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When the Gramiren family had ruled Myrcia, they had maintained accounts with several of the largest Immani banks, and a few of the Sahasran ones, too. But from a certain, highly legalistic point of view, those accounts belonged to the Myrcian crown, and even if the literal crown was currently hidden from the Sigors, the banks took the position that the accounts belonged to whoever ruled in Formacaster.
As a Gramiren supporter, Hamon found this grossly unfair. The previous Sigor king, Edgar II, had left the country virtually bankrupt with his pointless war against Loshadnarod. It had taken King Broderick I a decade of hard work and high taxes and extreme thrift (none of which had endeared him to his people) in order to set things right again. And now, according to the banks, the money that had been entrusted to them could be spent by Edgar’s idiot son, Edwin, rather than by the rightful king, Broderick II. Edwin would probably spend it all on another invasion of Loshadnarod, or something equally stupid.
Because of this terrible injustice, Hamon, normally a decent, Earstien-fearing, Ivich man, could reconcile himself to the fact that the Gramirens had taken the crown, the sword, and the book, and had emptied much of the Wealdan Castle treasury. They weren’t stealing, per se. They were keeping the money and treasure with the true king, rather than giving it all to the Sigors.
But again, the banks might not see it that way. You couldn’t borrow money with stolen property for collateral, either in Myrcia or the Empire. So Hamon would have to be very careful when he approached the banks. He would have to sound out the managers and directors and make sure they were the right sort of people before he raised the issue. He would have to weigh the words of their responses, the inflection of their voices, their tiniest change of expression, to know if they might be willing to consider the loan the Gramirens needed.
This wasn’t a job for a man who had spent most of his youth in a quiet cloister, but the retinue of the king and queen had been sadly diminished, and as Queen Therese had said when Hamon left, “There’s no one we trust more than you.” Hamon blushed whenever he thought of her saying it.
So, he had spent most of the morning scouting the banks. He’d gone to the Aquilonia, down by the merchant docks, and the Mediata, near the grain market, where he’d managed to get himself lost again for over an hour. Then, with the help of a grain merchant’s wife, who spoke a little Myrcian, he managed to get his bearings again, and then went to see the Procellus Bank, with its grand marble lobby. He liked the look of that—it had a reassuring kind of stability. It looked like the sort of place that did business with kings and princes.
At none of the three banks did he speak to anyone. No, that could come later, after he studied up on them and built up his courage. This would be the most important thing he ever did in his entire life, and he didn’t want to mess it up by rushing in unprepared.
He somehow took the wrong street coming back from the Procellus Bank and ended up in the grain market again, rather than the Septentrius district, where his inn was. Feeling suddenly hungry, he realized it was almost noon, so he bought three little fried fish on sticks from a street stall and sat down to eat them on the well-worn steps of the Grain Exchange.
As he sat eating, he heard someone whistling. And over the cries of the street vendors, and the rhythmic chants of the auctioneers in the market, he found that he recognized the song. It was “Our Kings Had Always Warriors Been,” an anthem for Gramiren supporters. It told the story of King Edgar II’s disastrous war with Loshadnarod, and it explained, in terms simple enough for even the lowliest peasant, why Broderick Gramiren the elder had been the rightful king, in spite of the slight technical disadvantage of not being of entirely legitimate birth.
The whistling came closer, and he turned to see Gina, the pretty girl from the Black Eagle, walking down the steps to him.
She stopped whistling, and she gave him a warm smile and a shy little wave. “Hello, again, Brother Hamon.”
“How do you know that song?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s something I picked up. As you’ve noticed, I like to practice my Myrcian with refugees, and one of them taught it to me.” She sat next to him.
“And do you know what the song means?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m not Myrcian myself, and I’m afraid politics always makes my head hurt a little. But it seems to me that any decent person would support the Gramirens.”
He was nothing if not polite. He held up the two fishes he had left and asked, “Would you like one?”
“Oh, no thank you,” she said. “They catch those river shad down by the Pistrina Docks, where the city sewers empty into the ocean.”
He gagged a little and tossed the two fish aside. They were claimed within seconds by a pair of seagulls.
To his surprise, the girl took his hand and said, “Come on. Let’s get you something decent to eat.” And she led him to a dank little alley nearby and through a curtain of hanging beads into a tiny restaurant barely larger than his room at the inn. And yet, the bowl of ham and onion soup he had there was one of the tastiest meals he had ever eaten in his life.
