The Tyrant's Law (Dagger and the Coin)

postpone getting food than from any genuine curiosity.
    “Off doing a little last-minute work,” Enen said. “Making the rounds of all the people we’ve worked with to let them know not to expect anything from us for a time at least. We figured that with the extra soldiery and Palliako himself and his priests lurking in the doorway, it’d be better to wrap up any outstanding business.”
    “Probably true,” Cithrin said. It was the kind of thing that she should have thought. There were enough times in her past for her to know when she was drinking too much, and she was drinking too much. The knowledge made her feel slightly more in control of things, though it wasn’t going to have any particular effect on her actions. She would go right on drinking too much.
    When her body finally felt it could stand the idea of food, she ate a sliced apple in cream and drank a cup of coffee, and afterward, she kept it down. She felt an unwarranted pride. She was the voice of the Medean bank in two cities. She was responsible for saving hundreds if not thousands of Timzinae from the occupation. And as her crowning glory, she didn’t puke up her food like a newborn babe.
    There were fewer guests in the compound now. The courtyards were empty. The quarters where refugees had slept and eaten and talked and led their lives were abandoned, with only their old straw mattresses and rag-worn clothes left behind. The day before had been taken up with that.
    She’d dreaded going to all the refugees who had accreted around the compound and asking them to leave. She knew as well as they did that there was no place to go, and so she’d expected grief and recrimination. Not her best prediction, since for the most part she got as far as explaining that the Lord Regent of Antea and a force of soldiers protecting him were very likely to come to the compound. Almost before she’d finished the last syllable, they were packing up their meager belongings and their confused children and heading out into the winter. They might die of cold in the streets. They might try walking to the Keshet or Orsen without food or water enough to make it two days. Cithrin wished she could go with them.
    The only solace she had was the books. Reviewing her ledgers and logs distracted her a bit from what was going to happen next. Something about the flow of income and expenditure soothed her in any case, but now it was also her justification. Leaning heavily on her desk, she could trace her fingers down all the work she’d done in Suddapal. Here were the payments she’d made to the ship captains who’d stolen away with a hold filled with humanity instead of cargo. Here were the reimbursements for drink and food that she’d granted to the men and women who’d agreed to seek out the taprooms and public spaces, moving from group to group and telling about the bounties available in Herez. Here were the loans she might as well have listed as gifts that were to be repaid at other branches. It was an account of all her sins against commerce and profit, and she took as much pride in it as she could.
    She wished that Komme Medean were there. Or Paerin Clark. Someone she could talk with about her time commanding the branch. She thought it had all been the right thing, but what if there had been some better way to do the things she’d done, and some way to build on it moving ahead? Geder wouldn’t be able to stay in Suddapal forever. Perhaps he’d only come for a few days, and then go back to Antea and his court. Certainly it wouldn’t be longer than the winter. When he left, she would go back to her work. Unless he wanted her go with him. Would he insist? She imagined herself living in Camnipol, sleeping and eating in the Kingspire, and wondered what it would be like to leave the books and the bank behind. It seemed that it would leave very little room for her.
    The compound of the Medean bank was also far from the only place in the city preparing itself for the arrival of its master. The protector’s guards were driving teams of enslaved Timzinae through the streets, cleaning away the winter-killed plants and paving roads that had never known stone. The houses and temples that had burned in the sack were finally being torn down or rebuilt. The few times that Cithrin went out into the city, she felt a sense of dislocation seeing the changes and improvements. It was as if the real city had been spirited away in the night and replaced with the Antean image of