The Widow's House (The Dagger and the Coin)

by Daniel Abraham

  “Magistra?” the chief scribe said as they reached the wide blue doors that led to the sun-drenched street. Cithrin and Isadau turned back together, each of them answering to the title. The master scribe held up the sample letters. “All of this we’re copying. Is it… true?”

  “All of it,” Cithrin said.

  The master scribe said something obscene.

  Walking back toward the holding company, Isadau folded her arm with Cithrin’s. Carse was not a beautiful city, but it was handsome. And there were places—the dry fountain of dragon’s jade by the magistrate’s court, the Grave of Dragons, the glassblowers’ street—where it achieved moments of radiance. Still, she missed the close, cramped streets of Porte Oliva and Maestro Asanpur’s coffee. For that, she missed Vanai’s canals and wooden houses and the gates that had closed off one section of the city from another.

  She wasn’t certain, even now, that Komme had ever given her freedom of the city. Nothing had been said. But after the last meeting with the king, Isadau had started taking her along. It was almost as it they were back in Suddapal and Cithrin was finishing out the last few months of her apprenticeship. Odd, with all that had happened since, that the thought reassured her. Yes, she’d lost Porte Oliva. Yes, Pyk Usterhall had been lost or killed. She’d spent the gathered fortunes of her branch on a half-mad scheme to remake what the world meant by money, but she was finishing her apprentice work, by God. Perhaps it was just the ritual of it that comforted.

  “Do you think we’ll manage it?” she said as they turned north into one of the great, dragon-wide main ways.

  “That depends on what you mean by it,” Isadau said.

  “I was thinking of defeating the ancient enemy, bringing Antea to heel and the dragon’s war to an end. Little things like that.”

  She’s meant it as half a joke, but Isadau’s tight smile made her think that perhaps she was on more serious ground than she’d known. “I hope that will be enough.”

  At the compound, Komme Medean was pacing in the courtyard. His left knee was swollen with gout, and he leaned heavily on a carved oak cane. All through the yard, palm-sized sheets of yellow paper hung from string tied between the walls and trees. The little pages fluttered in the breeze like the banners of a vast miniature army. As Isadau and Cithrin came near, Komme plucked one from its place and held it up to the sun. A line of purple ran along its lower edge, startling against the yellow, and bright flecks caught the light. He looked over at them and lifted his chin in greeting.

  “Komme,” Isadau said, smiling as she steered Cithrin toward him. “I don’t know what these are, but I think they’re beautiful. Have you taken to art in your old age?”

  Komme’s single laugh was harsh, but genuine. He held out the page in his hand to Cithrin. “I’m doing what you two should have done before you gave all my damned money away. These letters of transfer we’re writing? They’re too easily forged. Doesn’t do us any good having sole right to make these if everyone and their sisters can make copies. We need to find a way to make them distinct, yes?”

  The paper felt thick and stiff between Cithrin’s fingers, almost more board than paper. Tiny mineral chips glittered on its surface and tiny threads of red and blue spiraled through it. The violet band at the edge was damp. Komme saw her considering the discoloration and smiled sharply. She nodded her question.

  “Put it in vinegar and it turns color. Until it dries, anyway. The maker swears that no one else in the world knows the process or could figure it out. My guess is that’s lies, but even so, it cuts the number of people stealing our right down from everybody everywhere to a few that are really dedicated to it. The yellow and the flecks? That was my thought. Gives people the idea of gold without the actual coin. Brings them halfway.”

  “It’s a good thought,” Isadau said.

  Cithrin handed back the page. “I wasn’t sure you were going to let the contract stand.”

  Komme’s smile vanished. He pinned the page back in its place on the string. “I didn’t have a choice, did I? That’s the thing that all your plans and schemes skip. Contracts and letters of transfer and clever arrangements of business? All of it assumes that the agreements can be enforced. Well, his majesty’s the one with the crown and the guardsmen, so if he wants the agreement enforced, enforced it’s going to be.”

  “I didn’t forget,” Cithrin said.

