Geder’s own blade sank. Across the wide gap of the Division, a flock of pigeons wheeled in the the air, grey bodies catching the light of the falling sun. It was coming close to summer, and the nights were short. Geder felt the weariness in his body that came from having been awake since first light. Kalliam’s insurrection had been terrible, violent, and uncertain. For weeks, Camnipol had been a battleground, and the scars were still there. Burned-out compounds that hadn’t yet been rebuilt or razed. Street barricades pulled aside or into alleys, but not dismantled. And it wasn’t only the city. Geder felt it in himself too, as much as he tried to deny it or find some joy. Dawson’s betrayal had changed him too.
But in those days and nights squatting in the darkness, hoarding the candles and eating whatever the actors had snuck to them, there had been a kind of distance from the world, a sense of time standing still. He’d spent more time talking to Aster in those few weeks than he had in the whole year since. No council meetings, no servants plucking at him, no duties or expectations or demands. It might have been terrible at the time, but looking back, it seemed benign. A kind of golden moment, barely recognized when it happened.
“It is disappointing, isn’t it?” he said. Aster sighed and looked up at the massive expanse of the Kingspire looming above them.
“I miss Cithrin.”
“I know,” Geder said, swinging his sword through the empty air just the way Aster had been doing not minutes before. “I do too.”
Cithrin
The stream of refugees from Inentai began with a handful that arrived after the fall of Nus. At first they were the sort of people who moved easily through the world—people without work or with the sorts of trade that called for travel, with family in Suddapal to support them or without family anywhere. They came to Suddapal to find new places for themselves, and some petitioned the Medean bank for the coin that would help them begin again. Cithrin sat with Magistra Isadau and listened to the requests, discussed which to accept and which to reject. The woman who needed a loan to join the tanner’s guild had years of experience in Inentai and would be nearly certain to find the work to repay them. The three young men looking to buy a boat had lived all their lives in a landlocked city, and by giving them the money the bank would also be providing them the means to flee the debt should it go bad. Cithrin learned the etiquette of the market houses: when she could step into another conversation and when it would be rude, how to bid up a competitor’s contract to lower their profit and how to build temporary partnerships with them to increase them again. The deep structure of the city slowly became clear to her, like a musician learning a song composed in a foreign style.
But the stream did not stop. More people in larger groups, and of a different nature. As the summer ran its course, whole families came together, carts laden with the possessions of lifetimes. Almost weekly, Magistra Isadau offered the hospitality of the compound to groups too large to find shelter in smaller households. The stories weren’t unexpected. The war in Sarakal was too dangerous, and they had a child or a mother or a cousin in health too fragile to withstand a siege. Often the men of fighting age stayed behind to defend city and country, but not always. Magistra Isadau and her siblings fed their guests and welcomed them to their table. And as if following their example, the fivefold city of Suddapal opened wide its arms and gathered the fugitives of Sarakal into its vast bosom. Even as she watched it, Cithrin understood that the generosity was a symptom of something rotten.
History was clear: refugees of war were seldom if ever welcomed in the cities to which they fled unless they brought with them something of value. And yet all, or nearly all, of the citizens of Inentai were welcomed. And so they all, even the poorest, had something of value. The explanation was simple: by their presence, they carried the story that Suddapal was safe. That image of the city was powerfully reassuring, almost intoxicating, to its citizens, because they knew it wasn’t true.
It was a matter of time before the grand and glorious fabrication collapsed. It would begin with one or two pessimists and dissenters, then a handful more, and then everyone. And when it came, it would come as letters of credit. The carefully coded instruments could be purchased with anything—coin, cloth, spice, steel—and presented at any of the Medean bank’s branches for nine-tenths of the value they’d been bought at. Lightweight, portable, and valueless to anyone besides the one named on them, the papers were perfect for anyone who had come to the conclusion that Suddapal had become a place to flee from rather than to. And they were not greatly in demand. Not yet.
