The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin) (16 page)

The man across the table from them chuckled. Even seated, he was half a head taller than Isadau. The chitinous scales on his neck and face had begun to grey and crack with age. Cithrin sipped at her tea and smiled politely.

“You don’t do yourself any favors gouging us when we’re low, Isadau,” he said.

“You aren’t low. You’re at war.”

The man’s name was Kilik rol Keston, and Cithrin knew from her review of the books that he traded spice and olives from Elassae north to Borja, returning with worked leather and medicines. The bank had insured his caravans every year for the past decade and paid out the contract only once. It was the sort of information she would have used to make her determination in Porte Oliva or that Magister Imaniel would have considered in Vanai. It appeared to be only a part of Magistra Isadau’s calculations.

“This isn’t a war,” Kilik said, “it’s the world teaching Antea a lesson about the price of overreach. If anything, it makes my work safer. The traditional families aren’t going to be arguing over who gets to levy taxes every half mile of the eastern passage.”

“You’re hauling food and medicine past refugees,” Isadau said. “Next you’ll be storing your seed corn in a sparrow’s nest.”

A thick man passing by their table clapped a wide hand on Kilik’s shoulder.

“Why do you even talk to this woman?” the new man asked. “She’s only going to rob you.”

“Misplaced loyalty,” Kilik said sourly.

“Oh, did you want the contract, Samish?” Isadau asked, smiling brightly. Then to Kilik, “You know Samish has been offering very good terms on his insurance contracts.”

“Better than yours, that’s truth,” Samish said, sitting down at Kilik’s side. Cithrin felt her gut go tight. Anywhere she had ever been, the intrusion would have been unforgivable. Here, it meant nothing. “What’s this hag offering?”

“Half recompense for six on the hundred,” Kilik said, and Samish’s eyebrows rose like birds taking wing.

“You’re joking,” he said, and Cithrin thought he sounded genuinely surprised.

“Half recompense on expected sale,” Isadau said, “not on cost.”

Samish’s expression changed to a sly smile and he wagged a scolding finger at Kilik. “You’re being tricky with me, brother. But because our fathers fought together, I’ll give you five and a half on the hundred.”

Kilik looked at Isadau and pointed toward Samish as if to say,
You see how much better I can do?
Cithrin felt a rush of anger, but Isadau laughed.

“My terms don’t change,” she said, rising from the table. Cithrin sipped down the last of her tea too quickly and got a mouthful of soaked leaf for her trouble. When she stood Isadau took her elbow like they were close confidants and steered her back through the overwhelming din and chatter of the trading house. As they reached the door to the yard, she squeezed Cithrin’s arm once and tilted her head in query. Cithrin shrugged.

“I wish we could make our negotiations at the house,” Cithrin said. “I hate losing a contract because we were where we could be overheard.”

“We didn’t lose the contract. Kilik’s an old hand at this. He’ll spend the rest of the day wandering about talking, and he’ll find that Samish is overcommitted. The caravan will take insurance with us because he wants to be the gambler and have the insurance be his safety. He won’t risk his trade on someone who might be destitute when the time arrived to make a claim. Not for one-half on the hundred,” Isadau said, then paused. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. Her easy joy was gone from it. “I do worry about this war, though.”

In the yard, Enen and Yardem Hane leaned against a low stone wall, talking with a Timzinae girl old enough to have a woman’s figure but still with the light brown scales of youth. Yardem’s ears shifted toward them as they approached and Enen lifted her soft-pelted chin. The girl turned, caught sight of Isadau, and trotted up to meet them.

“Magistra,” the girl said.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, dear,” Isadau said. “Maha, this is Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour from the new Porte Oliva branch. Cithrin, this is my cousin Merid’s daughter Maha.”

Cithrin nodded her head and the girl matched her before turning back to Isadau.

“Papa said you should come when you can,” she said, then leaned closer and shifted to a whisper. “He’s got information about the lemon crop.”

Isadau nodded and let Cithrin’s arm go free.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to meet you back at the house,” she said.

“That’s fine,” Cithrin said. The girl took Magistra Isadau’s hand, and the pair of them walked briskly off through the gate and out to the uncurbed stone-paved road. Yardem and Enen came forward.

