The Dragon's Banker

by Scott Warren

“The fire’s reached the other side,” I informed Kuvtka and his men. I looked up. “The roof?”

  “No good,” said Kuvtka. He spat on the floor. Where he found the moisture to spare, I cannot fathom. “The smoke is so thick we wouldn’t even reach the top of the ladder.”

  “There’s another way out,” I said, pointing to the new hole we’d just made in the boardwalk. It was a long drop to the water below, but the swim was manageable if we could keep our bearings in the pitch black. So long as…

  “I can’t swim,” said Kuvtka. Several of his men echoed the sentiment. That was probably why they had become overland freight haulers instead of sailors like normal Southerners. Truth told, I wasn’t much of a swimmer myself. I could take the chance alone, but could I leave these men to die?

  There must be another way. I cast about again, and my gaze settled once more on Jassem Bol’s unguent.

  It has other uses.

  When the elf had donned the unguent in the demonstration beneath his studio and touched my hands, it had been to demonstrate the water-repelling properties. But his flesh had been ice-cold. So was the water near the hull when I later fell overboard Ur’s Gift. I had always said watching his ships sail was like watching Northerners glide across ice on skates or skis. Did the unguent’s alchemical reaction involve freezing in some way? If so, could that protect us from the heat of the flames?

  Time was running short, and if I was mistaken, we would be left without recourse. We would choke to death on smoke, if the roof didn’t collapse first. I could see glowing spots begin to appear across the southern edge as I pulled one of the unguent pots down and passed it to Kuvtka.

  “Pour it on yourselves,” I said. I unstoppered the last flask and demonstrated, feeling the concoction sluice through my hair and soak through my clothes. It had the consistency of thin whale oil and smelled of hair tonic. It burned where it touched my eyes, but no more than the smoke, and so I doubted it would cause anything more than irritation.

  What it didn’t make me feel was cold. I felt the same as I had before, if slightly slimier (which for a banker usually only happens after you cheat a man out of his earnings). Kuvtka seemed equally unimpressed. He looked down at his dripping body. “Is it working?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, looking around. “It needs something, a reactant to make it cold.”

  Jassem had never mentioned a binary component to add to the mixture to produce the final effect, but when it struck me, it was so obvious that I laughed.

  “The pump!” I said, trying not to cough. “Douse me, and be quick about it.”

  Two of Kuvtka’s men looked at each other and then brought the line around and pointed the aperture at me while Kuvtka and his other man began to work the priming handle, applying pressure until water began to gush out of the line. Rather than drenching me, the water created a shock of cold that set my teeth to chattering and almost made me long for the warmth of the fire outside. I lifted my arms, and a layer of frost cracked and fell from my jacket, leaving dry folds of cloth behind.

  I nodded to Kuvtka, and the rest of my companions took turns under the opening of the nozzle while I shivered. Seawater was the activating agent; the unguent repelled it and sapped heat from anything nearby. I have read about similar reactions of alchemical formulas, but it hadn’t occurred to me that such a thing could be useful. Of course, I never expected to find myself trapped in a warehouse on the receiving end of a dragon’s flaming wrath.

  Kuvtka still had the axe in hand, and he raised it overhead. “Ready?” he asked through chattering teeth.

  I nodded, and the bear of a man brought the blade down, cleaving a hole in the north door, then drew it back and repeated the strike. Four or five more swings and I could feel the heat through new cracks. After ten, there was more hole than door, and one of his men kicked away the meager remains to reveal the roar of fire beyond.

  They crowded back as the flames began to lick inside the open door, eager for the untouched air within. Though my heart pounded a sprinting rhythm, I stood before the inferno.

  “Are you sure this will work?” asked Kuvtka.

  “If I perish, you’re welcome to try the water.”

  “Like Hells! If you die, who gets my company?”

  I barked a laugh and then drew my coat over my head to attempt some modicum of protection. You might recall that I once said that fear does not grip me in the way it grips other men. That was a lie at the time. But the events of the previous year had molded me into something new and proven it true at last. I faced the roiling flames devouring the boardwalk. Then I stepped into them without hesitation.