After the day’s work at the trading house was finished, Cithrin followed Magistra Isadau on her walks through the city. They would stroll through the wide commons where the tents and carts of the refugees had become almost a township in themselves, or down to the massive piers where ships from across the Inner Sea came and went. Isadau had introduced Cithrin to many of the secret wonders of the city: an herb market in the third city where three full streets were lined with tables filled with living plants and the scent of soil; an ancient Tralgu cunning man whose talents let him turn berries and water into a sweet, icy slush; the hidden cove at the city’s edge where the Drowned had been bringing the wreckage of old ships and constructing some vast and arcane sculpture just below the waves. Often they would talk about the day’s trades as they walked, or the history of the bank, or more general topics: family, childhood, food, coffee, the hungers of men and of women, the pleasures of books. Cithrin tried to push past her reticence, sensing that Isadau was offering something that she deeply wanted. A better idea, perhaps, of how to become the woman she pretended to be. And Isadau listened carefully and deeply, and tried to make herself clear in reply.
Still, Cithrin felt that half the time they spoke past each other. Isadau was a Timzinae who had lived her whole life among not only her people, but her family. Cithrin was an orphan half-breed who’d never had a close friend among the Cinnae, much less a mother or sister. But she tried, and usually Isadau tried too. So when one day they left the trading house early and walked directly back toward the compound, Cithrin knew something was amiss. And what it was.
“Sold more letters of credit than usual today,” she said.
“I suppose we did,” Isadau said.
“May be there’s a market growing for them.”
“Oh, I think it’s early to say that.”
Cithrin scowled. Isadau’s stride was brisk and wide, and Cithrin had to scurry a little to keep up. They crossed a wide and grassy square, where a spire of black stone in the center was dedicated to the memory of someone or something. Cithrin fought the urge to pluck at Isadau’s sleeve like a child asking for attention.
“This isn’t the usual pattern for the season,” she said. “I’ve been looking through the books. You’ve sold most of them in the autumn or early spring, and even then, not more than ten or fifteen in a season. We took five today.”
“We did,” Isadau said as they turned the corner. The familiar lines of the compound hove into view and Isadau’s pace seemed to increase. Far ahead of them, Jurin and Salan—Isadau’s brother and nephew—were shoeing a horse. They were too far away to hear even the sound of their voices, but the positions of their bodies were eloquent. Jurin with his head turned slightly away from the beast as he spoke to his son. Salan upright and serious. Father and son as they had been since the beginning of time, it seemed. Isadau’s steps faltered, and Cithrin managed to reach her side. The older woman wasn’t even breathing hard. Her gaze was fixed on the men, her smile serene and content. Cithrin felt a moment’s frustration until she saw the tear that streaked down Magistra Isadau’s cheek and was quickly wiped away.
“Tell me, Cithrin,” she said. “Do you think the Porte Oliva branch might be able to make use of our extra capital?”
“I think they’ll need it if they’re to make good on the credit we’re selling,” Cithrin said.
Isadau turned her smile on Cithrin and nodded once.
“We should arra
nge that, don’t you think?”
Cithrin had been in Vanai when the Antean army came in conquest. This was the same, and it also wasn’t.
She remembered being the only one among many who had feared the coming battle in Vanai. The others had seen it as an evil and an inconvenience and prepared themselves for Antean rule with an air of resignation and the sense that whether it was the prince in the city or the king in Camnipol, taxes would be taxes and beer would be beer and not much call to worry about it. Even Magister Imaniel had been more concerned with keeping the wealth of the bank away from the prince than with fleeing the city himself. He was dead now. They were all dead now, burned with their city.
