The Liar's key

TWENTY-FIVE

Summer rests upon Umbertide’s rooftops, sizzling on the terracotta, dazzling across whitewashed walls where lizards cling, motionless, waiting as all of the city waits, for the sun to fall.

• • •

For three nights the same dream haunted me, making those that had recurred during the three weeks before seem mild in comparison. By day I felt a modicum of distress about Hennan-I’d liked the boy and hadn’t wished any harm to him, but I hadn’t signed on as his guardian or adopted him into the Kendeth family. The child had run off, as many children do, and it was hardly my duty to hunt him down amid the vastness of the Broken Empire.

Apparently my conscience disagreed-though only past midnight. Three mornings in a row I woke exhausted and harrowed by endless visions of Hennan in torment. Most often I saw him captured, many hands seizing him and dragging him screaming into the dark. I saw him curled about his misery on a filthy floor, ragged, little more than bones wrapped tight in a pale skin, the fire gone from his hair, eyes dull and seeing nothing.

On the first morning I hired an investigator to hunt for the boy. I had the money for it, money by the bucket-load.

On the second morning I paid a priest to say prayers and light candles for Hennan, though I was far from sure whether a few candles would induce God to watch out for a heathen.

On the third morning I decided that having a conscience was definitely over-rated and resolved to see a doctor in order to obtain some form of medication for my ailment. Worrying about other people, especially some peasant boy from the wilds, wasn’t me at all.

• • •

Umbertide is a city of narrow alleys, whose cobbles are lit but briefly when at the zenith of each day the sun dips its fingers deep into each crevice and cranny. Along these shadowed ways men come and go about their business-their business being other people’s business. These messengers bound on errands, bearing credit notes, invoices, transactions recorded and notarized, bring with them droplets of information, rumour, scandal and intrigue, and draw together to form a river, flowing from one archive to the next, filling and emptying vaults. You would think the blood of Umbertide gold but it runs ink-black: information holds more value and is easier to carry.

And today one among those many men was bound upon my business, carrying, I hoped, some small fact valuable to me.

The restaurant door opened and after some negotiations amid a huddle of waiters the maître d’ led a tall thin man, still wrapped in the blackness of his street-cloak, to my table.

“Sit.” I waved a hand at the chair opposite. He smelled of sweat and spice. “Try the quails’ eggs, they’re wonderfully. . expensive.” I’d been pushing an exquisite meal around three highly decorated Ling plates for some while now. Caviar from Steppes sturgeons, tiny anchovies in plum sauce, artistically spattered across the porcelain, mushrooms stuffed with garlic and chives, thin strips of cured ham. . none of it appealed, though it would require a full piece of crown gold to pay the bill.

The man took his seat and turned a face, as long and angular as his body toward me, ignoring the eggs.

“I found him. Debtors’ cells for Central, over on Piatzo.”

“Excellent.” Irritation wrestled relief. Damned if I knew why I’d wasted good money on an investigator-I could have guessed he’d end up behind bars somewhere. But a debtors’ prison? “You’re sure it’s him?”

“We don’t get many northerners in Umbertide-well, not pale-as-milk, godless heathen northerners anyway, and not like him.” He pushed a small roll of parchment across the table. “The address and his case number. Let me know if I can be of further service.” And with that he stood, a waiter swooping to escort him from the premises.

I uncoiled the parchment and stared at the number as if it might unravel the path that led a penniless child to a debtors’ cell, or perhaps even answer the more vexing question-why I had wasted both time and money hunting him down? At least it had turned out to be surprisingly quick and easy to find him. The next thing to do was to set him up safe and secure somewhere he wouldn’t run away from. Then perhaps I could recover from my inconvenient and thankfully rare attack of conscience.

The year I spent at the Mathema had armed me with the expectation that numbers held secrets, but had failed to give me the tools to reveal them. I’d been a poor student and the minor mathmagicians tasked with my training soon despaired of me. The only corner of numbers that I had any purchase on were odds-born from my love of gambling. Probability theory, the Libans called it, and managed to suck most of the joy out of that too.

“98-3-8-3-6-6-81632.”

Just numbers. The Central Bank? I’d thought to find Hennan dead in a ditch or chained to a bench in some workshed. . but not a guest of the Firenze Central Bank.

I stayed a while longer, watching the diners devour a small fortune, unable to tell how many of them were truly enjoying the over-salted delectables arranged in sparse displays across their platters.

I turned to signal for another glass of Ancrath red. There’s a noise that coins make when they move across each other, not quite a chinking, not quite a rustle. Gold coins make a softer sound than copper or silver. In Florence they mint florins, heavier than the ducat or the crown gold of Red March, and in Umbertide they also mint the double florin, stamped not with the head of any king, not with Adam, third of his name and last of the emperors, nor yet with any symbol of Empire-just the cipher of the Central Bank. That soft chink of gold on gold, double florins sliding over double florins, accompanied my motion when signing for more wine, and, though it made no more than a whisper beneath the currents of conversation, several pairs of eyes turned my way. Gold always speaks loudly and nowhere are ears more tuned to its voice than in Umbertide.

