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MR. VANDRAY, THE BANKER, looked like a jolly country innkeeper.
The bank itself looked like a temple.
I walked in, wishing my hand didn’t feel so greasy from the paper cone of chestnuts, wondering sardonically a moment later whether anyone in this benighted city would even notice. Though to be honest, despite the exterior filth, the interiors I had seen were all clean, even sweet-smelling, and people themselves spotless. The rushes on the floor of the student tavern now made sense, and even seemed a little quaint, if one had never heard of the state of things under the Empire.
My garments were of sufficient quality that no one in the bank sneered at the idea that I should enter; they were of sufficiently low style and material that no one approached to see what I needed, either. I took myself over to the side while I delved in the pockets of Sir Hamish’s greatcoat to find the letter I had received, by way of the Kingsford lawyers, requesting me to present myself to Mr. Ned Vandray at my earliest convenience.
I had originally intended to announce myself, by title at least, and request an interview with Mr. Vandray, but given the hints dropped by Jack Lindsary the night before, I was beginning to worry that even ‘St-Noire’ was a trifle dangerous to speak too loudly in public, and certainly not with the addition of ‘Imperial Viscount’, which would cause a nine-days-wonder almost anywhere, let alone somewhere where half the people I met might be compromised one way or another. It was disheartening to think how little trust there could be in this city, with the criminal kings of the seaboard coming into open power.
I therefore wrote a note on the back of the letter I’d received from Mr. Vandray, asking if he was available. I regretted my continuing lack of my good fountain pen; the replacement I had acquired from Mrs. Etaris’ store was nothing like so fine an instrument. I had so little of sentimental value from my stepfather, and it would have been pleasant, waiting there to hear what exactly he had left me, to use it. At some point I would confront the Honourable Rag about it.
After a moment I chose a junior-looking person and asked him to deliver the letter to Mr. Vandray. He gave me a scathing once-over, decided that I was likely a secretary or junior steward from someone important, and condescended to take the missive to the back.
I watched a dozen people come and go, all of them much more eagerly attended to than I. I kept myself out of the way, watching their interactions and considering their clothing, making a game of guessing what they might do or who they might be. This man was a merchant, I decided idly, worried to thinness over his ships, what with all the pirates out in the North Sea; that woman was the celebrated patron of a musical troupe; this one—
This one was Jemis Greenwing, Viscount St-Noire, and very distinguished patron of the bank, apparently. Mr. Vandray came out for me personally.
He shook my hand, greeted me exuberantly if not by name, and took my arm to lead me to an office in the back. I had a fleeting glimpse of marble walls and gold-gilt fixtures, thick carpets in rich colours, a seemingly endless array of portraits of a seemingly endless number of distinguished bankers and their patrons. Across from a portrait of the Emperor Artorin was a door of carved mahogany, and it was through this Mr. Vandray led me.
He ushered me to a comfortable seat across the desk from his own, bowed, and then took his seat when I bowed back, trying not to show my uncertainty.
“Mr. Greenwing,” he said at last, “thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for seeing me,” I replied, a little confused at his heartiness. We regarded each other for a few moments. I knew he saw a young gentleman, a little short, fairly lean, undistinguished of feature; pale of skin, darker brown of hair and eyes; dressed in clothing of Fiellanese cut, equally undistinguished.
Mr. Vandray himself was portly, swarthier than me but still noticeably rubicund. His dark brown hair seemed to be shorter than what I’d seen among the students, and his hat was a plain black beaver. He wore a waistcoat and breeches similar to my own, but his coat was looser and longer, the sleeves puffed and slashed to show the silk lining. It was nowhere near so dramatic as what the students had been wearing, especially as the coat and lining both were a deep dark green, only the change in materials showing the decorative features; I did like the silver and lighter green embroidery of leaves on his waistcoat.
He tapped the letter I had just sent to him. “I understand your discretion, Mr. Greenwing—you do prefer that address, do you not? Mr. Morres was quite emphatic in his report to me that you did.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “The, er, viscountcy is very new.”
“It will sit better with time,” he said soothingly. “These things always do.”
“Indeed, sir,” I said neutrally, making him laugh.
“You’re a canny one, aren’t you! Tell me, Mr. Greenwing, why you are here.”
I raised my eyebrows at him and did not say the obvious line of, Because you asked me to come. I had thought, ever since the reading of my stepfather’s will, about what I should do with what he had left me. I had spoken with my father about it, though he had admitted, with a wry smile, that he had never been that keen on financial administration even before his years as a pirate slave; apparently my mother had been the one to manage their combined estate; and longer with Hal before my friend had left Ragnor Bella. Hal had been managing the single largest private estate in Northwest Oriole since he was fourteen.
