She took care of me, knowing my mother wasn’t doing so, and she did it in a way that never made me ashamed. She made it a game, for me. Kip had seen the fun in it before, but he’d never seen the kindness of it until now.
And she’s dead. Like all of them.
Maybe Coreen’s jokes and laughter were a kindness, too. She’d seen that Kip was barely sane; she’d heard him wake sweating and screaming from another of the dreams, and she treated him like a mother would treat an incorrigible friend of her son. Kip found out that her late husband had been a renowned veteran of the Prisms’ War, though she never said on which side and Kip didn’t ask, and that made more sense of it. She had some of a warrior’s sense of humor: black and light, irreverent to death as death was irreverent to all else.
But she had a warmth, too, that was hugely appealing, and part of Kip wanted to stay here forever.
On his last full day, dressed in the widow’s husband’s clothes, which fit well due to Coreen’s labors with a needle and thread, Kip fixed what he could around her cabin. He drafted a few yellow lux torches, made some fire rocks to help start a blaze easily, tried his hand at drafting green to fertilize the vegetable gardens of her two daughters, and fixed a broken axle on a haycart by sheathing it in solid yellow luxin—something useful he’d actually learned during his lectures. Imagine that.
The morning he left, Coreen said, “I can’t let you go without saying my piece. Have I earned that?”
“Of course.”
She took a deep breath. “Kip, the Lord doesn’t want you to think you’re worthless, but he may want you to think you’re worth less than you presently think. He wants your eyes to be whole, so you have an accurate view of you. It’s done in love, you understand? When you surrender what isn’t under your control, you’re not giving up a crown, you’re giving up a yoke. I told you about my prudery in my youth. I was a beautiful girl, and though I never would have said it, I thought I was more virtuous than Orholam. My false virtue—not modesty, pride—took the joy out of my marriage bed. I’d fought to maintain a virtue, and I thought that because I’d had to fight so hard, it must be the highest good. Giving up my claim to look down on those I didn’t approve of was like losing a limb. But do you know what it’s like to try to walk with three legs?”
It was getting uncomfortably close, and Kip was afraid of what she would say next. “You’ve seen me naked, you know I do,” he said. He grinned.
She shook her head like she knew she’d walked into that. She leveled her soup ladle at Kip’s nose. “Kip, serious hat on, or I make comments about your manhood that you’ll never forget.”
Kip swallowed. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
“Taking correction was like losing a limb to me, but it was worth it. A good father doesn’t let his children stay stuck. Orholam is a good father, Kip.”
“Right now, I’m more worried about being a good son.” Deflect, deflect, don’t let her ask what I should give up.
“Then you are wiser than your years,” she said, and he wondered if he’d been nervous for nothing or if she was letting him off easy. Then she got a twinkle in her eye. “Oh, and Kip…”
“Don’t. Please don’t. Please?”
“That’s no limb. A good strong sapling, maybe. Now my husband… That was a limb. Let’s just say maybe modesty wasn’t the only reason I fainted.”
“I said I was sorry,” Kip whinged.
She pinched his cheek. “I know, but you deserved it. Don’t worry. You’ve got more than ample to satisfy. Bigger than my own sons’, and if my daughters speak true, bigger than their husbands’, too.”
“Ah! I have to see these people!”
Chapter 16
Karris sipped her kopi quietly in the Crossroads. The stimulant was a poor choice for her anxiety. She was seated in the clerestory, facing the big, gorgeous stained glass windows that had once been the pride of the Tyrean embassy. She wondered how the owner of the Crossroads had been able to purchase this building, and what it had cost. In the years since the fall of Tyrea, it had become the city’s most fashionable kopi house, restaurant, brewery, smokehouse, and—downstairs, out of sight of those with tender sensibilities—the foremost brothel in the city.
For that matter, she wondered who the owner was.
Kind of thing that a spymistress should be able to learn, isn’t it?
She wasn’t kept waiting long. She supposed that was one of the perquisites of her new position. She was the White’s right hand, and no one would keep the White waiting. The man who sat across from her was an Ilytian banker, the scion of one of the great merchant banking families, the Onestos, twenty-five years old, and probably just now being treated as an adult, brought home from learning his trade in one of the satrapies and now entrusted with meeting the Prism’s bride—or widow. At twenty-five, he could be treated as barely an adult because he still had another fifty years left in his mortal span. How different the lives of munds.
Turgal Onesto was dressed in his Sun Day best, and smelled of some fine perfume Karris would have been able to place if she’d been a lady instead of a warrior these blighted sixteen years. He sat, gulping. It had been a long time since he’d been asked to report. The White had recruited him as a boy. For her part, Karris didn’t feel much better. She hadn’t worn a dress since that bastard King Garadul had captured her and forced her to. She’d wanted to wear her Blackguard clothes, but those had been seized and forbidden her. Karris still wasn’t sure whether they’d been taken on Commander Ironfist’s orders or the White’s. Neither would say, which told her that whichever had done it had done it with the approval of the other.
