The Widow's House

Cithrin

King Tracian’s face was red and beginning to peel. Marcus Wester, sitting at Cithrin’s right side, looked much the same. It was as if they’d both sat out too long in the summer sun without shade. Komme Medean was at her left, his weathered face solemn as if they were at a funeral. And beyond him, Kit. The four of them together on one side of the table, and the king across from them and sitting in a slightly higher chair. On the pale white tablecloth, a single vivid drop of blood. And from it, dancing crazily, a tiny black body with eight frantic legs.

The point made, Marcus crushed the spider with a stone.

“You’re… one of them,” King Tracian said.

“I am, yes,” Kit said. “I believe, though, that my actions and history will speak for my benign intentions.”

“It’s truth,” Marcus said. “Kit’s been the driving force behind stopping these bastards since before the rest of us knew they were more than the latest fashion in Antean political cults.”

King Tracian put his head in his hands, peeking out between the fingers. The gesture didn’t seem intended to be comic, however it looked, and Cithrin didn’t laugh.

“The power of having someone like that,” he said. “To just say things and have them be true.”

“Have them be believed, rather,” Kit said. “Please forgive me, Majesty, but I find these differences are quite important to me. More so, perhaps, than the average person. What we do does not create truth. In my experience, only the world can do that.”

“And the dragon…”

“Yes,” Marcus said. “It seems that it started that long ago. Inys says he is part of the cause of it. And, we’re hoping, part of the solution for it too. But the point here that you should be taking back to your private chambers is that if we hadn’t come here, you’d be marching your army off to Kaltfel right now, ready to fly your banner and die to a man. You’d be at war.”

Cithrin glanced over at Komme. The old banker’s face didn’t seem to have moved at all. He might almost have been carved from wood. She kept her own expression smooth and calm, giving away as little as she could.

“So this isn’t Antea’s Lord Regent,” Tracian said. “Geder Palliako isn’t the danger we’re facing. It’s these… these priests that command him.”

“No,” Cithrin said. “It’s Geder. But it isn’t only him. The shape that all this has taken, the shape it still takes, began in him. You’re right that it won’t end with him, though. It will spread the way it almost did here. It may have already.”

“You see,” Kit said, leaning forward and gesturing with both hands, “as distance grows, the chance for… not even misunderstanding. For differences of opinion, then. They grow. And when all sides are certain—unshakably certain—there can be no reconciliation. Only death for one side or the other, inevitably. And I fear that will be true for every division, however small. I believe that, unchecked, men like myself will set the world into an eternal battle of all against all, with no hope of peace. It is, as Inys tells us, what we were made to do.”

“So, much like the normal course of history,” Marcus said sourly, “but without the restful times between.”

Cithrin folded her hands together and kicked him under the table. They could be cynical and despairing afterwards when they were safely back at the holding company and drunk. This was not the time.

Under the red of the burn, King Tracian looked green. “Komme?”

“Majesty,” the old banker said.

“What in the name of all that’s holy have you brought into my court?” the king demanded, his voice harsh with anger. No, not anger. Fear. Cithrin made a private note of that, even as she dreaded the answer. Komme bowed his head and heaved a sigh.

“I’ve brought you the only hope you’ve got,” Komme said at last. “We have to stand up to this, old friend. You know I don’t like working out in the world where everyone can see it. But being quiet and hoping the storm passes south of us won’t work this time. The girl brought you the gold to defend the nation because chances are you’re going to need it. Nothing she said to you was false. Cithrin bel Sarcour is more than the voice of my branch in Porte Oliva. I don’t say this lightly. She’s a genius. There hasn’t been a mind like hers for seeing the systems of the world in all my life.”

“You trust her, then?” the king asked.

“Absolutely,” Komme said with a firm nod, and Kit pressed his lips a degree tighter to cover a smile. It was all right. Cithrin knew it was a lie. All that mattered was that the king didn’t.

“All right, then,” Tracian said. “You think this war can be won?”

It was the question she’d been waiting for. The one she’d known from the moment the summons came she would answer. She thought of all the words she’d practiced, let her breath out, and pulled up her neck the way the players had taught her to. In truth, there might have been no one in the world better prepared to seem one thing and be another than her.

“No, it can’t be won. Not as a war, with soldiers on the field. The more we try that, the more they manage what they were made for. Violence. Dislocation. Chaos. What we can do is drive them out of business.”

King Tracian frowned, but there was something in his eyes. A glimmer not of hope—it was much too early for that—but of hope’s seed. King Tracian was curious.

“How,” he said, “would we do that?”

CUT THUMBS! the sheet read in letters half as high as her finger was long. Each one was drawn in red ink with a lining of black to make it easier to see. The writing went on underneath in a less ostentatious script. The forces of madness are all around us. Protect your mind and your family. Do no business with anyone who will not prove themselves free of the spider’s taint! When they say there’s no need, that is when the need is greatest! The servants of the spider are everywhere. Never let down your guard!

