The Widow's House

Cithrin

Everything had a cost. Cithrin knew that the way she knew her own body. It was simply the way the world was built. Even an apple given freely had to be carried or eaten or thrown away at the risk of offending the giver. A word kindly given cost the time it took to respond and to think afterward whether it had been truly meant. Having Marcus Wester at her side was a tremendous and likely critical advantage. It had, as she’d hoped, brought her before the king so quickly that Komme Medean and the holding company weren’t even aware as yet that she was in the city. That King Tracian’s interest and curiosity were built on a bedrock of fear was part of the price of it. It meant having the first part of the conversation in a pit where the king and his guards posed a much greater physical threat to them than they could to him. That was easy enough to ignore. Marcus’s cold smile and the way he spoke even the most innocuous words could be a prelude to violence and meant that his part of the work was done, and he needed to be put aside as quickly and gently as she could manage.

She had hoped to spend more time leading up to the proposal. Discussing Antea and the fall of Suddapal and Porte Oliva, perhaps. Something that would leave the king thinking of Geder as the more immediate threat. With Marcus in the room visibly restraining himself from snarling, bringing in the prospect of money at once seemed a better tactic. Gold had the advantage of being distracting.

“I was thinking of giving you a great deal of money,” she said.

For the first time, Tracian’s attention entirely left Marcus. Cithrin smiled. Look, there’s no animus. We are all allies and friends. In the corner of her eye, Yardem moved nearer to Marcus. She hoped they would both sit down.

“Well, I can’t say I’m averse to the idea,” King Tracian said. “But that isn’t what I’ve come to expect. Magister Nison has always been quite adamant that loaning money to the crown was out of the question.”

“I am not Magister Nison,” she said. “All respect to the man, but his position and mine are somewhat different.”

She saw the motion in her peripheral vision as Yardem and Marcus sat, giving the focus of the performance to her. If there was a way, once this was all done, she would have to give the Tralgu a gift as thanks. A plant, perhaps. The king frowned, but there was, she thought, a glint of interest in his eyes. Interest or avarice. One was as good as the next.

“How so? You’re both bankers. You answer to Komme.”

Cithrin spread her arms the way she imagined Cary would have, playing to the crowd. “I have spent the last year in the teeth of war, and Magister Nison’s been here. He is looking for reasons to keep money from you so that his branch can have it. I am looking for ways to give it to you so that we can both be safe. I’m afraid the importance I put on profit may not be as great as it was.” She let her voice quiver just slightly. You see? I’m afraid. Oh so afraid.

“Don’t overplay it,” Kit whispered, and Cithrin coughed.

Tracian was at the rail above her now, his hands resting on its edge. She could see directly up his nose, and he, likely, was looking down her dress. It was awkward for both of them, which was fine. The sooner they moved to a drawing room where the walls themselves didn’t cast them as enemies, the better it would be.

“A banker who doesn’t serve profit’s an odd thing,” he said.

“These are exceptional times. You’ve heard of what Magistra Isadau and I did after the fall of Suddapal.”

“Komme visits me on occasion, but he doesn’t tell me everything he knows.”

“But you have heard,” Cithrin said. You are king, and you have control. Truth was the best flattery, when that could be managed. It spoke well of him as a man that his expression shifted toward the solemn when he spoke. It could as easily have moved toward self-congratulation.

“I have,” he said. “The ambitions of the Severed Throne have been a subject of a great deal of conversation at court.”

“Will you hear my opinion?”

“Well,” Tracian said. “As I recall, you are the expert on the private mind of Geder Palliako.”

It was meant to embarrass her, so she grimaced as if embarrassed. The king’s smile was almost conciliatory, as if sorry to have brought up something so indiscreet. She understood for the first time how deeply King Tracian was out of his depth, and tried not to let the realization show in her voice or manner. “I suppose that’s true,” she said. “I believe that Antea is on the dragon’s path. Its war will not end.”

“Even the dragon’s war ended,” King Tracian said.

Master Kit coughed politely and stepped forward. “With respect, Your Grace, it did not. This is the dragon’s war.”

“It’s come back to life like a fire rising from old embers,” Cithrin said. “And Palliako is its tool, not its master. It can’t be ended in the normal ways. Even if Antea conquered every other throne in the world, the violence would not end. The fighting will come here, and you will need every advantage you can dream of to survive it.”

“Antea has no quarrel with me,” King Tracian said. “We have few Timzinae here. We have a long history of cordial relations with the Severed Throne. You are the greatest danger I see.”

