The Warlord's Domain (15 page)

“Not a scheme, and not a sleeve. Scrip and saddle are the words you need. There’s a letter of credit sewn into the welting just here”—again the fly-swatting flick— “and we’re heading for the mercantile quarter of the city to find the guild which honors it.”

Kyrin blinked, then grinned, then laughed aloud. “You! I should have guessed! Your sour friend was a merchant, then?”

“No friend of mine, love. Yes—and a wealthy one.”

“He didn’t look to enjoy life much.”

“Each to his own delight in life. I’ve found mine.”

“I know.” She leaned over, reaching out to touch his hand. “And I’m glad.”

Aldric returned the pressure of her fingers, the pinkness about cheeks and ears not entirely a result of the cold air. He could still be very shy, sometimes, about the most innocent public displays of affection; and Kyrin could remember other times when he was not shy at all.

“One thing you didn’t ask.”

“Mm?”

” ‘How much is the credit letter worth?’ Unless you’re not really interested.” With finger and thumb he eased the letter itself from the saddle-stitching—it was superfine parchment, rolled small as a quill—and waved it in front of her nose before tucking it into the deep cuff of his glove.

“Uh, no. I mean, yes. I mean, how much is the credit letter worth?” She could tell already, from the glitter in his eyes, that he wasn’t carrying small change.

“Does a value of thirty thousand deniers make you feel a little happier? Because that’s what we have, if we need it.”

Tehal Kyrin, Harek’s daughter, had suffered many shocks and surprises since she took up with this young Alban nobleman, but she had never been the butt of jokes and wasn’t pleased at being used as one right now. Then, as he began to explain the system which made the letter work, a system which her own family had used in their foreign trade dealings, she realized that he wasn’t joking after all.

“But why so much?”

“No more than a precaution. I’d sooner have more available funds than I’d ever need to call on than be without enough—especially with the direction the Empire’s currency has been taking of late.” He extended an index ringer, then stabbed it toward the ground. “Downward all the way. At least bullion gold is still reliable.”

“However did you get so much? I…” Kyrin hesitated, not sure how he would take what she was about to say, then ventured the observation away. “I never thought you were so rich.”

Aldric seemed to find her confusion funny rather than offensive. “What you mean is that you never dreamed you’d see me with more than a handful of silver to my name. Eh?” Somewhat shamefaced, Kyrin nodded. “Uh-huh. Well, all you need is to remember what my name is… and the rank, and the style, and the title that go with it:
Ilauem-arluth inyen’kai
Talvalin. Once in a while it’s pleasant to find all of that’s worth more than just a point of aim for other people’s weapons.”

“You’re doing this the usual way, with guild authority over existing funds?”

“Only about one-third of what was available.” Aldric smiled crookedly. “I didn’t want to be greedy.”

“Oh, Heaven forbid. But if you’ve had a falling-out with Rynert the King, then can’t he take control of your treasury?”

Aldric shook his head; he’d already considered that risk. It was why his negotiations were with Guild Freyjan rather than with a smaller guild working on a less usurious rate of interest. Guild Freyjan’s interest, at least where he was concerned, wasn’t merely on him but in him. They liked to take care of their investment at both ends of the transaction; and only if Rynert had gone completely insane would he dare locking horns with a merchant guild capable of bringing all trade both in and out of Alba to a dead stop. “He might risk commandeering the gold I didn’t pledge to the guild—if the other lords allowed him to set that sort of dangerous precedent—but if he stole what Freyjans regard as their own property until I surrender the credit note, then they’d lay such trading sanctions on Alba that he’d be forced to back down within a week.”

“Very clever. I applaud you.”

“Quietly, or people will wonder.” He reined in and winked at her as he slid from Lyard’s saddle to the snow-sprinkled ground. “And we don’t want the people in here to wonder any more than they have to already.” The elaborate crest of Guild Freyjan worked in brass above the door told Kyrin plainly enough what “in here” was. She nodded at him and patted her gloved palms together very softly, then followed him to the ground.

