“Our propulsion is forward. Our motion is backward.”
“I hope you will not remove me from command if I admit to being confused.”
“I would only question your sanity if you were not confused, Ram.”
“Do you have any hypotheses that might explain this situation?” asked Ram.
“We are not hypothesizers,” said the expendable. “We are programmed instruments and, as I pointed out to you before, decisions about what to do after the jump are entirely up to our resourceful, creative, highly tested and trained human pilot.”
Ram thought about it.
* * *
As they started seeing the buildings of O, Rigg was amazed at how different they were. During the weeks he and Umbo had walked along the North Road, changes had been gradual. Farms had become more frequent, villages larger, buildings a bit more grand. Thatch gave way to shingle and tile, oilcloth to shutters and occasional panes of glass. Leaky’s Landing had an air of newness about it, but the town was of the same wooden construction, the same roof angles, the same alternation of cobble, gravel, and corduroy on the streets, depending on the whim of the owners of the buildings abutting them.
But the trees lining the river had concealed any such gradual changes, and the current moved them much faster, so that as they approached the docks of O it was like entering another world.
Everything seemed to be made of stone—and not the grey-brown rocks of the mountains, either, but a pale rock, almost white with streaks of warm colors in it. No moss had been allowed to grow on any of it, except down near the water—it gleamed warmly in the noonday sun.
By contrast, the Tower of O shone with the glaring coldness of a steel blade. And since it was larger by far than any other structure, and many times higher than the tallest trees, the whole city gave the impression of the pale hand of a very white woman, holding a fierce dagger upward toward the sky.
As the boat drew nearer the docks, however, that impression faded. The docks were as dirty and cluttered and busy as docks anywhere. Not all the buildings were stone after all; in fact most buildings were wooden structures, though with roofs only of tile or, to Rigg’s amazement, tin. So much metal as to cover a roof! Rigg could see that the impression that all was stone came from a few dozen large buildings that rose much higher than the jumble of wooden warehouses, taverns, and shops selling mementoes of the Tower of O. From a distance, all he had seen were the white-stone walls of those buildings; close up, he could hardly catch a glimpse of them from the narrow streets, where each story of every building jutted out beyond the one below, until at the third or fourth story houses across the street from each other were so close that, as Loaf said, “A man could take a mistress across the street and neither of them leave their house.”
Rigg expected that they would first secure lodging, but Loaf grimaced and said no.
“So we’re going to carry our packs and goods to the banker?” asked Rigg.
Loaf drew them over away from the crowded street to the open space near one of the large stone buildings. “Listen,” he said, “the boat passage and the cost of food and of your clothes have me close to broke. The places I could afford right now would be of such a low nature that we wouldn’t dare to leave our belongings in them anyhow. I’m a taverner, my boys, and I know what the dockyard inns of O are like. Everything depends on getting Mr. Cooper to convert one of these . . . items . . . to money at full value, without anyone else getting a glimpse of them. Then we can afford to stay in a respectable place without hardly making a dent in your fortune, young Rigg. That’s why we’re stopping nowhere, but finding Mr. Cooper’s bank.”
Loaf seemed to know his way through the maze of streets and only had to backtrack twice. To Rigg this seemed like a miracle, since there were few street signs high up on the buildings, and even then they weren’t always right.
“Oh, that’s the old name,” said Loaf when Umbo noticed one of them. “Then they made a boulevard and put the name on that. This is now . . . something else that I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. You don’t learn by names here, you learn by landmarks and turnings.”
“How can they have landmarks here?” said Umbo. “Every street looks just like every other.”
“If you lived here, you’d see the differences plain enough,” said Loaf. “I could ask anyone here and get directions to Cooper’s bank because he faced his building in grey stone—not to show too much pride, you see, so grey not white—and then he set a clock high on the wall. You ask anybody, ‘Where’s the banker’s clock?’ and if they don’t know, they must be a tower pilgrim because no one as lives here wouldn’t know the place.”