(“Well, I do have help,” Hal had said self-deprecatingly, and then proceeded to demonstrate that he knew exactly what each of his employees, from chief steward to goose-girl, did.)
“Mr. Vandray,” I said slowly, “the last time I saw my stepfather was last spring in Morrowlea. He asked me what I intended to do when I graduated.”
“Yes,” he said encouragingly.
“At that time I had hopes that I would marry one of my fellow students and that we would return to her home—which is, in fact, here, Orio City—and make our way together. I had no clear idea of what form that would take, due to some of the eccentricities of Morrowlea’s charter. Mr. Buchance informed me that he would see that I had enough of a competency not to starve.”
I paused a moment, gathering my thoughts. Even though I’d decided to tell him the outlines of my story—my stepfather had trusted him and so did Hal, who was one of his other clients—it was still very hard to put it into words to a stranger. Mr. Vandray steepled his fingers before him.
“Ben, Mr. Buchance, came to see me shortly after that trip,” he said. “It was his practice, as I’m sure you heard at the will-reading, to update everything after the birth of a child. He told me that it was a doubly blessed spring, for he had a new daughter and a son setting forth into the world. He was very proud of you.”
I looked down at the table, working to keep my composure. I had been proud, disclaiming any need for his assistance, refusing always to take his name and follow him into his business. It was hard to have lost him without ever being able to know him as an adult, hard to feel that I’d never been able to settle my feelings for him, let alone tell him how much I had come to admire and (say it) love him over the years he had been my stepfather. I had been so angry that he was there, in my father’s place, when my father came home the first time.
Now both mother and stepfather were dead, and my father had come home again, entering a space left cavernous by their passing. I thought now that my father and stepfather would have liked each other, and wished I could have Mr. Buchance’s advice for what to do with the broken estates of the Woods Noirell and Arguty Manor. Having only his money was a poor second.
“Thank you,” I said eventually, once I felt able to speak calmly again. “I’m not sure whether he would have told you—” I wasn’t in fact sure what I had told him; I had been in no fit state, last spring, to be coherent explaining something I could not myself well understand— “But my final term at Morrowlea was in many ways disastrous. I was very ill, and the woman I was in love with betrayed my confidence severely.”
Even if it had been induced by drugs and maintained by magic, in my mind and heart I had loved Lark; there was no other word for what I had felt.
“Oh?” Mr. Vandray said softly.
“You have, I trust, heard of the play Three Years Gone: the Tragicomedy of the Traitor of Loe.”
“Oh,” he said, eyes widening. “I had not—oh no.”
I smiled involuntarily despite not feeling at all amused. “Oh yes. The outlines of events were unfortunately quite true, even if the motivations ascribed were false to the point of slander. My father did return home to Ragnor Bella three years after the disaster at Loe, to be reviled as the traitor, and find his wife married to another man.”
“Mr. Buchance died before he could reply to my letter enquiring about the play,” Mr. Vandray said mournfully, “and no one seemed to know where you were. In the absence of instruction I could legally do nothing ...”
“You’re not a lawyer on retainer to my family,” I said. “I’m not sure what you could have done.”
“You’re kind to say so.”
“I was travelling alone after I saw the play in Fillering Pool; I was in Ghilousette when Mrs. Buchance’s letters eventually reached me. By the time I got home the Midsomer Assizes were long over.”
“And so you come now,” Mr. Vandray said, nodding. He then fixed me with a piercing glance. “You are very free with your story to a stranger, Mr. Greenwing.”
I laughed unmirthfully. “My family’s doings are the talk of three kingdoms, Mr. Vandray. Last night I encountered Jack Lindsary, and it appears there is a sequel to Three Years Gone in the works. My former ... friend ... is vindictive.”
“You think this is her doing?”
“I know it,” I replied simply. “The name she used at Morrowlea was Lark. I have since been informed she is one of the Indrillines, and am nearly certain she is the one about to marry the governor-prince of Orio City.”
And hadn’t that been a pleasant revelation last night. We had not been able to get so drunk, last night in our rooms at the Red Lion, to hide Mr. Dart’s realization of what Jack Lindsary’s comments about his patron had meant. I only wished I could doubt it.
“Damme,” whispered Mr. Vandray, and rubbed his temples. He shook himself a moment later. “We have gone far afield, Mr. Greenwing. I apologize.”
“I wished you to be clear what my situation is.” I realized I was worrying my lip with my teeth and grimaced at this lack of subtlety. “There is more, I’m afraid.”