“You seem to know the city very well,” he said, settling back in his chair. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly do you do, Miss Gina?”
“I’m an Emissaria. It’s sort of like...how would you say it in Myrcian? A ‘messenger girl,’ I guess, is what it means literally. I go everywhere in the city. And other cities, too. I talk to a lot of people for work.” She raised her hands. “You pick things up, here and there.”
He wasn’t quite sure what any of that meant, but it sounded to him as if this girl knew something about the business world. Certainly more than he did, anyway. “Do you know anything about banking?” he asked.
“A bit. Why?”
He tried to be wary, but Gina seemed so blasted cute and bubbly he couldn’t imagine she had ulterior motives. It would be like suspecting a puppy of being a wolf in disguise.
“Well, the thing is,” he said carefully, “that I’m here to do something to help the Gramiren family. And I need to find a bank that might want to be...um, helpful. If you see what I mean.”
She nodded, slowly and thoughtfully. Then she giggled, shook her head, and said, “No, not really. I don’t know much about that sort of thing.” She leaned a bit closer and added, “But I do know someone who might be able to help you. She’s much cleverer about business and money and politics than I am.”
“Who is she?”
Gina appeared not to have heard his question. “Do you think you can remember how to get to the steps of the grain exchange tomorrow?”
“Um...maybe?”
“Well, everyone in the city knows where it is. Ask around until you find it. I’ll be there with her at noon, alright?”
He barely managed to get any sleep that night. Could he really trust Gina? Well, yes, he felt sure he could. She was pretty, and men of faith had to watch out for feminine wiles. But then again, Gina didn’t seem to have much in the way of wiles. There wasn’t anything untoward or vulgar about her. If she had been Myrcian, she would have seemed like the sort of wholesome, friendly young woman you could find selling wool at any May fair. She seemed completely without guile.
Although, as he drifted off to sleep at last, it occurred to him that maybe she was only pretending to be innocent. Maybe she was a very good actress.
He slept in far later than he had intended and then had to spend an embarrassingly long time in the privy, which he attributed to nerves, and also to the fish he’d eaten the day before. Then, when he finally managed to leave the inn, he immediately got lost again, and even though he had hoped to get to the grain exchange early, he barely made it on time.
Gina lay across several steps, head thrown back and whistling, arms and legs sprawled out in a childish sort of way. Beside her, with exquisitely perfect posture, sat the most beautiful woman Hamon had ever seen in his life. She had a perfect, sculpted profile, with high cheekbones and slim, delicate eyebrows. She had thick, red hair, pulled back with jade pins to reveal her long, white neck. Hamon had spent four years at court in Formacaster, and he had never seen a woman so clearly of noble birth.
He walked up the steps to them, bowed deeply, and introduced himself.
She stood slowly and bowed in return. When seated, her slim figure and upright posture had given him the impression she was very tall. But she wasn’t. She stood only a couple inches taller than Gina, who was quite tiny. She wore a long, sleeveless gown of blue silk, with gold armbands and bracelets clattering on either arm.
“Brother Hamon,” she said, in a low, sweet voice. “I’m so pleased to meet you. I’m Moira Lepida. I trust you haven’t eaten lunch yet.”
Her Myrcian was even better than Gina’s. It sounded perfect, in fact, without the faintest trace of an accent. Her first name, “Moira,” wasn’t Immani. It was Kenedalic, and was very common in Kenedalic parts of Myrcia. Was this woman a Myrcian, herself?
Gina bounced to her feet and pointed across the market. “I took him to the soup place over there yesterday.”
“Good choice,” said Moira, “but I wouldn’t want our friend to think that’s the best our fair city has to offer.”
They crossed the market to a much fancier looking restaurant, with fresh flowers on every table and starched Minertian cotton tablecloths. Their wine arrived in a crystal decanter with gilded etchings on the side.
Moira must have seen the nervous look he gave the décor, because she rested a slim hand gently on his arm and said, “Don’t worry. This is my treat.”
They had oysters for their first course, and then some sort of enormous, flat fish Hamon had never seen before. He gave Gina a look, and she nodded.
“They catch these way out at sea,” she whispered. “You’re safe.”
