The Dragon's Banker

by Scott Warren

  “It’s not necessary, sir. I’ve no use for riches,” said Cas. “Just need the sun and the sky and a place to rest my bones.”

  Ten silver pennies were hardly “riches” as Cas described. In fact, they barely made up half a silver mark, and I had just signed over forty-five thousand of those to Lady Tilia in exchange for Spardeep and the lands above it. If all went well, I would be signing over more in exchange for Harborlight some days’ travel south of here. Cas left to assist in shifting my junior partner’s trunk, and I climbed back inside a carriage that now felt rather empty without one of my three cohorts to help pass the time.

  Time did pass, though it seemed to do so at an unapologetically glacial pace for such a hot summer. I used the time to revise some figures for Dragon’s Daughter operational costs now that we would have the mine to consider. I expected the monthly profits from the ore to grant some extra leeway in pursuing the shipping angle more aggressively. If Jassem’s ship really could brave the Kraken’s Teeth, then it might be just as profitable to sail the ore up the western coast north of Whadael to Lethorn or even Shaitaccea as it would be to pack it into overland trains.

  Lady Tilia had given me a pair of boots when she’d noticed that my footwear was not at all appropriate for the Redfangs. Wearing the boots was a first for me, and I had the unfortunate opportunity to break them in by spending long stretches walking beside the carriage rather than riding inside of it. A sudden wash turned the roads to muddy ruts, and for a time the carriage simply could not bear passengers as Cunning and Hydra struggled to shift its weight.

  Western Borreos was beautiful in its own right, the harsh red cinder of the mountains giving way to the golden fields of wheat on the plains and then stretches of scrubby brush-filled badlands with stones of every shade of pale blue and puce. I imagined this was how soldiers must have felt as they marched in their boots. Doing it day after day with a full ruck was unfathomable.

  It was in these badlands that we were to make camp for the night, pitching tents on dusty rock and bare earth baked by the summer sun. Those rocks might hold their heat, but outside the city the air would grow chilly quickly once the sun fell, and so Destain called the march at what he felt to be an ideal campsite. We were off the road and with a rise to the west that would block the mountain breeze. You might think it odd for me to defer such a decision to a security detail when my scheduling seemed so demanding and precise, but I was paying good coin for his expertise. As I have said, I am not a man of the land.

  The mountain road south kept us close enough to the shadow of the Redfangs that night fell a full hour earlier than it would have in Borreos. My day of walking had left sore feet at the bottom of thoroughly exhausted legs, and I attacked my provisions with the fervor of a starving man. It was simple fare: bread, cheese, and tepid ale in a tin cup from a cask secured to the back of the carriage. Cas had taken his shortbow to look for game and had not yet returned. Destain’s men were asleep or on watch, and the captain himself was likely making the rounds to ensure his sentries were alert. One benefit to being the man holding the purse strings is not being woken up at the early hours to take a turn at such business.

  As such, I was left alone through most of supper and the late evening. As the light began to dim and the chill to mount, I retired to my tent. I had every intention of continuing to work by lantern-light and a small lap-desk. But the numbers soon started to blur, and the day’s exertion took its toll on my focus by plaguing me with frequent yawns. The nice thing about unfinished work is that it doesn’t go anywhere and will wait for you to resume. With that in mind, I hung my coat, set my notes down, and blew out my lantern.

  I don’t remember falling asleep, nor do I recall what I dreamed that night. What I do remember is that the first thing I smelled upon waking was rich topsoil, and for an instant I believed I had found my way back to the country estate in southern Lethorn where I’d spent a planting season setting up a Marquees’ barley distribution network with Marlin Fost. But that moment passed in an instant, and the shadow looming over me in that tent banished all semblance of fatigue.

  I jerked up, scrabbling back from the invader and succeeding only in entangling myself in my bedroll. The shadow raised a finger to its lips and with the other hand offered me what turned out to be a pair of my trousers.

