The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham

She wasn’t sure if it was more frightening or pretentious. It was certainly a large personal investment for an effect that limited the range of performances they could do.
    Cithrin mulled over how much of the performer’s craft relied on excellence in a small range and how much on competence over a wide variety of performances. It was, of course, a single instance of a more general problem, and it could be applied to the bank as well. A certain range of contracts— insurance and loans and partnerships and letters of credit— required relatively little additional expertise. To widen the business into renting out guardsmen or guaranteeing merchandise in bank-owned warehouses required more resources and higher expenses, but it also brought in coin that wouldn’t have come in otherwise.
    The Cinnae girls struck a series of high, gliding trills, matching each other in an uncomforting harmony. The one on Cithrin’s left swirled, her dark skirts rising with the motion to show blue-stained legs. Cithrin saw it and didn’t see it.
    It wasn’t only her mutilated tusks that made Pyk like the sharp-toothed puppeteers. Pyk also wanted to limit what the bank did, restrict it to the few areas in which she was comfortable and then increase her profits by reducing cost. Excellence in a narrow circle. It was safe and it was small and it was absolutely against Cithrin’s instincts.
    “Magistra,” Marcus said. She hadn’t noticed him walking up behind her.
    “Captain,” she said. “How are the guards?”
    “We lost a few,” he said. “That Yardem and I took the worst pay cuts pulled the punch a little. Still, I’m keeping either me or Yardem at the main house until people stop being quite so sour about it. I’d hate to be the captain whose guard stole the safebox.”
    The Cinnae girls scowled, their voices growing a degree harsher at the interruption. Cithrin dug out a few weights of copper and dropped them in the open sack between the performers, then took Marcus’s arm and walked west, toward the seawall.
    “I’m not going to win her over,” Cithrin said. “Not ever. It isn’t just that we dislike each other. We disagree .”
    “That’s a problem.”
    Cithrin felt her mind at work. From the time she’d been old enough to know anything, her world had been the bank. Coins and bills and rates of exchange, how to set prices and how to exploit prices that others had set poorly. It was what she’d had growing up instead of love.
    “I have a proposal I’m looking at from a man who makes his fortune searching for lost things,” Cithrin said. “It isn’t the sort of thing Pyk would be comfortable with, do you think?”
    Marcus looked sideways at her.
    “It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing she would,” he said. “Do banks even do that?”
    “Banks do whatever brings money to banks,” Cithrin said. “Still, it’s given me an idea, and I’d like you to look into it. If you can.”
    “You know you can’t negotiate anything…”
    “I don’t think that would be an issue. And really, nothing may come of this. But if it does, we might be able to bring Pyk enough money to restore the guards.”
    “That’s an interesting thought,” Marcus said. “What kind of business are you looking to start?”
    “Nothing outside the bank. It isn’t really even a new business.”
    “It’s looking for lost things.”
    “Yes.”
    “Something we’ve lost.”
    “Yes.”
    The seawall was whitewashed stone, and looked out over the pale water of the bay. The dropoff where the deeper water began was a blue as profound as indigo. Near the docks, it was shallow enough to be almost the color of sand. A guideboat was leading a shallow-bottomed galley through the reefs and sandbars that protected the city’s seaward face. In the centuries of its life, Porte Oliva had fallen, but never to force.
    Marcus leaned against the wall, looking out over the water. The angle of the sun showed the white hair mixed in among the brown.