The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

“Suspended over issues of taxation.” Corpus offered a thin smile. “The Central will have its pound of flesh.”

“Ah.” Another long pause filled with furious excuse-creation. Bank taxes on each transaction make it very difficult to scrape a legitimate profit in Umbertide’s markets. I discovered early on that the real key to success was to not pay them. This of course required an ever more elaborate scheme of deferred payments, scheduled payments, conditional payments, lies, and damn lies. I’d calculated it would be the end of the week before those particular large and potentially lethal chickens came home to roost. “Look, Corpus, old fellow, of the House Iron and all that.” I took a step forward and would have flung an arm across his shoulders but for the fact he took a step back and his soldier looked ready to grab any arm that touched the man and fling it over the rooftops, with or without its owner still attached. “We’ll deal with this the old way. Meet me at Yoolani’s Java House first bell tomorrow and I’ll have your payment ready for you in gold.” I patted my ribs to make the coins bound under my tunic chink for him. “I’m heir to the throne of Red March, after all, and my word is my bond.” I set my smile on the offer and let the honesty beam out.

Corpus took on that look of distaste that all of Umbertide’s financiers do when something as common and dirty as raw gold is mentioned. They build their whole lives on the stuff and yet somehow consider the actual substance beneath them, preferring their papers and notes, rather than the weight of coin in hand. To my way of thinking an extra zero on a promissory note is far less exciting than a purse that weighs ten times what it might. Though right there, with the bulk of my assets packed into a case and conspiring with gravity to remove my shoulder from its socket, I had some sympathy with the idea.

“First bell . . . prince. The full sum. Or there will be sanctions.” He turned his head, eyes flickering to the soldier, leaving little doubt that the sanctions would be rather worse than the revoking of my trading licence.

I stalked on past Corpus, not sparing him or his monstrosity another glance, and disguising my relief. I’d bought myself the best part of the day with a little bluster and a lot of lying. Cheap at twice the price! Falsehoods were a currency I was always willing to spend.

“There are two agents following us,” Ta-Nam said behind me.

“What? Where?” I spun around. Nothing in the sea of heads around us stood out, save for Corpus’s clockwork soldier, diminishing in the distance, nobody even reaching to its shoulders.

“It will be harder to evade them if you let them know you’re aware of their presence.” Ta-Nam managed not to make it a rebuke, not through servility but perhaps a reasonable expectation that everyone else was an amateur in this kind of game.

I turned back on our path and sped up a touch despite the heat. “Two of them?”

“There may be others more competent,” Ta-Nam conceded. “The two I have noted must be private hires—bank agents would not be so clumsy.”

“Unless they were sending a message . . .” Private hires? Investigators like the one who’d brought me news at lunch. Perhaps I was his next case and he was following me even now. Either way, the message was clear, Corpus of House Iron wasn’t the only one with suspicions. They couldn’t move on me until I defaulted but they sure as hell could watch me. All of which made my plan of skipping town rather more difficult. Fear reached out from that place nearby where it’s always waiting and took me by the balls. “Damn them all.”

TWENTY-SIX

When you emerge into Piatzo plaza you remember what summer is this far south. In the alleyways, shaded and angled to channel the breeze, you get just a hot breath of it, a reminder of the violence that waits for you, but step into Piatzo at noon in high summer and it hits you like a fist. Suddenly I wanted a hat, even one of those ridiculous confections the moderns sport. Head bowed against the onslaught from above, eyes narrowed against the glare reflected from broad and pale paving slabs, I strode out toward the Central Bank debtor prison on the far side.

From the front the place looks like a genteel residence, architecturally fit for its surroundings and meriting a place facing out into one of Umbertide’s most famed plazas. They tell me that in winter the square becomes a place where well-heeled citizens gather to socialize, hawkers sell expensive tit-bits, and renowned orchestras put on performances. Little wonder then that debtors with sufficiently generous friends and family often choose to take up residence in the apartments at the front of the prison, waiting there the weeks, months, or perhaps decades required either for their fortunes to rally sufficiently to pay what’s owed, and the interest upon it, or for their reserves to dwindle to the point where they begin the slow and inevitable migration toward the hidden rear of the building.