The Dragon's Banker

by Scott Warren

  I shook my head. “Not anymore. She fired me,” I said.

  “Yes, quite publicly. That is to say, in such a public display.”

  He stopped talking as one of his aides knocked and then entered, bringing another missive to Darrez Issa. Issa stopped to read it before handing it back and dismissing her. Matters of state finance waited for nothing and no one.

  “It’s especially interesting that just after First Winter she stipulated that the controlling stake of Dragon’s Daughter’s current assets and capital transfer to your ownership if she should fail to return by summer.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “I have the affidavit here. This is Lady Arkelai’s signature and seal, is it not?” he asked, lifting a short document. I accepted the vellum page and scanned its contents. Sure enough, it was her hand, her signature, and a tiny dragon’s fang burned onto the footer. “Fifty-one percent of all assets have been transferred to you as payment for services rendered. Perhaps some faith remains.”

  “I don’t understand her reasoning,” I protested, setting the paper down on Issa’s table. “There’s barely anything left now anyway.” After we’d sold Spardeep and drowned the dragon-eyes, Dragon’s Daughter Trading had become little more than a smelter, a few warehouses, and some alchemical freight stuffed in the back of a wagon train.

  “Yes, that is certainly unfortunate timing,” said Darrez, pulling out a little black leather envelope. He looked inside and sighed, a small smile on his thin lips.

  “Master Kelstern, Her Majesty Queen Liza charged me with rolling out these new paper bank notes. Naturally, this carries certain risk. While adoption by the higher echelons of society will come quickly, it is the lowest level whose trust we must see grow if the new notes are to succeed. That is where money, real money, not just figures in ledgers, moves. How do you convince a man to trade his sheep for a piece of paper?”

  “It’s difficult to change the ways of the smallfolk,” I agreed, careful to keep my answer neutral.

  “Indeed,” said Darrez Issa. “Imagine my surprise, then, to find an expanding string of farming villages from here to the Redfangs requesting harvest payment and tax refunds exclusively in bank notes, using something curiously called a Sailor’s Chit—despite being some hundred miles from the coast. Not something forced on them by the Royal Mint, no. This is propagating from farm to farm, through networks they trust. Further west yet, the bills are commonplace among the mining villages because one iron mine with an unusually enormous overhead switched its entire payroll from coinage to notes.”

  I hadn’t thought twice about the move’s implications when I’d instituted the new payment system at Spardeep. Before the collapse, it was one of the largest-producing mines in the region, with a negative profit margin because of all the people required to extract the ore. And I certainly hadn’t expected Jo Drover to take the squash credit affidavit beyond his village, let alone spread it across the entirety of the rural midland farms. The implications were enormous.

  “By the end of this harvest, any farmer in Middle Borreos not using bank notes will be at a disadvantage,” I said, following the thread to its conclusion.

  “Just so,” said Issa, handing me the black envelope.

  I opened it and reached inside, withdrawing five crisp printed notes for one thousand silver marks each. I ran my fingers over them, feeling the texture of the linen and memorizing every detail of the artwork and watermark. They held a portrait of the mountain Bastayne, the King’s Sword. They were beautiful. Not as beautiful as gold, but still splendor in their own right.

  “What’s this?”

  Darrez Issa stood and moved to the gallery window of his office where he could watch his clerks and minions through the frosted glass. I hesitated a moment and then stood joined him. Below us, I could see the half-hundred men and women at his beck and call in an open office that dwarfed mine. And on each of the eight compass points were large black slates. I couldn’t read them from this distance, but I had a feeling I knew what they held. It was an arrangement of my own design, and they had not been there on my first visit.

  It occurred to me that Darrez Issa wasn’t born to privilege, and he held no lands or title beyond Master of the Royal Mint. Perhaps position was not always a circumstance of birth. Perhaps my future held more than managing the wealth of a few highborn nobles. Darrez Issa was born to a family of linen traders right here in the city. Now he managed the wealth of a Queen’s realm.

