Chapter 91 - With a Flourish

I stopped by the workbenches to borrow one of the old timers’ quill for a moment. The interesting thing about 6’s, is that it’s very easy to make them look like 8’s if they’re written as numerals instead of longform. Lady Pelladine had been in such a hurry that she didn’t even realize she’d be paying me an extra twenty cunnings tip. It’s not as though people like her notice. I doubt she’d even remember how much we agreed on.

Both the knaves and the dragons hummed with approval as I quit the library and made my way a few streets down to Kelier & Thorn banking. They were a part of the Money-Changers Guild, just like the small shop that had let me the spare room in Barrowdown. While not as grand as the repository, they were very neat and tidy. And cold. Maybe it’s all the cold hard cash providing extra cooling, but every lending bank I’ve ever been inside has been unreasonably and unseasonably cold. K&T’s was no different.

As soon as I entered, a clerk directed me to the lending desk. When I told him I was here to have a withdrawal chit honored, he looked at me as though my head had transmuted to a block of cheese. But he directed me to the proper place and I whiled away the time in the line by using the four of dragons to guess and confirm both who was secretly armed (every teller and about one in four patrons) and who had the most expensive hat, coat, and boots (all the same person, it turned out, a Makers Guild shipwright).

The bank also had a robust system of wards. Mostly over the safe boxes and had guards nearly as steeped in deadly accoutrement as the Lamplighters. That’s big money for you. I got a chuckle out of imagining Annalisa bouncing off the pillars, going so crazy with boredom that she caused a scene. That reminded me of how we’d left things, and made me feel like a right moron all over again.

Annalisa, after these months, really was still a mystery to me. I wondered if there was anyone that really knew her. She had so few friends before we’d met that she threw herself headlong in pursuit of saving a handful of sex-workers from Mother Mayaz because they’d showed her any amount of kindness. Her fighting coach had completely discounted her and used her mainly as a live training dummy for more seasoned fighters, and despite having a family the size of a typical noble’s Winterday feast, I was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t on the outside of that, too.

Who else did she really have but me? And the reverse was also true. There was no one in Dragonmaw that I trusted like Annalisa, and the fact that I might have damaged that bond with my callous scheming tore me up more than I wanted to admit. I had to make things right. And Annalisa was a woman of action. Words weren’t going to convince her of anything.

The queue ahead of me eventually thinned, and I stepped up to one of the clerks and presented the chit. He scrutinized it, turned it side to side, and even held it up to the light.

“This seems to be in order. Do you have an account you’d prefer to transfer this into?”

I huffed. “Do I look like I have an account?”

“I can offer you very reasonable rates, Master...”

“No names, just coin. If you please.”

The clerk quirked an eyebrow at me but vanished into the back for a moment. He emerged with a small box and put it on the counter before me. He looked over my shoulder, and I followed his gaze.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

The clerk pursed his lips. “If you wish, Kelier and Thorne can provide transitory security, as well.”

I rolled my eyes as I withdrew my purse. I really didn’t need guild muscle taking a cut just for following me back to Barrow--

I opened the box.

I closed the box.

I looked at the clerk.

“I assure you, it’s all there. But you can count it if you wish. Eighty flourishes.”

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Eighty flourishes. Nearly a thousand cunnings in gold. More than I’d ever seen in my life. More than I ever expected. A drop in the bucket for Lady Pelladine. I caught myself scowling. How could someone have so much, that they could afford to wave off so much gold on an old book?

The clerk took in my inability to speak and offered a half smile. “Perhaps you’d like to reconsider an account of deposit?”

I nodded. “That might be prudent,” I squeaked. Dragons Above, I could buy a half-dozen dockside warehouses and two ships with this. Of course, half of this was Annalisa’s, by right. I’d never have made it into, or out of, the elven college without my friend.

The dragons roared in my deck. Who needs friends? We have MONEY!

Cut and run, whispered the knaves. Live like a king in Azurenon.

Gods, their feelings had never been clearer than when filtered through a box of gold coins. But the towers also had something to add. A castle without knights is a gate unbarred.

I sighed and gritted my teeth, pushing the box back. “I need to add a second name to the account.”

“Of course, sir. You’ll need to add a first name, as well.”