  “Give us a moment, Isadau,” Komme said, still squinting at the paper and rubbing his thumb along its violet edge. Isadau and Cithrin exchanged a silent glance, and the Timzinae woman uncurled her arm from Cithrin’s. Her footsteps faded as she walked into the shade of the house. A sparrow flew past, grey-brown wings fluttering in the air. Somewhere outside the compound, a man shouted. Komme sighed and turned to her.

  “You’re the worst voice of any bank I’ve ever seen,” he said, and then lifted his palm to her, commanding silence. “I don’t want to hear any damned explanations of why you had to do it this way or how the scale of the thing justified cutting me out of my own business. You crossed me. You know it. And you meant to do it.”

  Cithrin’s belly went tight and she nodded. “I did.”

  Komme’s smile had no mirth in it. “Well, at least you’ve got the balls to admit it. You did this the wrong way, Cithrin. You should have come to me. We should have talked the plan through. You and me and Paerin and Chana. Nison and Isadau. You have a brilliant mind for finance, but you don’t have the only goddamned mind there is. You’ve managed to insult everyone on the company. Did you think about that?”

  “I… No. Not really.”

  “You see? That’s the problem with you. You’ve been pretending to be a grown woman long enough you’ve forgotten you’re a girl. Get married, have a couple of children like I did, get some perspective on what risk is, and you’d be ready to run a bank the right way. You were raised badly.”

  “I was raised by your bank.”

  “The irony’s not lost,” Komme said, limping forward to the next yellow sheet. He reached up, running his fingers along its edge like a farmer judging a crop. “This doesn’t happen again. Ever. You’ve made a practice of stepping outside your authority, and you’ve gotten away with it. It’s given you the wrong impression of what authority is and what your role in the bank should be.”

  “I apologize.”

  He turned back to her and grunted in pain, leaning on his cane. “You’ve tied my hands for now. I could throw you on the street. Strip you of your place. It’s within my rights. You don’t even have a branch any longer. But since the bank’s just embarked on this scheme you’ve created, it would look odd to cut ties now. The bank has to seem more solid than thrones now. Getting back lost confidence is harder than stirring cream out of coffee. Besides which, you’re friends with a dragon. There’s a certain romance in that, and people like romances when the world’s uncertain.”

  “I’ll speak to you first next time,” Cithrin said. “I promise.”

  “Next time,” Komme said, shaking his head. “And with you, there may be a next time.”

  He moved on to the next string, but his gaze was skating over the yellow papers now. Cithrin walked half a step behind him and to his left.

  “You’ve heard the news from Narinisle,” he said over his shoulder.

  “No.”

  “Word of your agreement with Tracian’s spread. It’s precedent. Narinisle’s asked for the same arrangement. Herez will too, though I haven’t had it formally yet. They’re asking why Northcoast is favored over them.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Me? Who am I? I just have a holding company. It’s the branches who’ll make that call.”

  “Yes, but what are you going to do?”

  “Give it to them,” Komme said. “Start trading your letters of transfer as widely and commonly as I can. Sell Herez’s debt to Northcoast and Narinisle’s to both of them until the three are so entwined it’s impossible to say who owns what or where someone would go to change these things
back to coin. Anything to make the essential lie at the heart of this harder to see.”

  “Good,” Cithrin said. “That’s excellent.”

  “Or it’s my ticket to dying in gaol. Either way, I thought you’d want to know you’d drawn even with Palliako.”

  “How do you count that?”

  “He took Asterilhold, Sarakal, and Elassae. You’ve taken Northcoast, Herez, and Narinisle. I call Birancour a split,” Komme said, and spat into the bushes. “Cithrin bel Sarcour, secret queen of the world.”

  Entr’acte

  Captain Karol Dannien

  The mountains in the north of Elassae were black crags. The great slabs of stone lay one against the other like some titanic act of violence had been petrified mid-cataclysm. They channeled even the gentlest wind into howling gusts that came from any direction, or all of them. There were just enough wild goats surviving on the low grey scrub to attract a healthy population of mountain lions. The tracks and paths through the sharp valleys were challenging for pack mules, and anything wheeled was worse than useless. The water tasted sharp and mineral.

