"I work with Marcus Wester," she said. "I think that knowing him is a bit like that too."

T.

he two great surprises of the holding company were first that Paerin Clark, the auditor she had extorted into letting her keep a place in Porte Oliva, was also living at the holding company's unofficial holdfast inside the city. The second was that he was pleased to see her.

Coming back through the bronze gates now, Lauro called out to the pale man sitting on a bench. Paerin Clark waved to them, paused, and then waved them over. As they drew near him, Lauro tried to take Cithrin's hand and made do with putting his arm around her shoulder.

"Brother," Paerin Clark said. Technically it was true, as Paerin was married to Lauro's sister, but Cithrin couldn't really imagine the two being part of the same family. "What have you two been doing?"

"I took Cithrin to the Grave of Dragons," Lauro said. "She'd never seen it."

"And did you enjoy it, Magistra?"

"I did, and thank you," Cithrin said. She could feel a small discomfort in the way Lauro held himself beside her, thrown off by the easy formality of her talk with Paerin. And there was the smallest spark of amusement in the older man's eyes. If Lauro wanted to play at familiarity with her, she would play at being an adult with Paerin and throw the young boy off his stride. Comfort was never the fate of an obstacle.

"I was wondering if I might borrow the magistra's company for a few minutes. Something's come up I wanted to discuss with her. Bank business."

"Of course," Lauro said, a little coolly. He took his arm from around Cithrin's shoulder and bowed to her. "Thank you for the pleasure of your company."

"No, thank you, Lauro," she said.

She sat on the bench at Paerin Clark's side and watched as the son of Komme Medean walked away through the courtyard. Clark, she noted, shifted over slightly to be sure that the two of them were not touching.

"May I ask you a question?" he said.

"Of course."

"What are you hoping to win here?"

Cithrin glanced at him sharply, but his face was as blank and pleasant as always. In all her life, Cithrin had never known anyone better at not giving information away. As good, but not better.

"I thought I'd made that clear," she said, trying for the brash half-humor she used with Komme Medean.

"No," Paerin said, and there was no lightness in his voice. "What you've said is what you want. What I'm asking is why you want it. What are your ambitions?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't understand the question. I want to run my bank."

"Yes, but why is that what you want?"

"Because it's mine," she said.

Paerin took a deep breath and shifted on the bench so that he was half facing her. The tree above him cast shadows across his face, and for a moment he reminded her of children's pictures of forest ghosts.

"Do you want to be rich?" he asked.

"I suppose," she said.

"Then that isn't the answer. Do you want power?"

"I want the power that belongs to me," she said. "I want what I've earned."

"Even if you've earned it through forgery and fraud?"

"I haven't harmed anyone," Cithrin said, crossing her arms. "What I've done was good business. I kept my contracts. They're only not legal because I'm too young."

"Not for much longer, though," Paerin said, more than half to himself. He tapped his fingers against his knee, frowning. "Are you aware that Komme's been shoving Lauro at you to find out if you're fishing for a husband?"

"He could have asked. I'm not. I don't want someone to run my bank for me. If I did, I'd marry Pyk Usterhall and be done."

Paerin laughed.

"There's an image. All right. There's something I'd like you to do tonight," he said. "Not a feast, just a meal. But the man who's coming is important."

"All right," she said. "Why do you want me there?"

On the street, a horse neighed and a carter shouted. The breeze shifted the shadows across the pale man's face. She waited while he weighed his answer.

"I recall being your age," he said, portioning out each word, "and I remember what it was like to look for something without knowing what it was. You have one of the best minds for coin and the powers of coin that I've ever seen, but you lack experience. That's not a criticism, it's only true. And there's a negotiation happening tonight. I would like you to be there. See how the game is played."

Cithrin turned this over in her mind. Her heart was beating a little faster, and she felt the flush in her cheeks. This might be the opportunity she'd come all this way to find.

"May I ask you a question?" she said.

"That seems fair."

"Why is that what you want?"

He nodded. Almost a minute passed.

"You're young. You're still making yourself into the woman you're going to be, looking for the project that your life will become. People sometimes need help to find that. I am older, and in a position of some power, and I think you may become the sort of person I would like to owe me favors later on."

The smile forced its way to Cithrin's lips. It felt like victory.

"And here I thought it was altruism," she said.

"Oh, Magistra." Paerin Clark smiled. "We don't do that here."

