And Next… My Gold

'Matters proceed with the greatest speed, Superior, if I may say so. Since the gates to the Upper City were opened the work-rate of the natives has tripled! The ditch is down below sea level across the entire peninsula, and deepening every day! Only narrow dams hold back the brine at either end, and at your order the entire business is ready to be flooded!' Vissbruck sat back with a happy smile on his plump face. Quite as if the whole thing had been his idea.

Below them in the Upper City, the morning chanting was beginning. A strange wailing that drifted from the spires of the Great Temple, out over Dagoska and into every building, even here, in the audience chamber of the Citadel. Kahdia calls his people to prayer.

Vurms' lip curled at the sound. 'That time again already? Damn those natives and their bloody superstitions! We should never have let them back into their temple! Damn their bloody chanting, it gives me a headache!'

And it's worth it for that alone. Glokta grinned. 'If it makes Kahdia happy, your headache is something I can live with. Like it or not, we need the natives, and the natives like to chant. Get used to it, is my advice. That or wrap a blanket round your head.'

Vissbruck sat back in his chair and listened while Vurms sulked. 'I have to admit that I find the sound rather soothing, and we cannot deny the effect the Superior's concessions have had on the natives. With their help the land walls are repaired, the gates are replaced, and the scaffolds are already being dismantled. Stone has been acquired for new parapets but, ah, and here is the problem, the masons refuse to work another day without money. My soldiers are on quarter pay, and morale is low. Debt is the problem, Superior.'

'I'll say it is,' muttered Vurms angrily. 'The granaries are close to capacity, and two new wells have been dug in the Lower City, at great expense, but my credit is utterly exhausted. The grain merchants are after my blood!' A damn sight less keenly than every merchant in the city is after mine, I daresay. 'I can scarcely show my face any longer for their clamouring. My reputation is in jeopardy, Superior!'

As if I had no larger concerns than the reputation of this dolt. 'How much do we owe?'

Vurms frowned. 'For food, water, and general equipment, no less than a hundred thousand.' A hundred thousand? The Spicers love making money, but they hate spending it more. Eider will not come up with half so much, if she even chooses to try.

'What about you, General?'

'The cost of hiring mercenaries, excavating the ditch, of the repairs to the walls, of extra weapons, armour, ammunition…' Vissbruck puffed out his cheeks. 'In all, it comes to nearly four hundred thousand marks.'

It was the most Glokta could do to keep from choking on his own tongue. Half a million? A king's ransom and more besides. I doubt that Sult could provide so much, even if he had the mind, and he does not. Men die all the time over debts a fraction of the size. 'Work however you can. Promise whatever you want. The money is on its way, I assure you.'

The General was already collecting his notes. 'I am doing all I can, but people are beginning to doubt that they will ever be paid.'

Vurms was more direct. 'No one trusts us any longer. Without money, we can do nothing.'

'Nothing,' growled Severard. Frost slowly shook his head.

Glokta rubbed at his sore eyes. 'A Superior of the Inquisition vanishes without leaving so much as a smear behind. He retires to his chambers at night, the door is locked. In the morning he does not answer. They break down the door and find…' Nothing. 'The bed has been slept in, but there is no body. Not the slightest sign of a struggle even.'

'Nothing,' muttered Severard.

'What do we know? Davoust suspected a conspiracy within the city, a traitor intending to deliver Dagoska to the Gurkish. He believed a member of the ruling council was involved. It would seem likely that he uncovered the identity of this person, and was somehow silenced.'

'But who?'

We must turn the question on its head. 'If we cannot find our traitor, we must make them come to us. If they work to get the Gurkish in, we need only succeed in keeping them out. Sooner or later, they will show themselves.'

'Rithky,' mumbled Frost. Risky indeed, especially for Dagoska's latest Superior of the Inquisition, but we have no choices.

'So we wait?' asked Severard.

'We wait, and we look to our defences. That and we try to find some money. Do you have any cash, Severard?'

'I did have some. I gave it to a girl, down in the slums.'

'Ah. Shame.'

'Not really, she fucks like a madman. I'd thoroughly recommend her, if you're interested.'

Glokta winced as his knee clicked. 'What a thoroughly heartwarming tale, Severard, I never had you down for a romantic. I'd sing a ballad if I wasn't so short of funds.'

'I could ask around. How much are we talking about?'

'Oh, not much. Say, half a million marks?'

One of the Practical's eyebrows went up sharply. He reached into his pocket, dug around for a moment, pulled his hand out and opened it. A few copper coins shone in his palm.

'Twelve bits,' he said. 'Twelve bits is all I can raise.'

'Twelve thousand is all I can raise,' said Magister Eider. Scarcely a drop in the bucket. 'My Guild are nervous, business has not been good, the great majority of their assets are bound up in ventures of one kind or another. I have little cash to hand either.'

