The Liar's Key

“It’s driven from the torso, and lacks any strength of its own,” Yusuf said. “Most soldiers are part replacement these days, and the clock-springs that were wound to give them power are winding down—the knowledge required to rewind such mechanisms was lost before the clans took ownership of the Mechanists’ legacy.”

As Yusuf spoke my eyes fixed upon an indentation between the soldier’s shoulders, a complex depression into which many metal teeth projected. Perhaps a winding point, though how one might work it I had no idea.

“Come, Prince Jalan.” The soldier spoke again.

“There.” I walked past it into the open space of the hall. “You see, you can address me properly if you try. I advise that you study the correct forms of address. Perhaps you might master them before you unwind completely and become an interesting drawing room ornament.”

Iron fingers flexed and the soldier came toward me on heavy feet. It brushed past and led on through the crowd. I took some measure of comfort knowing the thing actually did appear to have attitude and that I’d managed to get beneath its metal skin.

I followed the mechanism up a flight of marble stairs, along a broad corridor with offices to either side in which a great number of clerks sat at desks checking through rolls of figures, tallying and accounting, and up a second flight to a polished mahogany door.

The office behind the door had that mix of Spartan design and money that the very richest aspire to. When you’ve moved past the stage of needing to show everyone how wealthy you are with gaudy displays of your purchasing power you reach a stage at which you return to simple and purposeful design. With cost being no object, each part of your environment will be constructed of the absolute best that money can buy—though it may require close inspection to determine it.

I of course still aspired to the stage at which I could afford my gaudy displays. I could however appreciate the utilitarian extravagance of the paperweight on the desk in front of me being a plain cube of gold.

“Prince Jalan, please take a seat.” The man behind the desk didn’t bow, didn’t rise to greet me, in fact he barely glanced up from the parchment in front of him.

It’s true that the niceties of courtly etiquette are rarely offered to me outside the confines of the palace, but it does pain me to have such conventions ignored by people who should know better. It’s one thing for some peasant on the road to fail to recognize my station, but a damned banker with not a drop of royal blood in his veins and yet sitting on a pile of gold, metaphorically, that would dwarf the value of some entire countries . . . well that sort of injustice practically demands that the man smarm all over any person of breeding to make up for it. How else are they to persuade us not to damn their eyes, march our armies into their miserable little banks and empty the vaults out to serve some higher purpose? It’s certainly what I plan to be doing when king!

I took the seat. A very expensive one and not the least bit comfortable.

He scratched something with his quill and looked up, eyes dark and neutral in a bland and ageless face. “You have a letter of deputization, I understand?”

I lifted the scroll Great-uncle Garyus had sent me, drawing it back a fraction as the man reached for it. “And you would be Davario Romano Evenaline of the House Gold, Mercantile Derivatives?” I let him chew the consequence of failing to introduce himself.

“I am.” He tapped a little nameplate angled toward me on his desk.

I passed the scroll across, lips pursed, and waited, staring at the dark and thinning hair atop his head as he bent to read.

“Gholloth has placed a significant trust in your hands, Prince Jalan.” He looked up with considerably more interest, a hint of hunger even.

“Well . . . I guess my great-uncle has always been very fond of me . . . but I’m not entirely clear how I’m to represent his interests. I mean they’re just ships. And they’re not even here. How far is it to the nearest port? Thirty miles?”

“To the nearest port of consequence it is closer to fifty miles, prince.”

“And, between you and me, Davario, I’m not fond of boats of any kind, so if there’s any setting sail involved . . .”

“I think you rather miss the point, Prince Jalan.” He couldn’t help that smug little smile that people get when they’re correcting foolishness. “These vessels don’t concern us except in the abstract. We’ve no interest here in ropes and barnacles, tar and sailcloth. These ships are assets of unknown value. There’s nothing finance likes to speculate about more. Your great-uncle’s ships are no common merchant ships hopping along coasts. His captains are adventurers bound for distant shores in ocean-going vessels. Each ship is as likely never to return, sunk on a reef or the crew eaten by savages, as it is to limp into an empire port groaning with silver, or amber, or rare spices and exotic treasures stolen from unknown peoples. We trade here in possibilities, options, futures. Your paper . . .” Here he held it aloft. “. . . once the seals are checked by an expert archivist against our proofs . . . gives you a position in the great game we play here in Umbertide.”