Suddapal, on the other hand, knew its danger. The fear bloomed in the market houses and the streets, on the piers and in the coffee houses. The whole city waited with bated breath for runners from Inentai with news of the siege, perched to fall on any scrap of information like carrion crows. Every rumor spread through its citizens, ripples in a pond. The debates in the taprooms changed from whether Sarakal would fall utterly to when, from why Antea wouldn’t march on Elassae to whether. The very rich who could afford it and the very poor who were no worse off anywhere left first, some by ship, others on foot. The governor and the council repaired to their estates, pretending to be in conference, though no one expected them to return. The stores of silver and gold, tobacco and spice, silk and gems and rare books filled the storerooms of the compound, and letters of credit left Isadau’s private study, written in cipher and sewn with knots as individual as a written chop.
Cithrin watched it all with dread, but also a strange sense of relief. At least this time, she wasn’t the only one worried. At least Suddapal understood.
The work of the bank also quietly shifted. Depositors came to withdraw their wealth, often arriving at the compound late in the evening rather than coming to the market houses. Even these were often taken as letters of credit rather than the actual coinage, but some coin did spill out. Isadau, on the other hand, began buying debts. If a taproom owed its brewers three months’ payments for their beer, Isadau paid the brewers half the full price today. If the taproom made its payments, the bank’s profit would be massive. If it burned, its owners and workers dead under Antean blades, the money would be lost utterly. Once, Cithrin had chafed under the timid strategies of her notary, Pyk Usterhall. Now she watched Magistra Isadau buy as much as she could of a city doomed to be conquered, and the risk of it took her breath away and left her giddy. It was optimism forged out of silver coins and paper contracts. A statement that Suddapal might change, but it would not be destroyed, that business done now, in the face of disaster, had meaning. It was banking as patriotism, and something more. Faith, perhaps.
But along with it, Cithrin noticed new entries in the books. Payments and expenditures marked with Isadau’s personal chop. Money given quietly without expectation of return to men and women whose names were not recorded. Subsidies paid to the weak and vulnerable to help them escape before the storm. The beginnings of a network of ships, farms, businesses, warehouses that might also last beyond the arrival of the Antean army and give those many, many people who didn’t or couldn’t leave some hope of escape. The city, and with it the bank, had become a thing of hope and desperation and calculated risk.
It was late at night, and Cithrin was in her room tracing through the connections that Magistra Isadau was building when the scratch came at her door. The sound was so soft, so tentative, that at first she thought she’d only imagined it. Turning the page of her ledger was louder. But it came again.
“Come in?” she said, still half expecting no one to be there. But the latch lifted and the door swung open. Roach stood framed in the doorway, his leather cap in his hand. His scales—light brown when he’d first come to work for the bank, had darkened with age and the summer sun. He looked older and slimmer. He nodded.
“Magistra,” he said. “I was wondering … That is, I was hoping for a moment of your time.”
Cithrin closed the ledger’s cover, but kept her thumb between the gently pinching pages to mark her place. Roach stepped in and closed the door behind him. His nictitating membranes opened and shut rapidly as a bird’s wing and he held his hands at his side in fists. Cithrin wanted to call him by his name as a way to reassure him, but she couldn’t remember it. Harver or Hamil. When she saw him, all she could think of was Roach.
“What seems to be the trouble?” she asked, trying to put the comfort into her voice the way Magistra Isadau did.
“I was hoping, Magistra, that you might be able to help arrange a meeting with Merid Addanos. For me. With me.”
Anxiety radiated from him while Cithrin racked her brain. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t recall where she’d read it. Or no. Not read. Heard. Not one of the depositors, she didn’t think. Roach cleared his throat.
“Magistra Isadau’s cousin,” he said. “Merid. Maha’s mother.”
“Oh,” Cithrin said, and then a moment later. “Oh.”
“I can resign if you like.”
Cithrin withdrew her thumb. The pages of the ledger closed over the gap like water. She put her palm to her forehead, pressing gently while she gathered her thoughts. Roach wasn’t one of the few who knew Cithrin’s past and secrets. He thought she was considerably older than she actually was, and likely assumed she had more experience than he did. That was a mistake on his part.
“How … ah … how serious is the situation.”
