She pushed the door open and walked through.
Within, the counting house was less gloomy than she’d expected, lit by clerestory windows and filled with potted ivies and violets on the edge of bloom. A man about Marcus Wester’s age—beginning to thicken and grey, but not yet old—with skin the color of polished mahogany leaned out of a door she hadn’t seen.
“Help you?” he asked.
Cithrin held up the books as if they were a ward against evil.
“I’ve brought the reports from Porte Oliva,” she said. Her voice was tight and high. She gave thanks she hadn’t squeaked.
“Ah, you’ll want the holding company. It’s three streets north and one west. Use the gate on the west side.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then, “Are you Magister Nison, then?”
A degree of interest came into the man’s expression.
“I am.”
“Magister Imaniel used to talk about you,” she said, forcing herself to smile.
It wasn’t truth. She’d taken his name from the papers and books that had come with her from Vanai. But Magister Imaniel was dead. Cam was dead. All the people who could say otherwise were gone from the world, and so the truth could be whatever she wanted it to be. And right now, she wanted it to be that she and this stranger shared a connection, however slight.
In less than a heartbeat confusion gave way to surprise, and surprise to amusement.
“You’re bel Sarcour, then,” Nison said. “Wait just a moment.”
He vanished again, and she heard his voice calling for someone, and another man’s voice calling back. The accent of Carse was fast and clipped, and the only words she could make out were
He stepped back into sight wearing a cloak of undyed wool and a smile that didn’t seem entirely benign.
“Let me escort you, Magistra,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
If the counting house had been modest, the holding company more than made up for it. Five stories high, it looked less like a building within a city than a fortified keep of its own. The unglazed windows were thin as arrow- slits and the roof had decorative stonework that could easily act as ramparts. Nison guided her through an iron gate and into a courtyard like a palace’s. A fountain chuckled and burbled, and incense wafted from windows covered by intricate carved shutters. Servants or slaves had washed the paving stones until there seemed to be neither dirt nor dust anywhere in the yard. He led her into a wide, airy chamber of brick and tapestry and from there up a stairway that curved with the wall to a doorway of oak inlaid with ivory and jet.
It made sense that the holding company would have greater wealth than any of the branches. It was, after all, the reason to have a holding company rather than simply a central branch of the bank. The profits and losses from any individual branch—her own, Magister Nison’s, or any of the others—were specific to that branch. They rose or fell on their merits, and all of them paid into a separate business that was the holding company, which gave out no loans and accepted no deposits, but rather mediated the flow of gold between the branches. No one outside the bank held a contract with the holding company or Komme Medean. If Cithrin gave out too many insurance contracts before a war or a bad storm season, she could bankrupt her branch, but her debt ended with her. No one could make claim from this building or from any other branch. In fact, depending on the situation, the holding company might be among the creditors she would suffer to repay.
It seemed little more than a told story, but it was a fiction that made this house a port of safety for wealth and her own an engine of risk. She knew all this and understood it as she knew her numbers and letters. Only she had never before seen it in practice. Silently, she began to recalculate her branch and its worth in terms of the doors and fountains, tapestry and incense. Her head swam a little.
The woman who opened the door to Magister Nison’s rapping was dressed in a dark robe of fine cotton and had her sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Cithrin smiled and nodded, totally unsure whether she was seeing a woman of the highest status or a well-dressed servant and trying to land somewhere that would offend neither one. At her side, Magister Nison nodded his head in her direction.
“Magistra bel Sarcour just in from Porte Oliva. She’s brought the reports. I thought Komme might like to meet the girl with the biggest balls in Birancour.”
“Actually, I’m from the Free Cities,” Cithrin said. “Originally.”
It was idiotic, but the words spilled out of her mouth as if she’d planned them. The dark-robed woman lifted an eyebrow.
“He’s a bit under the weather,” the woman said. “It’s a bad day.”
“I can come back another time,” Cithrin said, already half turned away.
“Who’s come?” a man’s voice called. “Who is it?”
The woman put a hand on Cithrin’s wrist like holding a dog’s ear to keep it from straying, then leaned back and spoke loudly.
“Magister Nison and Magistra bel Sarcour.”
“And you’re going to keep ’em standing there?”
The woman and Nison exchanged a shrug, and she stepped back, motioning them into the private rooms. The floors were golden-brown wood of a kind Cithrin had never seen before lacquered until it shone like wet stone. Sconces of gold and silver hung from the walls, the polished metal throwing back the light of small, delicate candles. A tapestry hung on the wall unmistakably showing the building that they were presently in, but in colors so bright and vibrant that Cithrin couldn’t begin to imagine what dyes could have done it; it was like looking at the iridescent wing of a butterfly. She wished that she’d stopped to buy some grander dress before she came. Or at least cleaner sandals.
The room they entered was open on one side to a balcony that looked down into the courtyard. The branches of a tree shifted in their spring green, the new leaves catching the sun and glittering like water or coins. Komme Medean lay in the center of the room, reclining on a seat woven from leather straps. Apart from a loincloth, he was naked, his brown skin powdered almost white. His belly was the solid fat of middle age, and a fringe of white hair clung to his scalp. He reminded Cithrin of a lump of bread dough coated with flour and left to rise.
His right leg was bent and of normal human proportion, but his left stood straight out, held in its own sling. The knee and ankle were massive, misshapen, and angry. A young Timzinae in the robes of a cunning man was crouched beside the diseased limb, chanting under his breath. Cithrin had never seen a man with gout before, and while she’d known it was an unpleasant ailment, she hadn’t understood the degree. She forced herself not to stare. Something in the cunning man’s fingers clicked, and he grunted as if in pain. Komme Medean ignored him. Pale brown eyes swept up and down her, evaluating her not the way a man would a woman, but as a carpenter might a plank of lumber.
“I’ve brought the reports from Porte Oliva,” Cithrin said.
“All right. What do you want?” Komme Medean said. And when she didn’t answer immediately, “You carried your reports yourself instead of sending a courier. You came here yourself. You want something. What is it?”
The moment balanced on the edge of a blade. It was true, she’d come all this way, and for this. To speak to the man at the center of the great labyrinth of power and gold and win him over to her. She’d imagined the delicate conversation of a courtier, the half-playful and half-serious questions that Magister Imaniel had raised her with. She’d imagined herself impressing the man slowly over the course of hours or days. And now, instead, she stood before a mostly naked, sick man, as the central question lay out on the floor between them like a broken toy.
The moment stretched, and Cithrin felt her opportunity slipping just beyond her reach. She was embarrassing herself in front of the very man she’d meant to impress. And then, from the back of her mind, an old voice whispered. Cary, the actress who’d helped Cithrin play the part of a banker, of a woman full-grown and at the height of her power.
Cithrin raised her courage and her chin.
“I’ve come to tell you your notary has the soul of a field mouse and the tact of a landslide. And after that, I want to charm you into giving me more of your money and greater freedom to use it,” Cithrin said. Her voice a little hard and buzzing at the edges. “How’m I doing so far?”
The room was silent. Even the cunning man stopped his chanting. And then Komme Medean, soul and spirit
