The Safest Place in the World

The banking hall of the Westport office of Valint and Balk was an echoing cavern of red porphyry and black marble. It had all the gloomy splendour of an emperor's mausoleum, the minimum light necessary creeping in through small, high windows, their thick bars casting cross-hatched shadows across the shining floor. A set of huge marble busts stared smugly down from on high: great merchants and financiers of Styrian history, by the look of them. Criminals made heroes by colossal success. Morveer wondered whether Somenu Hermon was among them, and the thought that the famous merchant might indirectly be paying his wages caused his smirk to expand by the slightest margin.

Sixty clerks or more attended identical desks loaded with identical heaps of papers, each with a huge, leather-bound ledger open before him. All manner of men, with all colours of skin, some sporting the skullcaps, turbans or characteristic hairstyles of one Kantic sect or other. The only prejudice here was in favour of those who could turn the fastest coin. Pens rattled in ink bottles, nibs scratched on heavy paper, pages crackled as they were turned. Merchants stood in clumps and haggles, conversing in whispers. Nowhere was a single coin in evidence. The wealth here was made of words, of ideas, of rumours and lies, too valuable to be held captive in gaudy gold or simple silver.

It was a setting intended to awe, to amaze, to intimidate, but Morveer was not a man to be intimidated. He belonged here perfectly, just as he did everywhere and nowhere. He swaggered past a long queue of well-dressed supplicants with the air of studied self-satisfaction that always accompanied new money. Friendly lumbered in his wake, strongbox held close, and Day tiptoed demurely at the rear.

Morveer snapped his fingers at the nearest clerk. “I have an appointment with …” He consulted his letter for effect. “One Mauthis. On the subject of a sizeable deposit.”

“Of course. If you would wait for one moment.”

“One, but no more. Time and money are the same.”

Morveer inconspicuously studied the arrangements for security. It would have been an understatement to call them daunting. He counted twelve armed men stationed around the hall, as comprehensively equipped as the King of the Union's bodyguard. There had been another dozen outside the towering double-doors.

“The place is a fortress,” muttered Day under her breath.

“But considerably better defended,” replied Morveer.

“How long is this going to take?”

“Why?”

“I'm hungry.”

“Already? For pity's sake! You will not starve if you—Wait.”

A tall man had emerged from a high archway, gaunt-faced with a prominent beak of a nose and thinning grey hair, arrayed in sombre robes with a heavy fur collar. “Mauthis,” murmured Morveer, from Murcatto's exhaustive description. “Our intended.”

He was walking behind a younger man, curly haired and with a pleasant smile, not at all richly dressed. So unexceptional, in fact, he would have had a fine appearance for a poisoner. And yet Mauthis, though supposedly in charge of the bank, hurried after with hands clasped, as though he was the junior. Morveer sidled closer, bringing them within earshot.

“… Master Sulfur, I hope you will inform our superiors that everything is under complete control.” Mauthis had, perhaps, the very slightest note of panic in his voice. “Absolute and complete—”

“Of course,” answered the one called Sulfur, offhand. “Though I rarely find our superiors need informing as to how things stand. They are watching. If everything is under complete control, I am sure they will already be satisfied. If not, well …” He smiled wide at Mauthis, and then at Morveer, and Morveer noticed he had different-coloured eyes, one blue, one green. “Good day.” And he strode away and was soon lost in the crowds.

“May I be of assistance?” grated Mauthis. He looked as if he had never laughed in his life. He was running out of time to try it now.

“I certainly hope you may. My name is Reevrom, a merchant of Puranti.” Morveer tittered inwardly at his own joke, as he did whenever he utilised the alias, but his face showed nothing but the warmest bonhomie as he offered his hand.

“Reevrom. I have heard of your house. A privilege to make your acquaintance.” Mauthis disdained to shake it, and kept a carefully inoffensive distance between them. Evidently a cautious man. Just as well, for his sake. The tiny spike on the underside of Morveer's heavy middle-finger ring was loaded with scorpion venom in a solution of Leopard Flower. The banker would have sat happily through their meeting, then dropped dead within the hour.

“This is my niece,” continued Morveer, not in the least downhearted by his failed attempt. “I have been entrusted with the responsibility of escorting her to an introduction with a potential suitor.” Day looked up from beneath her lashes with perfectly judged shyness. “And this is my associate.” He glanced sideways at Friendly and the man frowned back. “I do him too much credit. My bodyguard, Master Charming. He is not a great conversationalist, but when it comes to bodyguarding, he is … barely adequate in truth. Still, I promised his old mother that I would take him under my—”

“You have come here on a matter of business?” droned Mauthis.

Morveer bowed. “A sizeable deposit.”

“I regret that your associates must remain behind, but if you would care to follow me we would, of course, be happy to accept your deposit and prepare a receipt.”

“Surely my niece—”

“You must understand that, in the interests of security, we can make no exceptions. Your niece will be perfectly comfortable here.”

“Of course, of course you will, my dear. Master Charming! The strongbox!” Friendly handed the metal case over to a bespectacled clerk, left tottering under its weight. “Now wait here, and get up to no mischief!” Morveer gave a heavy sigh as he followed Mauthis into the depths of the building, as though he had insurmountable difficulties securing competent help. “My money will be safe here?”

