The King's Blood

contract. I mean how am I supposed to justify this to the holding company?”
    Pyk began putting the papers into stacks like she was dealing out cards in some deeply complex game. Cithrin wanted to take them from her. Seeing the papers there was like a half-starved man standing in a bakery door but not permitted to enter.
    “It was a good risk,” Cithrin said.
    “Then why am I paying out on it?”
    “Even good risks fail sometimes. That’s why we call them risks. If we only invested in certainties, we wouldn’t turn enough profit to eat.”
    “You cut thumbs on this contract and took in a hundred standard weights of silver. Now I’m supposed to pay out almost a thousand and call it good? Well, thank God we don’t have more good risks, then.”
    “The branch can absorb the loss,” she said as Pyk slapped another page on her piles. It was a yellowed strip with ink the color of rust. Cithrin pointed at it. “Don’t pay that one.”
    “What?”
    “That sheet. It’s from Mezlin Kumas. He’s got a reputation for claiming more cargo than he bought. Just a list like that in his own hand? Not enough. If it doesn’t have the captain’s thumb, you shouldn’t pay out.”
    “Why don’t you go outside and play with a ball of yarn or something,” Pyk said with a sigh. “I’ll take care of this.”
    Cithrin’s outrage felt like heat rising from her belly to her throat. She felt the flush of blood in her cheeks. The tears in her eyes were made from frustration and rage. Pyk put down another sheet over the top of the suspect list, licked her thumb, and went back to dealing out the pages. She didn’t look at Cithrin, and her frown drew a hundred thin lines in the flesh of her cheek.
    “Why don’t you like me?” Cithrin asked.
    “Oh, I can’t imagine, pet,” Pyk said. “Why wouldn’t I like you? Hmm. I’m here to do all your work for you, make all the decisions, take all the responsibility, write the reports, and justify myself to Komme Medean and the holding company. But God forbid that I should actually be the voice of the bank. Because that’s you, isn’t it? You wander around the city playing at being a great lady when you’re not old enough to sign your own contracts.”
    “I didn’t ask them to send you here,” Cithrin said.
    “What you asked for or didn’t ask for is the least interesting thing in my day,” Pyk said. “It doesn’t change anything. The truth is, no matter what you want or intend, no matter what I want or intend, I’m the one who’ll be called to answer for the failure, and you’ll be the one who dines out on the success.”
    “You could let me help you,” Cithrin said. “You know I’m smart enough to carry some of the weight.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Pyk put down the papers and turned to face Cithrin directly. The big woman’s expression was steely and cold.
    “Because you don’t answer for it. You can come in and play at being a banker, but you aren’t one. No, be quiet. You asked, you can keep your pretty little mouth shut and hear the answer. You’re not a banker. You’re an extortionist who got lucky.”
    “That’s not—”
    “Now you get the status in the eyes of the city, you get to call yourself the voice of the bank, you get the nice clothes and the food and the shelter, and you get it all on my back. They can’t fire you until all the poisoned contracts you signed are purged and replaced with something we could enforce. It’ll take years. Me, though? They could send a letter and turn me in the streets tomorrow. They won’t, but they could. You get all the carrot and none of the stick, and I do the job. That’s not enough? I need to like you too? You want to put your hooks in me like you’ve got ’em in your pet mercenary? Well, tough shit, kid.”
    The notary went silent. Cithrin rose. She felt like she’d been punched, her body vibrating from the depth of the notary’s anger, but her head was clear and cold as meltwater. It was as if her body was the only thing frightened.
    “I’ll leave you to your work, then,” Cithrin said. “If there’s anything I can do that would help the branch, please let me know.”
    Pyk made an impatient click in the back of her throat.
    “And, really,” Cithrin said, pointing to the pages laid out on the table, “don’t pay that list.”
    C
    ithrin walked through the streets in the southern end of the city nearest the port. The puppeteers were out in force, sometimes as many as three working