The King's Blood

despite the riches from Aster’s clothes, a theater company was never so well off that it would turn away the coin.
    “And perhaps a cloak, miss?” the Dartinae said, holding up what seemed a massive expanse of sewn black leather. “It is the fashion.”
    On whim, she tried it. It felt like she was swimming in a night-black sea and looked like she was being eaten by shadows. She shook her head and handed it back.
    “Just the others, thank you.”
    “You’re sure?” The tailor’s eyes glowed a bit brighter. “It is the fashion.”
    When she found her way back to Lord Daskellin’s mansion, Paerin Clark was waiting with an odd expression. The baron had been kind enough to offer lodging to the members of the Medean bank in no small part because of the extraordinary circumstances and his role in bringing them to the city. The understood message being that their welcome shouldn’t be taken as precedent. Daskellin was, after all, a Baron of Antea. They might break bread in a peasant dining room in Carse, but this was Camnipol and his home. There were standards and boundaries. For instance, she went in by the side doors.
    She walked up the wide stone stairs, her eyebrows raised in query. Paerin’s smile was calm, disarming, and so practiced that she was sure he was unaware of it.
    “I’ve just come from meeting with the Lord Regent,” he said, opening the door for her.
    “Yes?”
    “He is in an astoundingly companionable frame of mind,” Paerin said. “He suggested that the Medean bank might consider opening a branch in Camnipol.”
    “Really,” she said, stepping into the hallway. The rooms they’d been given were the largest in the servants’ quarters, and reaching them meant walking through the kitchen. “That doesn’t seem likely, does it?”
    “I wouldn’t have thought so. But I also wouldn’t have expected to be asked. And not only that, but he seemed very reluctant to have me leave. We talked for easily twice the time allotted for the audience. I almost had the sense he was working from some other agenda.”
    Cithrin laughed low in her throat.
    “And what sort of agenda would that be?” she asked.
    “That was what I wanted to ask you. You’ve become the bank expert of Geder Palliako. Why would he want a branch of the bank?”
    Cithrin paused by a thin black doorway so unobtrusive it apologized for itself. Outside the servants’ door, the voices of young women of the court floated like birdsong, beautiful and rich and essentially empty of meaning.
    “I can’t say for certain,” she said, “but I would guess that he was hoping I might be set to watch over it.”
    “Really now,” Paerin Clark said. “And you wouldn’t have put that thought in his mind, would you? I only ask because your interest in running a branch is fairly well known.”
    “I don’t want just any branch,” Cithrin said. “I want mine. If you offered me Camnipol… well, I might accept, but you’d have to pay me a great deal more.”
    “His idea, then.”
    “His.”
    “That’s quite interesting too. Is there anything you’d like to add to your official report?”
    “No,” Cithrin said. “There isn’t.”
    “Where are your loyalties?” he asked. His tone of voice was precisely the same, but she could sense that the question was deeper, and she thought for a long moment before she answered.
    “I don’t know. I think we’re in the process of finding that out, you and I. Don’t you?”
    “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Oh. And there’s a letter come from dare I call it your branch. From a Yardem Hane? Nothing critical I don’t think. Only that Captain Wester resigned. This Hane person was his second, and he’s stepped in the role.”
    “What?”
    He looked up at her, concern in his eyes.
    “Is that a problem?”
    Cithrin felt shocked and hollowed. He wouldn’t be there when she went back. She tested the thought and found it
    implausible. Of course Marcus would be there. He was always there. Something must have happened, but she couldn’t think what it would be, of what could make it all right.
    “Not a problem,” she said. “Only a surprise.”
    I
    might be able to get you some interest from Geder,” Cithrin said. “Having the patronage of the Lord Regent could make you all quite fashionable.”
    “You’re moving,” Hornet said around a mouthful of pins. “Stop moving.”
    “I’d be quite happy for whatever patronage we could find,” Cary said, lifting one of the