you?”
“She hasn’t,” the Tralgu rumbled.
“You can stay out of this,” Marcus said. “She couldn’t. She didn’t have any money of her own. All of this belongs to someone.”
“And now,” Master Kit said, “it seems she might be able to offer gold. And make decisions of greater weight than whether to have fish or poultry. Or what dress to buy. If this scheme of hers works, she’ll be choosing where to live, how and whether to protect herself, and all the other thousand things that come with her trade. And I suspect you’ll be here as well, at her side and protecting her. But only as her hired captain.”
“Which isn’t what I’ve been doing all along?” Marcus said.
“Which isn’t what you’ve been doing,” Master Kit said. “If you had been, you’d have asked Cithrin before you killed Opal.”
“She’d have told me not to.”
“And I think that’s why you didn’t ask. And why you dread the time when you have to ask, and you have to defer to her judgment even if you think she’s wrong.”
“She’s a little girl,” Marcus said.
“All women were little girls once,” Master Kit said. “Cithrin. Cary. The queen of Birancour. Even Opal.”
Marcus said something obscene under his breath. Outside in the street, the gambler’s man called out. Great fortune could be theirs. Odds offered on any fair wager.
“I am sorry about Opal,” Marcus said.
“I know you are,” Master Kit said. “I am too. I knew her for a very long time, and I enjoyed her company for more than half of that. But she was who she was, and she made her choices.”
“You were her lover, weren’t you?” Marcus said.
“Not recently.”
“And she was a part of your company. She traveled with you. She was one of your people.”
“She was.”
“And you let me kill her,” Marcus said.
“I did,” Master Kit said. “I believe there is a dignity in consequences, Captain. I think there’s a kind of truth in them, and I try to cultivate a profound respect for truth.”
“Meaning this is Cithrin’s mistake to make.”
“If that’s what you heard me say.”
Yardem flicked an ear, his earrings jingling against each other. Marcus knew what the Tralgu was thinking. She’s not your daughter. Marcus set his foot against the wall of boxes. The wealth of a city that didn’t exist anymore. The gems and trinkets, silk and spices traded to let the lucky escape the flames. All of it together wouldn’t buy back one of the dead. Not even for a day.
So what was the point of it?
“Her plan isn’t bad,” Marcus said. “But I have the right to hate it.”
“I can respect that position,” Master Kit said with a grin. “Shall we prepare the oil bath for the future foundational documents of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva before the women come back?”
Marcus sighed and rose.
When the morning came, Marcus walked beside her. The mornings were still cold, but not so much that he could see his breath. Men and women of the three predominant races of the city passed one another as if the differences in their eyes and builds and pelts were of no particular concern. The morning mist drifted through the great square, greying the dragon’s jade pavement. The condemned of the city shivered in the cold where all could see. Two Firstblood men hung as murderers. A Cinnae woman sat in the stocks with chains around her ankles as a recalcitrant debtor. A Kurtadam man hung by his knees and barely able to draw breath. Smuggling. Marcus could feel Cithrin pause. He wondered what the penalty would be for what they were about to do. It seemed unlikely to have precedent in the judges’ tables.
The wide copper-and-oak doors of the governor’s palace were already open, a stream of humanity pouring in and out from the center of authority. Cithrin lifted her chin. Smit had painted her face before they left. Faint, greyish lines around her eyes. Rose-grey blush coloring her cheeks. She wore a black dress that flattered her hips, but the way a matron might be flattered. Not a girl fresh from her father’s home. She could have been thirty. She could have been fifteen. She could have been anything.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Don’t walk from your ankles,” he said, and she slowed, taking the brickwork steps one at a time.
Within the palaces, the sunlight filtered through great walls of colored glass. Red and green and gold spilled across the floors, the twinned stairways. It mottled the skins of the people walking through, leaving Marcus with the sense of being in some enchanted grotto from a children’s song, where all the fish had been changed to minor political officials. Cithrin took a long, shuddering breath. For a moment, he thought she would leave. Turn on her heel, flee, and leave the whole mad folly behind. Instead, she stepped forward and put a hand on the arm of a passing Kurtadam woman.
“Forgive me,” Cithrin said. “Where would I find the Prefect of Trades?”
“Up the stairs, ma’am,” the Kurtadam said with a soft southland lisp. “He’ll be a Cinnae like yourself. Green felt table, ma’am.”
“My thanks,” Cithrin said, and turned toward the stairs. The Kurtadam woman’s gaze stayed on Marcus, and he nodded as they passed. As a bodyguard, he felt out of place. There were a few queensmen here, scattered among the crowd, but no other private guards that he could see. He wondered if the real Medean bank would have brought him along or left him outside.
At the top of the stair, Cithrin paused, and he did as well. The prefectures were set haphazardly about the room like a huge child had taken up the tables and scattered them. There were no aisles, no rows. Each table stood at an angle to the ones around it, and if there was a system to the chaos, Marcus couldn’t see it. Cithrin nodded to herself, gestured that he should stay close, and waded into the mess. A third of the way across, she came to a table covered with green felt where a Cinnae man in a brown tunic sat paging through stacks of parchment. A small weighing scale perched beside him, a row of weights behind it like soldiers at attention.
“Help you?” he said.
“I’ve come to submit letters of foundation,” Cithrin said. Marcus felt his heart speeding up, like the moments before a battle. He crossed his arms and scowled.
“What class of trade, ma’am?”
“Banking,” Cithrin said, as if she were doing something perfectly normal. The Prefect of Trades looked up as if seeing her for the first time.
“If you mean a gambling house-”
“No,” Cithrin said. “A branch house. The holding company is in Carse. I have the papers, if you’d like.”
She held them out. Marcus was certain he caught a whiff of old urine, that the section of the page that the wax had protected showed three shades darker than the rest. The prefect would laugh, call the queensmen, end the game here before it began.
The Cinnae man took the parchment as if it were spun glass. He frowned, his gaze skipping over the words. He stopped and looked up at Cithrin. His pale face flushed.
“The… the Medean bank?” he said. Marcus saw the conversations around them shudder and stop. More eyes were turning their way. The prefect swallowed. “Will this be a restricted license or free?”
“I believe the letter calls for free,” Cithrin said.
“So it does. So it does. A full and unencumbered branch of the Medean bank.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” the man said, and fumbled, reading for her name on the papers. “No, Mistress bel Sarcour, only I hadn’t been told to expect it. If the governor knew, he’d have been here.”
“Not called for,” Cithrin said. “Would I pay the fees to you?”
“Yes,” the prefect said. “Yes, that would be fine. Let me just…”
For what felt like a day and likely took less than half an hour, Cithrin fenced with the bureaucrat. Payment was delivered from the bank, assayed, accepted, and receipts issued. The man scribbled a note on a sheet of pink onionskin, pressed an inked signet on the page, signed, and had Cithrin put her name over his signature. Then he offered her a small silver blade. As if she had done it a thousand times before Cithrin cut her thumb and pressed her