Most of the people at their lunch were moderns, driven like all of Umbertide by the ebb and flow of fashions that changed with bewildering speed. Where fashion pertained to garments the only constants in Umbertide style were that it would be uncomfortable, expensive, and not resemble clothing.

I looked down at the number again. I should let him stew while I finished my meal. Under ideal circumstances I should let the ungrateful urchin spend another month on stale water and scraps. I munched a quail’s egg, gazing out over the small sea of multi-tiered hats angled over plates. Apparently it was the fashion not to remove them to dine-at least for this week. I didn’t have a month though. The time had come to leave town and delaying even a day could prove risky.

With a sigh I pushed myself away from the table, placed a cut florin beside the main plate, and left. The gold secreted all about my person chinked quietly to itself and the excess, stowed in the case in my hand, did its best to pull my arm off.

The moderns watched me leave, eyes drawn by some instinct to the departure of so much capital.

• • •

Ta-Nam waited for me outside the Fatted Goose, at ease in the shade but not dozing. I could have hired six guards for the price I paid the sword-son but I judged him more deadly, and certainly more loyal to his coin, loyalty being the credo of the caste. They bred and raised men like Ta-Nam to this one purpose on some hellish isle off the coast of Afrique, far, far to the south. I had taken the mathmagician’s advice and secured the services of a sword-son as soon as I deposited my first thousand. The price of his contract left considerably less of it to guard, but even so I felt that Yusuf’s advice had been sound-a prince should have the best and his protection should make a statement about the worth of what’s being protected. In any event one of the beauties of Umbertide is the way that the magics of the market enable one coin to become many, floating on a network of credit, promises, and fiddly little calculations called “financial instruments.” Perhaps for the first time in my life I was in credit and could afford the best.

“Walk with me,” I said. “We’re going to prison.”

Ta-Nam made no reply, only followed. It took a lot to get an answer out of the man. Whatever their training entailed it took as much out of the sword-sons as it added, leaving them too bound to their task to waste time or thought on social niceties or smalltalk. I could afford to replace Ta-Nam with the city’s ultimate accessory by now-should I want to. I’d made a middle-sized fortune staking ships of the line, merchant vessels under Grandmother’s flag, against complex future options on cargo. With the wealth I’d accumulated I could afford most things. As poor a conversationalist as the man was, though, one of the region’s famous clockwork soldiers would hardly improve things on that front. And besides, though there might be no guard more competent, the Mechanists’ toys made me nervous. Just having one near me made my skin crawl. The constant whirring of all those cogs and wheels beneath their armour, grinding at every move, so many little teeth geared to each other, everything in motion. . it unsettled me, and the copper gleam of their eyes promised nothing good.

Ta-Nam walked behind me as a guard that’s for protection rather than show always will, keeping his charge in sight at all times. Every now and then I’d glance back to check he was still there, my silent shadow. I’d yet to see him in action but he certainly looked the part, and the prowess of the sword-sons had been a thing of legend for centuries. Muscled for strength but not past the point where a price is paid in quickness, impassive, solid, watching the world without judgment. Darker even than a Nuban, his head shaved and gleaming.

“I don’t even know why we’re going,” I told Ta-Nam over my shoulder. “It’s not like I owe him anything. And he left me! I mean, of all the ingratitude. .”

We made slow but steady progress. I’d come to learn the layout of the city in the weeks I’d spent here-despite most of my hours passing in the gloom of the exchange, bilking traders, playing the percentages, and lying from the hip.

Umbertide’s narrow streets and grand sun-baked plazas hold a mix of people hardly less unusual than its most upmarket restaurants. The ubiquitous black-cloaked messengers thread cosmopolitan crowds. The lure of the city’s wealth draws visitors from every quarter of the known world, most of them rich already. There are perhaps no other places on the map where you might find a Ling merchant from the Utter East at table sipping java with a Liban mathmagician and with them a Nuban factor draped in gold chain. I’ve even seen a man from the Great Lands across the Atlantis Ocean striding the streets of Umbertide, a lighter brown than the tribes of northern Afrique and with blue eyes, his robe feathered and set with malachite beads in mosaiced profusion. What ship bore him across the wideness of that ocean I never did find out.

The alley broadened into what might almost be called a street, bracketed on each side by plaster-clad tenements reaching five and six storeys, all faded and shuttered, cracked and discoloured, though inside the luxury would shame many a mansion and the cost of such an abode would beggar most provincial lords. Ahead a fountain tinkled at the crossing of two streets, though I couldn’t see it yet, just hear its music and sense the coolness.

“Prince Jalan.” The flow of the crowd thinned around me.

“Corpus Armand.” Formally I should name him to the House Iron but he’d already trampled protocol by not listing my family and domains. I glanced back at Ta-Nam-when a modern discards protocol you know it means trouble. A modern breaches etiquette the way an Ancrath murders your family, i.e. it’s not unheard of but you know it means they’re pissed off.

