then reached over and pulled his tankard to her as well. The chicken did go well with it after all. As she drank, her mind wandered. She wasn’t angry at Sandr, but she couldn’t bring herself to respect him. On another night, she might have let his scene play out, if only to see where it led. But it was increasingly clear that Master Kit intended to remain in Porte Oliva for some time. Since she wasn’t sure when or how she’d depart the city, making that kind of connection was sure to complicate things. And then what if she got pregnant? Everything would fall apart then. Easier to stay out than to get out later. Still, she did wonder what it would have been like. Her mind shifted back to the mill pond, the snow against her skin, the weight of the boy upon her.
She finished the second beer and went back to the fortified wine. Alcohol was supposed to soften the mind, but she didn’t feel soft at all. Or at least not in a way that left her unaware. She was more relaxed, certainly. The ever-present knot in her gut was looser, and she felt more at home in her skin. But her thinking was as clear as ever. Maybe clearer. She had the sense of huge thoughts shifting just beneath her awareness, her mind comparing and scheming with a speed and elegance that she couldn’t quite keep up with herself. She ate some of the pickled carrots, finished the wine, and got another tankard of the beer.
When she stepped out the door, the sun had already set. Porte Oliva lounged in the grey twilight. Lanterns flickered and glowed. Men and women scurried through the streets, anxious to get home before twilight had entirely faded. The air was cold but not bitter. This wasn’t a mild winter evening so much as a chilly springtime. She let herself drift down the street, her mind plucking at thoughts, turning them over, and dropping them again. How old Sandr seemed on the stage, and how young off it. The emptiness in her heart that was the death of Magister Imaniel and Cam, the almost vertiginous need to fill it, and her almost clinical detachment from her pain. The impending trip to Carse, smuggling wealth she hadn’t stolen. The books of the bank records, sums and ciphers tracing history from the foundational document to the last rush of fleeing aristocracy. Opal’s betrayal and Captain Wester’s loyalty. She remembered something Master Kit had said about the shape of Wester’s soul, and wondered what shape her own soul might take.
A Cinnae woman hurried past, her robes wrapped with pink-and-orange gauze, her face pale as the moon. A dog barked from the shadowed mouth of an alleyway. Three Kurtadam men walked past her, beads clicking and jingling in their pelts, said something she didn’t understand, and then laughed together. She ignored them. The glow of her own windows shone just up ahead. If anyone were to attack her now, she’d only have to call out and Captain Wester and Yardem Hane would come. It was a pleasant thought, and enough to make her feel safe whether she was or not.
She pulled herself up the stairs to the steady creaking of Captain Wester’s pacing footsteps. She opened the door to his scowl.
“You’ve been out for quite a while,” he said.
Cithrin shrugged.
“How much have you been drinking?”
Cithrin walked over to the cot and sat beside the Tralgu. Yardem smelled like open fields and damp dogs. She repressed the urge to scratch his wide back. Captain Wester was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t recall exactly,” she said. “I wasn’t paying for most of it.”
Wester hoisted an eyebrow.
“The thaw’s almost come. We have to make a decision,” she said, her words precise and unslurred.
“That’s true,” the captain said, crossing his arms. The failing daylight from the windows softened the lines of his scowl and the grey at his temples. He looked young. Cithrin remembered that Opal had found the man attractive and wondered whether she did. She’d lived with him for weeks. Months, counting the time on the road. She wondered for the first time whether his mouth would taste like Sandr’s, then pulled her mind back to the moment, more than half repulsed by her own musings.
“No matter how we try to reach Carse,” she said, “the danger is that someone will kill us and take the money.”
“Old news,” Captain Wester said.
“So we need to take the money ourselves,” she said, understanding as she said it what she’d been considering all night. “We need to use it.”
“Probably the wisest thing we could do,” the captain said. “Take what we can carry and vanish.”
“No,” she said. “I mean take all of it.”
The Tralgu at her side flicked a jingling ear. Captain Wester licked his lips and looked down.
“If we took all of it, we’d be in the same situation we are now,” he said. “We’d still have to hide the money or protect it. Only we’d have your friends in Carse after our heads. That’s not an improvement. We can talk about this when you’re sober,” he said.
“No, listen to me. We’ve been acting like smugglers. We aren’t. You’ve always said we can’t keep this much money quiet and we can’t keep it safe. Opal proved that. So we shouldn’t keep it quiet.”
Wester and Yardem exchanged a silent glance, and the captain sighed. Cithrin stood and walked across to the unsealed books. Her feet were perfectly steady. Her hands didn’t waver as she pulled out the black leather binding. She opened to the first pages and handed them to the captain.
“Documents of foundation,” she said. “We write up a copy of our own, but for Porte Oliva instead of Vanai. We’ve got a hundred documents with Magister Imaniel’s signature and thumb. We can pick some minor contract and use it to forge letters of foundation. File the documents with the governor, pay the fees and bribes, and then I can invest all of this.”
“Invest it,” the captain said as if she’d said eat it.
“The silk and tobacco and spices I can place on consignment. Even if they’re stolen from the merchants, the bank would be paid. We can do the same with the jewelry or sell it outright for funds, and then make loans. Or buy into local businesses. We’ll have to hold back some portion. Five hundredths, perhaps? But with the name of the Medean bank behind me, I could turn over nine-tenths of what we have in this room into papers of absolutely no value to anyone else before the trade ships come from Narinisle. What was left wouldn’t be too tempting to guard.”
“You are very, very drunk,” Wester said. “The way you steal is you take something and then you leave.”
“I’m not stealing it. I’m keeping it safe,” Cithrin said. “This is how banks work. You never keep all the money there to be stolen by whoever finds a way to break your strongbox. You put it out into the world. If you take a loss or someone steals your working funds, you still have all your incomes and agreements. You can recover. And if it all goes wrong, what? We get thrown in prison?”
“Prison is bad,” Yardem rumbled.
“Not as bad as killed and dropped in the sea,” Cithrin said. “If you do what I say, the chances of keeping the money go up and the consequences of failure go down.”
“You want,” Captain Wester said, his voice tight, “to take a great deal of money that isn’t yours and start your own branch of the bank that you’re stealing the money from? They’ll come for you.”
“Of course they will,” Cithrin said. “And when they do, I’ll have what’s theirs and more besides. If I’ve done it right.”
Cithrin saw the disbelief in his face wavering on the border between amusement and outrage. She stamped her foot.
“Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to my voice, Captain. I can do this. ”
Marcus
Be careful,” Marcus said.
“I am being careful, sir.”
“Well, be more careful.”
Seven previous attempts lay on the floor between them: contracts and agreements between dead men over burned wealth, meaningless now. But, as Cithrin had said, each of them bore the signature and bloody thumbprint of Magister Imaniel of Vanai. The trick was to dip the parchment into the wax so that it covered the name and thumb, but nothing else. Then the page could be set in a wash of salt and rendered oil to loosen the ink. After a day in the bath, they could use a scrivener’s stone to scrape away the ink, then a wash of urine to bleach away any
