The King's Blood

Marcus

The trade ships from Narinisle arrived in Porte Oliva, and the city was a madness of activity. Merchants flooded the inns and pubs near the port, digging for information, pouring beer into the sailors and coin into the purses of keeps and brewers. Which ships had left first, which last, which traders had met with each other on the distant island kingdom. No detail was too small to be wrung of all significance. It was the high season of Porte Oliva, and even in the exhausting heat of the day, trade and barter and negotiations filled every corner. The Medean bank had placed no direct stake the previous year, and so the absence of Cithrin bel Sarcour could be excused. It could not, however, go unnoticed.

A light rain fell from a low, white sky, leaving the air steamy and thick. The interior of the taproom was punishingly hot. Given the choice between the damp and the heat, rain won out, and the courtyard that overlooked the sea was thick with benches and chairs. The keep had taken away the tables to make more room. Marcus sat with Yardem, Ahariel Akkabrian, and the Jasuru named Hart. Four men of four different races all sitting together. They were, Marcus noted, the only such group in the yard.

“You need a cunning man who can turn the beer cold,” Ahariel said.

“You need a desert,” Hart said.

“How’d a desert help?” the Kurtadam asked. He’d had his pelt shaved almost to the skin for the summer. Seeing his pink skin dotted with thick black stubble and improbably pink nipples exposed to the air felt slightly obscene. Without his beads, he looked more like a Firstblood, but also eerily less like a human—neither one race nor another. Some other of his race left a decorative V of fur to keep the beads in place, but Ahariel had opted for the extreme.

“You take a great pot,” Hart said, making his arms round. “Put a small one within, and sand between them. Damp the sand, and it will keep meat or beer cool. Only it won’t work here. Too wet.” His teeth clicked on the last word like it was threatening it. “What about you, Yardem? What do the Tralgu do?”

“Drink warm beer,” Yardem said with a wide, canine grin.

The others laughed, but not Marcus. He’d come drinking because he didn’t want to stay another day in the barracks or at the counting house, and a taproom by the port seemed to offer the chance of something interesting. Once he’d gotten there, the press of bodies and the roar of the voices left him anxious. There were too many people in not enough space. There was no way to see a threat coming. The tension was building across his shoulders and in the pit of his stomach.

He scanned the crowd, looking for something without quite knowing what it was. A familiar face, perhaps. Cithrin or Pyk. Or Master Kit. Yes, that was it. He was looking for Kit. Not—he told himself—because of the mad scheme the man had talked of. Only to pass an evening in conversation with someone who’d seen the world outside Porte Oliva recently. Someone whom the world hadn’t yet nailed in place.

He wondered where Kit had gone. What he was doing just then. It was hard to imagine him away from the other players. Kit had built a life and a family and then had walked away from it because he felt he had to. It didn’t matter that the reason was nonsense, it was still the mark of a brave man in a world of cowards. Marcus wasn’t going to leave his work here to run off on some mad and doomed adventure. Unless, perhaps…

Someone put a hand on his shoulder and he looked up into the face of Qahuar Em. The half-breed had the coloring and features of a Firstblood, but with a rough skin where the Jasuru scales hadn’t quite formed. Once, he had been Cithrin’s rival and lover, and that he couldn’t father children had been the only thing Marcus liked about him.

“Buy you men a round?” Qahuar Em asked, and then waited for an answer.

“Why not?” Marcus said, shifting on the bench.

Qahuar shouted to a harried serving boy and gestured toward the little knot of guards before he sat. His smile was both practiced and sincere. He was a difficult man to dislike. That was his job.

“The magistra seems to be missing the season,” Qahuar said.

“Pressing work in Carse,” Marcus said. “Don’t know much about it. Just poor soldiers, us.” Qahuar Em laughed, because they both knew better. “I heard your escort fleet hasn’t gone as well as planned.”

“We knew it would take a few years before we saw profit,” Qahuar Em said, with a shrug. “I heard that I might have some gratitude to offer you, though.”

“Always sorry for that,” Marcus said, his smile pulling the sting of the words, but only a little.

The serving boy came, a tray held above his head as he threaded his way through the crowd, and delivered mugs of last year’s cider to the five men. It was sweet and crisp and the fumes from his first mouthful went to Marcus’s head so that he only sipped it after that.

“The story goes that half the pirates between Cabral and here have moved elsewhere because the famed General Wester has been attacking them in their sleep and burning all their boats.”

“Exaggeration,” Marcus said. “Burned one boat once. But you know how these stories go. By next year, I’ll have lit the ocean on fire and anyone who loses a cargo someplace besides here will say it’s my fault for pushing the pirates in their way.”

“Likely true,” Qahuar said, and someone at the far end of the yard called his name. He looked up and waved at a Firstblood woman in a blue cotton gown, but he muttered something under his breath as he did it.

“Friend of yours?” Marcus asked.

“Client,” Qahuar said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to—”

“We’ll drink your cider without you,” Ahariel said with a broad smile. “Think of you while we do it.”

“Good man,” Qahuar Em said, rising to his feet. He clapped Marcus on the shoulder. “Give the magistra my regards when you see her. The game’s less interesting without her.”

