And of all the things that had kept her from sleep in the long weeks since she’d left Porte Oliva, the worst was this: how would she manage to stay long enough to win over the holding company? She had come to do a job, and she didn’t know how she would insinuate herself into the day-to-day life of the business well enough to keep them from sending her back.
When the occasion came, it hadn’t been a problem at all. She was a figurehead in Porte Oliva, a curiosity in Carse, and Komme Medean was more than happy to have her where she wasn’t even a social presence in the company. Oddly, she didn’t resent it. She had the feeling—true or not—that Komme Medean was willing to play this game with her. Willing to see if she could charm and impress him. And that along the way, he would throw obstacles in her path.
His son, for example.
As they walked past the great jade statue, the Grave of Dragons opened out before them. Cut down into the living earth, the tiers of the grave were wider than streets, curving and turning like the drawing of a riverbed, but too perfect to have been cut by any real water. The stone flowed out for over a mile, ten tiers deep, and at each level, the tombs.
The bodies, if they had ever really been there, were gone centuries ago. But the dragon’s jade altars still showed the clawmarks of the dead. Most had three great toes at the front and one in the rear, but some had only two in the front. Some two in front, and two in back. In the deepest tomb, a single massive dragon’s footprint sank into the ground almost as deep as Cithrin’s waist. Mineralized lines on the sides showed where rain had collected in it as if in a pond, and dried away. It was clean and empty now.
“Go ahead if you want,” Lauro Medean said. “It’s all right. Everyone does.”
Cithrin smiled, looked around, and then lowered herself into the footprint and lay down, stretching her arms above her. Her feet and fingertips couldn’t quite touch the edges at the same time. She imagined the dragon floating through the sky above her, blotting out the sun. Once, it had. Once, they had flown in this air, above these cliffs. The thought took her breath away.
When she stood, she saw Lauro’s grin.
“Funny?” she asked, putting up her hand. He took it—he had a strong grip—and helped her back out. They began walking back.
“It’s just I’ve grown up here. I never get impressed because it’s always been here. I like seeing people see it for the first time. It means something to them that it never does to me.”
“All this,” she said, gesturing at the empty tombs and the death prints, “has been here, right here, since before the beginning. People have been cleaning and neglecting and cleaning these graves almost since before there were people. And that doesn’t move you?”
“Maybe it should,” Lauro said, shrugging. “But no. It’s just the Grave. It’s this amazing thing to people who don’t know it, but it’s no more impressive to me than the sea or the sky or the cliffs, and I see all of them every day.”
“Hmm,” Cithrin said.
“What?”
“I work with Marcus Wester,” she said. “I think that knowing him is a bit like that too.”
The 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.”