that she’d find something else to do. Leave you with the bank.”
“I don’t make her decisions. And I don’t know that she’ll stay away. Only I can see that she might.”
“All right,” Marcus said. “That could happen.” “If it does, do you still work here?”
Marcus smiled. The hollowness had a touch of anger now. He didn’t want Cithrin to leave the bank and Porte Oliva, and he didn’t like thinking what it meant that he didn’t.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a particular answer you’re looking for?”
“There is,” Pyk said. “I want you to say you will. Having Marcus Wester collecting the debts gives the bank a certain weight. And you’re good at it. But if you’re only here for the girl, then you’re only here for the girl.”
“Well, I’m here until the girl comes back,” he said. “If she doesn’t, we can talk about it then.”
Pyk’s wide, yellowed eyes took him in and she sucked at her teeth.
“That’s good enough,” she said. “And you can hire back the men I had you take down and put the other back at full rates.”
“Now that she’s gone, you mean?” Marcus said, pushing himself off the wall. “Cithrin’s here, you’ll make it hard and mean and small, but when everyone knows it’s your hand on the purse, it’s all open? That how this is?”
Pyk’s smile was so wide, he saw the holes where her tusks had been gaping dark in her gums. Her laughter wasn’t a sound but a motion in her shoulders and her belly. She shook her head.
“The girl’s letter didn’t come alone,” she said. “The holding company saw the reports. It approved my request to budget more for the guards. So now I put in more money for guards. It’s not a mystery. I’m not the villain here. You can stop treating me like one.”
Marcus stood, anger and confusion and embarrassment growing in him.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t know you had to have your budget approved.”
“Don’t, strictly speaking,” Pyk said. “But the Porte Oliva branch has a reputation as unpredictable. I’m tacking into that wind. Can’t think where it came from.”
“Anything else?” Marcus said.
“Is. Keep an ear to the ground for anything about a captain name of Uus rol Osterhaal. He’ll have been coming up from Lyoneia, but he might not be announcing the fact.”
“Anything I’m trying to find out?”
“Whatever you can. Bring me what you find, and I’ll know whether it’s useful or not. You can go now. I’m going to sit here and sweat a while more.”
Marcus walked back out. He felt like he’d been in the gymnasium, down in the fighting pits getting a fist sunk just under his ribs. The world was unchanged, but it was also different. Porte Oliva seemed smaller. Thin. As if the only thing that had given the city any sense of reality was that Cithrin lived here. And if this wasn’t her city, then it was an encrustation of buildings stuck on a rock overlooking the sea. Wasn’t much charm in that.
He walked slowly, retracing his steps. The rain was still falling, though if anything less now than it had been. The streets were wet and slick, and they stank. In an hour, maybe two, the heat would loosen its grasp a little. He’d still be sweating through his shirts until morning. It would be like that until the days got short again. But he would be here when it happened. He’d be working for Pyk Usterhall and the Medean bank and waiting for Cithrin to come home until it was clear that she wouldn’t.
He held the thought in his mind like pressing his tongue to a sore tooth.
“She’s not my daughter,” he said to himself. A small voice in the far, dark reaches of his mind answered,
He wasn’t sure what he’d thought. What he’d expected. That they would stay there, he supposed. That he and Yardem would keep her and her bank safe, if not forever, then for years at the least. It wasn’t something Cithrin had promised him or that he’d asked from her. If she found a better path, a better plan, taking it wasn’t any betrayal of him.
A beggar came up to him with her hand out, then met his eyes, started, and backed away. He was almost back at the taproom before he knew he was going there. The sound of the voices in the courtyard was just as loud. Maybe louder. He made his way in. He saw Yardem see him. The Tralgu’s ears went up and forward, straining at him, but Marcus only lifted a hand, more acknowledgment than greeting.
Qahuar Em and his client were sitting at a small table in the shade of a wide white wall. Seagulls were screeching and wheeling out beyond them, grey against the white sky. Marcus hesitated. He’d taken enough lovers in the years after Ellis that he knew what sex would ease and what it wouldn’t. Right now, his body wasn’t hungry. He didn’t need release for its own sake. The thing that would soothe him now, he wasn’t going to find in a woman’s bed.
Or anywhere else.
And more than that? What did he want that was more than that? What had Cithrin taken with her that left him angry with no one to be angry at?
The woman with Qahuar Em looked over, saw him, smiled. Marcus smiled back. This was a mistake, but it was his to make. He found the serving boy, made his order, and gave him a silver coin that would have paid twice over. When he approached the table, Qahuar Em smiled and lifted his eyebrows.
“Evening,” Marcus said. “I hoped I could return your kindness. Stand you to a round?”
“Of course,” Qahuar Em said. “This is Arinn Costallin, a dear friend of mine from Herez.”
“Marcus Wester,” he said, taking her hand. “So I’ve heard,” she said.
Yardem found him by the seawall just before dawn. Marcus wasn’t drunk anymore. The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, and the clouds had scattered. Yardem had a sack of roasted nuts in his hand. When he squatted down next to Marcus, he held its open mouth toward him. Marcus took a handful. They tasted sweet and meaty.
“Didn’t see you at the barracks,” Yardem said.
“I am an ass.”
Yardem nodded and bit down on a nut. They chewed together quietly for a time. A seagull called, lofting up into the darkness, then, as if confused, swung back and landed on the cliff face below them.
“Moved too fast with her, sir?”
“Did.”
“Should we be expecting children?”
“No. I was careful about that, at least. But then after, I started talking about…”
Marcus leaned forward, his head in his hands.
“Might have been a little early to talk about them, sir.”
“Might have.”
“Scared her off of you.”
“Did,” Marcus said. Below them, fishing boats had put out to sea for the day. Tiny black dots on a nearly black sea.
“Was this about Alys and Merian?” Yardem asked. “Or was it about the magistra?”
“Cithrin.”
“You think she isn’t coming back, then.”
“I think she may not. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. And someday I’ll need to find what it’s going to take to get a family I can keep.”
Yardem nodded and flicked one jingling ear. They were silent for a moment.
“I have an answer for that,” Yardem said.
“Is it theological?”
“Is.”
“Best we save it, then,” Marcus said, clapping his hands on his thighs and standing up. His back was a single long ache, and his mouth felt as dry as cotton. When he stretched his arms, something between his shoulders cracked like a dry stick. “I take it Pyk has a list of work for us?”
“Does, sir. But if you’d like to sleep, I can take a group through it all. It’s not so much we can’t manage without.”