They secured both pairs of horses to the hitching-rail which Freyjan had so thoughtfully provided for their equestrian customers, dropped a coin or two into the upturned palm of the liveried guild servant whose duty it was to make sure that the animals weren’t stolen or their gear interfered with while their owners were away, and went inside House Freyjan. Inside was lit by good quality oil-lamps, and managed to convey an air of unruffled efficiency which Kyrin supposed made those who came through Freyjan’s doors feel that their money was not being put to flippant use. All that efficiency served only to give everyone they met a few seconds’ free time in which to look at them, either with frank curiosity or in the more indirect way that passed for manners. Aldric was long since used to the sidelong glances which people directed more or less covertly at him; the black and silver clothing which he preferred was a statement of faction in the Drusalan Empire, indicating his support for the
Woydachul
, the Grand Warlord’s party. The menacing presence of a combat-slung longsword probably had something to do with it as well.

“Sir, milady?” The speaker—he was using Jouvaine, but then in the worlds of art and literature, diplomacy and its bastard cousin finance, who didn’t?—was hardly the sort of man Kyrin expected to see in a mercantile house. Mid-twenties like Aldric, or a little younger, he towered over both of them and from the set of his face was torn between curiosity and a definite dislike of the fact that they were both wearing swords. For his part, he was wearing not only a sword but a small repeater crossbow, and half-armor besides; though the fact that everything was marked with the guild crest made it all right . . . more or less.

“Cash conversion,” she heard Aldric say, sounding more authoritative then he probably felt. “Credit scrip to Drusalan florins. Cipher code authority
kourgath
.”

“Sir.” The word had a definite “so
you
say” feel about it, but the guard was courtesy personified as he gestured them to comfortably quilted chairs set by a table which bore a dish of nuts, dried fruits and other small-foods on the same tray as goblets and a flagon of wine. Aldric glanced at the hospitalities and gave a perfunctory nod which managed to suggest that he had expected nothing less, then settled down to take his ease until whoever was to speak to him came out and did so.

The man who emerged was moving with more brisk enthusiasm than the guard’s studied lethargy might have suggested was available in the whole building, but then— small and tubby though he might have been—this newcomer evidently knew what that particular code authority was all about. Gossip travels, even in merchant banks. He bowed nicely to Kyrin, deeply to Aldric, sat down and let it be known that after the customary procedures were complete he was at their disposal for as much cash as they cared to handle. At the usual rate of interest and currency conversion charges, of course…

“It seems to me,” said Giorl severely once Voord’s confession had run its course, “that you’re lucky to be even this much alive.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Exhausted from the pain of injury, the pain of surgery and the soul-wrenching effort of telling everything about his present situation to the one person in the Empire he least wanted to know about it,
Woydach
Voord was content merely to lie still on the thin, hard mattress of sponge-clean leather and be glad he wasn’t hurting more than usual.

“I mean that instead of just these mortal wounds which neither heal nor kill you, what about being trapped in a body which had truly died and was decomposing all around your still-living awareness of it? At least you have the good fortune to be reasonably intact.” Giorl polished one of her surgical probes on a piece of soft cloth and studied it incuriously. “But from all I’ve heard, the high stakes in sorcery demand a high price.

I’ll stick to more natural skills, thanks very much. Now, about these cuts and all the other mess… you say that closing the wounds eases the pain?”

“Yes, damn you, I’ve said so already!” Voord would have shouted at her had the strain of producing anything above a whisper not begun to squeeze his entrails out of the holes in either flank. He collapsed back again, panting and bathed in sweat. “Yes. Close them… please.”

“Sutures won’t work, the dermal layer outlasts them; we know that much already…” Giorl was talking more to herself than Voord, the words mostly medical terms, no more than audible thought and not making much sense to a layman even in his full senses, never mind one who was delirious and almost insane with agony. “Yes, yes,” she said after a while, emerging from her muttered reverie, “we could try that, it would at least create no further harm…”

“What are you talking about, woman?” Voord stared straight up at the ceiling and tried to control his temper and impatience, because losing one or both did nothing except cause him more pain.