They passed many a food vendor, and when Umbo suggested stopping at one, Loaf just pulled him away and kept them on the road. “So you eat some greasy slab of meat and go in to see Mr. Cooper with fat dripped all over your hands and sleeves and the front of you. Then he throws us out as being the kind of people who have no house to eat in or table to sit at or napkin to drape with.”
“But we don’t have any of those,” said Umbo.
“Exactly, and we mean to have them, so we’ll be hungry and thirsty in the bank, but we won’t look like poor privicks.”
“We are poor privicks,” muttered Umbo. Loaf ignored him.
But Rigg thought about it. Umbo is a poor privick, though in Fall Ford his father did as well as anyone else, and his family was never hungry, nor was anyone else’s. During lean times they shared about, knowing that every man and woman worked as hard as any other, if they could, and they all watched out to make sure no old widows or spinsters starved or froze in the winter. But of food sold by vendors on the street no one got a taste, because there were no such. Only Nox cooked food for strangers, and you had to come at mealtime for a bite; she never brought the food out into the road, she never called out the name of the dish.
Strange how, just by being in a different place, a boy who always had enough and never wanted for anything could now be poor, and had to go hungry for fear that someone will notice his poverty.
And Loaf, too. In Leaky’s Landing he was prosperous, and mocked the privicks as merrily as anyone. But here in O, so far downstream, he was a privick, too, though better at disguising it, since he had traveled the world a good bit more.
I’m the only one who isn’t a poor man here, or at least might not end up so. Even though I’m the most upriver of all, having lived above the falls most days of my life, wandering with just my father in the deepest forest with few paths of men among the beasts and trees. But because of nineteen jewels in a bag hanging from a ribbon at my waist, I may soon be rich compared to them.
And yet they are my friends on this journey, the only friends I have. And if I prosper, they will prosper. The money may be mine, but the benefit will be for all of us. Loaf will go home with a fine profit for his kind service. Umbo can stay with me or go back upriver if he wants, this time in fine clothes and with the passage money for as far upstream as oars and poles can go. Let him go home and be the richest young man in Fall Ford, and then see whether his father shuns him. No, Tegay the cobbler will usher him into his house and offer his son his old place at the table.
People talk of magic and miracles wrought by the saints—and if they saw what Rigg and Umbo had done together, conjuring out of thin air a fine bejeweled knife, they’d be accounted saints or mages themselves—but none of these miracles is as potent or useful as a sudden flow of money into a man’s pocket. Then the transformation is like changing rainy to sunny weather, which no evil mage or generous saint can do except in the silliest old stories.
They arrived at the greystone building just as the large clock set high in the wall began chiming so loudly Rigg was surprised he hadn’t heard it clear down at the docks, though none of the locals seemed to be startled by it. At the door, a man dressed all in grey, wearing a short sword and holding a quarterstaff, stopped them and looked them up and down.
Loaf had already warned them many times to stay silen
t and say nothing, so Rigg merely looked at the guard with candid interest, showing no apprehension or any other thing if he could help it. Just wide-open eyes, regarding him. Whether the man could read the dread and the hope behind his eyes, Rigg could not guess. But at least Rigg wasn’t blurting things out, or showing the gems around, the way he had spilled his money on Loaf’s bar.
The man stared especially long at Rigg, trying perhaps to break the steadiness of his gaze. But Rigg had done this exercise with Father, so the more the man tried to stare him down, the calmer Rigg became, the steadier his gaze. Until the man looked away.
Then Loaf spoke to him. “I see that you can recognize quality, however weary the traveler,” said Loaf. “This boy and I”—he indicated Umbo—“have kept company with young master here, to ensure his safe arrival here at Mr. Cooper’s bank. But Mr. Cooper has had dealings with me before. I’m Loaf of Leaky’s Landing now, but once a sergeant major in the People’s Army, and I have accounts here, credit and debit both.”
