Lora of Two Worlds

The next morning, in the smithy at East Manor, Lyle ground the official lettering carefully off both faces of the gold ingots they had brought back, and set fresh stamps in their place: ”Lohenheim Vault” and ”Gold, Twenty Marks.”

The vault trade had been growing in the Empire near a hundred years by now, and it had sunk deep into the country’s bones. The great deep-pursed vaults carried the trust of merchants everywhere — the Salt house’s Good-Faith Vault, the Windsor house’s Midland Vault, and the rest of them.

Roland picked up one of the ingots and tossed it in his palm: ”You’ve ground a little off — won’t the weight come up short?”

”And your one mark of pennies — some counts hold eight hundred coins, some nine hundred. When you count them out, don’t you call it one mark all the same? What matters is that the Lohenheim Vault can put the money out on pledge, and its bills can be drawn in any place at all.”

Leon had long been turning over the chain of vaults Lora had spoken of in the old days; the journey to Yorvik had only now made the thing a hand could grip.

Now Lora had said there was gold along the Yarrow, and he had come into the whole treasury of the Empire’s high noon — and the Lohenheim Vault could open its doors.

Lora, at the side, was all delight inside: What I’d had in mind was — dig up the gold and silver in time to come, carry it to Augustburg and the southern provinces for the overseas trade, and turn it into spice and cumin; the gold and silver turned into goods that move on the open market.

Now here came Leon proposing to turn the gold and silver into the vault’s bottom-of-chest capital — and the bills of exchange set against it would carry true buying power, and a far wider reach.

The man had a nose for money, no denying it. All credit to my teaching.

All but Osler left East Manor. Roland went straight off with the gold to find Windsor Yves; Lora, dressed in a guardsman’s coat, went along with her brother.

But at the Minister’s mansion they learned that a guardsman of the train went no farther than the outer hall — and Lora was left standing at the door with Fyfe, Shawn, and the others.

”Well — Captain Odenheim. I was just on my way out the door. To what do I owe the honor of this visit to my humble place?”

Windsor Yves had a great domed forehead, thick lips, and a short chin — the very picture of an honest, simple man, betrayed by nothing but the pair of eyes rolling and flicking about without rest.

”If the Minister’s mansion is a humble place, then there’s no spot of wealth left in Lohenheim.” Roland stood on no ceremony; he sat straight down into the chair.

Windsor Yves’s father was the Lohenheim Minister of Rites — though the Eastern Capital had not seen a royal ceremony in who knew how many years, so the post was a Crown-salary sinecure and nothing more.

Roland had no small talk in him. He went straight at the head of it: ”I’ve come today to buy back the deeds to my family’s two manors. Have your people do the sums, young lord — what does the Odenheim house owe you?”

”Oh? Is the captain saying... the Odenheims have found money?”

And it was no great surprise to Windsor Yves. After all, the Charwick house stood behind them — a daughter married out is a daughter married out, but what if the Duke of Charwick was willing to lend?

”Our family in Augustburg is hardly going to stand by and watch their poor relations of Lohenheim go under. As long as it’s true gold and true silver, what has the young lord to worry over?”

”That’s so enough... Only — my steward is in your prison, and without him the account can’t be settled at the drop of a hat. And then besides, last night my favorite wasn’t in her bed, and I hardly slept a wink. I was just setting out to find a couple of foreign girls to knead the kinks out of me and soothe my lonely heart.”

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Windsor Yves smoothed a temple, and put on the smile that never gets past the skin: ”My sincere apologies. I must be going out. See yourself to the door, won’t you?”

”In all that great Windsor house, not a second man who can count? Young lord — one thing is one thing and another is another. A house that trades as big as yours — and this is the welcome you give a guest?” Roland said it cold:

”Let word of it get about, and the Midland Vault’s good name takes a knock.”

Windsor Yves threw his head back and laughed: ”The third Odenheim — sword and pen together, as they do say! The Midland Vault’s face will be shamed clean off it! And I’m precisely the man who doesn’t care. We’re tradesmen — not you office-holders. What would we be wanting face for? Ha, ha, ha...”

