The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

Captain,” she said.
    “Might as well now,” he said. “We’ve time.”
    “Policy,” she said, as if the word explained and excused everything. She turned back toward the growing city and wished she’d had less wine in the night.
    Her agreement with Komme Medean had called for a year’s apprenticeship, and they had agreed before she left on the long winter journey south from Carse that Suddapal would be the best place. Komme Medean’s letters would have reached Magistra Isadau weeks before, but Cithrin had no way to know what the woman would think of the arrangement. Any greeting could be waiting for her on the docks. Or even a refusal.
    The sailors scrambled behind her, and the little ship turned its nose to the shore. The noise of the sails as they caught the breeze deafened. A guide boat raced out to meet them, hardly more than a canoe with three Timzinae youths hauling on red-dyed oars. Timzinae had been as common as Firstblood in Vanai, and the young men’s dark bodies and shining scales comforted her.
    “Magistra,” Yardem Hane said from just behind her. She turned, craning her head up toward the Tralgu’s broad dog-like face. His expression was impassive, but the tall, mobile ears were canted forward, toward the shore. “We’ve packed the chest.”
    “And last payment?”
    Yardem patted his hip where his leather wallet hung from his belt, the sound of coins hardly carrying over the din. “I’ll take care of it. Enen and Roach will see to the rest.”
    Cithrin nodded, her eyes following the laughing gestures of the guide boat crew. Their canvas pants and rough shirts seemed too light for the cold of the winter sea, but any discomfort they felt was hidden by their boisterous shouts and friendly profanity. She envied them. She had more money than they would likely see in a decade and had commanded control of a hundred times that, but the ease with which she held her body and the calmness of her affect were all the fruit of study and artifice.
    Leaving Porte Oliva had been harder than she’d expected. The white buildings and winter mists, the street dogs and the little café where she had leased the back room, the wide square between the Governor’s Palace and the grand temple where the guests of the magistrate’s justice served out their punishments. All of it was gone now. Even Pyk Usterhall, officially the notary of the Porte Oliva branch and in truth its voice in all but name, carried a weight of fond nostalgia for Cithrin now, and she disliked Pyk as much as she did anyone breathing air. The only familiar faces were the guards she chose as her companions. Enen because the woman was old, uncompromising, and as hard as last week’s bread. Roach because he was the only Timzinae among the bank’s guard, and having someone who might pass for a local could only be to her advantage. And Yardem Hane, because he was Yardem and because Captain Wester had quit while she was in Camnipol. He’d vanished into the world without so much as a farewell. He’d given no explanation of his decision to leave, left no note or letter behind for her. She told herself that his departure hadn’t stung, but she wasn’t quite able to convince.
    But even without Marcus, Porte Oliva had been the first home she’d made for herself. She had founded the branch of the Medean bank there without in fact even consulting with the bank’s holding company. Her rooms there were familiar and comfortable, the servants at the taphouse down the street knew her and her habits, the queensmen who kept order in the streets touched their brows in respect as she passed by. In Porte Oliva, she had been someone, and more, she understood who and what she was. In Suddapal, she might be anyone. And so she might be nobody.
    Her stomach made a little flutter, and she wished that she had a little skin of wine. Preferably distilled.
    The piers of Suddapal reached out deep into the waters of the Inner Sea. The planks were black, slippery, and flecked with foam. At the height of a shipping season, Cithrin imagined they would be as full and crowded as the beggar-press walking into Porte Oliva, and she was pleased to have arrived when she could keep herself far away from the churning green of the sea against the pilings. The waves seemed to shift the boards under her feet, the world rolled unsteadily, and she knew it was an illusion of stepping back on land. Any pier that truly swayed so much would come to pieces in a day.
    A Timzinae woman