Minutes later Lisa and I disembarked outside the courthouse on Gholloth Square and stood stiff and stretching, looking around with disbelief. Father Agor tossed a coin to a porter who received his luggage from atop the carriage and set off after the priest, a case under each arm. Our silent merchant friend departed, a boy with a mule carrying his trunk, leaving Lisa and me alone on a crowded street as the carriage rattled off to whatever stables would receive it.
On my journey south with Snorri I’d spent much of my waking day planning and anticipating my return to Vermillion. Travelling with Lisa, I had hardly spoken a word on the subject—perhaps fearing to jinx it, or unbelieving that after all I had endured our home would be waiting there to take us in once more as if nothing had changed. But here it was, busy, hot, wrapped around its own concerns and indifferent to our arrival. A large number of troops had been assembled on Adam Plaza, their supplies heaped against the side of the war academy.
“Will you take me home, Jal?” Lisa turned from the street and looked up at me.
“Best not. I’ve met your eldest brother, and he doesn’t like me.” Lord Gregori would have sliced me up himself if I hadn’t hidden behind my rank and made him goad Count Isen into doing the job for him.
“I live at the palace now, Jal.” She looked at her feet, head down.
“Oh.” I’d forgotten. She had meant the rooms in the Great Jon’s apartment in the guest wing. The ones she had shared with her husband. “I can’t. I’ve got something really important I need to do straight away.”
She looked up then, disappointed.
“Look.” I waved my hands as if there were something to look at that might actually explain it. “You don’t want me there. Not when you meet with Barras. And you’ll hardly come to grief between here and the palace gates.” She kept those big eyes on me, saying nothing.
“I would have married you, you know!” The words took me by surprise but they were out now and words can’t be unsaid. Instead they hang between you, awkward and uncomfortable.
“You’re not the marrying type, Jal.” A tilt of the head, surprise touching her face.
“I could be!” Maybe I could. “You were . . . special . . . Lisa. We had a good thing.”
She smiled, making me want her all the more. “Mine wasn’t the only balcony you climbed, Jal. Not even within my father’s grounds.” She took my hands. “Women like to have their fun too, you know. Especially women born to families like mine, who know they’re going to be married for their father’s convenience rather than by their own choice.”
“Your father would have jumped at the chance of a prince for one of his daughters!”
Lisa gave my hands a squeeze. “Our brother did jump at the chance.”
“Darin.” His name tasted sour. The elder brother. The one not to be seen staggering drunkenly from bordellos in the predawn grey, or gambling away other men’s money. The one not past his eyes in debt to underworld criminals.
Suddenly I couldn’t stand her kindness a moment longer. “Look. I’ve got this matter to attend to. It can’t wait. I really have to do this. And—” I rummaged in my jacket’s inner pocket. “I need your help.” I withdrew Loki’s key, wrapped inside a thick velvet cloth bound tight with cord. “Keep this for me. Don’t open it. For God’s sake don’t touch it. Don’t show it to anyone.” I folded her hands about the package. “If I don’t come to the palace within a day present it to the Red Queen and tell her it’s from me. Can you do that? It’s important.” She nodded and I released her hands. And somehow, although that key was by far the single most valuable thing in the kingdom of Red March, something I had fought and bled for, literally walked across Hell to keep, I felt no pang at letting Lisa DeVeer take it. Only a sense of peace.
“You’re scaring me, Jal.”
“I’ve got to go and see Maeres Allus. I owe him a lot of money.”
“Maeres Allus?” A frown.
I remembered that to most of my circle Allus was a merchant, a rich one to be sure, but nothing more, and who has time to remember the names of merchants. “A dangerous man.”
“Well . . . you should pay him.” She took my hand in both of hers. “And be careful.”
The old Lisa might have laughed and told me to tell this Maeres fellow to wait—and if he had the temerity to lay a hand upon me, to draw my sword and have at him. The new Lisa was much better acquainted with the realities of swords meeting flesh. The new Lisa wanted me to swallow my pride and pay the man. There was a Jalan once who would have advised swinging the sword too—but that Jalan was eight and he and I had been strangers for many years.
I took myself first to the Guild of Trade, a great dome that may be entered by many archways about its circumference. Beneath the dome on a wide mosaicked floor merchants of a certain degree of wealth gather to make deals and swap the gossip that oils industry’s wheels. A gallery runs around the dome, several storeys above the trade floor and from it doors lead to offices that look out over the surrounding city.
I borrowed money on the trade floor first. I borrowed against my family name, leaving Edris Dean’s sword as additional security—whatever evils tainted it nobody could deny the quality of the steel, ancient stuff melted down from Builder ruins: no smith today has the skill to match its strength. Whether word of my incarceration for debt in Umbertide had reached Vermillion yet I didn’t enquire, but it seemed unlikely given that I walked out of the Guild with fifty pieces of crown gold.
With those monies and the remains of Omar’s Liban bars I purchased clothing of sufficient quality to match my station, along with a blood-gold chain, a ruby ring, and a diamond ear stud. The garments had to be tailored to my build rapidly, adjusted from the dimensions of their intended recipients, but I paid handsomely enough and forgave any failings in the cut.
To borrow a lot of money you have to look the part. A king in rags will win no credit no matter what collateral he may own.
Penniless again, I climbed the stair to the gallery where Vermillion’s richest moneylenders plied their trade. Maeres Allus would never be permitted an office in this circle, though he had the coin to sit among such men. Old money ruled here, merchant dynasties of good repute and long ties to the crown. I chose to approach Silas Marn, a merchant prince that Great-uncle Garyus had given good opinion of over the years.
The men at the door carried my petition inside and Silas had the manners not to keep me waiting. He saw me in person in his interview chamber, a vaulted room, marble-clad, with the busts of various long-dead Marns watching us from alcoves.
The old man, so ancient as to be practically creaking, rose from his chair as I entered, burdened by his velvet robes. I motioned for him to sit and he gave up on the effort before managing to fully straighten himself.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” I took the seat he gestured to and we sat opposite each other across a span of gleaming mahogany.
“I would hardly turn away a prince of the realm, Prince Jalan.” Silas Marn regarded me from murky brown eyes almost lost in the many folds of his face, his skin leathery and stained with age. I gave him a broad smile and he returned a more cautious one. Large ears and beak-like nose dominated his small head, though those seem to be the fate of any man who lives too long. “How may I help you?”
I pushed the relevant documentation across the desk. The crumpled parchment looked in no better state than old Silas, as stained and creased, the writing barely legible, the wax seal cracked.
“It looks like it’s been through hell.” Silas made no move to pick it up. “What is it?”
“Deeds to thirteen twenty-fourth shares in the Crptipa salt-mine.”