Corpus drew himself up to his full unimpressive height and stalked into my path. Behind him his soldier whirred into position, looming above its master. They made a curious pair, the modern clad in his close-fitting blacks, wholly unsuited to the heat, his skin a dead white where it showed, not a Norse pale, but an albino colouration achieved with bleaches and, if the rumours were true, no small amount of witchcraft. Behind him the soldier held almost trollish proportions, taller than any man, lean, long-limbed, glimpses of mechanism where the armour plates met, steel talons flexing as cables wound about their wheels or vanished down past the wrist-guard.

“Your note for the Goghan deal is void, prince. The Waylan and Butarni both refused it.”

“Ah,” I said. Being refused by any bank was bad enough. Having your credit voided by two of the oldest in Florence effectively ruled a man out of all the best games of finance that Umbertide had to offer. “Well, this is a grievous oversight! How dare mere banks impugn the name of Kendeth? They might as well call the Red Queen a whore!”

Ta-Nam moved to my side. Umbertide regulations prohibited the carrying of weapons larger than knives in the old town, but with the razored pieces of chrome steel at his hips the sword-son constituted mass murder on legs. Unfortunately the automaton behind Corpus was reputedly immune to stabbing.

Corpus narrowed his dark little eyes at me. “Nations stand or fall on finance, Prince Jalan. A fact I’m sure your grandmother is well aware of. And finance stands on trust-a trust cemented by the honouring of debts and of contracts.” He held out the promissory notes in question, fine crisp documents on the thickest parchment, scroll-worked around the edges and signed by my good self along with three witnesses of certified standing. “Restore my trust, Prince Jalan.” Somehow the white-faced little creep managed to slide an impressive level of threat around all his formality.

“This is all nonsense, Corpus, my dear fellow. My credit should be good.” I meant it too. I’d taken great care when hollowing out my finances to leave a skeleton of assets sufficient to keep the edifice standing for at least a day or two after my departure. All I had to do was transform my overly heavy heap of gold into some still more portable form of wealth-one that didn’t depend on bank vaults, trust, or any of that foolishness-and I’d be off on the fastest horse stolen money could buy. In fact, if not for my investigator finding me at luncheon, I would already be at the doors of a certain diamond merchant purchasing the largest gems in his collection. “My credit is as good as any-”

“Suspended over issues of taxation.” Corpus offered a thin smile. “The Central will have its pound of flesh.”

“Ah.” Another long pause filled with furious excuse-creation. Bank taxes on each transaction make it very difficult to scrape a legitimate profit in Umbertide’s markets. I discovered early on that the real key to success was to not pay them. This of course required an ever more elaborate scheme of deferred payments, scheduled payments, conditional payments, lies, and damn lies. I’d calculated it would be the end of the week before those particular large and potentially lethal chickens came home to roost. “Look, Corpus, old fellow, of the House Iron and all that.” I took a step forward and would have flung an arm across his shoulders but for the fact he took a step back and his soldier looked ready to grab any arm that touched the man and fling it over the rooftops, with or without its owner still attached. “We’ll deal with this the old way. Meet me at Yoolani’s Java House first bell tomorrow and I’ll have your payment ready for you in gold.” I patted my ribs to make the coins bound under my tunic chink for him. “I’m heir to the throne of Red March, after all, and my word is my bond.” I set my smile on the offer and let the honesty beam out.

Corpus took on that look of distaste that all of Umbertide’s financiers do when something as common and dirty as raw gold is mentioned. They build their whole lives on the stuff and yet somehow consider the actual substance beneath them, preferring their papers and notes, rather than the weight of coin in hand. To my way of thinking an extra zero on a promissory note is far less exciting than a purse that weighs ten times what it might. Though right there, with the bulk of my assets packed into a case and conspiring with gravity to remove my shoulder from its socket, I had some sympathy with the idea.

“First bell. . prince. The full sum. Or there will be sanctions.” He turned his head, eyes flickering to the soldier, leaving little doubt that the sanctions would be rather worse than the revoking of my trading licence.

I stalked on past Corpus, not sparing him or his monstrosity another glance, and disguising my relief. I’d bought myself the best part of the day with a little bluster and a lot of lying. Cheap at twice the price! Falsehoods were a currency I was always willing to spend.

“There are two agents following us,” Ta-Nam said behind me.

“What? Where?” I spun around. Nothing in the sea of heads around us stood out, save for Corpus’s clockwork soldier, diminishing in the distance, nobody even reaching to its shoulders.

“It will be harder to evade them if you let them know you’re aware of their presence.” Ta-Nam managed not to make it a rebuke, not through servility but perhaps a reasonable expectation that everyone else was an amateur in this kind of game.

I turned back on our path and sped up a touch despite the heat. “Two of them?”

“There may be others more competent,” Ta-Nam conceded. “The two I have noted must be private hires-bank agents would not be so clumsy.”

“Unless they were sending a message. .” Private hires? Investigators like the one who’d brought me news at lunch. Perhaps I was his next case and he was following me even now. Either way, the message was clear, Corpus of House Iron wasn’t the only one with suspicions. They couldn’t move on me until I defaulted but they sure as hell could watch me. All of which made my plan of skipping town rather more difficult. Fear reached out from that place nearby where it’s always waiting and took me by the balls. “Damn them all.”