  Karol Dannien had fought in the flatlands of the Keshet and at the Bloody Gate of Lôdi, the swamps south of Kaltfel and the iced-in harbors of Hallskar. In almost thirty years of paid violence, only the Dry Wastes had been a less hospitable stretch of land and worse ground for a battle of any size. But God hadn’t asked his opinion, and so there it was.

  The aftermath was mostly confined to a pair of slightly less steep inclines. The Anteans, spurred on by the shouting and hectoring of their priests, had charged the high ground, and Karol had had his men roll rocks down at them to break their ranks, following with a charge of his own. It had worked, but it hadn’t been anything like pretty. The first clash had come just after dawn, and Karol’s men were still hunting down the last of the fleeing Anteans when dark came on. He wasn’t worried about a counterattack. The mountain lions could pick up the slops for all he cared. Probably be a nice change from goat meat.

  Cep Bailan, his second this godawful endless campaign, stepped out of his tent and stretched his arms out to the sky like the Haaverkin was gathering the whole world to his fat, tattooed belly. Karol hunched deeper into his coat.

  “Heat’s finally breaking,” Cep said. “And past time for it.”

  “You’re too far south. Your kind should stay north of Sarakal.”

  “That’s only true,” Cep said and slapped his massive chest. “But sometimes you sad little bastards need our help.”

  Karol sighed. Cep was a brilliant man in a fight and a good leader before a battle, but the long months in the dark halls of Kiaria had been too long in close company. Every night had ended in another volley of insults and crudeness, and after a half season in the dark hearing the man rain abuse on Karol’s imagined mother, sisters, and lovers, it was hard not to think some of the joking had teeth.

  “Do we have to do the first part again?” Cep asked, plodding after Karol. “I don’t know why you do this. It isn’t like they don’t know they’re hurt. Not like you’re going to tell them anything different.”

  “They’re my men,” Karol said.

  “If you need to keep saying it, it starts not sounding true,” Cep said. Karol promised himself for the thousandth time that he’d never work with a Haaverkin again. “You go on ahead. I’ll meet you with the prisoners. The men don’t like it when I see them injured.”

  “You laugh at them.”

  “They’re funny.”

  “Go be sure Chaars has enough men to set up a watch.”

  Cep scowled, the tattoos on his face warping. He stamped off down the incline, intentionally making his way across the paths of the black-chitined Timzinae soldiers still carrying the wounded and the dying from the battlefield. Karol sighed. The man truly was a child. But he was good at being sure the other side fell and his own didn’t, and that forgave a lot.

  The cunning man’s tent was overfull, and the soldiers had started lining the wounded on the rough ground outside it. The low chanting and uncomfortable weight of the air that felt like the oppressive hour before a thunderstorm were familiar enough. Someone was on the edge of death, and they were trying to coax him back for another chance at living, at least until the next fight. Karol went down the line of wounded men, smiling at each, telling them they’d done a good job, making light of the wounds they’d suffered and encouraging them to laugh through their pain. And in the back of his mind, a small quiet voice made evaluations. Dead. Crippled. Will recover. Won’t recover. Dead. Dead.

  Most of them were Timzinae—likely ten out of every dozen—but here and there a Tralgu or a Jasuru lay in the dirt alongside them. Karol himself was one of the only Firstbloods, and he could feel an exception being made for him. Yes, he was like the Anteans, but he was different. He was their Firstblood. He was all right.

  He paused by a young Timzinae boy he remembered from his calmer days when he’d been running the gymnasium in Suddapal. Another attempt at retirement that hadn’t gone well. The leather-bound hilt of a great knife protruded from the boy’s belly, and blood soaked his sides. The nictatating membranes covering his eyes were locked closed, but his eyelids were open, giving him the eerie aspect of being both seeing the world and not. It took Karol a moment to place the boy’s name.

  “Caught a memento there, Salan,” the mercenary captain said.

  Salan forced a smile. There was blood on his teeth, and his breath came in gasps. “A good knife.”

  “Looks it,” Karol said, kneeling beside the boy and making a show of considering the blood-soaked hilt. “Fine workmanship. Take care of it, and you’ll get a lot of years out of a blade like that.” Might recover, he thought. Might be dead already.

