The King's Blood

robe under her arms and breasts. She lifted her chin in greeting.
    “You look like a drowned cat. Was about to send for you,” she said.
    “What’s the matter?” Marcus asked.
    The Yemmu woman heaved a tectonic shrug. “Depends on how you look at it. Maybe nothing. Letter came. On the table there. I’d get up and hand it to you if it wasn’t so fucking hot.”
    The pages were coarse, and the ripped edges where they’d been sewn had tiny tears going into the page. The cheap paper the bank used for things that didn’t need keeping. The signature at the bottom was Cithrin’s, but it didn’t bear her thumb. Not a legal document. He started from the top, reading slowly, and his heart went stiller.
    “Camnipol,” he said. “Thought they had a war going there.”
    “They do,” Pyk said. “All but over, from what I hear. My money’d be on old Komme keeping his eye on the next war. Antea’s a big place, and may be about to get bigger. Good to know who the players are.”
    “Didn’t know it was a game.”
    “It’s all a game,” Pyk said. He wanted to find a sneer in her voice, but she only sounded tired. “The girl’s a good choice. Pretty. Young. Smart. People say things in front of her and think she won’t understand. What’s this do to you?”
    Marcus put the letter back on the table. It lay limp and broke-winged.
    “Nothing,” he said. “Just means I’ll be watching the store a little longer before she gets back.”
    Pyk smacked her lips.
    “And if she doesn’t come back?”
    Marcus leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. He took a deep breath, and felt hollow. “Why wouldn’t she come back?”
    “Because she’s young and finding her place in the world. It may not be here. Maybe she gets out there and finds there’s something she’d rather do than be my mask.”
    “Tell me that this wasn’t your plan,” Marcus said. “Tell me you weren’t trying to get her to go out there so that she’d find something else to do. Leave you with the bank.”
    “I don’t make her decisions. And I don’t know that she’ll stay away. Only I can see that she might.”
    “All right,” Marcus said. “That could happen.” “If it does, do you still work here?”
    Marcus smiled. The hollowness had a touch of anger now. He didn’t want Cithrin to leave the bank and Porte Oliva, and he didn’t like thinking what it meant that he didn’t.
    “Why do I get the feeling there’s a particular answer you’re looking for?”
    “There is,” Pyk said. “I want you to say you will. Having Marcus Wester collecting the debts gives the bank a certain weight. And you’re good at it. But if you’re only here for the girl, then you’re only here for the girl.”
    “Well, I’m here until the girl comes back,” he said. “If she doesn’t, we can talk about it then.”
    Pyk’s wide, yellowed eyes took him in and she sucked at her teeth.
    “That’s good enough,” she said. “And you can hire back the men I had you take down and put the other back at full rates.”
    “Now that she’s gone, you mean?” Marcus said, pushing himself off the wall. “Cithrin’s here, you’ll make it hard and mean and small, but when everyone knows it’s your hand on the purse, it’s all open? That how this is?”
    Pyk’s smile was so wide, he saw the holes where her tusks had been gaping dark in her gums. Her laughter wasn’t a sound but a motion in her shoulders and her belly. She shook her head.
    “The girl’s letter didn’t come alone,” she said. “The holding company saw the reports. It approved my request to budget more for the guards. So now I put in more money for guards. It’s not a mystery. I’m not the villain here. You can stop treating me like one.”
    Marcus stood, anger and confusion and embarrassment growing in him.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t know you had to have your budget approved.”
    “Don’t, strictly speaking,” Pyk said. “But the Porte Oliva branch has a reputation as unpredictable. I’m tacking into that wind. Can’t think where it came from.”
    “Anything else?” Marcus said.
    “Is. Keep an ear to the ground for anything about a captain name of Uus rol Osterhaal. He’ll have been coming up from Lyoneia, but he might not be announcing the fact.”
    “Anything I’m trying to find out?”
    “Whatever you can. Bring me what you find, and I’ll know whether it’s useful or not. You can go now. I’m going to sit here and sweat a while more.”
    Marcus