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Whenever Moira faced some intractable problem that didn’t seem to have a clear solution, she took a walk. She had found, many years earlier, that she seemed to think better when she was out, moving around, rather than sitting lazily behind a desk somewhere.
She left the palace grounds and crossed the park into the university district. This neighborhood had a kind of bustling, intellectual vitality that she sometimes enjoyed. Students rushed from one lecture hall to another, or sat arguing natural philosophy with friends at little tables on the street in front of cozy taverns. Aged, whiskered professors stood at bookstalls, brows furrowed as they tried to decide which new treatise to buy. Moira enjoyed visiting the area for a quiet drink every once in a while, though inevitably people would mistake her for an undergraduate, which she found exasperating.
A group of young men in an open-air wine shop whistled at her as she walked past. One of them complimented her on having a nice ass and claimed they had met at some party the previous weekend.
“I don’t believe we did,” she said, turning and smiling. Then she used a slight pressure spell to knock his pitcher of wine into his lap, and she walked on.
She strolled through the theater district after that, and then into the Viridanus District, a quiet neighborhood with little, twisting, tree-lined lanes. Wealthy artists and actors lived there. It wasn’t quite fashionable enough for senators, but it was the sort of place where a senator might set up a mistress with a discreet little apartment.
Moira stopped, looking around at the little houses and garden plots. Senators and mistresses. Artists and patrons.
Brother Hamon could use a patron. Someone sympathetic to the Gramiren cause. Someone who could set him up with a nice house, get him some servants. He’d grown up in a monastery, and few people were more susceptible to luxury than those who had never had it before. A few comforts, some sympathy, and he’d start talking. He’d tell them everything the Gramirens were planning. He’d tell them where the Gramirens were, and where they kept the treasures they’d taken during their escape from Formacaster.
She jogged back to the palace and ran up the steps, two at a time, to her office. Throwing open the door, she cried, “Lily? Lily, how much could we spend on an apartment?”
“After all these years, you’re asking to move in together, ma’am?” Lily looked up and gave a crooked smile. “Seriously, though. The answer to your question is, ‘Not much.’” She reached under her desk, flipped open a hidden panel, and brought out a small ledger bound in purple leather. “I’m afraid expenditures have been higher than usual these past few months.”
Moira read through the ledger with a sense of growing alarm. The Prefecturate of Correspondence and Communications often spent a considerable amount of money, in spite of the fact that it had fewer than a dozen full-time employees. Getting messages to people in distant lands and getting information from people who didn’t wish to talk could get very expensive. Moira gave her Emissariae a free hand in spending, and generally speaking, they did not abuse the privilege. But the money had flowed more and more freely, and now, for three months in a row, they had run a deficit.
Practically speaking, this meant they couldn’t woo Brother Hamon with luxury and vice unless he happened to have a fetish for tiny rooms and cheap ale.
“I suppose I’ll have to go see the Treasury,” said Moira.
“I did already,” said Lily. “I went over there last week. They said they’re not approving another advance on our yearly budget. The Procurator-in-chief up in Albus Magnus came down hard on them the last time they did it for us, and they’d rather avoid his ire in the future.”
“Then a loan, perhaps,” said Moira. “I assume my credit is still good in this city.”
“Not as good as it used to be,” said Lily. “We missed two payments last year after we resettled that Minertian defector.”
“Yes, but the Mediata Bank did, in fact, get their money,” said Moira firmly.
Lily cleared her throat and blushed slightly. “And then there’s the issue of, well...your husband. Lord Faustinus has very poor credit right now.”
“Yes, he often does. And yet, somehow that only ever makes people more eager to loan him money. Would it make a difference if I explained we’re getting a divorce?”
“Possibly. And it couldn’t hurt for you to make a personal appeal, ma’am.”
Lily raised an eyebrow, and Moira knew the woman was referring to the tactical use of calming spells. Moira had long since gotten over any moral qualms about using magy to help her persuade people to do things, but even powerful spells had their limits, and given the appalling state of the Prefecturate’s finances, she didn’t feel optimistic.
Her first stop was the Mediata Bank, which had its headquarters in Presidium, so she often chose it by default when the court visited the city for the winter. It helped to be able to see all the directors in a single day, if it came to that. But this time, when she sent up a note with her seal and Lily’s affixed, a trembling pageboy came back to say the directors were indisposed.