“Is all well, ma’am?” Yardem asked in his soft low voice.

“Apparently,” Cithrin said. “But I couldn’t start to tell you why.”

Enen scratched her collarbone, setting the beads woven into her pelt clicking. “I had that experience of them too. Timzinae are the worst. Haaverkin or Jasuru—even Tralgu, if you don’t mind my saying it, Yardem—you deal with them and you at least know you’re in for something odd. Timzinae seem just like anyone right up until they don’t, and then who the hell knows what they’re thinking?”

The city was low all around them, the wide streets with stretches of grass and low scrub between them and the houses making it seem less a city than a village grown vast. Horses and mules drew large carts, men small ones. The air smelled of the sea but also of turned earth and damp. Above them, the sky was a blue so intense it was hard to look at and the sun glowed like a great burning coin. Cithrin crossed her arms as she walked, realizing only after she’d done it that she missed Magistra Isadau’s touch and was trying to make up for its loss. She dropped her arms to her sides.

“Where’s Roach?” she asked. “Wasn’t he on duty today?”

“Took his shift for him, gave him a day’s liberty,” Yardem said. “He has a nephew getting wed.”

“Really?” Cithrin said. “I didn’t know he had family in Suddapal.”

“Some,” Yardem said.

“He never mentioned them to me.”

“Don’t know that he felt it was his place to, ma’am,” Yardem said. Enen cleared her throat in a way that sounded more for preparation than for comfort. Cithrin turned to look at her. The Kurtadam woman’s face was masked by the oily seal-like fur of her pelt, but the discomfort showed through in her eyes.

“I was just thinking, Magistra,” Enen said. “You might not want to call him that while we’re here.”

“Who? Roach?” Cithrin said. “Isn’t that his name?”

“His name’s Halvill,” Yardem said. “Halvill rol Kausol. Roach was just what people called him in Porte Oliva. Sort of the way people might call a Southling ‘Eyehole’ or a Kurtadam ‘Clicker.’”

“Oh,” Cithrin said. “I didn’t know it bothered him.”

Yardem shrugged. “He’s never said it does. He’s not the sort that makes trouble.”

“Only if other people hear you saying it, they might take it wrong is all,” Enen said.

“I understand,” Cithrin said, trying to recall how many times she’d called the little Timzinae guard by name and who had been present when she had. “Thank you.”

C
ithrin had spent most of her life being alone. As a girl, she had been the odd one of her cohort, fitting as poorly with the children of nobility as the urchins who ran in the streets. When she left Vanai, she had adopted false identities, from boy carter to agent of the Medean bank, which had required a certain distance from the world to remain plausible. The work of banking itself was isolated. Simply being known as the woman who could lift a poor man to wealth so long as he was wise, prudent, and lucky—or destroy the highborn if they were prodigal and weak—made her a race of one. She was a banker, and so of course she was alone.

Still, the isolation she felt in the compound at Suddapal was unlike the cultivated distances she’d experienced before. Here, she could retreat to her room, close the door behind her, and feel like a prisoner waiting for the magistrate’s justice, or else she could go out into the compound and be greeted and welcomed to half a dozen conversations and endeavors from quilting to shoeing horses to sitting with the children of the family and improvising poetry, and never once feel she was truly at home. Being alone in her room, trapped by the walls, was unpleasant. Being alone in the midst of a group that seemed to go out of its way to make her welcome was worse. The only solace she could take was the branch’s books and kitchen’s wine cellar, and so over weeks, she had become a citizen of both.

The evening meals came late, the wide hall with Magistra Isadau and her siblings and their families and friends often making room for twenty people. Afterward, the diners would withdraw to the yard or to private rooms. The sound of lutes and drums and living voices lifted in harmony were as much a part of the after-meal as sweet wines and cups of chocolate. Cithrin, though, excused herself from the merriment, took a bottle or two of the rich red wine the house imported from Pût, and took some ledger or company book from Magistra Isadau’s office to her room to read like a girl lulling herself to sleep with a volume of poetry. The wine calmed the tightness in her body, the play of numbers and agreements occupied her mind until the music of the house didn’t bother her and the cold of the night drove her under her blankets and, at last, to sleep.