  “You’ve done a great deal of work for me this past year,” said Darrez, “witting or not. Perhaps some laws have been skirted along the way, but most of those violations were the result of your client’s extracurriculars, not your management of her company. Your company, now. Unlike Lord Brackwaldt, you were quick to show the Queen her due wherever Lady Arkelai’s money seemed to go. And where it seemed to go most was into the hands of the builders, sailors, drovers, farmers, miners, and the people I most needed to trust and use these bank notes. Not only that, but your actions in the Borrean Bay and your little alchemical holdings business helped me uncover smuggling operations I have been tracking for some time with the help of Commodore Yasmin.”

  “They did?” I asked.

  “Indeed they did, but that is a story for another time. As I said, witting or not.”

  It seemed Alkazarian’s game was not the only one I had found myself caught up in. Darrez Issa nodded at the five crisp notes in my hand. “As for those? In light of the recent losses suffered by Dragon’s Daughter Trading Company, I believe your new enterprise overpaid its taxes by, oh, five thousand marks or so. As the stake passed to you, I suppose so too shall the refund.” Darrez Issa clasped his hands behind his back and met my eyes. “Sailor, I am given some leeway in how I dole out not just penalties, but rewards as well, for those who serve the Crown and the realm. And the two are not always one and the same.”

  I looked at the notes in my hand. Truth told, it wasn’t much to make up for the loss. The dragon-eyes at the bottom of Spardeep and the Borrean Bay were worth fifty times as much. But it was a show of Darrez Issa’s appreciation, which was worth much more than the face value on the bills and vastly preferable to the jail cell I probably deserved.

  “Now, Master Kelstern. I expect you have some business to attend to. I should like to not hear your name for a time unless it is attached to a tax affidavit.”

  And with that dismissal and the five bills clutched tight to my chest, I departed the company of Darrez Issa.

  Chapter 37 – Cold Storage

  A few days passed. Sure enough, once the ashes had settled, it turned out that a few unknown individuals had placed heavy shorts on the very ventures most impacted by the fires at the docks, including Dragon’s Daughter Trading. Not only that, but freak disasters occurred on or near the same day in Whadael, Lethorn, and Kaharas. The person or persons behind the maneuver had crippled the enterprises in question while amassing ridiculous fortunes and leaving large openings in critical enterprises. I may not be gifted with the clairvoyance to know if a business will fail, but dragons have something just as good: the ability to set rivals on fire without apparent repercussion.

  My mistake was thinking Alkazarian’s family had begun to play by our rules instead of simply subverting them. That mistake was amplified when we received word that Spardeep had breached not an underground river, but the ruins of a Progenitor aqueduct connecting Whadael and Borreos. That underground tunnel was accessible year-round, making it the only overland pass through the Redfangs unaffected by snow. The stretch of land instantly became the most valuable tract in Borreos. That flooded hole in the ground we sold for a few thousand silver marks was now valued at over six million. I strongly suspect the purchaser was one of Alkazarian’s children. After all, how else would the new owner know to tunnel up toward the source of water?

  Back in my office once more, I looked at where Dragon’s Daughter stood. We had lost the primary warehouse for the dragon-eyes and a large margin in the Spardeep c
ollapse, but we still had many out at the Spardeep smelter. With the new overland passage, enough ore was going to come through the tunnel that I calculated we would pay off the smelter inside six months simply for extracting metal from the ore. In Borreos, I authorized Marlin to rebuild our warehouse and construct five more. The integrity of our other structures during the port fire and the in-house firefighting had increased demand for Dragon’s Daughter storage. Kuvtka’s men displaced by his downscaling would find permanent positions with us.

  And yet, I still felt as though I was missing something. I went back over my notes from the previous year, everything I had marked about mining or alchemicals or the movement of overland freight. Seeing it all with the perspective of hindsight showed how stacked against us the deck had really been, and how Lady Arkelai had positioned Dragon’s Daughter as completely expendable while she and her brother set up the real score behind the scenes. The extent of their alliance and loyalty to Alkazarian hadn’t been clear to me until I’d seen them in the sky together above the port of Borreos.