In truth, it was not her favorite of the letters. There were five of them now. The first laid out what the spiders were and where they had come from, and the rules by which they functioned. Another listed twenty strategies for defeating the priests in the field of battle, including a rudimentary set of visual signals that could be used with torches or banners to guide troops whose ears had been stopped with wax. But the one that was hardest for her to read was the letter that Magistra Isadau had written to her race, telling the Timzinae what the spiders were and of Inys’s creation of their whole people as a measure against them. We have suffered, that letter said, but not without reason. We have suffered because they fear us. And they fear us for good cause.

Cithrin imagined the copies of the letter coming into the hands of the slaves of Antea. She could barely imagine what it might mean to them. Isadau’s words already had the power to move her to tears, and she was sitting safely in the scrivener’s house at the south of Carse with the sample copies in her hand and a cup of watered wine sitting on the bench at her side.

“How many can we produce?” she asked.

The master scribe was a dark-skinned woman of middle years. Her forefinger and thumb looked almost deformed by the calluses there. “Done to standard, a full member of the guild could make five copies in a day.”

“And how many full guild members are available?” Isadau asked. Through everything, she managed to seem gentle and firm.

“Twenty,” the woman said.

“Not enough,” Cithrin said. “How many senior apprentices?”

The master scribe scratched her arm. “If we used them, we might have as many as… fifty desks? So that way we could have two hundred and fifty pages a day, but that would be—”

“We will supply paper, pens, and ink,” Cithrin said. “And you’ll accept payment in letters of transfer.”

A shadow passed over the master scribe’s face, but at least it passed. “King Tracian has commanded that we will, and so we will.”

“I’m glad we understand each other,” Cithrin said. She drank off the last of the wine in a gulp and put the cup back on the bench with a sharp click. “It’s a pleasure working with you.”

“Likewise,” the master scribe said.

Cithrin and Isadau rose. The main room of the house was row upon row of desks, and fewer than half of them occupied. That would change. Cithrin could already picture every desk full, the air thick with the scratching of pen on paper. One point in a plan of a hundred, and thankfully not one that had to be paid in coin. Buying paper with paper. There was an elegance in that, she thought. Or it might only have been that she was a little bit giddy.

The plans she’d drawn up in Porte Oliva had been for besting Antea in the field, and not all of them applied to her new framework. But some did, and others she could create with Komme and Chana and Magistra Isadau and Magister Nison.

“Magistra?” the chief scribe said as they reached the wide blue doors that led to the sun-drenched street. Cithrin and Isadau turned back together, each of them answering to the title. The master scribe held up the sample letters. “All of this we’re copying. Is it… true?”

“All of it,” Cithrin said.

The master scribe said something obscene.

Walking back toward the holding company, Isadau folded her arm with Cithrin’s. Carse was not a beautiful city, but it was handsome. And there were places—the dry fountain of dragon’s jade by the magistrate’s court, the Grave of Dragons, the glassblowers’ street—where it achieved moments of radiance. Still, she missed the close, cramped streets of Porte Oliva and Maestro Asanpur’s coffee. For that, she missed Vanai’s canals and wooden houses and the gates that had closed off one section of the city from another.

She wasn’t certain, even now, that Komme had ever given her freedom of the city. Nothing had been said. But after the last meeting with the king, Isadau had started taking her along. It was almost as it they were back in Suddapal and Cithrin was finishing out the last few months of her apprenticeship. Odd, with all that had happened since, that the thought reassured her. Yes, she’d lost Porte Oliva. Yes, Pyk Usterhall had been lost or killed. She’d spent the gathered fortunes of her branch on a half-mad scheme to remake what the world meant by money, but she was finishing her apprentice work, by God. Perhaps it was just the ritual of it that comforted.

“Do you think we’ll manage it?” she said as they turned north into one of the great, dragon-wide main ways.

“That depends on what you mean by it,” Isadau said.

“I was thinking of defeating the ancient enemy, bringing Antea to heel and the dragon’s war to an end. Little things like that.”

She’s meant it as half a joke, but Isadau’s tight smile made her think that perhaps she was on more serious ground than she’d known. “I hope that will be enough.”

At the compound, Komme Medean was pacing in the courtyard. His left knee was swollen with gout, and he leaned heavily on a carved oak cane. All through the yard, palm-sized sheets of yellow paper hung from string tied between the walls and trees. The little pages fluttered in the breeze like the banners of a vast miniature army. As Isadau and Cithrin came near, Komme plucked one from its place and held it up to the sun. A line of purple ran along its lower edge, startling against the yellow, and bright flecks caught the light. He looked over at them and lifted his chin in greeting.

“Komme,” Isadau said, smiling as she steered Cithrin toward him. “I don’t know what these are, but I think they’re beautiful. Have you taken to art in your old age?”