  “Wish it was someplace else,” Salan said. “Like to take it out.”

  “No, that’s not true. You keep that right where it is until the cunning man gets to you.”

  “Hurts though.”

  “Knife doesn’t hurt,” Karol said. “It’s the damned hole that hurts. As soon as that steel stopped cutting you, it started holding your blood in. I can’t tell you how many men I’ve seen who would have been fine pluck out a weapon like that and bleed to death instead. Taking it out’s a damned sight more dangerous than putting it in.”

  Salan nodded and put his black hands around the wound, as if promising not to let anyone take the knife out of him. Karol nodded and clapped the boy’s knee.

  “Did we win?” Salan asked as Karol stood.

  “Hell yes, we did,” Karol said, glad that he didn’t have to lie to say it. “You just stay there and wait your turn. And don’t get impatient. We don’t rush the cunning men for pinpricks and scrapes.”

  “Be all right with me if they rushed a little, sir.”

  “I’ll mention it to them,” Karol said with a smile. Probably live, he decided. Probably.

  Before setting up shop in Suddapal, Karol had worked with perhaps half a dozen Timzinae. A couple years of garrison work in Maccia and Nus. A Kesheti prince named Unlil Soyam who’d hired his company to hold the left flank in a massive honor battle. A brief partnership with Sanis Sorianian before she’d retired. That Suddapal was a center of the Timzinae race hadn’t been a point for or against it. He’d decided to settle there in the end more for the coffee than the races that made up the fivefold city. The last year hunkering down in the vastness of Kiaria had given him a deeper respect for them. In the deepness and dark of the stronghold, the Timzinae fighters had been thoughtful and professional and no less disciplined than a Firstblood troop.

  There were always incidents, but the commander of the siege had treated them with courtesy and respect. All in all, it had left him feeling better about roaches as a people. Not that he’d stopped thinking of them as roaches, but they made jokes about Firstbloods barely being civilized enough to take their pants down when they pissed. That kind of joking was all in fun, after all. And kinder than half the shit that spilled out of Cep Bailan’s fat mouth.

 
All in all, Karol’s time with the Timzinae made the part that came next that much more pleasant for him.

  Most of the prisoners were disarmed, stripped, and tied neck to neck by a Jasuru Karol had worked with a time or three who had almost certainly been a slaver at some point in her career. The knots were tight enough on them that too much struggle kept the blood from their heads but didn’t outright kill them. It was a pretty piece of ropecraft. The great prize was in a little shack they’d put up for the purpose. And the priests—there’d been two of the bastards—were already char and meat on the fire.

  Karol entered the shack and nodded to the guards. They each made their salute and left. A small tin lantern hung from the roof, though there was more light leaking through between the boards than the flame provided. The prisoner was on his knees and naked as a babe newborn. His arms were bound behind him, and his ankles as well to keep him from standing. He was shivering, maybe from cold, maybe from shock. Hard to say. Somewhere along the line, someone had thrown an elbow across the man’s nose and splashed it over until the tip pointed off to the right somewhere. Blood and spit soaked the ornate mustache, and deep bruises mottled the man’s arms and legs. Karol sat on a three-legged stool.

  “Well,” Karol said. “Here’s a turn, eh? Fallon Broot, yeah?”

  The prisoner’s gaze swam up to him, floated for a moment, and the man nodded. Karol nodded back.

  “Yeah, I remember you. You’d not recall me, I wouldn’t think. Not sure we ever met to speak to. I was in Camnipol… Lord, years ago. Around the time of that unpleasantness in Anninfort. There was a thing, eh? Believe I saw your manor house. It had the… the little grey tower? Yeah? On the eastern side.”

  Broot’s nod started slowly and then had a hard time stopping.

  “Nice place,” Karol said. “Not as showy as some of the others, but dignified. I liked it.”

  “My thanks.”

  “Come up in the world since then, though, haven’t you? Protector of Suddapal. There’s a hell of title. Whole city under your protection. Or five, I suppose. Depending how you count it.”