The meal began just before sundown around a table of wooden planks no grander than a laborer might sit at. Platters filled the space between: clams in garlic sauce, pasta and cream, bottles of wine, loaves of fresh-baked bread. Komme Medean sat at one end, the swelling in his ankle and knee gone down enough that they looked almost normal. Cithrin and Lauro sat along one side across from Paerin Clark and his wife, Chana, who looked even more like her father than Lauro did. At the other end of the table, the Antean nobleman with skin as dark as coffee. Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch and Protector of Northport and the Regent's Special Ambassador to Northcoast, grinned and broke bread with his hands.

"Think how I feel," Daskellin said. "I'm sent on a fast boat with desperate pleas for King Tracian to help us in the war, and by the time I get here, we've all but won. It doesn't make me look smarter, let's say."

Komme Medean chortled and nodded.

"I know just how you feel," he said. "I was trying to win a concession in a sugar plantation on an island off Elassae. Year and a half of negotiation, and I was just sending back the final contracts to their council when the whole damn thing burned flat. Wound up with a concession on a salt cinder in the Inner Sea. Thank God I hadn't paid for it yet."

"I remember that," Cithrin said.

"Do you now?" Komme said.

Canl Daskellin's gaze turned to her, and she realized how thin the ice was she'd just put herself on. If it came out she'd been living at the Vanai branch, it might come out why. If anyone looked into her age, there could be a great deal at stake.

"Heard about it from Magister Imaniel," she said without missing a beat. "It was done out of the Vanai branch, wasn't it?"

Komme Medean pursed his lips as if in thought.

"I suppose it was, now you mention it," he said. And another danger was stepped past.

"This new regent of yours," Paerin Clark said. "Geder Palliako. It's not a name I've heard often. I'm surprised we didn't see a more familiar man."

"I hope you aren't looking at me," Daskellin said. "No, Palliako's father is a viscount. Unremarkable man. His son's something different, though. He stopped the showfighters' coup. He exposed Feldin Maas. There's a strong case that this war is his private project from the start."

"What sort of man is he?" Chana asked, then winked broadly at Cithrin and said, "I hear he isn't married."

They all laughed because it was expected.

"He's a strong man," Daskellin said. "He comes almost from outside the court, and it makes him very independent. His own thoughts. His own plans."

"Ambitious?" Komme asked, cracking open a clam and pulling out the flesh.

"He'd have to be," Canl said. "People underestimated him at first. That's happening less now. His unofficial patron is Dawson Kalliam, and I think he's got the feeling of riding a tiger."

"Bad enemy to have," Paerin said.

"That," Daskellin said, "is the regent in a phrase. Would someone pass me that wine? I seem to have finished mine."

"No," Komme Medean said, feigning horror. "Never that."

The meal went on until well after dark. The conversation ranged over art and politics and the indignities of travel. Everyone was very casual, and traded jokes and stories. The wine was very good, and left Cithrin feeling a little above herself, warm and happy and more relaxed than was strictly wise. Before he left, Daskellin shook all the men's hands and embraced Komme Medean like a brother. He also kissed Cithrin on the lips, so he might have been more than a bit tipsy himself.

After he left, servants came in and cleared the table, bringing a stool for Komme's bad leg. It had gotten visibly worse during the evening, but it was only now that he showed that it bothered him. The others took their seats, and so Cithrin did too.

"Well?" Komme said, his voice perfectly sober and crisp. "What do we have?"

"The regent's unpredictable," Chana said. "And Daskellin doesn't like him."

"Fears him, though," Paerin Clark said.

"Do you think so?" Lauro said. "He seemed to speak well of him to me."

"No," Cithrin said. "Fears him is right. And there was something else, I couldn't make out. He's uneasy about the war. Even though they're winning it. Why is that?"

It was eerie. All her childhood had been spent around a different table with Magister Imaniel and Cam and Besel having conversations much like this. Analysis, debate, discussion. Dissection. And now here she was in a strange place with different people and utterly at home.

"Either he doesn't think it's going to end with Asterilhold or he expects the balance of power in court to shift because of it," Chana said. "Did you see how nervous he looked when I joked about the regent not having a wife?"

"You're thinking there might be a political marriage with Asterilhold?" Komme said. "Unification?"

"I think it's on his mind and he doesn't want it," Chana said. "Does he have a daughter?"

"Yes," Paerin said. "And of the right age."

"Well then," Chana said as if the matter were settled.

"I'm not sure," Komme said. "I think there was something more to it than that. How much do we know about Palliako's allies?"

"Very little," Paerin said. "His reputation is as a scholar. And newly pious."

