Morveer grinned across at it. “Ladies, gentlemen and savages, I give you the Westport branch… of the Banking House… of Valint and Balk.”

Shivers shook his head. “Place looks like a fortress.”

“Like a prison,” murmured Friendly.

“Like a bank,” sneered Morveer.

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.”