  “Master Kelstern, sir, get you dressed please,” the shadow implored.

  “Cas?” I whispered back. “What are you doing in my tent?”

  The vagrant tossed me the trousers, and I began to pull them on. Not because he told me to, mind, but because I felt oddly vulnerable in my smallclothes, despite the darkness.

  “Your men, sir, I think they mean ye harm. I heard that captain talking. Telling them to make sure everyone’s awake come second bell.”

  “I paid those men to protect me, Cas,” I said.

  “Aye,” he said, fishing around until he found my boots. “And you paid me too. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  I don’t know if it was Cas’ calm urgency or the image of him proudly brandishing those two copper coins in line with the other guards, but I believed him. Or rather, I believed that he was telling the truth as he saw it. Though I was sure he’d misinterpreted the situation. In either case, I felt a pressing need to be out of the confines of my tent.

  “What about Dannic?” I asked, tugging on my boots.

  “Already got him out, waiting for us half mile o’er east. We’re to meet him once we slip camp.”

  I began to pull together some of my loose notes and work from earlier in the evening, but at Cas’ insistence, settled only for my leather-bound notebook that contained the majority of my plans and projections for the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company. Admittedly, I knew ninety percent of it by heart, but the remaining ten percent would take ages to reproduce.

  Twenty paces out of the tent with fresh blisters burning the soles of my feet, I began to notice the night’s chill on my bare arms. That realization sent a second, deeper chill straight down my spine.

  “My jacket!” I whispered, turning. I felt Cas’ grip on my shoulder as I made to return.

  “No time, Master Kelstern, sir.”

  Now there was a hint of panic in his voice, and apparently iron in his fingers as strong as any product of Spardeep, because I could not dislodge him. What I didn’t mention was that the temperature had little to do with my desire to turn back. My silk jacket, hanging on the tent peg, still contained Alkazarian’s platinum bar. That little velvet bag of concentrated wealth represented a sizable percentage of the dragon’s remaining capital in Borreos, capital I was responsible for safeguarding. With a noticeable lump forming at the base of my throat and another to match it in the pit of my stomach, I followed Cas to the outskirts of the camp and onto a short bluff of dusty stone.

  Cas lowered himself to his belly and gestured beside him. I joined with rather less stealth than the drifter. Skullduggery is not among my talents. From our vantage, we had a view of the camp, lit only by the stars and the dying coals of the fire. At first, I did not see what Cas was looking at. As I mentioned, I would have made a terrible sentry. But shadows began to detach from the rock, first one, then two, then the majority of Destain’s men. I don’t know if I was unable to see the rest of them or if they were still acting as sentries. There is no honor among thieves, or so I am told.

  Several of the men pulled out orange rods, which confused me until I realized I was looking at the reflected light of the fire’s coals in short lengths of sharp steel. One of the knifemen entered my tent, followed by who I believe was the captain himself. My guess was confirmed when he emerged a heartbeat later, his voice carrying across the still air.

  “He’s gone, but he’s left this,” Destain said, lofting what must have been either my jacket or overcoat, both of which I was missing now as my arms shivered. “He won’t have wandered far.”

  Truth told, that shivering might have had very little to do with the cold. I turned to Cas. “Time for us to leave,” I
said. The vagrant nodded and slid backward across his belly down below the lip of the ridge. I followed suit and marked east by the rise of the moon and the constellation of the Four Kings. Keeping pace with Cas was easy, though I envied his stealth. My legs, still tired from walking much of the day outside my carriage, protested each hunched step.

  It was odd, I felt, to so lament the loss of that carriage and draft animals in the face of surrendering one of Alkazarian’s platinum bars. If we had gone back for it, I would likely be dead now. It was almost as though I could feel Destain’s eyes on my back as we made our escape. The sheer mind-softening terror of being face to face with Alkazarian put lesser fears in perspective, but they were still very real fears grown from seeds of real danger. I do not feel my physical reaction to it was at all inappropriate.

