Cithrin had hardly changed into fresh clothes and washed her face when a gentle tapping came at the door.
“Magistra Isadau’s come,” Enen said.
Cithrin squared her shoulder, put on her best imitation of an older woman, and opened the door. Magistra Isadau, voice of the Medean bank in Suddapal, was slender with flecks of gray at her temples and the first dusting of frost on the scales of her face and neck. Her gown was simple cotton, embroidered with flowers and vines, and she held a small green pot in her hands with what looked like a windblown pine in miniature.
“Magistra Cithrin,” the woman said, extending the little tree. “Welcome to my home.”
The pot was heavier than it looked. Cithrin put in on the corner of the desk with a distinct clunk. The tiny boughs shivered as if blown by an unseen wind.
“Thank you. Please come. Sit.”
Isadau smiled and sat on the corner of the bed, leaving the desk’s chair to Cithrin. Her eyes flickered, considering Cithrin without judgment.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
“Thank you,” Cithrin said, wondering what the head of the Medean bank had said about her, and whether she could find out. “I’m not sure how much Komme Medean said.”
“It wasn’t only Komme. Mani mentioned you too, one time and another.”
It took Cithrin a moment to realize Isadau meant Magister Imaniel. She’d never considered that the two heads of Medean branches so physically near one another must have also known each other, or that Magister Imaniel would have spoken about the girl who was only the ward of his bank. Her past had always been entirely her own, and her first and unconsidered response to sharing it was resentment.
“I see,” Cithrin said. “Well. I hope it was all positive.”
“Most was, yes,” Isadau said. “Komme wrote that he saw a bit of Mani in you. I can too. You speak the way he did.”
“I grew up with him.”
“That can’t have been easy. Komme also said you had the best mind for banking he’s seen in a generation. A wild talent still, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. The phrase was bold without being reckless and reckless without being stupid. He can be a bit of a poet when he’s in a good mood,” Isadau said, then her forehead narrowed. “I have to ask. Did you really boast to the king of Northcoast that you’d bedded the Antean Lord Regent?”
Cithrin felt the blush growing in her neck.
“I wouldn’t call it boasting. They weren’t listening to me,” Cithrin said. “Geder Palliako and I were in close quarters for weeks. All they’d ever managed was a few meetings and letters. I wanted them to understand that I knew the man better than they did.”
“And that you’d lain him was proof of that?”
“I might have phrased it for effect,” Cithrin said
Magistra Isadau’s laughter was warm and delighted, and Cithrin felt the knot in her belly loosen a notch.
“Well, no one can call you timid.”
“I don’t know I’d say that. I was annoyed with them,” Cithrin said. Then, a moment later, “Did Komme say anything else about me?”
“That your heart hadn’t died yet,” Isadau said, her tone precisely as it had been before, “but that it was in danger of it.”
Now Cithrin laughed, but it was a nervous sound even to her. In the courtyard, someone called out, a woman or a child. Magisra Isadau lifted a finger.
“May I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” Cithrin said.
Isadau gestured with her chin to the tiny plant on the desk.
“Why did I bring that to you?”
Cithrin considered, chewing the inside of her lip. For a moment, she was a child again, sitting at evening meal with Magister Imaniel and Cam and Besel, answering question after question. It came to her as easily as breath.
“Gifts create a sense of obligation,” she said. “Not debt, exactly, because it can’t be measured. And because it can’t be measured, it can’t be definitively repaid. If instead you’d given me the coin you spent to buy that, I’d know what I owed, and I could give it back and be done. By giving me a gift instead, you build the sense of owing without a path to repayment, and so I’m more likely, for example, to grant you a favor or make some concession that I’d never have agreed to if I’d been given an explicit price.”
Cithrin spread her hands, as if presenting something. Magistra Isadau nodded, but her smile seemed melancholy.
“Mani taught you well. I can hear him say all of that. Only … there is more than one way of doing what we do. Of being what we are.”