“She’ll be pleased to hear it,” Marcus said, and watched the man walk away. He knew his animosity wasn’t entirely fair. Porte Oliva thought Cithrin to be older than she was. Marcus knew Qahuar Em had been sleeping with a girl barely more than a child, but even the half-Jasuru didn’t.

“Hm,” Hart said. “I’d say the captain’s got an admirer.”

The woman in the blue gown was speaking with Qahuar. She glanced back toward Marcus as Qahuar nodded, then she looked away perhaps a bit too quickly. She was too old to be pretty, but so was he. And she was handsome. Younger than Alys would have been, Marcus guessed, and older than Merian. Marcus sighed and handed his mug across to Yardem. The rain plastered her dress to her body, much as it did with everyone.

“You boys behave,” Marcus said, standing.

“You’re going for an introduction?” Hart asked with a leer.

“I’m going for a walk.”

The streets were less crowded than the courtyard had been, but they were just as hot, just as damp. Horses and oxen pulled carts across filthy pavement, their heads hung low and heat spume on their lips. Men with hands on sword pommel walked beside loads of silk and spice, gold and tobacco leaf come from Far Syramys. The air smelled of horse shit and rotting vegetables and curry. All familiar, Marcus thought, but he wouldn’t go so far as to say it smelled like home. Having no place in mind he cared to be, he found himself falling into a lonely patrol. The bank warehouse was open, bills of lading being compared with a cartful of crates. Enen and Roach waved to him as he passed. The barracks was nearly empty, the heat of the day making the interior unpleasant, but several of his guards sat in the shade of the building playing music and telling one another unlikely stories of battle or sexual misadventure. The counting house was open, the planter of tulips that Cithrin had put out when they had first purchased the building was a splash of celebratory red and pink.

Inside, Pyk was squatting on a stool, her legs splayed. Sweat ran down her face and stained her robe under her arms and breasts. She lifted her chin in greeting.

“You look like a drowned cat. Was about to send for you,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” Marcus asked.

The Yemmu woman heaved a tectonic shrug. “Depends on how you look at it. Maybe nothing. Letter came. On the table there. I’d get up and hand it to you if it wasn’t so fucking hot.”

The pages were coarse, and the ripped edges where they’d been sewn had tiny tears going into the page. The cheap paper the bank used for things that didn’t need keeping. The signature at the bottom was Cithrin’s, but it didn’t bear her thumb. Not a legal document. He started from the top, reading slowly, and his heart went stiller.

“Camnipol,” he said. “Thought they had a war going there.”

“They do,” Pyk said. “All but over, from what I hear. My money’d be on old Komme keeping his eye on the next war. Antea’s a big place, and may be about to get bigger. Good to know who the players are.”

“Didn’t know it was a game.”

“It’s all a game,” Pyk said. He wanted to find a sneer in her voice, but she only sounded tired. “The girl’s a good choice. Pretty. Young. Smart. People say things in front of her and think she won’t understand. What’s this do to you?”

Marcus put the letter back on the table. It lay limp and broke-winged.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just means I’ll be watching the store a little longer before she gets back.”

Pyk smacked her lips.

“And if she doesn’t come back?”

Marcus leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. He took a deep breath, and felt hollow. “Why wouldn’t she come back?”

“Because she’s young and finding her place in the world. It may not be here. Maybe she gets out there and finds there’s something she’d rather do than be my mask.”

“Tell me that this wasn’t your plan,” Marcus said. “Tell me you weren’t trying to get her to go out there so that she’d find something else to do. Leave you with the bank.”

“I don’t make her decisions. And I don’t know that she’ll stay away. Only I can see that she might.”

“All right,” Marcus said. “That could happen.” “If it does, do you still work here?”

Marcus smiled. The hollowness had a touch of anger now. He didn’t want Cithrin to leave the bank and Porte Oliva, and he didn’t like thinking what it meant that he didn’t.

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a particular answer you’re looking for?”

“There is,” Pyk said. “I want you to say you will. Having Marcus Wester collecting the debts gives the bank a certain weight. And you’re good at it. But if you’re only here for the girl, then you’re only here for the girl.”

“Well, I’m here until the girl comes back,” he said. “If she doesn’t, we can talk about it then.”

Pyk’s wide, yellowed eyes took him in and she sucked at her teeth.

“That’s good enough,” she said. “And you can hire back the men I had you take down and put the other back at full rates.”

“Now that she’s gone, you mean?” Marcus said, pushing himself off the wall. “Cithrin’s here, you’ll make it hard and mean and small, but when everyone knows it’s your hand on the purse, it’s all open? That how this is?”

Pyk’s smile was so wide, he saw the holes where her tusks had been gaping dark in her gums. Her laughter wasn’t a sound but a motion in her shoulders and her belly. She shook her head.

“The girl’s letter didn’t come alone,” she said. “The holding company saw the reports. It approved my request to budget more for the guards. So now I put in more money for guards. It’s not a mystery. I’m not the villain here. You can stop treating me like one.”

Marcus stood, anger and confusion and embarrassment growing in him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t know you had to have your budget approved.”

