Daniel Abraham - The Tyrant's Law

But even without Marcus, Porte Oliva had been the first home she’d made for herself. She had founded the branch of the Medean bank there without in fact even consulting with the bank’s holding company. Her rooms there were familiar and comfortable, the servants at the taphouse down the street knew her and her habits, the queensmen who kept order in the streets touched their brows in respect as she passed by. In Porte Oliva, she had been someone, and more, she understood who and what she was. In Suddapal, she might be anyone. And so she might be nobody.

Her stomach made a little flutter, and she wished that she had a little skin of wine. Preferably distilled.

The piers of Suddapal reached out deep into the waters of the Inner Sea. The planks were black, slippery, and flecked with foam. At the height of a shipping season, Cithrin imagined they would be as full and crowded as the beggar-press walking into Porte Oliva, and she was pleased to have arrived when she could keep herself far away from the churning green of the sea against the pilings. The waves seemed to shift the boards under her feet, the world rolled unsteadily, and she knew it was an illusion of stepping back on land. Any pier that truly swayed so much would come to pieces in a day.

A Timzinae woman stood before a palanquin of red and gold, and two massive Yemmu men with uncut tusks rising from their jaws knelt behind her. Her robes were a vibrant green that would have left Cithrin looking wan and sickly. A necklace of gold splayed itself on her throat. Cithrin put on a smile, tucked her hips the way Master Kit had taught her to make herself seem older, and walked to the woman. The Timzinae smiled, the nictitating membrane sliding over her eyes, blinking and unblinking.

“Magistra bel Sarcour?” the woman asked.

“Magistra Isadau, I presume?” Cithrin said.

“Oh, no. Isadau is my sister. She’s folded into some business or other. I am Mykani rol Ennenamet, but please call me Kani.”

Behind her, Yardem snapped out a sharp order. Enen replied, her voice respectful and unintimidated. Cithrin found herself on the wrong foot, trying to readjust her expectations of Magistra Isadau and her bank.

“I wasn’t aware that the Magistra had family,” Cithrin said, and Kani’s laughter shimmered.

“There seem like a thousand of us sometimes, but we don’t all live in the compound. Just me, Isadau, and our brother Jurin. And the children, of course.”

“Magistra Isadau has children?” Cithrin said. She tried to imagine Magister Imaniel with a wife and children of his own. It was as easy to picture a house cat juggling knives.

“Not of her own,” Kani said, “but I have my girls, and Jurin is raising three boys. We have the household to herd them, though. They’re all looking forward to meeting you. In fact, I should warn you. Jurin’s oldest boy, Salan, just turned twelve. He saw a company perform a play last year about a Cinnae queen who saves Herez from a plague of demons.”

“The Ash Burner’s Tale,” Cithrin said.

“Yes, I think that was the name. Regardless, the woman playing the queen was quite beautiful, and I think he’s decided to fall in love with you on that basis. If his mooning around gets bothersome, let one of us know and we’ll rein him in somehow. You know how boys that age are with their doomed infatuations.”

I haven’t got a clue , Cithrin thought, but didn’t say. How are they?

“We’re ready, Magistra,” Yardem said. His ear flicked, and the earrings jingled. Kani’s attention fastened on them.

“Priest caste?” she said.

“Fallen,” Yardem said.

“Oh. Excuse me. I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“No offense taken,” Yardem said. Kani’s smile stayed warm, but a reevaluation showed in her eyes.

“You are a fascinating woman, Magistra bel Sarcour. It should be delightful having you in the family,” Kani said. The repetition of her formal name and title made Cithrin realize she’d been rude.

“Please, if I’m to call you Kani, you should call me Cithrin.”

Kani made a small, playful bow, then scooped Cithin’s arm into her own and led her toward the palanquin. The two Yemmu men coughed to one another and hunkered down, ready to lift Cithrin and her new companion and carry them into the city.

“Cithrin,” Kani said. “That’s a beautiful name. Was it your mother’s?”

The five cities that made up Suddapal stretched along the northern coast of the Inner Sea. Along the eastern side, black cliffs rose. Islands towered a hundred feet above the waves, topped by tiny houses and greenswards where sheep spent their whole lives without ever cropping the mainland’s grass. Farther to the west, the docks and piers stretched out to sea, and streets and squares pressed up into the hills. There were no canals as there had been in Vanai. Many of the streets were stone-paved, but in others, a low, tough ground cover grew on the soil, resisting horses’ hooves and carts’ wheels alike. The puppets and singers that had seemed to spring up on every corner of Porte Oliva were gone. Timzinae children played, running alongside the palanquin, chanting rhymes that Cithrin couldn’t quite follow in harmonies that were as complex as the most sophisticated singers she’d heard in the temples. Here and there, she caught glimpses of other races—Yemmu, Tralgu, Firstblood—but for the greatest part, Suddapal was a Timzinae city, and Cithrin realized that her skin, hair, and stature would stand out there like a daisy among roses. Just another thing to consider as she remade herself here. The year ahead seemed to stretch out forever.

Magister Imaniel had always taught her that a bank’s public face should be humble. Architecture that boasted was better left for kings and princes and priests. A small house, clean and simply run, told the mechanisms of power that the bank was no threat to them, and since that was not true, the appearance of it was all the more important. In Porte Oliva, Cithrin had taken an old gambler’s stall for the home of her branch, and had conducted business in Maestro Asanpur’s café. When the guard grew large enough to require a barracks of their own, she hadn’t moved to larger quarters, but taken other places. Other sites. As her power in the city grew, she took pains to appear small even to the people who knew better. Especially to them.

The Medean bank in Suddapal, in contrast, was in a broad, sprawling compound as grand and pleasant as a duke’s holding. Halls of polished granite with statues of gods and holy men, monsters and angels in niches at every corner. A massive pasture adjacent with stables enough for a dozen horses. A slave to greet them wearing a decorative silver chain that wasn’t even attached to the doorframe. Pillars of carved wood and the scent of pine smoke. If this was how a bank remained unnoticed, humble, and small, then Suddapal had to be the richest city in the world. Cithrin felt certain that it wasn’t.

The strangest thing about it all was the openness of the space, the absence of glass or parchment over the windows. The building itself seemed exposed to the air and weather in a way she had never seen before. She wasn’t sure it was wise.

Her own room had a black iron stove squatting in the corner with a fire already burning in its belly. Fresh rushes covered the floor. Her bed was square with a soft mattress, a blanket filled with down, and a pillow stuffed with buckwheat hulls. A washing basin of carved stone topped an iron stand at the bedside, and an enameled night pot waited discreetly beside it. The desk was made from carved oak, stained almost black. The window opened onto a courtyard, and the voices of a man and woman carried to her. The hall just outside had a guard’s niche where Enen sat. With a Kurtadam’s thick pelt, the cool hallway might be almost comfortable.