I daresay you have a good deal more than twelve thousand, but what's the difference? I doubt even you have half a million tucked away. There probably isn't that amount in the whole city. 'One would almost think they didn't like me.'

She snorted. 'Turning them out of the temple? Arming the natives? Then demanding money? It might be fair to say you're not their favourite person.'

'Might it be fair to say they're after my blood?' And plenty of it, I shouldn't wonder.

'It might, but for the time being, at least, I think I've managed to convince them that you're a good thing for the city.' She looked levelly at him for a moment. 'You are a good thing, aren't you?'

'If keeping the Gurkish out is your priority.' That is our priority, isn't it? 'More money wouldn't hurt, though.'

'More money never hurts, but that's the trouble with merchants. They much prefer making it to spending it, even when it's in their own best interests.' She gave a heavy sigh, rapped her fingernails on the table, looked down at her hand. She seemed to consider a moment, then she began to pull the rings from her fingers. When she had finally got them all off, she tossed them into the box along with the coins.

Glokta frowned. 'A winning gesture, Magister, but I could not possibly—'

'I insist,' she said, unclasping her heavy necklace and dropping it into the box. 'I can always get more, once you've saved the city. In any case, they'll do me no good when the Gurkish rip them from my corpse, will they?' She slipped her heavy bracelets off her wrists, yellow gold, studded with green gemstones. They rattled down amongst the rest. 'Take the jewels, before I change my mind. A man lost in the desert should take such water—'

'As he is offered, regardless of the source. Kahdia told me the very same thing.'

'Kahdia is a clever man.'

'He is. I thank you for your generosity, Magister.' Glokta snapped the lid of the box shut.

'The least I could do.' She got up from her chair and walked to the door, her sandals hissing across the carpet. 'I will speak with you soon.'

'He says he must speak with you now.'

'What was his name, Shickel?'

'Mauthis. A banker.'

One more creditor, come clamouring for his money. Sooner or later I'll have to just arrest the pack of them. That will be the end of my little spending spree, but it will almost be worth it to see the looks on their faces. Glokta gave a hopeless shrug. 'Send him in.'

He was a tall man in his fifties, almost ill-looking in his gauntness, hollow-cheeked and sunken-eyed. There was a stern precision to his movements, a steady coldness to his gaze. As though he is weighing the value of all he looks at in silver marks, including me.

'My name is Mauthis.'

'I was informed, but I am afraid that there are no funds available at the present moment.' Unless you count Severard's twelve bits. 'Whatever debt the city has with your bank will have to wait. It will not be for much longer, I assure you.' Just until the sea dries up, the sky falls in, and devils roam the earth.

Mauthis gave a smile. If you could call it that. A neat, precise, and utterly joyless curving of the mouth. 'You misunderstand me, Superior Glokta. I have not come to collect a debt. For seven years, I have had the privilege of acting as the chief representative in Dagoska, of the banking house of Valint and Balk.'

Glokta paused, then tried to sound off-hand. 'Valint and Balk, you say? Your bank financed the Guild of Mercers, I believe.'

'We had some dealings with that guild, before their unfortunate fall from grace.' I'll say you did. You owned them, from the ground up. 'But then we have dealings with many guilds, and companies, and other banks, and individuals, great and small. Today I have dealings with you.'

'Dealings of what nature?'

Mauthis turned to the door and snapped his fingers. Two burly natives entered, grunting, sweating, struggling under the weight of a great casket: a box of polished black wood, bound with bands of bright steel, sealed with a heavy lock. They set it down carefully on the fine carpet, wiped sweat from their foreheads, and tramped out the way they came while Glokta frowned after them. What is this? Mauthis pulled a key from his pocket and turned it in the lock. He reached forward and lifted the lid of the chest. He moved out of the way, carefully and precisely, so Glokta could see the contents.

'One hundred and fifty thousand marks in silver.'

Glokta blinked. And so it is. The coins flashed and glittered in the evening light. Flat, round, silver, five mark pieces. Not a jingling heap, not some barbarian's horde. Neat, even stacks, held in place by wooden dowels. As neat and even as Mauthis himself.

The two porters were gasping their way back into the room, carrying between them a second box, slightly smaller than the first. They placed it on the floor and strode out, not so much as glancing at the fortune glittering in plain view beside them.

Mauthis unlocked the second chest with the same key, raised the lid, and stood aside. 'Three hundred and fifty thousand marks in gold.'

Glokta knew his mouth was open, but he could not close it. Bright, clean, gold, glowing yellow. All that wealth seemed almost to give off warmth, like a bonfire. It tugged at him, dragged at him, pulled him forward. He took a hesitant step, in fact, before he stopped himself. Great big, golden, fifty mark pieces. Neat, even stacks, just as before. Most men would never in their lives see such coins. Few men indeed can ever have seen so many.

