So here she was, sending a very public message by the garb she had chosen to wear. Because her husband was the Prism, she would wear garb drawn from each of the satrapies, to show she didn’t favor any over the others. Today, that meant wearing a loose-fitting white silk abaya, subtly embroidered with murex purple thread, but she wore the jilbab down—modesty was not prized on the Jaspers as it was in the Parian inland and highlands. Along with the traditional white of mourning, for Parians believed that death was a procession into light, and not into darkness, Karris had chosen some few hints of bright color, not pure funerary white. She wore a bright scarf, white and blue and red and purple and green, though she had bleached her hair white.

My husband is lost, and for this I grieve, her clothing said, but he is not dead. The richness of it said that she expected to be taken seriously, that she was taking her place as a woman of means and influence. She even had a Blackguard bodyguard. That it was her squat friend Samite made that marginally better, but the woman treated her duties seriously, standing beside the table, watching everyone and everything, treating Karris as if she were just another ward who would doubtless be blind, deaf, and dumb to danger.

‘It’s to free you to pay attention fully to the task at hand,’ the White had told her.

Karris crossed her legs as the banker sat. It was a thobe, not a dress, she told herself. Still, it made her feel naked and vulnerable. Worse, she hadn’t even been able to pick it out for herself. Marissia had helped her, last night, asking the parameters she wished to fulfill. Karris did, though she didn’t tell the slave her task. The slave had accepted her silence on that and simply told Karris she could go to bed; it would be taken care of.

When Karris woke, this awaited. The fit was perfect. “How…?” she asked Marissia as the slave woman had tied the laces.

“The tailor still had your measurements.”

Karris looked at her. “I haven’t been to a tailor’s shop in years.”

“And I noticed you’d lost some weight since then, so I suggested a few alterations,” Marissia said, her voice level.

The eye for detail and the memory—the sheer bloody competence—was infuriating. So Gavin hadn’t kept the woman purely for warming his bed. Perhaps she wasn’t good at that, at least. Perhaps he’d merely—

What delusions are you filling your head with, Karris? She’s beautiful, she’s competent, she’s been Gavin’s room slave for years. Karris had told herself she wasn’t going to be jealous of what Gavin had done during the time she’d no claim on him. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right … and it wasn’t going away. She should be happy that he’d only slept with his room slave, and not every woman who would have been happy to have him.

But seeing that Marissia was eminently competent roused something ugly in Karris. She should appreciate the woman. For Orholam’s sake, was she looking at a slave as a rival? Ridiculous! She could put the woman out at a moment’s notice. But that wasn’t fair, either, was it? Marissia was trying to serve well and unobtrusively—she was even hiding how well she served so as to remain beneath Karris’s notice. Probably in case Karris was as petty as … as petty as she was.

I would ruin a woman’s livelihood and steal her purpose from her for what, exactly? For serving Gavin well?

Serving him well all night long, no doubt.

And what of it? That is her life, her duty. Would I be happier with her if she had served her master poorly in petty rebellion, as other slaves do? Has Gavin said a word about Param or Naelos, whom you took to your bed mostly to spite him? She’d made Param make love to her in total darkness, so she could imagine he was Dazen. But at least both of them were gone.

And what, like I didn’t know about Marissia?

He’s gone, Karris. He’s gone.

The wave of grief came out of nowhere. Karris’s throat tightened; her eyes filled.

She let out a breath like a hiss, looked away, got control of herself. Turgal blinked, and repeated, “Are we to have a privacy shield?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Karris gestured to the beautiful woman who served as a greeter. Turgal’s eyes were all over her. Not very discreet, for a banker. For a moment, Karris felt old and overlooked. Turgal looked at the greeter like that, and not at—

She silently cursed herself. She’d dressed modestly, specifically so she would seem respectable, and now … Back on keel, Karris.

She gestured for the greeter to draft them a privacy shield. Karris handed the woman her payment. “May I bring you more kopi, my lady? And my lord, would you like something?”

Karris acquiesced to more kopi, and the banker ordered ale. The greeter disappeared into the kitchens and reappeared almost immediately. She put down Turgal’s ale and Karris’s kopi and saucer, drafted the invisible superviolet bubble that would block their conversation from others, and drafted the fans that allowed some airflow. She gave a big, perfect smile at the young banker, bowed low enough to both of them to display cleavage, and went back to her station.

Probably works nights downstairs.

And since when did I get so prudish? Like my Blackguard brothers were pure as heaven’s rain?

After Turgal Onesto had a bit of his ale, Karris said, “I need to assume control of my husband’s accounts.”

“As you doubtless know, the Onestos never comment on the status or existence of accounts. Which accounts did you have in mind?” He smiled unconvincingly.

“What do you mean, which accounts? All of them,” Karris said. She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. The proximate cause for this meeting was, of course, to take control of Gavin’s accounts. What else would one meet with a banker for? That Turgal Onesto was also one of the White’s spies merely made this meeting potentially doubly productive.

“I’m afraid that we don’t keep accounts by name, only by number. It keeps hostile nobles and kings and parents and others from seizing accounts that have been opened privately,” Turgal said. He smiled pleasantly. Fop he might be, but this was a conversation he had clearly had before.

More, it was a lie. Karris was certain of it. There was no way the Onestos wouldn’t keep track of the account holders’ names.

“What happens when account holders die?” Karris asked.

“Nothing. The Onestos don’t even have knowledge of when that happens. We have no way of knowing that. As I said, we don’t link names to accounts.”

“What happens to the money?”

“It remains in the account, of course.”

“Uh-huh, for how long?”

“If an account has had no activity for a generation—defined by old tradition as forty years’ time—the monies therein are made available for other loans.”

Which was doubly a lie, and a subtle pair of lies at that. The money was never put aside in the first place. The moment money was deposited, it was loaned elsewhere. And when he said ‘made available,’ he meant that it then moved into his family’s personal coffers. It wasn’t completely unfair, Karris supposed. If an entire family was extinguished, as had doubtless happened many times in the various wars that had wracked the Seven Satrapies since the Onestos had entered the business, and if no heirs stepped forward, what else should they do with the money? Give it away? It was a perquisite of taking the risks of bad loans.