The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(119)
Corpus drew himself up to his full unimpressive height and stalked into my path. Behind him his soldier whirred into position, looming above its master. They made a curious pair, the modern clad in his close-fitting blacks, wholly unsuited to the heat, his skin a dead white where it showed, not a Norse pale, but an albino colouration achieved with bleaches and, if the rumours were true, no small amount of witchcraft. Behind him the soldier held almost trollish proportions, taller than any man, lean, long-limbed, glimpses of mechanism where the armour plates met, steel talons flexing as cables wound about their wheels or vanished down past the wrist-guard.
“Your note for the Goghan deal is void, prince. The Waylan and Butarni both refused it.”
“Ah,” I said. Being refused by any bank was bad enough. Having your credit voided by two of the oldest in Florence effectively ruled a man out of all the best games of finance that Umbertide had to offer. “Well, this is a grievous oversight! How dare mere banks impugn the name of Kendeth? They might as well call the Red Queen a whore!”
Ta-Nam moved to my side. Umbertide regulations prohibited the carrying of weapons larger than knives in the old town, but with the razored pieces of chrome steel at his hips the sword-son constituted mass murder on legs. Unfortunately the automaton behind Corpus was reputedly immune to stabbing.
Corpus narrowed his dark little eyes at me. “Nations stand or fall on finance, Prince Jalan. A fact I’m sure your grandmother is well aware of. And finance stands on trust—a trust cemented by the honouring of debts and of contracts.” He held out the promissory notes in question, fine crisp documents on the thickest parchment, scroll-worked around the edges and signed by my good self along with three witnesses of certified standing. “Restore my trust, Prince Jalan.” Somehow the white-faced little creep managed to slide an impressive level of threat around all his formality.
“This is all nonsense, Corpus, my dear fellow. My credit should be good.” I meant it too. I’d taken great care when hollowing out my finances to leave a skeleton of assets sufficient to keep the edifice standing for at least a day or two after my departure. All I had to do was transform my overly heavy heap of gold into some still more portable form of wealth—one that didn’t depend on bank vaults, trust, or any of that foolishness—and I’d be off on the fastest horse stolen money could buy. In fact, if not for my investigator finding me at luncheon, I would already be at the doors of a certain diamond merchant purchasing the largest gems in his collection. “My credit is as good as any—”
“Suspended over issues of taxation.” Corpus offered a thin smile. “The Central will have its pound of flesh.”
“Ah.” Another long pause filled with furious excuse-creation. Bank taxes on each transaction make it very difficult to scrape a legitimate profit in Umbertide’s markets. I discovered early on that the real key to success was to not pay them. This of course required an ever more elaborate scheme of deferred payments, scheduled payments, conditional payments, lies, and damn lies. I’d calculated it would be the end of the week before those particular large and potentially lethal chickens came home to roost. “Look, Corpus, old fellow, of the House Iron and all that.” I took a step forward and would have flung an arm across his shoulders but for the fact he took a step back and his soldier looked ready to grab any arm that touched the man and fling it over the rooftops, with or without its owner still attached. “We’ll deal with this the old way. Meet me at Yoolani’s Java House first bell tomorrow and I’ll have your payment ready for you in gold.” I patted my ribs to make the coins bound under my tunic chink for him. “I’m heir to the throne of Red March, after all, and my word is my bond.” I set my smile on the offer and let the honesty beam out.
Corpus took on that look of distaste that all of Umbertide’s financiers do when something as common and dirty as raw gold is mentioned. They build their whole lives on the stuff and yet somehow consider the actual substance beneath them, preferring their papers and notes, rather than the weight of coin in hand. To my way of thinking an extra zero on a promissory note is far less exciting than a purse that weighs ten times what it might. Though right there, with the bulk of my assets packed into a case and conspiring with gravity to remove my shoulder from its socket, I had some sympathy with the idea.
“First bell . . . prince. The full sum. Or there will be sanctions.” He turned his head, eyes flickering to the soldier, leaving little doubt that the sanctions would be rather worse than the revoking of my trading licence.
I stalked on past Corpus, not sparing him or his monstrosity another glance, and disguising my relief. I’d bought myself the best part of the day with a little bluster and a lot of lying. Cheap at twice the price! Falsehoods were a currency I was always willing to spend.
“There are two agents following us,” Ta-Nam said behind me.
“What? Where?” I spun around. Nothing in the sea of heads around us stood out, save for Corpus’s clockwork soldier, diminishing in the distance, nobody even reaching to its shoulders.
“It will be harder to evade them if you let them know you’re aware of their presence.” Ta-Nam managed not to make it a rebuke, not through servility but perhaps a reasonable expectation that everyone else was an amateur in this kind of game.
I turned back on our path and sped up a touch despite the heat. “Two of them?”