I nearly smacked myself. “Yes. Darcent of Stitch Alley. The other is Annalisa of Dunnemarshe.”

The clerk scratched down the names, and then reached under and pulled out yet another box. “Perhaps sir would like to choose a signet with which to mark the account? This will serve to allow access.”

I looked down at the little box, filled with neat rows of wooden rings looking up at me. Each had an ornate carving on a broad, oval base, meant to mark an identity reduced to a smudge of ink or wax. While complex designs, they weren’t any more challenging than carving cards capable of evoking the Wills. Maybe a bit smaller.

Speaking of Wills, one signet in particular stuck out to me. It was the rose and dagger sigil of the suit of knaves. “That one,” I said, pointing. I scratched my chin. “Can you recommend a good whitesmith?”

“Absolutely, Master Darcent,” he said, scratching down another note on a scrap of parchment and sliding it over. I took it and read the address. “She can be trusted with our signet designs, and she’ll give you a discount if you tell her it’s one of ours.”

Still slightly in shock, I took possession of the wooden ring.

“So then, how much of this would you prefer on deposit?”

In the end, I put all but two hundred and fifty cunnings back into the bank. I never felt so paranoid walking through the streets of Dragonmaw. Even in the upper city, if I was caught with a sum like that, I wasn’t important enough that the enforcers couldn’t claim it was stolen and relieve me of it. High rank adventurers prowled the upper city street, some as high as truesilver or platinum—ranks 8 and 9. I’d been shaken down by them before, while I still went to the academy. My own badge had begun to display half-silver—rank 7, after I’d manifested the Heiress of Dragons. So I could probably get away, but not without causing a scene, and I wasn’t wearing the robe or cravat to help hide my identity. I kept one hand on my deck the entire time.

The dwarven whitesmith relieved me of forty of those cunnings in exchange for a promise to deliver a pair of more permanent rings to the Mop and Bucket on the following day.

Somehow, I made it to the Mop unmolested. With a fairly high-profile fight on (not one of ours), most of the denizens of the downs were out and about reveling, so the crowds were nice and thick. Annalisa had gone out as well to partake in the festivities. But I spied Mithra still at the Mop, chatting up a potential customer and touching him in just the right places to make him sweat.

“Sorry friend, mind if I borrow her for a minute?”

He did. He looked me up and down. Had the look of a minor noble’s get about him. You know, the type that comes to the downs for a bad time and a story to tell his mates about it. “Hey, mister, who do you think you are? Find you’re own piece of—”

“Jacco, he drinks as much as he wants, free, until Mithra comes back.”

His eyes lit up, while Mithra’s narrowed. She pulled me by the elbow into the corner. “We need to have a talk about interrupting me while I’m working. Charity and jealousy are massive turnoffs, you know. Plus he’s not going to perform if he’s had too much to drink. You ever tried to sit on a hand-span of rope?”

“This’ll be quick,” I said. I took her wrist and turned her palm upward before dropping the purse into it. Her eyebrows shot up, and she looked down at the little brown bag.

“That’s not copper, is it?”

“What can you do with two-hundred cunnings?” I asked.

“Treat you to a month of savage delights,” she replied.

“How about paying off the Builders Guild, hiring some soft-steels to finish out the dregs of the Teeth, and helping Jeedle poach some prospects?”

Mithra scrunched up her face. “Not nearly as much fun. That’s a thin spread, no mess. I’ll see what I can shore up.”

“Thanks Mithra,” I said, and then startled her by planting a kiss on her cheek. “There’s ten cunning in there set aside, as well.”

“For what?” she asked, still somewhat taken aback.

“For deserving much more and working with much less.” I put my hand on the side of her shoulder. “I spoke with Annalisa about that... other matter. She and I are of a mind. We’ll help how we can.”

Mithra stiffened, and then softened. She nodded and put her palm over my hand for a moment before tucking the purse away. Don’t get me wrong, this was still self-preservation. I needed Mithra. And now, as long as we had her secret and her confidence, the red devilborn was in my pocket. She turned back to her patron.

“Oh, come on!” she said.

I looked past her to the bar and almost did a double-take. A stack of up-ended steins littered the bar in front of a dozing fop who’d already been relieved of his own purse. “That is astounding,” I said.

Mithra shot me a glare.