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The first week of the new bank was a success, though mostly in spite of Quintus, rather than because of him. He kept giving everyone these sanctimonious little lectures about how the point of a bank was to help people, rather than to make money. It felt like riding with someone who knew how to mount a horse, but insisted on doing so backwards to be different from everyone else. Even so, when he wasn’t being self-righteous, he knew his job. He kept the staff happy, and he trained Hamon and the Emissariae girls in the basics of bookkeeping.
Moira didn’t spend much time at the bank. She and Faustinus sat on the board of directors, which meant they went to meetings all over the city with merchants and government officials, trying to convince them to move their accounts from the old, established banks to their new one. Moira could feel Faustinus using calming spells on these people as he sought to overcome their very reasonable objections. She added spells of her own sometimes, too.
By the end of the first week, they didn’t need to use spells anymore. Word got around about the new bank with the court sorcerer on the board, and everyone heard how this shipping company or that guild had switched their accounts over from the Procellus or the Mediata. Everyone assumed these people knew something they didn’t, and soon enough, people showed up at the lobby, clamoring to open accounts. Quintus wanted to accept them all, as a matter of principle, and Faustinus gave the young man a free hand.
Moira’s favorite part of the new bank was setting up the postrider system with her girls. Callista, recently returned from an assignment out east, was now working with Lily to find new Emissariae, but their standards—and Moira’s—had always been very high. Not every girl could do the work properly. So, in the meantime, they hired regular postriders. They were former cavalrymen, for the most part, and some of them had done the same sort of work before for other banks.
Even so, Moira insisted that her girls investigate the background of every single man they hired. They had to be reliable, and they had to be honest. She knew that for some of the girls, this vetting process became a “bedding” process, and Lily was obliged to deliver some very stern lectures in the upstairs office on the kind of morals that she expected from the women of the Prefecturate of Correspondence and Communications. But Moira didn’t feel it was her place to tell the girls not to have fun. It would have been terribly hypocritical of her, since she had done more or less the same thing with Hamon.
Out of some misguided sense of propriety, the former monk still insisted on keeping a room at the Prefectus Arcus inn, but he spent four or five nights a week at Moira’s house. She had told him he could move in, but he didn’t. Perhaps he disliked the idea of being entirely dependent on her, and she could respect that.
He was getting better in bed. There was no doubt about that. She tried not to compare him to Faustinus, but she couldn’t help it. This was only her second real relationship in 105 years, after all. Setting aside a few random, drunken nights during previous break-ups with Faustinus, she really had no one else to whom she could compare her new lover. And, since Faustinus had spent centuries refining his technique, the comparison was not flattering to Hamon. Still, the former monk did his best and seemed quite eager to learn and try new things.
This appreciation for novelty surprised her at first. She had supposed he would be quite reluctant to do anything unusual or perverse, but he made no objections at all to anything she proposed. Perhaps he simply wanted to make her happy. Or perhaps, having made the vast, initial leap from celibacy to sex, any further step seemed almost inconsequential to him. It was very odd; it had taken Faustinus years, sometimes, to convince her to try certain things with him. But Hamon was happy to do those exact same things the moment she suggested them.
She supposed she ought to feel bad about tempting the man away from his religious vocation, but she didn’t. Hamon hadn’t really liked being a monk. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could like it, but certainly not a young man with a fairly healthy appetite for sex.
If she felt any moral qualms about their relationship, she only worried he might regret it someday. Perhaps he would grow anxious about the state of his soul and try to atone for his sin. But she was fairly confident that he wouldn’t do that. No, she mainly worried she might ruin him for other women. Not that Moira considered herself the world’s greatest lover. But she had spent seventeen years learning from someone who could legitimately contend for that title. And she had magy. And she had the body of a 22-year-old. Hamon would never again find a girl with that same combination of qualities.
This assumed that she and Hamon were eventually going to break up. Moira didn’t tell him so, but she couldn’t see much of a future for them, at least not in the long term. In forty years, he would be an old man, and she would look like his granddaughter. The mere idea of such a relationship made her shudder at first, and on one occasion, nearly put her out of the mood for sex entirely.
But strangely, the more time she spent with Hamon, the more she liked him, and the more she felt as if she could certainly spend a few years with him. Perhaps not forever, but maybe a decade or so. True, he wasn’t Faustinus, but if the past seventeen years had proved anything, they had proved Faustinus was not the right man for her. Perhaps Hamon was. By the end of the second week of banking operations, she felt as if she might be able to fall in love with him, if she let herself. Perhaps she already had.
