The Dragon's Path

found problematic, but he was still speaking.
    “I am making my report to the holding company now. My primary finding is that what you have done here washonestly intended to be in the interests of the bank as a whole. We are, unfortunately, obligated to a length of contract in Porte Oliva that doesn’t match what we’d like, but I know you were doing the best you could. And while some aspects of your behavior were certainly outside the law, I see no advantage to seeking any legal redress.”
    “He means we got away with it?” Marcus asked.
    “He does,” Cithrin said.
    “Good to know.”
    Paerin tapped his fingertips against the top of the desk, the deep lines of a frown marking his high forehead.
    “I don’t want to be forward, and I can’t, of course, make any guarantees,” he said, “but there may be a position for a woman with your talents in Carse. I would need to discuss it with Komme Medean and some of the other directors. But if you would like to make a career as a banker, I think you could find a start there.”
    You still have the option of walking away,
Marcus had said less than hour earlier. She still did. It was time to burn that hope.
    “I would prefer to have a start here,” Cithrin said. “Have you considered my proposal?”
    Paerin Clark looked at her blankly. Then, embarrassed for her, he nodded.
    “Yes, that. No. We will be putting a recognized member of the bank in charge of the branch until it can be dissolved. Keeping you in your present position isn’t possible.”
    Marcus chuckled.
    “Does it make me a bad man that I was hoping he would say that?” he asked.
    Cithrin ignored him. When she spoke, she sat straight and looked the auditor in the eye.
    “You’ve overlooked something, sir. There’s a record bookfrom Vanai that isn’t among these. It’s an old one, though. It doesn’t touch directly on your audit.”
    Paerin Clark shifted his chair to face her. He crossed his arms over his chest.
    “It is the book that records my status as ward of the bank,” Cithrin said. “It shows my legal age, and the date upon which I can begin to sign legally binding contracts. That would be next summer.”
    “I don’t see how that—”
    Cithrin gestured to the books, the piles of paper and parchment, the entire mechanism of her bank.
    “None of these contracts is legal,” she said. “I am not legally permitted to enter into any agreement. I’m ten months too young.”
    Paerin Clark’s expression was the same bland smile he’d worn the first day he’d come. It might only have been her imagination that he was a shade paler. Cithin swallowed to loosen the knot in her throat.
    “If the information in that book becomes public,” she said, “the bank will have to resort to direct appeal to the governor to either enforce the contracts anyway or reclaim the sums that were given out. I’ve met the governor, and I think that he is unlikely to take money away from his citizens to give to a bank that’s in a hurry to abandon his city.”
    “And the book in question is where?” Paerin Clark asked.
    “In a strongbox deposited with the governor under my name privately and separately from the bank. And the key to the box is in the keeping of a man with no incentive to see the bank succeed here. If I tell him what it unlocks, you can burn all these papers to light your cookfires.”
    “You’re bluffing. If this comes out, you’re guilty of forgery,theft. Misrepresentation. You’ll be in gaol for the rest of your life, and all we’ll lose is money.”
    “I can get her out of here,” Marcus said. “A city’s complement of queensmen half incapacitated from laughing at you? I can get her out of Birancour and in a decent house by midwinter.”
    “We are the Medean bank,” Paerin Clark said. “You can’t outrun us.”
    “I’m Marcus Wester. I’ve killed kings, and I’m lousy at bluffing. Threaten her again, and—”
    “Stop it, both of you,” Cithrin said. “Here’s my offer. Keep the branch as it is, but install a notary from the holding company. We say it’s to help with the workload. I’m the face and voice, but the notary oversees all the agreements.”
    “And when I refuse?”
    She wanted a drink. She wanted a warm bed and man’s arms around her. She wanted to know for certain that she was doing the right thing.
    “I burn this branch to the ground,” she said.
    The world balanced on the edge of a blade. The auditor closed his eyes, leaned back in his