So here she was, sending a very public message by the garb she had chosen to wear. Because her husband was the Prism, she would wear garb drawn from each of the satrapies, to show she didn’t favor any over the others. Today, that meant wearing a loose-fitting white silk abaya, subtly embroidered with murex purple thread, but she wore the jilbab down—modesty was not prized on the Jaspers as it was in the Parian inland and highlands. Along with the traditional white of mourning, for Parians believed that death was a procession into light, and not into darkness, Karris had chosen some few hints of bright color, not pure funerary white. She wore a bright scarf, white and blue and red and purple and green, though she had bleached her hair white.
My husband is lost, and for this I grieve, her clothing said, but he is not dead. The richness of it said that she expected to be taken seriously, that she was taking her place as a woman of means and influence. She even had a Blackguard bodyguard. That it was her squat friend Samite made that marginally better, but the woman treated her duties seriously, standing beside the table, watching everyone and everything, treating Karris as if she were just another ward who would doubtless be blind, deaf, and dumb to danger.
‘It’s to free you to pay attention fully to the task at hand,’ the White had told her.
Karris crossed her legs as the banker sat. It was a thobe, not a dress, she told herself. Still, it made her feel naked and vulnerable. Worse, she hadn’t even been able to pick it out for herself. Marissia had helped her, last night, asking the parameters she wished to fulfill. Karris did, though she didn’t tell the slave her task. The slave had accepted her silence on that and simply told Karris she could go to bed; it would be taken care of.
When Karris woke, this awaited. The fit was perfect. “How…?” she asked Marissia as the slave woman had tied the laces.
“The tailor still had your measurements.”
Karris looked at her. “I haven’t been to a tailor’s shop in years.”
“And I noticed you’d lost some weight since then, so I suggested a few alterations,” Marissia said, her voice level.
The eye for detail and the memory—the sheer bloody competence—was infuriating. So Gavin hadn’t kept the woman purely for warming his bed. Perhaps she wasn’t good at that, at least. Perhaps he’d merely—
What delusions are you filling your head with, Karris? She
’s beautiful, she’s competent, she’s been Gavin’s room slave for years. Karris had told herself she wasn’t going to be jealous of what Gavin had done during the time she’d no claim on him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right… and it wasn’t going away. She should be happy that he’d only slept with his room slave, and not every woman who would have been happy to have him.
But seeing that Marissia was eminently competent roused something ugly in Karris. She should appreciate the woman. For Orholam’s sake, was she looking at a slave as a rival? Ridiculous! She could put the woman out at a moment’s notice. But that wasn’t fair, either, was it? Marissia was trying to serve well and unobtrusively—she was even hiding how well she served so as to remain beneath Karris’s notice. Probably in case Karris was as petty as… as petty as she was.
I would ruin a woman’s livelihood and steal her purpose from her for what, exactly? For serving Gavin well?
Serving him well all night long, no doubt.
And what of it? That is her life, her duty. Would I be happier with her if she had served her master poorly in petty rebellion, as other slaves do? Has Gavin said a word about Param or Naelos, whom you took to your bed mostly to spite him? She’d made Param make love to her in total darkness, so she could imagine he was Dazen. But at least both of them were gone.
And what, like I didn’t know about Marissia?
He’s gone, Karris. He’s gone.
The wave of grief came out of nowhere. Karris’s throat tightened; her eyes filled.
She let out a breath like a hiss, looked away, got control of herself. Turgal blinked, and repeated, “Are we to have a privacy shield?”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Karris gestured to the beautiful woman who served as a greeter. Turgal’s eyes were all over her. Not very discreet, for a banker. For a moment, Karris felt old and overlooked. Turgal looked at the greeter like that, and not at—
She silently cursed herself. She’d dressed modestly, specifically so she would seem respectable, and now… Back on keel, Karris.
She gestured for the greeter to draft them a privacy shield. Karris handed the woman her payment. “May I bring you more kopi, my lady? And my lord, would you like something?”
Karris acquiesced to more kopi, and the banker ordered ale. The greeter disappeared into the kitchens and reappeared almost immediately. She put down Turgal’s ale and Karris’s kopi and saucer, drafted the invisible superviolet bubble that would block their conversation from others, and drafted the fans that allowed some airflow. She gave a big, perfect smile at the young banker, bowed low enough to both of them to display cleavage, and went back to her station.
Probably works nights downstairs.
And since when did I get so prudish? Like my Blackguard brothers were pure as heaven’s rain?
After Turgal Onesto had a bit of his ale, Karris said, “I need to assume control of my husband’s accounts.”
“As you doubtless know, the Onestos never comment on the status or existence of accounts. Which accounts did you have in mind?” He smiled unconvincingly.
“What do you mean, which accounts? All of them,” Karris said. She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. The proximate cause for this meeting was, of course, to take control of Gavin’s accounts. What else would one meet with a banker for? That Turgal Onesto was also one of the White’s spies merely made this meeting potentially doubly productive.
“I’m afraid that we don’t keep accounts by name, only by number. It keeps hostile nobles and kings and parents and others from seizing accounts that have been opened privately,” Turgal said. He smiled pleasantly. Fop he might be, but this was a conversation he had clearly had before.
More, it was a lie. Karris was certain of it. There was no way the Onestos wouldn’t keep track of the account holders’ names.