“None of that will save you,” Master Kit said. “You may walk as if on eggshells, and it will not keep you safe. You may give Antea everything it asks for, and it will still come to violence. You know that to be true, Majesty. Look in your heart, and you’ll find you know our words are fact.”

The king’s gaze flickered to from Cithrin to Kit and back to Cithrin. “And who exactly is this man?”

“His name is Kitap rol Keshmet, and he’s my expert on Palliako’s master.”

“The spider goddess?” the king asked.

“No, Your Grace. Worse than that. Even gods and goddesses may die. I stand before you as the warning against a particularly bad idea. There is no sword so sharp it draws blood from a mistaken thought.”

King Tracian scowled. “I don’t understand.”

“I will be happy to explain it,” Kit said. “It is important that you know. But also, it is important that you have every resource at hand to stand against the coming madness.” He nodded toward Cithrin.

“Ah yes,” King Tracian said. “The great deal of money?”

“I have the remaining resources of Suddapal and Porte Oliva in my command. I propose to lend them to you for the duration of the war, but I would ask a favor in return.”

“Sanctuary?” King Tracian asked.

“No,” Cithrin said. “Permission to trade. If I hand you all my capital, I have nothing left to do business with. No way to buy, no way to sell. I would ask that you permit me to write letters of transfer based on the gold I have given you.”

“I don’t know what that means,” the king said.

“Only that the loan I give you, I may transfer to others. After the war, when the world is safe again, you will repay your debt. Of course you will. You’re an honest and honorable man. Yes?”

“Of course,” Tracian said. She couldn’t tell whether he believed it or not, but it hardly mattered.

“Between that time and this,” she said, spreading her hands, “I would like the exclusive permission of the throne to issue letters of transfer. Should I wish to purchase a bolt of cloth or supplies for a brewery, I will write a letter transferring part of your debt to me to the seller. So if I were to purchase seven tenthweights of gold worth of barley, I would be able to write a letter transferring seven tenthweights of your debt to that merchant. And when the time came to repay the debt, the merchant would be guaranteed the gold directly from the crown. You would repay him as you would have me.”

“In that manner,” Master Kit said, “Magistra Cithrin’s bank could continue to trade and function, you see.”

“It would require that you let it be known that the crown guaranteed the debt,” Cithrin said. “You would need to make a proclamation that the letters were to be respected as one would respect the throne itself.”

“For the duration of a war,” King Tracian said, “that hasn’t started.”

“Until you repay the loan, Your Majesty,” Cithrin said. “Whenever that may be.”

Marcus said something under his breath. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was derisive. Yardem shrugged.

“The danger you are in is real,” Kit said. “Placating Antea will not save you. Listen to my voice. You must be ready when this comes.”

“How much gold are we talking about?” King Tracian asked. She took a deep breath. When she told him, his eyes went wide.

The master of coin was a thin-faced man younger than Marcus Wester and chosen for the position more by the nobility of his blood than his keen understanding of finance. She sat with the man in a comfortable drawing room that looked out over the sea. Their chairs were leather and wood, and the workmanship so solid they didn’t so much as creak. She drank wine and water and ate sugared almonds and salty cheese. He looked over the proclamation she’d drawn up and the terms of her contracts with the crown, scowling and scratching his chin. Kit sat across from her, lending the uncanny power of his voice less often than she had anticipated he would have to. Cithrin kept her hands folded in her lap, waiting for the guards to rush in at any moment, Komme Medean shouting and shrieking at their head.

The two points of critical importance—the exclusivity of her right to issue letters and the consequences of merchants flaunting the crown’s guarantee—hung in the back of her mind, the arguments she’d prepared to support them pressing to get out even before objections were raised. When the master of coin did balk, it was at trivia—the price she was charging the crown for silk and tobacco, how to make certain that no false letters were presented to the treasury. Cithrin responded to every query with dignity and grace because Kit and Cary and the players had taught her how to seem one thing while being something else. If her true self had been at the table, she would have been a creature entirely of laughter and contempt.

When she stepped out of the palace, the sun had already fallen into the western sea. A soft wind shifted through the wide streets, rubbing against Cithrin’s legs like a cat. A group of children ran across the square, chasing one another with laughter and tears. Seagulls wheeled overhead, their twilight-darkened bodies barely showing against the pearl-grey sky. The agreements were signed, King Tracian’s signature and seal already in place. The wealth on the ships still not arrived at Carse had changed as if by a cunning man’s trick. At the height of the day, it had been the capital of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva. Now at evening, it was the property of the crown of Northcoast. Not hers any longer. She had traded it all for a parchment and a few hundred words. At her side, Kit lifted his eyebrows and glanced back at the palace behind them. Have we managed? Did it work?