“Don’t, strictly speaking,” Pyk said. “But the Porte Oliva branch has a reputation as unpredictable. I’m tacking into that wind. Can’t think where it came from.”

“Anything else?” Marcus said.

“Is. Keep an ear to the ground for anything about a captain name of Uus rol Osterhaal. He’ll have been coming up from Lyoneia, but he might not be announcing the fact.”

“Anything I’m trying to find out?”

“Whatever you can. Bring me what you find, and I’ll know whether it’s useful or not. You can go now. I’m going to sit here and sweat a while more.”

Marcus walked back out. He felt like he’d been in the gymnasium, down in the fighting pits getting a fist sunk just under his ribs. The world was unchanged, but it was also different. Porte Oliva seemed smaller. Thin. As if the only thing that had given the city any sense of reality was that Cithrin lived here. And if this wasn’t her city, then it was an encrustation of buildings stuck on a rock overlooking the sea. Wasn’t much charm in that.

He walked slowly, retracing his steps. The rain was still falling, though if anything less now than it had been. The streets were wet and slick, and they stank. In an hour, maybe two, the heat would loosen its grasp a little. He’d still be sweating through his shirts until morning. It would be like that until the days got short again. But he would be here when it happened. He’d be working for Pyk Usterhall and the Medean bank and waiting for Cithrin to come home until it was clear that she wouldn’t.

He held the thought in his mind like pressing his tongue to a sore tooth.

“She’s not my daughter,” he said to himself. A small voice in the far, dark reaches of his mind answered, She’s Cithrin.

He wasn’t sure what he’d thought. What he’d expected. That they would stay there, he supposed. That he and Yardem would keep her and her bank safe, if not forever, then for years at the least. It wasn’t something Cithrin had promised him or that he’d asked from her. If she found a better path, a better plan, taking it wasn’t any betrayal of him.

A beggar came up to him with her hand out, then met his eyes, started, and backed away. He was almost back at the taproom before he knew he was going there. The sound of the voices in the courtyard was just as loud. Maybe louder. He made his way in. He saw Yardem see him. The Tralgu’s ears went up and forward, straining at him, but Marcus only lifted a hand, more acknowledgment than greeting.

Qahuar Em and his client were sitting at a small table in the shade of a wide white wall. Seagulls were screeching and wheeling out beyond them, grey against the white sky. Marcus hesitated. He’d taken enough lovers in the years after Ellis that he knew what sex would ease and what it wouldn’t. Right now, his body wasn’t hungry. He didn’t need release for its own sake. The thing that would soothe him now, he wasn’t going to find in a woman’s bed.

Or anywhere else.

We have steady work for fair pay. We have shelter and we have food. Interesting if that’s not what we were looking for.

And more than that? What did he want that was more than that? What had Cithrin taken with her that left him angry with no one to be angry at?

The woman with Qahuar Em looked over, saw him, smiled. Marcus smiled back. This was a mistake, but it was his to make. He found the serving boy, made his order, and gave him a silver coin that would have paid twice over. When he approached the table, Qahuar Em smiled and lifted his eyebrows.

“Evening,” Marcus said. “I hoped I could return your kindness. Stand you to a round?”

“Of course,” Qahuar Em said. “This is Arinn Costallin, a dear friend of mine from Herez.”

“Marcus Wester,” he said, taking her hand. “So I’ve heard,” she said.

Yardem found him by the seawall just before dawn. Marcus wasn’t drunk anymore. The rain had stopped sometime after midnight, and the clouds had scattered. Yardem had a sack of roasted nuts in his hand. When he squatted down next to Marcus, he held its open mouth toward him. Marcus took a handful. They tasted sweet and meaty.

“Didn’t see you at the barracks,” Yardem said.

“I am an ass.”

Yardem nodded and bit down on a nut. They chewed together quietly for a time. A seagull called, lofting up into the darkness, then, as if confused, swung back and landed on the cliff face below them.

“Moved too fast with her, sir?”

“Did.”

“Should we be expecting children?”

“No. I was careful about that, at least. But then after, I started talking about…”

Marcus leaned forward, his head in his hands.

“Might have been a little early to talk about them, sir.”

“Might have.”

“Scared her off of you.”

“Did,” Marcus said. Below them, fishing boats had put out to sea for the day. Tiny black dots on a nearly black sea.

“Was this about Alys and Merian?” Yardem asked. “Or was it about the magistra?”

“Cithrin.”

“You think she isn’t coming back, then.”

“I think she may not. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. And someday I’ll need to find what it’s going to take to get a family I can keep.”

Yardem nodded and flicked one jingling ear. They were silent for a moment.

“I have an answer for that,” Yardem said.

“Is it theological?”

“Is.”

“Best we save it, then,” Marcus said, clapping his hands on his thighs and standing up. His back was a single long ache, and his mouth felt as dry as cotton. When he stretched his arms, something between his shoulders cracked like a dry stick. “I take it Pyk has a list of work for us?”

“Does, sir. But if you’d like to sleep, I can take a group through it all. It’s not so much we can’t manage without.”

“No. There’s a job needs doing,” Marcus said. “Show me what we’ve got.”