“What if I came back tomorrow?” she asked, suspecting she already knew the answer.
“I think they’ll be indisposed tomorrow, my lady,” the page said in a quavering voice. “And...you know...for the foreseeable future, too.”
Next, she visited the Aquilonia, and after that, the Naftikos, the old Thessalian bank right next door. And there, too, everyone who might have been able to loan her money suffered from some sudden and mysterious indisposition.
After she was turned away at three smaller banks, two Immani and one Zekustian, all of which should have been grateful for her patronage, she wound up at the mighty Procellus—her last, best chance. There, in the marble-vaulted lobby, she approached the floor manager’s desk.
“I’m here about a loan,” she said to the balding young man seated there.
He didn’t even glance at her, but pointed across the way to a smaller desk with a thin, bespectacled boy. “Loans are over there.”
Then she handed him the little note bearing her seal and that of Lily, and he looked up, eyes wide. “Oh. I see. Perhaps you should...come with me, my lady.”
He led her upstairs, down the long hall, and into the office of the branch director.
“Mr. Megalos, how charming to see you again,” she said, as the rotund little Thessalian man rose to greet her.
“Countess Faustina,” he said, motioning toward a chair. “It is always a pleasure.”
This was a good beginning, but everything went downhill from there. No sooner were they both seated, but he explained to her that a further loan would be impossible.
“I’m afraid the directors have discussed this very issue,” he said, “and I have been given clear instructions. The little organization that you and Dominus Faustinus have established, the...oh, what are you calling it these days?”
“The Prefecturate of Correspondence and Communications,” she said.
“Yes, quite. I’m afraid large amounts of money were loaned to your people in the past, with the understanding that we would someday have a share in the silver mines of Loshadnarod.”
“That was years ago.”
Megalos gave a slight shrug. “And yet, Loshadnarod remains, sadly, outside the comforting embrace of the Imperial family.”
“But there is a Sigor king again,” Moira pointed out. “They’ve always been allies of the Empire.”
Megalos shifted in his chair. “Yes, but King Edwin might decide to make peace with Loshadnarod.”
“But this new loan has nothing to do with Loshadnarod,” she said. And in her mind, she said the words for the calming spell.
The branch director’s eyes became somewhat unfocused for a second, and he gave her a vague, pleasant smile. But it did no good.
“Oh, I understand that,” he said, with a girlish little giggle, “but that’s how it goes, I’m afraid. If a sea captain loses money on a voyage to Turetania, we don’t forgive his debts if he promises only to go to Minerto in the future.”
She left the bank and ran fuming back to the palace. She went in the front entrance, past the ruined gates of Paradelphia, hung up in the reception hall, relics of a war her husband had won for the Empire more than a century earlier, then across the rotunda and up the long, sweeping stairway, made of marble and worn smooth with age. Then to the right, down a long corridor lit with little balls of pulsing blue and yellow flames. A left turn, and she came out in a wide, sunlit, circular room, surrounded by high banks of windows and bookshelves.
This was Faustinus’s chamber, inherited from his old mentor, Drustan. She and Faustinus had spent their first, most passionate nights together in Presidium in this room, in the little private bedchamber off to the side behind some tapestries. But that had been years ago, long before they were husband and wife.
A creaking moan came from a hinge, and Moira turned, spell on her lips, to see Gina coming in from the balcony through a tall glass door.
“Oh, ma’am.” The girl’s rosy lips broke into a wide, winsome grin. “I didn’t know you were here!”
Gina wore normal street clothes—a light green Minertian cotton dress with yellow tights and long, brightly-polished riding boots underneath. It wasn’t as if she was naked or dressed only in a silk robe, or something like that. But her presence here seemed to confirm everything Moira had guessed about her and Faustinus. Except that Moira’s Emissariae girls did occasionally carry messages for him, and it wasn’t really that odd for one of them to be waiting here.
“Is my...,” Moira’s voice caught for a second, “is my husband around, by any chance?”
“He ran down the hall to the privy,” the girl said. “He’ll be back soon, I expect.”
And sure enough, half an awkward minute later, he walked in, in leather riding trousers and a billowy linen shirt with the front fully unlaced. Moira repressed a sigh—she had always found that look particularly attractive.