And he truly did walk out on Roland sitting there in the room, strolling off on his own course.

Every word said in that room, Lora standing outside had taken whole into her ears:

The crown had set the pledge rate at sixty percent — but the crown itself had little money to put out; what there was mostly got borrowed away by the great houses. The common folk, who could come by no crown loan at all, had nowhere to go but the private vaults.

And the vaults were not going to keep any court guideline about ”pledge interest not to run past the principal” — the money they put out went out at interest rolling upon interest.

Take East Little: pledged out at ten thousand florins — a living pledge, and they’d have handed you only nine thousand. Come the term, you owed thirteen. Past the term, every month added thirty percent on top of the whole standing sum of principal and interest together — miss it once, you owed sixteen thousand nine hundred; miss it again, the same over from the top. Let one year roll by, and the debt stood three times, five times, what it had begun at.

Webb had been a man packing for flight — what he signed was a dead pledge, and a dead pledge brought East Little its full ten thousand florins. Miss the term on that, and there wasn’t even the chance to roll the interest: the manor became a Windsor holding on the day itself.

So when fat Hugo quoted his six-tenths on the year, that was the figure read straight off the crown’s books — the crown’s own floor, a mercy so stingy it set the great houses howling to gods and men together.

Felix had thrown Windsor Fortune into the cells to cool his heels a few days, the case to be heard only after the first run of the man-hunt was done.

Truly wait for Windsor Fortune to walk out of that cell, and the soup would have gone stone cold.

East Great and East Little sat wedged between two manors of the Windsors’ own — broad farmland, and a little river running through the middle of it. How many years had the Windsor eyes run red over that land — and only now had the chance come rolling to their door.

Buy the manors back from their hands by then, and they’d name a price at the sky’s rim — and you might not even win the right to bargain from the ground.

The night before, Windsor Yves truly had thought of Rowena Ashby — thought of setting his hands around her throat on the spot:

A few days left on the clock — and you, you base thing, must go out playing at the stones!

And now up comes Roland Odenheim to buy back the deeds. On the surface Windsor Yves couldn’t have cared less; in his heart he had cursed the Odenheims and all their line to the seventh generation. Stall! He didn’t believe for one moment that the Odenheims could do a thing to him.

”Young lord Windsor — hold your step!”

Lora stepped out of the line and planted herself in his road: ”The young lord can’t settle by the contract — for want of the steward who knows this pledge paper, is that it?”

”It is. And what of it?... Eh! I must say, you Odenheim guardsmen carry a gall on you — daring to stand in this young lord’s road!”

Windsor Yves was gathering his temper to let it fly when Lora’s hand went up, and her voice with it: ”Take him to the shire court! The man he wants so much to see is waiting for him there.”

The Windsor bully-boys surged in to block her — and Lora’s dagger was out of its sheath like a struck match, pressed hard to Windsor Yves’s ribs:

”Call them off! One word more out of line and the knife goes in. I won’t kill you — but your little brother will never lift his head again the whole rest of your life!”

This... Roland and the Odenheim guardsmen went red to the ears on the spot:

No — never seen this girl before in our lives!

Red ears or no red ears, the grip holding Windsor Yves never once loosened. For this was, after the making of money, the man’s greatest pleasure in life — how could he not be afraid? Up went his hand in a hurry, waving the bully-boys clear:

The Sheriffure was a deal better than the loss of his manhood.

And in the middle of all the flying feathers and the barking, Shawn’s dagger went winging up at the rooftop — struck sparks off the eave’s corner with a clang — and a shape of shadow flicked once and was gone.

Roland’s temper went clean off. He swore:

”Beast! And you still claim the hidden arrow wasn’t your man’s! Yesterday you put one of mine into the dirt — today the same trick over again? Windsor Yves goes to the shire court under guard! Whoever stands in the way — cut him down, no appeal!”

After living through yesterday once, Shawn had carried it with him the whole night — that he had not kept the young lady safe, and had not taken the archer either.

Coming into the Minister’s mansion today, every nerve in the man had stood on watch. That was what picked the shooter off the rooftop for him.

Thank heaven his hand had gone out one step ahead of the shadow.