“More?”
“You know how I recently became Viscount St-Noire?”
“Yes, Mr. Morres wrote immediately following the reading of the will, to inform me it had been done—I’d asked him to do so—and to let me know that that had also happened.” He smiled. “He might have mentioned something about you slaying a dragon.”
I waved that off as a distraction. “Did he happen to mention that my father—Jakory Greenwing, that is—had returned from the reputed dead a second time?”
“Yes ...”
“And that my uncle, my father’s younger brother, had illegally claimed the family estate?”
“Yes.”
“So I find myself, then, with a formerly cursed village with no resources for the winter, an estate that was only not run entirely into the ground because of my aunt’s various illegal dealings, and a vindictive ex-lover with the might of the most notorious criminal gang in the continent behind her.”
And that wasn’t mentioning the cult to the Dark Kings that had tried to sacrifice me on the Fallowday of the Autumn, my grandmother the Marchioness’ sudden interest in my marriageability, the fact that the New Salon was likely to announce all of these things within the week, and my own uncertainties as to my future career.
“You are very trusting, Mr. Greenwing, to tell me all this,” Mr. Vandray said thoughtfully.
I sat back and regarded him equally intently, then smiled. “You already know most of it, sir. Besides, my stepfather was a very canny man, and he trusted you. So did his Charese business partners, Mr. Palaion and Mr. Zuraine; I did ask them, before they left Ragnor Bella after the will was read. I’m sure they would have told me had they had any reservations.”
“I’m glad to see you did your due diligence,” Mr. Vandray said with a smile.
“Moreover,” I went on, “my best friend from Morrowlea is the Imperial Duke of Fillering Pool, and he tells me you are also his banker, and that I could trust you with these details. Two more different men than Mr. Buchance and Hal I could not imagine, and if they both have trusted you for many years with their dealings, I think I am able to do so as well.”
Mr. Vandray chuckled. “Ah, you have young duke at your side? Then you will go far.”
“He is a good friend.”
“Very well, we have laid out the lines of your situation. I take it you will want to know the details of what you have been left now?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “I know from the will that I was left the residue of Mr. Buchance’s fortune after the specific bequests were made.”
Those specific bequests had totalled a great fortune in their own right, given to my stepfather’s wife and daughters, so after due reflection I did not expect my portion to be that great, all things told. Although undoubtedly it was still more than I’d ever seen in my life before, or had expected from the words ‘competency’.
“I am hoping that I will be able to draw enough to see the village of St-Noire through the winter without touching the capital, and in the spring start making investments to the end of making both St-Noire and Arguty profitable again.”
Mr. Vandray actually stared at me for a moment. “Mr. Greenwing, do you not have any idea what Mr. Buchance left you?”
I shrank back a little. “Is there not enough? I’ve made a budget—” I passed him the paper I’d prepared, with Mr. Dart’s help, after finding out from Mr. White in the Woods just how bad the situation was for the villagers.
The banker glanced down at it but did not seem to actually read it. “Mr. Greenwing ...” He sighed. “Ben left you half his fortune. You’re the twenty-fourth richest man in Northwest Oriole.”
***
MR. VANDRAY AND I SPOKE for almost an hour before he sighed and said I’d gotten the gist of everything he could do at the moment and that my budget was not entirely absurd. I was most grateful for Hal’s crash course in the administration of a great lord’s estate; at Morrowlea we had learned the basics of personal finance, how to manage money and think about investments and small businesses, but nothing on this scale.
“The basic principles are the same,” Mr. Vandray assured me. “Spend less than you earn, and you will increase your wealth.”
Well, yes, that was clear enough, but there were many, many other parts to it when one had a fortune even half the size of my stepfather’s. I was struck, over and over again, with gratitude and wonder for how well he’d managed his affairs. The house in Ragnor Bella he’d bought for the second Mrs. Buchance, which had been the talk of the town (or so I had been informed; I’d been away at Morrowlea by then), was extremely modest for a merchant of Mr. Buchance’s stature.
“I knew he was wealthy, but not ... this,” I murmured, stacking the documents Mr. Vandray had given me together neatly.
“Everyone uses his containers, and he kept the most important features of the seals proprietary. His wife will earn far more than you have now over time.”
That made me feel better, knowing that neither Mrs. Buchance nor my sisters would lose out by Mr. Buchance leaving me the half of his fortune.
“By the time your sisters are your age they will be great heiresses many times over,” Mr. Vandray went on, smiling happily at the thought.