Mauthis reached into his coat and pulled out a flat leather case. He placed it carefully on the table and unfolded it: once, twice, three times.

'One half of one million marks in polished stones.'

There they lay on the soft black leather, on the hard brown table top, burning with all the colours under the sun. Two large handfuls, perhaps, of multi-coloured, glittering gravel. Glokta stared down at them, numb, and sucked at his gums. Magister Eiders jewels seem suddenly rather quaint.

'In total, I have been ordered by my superiors to advance to you, Sand dan Glokta, Superior of Dagoska, the sum of precisely one million marks.' He unrolled a heavy paper. 'You will sign here.'

Glokta stared from one chest to another and back. His left eye gave a flurry of twitches. 'Why?'

'To certify that you received the money.'

Glokta almost laughed. 'Not that! Why the money?' He flailed one hand at it all. 'Why all this?'

'It would appear that my employers share your concern that Dagoska should not fall to the Gurkish. More than that I cannot tell you.'

'Cannot, or will not?'

'Cannot. Will not.'

Glokta frowned at the jewels, at the silver, at the gold. His leg was throbbing, dully. All that I wanted, and far more. But banks do not become banks by giving money away. 'If this is a loan, what is the interest?'

Mauthis flashed his icy smile again. 'My employers would prefer to call it a contribution to the defence of the city. There is one condition, however.'

'Which is?'

'It may be that in the future, a representative of the banking house of Valint and Balk will come to you requesting… favours. It is the most earnest hope of my employers that, if and when that time comes, you will not disappoint them.'

One million marks worth of favours. And I place myself in the power of a most suspect organisation. An organisation whose motives I do not begin to understand. An organisation that, until recently, I was on the point of investigating for high treason. But what are my options? Without money, the city is lost, and I am finished. I needed a miracle, and here it is, sparkling before me. A man lost in the desert must take such water as is offered…

Mauthis slid the document across the table. Several blocks of neat writing, and a space, for a name. For my name. Not at all unlike a paper of confession. And prisoners always sign their confessions. They are only offered when there is no choice.

Glokta reached for the pen, dipped it in the ink, wrote his name in the space provided.

'That concludes our business.' Mauthis rolled up the document, smoothly and precisely. He slipped it carefully into his coat. 'My colleagues and I are leaving Dagoska this evening.' A great deal of money to contribute to the cause, but precious little confidence in it. 'Valint and Balk are closing their offices here, but perhaps we will meet in Adua, once this unfortunate situation with the Gurkish is resolved.' The man gave his mechanical smile one more time. 'Don't spend it all at once.' And he turned on his heel and strode out, leaving Glokta alone with his monumental windfall.

He shuffled over to it, breathing hard, and stared down. There was something obscene about all that money. Something disgusting. Something frightening, almost. He snapped shut the lids of the two chests. He locked them with trembling hands. He shoved the key in his inside pocket. He stroked the metal bindings of the two boxes with his fingertips. His palms were greasy with sweat. I am rich.

He picked up a clear, cut stone the size of an acorn, and held it up to the window between finger and thumb. The dim light shone back at him through the many facets, a thousand brilliant sparks of fire—blue, green, red, white. Glokta did not know much about gemstones, but he was reasonably sure that this one was a diamond. I am very, very rich.

He looked back at the rest, sparkling on the flat piece of leather. Some of them were small, but many were not. Several were larger than the one he held in his hand. I am immensely, fabulously wealthy. Imagine what one could do with so much money. Imagine what one could control… perhaps, with this much, I can save the city. More walls, more supplies, more equipment, more mercenaries. The Gurkish, thrown back from Dagoska in disarray. The Emperor of Gurkhul, humbled. Who would have thought it? Sand dan Glokta, once more the hero.

He rolled the shining little pebbles around with a finger-tip, lost in thought. But so much spending in so little time could raise questions. My faithful servant Practical Vitari would be curious, and she would make my noble master the Arch Lector curious. One day I beg for money, the next I spend it as if it burns? I was forced to borrow, your Eminence. Indeed? How much? No more than a million marks. Indeed? And who would lend such a sum? Why, our old friends at the banking house of Valint and Balk, your Eminence, in return for unspecified favours, which they might call in at any moment. Of course, my loyalty is still beyond question. You understand, don't you? I mean to say, it's only a fortune in jewels. Body found floating by the docks…

He pushed his hand absently through the cold, hard, glittering stones, and they tickled pleasantly at the skin between his fingers. Pleasant, but perilous. We must still tread carefully. More carefully than ever…