He sighed. “It isn’t that easy to judge prospects,” he admitted. “I can seize the property of someone who takes a loan, if they are unable to pay it back, yet…what do I do if they just don’t have enough to compensate me for the loss? A client took the loan I gave him and bought a ship, then vanished when it became clear he’d never be able to keep the ship. She’s probably been renamed and repainted by now, somewhere on the other side of the world.”
Emily nodded in grim agreement. There was no international system for tracking down criminals, let alone debtors. A man who reached the next country, perhaps even the next city, with enough untraceable goods could probably vanish, taking a new name and finding a new place. There wouldn’t even be many problems in hiding an entire ship. It wasn’t as if there was a giant list of every ship sailing the seas.
“And I don’t want to snatch their children,” Markus added. “Melissa would kill me.”
“Good for her,” Emily said. The concept of taking someone’s children to pay their debts was horrifying, even though it was technically legal. Melissa, who’d been used as a pawn herself in her family’s affairs, had good reason to hate the practice. “How are you coping?”
“I’ve hired extra staff to research business opportunities,” Markus said. “We do have a slush fund, and money coming in from most of the microloans, so we should be safe enough as long as we don’t start cutting into our seed monies. It means we get some bad press, but most of our larger investments have managed to pay off.”
“So the bank itself is fairly stable,” Emily said.
“I think so,” Markus said. He took a sip of his Kava. “We can’t control what people do when they remove their money. There have been times, over the past few weeks, when I’ve been worried about the sheer number of people trying to invest. I’ve even noted a number of customers who’ve taken the financial hit, just to get their money out of the bank. They gave up a sure thing just to play the investment game.”
“And if they lose, they lose,” Emily said.
“Yeah.” Markus glanced at the window. “And I’m really not sure what’s happening with the other banks. The Bankers Guild isn’t big on sharing information.”
“I thought you were the guildmaster,” Emily said.
“Only by courtesy,” Markus said. He grinned. “I was the first bank manager in the city, unless you count the handful of sorcerers who used to run protective vaults. Some of them think they should have the title, to be fair. With or without them, Emily, we bankers don’t have an established guild structure. I imagine one will sort itself out, sooner or later, but it may not be in place when we need it.”
His expression darkened. “And without some limited information sharing,” he added, “it’s hard to know just how well the other banks are coping.”
Emily nodded. “I thought that a number of banks did fail.”
“Seven did,” Markus said. “Five of them folded very quickly. I believe the original investors didn’t realize they had to offer incentives, beyond basic security. They had few customers and collapsed when they couldn’t repay the original investment. The sixth had a major break-in, a couple of months after it opened. Their customers lost a great deal of gold, which led them to simply abandon the bank completely.”
“Unsurprising,” Emily commented. “And the seventh?”
“I don’t know what happened to it,” Markus admitted. His face twisted in annoyance. He’d always liked to know things. “One day, everything seemed to be fine; the next, the doors were shuttered and the bank manager had done a runner. Thankfully, there weren’t that many customers who lost out. I think the manager realized he couldn’t repay his original investors and vanished, taking everything he could carry with him.”
“It sounds likely,” Emily agreed.
“We may never know for sure,” Markus said. “The investors stripped the building, then sold it to Vesperian for a song.”
“I keep hearing that name,” Emily said. “Who is he?”
“The Railway King,” Markus said. “Vesperian Industries built the Beneficence-Cockatrice Railway, as well as a number of prototype steamboats and improved steam engines. They’re currently plowing their profits into the planned Beneficence-Zangaria Railway. Or Vesperian’s Track, as they call it. There’s been a lot of investment in the line.”
Emily lifted her eyebrows. She’d approved the original plans for the railway, two years ago, but she hadn’t realized it had expanded so far. And yet, it wouldn’t be the only thing that had grown rapidly, when imaginative minds took what she’d taught them and ran with it. Right now, there were printing presses far superior to the primitive designs she’d introduced. Why not steam engines? How long had it taken Earth to move from the Puffing Devil to the Flying Scotsman?
“We were involved in some of the early investment,” Markus added. “I took the liberty of adding some extra investment after the first track started to pay off.”
Emily smiled. “Did it repay its investors?”
“I believe so,” Markus said. “Moving goods from Beneficence to Cockatrice is quicker now, thanks to the steam engines. But merely encouraging closer relations between the artisans in Cockatrice and the workers here has produced all sorts of interesting spin-offs. I believe that a number of new factories are being opened in Cockatrice, if only because we don’t have the room for them. Some of the guildmasters were actually thinking of trying to buy land from you.”
“They’d have to talk to the king,” Emily said. Cockatrice was entailed. She couldn’t divide her lands amongst her children, let alone sell a small patch of ground to the highest bidder…not without the king’s permission, at least. “It would be vulnerable, would it not?”