I smiled back, a little less reluctant than I had been a month ago when I had first learned I was to be Viscount St-Noire. “I will have to work hard to reclaim the reputation and standing of the marquisate, then, and assist my father with Arguty, so that when they are of age I can help launch them into society.”
Mr. Vandray looked pleased at this thought. “That connection will do them very well indeed, Mr. Greenwing. Now, I believe that’s everything we can do today. I will make arrangements to have the funds we discussed available to you at the branch in Yrchester; you should be able to access what you need for supplies by this time next week, and the rest will come soon after. I think you are quite correct to prefer not to use the branch in Ragnor Bella itself. I know Mr. Hurry at Yrchester will assist you well.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vandray. I hope the next time we meet the political situation is a bit less fraught.”
He huffed a sigh. “I doubt we’ll be seriously affected—both the law-abiding and the criminal need their funds kept safe, after all. Nevertheless, if things continue as they are, send me a letter and we’ll make arrangements to meet in a more neutral location. Perhaps Fillering Pool, since as you say you know the duke.”
“That would be most appreciated.”
He smiled crookedly at me. “It’s most appreciated that you continue to patronize our establishment, Mr. Greenwing. Now, I’ll walk you out and see that you get the ready cash you’ve requested.”
This had been his idea, in fact, so that I could (as he said) refresh my wardrobe as well as get the immediate stores needed by the villagers on my way back. I nodded and stood, tucking the papers carefully into my waistcoat pocket, then shrugging back into the great-coat and straightening my hat.
“Very dashing,” Mr. Vandray said. “I think I prefer your fashions to those currently sported by the young here in Tara.”
“We’ll probably get there in a year or two,” I replied, privately certain I was never going to wear a codpiece in public (or in private, for that matter). Mr. Vandray held the door for me and led me back down the gorgeous hallway and into the main foyer of the bank, whereupon we immediately encountered Hal.
I forestalled his surprised greeting (no need for him to shout “Jemis!” in the midst of the hall) by reaching out for his extended hand, clasping my left to his shoulder, and whispering into his ear, “Don’t say my name!”
“How intriguing,” he murmured back very quietly, then stood back to smile cheerfully at me and Mr. Vandray. “What a surprise to see you, sir! I had no idea we should see each other again so soon; I would have waited to accompany you here had I known.”
“Mr. Dart was unexpectedly required to make the journey, and I accompanied him in the hopes of speaking to Mr. Vandray, here.” I gestured at the banker, who was smiling jovially but could not hide his bemusement. Perhaps he had not quite believed me when I said I was friends with Hal?
It occurred to me that probably there were many who pretended to be friends with the wealthy and titled, and that Hal probably had to foist them off with sticks.
“And have you finished your banking?” Hal asked courteously, prompting Mr. Vandray to whisper something to an attentive flunky, who whispered in turn to a teller, who promptly counted out a sum into a leather wallet. The teller handed this to the flunky, who handed it to Mr. Vandray, who presented it to me with a nod halfway to a bow.
The gossips were going to be buzzing with this, I realized, catching a few patrons of the bank leaning to discuss this development. Hal was dressed as befit an Imperial Duke, and I ... was not.
“Yes, for today,” I said simply, putting the wallet inside my waistcoat pocket.
“Shall we meet after my business is concluded?”
I nodded. “I understand there is a book fair under way in the Guildmarket Hall ...”
“Say no more!” Hal laughed. “I’m sure you will be well occupied, no matter how long I am here.” He clapped me on the back. “Good searching. Now, Mr. Vandray, if you’re amenable?”
“Always, your grace,” replied the banker, and I left them to their meeting.
The street outside seemed brighter merely for having met Hal. I smiled generally at people, receiving startled and suspicious glances in return. This made me sigh, for the city had not, actually, changed in the past hour. I picked my way past the piles of ordure with less grace and more attention than the citizens did, but nevertheless arrived at the Guildmarket Hall without any further adventure.
It was, it appeared, free to enter. I went past the guardsman on duty, in a uniform relict of the Fourth Division of the Fifth Imperial Army, unless I missed my guess (and I probably did not, my father having spent much time teaching me the different uniforms when I was a child and he was home from his campaigns). He glowered a little at me, perhaps because of the encounter with the odd old man earlier, but said nothing.
There was a steady stream of people moving through the building. Mindful of the warning about the bear baiting, I pushed my way to a corner to see where I should go. After a few minutes of observation I noted that several of an obviously academic bent—a tall, willowy man in the royal-blue robes of a mastery student, another man in a Scholar’s black robes—had broken away from the main crowd to enter a door down the hall from me.
I followed them and was rewarded by the book fair.