“The bank's walls are at no point less than twelve feet in thickness. There is only one entrance, guarded by a dozen well-armed men during the day, sealed at night with three locks, made by three different locksmiths, the keys kept by three separate employees. Two parties of men constantly patrol the exterior of the bank until morning. Even then the interior is kept under watch by a most sharp-eyed and competent guard.” He gestured towards a bored-looking man in a studded leather jerkin, seated at a desk to the side of the hallway.

“He is locked in?”

“All night.”

Morveer worked his mouth with some discomfort. “Most comprehensive arrangements.”

He pulled out his handkerchief and pretended to cough daintily into it. The silk was soaked in Mustard Root, one of an extensive range of agents to which he had himself long since developed an immunity. He needed only a few moments unobserved, then he could clasp it to Mauthis' face. The slightest inhalation and the man would cough himself to bloody death within moments. But the clerk laboured along between them with the strongbox in his arms, and not the slightest opportunity was forthcoming. Morveer was forced to tuck the lethal cloth away, then narrow his eyes as they turned into a long hallway lined with huge paintings. Light poured in from above, the very roof, far overhead, fashioned from a hundred thousand diamond panes of glass.

“A ceiling of windows!” Morveer turned slowly round and round, head back. “Truly a wonder of architecture!”

“This is an entirely modern building. Your money could not be more secure anywhere, believe me.”

“The depths of ruined Aulcus, perhaps?” joked Morveer, as an overblown artist's impression of the ancient city passed by on their left.

“Not even there.”

“And making a withdrawal would be considerably more testing, I imagine! Ha ha. Ha ha.”

“Quite so.” The banker did not display even the inkling of a smile. “Our vault door is a foot thickness of solid Union steel. We do not exaggerate when we say this is the safest place in the Circle of the World. This way.”

Morveer was ushered into a voluminous chamber panelled with oppressively dark wood, ostentatious yet still uncomfortable, tyrannised by a desk the size of a poor man's house. A sombre oil was set above a looming fireplace: a heavyset bald man glowering down as though he suspected Morveer of being up to no good. Some Union bureaucrat of the dusty past, he suspected. Zoller, maybe, or Bialoveld.

Mauthis took up a high, hard seat and Morveer found one opposite while the clerk lifted the lid of the strongbox and began to count out the money, using a coin-stacker with practised efficiency. Mauthis watched, scarcely blinking. At no stage did he touch either case or coins himself. A cautious man. Damnably, infuriatingly cautious. His slow eyes slid across the desk.

“Wine?”

Morveer raised an eyebrow at the distorted glassware behind the windows of a towering cabinet. “Thank you, no. I become quite flustered under its influence, and between the two of us have frequently embarrassed myself. I decided, in the end, to abstain entirely, and stick to selling it to others. The stuff is … poison.” And he gave a huge smile. “But don't let me stop you.” He slid an unobtrusive hand into a hidden pocket within his jacket where the vial of Star Juice was waiting. It would be a small effort to mount a diversion and introduce a couple of drops to Mauthis' glass while he was—

“I too avoid it.”

“Ah.” Morveer released the vial and instead plucked a folded paper from his inside pocket quite as if that had been his intention from the first. He unfolded it and pretended to read while his eyes darted about the office. “I counted five thousand …” He took in the style of lock upon the door, the fashion of its construction, the frame within which it was set. “Two hundred …” The tiles from which the floor was made, the panels on the walls, the render of the ceiling, the leather of Mauthis' chair, the coals on the unlit fire. “And twelve scales.” Nothing seemed promising.

Mauthis showed no emotion at the number. Fortunes and small change, all one. He opened the heavy cover of a huge ledger upon his desk. He licked one finger and flicked steadily through the pages, paper crackling. Morveer felt a warm satisfaction spread out from his stomach to every extremity at the sight, and it was only with an effort that he prevented himself from whooping with triumph. He settled for a prim smile. “Takings from my last trip to Sipani. Wine from Ospria is always a profitable venture, even in these uncertain times. Not everyone has our temperance, Master Mauthis, I am happy to say!”

“Of course.” The banker licked his finger once again as he turned the last few pages.

“Five thousand, two hundred and eleven,” said the clerk.

Mauthis' eyes flickered up. “Trying to get away with something?”

“Me?” Morveer passed it off with a false chuckle. “Damn that man Charming, he can't count for anything! I swear he has no feel for numbers whatsoever.”

The nib of Mauthis' pen scratched across the ledger; the clerk hurried over and blotted the entry as his master neatly, precisely, emotionlessly prepared the receipt. The clerk carried it to Morveer and offered it to him along with the empty strongbox.

“A note for the full amount in the name of the Banking House of Valint and Balk,” said Mauthis. “Redeemable at any reputable mercantile institution in Styria.”

“Must I sign anything?” asked Morveer hopefully, his fingers closing around the pen in his inside pocket. It doubled as a highly effective blow-gun, the needle concealed within containing a lethal dose of—

“No.”

“Very well.” Morveer smiled as he folded the paper and slid it away, taking care that it did not catch on the deadly edge of his scalpel. “Better than gold, and a great deal lighter. For now, then, I take my leave. It has been a decided pleasure.” And he held out his hand again, poisoned ring glinting. No harm in making the effort.

Mauthis did not move from his chair. “Likewise.”