokes and a trick baby puppet that grew monstrous teeth, but to the residents of the city it was also an elaborate in-joke about a famously corrupt governor. Cithrin stopped in an open square to stand and watch a pair of full-blooded Cinnae girls— paler and thinner even than her—singing an eerie song and swaying with marionettes in the shapes of bloodied men. She noticed the girls had filed their teeth to sharklike points. She wasn’t sure if it was more frightening or pretentious. It was certainly a large personal investment for an effect that limited the range of performances they could do.

Cithrin mulled over how much of the performer’s craft relied on excellence in a small range and how much on competence over a wide variety of performances. It was, of course, a single instance of a more general problem, and it could be applied to the bank as well. A certain range of contracts— insurance and loans and partnerships and letters of credit— required relatively little additional expertise. To widen the business into renting out guardsmen or guaranteeing merchandise in bank-owned warehouses required more resources and higher expenses, but it also brought in coin that wouldn’t have come in otherwise.

The Cinnae girls struck a series of high, gliding trills, matching each other in an uncomforting harmony. The one on Cithrin’s left swirled, her dark skirts rising with the motion to show blue-stained legs. Cithrin saw it and didn’t see it.

It wasn’t only her mutilated tusks that made Pyk like the sharp-toothed puppeteers. Pyk also wanted to limit what the bank did, restrict it to the few areas in which she was comfortable and then increase her profits by reducing cost. Excellence in a narrow circle. It was safe and it was small and it was absolutely against Cithrin’s instincts.

“Magistra,” Marcus said. She hadn’t noticed him walking up behind her.

“Captain,” she said. “How are the guards?”

“We lost a few,” he said. “That Yardem and I took the worst pay cuts pulled the punch a little. Still, I’m keeping either me or Yardem at the main house until people stop being quite so sour about it. I’d hate to be the captain whose guard stole the safebox.”

The Cinnae girls scowled, their voices growing a degree harsher at the interruption. Cithrin dug out a few weights of copper and dropped them in the open sack between the performers, then took Marcus’s arm and walked west, toward the seawall.

“I’m not going to win her over,” Cithrin said. “Not ever. It isn’t just that we dislike each other. We
disagree
.”

“That’s a problem.”

Cithrin felt her mind at work. From the time she’d been old enough to know anything, her world had been the bank. Coins and bills and rates of exchange, how to set prices and how to exploit prices that others had set poorly. It was what she’d had growing up instead of love.

“I have a proposal I’m looking at from a man who makes his fortune searching for lost things,” Cithrin said. “It isn’t the sort of thing Pyk would be comfortable with, do you think?”

Marcus looked sideways at her.

“It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing she would,” he said. “Do banks even do that?”

“Banks do whatever brings money to banks,” Cithrin said. “Still, it’s given me an idea, and I’d like you to look into it. If you can.”

“You know you can’t negotiate anything…”

“I don’t think that would be an issue. And really, nothing may come of this. But if it does, we might be able to bring Pyk enough money to restore the guards.”

“That’s an interesting thought,” Marcus said. “What kind of business are you looking to start?”

“Nothing outside the bank. It isn’t really even a new business.”

“It’s looking for lost things.”

“Yes.”

“Something we’ve lost.”

“Yes.”

The seawall was whitewashed stone, and looked out over the pale water of the bay. The dropoff where the deeper water began was a blue as profound as indigo. Near the docks, it was shallow enough to be almost the color of sand. A guideboat was leading a shallow-bottomed galley through the reefs and sandbars that protected the city’s seaward face. In the centuries of its life, Porte Oliva had fallen, but never to force.

Marcus leaned against the wall, looking out over the water. The angle of the sun showed the white hair mixed in among the brown. His eyes were narrowed against the light.

“And what is it we lost that you’re thinking to look for?”

“The cargo of the
Stormcrow
,” she said. “We’re about to pay for it. The pirates have to come to ground somewhere. If we can find where, we might be able to recover some part of what we’ve lost. Even if it was a tenth of the manifest, it would be enough to put the guards back to full pay.”

Seagulls wheeled past the wall, wide wings riding the rising air where the breeze from the sea broke against the walls of the city. Seven young Timzinae men in the canvas of sailors walked past, laughing and talking too loud. One of them shouted something playful and obscene. Marcus turned to watch them pass.

“I can ask around, I suppose,” Marcus said. “No harm in that.”

“It would have to be done quickly.”

“I can talk quickly,” he said. “What are we trying to do with it? If we find the cargo and bring it back, what do you think we’ll have won?”