“Then the boys stay outside,” said the guard.
“I’m not here on my own business, but on young master’s, and we go inside all three.”
“Then you go inside none. What do your accounts matter, if the business isn’t your own? And this boy”—he gestured with the head of the quarterstaff toward Rigg—“he’s no customer of Mr. Cooper’s.”
“And yet Mr. Cooper would be sorry to lose his custom,” said Loaf without a hint of temper. “Mr. Cooper has trusted me with loans before, and I have trusted him with my deposits. Let him say for himself if he trusts me now when I say this boy is worth a thousand times the trade that Mr. Cooper’s bank has had with me. Mr. Cooper knows I lie not, and pay my debts, and that is honor enough to win us entrance, I think you’ll find.”
“Mr. Cooper wants no visitors right now,” said the guard.
“And yet I say he will want us,” said Loaf, still as pleasant as could be. Rigg thought: It must be a skill a taverner has to have, if he’s to succeed—to stay calm and friendly in tone and look, regardless of the provocation. And it was quite possible the guard was showing so much resistance precisely because it was obvious that Loaf could pick the man up and break him against the stone walls if he was so inclined. The guard had to prove he was both brave and manly, by making Loaf stand begging at the door. Though in fact, now that Rigg thought about it, Loaf had not begged, but rather demanded, however cheerfully, nothing less than exactly what he wanted.
Which is what Father taught me to do, if I can only overmaster my fear.
Rigg forced himself to become calm, slowing his breath and relaxing his muscles. If Rigg was to be a worthy son of his father and claim his inheritance, he would have to stay clearheaded and confident, putting fear aside. He could not afford to wait until he was as old as Loaf to have that kind of sureness.
When the guard turned around and went inside—leaving the doorway unattended, Rigg noticed—it had not been more than a minute or two that he’d delayed them at the door. And his return was even swifter, and his manner completely changed, for when the door reopened, the grey guard bowed deeply and solemnly, and ushered Rigg inside first, taking him at Loaf’s valuation. Rigg, for his part, carried himself in a relaxed manner, as if being treated with deference were the most normal thing in the world to him.
The moment they were inside, a sharp-faced old woman led them up a wide flight of stairs while the guard returned to duty at the door.
“Why are these stairs so wide?” asked Umbo. “Do so many people have to go up and down them at the same time?”
“No,” said Loaf, patient-sounding as if talking to a favored son.
And that was right, Rigg thought—as right as Rigg remaining silent, as if he had no curiosity about the place.
“It’s important for a banker to impress those who are not yet his customers with how prosperous he is. A rich banker will not be tempted to steal from his customers, and his wealth shows that he knows how to use money wisely.”
Umbo opened his mouth to speak, but Rigg put up a finger that the old woman could not see, twitching it to warn Umbo to keep silence. For Rigg knew exactly what Umbo was going to say, since he had thought of it himself: A banker who looked rich might have gotten that way precisely by stealing from his customers. But now was not the time to bandy words that they would not want repeated to Mr. Cooper.
So they walked in silence up yet another flight, which ended in a spacious landing with a huge double door paned with glass at the far end of it. Other, more modest doors led off on either side.
The old woman brought them to a halt a few steps short of the great doors, and though there was no one to be seen, she said, not particularly loudly, “Loaf of Leaky’s Landing, former master sergeant of the People’s Army, and two boys, one of whom he vouches for as being of quality, sir.”
Without any hand touching them, the doors opened, but not by swinging in or out. Instead they slid aside to left and right, and in front of them was a large, bright room, with many tall windows in the walls and a table larger than the one in Nox’s dining room. Bookshelves filled the gaps between the windows, and they were jammed with books, not a space left over.
Mr. Cooper himself stood at the largest window, directly behind the table, silhouetted by the bright light coming through it. He faced outward, as if there were something important to examine on the wall of the building opposite.
“Come in and be seated,” said Mr. Cooper, his voice like a whisper of someone speaking directly into their ears.