Komme’s single laugh was harsh, but genuine. He held out the page in his hand to Cithrin. “I’m doing what you two should have done before you gave all my damned money away. These letters of transfer we’re writing? They’re too easily forged. Doesn’t do us any good having sole right to make these if everyone and their sisters can make copies. We need to find a way to make them distinct, yes?”

The paper felt thick and stiff between Cithrin’s fingers, almost more board than paper. Tiny mineral chips glittered on its surface and tiny threads of red and blue spiraled through it. The violet band at the edge was damp. Komme saw her considering the discoloration and smiled sharply. She nodded her question.

“Put it in vinegar and it turns color. Until it dries, anyway. The maker swears that no one else in the world knows the process or could figure it out. My guess is that’s lies, but even so, it cuts the number of people stealing our right down from everybody everywhere to a few that are really dedicated to it. The yellow and the flecks? That was my thought. Gives people the idea of gold without the actual coin. Brings them halfway.”

“It’s a good thought,” Isadau said.

Cithrin handed back the page. “I wasn’t sure you were going to let the contract stand.”

Komme’s smile vanished. He pinned the page back in its place on the string. “I didn’t have a choice, did I? That’s the thing that all your plans and schemes skip. Contracts and letters of transfer and clever arrangements of business? All of it assumes that the agreements can be enforced. Well, his majesty’s the one with the crown and the guardsmen, so if he wants the agreement enforced, enforced it’s going to be.”

“I didn’t forget,” Cithrin said.

“Give us a moment, Isadau,” Komme said, still squinting at the paper and rubbing his thumb along its violet edge. Isadau and Cithrin exchanged a silent glance, and the Timzinae woman uncurled her arm from Cithrin’s. Her footsteps faded as she walked into the shade of the house. A sparrow flew past, grey-brown wings fluttering in the air. Somewhere outside the compound, a man shouted. Komme sighed and turned to her.

“You’re the worst voice of any bank I’ve ever seen,” he said, and then lifted his palm to her, commanding silence. “I don’t want to hear any damned explanations of why you had to do it this way or how the scale of the thing justified cutting me out of my own business. You crossed me. You know it. And you meant to do it.”

Cithrin’s belly went tight and she nodded. “I did.”

Komme’s smile had no mirth in it. “Well, at least you’ve got the balls to admit it. You did this the wrong way, Cithrin. You should have come to me. We should have talked the plan through. You and me and Paerin and Chana. Nison and Isadau. You have a brilliant mind for finance, but you don’t have the only goddamned mind there is. You’ve managed to insult everyone on the company. Did you think about that?”

“I… No. Not really.”

“You see? That’s the problem with you. You’ve been pretending to be a grown woman long enough you’ve forgotten you’re a girl. Get married, have a couple of children like I did, get some perspective on what risk is, and you’d be ready to run a bank the right way. You were raised badly.”

“I was raised by your bank.”

“The irony’s not lost,” Komme said, limping forward to the next yellow sheet. He reached up, running his fingers along its edge like a farmer judging a crop. “This doesn’t happen again. Ever. You’ve made a practice of stepping outside your authority, and you’ve gotten away with it. It’s given you the wrong impression of what authority is and what your role in the bank should be.”

“I apologize.”

He turned back to her and grunted in pain, leaning on his cane. “You’ve tied my hands for now. I could throw you on the street. Strip you of your place. It’s within my rights. You don’t even have a branch any longer. But since the bank’s just embarked on this scheme you’ve created, it would look odd to cut ties now. The bank has to seem more solid than thrones now. Getting back lost confidence is harder than stirring cream out of coffee. Besides which, you’re friends with a dragon. There’s a certain romance in that, and people like romances when the world’s uncertain.”

“I’ll speak to you first next time,” Cithrin said. “I promise.”

“Next time,” Komme said, shaking his head. “And with you, there may be a next time.”

He moved on to the next string, but his gaze was skating over the yellow papers now. Cithrin walked half a step behind him and to his left.

“You’ve heard the news from Narinisle,” he said over his shoulder.

“No.”

“Word of your agreement with Tracian’s spread. It’s precedent. Narinisle’s asked for the same arrangement. Herez will too, though I haven’t had it formally yet. They’re asking why Northcoast is favored over them.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Me? Who am I? I just have a holding company. It’s the branches who’ll make that call.”

“Yes, but what are you going to do?”

“Give it to them,” Komme said. “Start trading your letters of transfer as widely and commonly as I can. Sell Herez’s debt to Northcoast and Narinisle’s to both of them until the three are so entwined it’s impossible to say who owns what or where someone would go to change these things back to coin. Anything to make the essential lie at the heart of this harder to see.”

“Good,” Cithrin said. “That’s excellent.”

“Or it’s my ticket to dying in gaol. Either way, I thought you’d want to know you’d drawn even with Palliako.”

“How do you count that?”

“He took Asterilhold, Sarakal, and Elassae. You’ve taken Northcoast, Herez, and Narinisle. I call Birancour a split,” Komme said, and spat into the bushes. “Cithrin bel Sarcour, secret queen of the world.”