The King's Blood

She’s a lucky girl, my new daughter, to have a husband like you.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Jorey,” Dawson said, catching his son at the doorway. “The world’s briefer than we think, and less certain. Don’t wait to have children.”

Cithrin

The Stormcrow was one of the first ships Cithrin had accepted an insurance contract against, and it took time to put the story together of how she was lost. She was a three-masted roundboat, deep-bellied and well crewed. The captain, a Dartinae man whose eyes glowed green rather than the usual yellow, had walked Cithrin across the deck when the contract had first been made. She still remembered the pride in his voice. He’d told how many times the ship had made the blue-water trade to Far Syramys before he’d settled into his retirement. No more the long, landless weeks navigating by stars and hoping for the distant coasts. Now he was making the simple, riskless trade between the Free Cities, Put, Birancour, and Narinisle. The storms of the Inner Sea might swamp the little galleys they ran, but not a real ship like the Stormcrow. She’d weathered cyclones in the ocean sea. He’d made light of the pirates that haunted the coast of Cabral. Coast-humpers, he called them. Anyone makes trouble, just set the sail toward open water and let their own cowardice do the rest.

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 cafe, 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.”