| |
He couldn’t go back to sleep after she left. He said prayers for her safety, and that made him feel a little better. Even if breaking his vows was a terrible sin (and he wasn’t sure it was), he and Moira were on the right side here, helping the rightful king and queen carry on the fight against the Sigors. This was Earstien’s will, and even if they committed sins here and there along the way, what mattered in the end was that they were trying to do the right thing. He was surely more useful to the cause here than he would be if he went back to Formacaster and led prayers.
Lily showed up at the house as he was starting to think about having breakfast. He told her that Moira had left.
“Oh, yes, I know,” said Lily. “I got a message saying she’d crossed the straits going east. I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
He was touched. “I’m doing fine, thanks. I’m not sure if I should stay here or not, though. She said I could, but do you think she was serious?”
“I think that if she had wanted you to leave, she would’ve had no trouble at all telling you so. Go ahead and stay. You’ll be far more comfortable here than in that awful inn by the docks.”
He went with her down to the Prefectus Arcus, where he paid his bill and collected his trunk. And then they went back up to Moira’s house, where Lily offered to help him unpack and move his clothes from the trunk into Moira’s wardrobes. “Unless you think that’s too much too soon,” she said.
“I think it might be,” he said. He didn’t like feeling as if he was presuming on Moira’s hospitality.
He did take out his gray and white habit and laid it out on the bed for Lily to see. “I feel strange not wearing it,” he said. “Yet, I can’t throw it away, can I?”
Lily told him the rag merchants down by the cloth market would probably give him half a dupondius or so for it. “Or you could take it to one of the costume shops in the theater district. I can’t think of any roles for Myrcian monks in any play I’ve ever seen, but I suppose someone might write one someday.” She nudged him with an elbow in the ribs. “Or, if you don’t mind the sacrilege, you could take it to a seamstress and have a dress for Moira made out of it. Something slinky and tight-fitting.”
Hamon didn’t feel ready to be quite that sacrilegious, but he did decide to have it made into a new gray and white winter cloak for her.
When Faustinus heard about this, he insisted on taking Hamon to his favorite tailors in the city to get new clothes, which he then paid for out of his own pocket. Hamon got four pairs of trousers, including a very nice leather pair for riding, and twelve tunics in a riotous array of colors and fabrics, from dark green velvet to pale yellow cotton.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Faustinus told him afterward, as they had lunch together, “but if you’re going to represent the bank, we want you looking the part.”
Hamon thanked him, and the sorcerer waved off his thanks. “Not at all. I’m thinking I’ll take Quintus to get some new clothes sometime soon as well.”
On their way back to the bank, out of nowhere, Faustinus said, “I’m not sure if anyone has told you, but Moira and I used to be...together.”
“She mentioned that. And, um...now that I think about it, I guess I remember hearing stories about the two of you running away from the Myrcian court together, years ago.” Hamon felt the hair stand up on his neck. This wasn’t going to get ugly, was it?
Faustinus patted him on the back. “Don’t worry. As long as you and she are happy, then I’m happy for both of you. The divorce is nearly final, after all.”
Hamon forgot to keep walking. “The what?”
“Oh, it’s nothing to be concerned about. Purely a legal matter at this point; we stopped being married in any real sense long ago.”
Hamon didn’t know how to feel about that. If their marriage was so unimportant, then why hadn’t Moira mentioned it before now? But when Faustinus said it was alright, somehow it felt silly to be worried about it.
After that awkward conversation, Hamon decided he really quite liked working at the bank. Faustinus was marvelous fun to be around—it was clear why Moira had once been attracted to him, and why Gina was attracted to him now. But he did more than spread amusement and good cheer. He was also stunningly, almost frighteningly good at his job. Hamon had the opportunity to accompany the sorcerer a few times to meet with potential investors, and Faustinus had an uncanny knack for convincing them to part with their money.
Sometimes people would raise objections. They might, for example, mention how new the Verrus Bank was. Or they might question where the bank was getting its funding. And if Hamon had been there by himself, he would have said, “Well, that’s a good point,” and left them to think it over. But Faustinus had this astonishing way of sidestepping the issue and talking about something else, so that the investors sat there, smiling vaguely, as the tidal wave of pleasant-sounding nonsense washed over them. And at the end of it, they couldn’t even remember what question they had originally asked, or what objection they had raised.
Sometimes after these meetings, Hamon’s conscience would bother him a little, but then, after thinking about it, he would remind himself that Faustinus was a decent person, deep down, and that if the investors were being hoodwinked a bit, it didn’t matter, because in the end, they would benefit.
At these moments, he also found himself reassured by Quintus’s novel ideas on banking. Hamon liked the concept of a bank as an institution dedicated to social improvement, rather than vulgar profit. Even if Hamon had no desire to follow a religious vocation anymore, he still wanted to help the poor and downtrodden. Quintus’s bank seemed like the sort of charitable institution that a group of monks and preosts would come up with, if they were inclined to start a bank. It gave the whole enterprise a comfortable, familiar feeling for Hamon.
They had plenty of opportunities to discuss this over drinks. The bank’s staff had quickly fallen into the habit of going out in the evenings. Some nights, only Hamon and Quintus dined together. But most of the time, at least a few of Moira’s Emissariae joined them. And when they could get Quintus to stop talking about his philosophy of banking, Hamon loved hearing about all the places the girls had gone in the course of their work.
Gina, for example, was four years younger than Hamon, but she had seen far more of the world than he had. And she seemed to have enjoyed every bit of it. “I’d love to see more of your country, though,” she told him.