“Gina tells me you’re staying at the Black Eagle,” said Moira, pouring him more wine. “I suppose you’ve spoken to the refugees around there. It’s a very sad business, isn’t it?”
He hadn’t talked to anyone but Gina and the innkeeper, but no doubt she was speaking in general terms. “Yes, my lady. Very sad.”
“We do what we can to help them, don’t we, Gina? But there is only so much we can do.”
“Brother Hamon is here to help them, too,” said Gina. “Aren’t you?”
“Let’s not rush the man,” said Moira. “Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself, Brother Hamon?”
There didn’t seem to be any harm in it, so he told them how he had been born in Keelweard, the third son of a knight, and had been sent to the monastery at the age of 12.
“My father noticed I liked books better than horses. I think I was a great disappointment to him.”
“On the contrary,” said Moira, smiling, “I think in that habit you’d lull your enemies into a false sense of security. You’d make a fine knight.”
He laughed. “Have you ever seen a tournament, my lady?”
“Indeed. Many of them, in fact.” She leaned forward and touched his arm lightly again. “Don’t tell anyone, but I was born in Haydonshire, Myrcia.” And to prove it, she recited the first verse of “Our Kings Had Always Warriors Been” in a lilting Haydon accent. Haydonshire had once been part of Annenstruk, Myrcia’s neighbor to the south, and the language there still bore traces of Annensprak.
They all laughed, and Gina and Hamon applauded Moira’s performance while she stood and gave them each a graceful bow. “I haven’t been back there in a long time,” she said, sitting down again. “And it took me forever to get rid of that stupid accent.”
“Forever?” he asked. She couldn’t have been older than her early 20s.
“I’m a bit older than I look,” she replied with a wink. Then she poured him more wine. “Now, then, Brother Hamon. Gina says you wanted to know something about banking. I do lots of business with various banks, both here in the Empire and abroad. What would you like to know?”
He came very close to telling her everything right then and there. She was clever and kind and clearly very smart. She was a Myrcian, too, and she was from Haydonshire, one of the traditional bastions of Gramiren support. Queen Therese, wife of King Broderick, was the daughter of the Duke of Haydonshire.
And he couldn’t pretend her beauty didn’t affect him. Hamon might be a monk, but he was still a young man, with all the normal desires that a young man had. When she put her hand on his arm, he felt sudden stirrings of his baser urges, and he had to surreptitiously adjust his loose white scapular to make sure the women didn’t see the vulgar evidence of his shame. Even so, he didn’t feel as if Moira was making deliberate advances toward him. On the contrary, except when she touched him, he found her presence calming.
He liked Gina, and he trusted her, but she seemed a bit like a little girl, in spite of being a grown woman. Moira seemed entirely different. Even though she couldn’t be much older than Gina, she was clearly a woman of the world. When she wasn’t laughing and she sat looking at him, he could hardly meet her eyes. Her gaze had a kind of piercing quality, like she already knew all about him. Like she had already surmised what he would say, and only waited for him to confirm her guess.
All at once, he became suspicious again. Yes, she was from Haydonshire, or at least she claimed to be. But that was exactly what a Sigor spy would say, too. She hadn’t done anything to make him suspect her, but that, in itself, worried him. She appeared so perfect and so poised and so polished. She was so beautiful and—there was no other word—so regal, and yet she seemed to have nothing else to do today but sit around, chatting with a Myrcian monk.
So, he decided not to tell her quite everything. “I wondered about the big merchant banks here in town. Which one is the best?”
“The best for what, exactly?” asked Moira, resting her hand on his arm again.
“For...well....” Again, he almost said it, but he stopped himself. “Which one is regarded as the most reliable? Which is the one you’d do business with if you had something very important to do?”
“The Procellus, I suppose,” said Moira.
“The Procellus,” said Gina, at the same time.
“It would help if I knew what you wanted to do, exactly,” said Moira. Her left hand joined the right on his arm. “I really do want to help.”
By this point, he knew he must be blushing furiously, and he would need to order a very, very cold bath when he got back to the inn. “I...I’m so sorry,” he said jumping abruptly to his feet. “You’ve been very helpful, and the food was delicious.”
Moira sat back, a look of genuine disappointment on her lovely face. “You’re certainly welcome. If there’s anything else I could help you with, I would—”
“Thank you, but I think that’s enough for now,” he said. He bowed quickly and rushed off, nearly upsetting a teacart on his way to the door.