“But madam—” Mr. Stanley started.
“Now,” I said. When he didn’t move, I let my expression, mostly hidden by the scarf, go glacial. “Perhaps you did not hear me,” I said in a saccharine voice. “Guard”—I snapped my fingers at Marcus—“do you think he has gone deaf? Help him with his hearing.”
“With pleasure, my lady,” Marcus rumbled. He stepped out from behind me, a towering wall of muscle covered by a dark cloak.
“There’s no need, madam,” Mr. Stanley said nervously. “I’ll go get him and be right back.”
I inclined my head a fraction. Sometimes playing a bitch was awesome.
“Having fun, are you?” Marcus murmured to me.
“Oh, yes,” I said. My smile was hidden by the scarf, but he could probably see it in my eyes. “Excellent work, by the way.”
He nodded once and returned to his position behind my right shoulder.
Mr. Stanley returned with the younger man in tow. “This is Mr. Rochester. How may we help you?”
“Mr. Rochester, take me to a private room.”
The young man looked a little bewildered, but he knew an order when he heard one. The older man tried to follow us. “You are not needed,” I said. I turned away without another word and followed Mr. Rochester to one of the rooms set aside to conduct sensitive business.
“Um, here is the room, madam,” Mr. Rochester said. He held the door open while I swept inside. Once we sat, I checked the room for bugs and found none. Excellent.
I sat in one of the plush chairs facing the desk. “How long have you been with the bank?”
He moved to sit behind the desk. “Four years, madam. I assure you, even though I am a junior banker, I can assist with whatever you need.”
“Very good. I need to make several large withdrawals from a private account. Please set up the terminal for an immediate withdrawal from a numbered account and then wait outside.”
The young man’s eyes widened but he started typing on the terminal in front of him.
FTL communication was expensive and finicky. Only financial institutions and Houses had enough at stake to make it worthwhile. Everyone else waited for their messages to bounce through gates, carried by passing ships and communication drones. But it meant that in order to move large amounts of money, you had to physically be at a bank or wait for up to two weeks for the transaction to be confirmed.
I didn’t have two weeks.
Accessing my House account would alert Father to my location. And if he happened to be near an FTL com terminal, he could order the bank employees to detain me until a retrieval team arrived. So that account was out, even though it was the one with the most money.
Fortunately, I had more than one account, including several numbered accounts. Not tied to any identity chip, numbered accounts were anonymous but also dangerous. If you forgot the account number or access code, the money was gone forever.
Luckily, I was very good with numbers.
“The terminal is ready, madam. Are you transferring between accounts or do you need credit chips?”
“I will take it from here. My guard will alert you once I am finished.”
Mr. Rochester turned the terminal toward me, bobbed a half bow, then exited the room and closed the door behind him. That was the nice thing about junior bankers, they knew how to follow orders and not be a nuisance.
I laid two anonymous credit chips on the desk then pulled up the privacy screen. The other problem with numbered accounts is that anyone with the number could access them. And while I didn’t think Marcus would rob me, better safe than sorry.
I typed in the account number and access code. A second of delay and then my balance appeared. This account had just under a million credits. I withdrew two hundred thousand and fitted the first credit chip into the reader. A pleasant beep confirmed the transaction.
With Marcus taken care of, I considered how much money to withdraw for myself. The account linked to the identity I had chosen for this planet had nearly a hundred thousand credits in it. It was unlikely that I would need more, but another trip to the bank would be additional risk. I withdrew another hundred thousand credits onto the second chip.
Numbered accounts did not keep transaction records. Oh, they kept the running balance and showed when money had been added or removed, but they kept no records of where that money came from or went to.
Because anonymous money transfers were so ripe for abuse, opening a numbered account required a House ID. You didn’t have to give the banker your name or let them scan your ID chip, but if you couldn’t produce a House seal then you couldn’t open the account.
The lack of transactional records meant that when these credit chips were used, the money couldn’t be tied back to my numbered account. So I could transfer the money from the credit chip to Irene’s account without compromising the secrecy of the numbered account. It was the same way I got money into the numbered account in the first place.
I logged out of the account and carefully wiped the terminal screen clean of fingerprints. I lowered the privacy screen and placed the two credit chips in internal zippered pockets, keeping them separate. “Time to go,” I said.
Marcus opened the door and stepped out. At his signal that it was clear, I followed him. Mr. Rochester snapped to attention. “Madam, is there anything else you need?”
“No, thank you for your assistance. I am leaving.”
Mr. Rochester bowed and escorted us to the door. Marcus and I entered the waiting transport without incident.
I sighed and let my public persona fall away. “Do you need anything while we’re out?” I asked. “I was thinking about buying some new clothes, but I can drop you at the ship first if you’d like to head out early.”
“I go where you go,” he said. “I could use some more clothes, too, assuming you’re not shopping down here.”
The thought of Marcus Loch in a suit derailed my thought process for a solid minute. All of that muscle and menace hidden beneath a bespoke suit would be a sight to see. Yum.
I shook myself out of thoughts of getting Loch out of said suit and handed him the credit chip with his money on it. “This is what I owe you,” I said. “There’s no transaction history, so don’t lose it.”
Loch pocketed the chip without comment.
Handing the money over was bittersweet. My obligation was finished, but now he had no reason to stick around. “I guess today is our last day together,” I said, hoping he would deny my words.
He did not.
Chapter 15
I pushed aside my hurt and directed our transport to a shopping district in the two hundreds: high enough to be cheap, but not so high as to be poor quality. Most of the middle class shopped in this district. And around the periphery was a thriving black market where you could buy anything from jewelry to weapons to pleasure.
The transport dropped us on a landing pad on floor 215. I ended our ride and confirmed the fare deduction. Once we were out, the transport glided away to pick up the next passenger. I’d order a new transport when we were done shopping.
This was not my first trip to Sedition, but even so, the sheer scale boggled the mind on every visit. Looking around, it was easy to forget that we were hundreds of meters in the air. Even the harsh sun was partially blocked thanks to the higher levels.
Shops opened out to wide walkways bustling with pedestrians. Plazas dotted with small trees connected adjacent buildings, both on our level and above and below us. With the exception of the tall plastech and glass wall that prevented accidental falls, this could be a shopping street on any planet.