  But those two weren’t the only dragons in the mix. Arkeleera had pushed Jassem Bol and me together. Her remarks about leaving the mountain in secret were earnest, and she hadn’t been a part of the conflagration. And I held the little urn of unguent in my hand as I thought about the three of them.

  Dahli came into my office with the afternoon’s financials, reports from our myriad ventures, which were once again bringing in a slow trickle of bank notes. Not enough to make anyone rich, but enough to stabilize Kelstern Merchant Banking until I could begin bringing on newer, more human clients. Brackwaldt’s arrest had hit the gossip lines like a meteor, and word of his reckless vendetta did much to repair my reputation. I had received several requests for meetings so far, but Marlin had stood in for me while I puzzled over the missing piece I knew to be there.

  My secretary noticed the pot in my hands. “He’ll be back, I think.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “He’s had enough of Borreos and its laws. Still, I should like to thank him. Without this…”

  “…you would never have walked out of that warehouse, I know.”

  I’d recounted the story to Dahli at least four times. Pouring the greasy sludge on ourselves and taking turns with the pump before making a mad dash through the fire and flames. The frigid side effect of the water-fearing formula had shielded us from the heat of the fire consuming our warehouse.

  There was utility in a fire-repelling formula, possibly as much as a water-repelling one. But who would buy it? Sail-makers? Miners? Selling the unguent for non-naval purposes wouldn’t violate our agreement with Yasmin, but it would walk a fine line. There was always the Queen’s Navy itself, but from what I gathered, they were using their own channels to acquire the necessary compounds to generate the unguent. Whatever warm regard Darrez Issa had for my little operation, it was not shared by Commodore Yasmin. For reasons I could ill fathom, the woman still detested me.

  For a time, I sketched out projections, attempting to see how I could turn a profit from the previously unknown feature of the formula. But once one accounted for travel time and costs, taxes, tariffs, and materials, every calculation came up short.

  I looked up after a while to find Dahli replacing some of the candles that had burned down to beeswax nubs, and I looked at the windows. The light had long since fled.

  “You’re still here?” I asked.

  Dahli rolled her eyes. “Someone has to make sure you make it home. You’ve developed a nasty habit of disappearing over the past year.”

  As one does when riding on the wings and whims of dragons. I leaned back in my chair and stretched, not fully realizing how cramped I had become hunched over my notes and figures. “You’re too good for me Dahli,” I said.

  “I know,” she replied, sitting on the edge of my desk and opening the seawater flask to recharge the dragon-eye. “You can’t even be trusted to keep this thing fed. It’s getting cold in here.”

  I blinked. My eyes moved from the slow trickle of water sinking into the shimmering surface of the dragon-eye to the pot of Jassem Bol’s water-fearing unguent. As Dahli moved to touch a candle to the device, I stopped her with a gentle grip on her wrist.

  “Sailor, what are you—”

  “You’ll need my eyes to find the path,” I murmured, “but what are you willing to risk?”

  They were the words Arkaleera uttered the day Ur’s Gift had conquered Andil’s Hammer. It was the day I’d risked my life on the deck of Ur’s Gift to secure a sail line, and soon after Jassem returned with the first batch of dragon-eyes. Arkelai had provided the funding; Arkeleera had provided the path. Jazalkorin had provided the alchemical unguent and through Lord Brackwaldt’s embargoes had ensured we would return from Borreos with shiploads of these little amber orbs. How much had I risked as Alkazarian’s champion? Not just money. Life and limb? My future? My freedom?

  Surely that was enough. But I could also risk one final experiment.

  Slowly, I pulled the stopper from my little pot of unguent. I held it over the charged dragon-eye and tipped it. The alchemical sludge had been sitting a long time and was slow to move. But a dollop began to form at the mouth of the pot, and it stretched down toward its reflection in the dragon-eye as I encouraged it with a small shake.

  I’m not sure what I expected to happen. Probably nothing. But as I mentioned once before, some small events mark a critical turning point that bear some extra attention.