“Ah, Moira, darling!” He walked over and gave her a quick, perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Always a delight to see you up here. Wine?” He gestured to a decanter on the sideboard. Moira noticed glasses had already been set out, two of which showed signs of being used.
“No, thank you,” she said, a bit more curtly than she had meant to. “Servius, we’ve got a problem.”
She considered sending Gina out of the room, but the girl was an Emissaria, and if she was Faustinus’s mistress now, then she was likely to get a promotion soon, whether she knew it or not. Moira, in her mind, meant this in the best possible way. It wasn’t that Faustinus showed unfair favoritism toward his lovers. Rather, he chose his lovers very carefully, so they were always highly intelligent and capable women.
So, Moira let the girl stay, and she told the two of them about the sudden financial problems of the Prefecturate, as well as her disappointing tour of the city’s banks.
As she spoke, he poured three glasses of wine, in defiance of her wishes, but once she was seated by his invitation in the ratty old velvet chair by the hearth—the most comfortable seat in the room—and she had the wine at her elbow, she found she needed a drink, after all.
“So, we are out of money,” said Faustinus, when she had finished.
She didn’t object to the first person plural. Even if he wasn’t currently in the chain of command of the Prefecturate, it had been partly his creation, and they had always shared it in joint custody, as it were.
Gina held up a hand, as if she were a schoolgirl in class. “We could put on a show. I could do some sort of acrobatic act, and maybe the two of you could sing a duet. You both sing so beautifully.” She gave them an ingratiating smile. “And Lily could recite a poem or something. And Rossana could dance. Callista could dance, too, or play some music—you know she can play about twenty instruments. And Vittoria and Stavra could do a comic skit. You know how funny they get when they’re drunk. And—”
“That is certainly something to keep in mind for the future,” said Faustinus, “but I think we need something that will bring in a bit more money than a Saturday night comic revue.”
Moira slumped lower in the soft chair. “It’s all about the Loshadnarodski War. The banks don’t trust us anymore after we couldn’t get the silver mines.”
Faustinus paced around the room several times, head bowed in thought, and then perched himself on the edge of the book-strewn central table. Gina went and sat on the table, too, a few feet away, but he ignored her.
“I think I might have the beginnings of an idea,” he said. “Do you know where Dommolia is?”
“Somewhere out east,” said Moira.
“It’s a province of the Kingdom of Teralia,” said Gina, beaming at the opportunity to answer a question correctly. “It used to be a protectorate of the Shangian Empire, back in the days when—”
“Yes, exactly,” said Faustinus. “As it happens, I’ve heard that a vast new vein of silver has been found out there.”
Neither Moira nor Gina needed to ask why Faustinus knew this. Sometimes he just knew things.
He went on. “My thought is that if we can’t get the Loshadnarodski mines, we might get the next best thing.”
The Kingdom of Teralia lay to the northeast of Loshadnarod, on the borders of the Immani Province of Nivia. The plan might work, except.... “The banks still won’t lend us any money,” said Moira. “And I doubt the Senate and Tullius have much stomach for further eastern adventures.”
“We need collateral,” said Faustinus.
Gina bounced up and down with excitement. “What about the things the Gramirens stole when they ran away from Formacaster? You know, the book and the sword and the crown and so on.”
An intriguing idea, but hearing the girl say it made Moira’s breath catch. She, herself, only knew about the Gramirens’ theft because Faustinus had told her. And though she and Gina had gone to see Brother Hamon together, Gina only knew the monk was a Gramiren agent. Moira hadn’t explained the theft. Which meant the only way the girl could have heard the story was from Faustinus.
No matter. Moira was divorcing him, and clearly he had taken Gina on as a new protégé. Good for him. Good for her.
“Fine,” she said. “We get the stolen Myrcian things, use them for collateral, then take over the Dommolian mines. Then what?”
Faustinus slid down the table and propped a foot up on the arm of Moira’s chair. “My dear girl, once we’ve got that much silver, we’ll never need to go begging to one of these banks again. In fact....” A pause, and his face suddenly lit up with transcendent joy. “In fact, if we had that much silver, we could start our own blasted bank.”
Gina let out a squeal of glee. “That’s brilliant, sir!”
Moira, who had been through the Loshadnarodski invasion, shook her head. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Servius.”