“Silver wire. I could use it to close the cuts and repair the remains of the other damage. It wouldn’t rot, and it wouldn’t react against your body tissue.”

“Silver wire.” He repeated the words as if tasting them. “Have you done this before?”

“No.” The blunt frankness of Giorl’s reply was supported by what else she had to say. “And I haven’t tried to heal a man who ought to be three weeks dead, either—just before you ask.”

The sound Voord made was like a cat being sick. Only Giorl, more familiar than anyone else in the city with the sounds humans could make under great stress, could have identified it as a laugh. “Do I win the match?” she asked.

“Only half the points,” said Voord. “You’re forgetting who I am.” He grinned at her, a horrid expression like that on the face of a five-day corpse. “The Grand Warlord deserves gold wire at least.”

Giorl stared at him, then laughed softly at the determined, ironic attempt at humor. Suffering seemed to be doing something to improve the Voord she knew, changing him inside, maybe even making him into a better person more able to appreciate the difficulties of others. Or maybe not. But it would be an interesting development to watch. “Of course, my lord,” she said, still laughing just a little. “Gold wire indeed, my lord. And would my lord also care for little jewels where the ends of wire are twisted together… ? Of course,” Giorl continued after a moment, “I can’t use pure gold wire. Too soft. Where would I find silver-gilt?”

“Send one of my body-servants to the fortress armory. They should have what you want.”

“What I want,
Woydach
, is to go home. There are other things that need doing.”

“Afterward. I come first.”

Giorl kept the obvious comment to herself and spoke to a summoned servant instead. Once the man had gone about her business, she returned her attentions to Voord and to the confidences he had imparted to her. She had never met a sorcerer before, and apart from curiosity had never really wanted to. Giorl disapproved of users of the Art Magic—not in the same way as the Imperial Courts of Law might do, but simply because in her experience there was already trouble enough in the world without bringing in more from Outside Voord’s present situation was a case in point. The thought of living this horrific half-life was enough to make even her skin creep, and the one way to hope for escape was a route along which she would guide him only with the greatest reluctance.

“Have you considered,” she said at last, “trying to shake free of this curse by the… ah… same means as it was laid on you? Have you attempted to reverse the spell?”

“Yes, and no.”

“Mother and Maiden, man, why not?”

Voord’s teeth showed as his lips twitched back in an expression somewhere between rueful smile and snarl of impatience. “Because,” he said, “no matter what it says in children’s stories, sorcery is rather more than just the waving of a wand. To grant power, it needs power. And the sorcery I need takes more than most. I couldn’t do it and survive the strain, not like this, except that… that now, ‘not surviving’ might mean something worse than death. I’m afraid to die and find I’m still alive…”

“There should be enough here to keep us comfortable,” said Aldric, hefting a money-purse in the palm of his hand.

“After the trouble they put you through, I should think so.” Kyrin was still feeling somewhat ruffled by what had been so lightly introduced as “customary procedures,” the way Guild Freyjan had checked and investigated everything to do with Aldric before parting with anything more substantial than good manners, and that he himself had been completely unconcerned did only a little to calm her down.

The cipher code was only the first step. After that, and with the big guard in close attendance, had come comparisons with what was presumably a description prepared and circulated by the Guild House in Alba; comparisons that were ticked off a list like a housewife shopping in the market. Height, weight (there were slight problems with
that
one), eye color, visible scars, seals and similar means of identification and finally, comparison through lenses of thumbprints made on glass.

When first setting up this financial arrangement back in Alba, Aldric had provided two-score and some-odd prints of each thumb on small strips of glass, one for each of the Houses set up by Guild Freyjan to manage ‘ their affairs. These had been sent out together with a copy of the identification chart and would be utilized, they had told him, to make certain that the person attempting to make use of Talvalin money was the person entitled to it. He had provided a fresh thumbprint today, on another strip of glass, and they had both watched while one of the Guild’s experts in such matters had compared the prints, first side by side and then with the new overlaying the old, looking for points of similarity or difference. Only when that had been completed was Kyrin able to detect real warmth in any Guildsman’s smile. And more important still, the guard had been dismissed.