“What happens when account holders die?” Karris asked.
“Nothing. The Onestos don’t even have knowledge of when that happens. We have no way of knowing that. As I said, we don’t link names to accounts.”
“What happens to the money?”
“It remains in the account, of course.”
“Uh-huh, for how long?”
“If an account has had no activity for a generation—defined by old tradition as forty years’ time—the monies therein are made available for other loans.”
Which was doubly a lie, and a subtle pair of lies at that. The money was never put aside in the first place. The moment money was deposited, it was loaned elsewhere. And when he said ‘made available,’ he meant that it then moved into his family’s personal coffers. It wasn’t completely unfair, Karris supposed. If an entire family was extinguished, as had doubtless happened many times in the various wars that had wracked the Seven Satrapies since the Onestos had entered the business, and if no heirs stepped forward, what else should they do with the money? Give it away? It was a perquisite of taking the risks of bad loans.
Of course, if they were less than diligent in their pursuit of finding heirs, it would also be a quick way to pad their own accounts. Too much of that, though, would hurt their reputation. A bank was only as good as its reputation. So the appearance of punctilious virtue had to be of the utmost import. Of course, generations of the Onestos now long dead had built that reputation to such a height, it was quite possible Turgal and his compeers felt they could coast on it to enrich themselves.
And if they thought that, they probably thought right. Their children and grandchildren would pay for it, of course, but Karris wouldn’t be there to feel vindicated.
“Before you came here,” Karris said, “you looked up all of my husband’s accounts to see what I would be talking to you about. Did you bring them?”
He blinked. “I can’t comment on the existence or status—”
“Which is a yes. And you brought them. You wrote them down.” It would, the White had guessed, be quite a few different numbers, and Turgal Onesto didn’t have his ancestors’ head for numbers. The White said writing down the account numbers would be a direct violation of family policy. They believed in memorizing everything. What was in your head couldn’t be stolen, at least not without your knowledge of the theft.
Karris was surprised that the White would know so much about a mere merchant family, but the White believed in knowing as much as possible about those who had any kind of power. In a hundred years, she said, the Onestos would probably be more respected and more titled than most of the remaining eighty-seven and a half out of a hundred noble houses in the Seven Satrapies.
It had been a joke, and Karris hadn’t caught the punch line. Twelve and a half percent was the typical rate of interest the Onestos charged. Twelve and a half, out of a hundred left… Ah. Then she got it. Here she’d been wondering if there really were exactly one hundred noble families in the satrapies. Even the jokes told Karris how much she had to learn.
He reached for the slender scroll case he kept slung across his back.
But in addition to being given a network of eyes and ears, the White had also been directing Karris to some fingers as well. Some of which were very light.
Turgal Onesto reached in the scroll case and found nothing. He upended it. Nothing. Empty. His face lost all color, then went green.
“Tell me you at least wrote it in code. Your family must have a dozen ciphers.”
“Of course. Of course. Setback, not a disaster. It’s right…” He reached into the satchel he’d brought. Groped. Blanched once more.
“You brought the key to the cipher along with the message?” Karris rubbed her forehead. “You’re not making some very poor jest, are you?”
Turgal’s wide eyes told the tale.
“Your grandfather is going to be so very displeased.”
“Most people don’t even know it’s a cipher!” Turgal said. “It’s just a piece of wood, a cone. If you don’t have exactly the same…” He trailed off. “You! You did it.”
“Turgal, listen to me.”
The veins on his neck were st
anding out. A temper, huh? Well, let him try something, please. She’d see just how much freedom of movement she had in this thobe after all. And for however embarrassing a man might find it to have his bung packed by an Archer, how much more embarrassing would it be to be humiliated by a woman in a thobe?
But then again, the Blackguard clothes were an armor that kept Karris out of fights. Bullies didn’t want to fight and lose. New garb, new rules.
She realized then that his lack of cooperation in the first place might have something to do with her choice of Parian garb. The Onestos were originally Ilytian, and there had long been strife between them and Paria. Especially among the rich, who felt unfairly taxed when they used Parian overland routes for trade during the winters.
Many nobles who were raised on Big Jasper prided themselves on putting those petty struggles in the past, but Turgal hadn’t been raised here. He looked like another young rich urban fop, but he had the biases of his elders.
Karris suddenly wondered if Marissia had dressed her like this on purpose. But Karris hadn’t said anything about meeting with an Ilytian, had she? Had she let something slip, and this was Marissia sabotaging her, or had she not said anything and Marissia would have helped her avoid it if she had?
“Turgal, I could have played this a dozen different ways. I could have delayed our meeting and showed up in front of your father with all the correct numbers. I could now expose you and destroy you. Instead, this.” Karris fished the cone out of her bag, along with paper. She handed both back, and pulled out a third paper, with the cipher correctly translated and put on flat paper. All done in the time that he’d taken to walk to this meeting. “I don’t wish to destroy you,” Karris said. “But I will have your respect.”
The spine went right out of him. “You have it. Please, I’m on my last leg with my grandfather. He’ll disown me. If he does that, I can’t be any use to you, right? Right?”