The Dragon's Path

stood and walked across to the unsealed books. Her feet were perfectly steady. Her hands didn’t waver as she pulled out the black leather binding. She opened to the first pages and handed them to the captain.
    “Documents of foundation,” she said. “We write up a copy of our own, but for Porte Oliva instead of Vanai. We’ve got a hundred documents with Magister Imaniel’s signature and thumb. We can pick some minor contract and use it to forge letters of foundation. File the documents with the governor, pay the fees and bribes, and then I can invest all of this.”
    “Invest it,” the captain said as if she’d said
eat it.
    “The silk and tobacco and spices I can place on consignment. Even if they’re stolen from the merchants, the bank would be paid. We can do the same with the jewelry or sell it outright for funds, and then make loans. Or buy into local businesses. We’ll have to hold back some portion. Fivehundredths, perhaps? But with the name of the Medean bank behind me, I could turn over nine-tenths of what we have in this room into papers of absolutely no value to anyone else before the trade ships come from Narinisle. What was left wouldn’t be too tempting to guard.”
    “You are very, very drunk,” Wester said. “The way you steal is you take something and then you leave.”
    “I’m not stealing it. I’m keeping it safe,” Cithrin said. “This is how banks work. You never keep all the money there to be stolen by whoever finds a way to break your strongbox. You put it out into the world. If you take a loss or someone steals your working funds, you still have all your incomes and agreements. You can recover. And if it all goes wrong, what? We get thrown in prison?”
    “Prison is bad,” Yardem rumbled.
    “Not as bad as killed and dropped in the sea,” Cithrin said. “If you do what I say, the chances of keeping the money go up and the consequences of failure go down.”
    “You want,” Captain Wester said, his voice tight, “to take a great deal of money that isn’t yours and start your own branch of the bank that you’re stealing the money
from
? They’ll come for you.”
    “Of course they will,” Cithrin said. “And when they do, I’ll have what’s theirs and more besides. If I’ve done it right.”
    Cithrin saw the disbelief in his face wavering on the border between amusement and outrage. She stamped her foot.
    “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to my voice, Captain.
I can do this.
”

Marcus
     
    B e careful,” Marcus said.
    “I am being careful, sir.”
    “Well, be more careful.”
    Seven previous attempts lay on the floor between them: contracts and agreements between dead men over burned wealth, meaningless now. But, as Cithrin had said, each of them bore the signature and bloody thumbprint of Magister Imaniel of Vanai. The trick was to dip the parchment into the wax so that it covered the name and thumb, but nothing else. Then the page could be set in a wash of salt and rendered oil to loosen the ink. After a day in the bath, they could use a scrivener’s stone to scrape away the ink, then a wash of urine to bleach away any remaining marks. In the end, they would have a blank page, ready to take whatever carefully practiced words Cithrin put on it, already signed and endorsed by the former head of the bank. A man, the story would have it, who foresaw the coming death of his city at Antean hands and concocted a scheme to refound his branch in Porte Oliva with Cithrin as his agent.
    Provided they could put the wax in the right spot. Marcus leaned forward, fingers reaching toward the side of the document.
    “If you just—”
    “Sir?”
    “Yardem?”
    The Tralgu’s ears sloped backward, set so close to his head that the earrings rested on his scalp.
    “Go over there, sir.”
    “But I—”
    “Go.”
    Marcus tapped at the air just before the parchment, grunted, and turned away. The boxes in the small rooms above the gambler’s stall had been shifted and rearranged, making what had been one small room into two tiny ones. Outside, a warm spring wind hissed, rattling the shutters and making the world in general seem uneasy and restless. It had been a long time since Marcus had broken the thaw in a southern port, and the rich salt-stink of the bay reminded him of yesterday’s fish. Cithrin sat on a stool, dressed in her carter’s rough, with Cary squeezed in close beside her. Master Kit stood a few steps away, his arms crossed over his