  The dragon-eye came to life as soon as the alchemical unguent touched the filmy surface. There was a flash of white, and a breath of cold air so intense that it sent me recoiling into my chair with such force that it toppled over. I heard Dahli in similar alarm but couldn’t see her. Every candle in my office had snuffed out in an instant. My teeth chattered as I extricated myself from the overturned chair and felt around on the floor. There was frost on the rug, and I felt it melt under the warm touch of my fingers.

  “Sailor?” asked a voice from the opposite corner.

  “I’m here,” I replied. “Are you alright?”

  “I think so,” said Dahli. “What in the Gates was that?”

  I climbed to my feet, my eyes adjusting to the dim light from a few candles in the main room. I went to retrieve one. Stepping out of my office felt like the moment I’d stepped from the winter cold at Spardeep into the operations building at the Feast of First Winter. I picked up the candle and carried it into my office. Dahli had already climbed to her feet and found a candle to light off mine so that we could survey the result of my experiment.

  The dragon-eye was completely lifeless. The porcelain saucer underneath it had cracked and shattered as if struck, and there was a ring of frost coating the corner of my desk where it lay. The pot of unguent lay shattered on the floor. The water flask had fallen beside it but remained curiously in one piece. I reached down to touch it but recoiled as the cold of the thing set my skin to burning. Instead, I doffed my coat and shook the remaining frost from it before wrapping my hands with the silk. With the extra layer, the flask was no longer painfully cold, and I hefted its unbalanced weight. The stopper was open, but when I turned the vessel upside down, no water emerged from the throat.

  Dahli was ready with the light, and I held it up to the flask, revealing the remaining water to be flash-frozen in the moment the unguent contacted the dragon-eye.

  “Is that…?” asked Dahli.

  “Ice,” I said. “In Borreos.”

  “In summer,” she whispered.

  Chapter 38 – Realized Gains

  The apparent value of what we had discovered was so obvious that it drove our entire business for the next year. With the increase in apparent value, recovery of the dragon-eyes from the muddy shoals became paramount. Dragon’s Daughter dredged the little orbs from the bottom of the Borrean Bay one by one until we had recovered all but twenty-six of those we had lost. It was difficult. The water they absorbed made each of the orbs heavier than a full-grown man. A few fell into
other hands, but we effectively still had a monopoly. Recovery efforts were undertaken at Spardeep for the remainder by its new resident, who would likely become our competition.

  I won’t pretend to understand the precise alchemical specifics, but I surmised that upon contact with a dragon-eye, the heat-sapping property of the water-repelling unguent affected all the water trapped within the little orbs. Individually, the disparate elements could keep a struggling business afloat. The value of a formula that made things resistant to both fire and water was questionable, and a device that created warmth in an equatorial climate was laughable. But the value of a pairing that made things frozen was undeniable.

  Foodborn illnesses abundant in summer could now be staved off with the aid of a dragon-eye. The food itself stayed fresh longer when held in a chilled Dragon’s Daughter warehouse, and even Commodore Yasmin came around when we outfitted the Queen’s Grace with a locker capable of storing fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat for the duration of a months-long patrol.

  I put Marlin in charge of managing our westward expansion. Each farmer couldn’t afford a dragon-eye, but most villages could.

  But the best part, in my opinion, as I celebrated the two-year anniversary of Dragon’s Daughter’s founding, was that even a secretary could enjoy the luxury of ice in her water at the start of summer.

  Not Dahli, mind you. I had a new secretary. There was an opening after I promoted Dahli Fost to full partner along with her cousin Marlin. Twins damn any of the old guard who looked twice at a woman heading up a banking house, because Kelstern and Fost had become a powerful presence in Borreos. Bendric had returned to Kaharas and used his earnings to open his own banking house to finance mining and quarry operations using the skills he’d learned in his months managing Spardeep. Tokt was heading up the old grotto shipyard, building and testing new ships that could accommodate a frozen hold. Ironically, the unguent was much too valuable to waste on the keels and hulls of boats now that fresh fruits could be preserved on chilled ships. Tokt had gone into business with Barron Dancin and planned to marry the shipping magnate’s orderly in the winter. The two spent most evenings together on the bay. I joined them, once or twice a month, to discuss both business and pleasure.