  What seemed like hours later, Cas reached a point where he felt comfortable standing among the scrub-weeds and scraggly trees. He stretched out his back with two audible clicks as he twisted. We both tensed as another form emerged from the shadows, but this one turned out to be Dannic, who I noticed had time to grab his twin-tailed overcoat.

  “Thank the Mothers, you made it,” he said, reaching out.

  I grabbed his hand and pumped it with renewed vigor, clapping the other on his shoulder, and was surprised when he drew me into an embrace. Wet streaks on his cheeks left dusty smears on my own, and I was confused for a moment. Dannic was in my employ, but what gave the man such cause to fear for my safety? My driver wiped the back of his hand beneath his nose.

  “Are you well?” I asked, looking him over as best I could in the gibbous moonlight.

  “Aye,” he said. “Well as can be expected. Most o’ my things were in that cart, and I worry for Hydra and Cunning.”

  The two horses had been named after colloquial terms for silver in other parts of Varshon. Kaharan coinage was called “heads of the hydra” while full silver marks in Lethorn were called “cunnings”, for reasons to which I am not privy.

  Dannic must have noticed my shivering, because he started to doff his coat. “Sir, please take mine,” he offered.

  I put my hands on his lapels to prevent him undoing any more fasteners and shook my head. “My need is no greater than yours, Dannic. I can survive one summer night. Once we reach a town, I can purchase a new coat.”

  “You’ve your purse then, sir?” asked Dannic?

  I was about to answer him when I realized that I most certainly did not. It felt like falling flat upon my face to realize there was no currency anywhere on my person. The last time I had found myself in that situation, my age had only a single digit. My coin purse was sitting on the seat of the carriage, and whichever bandit (for I refused to continue calling them security) found it would claim a handful of coppers, twelve silver pennies, five silver marks, and eight Borrean-Standard gold dinar along with a roll of the new bank notes secured with a small band of twine. I reached up to my ears as well, relieved to find that in my fatigue I had not removed the silver hoops at the backs of them.

  We set out to the east, intent on putting more distance between us and Destain’s troupe. I marked the time by watching the Four Kings rise in the eastern sky. Cas blazed the trail, spotting dangerous flora and two poisonous nocturnal snakes. The man must have had the eyes of a hawk to see them in this light, but he shot a small adder with his shortbow at twenty paces and draped the carcass over his shoulder, the head lolling at the small of his back. I noticed that it had a curious yellow ring of scales around each of its eyes like tiny gold spectacles.

  Several hours passed in this way, and newly forming blisters on my feet chafed terribly in the boots that had seemed so innocent when I was daydreaming about soldiers and marching. I was not used to this much walking on foot. Despite my discomfort, I did not complain about my situation, and several hours passed in silence before Dannic broke the calm as Cas knelt for a rest.

  “Why do you think they did it?” my driver asked. “You was paying them what to watch our backs.”

  I shrugged, falling to my arse in the dirt in a way that was sure to leave stains upon my twill trousers. “Not as much as they could get by killing us.”

  “But why?”

  This I had pondered for some time this night and come to an unfortunate conclusion. “My own Gate-damned clumsiness. I let Destain discover that I was secreting something beyond a letter of credit. He must have surmised that I held a gold bar in my pocket when he caught me stumbling.” I rubbed my eyes. “A gold bar would be enough to disappear in the northern territories. If only it had been gold.”

  That caught Cas’ attention. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  There was no point in maintaining the secret now. I shrugged. “There was a platinum bar in my jacket pocket,” I said.

  “There was platinum in that coat?” asked Cas?

  “How much was that worth?” asked Dannic.

  I shrugged again. “It depends on who you sell it to, and where. But my rough estimate is sixty to one hundred thousand silver marks.”

  Cas stood, stalking past me, then stopped, turned, and stomped back. Then he repeated this maneuver while muttering to himself. It was the first time I had seen him flustered about anything, as well as the first time I had seen him concerned with money.

