The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(114)
A small frown creased the flesh between Davario’s eyes. “Your debts aren’t currency, my prince, and yet they’re every bit as real as your assets.”
My turn to frown. “What do you know about my debts?”
The banker shrugged. “Little more than that they exist. But if you sought to borrow money from me I would know far more about them by sunset.” His face became serious and despite our civilized surroundings I felt little doubt that in the matter of collecting what might be owed to the House Gold Davario Romano Evenaline would be no more inclined to show mercy than Maeres Allus. “But I wasn’t talking about your debts: it’s your Uncle Hertet’s debts that are the stuff of legend. He’s been borrowing against the promise of the throne since he came to his majority.”
“He has.” I managed to stop the words becoming a question. I knew the heir-apparently-not liked to spend and had several ventures on the go, including a theatre and a bathhouse, but I had assumed that the Red Queen indulged him in recompense for her failure to either be a doting mother or to die.
Davario returned to his theme. “Debts are very real—they’re not hard currency but they are hard facts, my prince. This note is a promise: it carries the reputation of the House Gold. The whole of Umbertide, the whole of finance, runs on promises, a vast network of interlinked promises, each balanced on the next. And do you know what the difference is between a promise and a lie, Prince Jalan?”
I opened my mouth to tell him, paused, thought, thought some more, and said, “No.” I’d uttered plenty of both and the only difference seemed to be the side you looked at them from.
“Well and good, if we ever found someone who did we might have to kill them. Ho ho ho.” He spoke his laugh, not even pretending humour. “A lie may prove true in the end, a promise might be broken. The difference might be said to be that if a person breaks one promise then all their promises are suspect, worthless, but if a liar tells the truth by accident we don’t feel inclined to treat all their other utterances as gospel. The promise of this note is as strong, or weak, as the promise of every bank in this broken empire of ours. If it breaks, we plunge into the abyss.”
“But . . . but . . .” I grappled with the idea. I’m an easy man to put the fear of God into . . . unless it actually is God you’re talking about, then I’m rather more relaxed, but this notion of kingdoms and nations standing or falling on the reputation of a collection of grubby bankers took more imagination than I could muster. “Any promise can be broken,” I offered, trying to think of anyone whose promise I might actually stake something on. For a promise that benefited me rather than the other person I could only come up with Snorri. Tuttugu would try not to let you down, but that’s not the same as actually not letting you down. “Most promises are broken.” I set the note back upon the table. “Except mine of course.”
Davario nodded. “True, just as every man has his price, every promise has a fault along which it might be fractured. Even the bank has its price, but fortunately nobody can afford to pay it, and so to all intents and purposes it is as incorruptible as the holy mother in Roma.”
And that took my faith in the paper away again in a stroke. Even so I took it, and left with the necessary pleasantries, once more turning down the idea of an escort.
In the lengthening shadows and narrow alleys of Umbertide I almost regretted the decision not to have a mechanical monster walk me home. To find necromancy waiting for me in the city’s innermost circles did nothing to settle my nerves after the narrowly avoided horrors of my journey. At each turn I felt hidden eyes upon me and picked up my pace a little more, until by the time I reached my lodgings I’d almost broken into a run and my clothes were soaked with sweat.
I wondered about Hennan too, lost on the road, and about Snorri; was he in Vermillion now, a broken man, the key taken from him?
TWENTY-FOUR
Despite my fears I settled into Umbertide life like a gambler taking his place at a card table. I hadn’t come for the night life, to attend the balls, to savour the local wines, nor for the opportunities to climb the local social ladder, not even to find a rich wife—I’d come to take the money. Of a certainty I would be interested in many of those other things, wife-hunting excepted, in due course, not that a banking town like Umbertide had much of a seedy underbelly to explore, but I can be surprisingly focused when it comes to gambling. My ability to spend twenty hours a day at a poker table for seven days straight is one of the reasons I was able to pile up so prodigious a debt to Maeres Allus at such a tender age.
A number of major trading floors punctuate the map of Umbertide, some defined by the Houses that control them, others by the nature of the trades conducted there. I started on the House Gold floor so I could receive instruction on the basics from Davario’s white-faced and humourless underling Marco Onstantos Evenaline.
“Stakes in business ventures of modest size are sold in twenty-fourths, shares in larger enterprises, even the banks themselves, can be purchased in ten thousandths. Though even a ten thousandth of a concern like the Central Bank will be beyond the pocket of many private traders.” The man had a voice that could bore goats to death.
“I understand. So, I’m ready to play. I’ve got stakes to sell in three of the finest merchantmen beneath sail on any ocean anywhere, and an eye to buy.” I looked out across the traders: a mixed bunch, House Gold men in the majority but interspersed with independents from many distant shores. The House Gold traders wore black with gold trim and smoked constantly, pipe and cigarillo, in such quantity that a pall of acrid smoke floated above the traders’ heads. Can’t abide the smell myself. Tobacco remains one of the few dirty habits that holds no appeal for me. “I think I can wing it from here.”