Lily, in contrast, said she was becoming “a bit of a homebody.” She had spent time in Myrcia, but talking about it seemed to make her sad, and she said, “I don’t know that I could ever go back to Formacaster. No offense, Mr. Friel.”
“None taken,” he assured her.
Of all the girls, she showed up most often in the evenings. But she never stayed long after Quintus went home.
Quintus had the unusual idea that everyone at the bank should be able to do everyone else’s job. So one day, he and Hamon tried their hands at supervising the postriders. Gina and Lily and the other girls took turns as loan officers. Everyone worked at least a few shifts per week as lowly clerks at the front desk.
Following this theory, Hamon found himself sifting through dispatches at Moira’s kitchen table the morning of Finstertide, while Lily sat at his side, teaching him the code. It seemed fairly simple, once you knew how to do it, but even when decoded, most of the messages made no sense to him. One, for example, simply read, “14, 16, 12 at 37.”
Hamon asked what that meant, and Lily explained it referred to the amount of food and other supplies at a particular postrider station. “They’ve got extra, so if there’s another station close by that’s running short, we can send it to them.”
Only a few of the messages seemed to have anything to do with banking, as such. A merchant from Presidium had gone to Albus Magnus and wanted funds sent to him. A shipbuilder in Solopolis, Minerto, wondered about opening an account in Presidium, where the taxes were lower. Sometimes Hamon and Lily could answer the messages themselves. Other times, they had to forward the letters to Quintus at the bank, or to Faustinus.
Everything seemed to be going well, and Hamon looked forward to an early lunch in celebration of it being Finstertide, his favorite of all Ivich holidays, when he stumbled on a message that changed everything. It was a reply to some message Faustinus had sent, but it had been addressed to all the directors of the bank, perhaps by accident.
My dear sirs and madam,
Your proposal arrived in Formacaster this morning by special courier and was discussed in council. The loan to repair the fortifications will be greatly appreciated. His majesty has been displeased for some time with the rate of return offered by the Procellus and Mediata Banks. If, as you promise, you can do better, then we would certainly be interested in shifting some of our funds to your new bank. As for the proposal to create postrider stations, his majesty is inclined to allow this, provided that adequate compensation was forthcoming for the use of Myrcian roads. The details of these payments can be set up at a later date with the Treasurer, his grace, Aldrick Sigor.
“Myrcian roads?” said Hamon. “What is this?”
He looked at the bottom of the letter and found, to his horror, that it closed with the name, “Abbot Rollo Norswith, Bishop-elect of Haydon and Secretary-in-Council to His Serene Majesty, Edwin, King of Myrcia.”
Abbot Rollo had gone over completely to the enemy and had gotten his reward for it. But that was not the most devastating news in the letter.
“What is this?” Hamon repeated, holding the message up in Lily’s face. “King Edwin? Are we doing business with the Sigors now? Are we lending them money to repair fortifications?”
Lily studied the note calmly. “It sure looks like it.”
“This bank,” said Hamon, his voice shaking with anger, “was started with Gramiren treasure. And now we’re giving money to the blasted Sigors?”
“Well, they are the de facto rulers,” said Lily. “If we want to open branches in Myrcia, we have to—”
She was trying to be reasonable, but he wasn’t interested in seeing reason. “Where’s Faustinus? I have to see him. Now.”
“Probably at his chambers in the palace,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders to restrain him. “But if you’re thinking of running up there and threatening him, you might want to think again.”
Hamon brushed her aside, sprinted the short distance to the palace, and ran up the wide, sweeping stairs. He burst into the round, window-lined chamber to find Faustinus seated at his desk, with Gina sitting on his lap. They both wore identical fur robes, and it looked as if she was helping him compose a message.
“Hamon!” Gina jumped up and beamed at him. “What brings you here at this hour?” Then, noticing the expression on his face, she added, “Is something wrong?”
“This,” he said, pushing past her and holding the message out so Faustinus could see it. “What in the Void is this?”
Faustinus looked up. “Oh, that. Standard arrangements with the de facto government. Nothing to be worried about.”
“Have you lent them money?” asked Hamon. “Have you given Gramiren money to the Sigors?”
The sorcerer sat back and folded his hands over his stomach. “If you think about it, in the long run this will help your side. If we handle the Sigors’ finances, then we have leverage over them. And when we have a postrider system, we can gather intelligence for the inevitable day when King Broderick II returns in triumph to his—”
“That day,” fumed Hamon, “is going to be a lot farther off if they can rebuild their fortifications. People are going to die, Faustinus. Real people are going to die because you gave those bastards our money.”
Faustinus’s eyes narrowed. “I would think that, as a Gramiren supporter, you’d be a little more careful throwing around the word ‘bastard.’”
Gina appeared at Hamon’s side, tugging at his arm. “Here, come have a seat. Let me get you some wine, and we can all talk about this like rational adults.”
“Yes, please have a seat,” said Faustinus. “There’s no reason to be upset. It’s a holiday, after all. Let’s get into the true spirit of Finstertide.” He smiled, and Hamon felt his mind go all vague and cushiony.
Then he remembered watching Faustinus convince investors to move their accounts to the Verrus Bank. The sorcerer had used that same smile, had looked at them in exactly that same way—like a patient parent with an unruly child. The dreamy, pleasant feeling in his mind faded, and he fought against it, like stumbling out of a warm bed on a cold morning.
“Is that a spell?” he demanded. “Are you using magy to calm me down?”
“Only because I think you could use it right now,” said Faustinus. “Please sit. Gina, get three glasses of the old Paradelphian red.”
“Don’t bother,” snapped Hamon. “You can go to the Void.” And he rushed away, heedless to Gina’s increasingly plaintive calls for him to come back. It was officially the worst Finstertide of his life.