As they walked through the doorway, Loaf stopped them long enough to show them a finger pressed to his lips, to remind them that only Loaf was to do any talking. At first, Rigg decided to comply, letting Loaf take care of everything. He’d handled things well so far.
Yet Rigg knew that it was only his fear and self-doubt that made him imagine he could let Loaf deal with everything. When it came to banking in large amounts, Loaf knew little and Rigg knew much. Father had never taught Rigg how to talk with surly rivermen in a dark tavern by the river, but he had taught him the principles of banking and finance. And Rigg also understood that if he was to be credible as the rightful possessor of whatever money these jewels were worth, he must show that he alone was making the decisions, that he could not easily be fooled.
The only seats were stools around the table. And the stools were low, almost to the point of being milking stools, so that when they sat, even Loaf looked a bit ridiculous, like a child sitting at the grownups’ table. Umbo was not tall for fourteen years of age, so he looked even sillier, lacking only a bib for the babyish effect to be complete.
Rigg, seeing the effect, did not sit down. He recognized at once a thing that Father had warned him about: Men jealous of their power and fearful of losing it will use tricks to dominate other men. “But if you refuse to let such a man deploy these tricks against you, he will be afraid of you. If that’s what you desire, then refuse to submit. But if you want to deceive him into complacency, submit happily, and keep your resistance in your heart.”
In this case, Rigg decided not to submit, because he knew he needed to be seen as bringing great wealth into the bank, not asking for a favor. It was the banker who must prove himself to Rigg, and not the other way around—that was how Rigg knew this conversation must be framed.
And he also realized that Father had spent those forest journeys preparing him for such a moment as this. My life was in the woods among the beasts, up to my elbows in blood, the skinning knife worn down to fit my callused hands—but my education was for rooms like this.
When the sound of sliding and shuffling stools was silent, Mr. Cooper turned around, and there was an eyeblink of a moment in which he took in the fact that Rigg remained standing at the end of the table, his bag resting open upon it.
Rigg met his gaze calmly, trying to keep the same steady emotionless regard he had practiced on the guard downstairs. And as he did, he noticed the path that Mr. Cooper had most recently followed. There ha
d been a back-and-forth from table to bookshelves, a half a dozen little trips, and Rigg realized that when their arrival had first been announced, while they were still waiting outside the door, Mr. Cooper had rushed around to clear everything off the table. His stance by the window was nothing but a pose. He did indeed regard Loaf’s arrival as a matter of some importance, and he had gone to some trouble to make an impression of loftiness and lack of need, which suggested that he needed the business they were bringing him.
“Mr. Cooper,” said Rigg, though Loaf had been about to speak and now glowered at Rigg for preempting him. “I have come into an inheritance from my late father. I was to take it to Aressa Sessamo, where I have kinfolk that I have never met. He gave me a letter of introduction to bankers there, but I find that it is inconvenient to make the rest of the journey without converting a little of it into ready money. Therefore I wish you to oversee the sale of a particular item, return a small part of the value to me in coin, and provide me with a letter of credit that will be convertible in Aressa Sessamo when I arrive. I assume you have a relationship with at least one banking house in Aressa Sessamo?”
Loaf’s irritation had changed to something more like awe. Well, hadn’t Father made Rigg practice rhetoric? “Say the same thing, but now say it to someone you love, to whom you are in great debt.” “Say it now to someone who thinks he has power over you, but whom you wish to intimidate.” “Say it to someone of a higher class than you wish to seem to be of.” “Say it now to make sure someone knows he is of a lower class.” It all seemed like such a game to Rigg, but he had mastered all these tricks of rhetoric before he reached the age of ten, and had done it well enough that Father laughed with delight at some of the things he said. He had used these skills well enough with farmers and taverners and other travelers coming down the North Road, and had dealt with Loaf and Leaky well enough, but in those cases it served him to seem what in fact he was—a harmless boy in need of help.
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