Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

“What are you doing ?” she shouted.

“I tried talking first,” Wester said, and pushed her into the basin. The water was warm. “Take those rags off or else I will.”

“I am not going to—”

In the growing light of the candles, his expression was hard and implacable.

“I’ve seen girls before. I’m not going to be shocked. I’ve got soap here,” he said, pressing the stone jar into her hand. “And be sure to wash your hair. It’s greasy enough to catch fire.”

Cithrin looked at the jar. It was heavier than she’d expected, with a tight-fit lid. She didn’t know the last time she’d washed herself. When he spoke again, his voice was resigned.

“Either you do it, or I will.”

“Don’t watch,” she said, and as she did, she realized that she was agreeing to a contract whose terms she didn’t yet know. All she felt was relief that they hadn’t left her.

Marcus made in impatient sound, but turned to face the stairway. Yardem coughed discreetly and stepped into the bedroom. Cithrin pulled off the carter’s clothes and knelt in the basin. The air felt cold against her skin. A carved wood bowl floated beside her, and she used it to rinse herself. She hadn’t realized how filthy she’d felt until she didn’t anymore.

A familiar voice came from the stairway.

“Is she there?” Cary asked.

“She is,” Marcus said. “Just toss it up for now.”

The actor grunted, and Marcus moved forward, catching a bundle of rope and cloth out of the air.

“We’ll be downstairs,” Cary said, and Cithrin’s street door opened and closed. Marcus untied the rope and passed a length of soft flannel out behind him. Cithrin took the towel from his hand.

“Got a clean dress here too,” he said. “You say when you’re decent.”

Cithrin stepped out of the bath shivering and dried herself quickly. The water in the basin was dark, a scum of suds floating on the top. Shrugging on the dress, she recognized it as one of Cary’s. The cloth smelled of face paints and dust.

“I’m decent,” she said.

Yardem came out of her bedroom. He’d fashioned her blanket into a sack and filled it with empty wineskins and bottles. The tun and her remaining bottle were in with the dead. She reached out, ready to tell him to leave those, that she wasn’t done with them. The Tralgu cocked an ear, his earring jingling. She let him pass.

“I’ve got food coming,” Marcus said. “You have all the bank’s records in here?”

“There’s a transaction ledger at the café,” she said. “And copies of a few of the contracts.”

“I’ll send someone. I am posting a guard at the foot of the stairs and under that window. No drink stronger than coffee comes in. You stay in here until you figure out what we’re going to do to keep your bank for you.”

“There isn’t anything,” she said. “I’ve been forbidden from any more negotiation or trade.”

“And God knows we wouldn’t want to break any rules,” Marcus said. “Whatever you need, you say the words. Everyone gets a good self-pitying drunk now and again, but it’s over. You stay sober and you do what needs doing. Understood?”

Cithrin stepped in close and kissed him. His lips were still and uncertain, the stubble around them rough. He was the third man she’d ever kissed. Sandr and Qahuar and Captain Wester. He stepped back.

“My daughter wasn’t much younger than you.”

“Would you have done this to her?” she asked, gesturing at the basin.

“I’d have done anything for her,” he said. And then, “I’ll have the bath taken away, Magistra. Do you want us to get some coffee since we have to get the books from the café anyway?”

“It will be closed by now. It’s night.”

“I’ll have an exception made.”

“Then yes.”

He nodded and went back down the stairway. Cithrin sat at her little desk. The sound of rain above her mixed with the voices below. There was nothing to be done, of course. All the best efforts and intentions in the world couldn’t change a single number inked in her ledgers. She looked anyway. Yardem and the two Kurtadam came and hauled the basin away again. Roach appeared with a bowl of fish-and-cream soup that tasted of black pepper and the sea. A mug of beer would have gone with it perfectly, but she knew better than to ask. Water was good enough for now.

Her mind felt fragile, a thing that might fall apart at any little jostle, but she tried to imagine herself as the auditor from Carse. What would he see when he looked at all this? She went through the initial listing of inventory that she’d made. Silk, tobacco, gems, jewels, spices, silver, and gold. The pudgy Antean at the mill pond had stolen some, and her estimate of the loss was included, the numbers in black strokes against the cream-colored paper. So there was the beginning. Now to what she’d done with it.

Turning the pages had a sense of nostalgia. The dry hiss of the paper, and here was another artifact of the golden age that had just passed. The contract and receipt from when she’d bought the rooms from the gambler. The onionskin permit and seal that had marked the opening of the bank. She traced her fingertips over it. It hadn’t been a full season since she’d begun. It seemed more than that. It seemed a lifetime. Then the agreements of consignment from the spicer and the cloth merchants. Her valuation, theirs, and the final income from sale. The jewelry had always been the problem. She found herself wondering if there might have been a better way to be rid of it than the one she’d chosen. Maybe if she’d waited until the ships from Narinisle had come in. Or placed them on consignment with a trading house with a heavy export trade. Then she wouldn’t have been flooding her own market. Well, next time.

Distant thunder rolled softly through the steady tapping of rain. Roach, soaked to his scales, brought up the lockbox from the café, a huge earthenware mug of coffee, and a note from Maestro Asanpur hoping that she would feel better soon and saying that the café felt too large without her in it. It was almost enough to reduce her to tears again, but that would have confused the Timzinae boy, so she forced herself to keep composure.

The best trade she’d worked had been the horizontal semi-monopoly with the brewer, cooper, and taphouses. Each person in the chain of production was in business with the bank, and so as soon as the grain and water arrived at the brewery, every trade benefited her, and put her in the position to guarantee business to the next link. If she could make arrangements with a few farmers for dedicated access to their grain crops, it would be a locked-in gold-producing mechanism.

But that would be for the next person, whoever they were. Cithrin sipped at her coffee. It had been a good thought, though, and well performed. In a year, when the remnants of her parents’ investment in the bank came to her, she would have to see if there was some much smaller version of the same plan. It would be painful, she thought, going from Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour to the bank’s ward again for that last year. But once she reached her naming day, and could enter into business for herself…

The skin on her arm puckered, the fine hairs standing up. Her neck prickled. A feeling of cold fire lit her spine. She closed the books she’d written, shoved them aside, and went back to the older ones, written by other hands now dead. The records of Vanai. The small red-inked notation that marked her arrival at the bank. She closed the book with trembling hands.

Captain Wester had been right.

There was a way.

I won’t hear it,” King Simeon said. The months hadn’t been kind to him. His skin was greyer than it had been, his lips an unhealthy blue. Sweat beaded his brow though the room wasn’t particularly warm. “God, Dawson. Listen to yourself. You’re back from exile for one day— one —and already you’re back at it.”