"Pious, eh? That may be an issue. King Tracian should send a group," Komme said. "Sound out the court. This new war went awfully well for Antea. It'd be good to know if this Palliako's gotten a taste for blood. If this doesn't end with Asterilhold, that will change quite a few calculations."

"I'll speak with his majesty," Paerin Clark said. "I'm fairly sure he's of a similar mind. Not anything official, I think. Not an embassy. A dozen important people from court. A few powerful merchants."

"Meaning you," Lauro said. He sounded peevish.

"Meaning me," Paerin Clark said. "I have some other contacts in Antea it might be wise to visit. See what we can find."

Cithrin found herself nodding, but her mind was elsewhere. The wine fumes confused her, but only a bit. In her memory, Paerin Clark was saying, You lack experience. It's not a criticism, it's only true. As if the truth couldn't be critical. Something in the back of her mind shifted. This wasn't the moment for more brashness. This was when to show some range. She could do that. She cleared her throat and lifted her hand like a schoolgirl asking to be recognized. Komme Medean nodded.

"With your permission, sir," she said, "when the group goes to Camnipol, I'd like to go too."

Geder.

T.

he Kingspire was as busy as an anthill. Servants and workers and merchants moved through the sacred places of Antea with faster steps and louder voices. It felt like at any moment they all might break into song or else battle. And it wasn't only the Kingspire. When Geder appeared at a feast or a ball, the sense was the same. The whole court was vibrating with a wild, barely constrained energy. The whole of Camnipol. They were preparing for the celebrations that would come when King Lechan of Asterilhold surrendered to Lord Marshal Kalliam and the short, decisive war- hardly a half a season long-ended with the Severed Throne triumphant.

It all made Geder very nervous. It wasn't that he didn't expect the victory to come. Every day brought more couriers and reports, and the news was consistent: Kalliam and the armies were advancing steadily toward Kaltfel. The enemy was demoralized and falling back. The priests of the spider goddess seemed to be a very real help. Morale in the ranks was high, and three enemy commanders had already offered private surrender and been taken prisoner. Geder had the impression from Dawson Kalliam's letter that there might be some friction between him and the priests, but it didn't seem to be affecting anything. And the man could be a little prickly sometimes, so likely that wasn't a problem.

No, the thing that bothered Geder most was catching glimpses of bright costumes and servants cutting bright paper into bits small enough to throw. He understood that there would be celebrations when the war ended and that people would have to prepare. The city was like the taut bud of some lavish flower, only waiting for the right moment. And still, to assume a victory that hadn't actually happened seemed like courting bad luck. And as much as the half-hidden costumes and half-made gaudy bothered him, the sober discussions of how to proceed once Asterilhold was crushed bothered him more.

"Once Lechan sues for peace," Emmer Faskellan said, lacing his fingers across his wide belly, "I believe we have established that the Seref Bridge must be permanently under our control. That's the absolute very least."

"And reparations," Gospey Allintot said. "We've lost most of the planting season, and it's not fair that our women and children should go hungry. And we've lost good men whose widows and children will need to be supported."

It was a discussion that had clearly been going on in the rooms of the Great Bear, now translated into Geder's meeting chambers, a grander venue for the old conversation. The walls here were draped with silk and tapestries from Far Syramys and fine golden chains from Put, the floor covered with Southling-woven carpets from one of the small nations in the interior of Lyoneia. The table around which they all sat was a single piece of carved basalt from Borja; representations of the thirteen races of humanity made up the legs, all supporting the tabletop-wide stylized crown. Furniture as political sculpture. The air was perfumed with a musky Hallskari incense that made Geder think of rich food and ripe fruit.

Geder's personal guard stood in the corners of the room, armed and impassive, and Basrahip sat at a small table by the doorway where Geder could see him. The priest was only apparently meditating, his not quite closed eyes glittering under their lids.

It wasn't the most formal of councils, as many of the most important and powerful men in Antea were presently in the field. This was a gathering of sons and grandfathers and secretaries. Men who'd fought the war from their chairs, and were happy now to congratulate each other on how well they'd done. The only ones present who'd been in the field at all were Gospey Allintot, still recovering from an arrow in the meat of his arm, and Jorey Kalliam, just come with the reports from his father. The army had reached Kaltfel. The final siege was under way.

"If I may?" Jorey said slowly. "What are we trying to achieve? I mean if we want to cripple Asterilhold for a generation, it's easy enough to do that. But is that what we want?"

"Well, they have to be punished," Emmer Faskellan said. "My cousin died from their scheming. Died in the streets of Camnipol!"