  “In a way,” I said, as much to interrupt his pacing as to convince myself, “leaving that bar behind was the best thing to happen.”

  “How do ye reckon?” asked Cas. His scowl could have split stone; it was so unlike him that it actually made me somewhat uncomfortable. Even his earthy musk seemed to take on a sour tinge, though that could have been juniper sap from a nearby stand of the prickly trees.

  “Well, they got what they were looking for, as I see it. But if they found that jacket missing, they’d be after us. Why bother with the hassle of finding and killing us if their payday just increased threefold without it? I brought it to pay for the mine, but it’s lucky I didn’t need it.”

  “Master Kelstern’s right,” said Dannic. “This way, he at least keeps the mine. And his life.”

  Personally, I would have arranged those items in a somewhat different order, but my driver had the right of it. I was far from happy. But being willing to write off the platinum bar as an expense for my continued existence? That added up. Of course, we still had to make it back to Borreos. Visiting Harborlight was flat out of the question, even with the letter of credit tucked away safely in the small notebook I had managed to rescue.

  Chapter 18 – Delayed Returns

  You may recall I mentioned that the journey west was somewhat miserable and uneventful. At this point, I longed for that tedium, and it seemed my misery had only just begun. By the time we stopped for our next rest, the eastern horizon glowed with the pending sunrise. My ribs and jaws ached where the cold of the desert night had set my muscles to shivering and my teeth to chattering. My lips and cuticles were chapped and cracked from the dry, dusty wind.

  We had with us no water and would risk none of the brackish ponds in the occasional juniper copse without bringing the water to a boil. Dahli’s advice turned out to be useful after all, as her recommendations usually did. Men could take ill from such wild provisions, and a bout of dysentery or vomiting would only hasten dehydration. We stopped only once to risk a fire. Cas took this opportunity to clean and carve the snake, sprinkling it with salt that he scraped from a block with his knife. He ate several slices raw while he smoked the rest, offering some to me as well. I declined, certain the feel of the slimy game sliding around in my mouth would have a similar effect as tainted water. Simply watching those shiny slivers disappear as lumps down his throat worked just fine as an appetite suppressant.

  It also turned out that the only currency between the three of us was the ten silver pennies I had paid out to Cas for his services. He returned them to my safekeeping when we spotted smoke from a crossroads village two hours after encountering rows of farmed squash and stands of beans. By my estimation, we had traveled some twelve miles t
o the southeast. It was fantastic time across unworked land, and I whispered a grateful prayer to the Twin Mothers that despite my lack of fitness I had at least not given in to the culinary excess of so many in my profession.

  In preparation for the trip, I had studied maps of the intervening regions with the purpose of committing all towns of notable size to memory. This was not one of those towns, which suited us just fine as remaining off the beaten path would be good for our survival. The summer sun climbed well above the horizon before we began to pass through the smaller structures at the outskirts of the town, and several curious onlookers had stopped their chores to watch us. We must have looked a sight, stumbling in from the arid badlands, our guide with half a snake over his shoulder.

  One thing was a surety: my feet would not tolerate another day of marching. Sitting down in the shade of a tree to peel off my boots revealed pus from fresh blisters on both feet. My soles were raw and ragged. Cas grimaced as their sickly-sweet smell hit his nose.

  “You won’t make it back to Borreos on foot,” he said.

  “I won’t even make it to the next town,” I said. I prodded one of the fresh sores. Now exposed to open air and sunlight, they awakened with fresh pain that made my toes twitch, and I hissed. “It doesn’t look septic,” I said. Sickness in the land was less common in the summer months but would awaken again with the autumn and winter rains that kissed the soil with enough moisture for the winter growing season. But that was months from now; soon this village would have its hands full collecting the spring harvest.

  “Them ten pennies what Cas gave you won’t get us three horses,” said Dannic. “’Least not ones worth the name. Fine flesh costs twice that number, even out here.”