Early one chilly morning before sunrise, as she lay in bed watching him sleep and trying to decide if she really loved him or not, she felt the familiar pressure in her jaw, and she knew Faustinus was down in the garden. She crawled out of bed carefully, so as not to wake Hamon, put on her dress and a thick fur cloak, and went outside.
“Sorry to come by this early,” said Faustinus, with a sly smile. He surely knew Hamon was sleeping over at her house these days, but he didn’t mention it. “I’ve been up all night, talking with some of the Proconsul’s agents.”
“Oh, what do they have to say?”
“No one can confirm the Gramirens are in Terminium. At least not without making it into a formal military matter. And I’m reluctant to do that, because then half the world will find out.”
“I had a feeling it might be difficult to get in touch with them.”
Hamon had given her the exact location of the safehouse where they had been staying when he left them, but he had cautioned her that they would almost certainly change locations periodically.
“We need one of our people out there, I suppose. Should I send an Emissaria?” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Callista knows Terminium very well. But then again, Gina’s Myrcian is nearly flawless. And she is the one with all the contacts in the Gramiren exile community here. Whereas Callista is the one with all the Sigor contacts.”
“Actually...,” Faustinus cringed and gave her a plaintive look, “I was wondering if you’d consider going out there yourself. The girls are good at their jobs, but I don’t have the same confidence in their judgment that I have in yours. And besides, if Caedmon is right that the Sigors have hillichmagnars working as assassins for them, then....” He spread his hands and shrugged.
“In that case, we need a hillichmagnar to protect the Gramirens,” she sighed.
She could have suggested that he should be the one to go, but she knew that wasn’t practical. He wasn’t quite so much in the public eye as he once had been, but he was still very well known at court and in society. His absence would cause a lot more comment than hers would.
“Very well,” she said. “Do you think I should take Hamon with me?”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you. He’ll slow you down.”
That was certainly true. She’d traveled often with Faustinus, both before their wedding and afterward, and nothing slowed two people down like stopping for sex constantly.
“I suppose you want me to leave immediately.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Make sure they’re safe. We need to figure out where we can put them permanently—maybe somewhere up north. Maybe another country entirely. But for the time being, find them and use whatever spells you think are necessary to make them more secure.”
She considered leaving while Hamon was still asleep, and leaving him a note, but he woke up while she packed her bag, and she had to tell him something.
“I’m going to be out of town for a little while,” she said. In her mind, she tried to guess how long the trip to Terminium and back might take, but then she realized that she had no idea how long it would take to ensure the Gramirens were safe. “It might be a few weeks. Maybe longer.”
“Do you want me to come along, too?”
She went over to the bed and kissed him. “Sorry, but no. You need to keep an eye on things at the bank for me.” She waved a hand around at the bedroom. “You’re welcome to keep staying here, though. It’s a lot nicer than that inn.”
The poor boy looked quite sad that she was leaving, so in spite of the urgency of her mission, she took a half hour or so and gave him one, last, good fuck to remember her by. And for her to remember him by, as well. The pleasant, warm glow of the encounter lasted her all the way down to the docks and most of the way across the straits on the ferry.
When she stepped off the boat in Denizvatan, though, she resolved to put Hamon out of her mind. She needed to concentrate on her work, and even if it might be a couple weeks before she got to Terminium, she would need to be on constant alert for any signs of the hillichmagnar assassins.
And she needed to plan how to approach the exiled Gramirens. She wondered if she should mention her past acquaintanceship with Broderick the younger, or whether it would be better to present herself as an agent on behalf of Faustinus, who she assumed Broderick still felt a fondness toward. It would be tricky to get a meeting with the “royal” family, and if she chose the wrong approach, she might end up sinking the entire bank.
Marzia, her youngest and newest Emissaria, was in charge today at the half-abandoned old inn that they were using for a postrider station near the ferry docks. “We’ve got stations all the way out to Konradstadt in northern Odeland,” she said. “We might get started on Cruedrua and Myrcia by the Solstice, but I can’t make any guarantees.”
Moira considered her route carefully, checking her map. With the post stations, she could get as far as Konradstadt very quickly. But then things would be much slower. She could take the southern route through Dunkelshire and Newshire in Myrcia, and then up the Styrung Pass into Cruedrua, and then north across the mountainous plateau to Terminium.
Or, from Konradstadt, she could go up the Lebenfluss valley, through the wilderness, into Cruedrua, and up to Terminium from the west. Either way would be extremely long and tiring, and even after talking it over with Marzia, she still hadn’t made up her mind. But that was another thing she could decide on the road.
She loaded her bags onto the first of a dozen horses she would ride that day, and she galloped out of the inn and up into the frost-covered hills of Denizvatan.