“It’ll need a priest,” Roach said. “And a wedding cup.”
“Oh. Well then.”
“I’m very, very sorry, Magistra Cithrin.” Roach’s voice was shaking. “I know that becoming involved with a member of the household was a betrayal of your trust in me and a failure of my duty. And I can just hope that you … that you can …”
“Oh stop. Let me think.”
She would have to speak with Isadau first. And Yardem. She wished she knew how the pair of them would take the news. Certainly it wasn’t the first time in history that a young woman and a professional soldier had found themselves possessed of an unexpected third party. Cithrin thought for a moment about the pregnancies she’d been lucky enough to avoid and shuddered.
“Give me a day or two to lay the groundwork,” she said. “I will do what I can.”
“Thank you,” Roach said, and turned to go.
“Wait, Ro—Wait. A moment.” He paused. Cithrin gathered herself. “Isadau and I may be shifting some of the capital from Suddapal to Porte Oliva. The ship will be heavily guarded, of course, and I’ll want someone from my branch there to oversee it. Make sure nothing goes missing between here and home.”
“Ma’am?”
“It will get you and Maha out of the city.” She could see the struggle in his expression; leaping hope fought with shame. She thought she understood. “I would have needed to send you or Enen regardless. All you’ve done is make the choice of which a bit simpler.”
“Yes, Magistra.”
After he left, the door closing quietly behind him, Cithrin let her forehead sink to the table. Her personal guard was getting the magistra’s family pregnant. How lovely. And, in the shadow that was falling over them all, how obvious. Cithrin put on her cloak and walked out through the corridors. The compound was emptier than she was used to. There was music, but it came from a long way off, and it wasn’t the bright, lively sound of dancing. She felt a knot tying itself in her gut and knew that her choices were to drink herself to the edge of sleep or stay awake until morning. Neither appealed, but they were all she had.
She found Yardem at the watch fire alone. The flames lit the back of his head and glittered off the rings in his tall ears. He never sat facing the fire. She sat next to him, her hands between her knees.
“Ma’am.”
“Yardem,” she said.
Across the road, someone struck up a mournful tune on a violin. The eerie reeds of a bellows organ rose with it. Yardem held up a wineskin, and Cithrin took i
t, wiping its mouth on her sleeve after she drank. It was a bright taste, and it warmed her throat, but it didn’t have enough bite to it to affect her thinking. She looked out at the night, trying to see the buildings and streets, lanterns and alleys of Suddapal the way she imagined Yardem did. No walls to speak of. Streets too wide to block. Commons big enough to field an army. History had made Suddapal a wide sprawl of a city. Rich with the trade from the Inner Sea, safer than the Keshet, and natural partner to the Free Cities and Pût. Indefensible. Even if the Imperial Army arrived exhausted and half dead from thirst, Suddapal would fall.
There was nothing she could do to stop it. No hope she could offer up. She wondered whether Magistra Isadau would leave when the time came, or go down with her city like the captain of a sinking ship. She wondered how long she would stay and watch or go back to Porte Oliva. It was the time for asking questions like that.
“Looking bleak, ma’am.”
“The situation or me?”
“Meant the situation, but either works. Talked to Karol Dannien this morning. He says the defenses are going up at Kiaria. It’s the traditional stronghold. Thick walls, deep tunnels.”
“And are they going to fit everyone in Suddapal into it?”
“No.”
“Half?”
“No.”
“One in three?”
“Two in ten.”
“So the city falls with most of the population still in it.”
“Yes.”
“Isadau’s putting together a group to smuggle people out afterwards. She hasn’t told me, but it’s what she’s doing.”
“Brave.”
“Doomed.”
“That too,” Yardem agreed. “But it’s her people. Her family. Likely a third of the people in Suddapal are related to her if you squint hard enough. People do that sort of thing for their families.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“There’s more than one kind of family,” Yardem said. “It’s the kind of thing the captain would have done for you.”
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