The King's Blood

different corners when two of the larger ways crossed. Many were variations on old themes: retellings of PennyPenny the Jasuru with his bouts of comic rage and violence or stories of cleverness and crime with Timzinae Roaches—often with the three black-scaled marionettes tied to a single cross, their movements literally made one. Other times, the stories were of greater local interest. A story of a crippled widow forced to sell her babies only to have them each returned as too much trouble to keep could be just a comic tale with a few bawdy jokes and a trick baby puppet that grew monstrous teeth, but to the residents of the city it was also an elaborate in-joke about a famously corrupt governor. Cithrin stopped in an open square to stand and watch a pair of full-blooded Cinnae girls— paler and thinner even than her—singing an eerie song and swaying with marionettes in the shapes of bloodied men. She noticed the girls had filed their teeth to sharklike points. She wasn’t sure if it was more frightening or pretentious. It was certainly a large personal investment for an effect that limited the range of performances they could do.
    Cithrin mulled over how much of the performer’s craft relied on excellence in a small range and how much on competence over a wide variety of performances. It was, of course, a single instance of a more general problem, and it could be applied to the bank as well. A certain range of contracts— insurance and loans and partnerships and letters of credit— required relatively little additional expertise. To widen the business into renting out guardsmen or guaranteeing merchandise in bank-owned warehouses required more resources and higher expenses, but it also brought in coin that wouldn’t have come in otherwise.
    The Cinnae girls struck a series of high, gliding trills, matching each other in an uncomforting harmony. The one on Cithrin’s left swirled, her dark skirts rising with the motion to show blue-stained legs. Cithrin saw it and didn’t see it.
    It wasn’t only her mutilated tusks that made Pyk like the sharp-toothed puppeteers. Pyk also wanted to limit what the bank did, restrict it to the few areas in which she was comfortable and then increase her profits by reducing cost. Excellence in a narrow circle. It was safe and it was small and it was absolutely against Cithrin’s instincts.
    “Magistra,” Marcus said. She hadn’t noticed him walking up behind her.
    “Captain,” she said. “How are the guards?”
    “We lost a few,” he said. “That Yardem and I took the worst pay cuts pulled the punch a little. Still, I’m keeping either me or Yardem at the main house until people stop being quite so sour about it. I’d hate to be the captain whose guard stole the safebox.”
    The Cinnae girls scowled, their voices growing a degree harsher at the interruption. Cithrin dug out a few weights of copper and dropped them in the open sack between the performers, then took Marcus’s arm and walked west, toward the seawall.
    “I’m not going to win her over,” Cithrin said. “Not ever. It isn’t just that we dislike each other. We disagree .”
    “That’s a problem.”
    Cithrin felt her mind at work. From the time she’d been old enough to know anything, her world had been the bank. Coins and bills and rates of exchange, how to set prices and how to exploit prices that others had set poorly. It was what she’d had growing up instead of love.
    “I have a proposal I’m looking at from a man who makes his fortune searching for lost things,” Cithrin said. “It isn’t the sort of thing Pyk would be comfortable with, do you think?”
    Marcus looked sideways at her.
    “It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing she would,” he said. “Do banks even do that?”
    “Banks do whatever brings money to banks,” Cithrin said. “Still, it’s given me an idea, and I’d like you to look into it. If you can.”
    “You know you can’t negotiate anything…”
    “I don’t think that would be an issue. And really, nothing may come of this. But if it does, we might be able to bring Pyk enough money to restore the guards.”
    “That’s an interesting thought,” Marcus said. “What kind of business are you looking to start?”
    “Nothing outside the bank. It isn’t really even a new business.”
    “It’s looking for lost things.”
    “Yes.”
    “Something we’ve lost.”
    “Yes.”
    The seawall was whitewashed stone, and looked out over the pale water of