Except that some nights, sleep would not come. On those, she would rise, dress in her dark wools, and walk the halls of the compound. There were always a few men and women still awake or else woken early for the next day. The capacity of the Timzinae to go without sleep was remarkable to her. On one such night, she found Yardem sitting at the watch fire alone, staring at the stars scattered above them and listening to the first crickets of spring.

She looked up, tracing the new constellations she knew. Stars were not her passion.

“Evening, ma’am,” he said. “You’re up late.”

“I suppose,” she said, her words careful and deliberately unslurred. “You are too.”

“Am,” Yardem said and flicked one jingling ear. It might have been only her imagination, but the Tralgu’s wide, canine face seemed wistful. “Seems we’re settling in well.”

“Yes,” Cithrin said. “Magistra Isadau is a very intelligent woman. From everything I saw at the market house, I’d have thought the bank would be barely turning a profit, but she manages to do quite well.”

“I was thinking more of the household,” Yardem said.

“They’re very kind,” Cithrin said. “I’ve never been around a real family before. To see the way they treat each other … the way they treat us, for that. They’re all so open and loving and accepting. It’s like we’ve always belonged here and just never knew it.”

In the trees at the compound’s edge, an owl launched itself up against the stars, a shadow moving on darkness. Yardem traced its arc with eyes and ears, and Cithrin followed it by following him. The silence between them was calm, companionable. Cithrin put her small hand over the back of his.

“I hate it here,” she said. “I have never hated anyplace as much as here.”

“I know.”

“It is obvious? I try not to let it show.”

“I’ve known you a while,” Yardem said.

“They’re all so kind, and all I can feel is how little I belong with them. Magistra Isadau? She’s like a good witch from a children’s story. She’s sweet and she’s wise and she wants the best from me, and it makes my skin crawl. I keep thinking that I wouldn’t know it if she hated me. God knows she’d treat me just as well.”

A falling star streaked overhead, there and then gone.

“I knew a man once,” Yardem said. “Good fighter, pleasant to keep watch with. The sort of man who’d have done well in a company. Might have gotten as far as running one if he’d kept at it. Only he’d spent his whole youth as a slave. He’d do well enough when we were on campaign, but when we were done and he had time and money of his own and no one telling him what to do? He didn’t know how to act.”

“How did he deal with it?”

“At first, the captain tried keeping him back, giving him duties even while the other men went out and drank themselves poor. Treated the boy like he was still enslaved. That worked for a time, but in the end it wasn’t enough. It took the boy a season to manage it, but the magistrates stripped his freedom and sold him to a farmer.”

“That’s sad.”

“Is it?”

An insect landed on Cithrin, its legs struggling against the fine, pale hair of her forearm. She flicked it away.

“We say our souls want joy, but they don’t,” she said. “They want what they already know, joyful or not.”

Yardem grunted as if he’d taken a blow to the gut and pulled his hand away from her to scratch an itch she doubted was really there.

“What about you?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“Should.”

“But you can’t.”

“Apparently not.”

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“The war, partly. The word in the trade has it that Antea is stretched tight as a drumskin. Wore themselves thin last year, and on the edge of falling apart. Except there’s other stories too.”

“You can’t say that and not tell,” Cithrin said. “I’d fire you.”

“They’re saying that the spirits of the dead march with the Antean army. And that the birds and dogs all start running away before their army comes the way they do from a fire. Makes it sound as if there’s something uncanny about the Lord Regent, like he’s some sort of cunning man.”

“Geder’s not a cunning man,” Cithrin said. “He’s … he’s just a man of too little wisdom and too much power.”

“You sound sad for him.”

“No,” she said. “He burned my city. Killed the people who raised and looked after me. I lived with him for weeks. Took comfort in him. I don’t think there’s a word for what he and I are to each other.”

“Do you love him?”

“Are you
drunk
?”

“You took comfort in him,” Yardem said. “For some people—”

“He got anxious, I didn’t say no. What’s love got to do with that?”

“Nothing,” Yardem agreed. “Only there are people who don’t see it that way.”

“They’re fools,” Cithrin said, without rancor. And then, “You said partly. What’s the other part?”