  Chapter 36 – Hot Commodities

  It’s a strange thing standing inside a fire. Though Jassem’s unguent prevented the flames from consuming me, I still imagined this must be how iron ore felt when it entered our smelter at Spardeep. Every exposed inch of me felt as though it roasted, and the entire world wavered like a singular mirage that refracted the light of Borreos. There was no sound outside the roar of wind and the snap of wooden cinder; even the footfalls of my staggering run made no intrusion on the symphony of incineration that closed in on all sides. It’s a miracle I didn’t veer off and splash into the bay on either side of the wooden boardwalk.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over, and the wall of flame was behind me. I exhaled, having dared not breathe during my egress. My flesh might have been coated in the water-fearing formula, but my lungs were under no such protection. In fact, I had only half-expected the gambit to work. Such unguents were just as often highly flammable, and I likely would have known instantly (and only for an instant) were that the case.

  My appearance frightened one member of the bucket brigade such that he stumbled and nearly tumbled off the boardwalk before his fellows arrested his fall. Kuvtka followed immediately in my wake. His men made it through as well, worse for wear with singed clothes and missing eyebrows. But they were alive and breathing.

  I collapsed on the boards, caught between mad laughter and gasping for breath. Kuvtka thumped down next to me and slapped my back with what felt like a giant’s palm. He must have thought me choking because he hit me hard enough to dislodge my next three meals. A wave staved off follow-up pats, and I climbed to my feet, spine stinging where he’d struck me. He offered his hand and I took it, grinning ear to ear as I heaved him to his feet. It was true that I had flushed a good portion of Arkelai’s remaining assets down into the Borrean Bay, but I had also survived her return. And from the looks of things, so had the… majority of Borreos. A look around showed us the Queen’s navy deployed and most of the fires under control. Once the Queen’s sorcerers were set to the task, they could weave magics to suppress fire far more effectively than any bucket brigade or bilge pump.

  Alkazarian had said on our first meeting that I would not like the result of my failure. I had taken that to mean that he would devour me on the spot, which may or may not have been true at the time. But had I failed, really? It seemed the ancient creature had a pattern to his destruction here. And I was but left to wonder what my place in his game truly was, for it was not Alkazarian that I had seen in those clouds. It was the telltale colors of Lady Arkelai and Jazalkorin, flying side by side as siblings.

  When my gaze returned to the port, I saw a familiar face on the dock beneath a feather-plumed hat. When Commodore Yasmin spotted me, she pointed and spoke to the Queen’s Guard soldier at her side.

  “That’s the one. Grab him,” she said, and the sergeant stepped forward.

  Kuvtka moved to step between us. He still had the axe wrapped tight in his fist, and I harbored little doubt that he would be just as effective with the old iron hatchet as he would with his usual short sword. I stopped him, knowing that neither he nor the Queen’s Guard Elite were the type to stand aside. I had no desire to see either man lying bloody on the boardwalk.

  “It’s alright, Kuvtka. I’ll be fine,” I said as I stepped around him and toward the sergeant. “Sir,
I will come willingly.”

  The sergeant looked past me—or rather over me, as he stood a full head taller. His eyes narrowed at Kuvtka. “Do I know you?” he asked, hand on the pommel of his sword.

  “Not yet,” said Kuvtka, meeting the marine’s stare.

  “Gentlemen, enough,” said Yasmin.

  The sergeant shook free of his fixation and pulled out a pair of iron cuffs. “Master Kelstern, come with me. I don’t think these are necessary, so don’t prove me wrong.”

  “I’ll offer no argument, Sergeant,” I said, walking past him to Commodore Yasmin. “I thought we had parted on better terms. May I ask what this is about?”

  “No,” she said, smirking, and turned on her heel. I felt the sergeant’s grip on the singed collar of my coat, and I followed Commodore Yasmin up the boardwalk.