Her smile was slow and broad and only a little more certain than her heart.

Marcus and Yardem finished exchanging their own banter with the captain of the palace guard, their voices bluff and masculine and uneasy. The pair made their way toward her, Firstblood and Tralgu. The poisoned sword slung across Marcus’s back caught the falling light and seemed to glow green.

“That was it?” Marcus said by way of greeting.

Cithrin lifted her eyebrows. The implicit threat was still in his mouth and the way he held his shoulders. He glanced down the streets around them, not looking directly at her, but watching for dangers she was nearly certain didn’t exist. Or at least not here. Or now. She looked to Yardem and made her gaze a question. Without seeming to move at all, the Tralgu looked pained. They were walking the paths of Wester’s history, and the tension in him was like seeing someone caught in an unexpectedly harsh current. What had happened here might be dead and gone to everyone else in the world, but he was still within it. For him it had never died, and so perhaps it never would. Or at least not while he lived.

She felt a tug of pity for him. “That was it, and it was enough,” Cithrin said.

“I owe Yardem a beer. You owe me a beer. So you buy him one and we’re all square?” Marcus said. “That’s the magic that’s supposed to let you defeat Geder Palliako in the field? Because it seems to me you’ve just given away a lot of gold.”

“I didn’t give it away,” Cithrin said, walking east. The rising night before her was studded with the first stars. Away to their left, the great carved dragon slept at the Grave of Dragons. Now that she’d seen a living example, she could appreciate how true the sculptors had been to their model. Always before it had seemed like an exaggeration. “I bought something with it.”

“Tracian’s goodwill isn’t worth that much,” Marcus said.

“That isn’t what I bought,” Cithrin said. “I bought the crown’s debt.”

“That’s like owning an empty hole and the air to fill it with, from what I can see.”

“That’s all he could see too,” Cithrin said. “He looked at me and saw a frightened woman with more money than sense. And he thinks he took advantage.”

“Well,” Marcus said, “he always was a snot-nosed little brat. His mother, at least, was someone to contend with.”

“He didn’t understand the implications of what he was doing,” Cithrin said.

“He’s got good company in that,” Marcus said, and then sighed. He squinted up at the moon, looking thinner and older and more fragile than her memory of him. She felt the urge to put her arm around him, lean her head against his shoulder as a daughter might to her father. Tentatively, she reached out, touching his elbow. At first he stiffened as if offended, then with a rueful smile he let her tuck her arm through his and walk on into the twilight city. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. As long as you understand it.”

“I do,” she said. “And Komme Medean will too. But he’s not going to like it.”

She would have liked to spend the evening in the city, moving from one taproom to the next, finding the places where musicians played in the cool and darkness, the gambling rooms where desperate men and women played at dice and tiles. Her time in Carse had been so long ago and with the distortions of memory seemed so brief, she wished she could take a few hours to pretend that the time in between hadn’t happened. That Suddapal still stood, that Pyk Usterhall still lived, that Geder Palliako might have found some other lover to occupy his time and attention. The risk was too high. There were too many people there who knew her on sight.

And in truth, what she wanted most was not to have to explain herself to the man whose fortune she’d just committed.

Still, on the way to Magister Nison’s branch, she did contrive to stop at a stand where a Dartinae girl sold bricks of cake and little cloth napkins filled with spiced pork and walnuts. She paused for a long moment at the council tower, looking up at its dark windows, ten floors above the cobbled street. Kit told stories of his travels in the city with the troupe and Yardem made laconic, gentle jokes about the people as they passed. She could feel Marcus softening a bit as they walked and the knot in her own belly starting to tighten. It was as if the alarm of his past was transferring into her and becoming an anxiety for the future. Nor was it the far future she feared. Geder and his blades, the spider priests and their creeping madness. They were the terrors of another day.

The moon was high in the sky and the western horizon utterly black when the moment came she could put off no longer. The holding company was built like a keep within the city. She walked to the great iron gate that stood closed against the uncertain traffic of the night. Two Tralgu guards in light scale armor with short, workmanlike blades stood at a rough sort of attention, but their ears shifted forward as she and the others approached.

“I’ve come to see Komme Medean,” Cithrin said before the guards could call her out.

“Household’s asleep,” the smaller of the two guards said. “You’ll have to wait for morning.”

Her heart leapt at the idea. It wouldn’t be her fault. The guards had turned her away. What could she have done? But, of course, the answer would be obvious. And so she did the obvious.

“Find him or his daughter,” Cithrin said. “Tell them Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour of the Porte Oliva branch has come with news of the war. And that I have a document that they will be very interested in seeing.”