The King's Blood(42)

And, of course, she would go. Even though her competitor and once-lover Qahuar Em would be there. Even though the night would bore and chafe. She would go and laugh and talk and behave as if she had power. If she didn’t someone might notice, and the illusion of influence once broken was hard to rebuild.

“Thank you,” Cithrin said. “That will be all.”

The courier bowed and trotted off, her beads clicking against each other. Cithrin considered going back up, maybe putting on the face paint after all, but decided against it. There was the empty form of a meeting at the café she might as well attend. She closed and locked the door.

She could tell a great deal about the state of the city by walking through the streets near the Grand Market. The food sellers on the corners showed what harvests had been good and what disappointing. If crime had been low, there was more horse and ox shit on the street waiting for the guests of Porte Oliva’s magistrates to come and clean it. The number of beggars who’d made their way in from the dragon’s road leading into the city said whether there were caravans expected or if the traffic to the city was all local. It was like a cunning man smelling someone’s breath and knowing the condition of their liver. Cithrin did it automatically, as she had all through her childhood. Only now there would be no Magister Imaniel to go home to and show off her con clusions. It was only a habit.

Pyk wasn’t at the café, which on one hand was a blessing because Cithrin could spend a few hours working on the bank’s business without her. On the other, anything she did here would have to be discussed with the foul woman later. All the faces around the table were familiar. Maestro Asanpur smiled at her and winked his milky eye.

“One moment,” he said, stepping to the back, and she knew he would return in moments with a mug of fresh coffee and a barely sweetened honey roll. She sat at a table in the front looking out over the square and waited. Maestro Asanpur brought her just what she’d known he would, patted her shoulder gently as he did, and made his slow way back inside. Someday, Cithrin thought, he would die and the café would change. It would become something different and unknown. She wondered what it would be like.

She knew the man when he stepped into the square. She had never met him except through the letters of proposal he had left at the bank, but he walked with a sense of purpose. He was thick across the shoulders for a Dartinae and his eyes glowed brighter than most. His tunic was leather and the sigil of a dragon was inked on it. When he came up to her table, she nodded to the chair opposite her own. He sat with the grace of a dancer and leaned forward, his elbow on the table.

“Dar Cinlama, I presume,” Cithrin said.

“Magistra bel Sarcour,” he said, bowing from the neck.

“I’ve read over your proposal. I’m afraid our bank doesn’t have a history of backing expeditions like the one you propose.”

“There is great risk, it’s true. There is also great reward. When Seilia Pellasian found the Temple of the Sun, she came home with gold and jewels enough to last a hundred lives. Sarkik Pellasian didn’t find gold, but the designs in the old library are what everyone uses in siegecraft now. The list is very long, Magistra.”

“And doesn’t include the name of anyone now living,” she said.

“Not yet,” he agreed with a smile. “But who in a generation has taken the chance? The world is sick with history. The dragons were everywhere, you know? It’s only us who hold to the roads. We go where it is convenient. Build where it is convenient. But what’s convenient for us was nothing to the dragons. Their roads were the open sky. Is there a lost treasure in Porte Oliva? No. People have been building on their own outhouses since forever. But in the Dry Wastes? In the north of Birancour where no dragon’s road runs? No one touches these places deeper than a plow will cut. I was a boy in such a place. We would go out to the fields and dig for dragon’s teeth. By the time I left, I had a dozen.”

The lines were compelling and delivered with the ease of long practice. Cithrin shook her head.

“It’s a pretty story,” she said, “and there’s some sense to it, but—”

He leaned forward and placed something on the table before her. The tooth was as long as her hand and curved. The sharp end was rough. Serrated. The base was a tangle of hooks and broad places meant to root the thing in a massive jaw. Cithrin picked it up, surprised by its weight.

“There are hidden things in this world,” he said. “More than you might imagine. And some of them are good for more than decoration.”