  Instead of taking a turn past Lowport toward the military quarter, we veered into town, trading sodden duckboards for dusty streets that transitioned gradually into the finished cobbles of the civic district. We passed the public dictate where I had watched the Queen make her announcement a year prior and met Lady Arkelai the very same morning.

  I wondered in brief if Yasmin was bringing me before Her Majesty Queen Liza, but we passed the palace as well as the dungeons. Then we turned onto the financial row, to a structure perhaps even more foreboding in reputation: the Royal Mint. I fought the urge to dig in my heels, aided by the assumption that the sergeant could simply hoist me over his head and hurl me through the second story window directly into Darrez Issa’s office. Front doors had ever always been my style, and so in I marched under the Queen’s banner hanging across the threshold for the second time in my career.

  Men of my status have no business in the financial heart of Borreos, and that status was something I endeavored to maintain. Upward mobility would see me noticed by the Borrean financial overseers without the protection offered to many of my peers. No good comes of their attention when your name is not at least the fourth of its line with lands and a title behind it. Sometimes even that isn’t enough. I was ushered past the hive of activity into the relative quiet of Darrez Issa’s office and deposited in a chair beside my most prominent rival, Lord Brackwaldt. He looked much the way I felt. Burn marks on his black doublet and ginger beard betrayed his presence on the docks as well. He also appeared just as shocked to see me as I was to see him.

  “Kelstern?” he asked but was quieted by Commodore Yasmin’s hand on his shoulder. She wasn’t looking at Brackwaldt. Her eyes were fixed on the opposite end of an office so sprawling with displays of royal wealth it might have made Alkazarian envious. Darrez Issa was there, so still I’d failed to notice him until I heard the clink of teacups. The Master of the Royal Mint spun to face us, a saucer in each weathered hand held between long, slender fingers. His crossing was glacial, like a panther stalking a pair of wounded pigs, and I could feel his regard almost as tangibly as a dragon’s.

  “Thank you, Commodore,” he said. Yasmin and her elite sergeant withdrew, but the latter stayed by the inside of the door, not letting his charge remain unsupervised in the company of such rogues as a disheveled noble and a slightly singed merchant banker.

  We each accepted the tea offered by Darrez Issa. The circumstances had offered no excuse for the surrender of civility, and manners are never at a premium. As before, it had been brewed and sweetened exactly according to my tastes and made me wonder what other details the old gargoyle knew about me. That was likely its intent. Issa was charged with maintaining the integrity of Borrean finance. He was as much an inspector advocate as any of the masked detectors in the Queen’s secret police. Six Hells, he probably commanded more than a few of them.

  One of his clerks brought a third chair and a small table set between us, and Darrez Issa seated himself and accepted a small folio from yet another clerk.

  “There have been some… interesting irregularities as of late when it comes to the financial activities surrounding the both of you.”

  I gulped. It was trite and cliché, to be sure, but it slipped out before I noticed the little lump climbing in my throat. Darrez Issa peered over his spectacles at my interruption. His face might as well have been carved from stone.

  “Get to the point, Darrez,” said Brackwaldt. “In case you haven’t noticed, half the city is wearing a flaming mantle.”

  “There’s no need for dramatics, My Lord. The blazes are well in hand. I am terribly sorry about your ships though.”

  I watched Lord Brackwaldt’s eyes widen. “My what?”

  “The ships you’ve been building at the illegal shipyard behind Barron Dancin’s former office. Completely destroyed, I’m afraid. I would seize them, but I’ve little use for the charred bones of a few dozen sloops. The doctored books and forged manifests that Dancin surrendered, however, are of great interest to me. As are the embargoed alchemical compounds he admitted to helping you acquire.”

  Issa flipped through his folder and drew what looked to be a writ of agreement and a second document. I could not read the script from this angle, but I could see both Brackwaldt’s and Barron’s signatures at the bottom of one, and only Barron’s signature at the bottom of the second. A signed confession!

  “Absurd,” claimed Brackwaldt. “No enterprise of mine would resort to smuggling.”

  “Of even more interest,” Darrez continued, ignoring the outburst, “is the mysterious source of funds used to bankroll these operations. You seem to have forgotten to disclose the third party providing you with exorbitant capital. That much money draws attention, My Lord.”

  Brackwaldt struggled, and for the first time I noticed his legs were bound by iron manacles built into the chairs. I glanced down at my feet to verify that my chair also had them, though they had not been secured. When I looked back up, Darrez Issa had a twitch of smile, as if simply checking had been a full admission of guilt.

  Brackwaldt’s face was turning the shade of late sunset. “I have no need for financiers. All of my business is self-sufficient, and I post payments from my own accounts. Check with my clerks.”

  “Oh, I did. But I rather think it more effective to go to the source,” said Issa, pulling another folder out that was stamped with the emblem of Fost and Lavender, from the bank where Issa and I had crossed paths. “Apparently your clerks have some discrepancies, My Lord. They reported you nearly destitute while there is in fact a great excess of undeclared funds in your accounts from two large deposits totaling six million silver marks that have no explanation, no source, and perhaps most importantly, no affidavit of taxes surrendered to the Crown. I might have missed it had you not stepped up your efforts to disperse that wealth these past six months. I imagine we have the movements of Master Kelstern here to thank for that.”

  Brackwaldt was silent for a moment, breathing deeply. Then he launched himself at me. Or tried, rather, but his legs were still bound. Still, we tumbled to the floor, and his fists managed to land several blows on my chest and one across my chin that twisted my head painfully before Yasmin’s sergeant pulled him off me and the enraged lord was hauled from the room, chair and all.

  I was as shaken then as I had been staring down the flames in the dock fire, in part because of the sudden violence and in part because I was now alone in a room with Darrez Issa and the sole subject of his attention. He gestured for me to return to my seat.

  “Nasty business, seeing a member of the high families reduced so. Naturally, his position will protect him from many of the charges I would like to levy. But the Queen does not look kindly on those who enrich themselves without offering her their due. Nor those who engage in the acquisition of embargoed alchemicals.”

  He took a long sip from his tea and settled back in his chair. How he settled in the bare wooden ensemble that looked more like it had been pulled from the cellars of the Queen’s dungeon, I can’t imagine, but he did. He set his cup back on the saucer and flipped through that damnable folio again.

  “Strange how the circumstances of one’
s birth can offer a blanket of security, wouldn’t you agree, Master Kelstern?”

  It was not lost on me that I was guilty of many of the financial crimes he had listed for Lord Brackwaldt. The unique circumstances of Alkazarian’s contract had necessitated some criminal activity, and skirting the law was practically a tradition in the field of merchant banking. The implicit threat—or rather the call to my total lack of protection—was quite clear. One set of laws for the privileged, one set of laws for the common man.

  “So what’s going to happen to him?” I asked.

  Darrez leaned forward.

  “Those illicit funds will be seized by the Crown, and we’ll assess an additional fine that his advocates will parley down to a pittance. Most of his ships and wares in the harbor have been reduced to ash. With the prospect of fraud shadowing his ventures, no insurer in their proper state of mind would grant any claim. In truth, he will be only slightly worse off than he was after you left his employ. That is, of course, excepting the slight to his reputation.”

  One in my position is well equipped to understand the tangible value associated with reputation. To a noble, it was everything, their family honor backed their dealings as much as any collateral. If Brackwaldt emerged from this with the perception that he was a fraudster engaged in evasion of taxes, it would hurt him more than any fine Darrez Issa could imagine laying against him. And I believe that was the goal.

  “Now as for you, Master Kelstern.”

  I met his eyes and found little there I could read behind the gold-rimmed spectacles. “I imagine you have some interest in the Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Very well,” I said, spreading my hands. “What would you like to know?”

  Darrez licked a finger and drew a notebook from his coat pocket. “I believe I have everything I needed before bringing you here. One should never pose a question one does not already know the answer to. How else could you sort the liars from the honest men? I already know which of those you are. I would have liked to interview Lady Arkelai, however. Do you truly have no means of contacting her?”