Two days later, Fenn burst into the Trust House at mid-morning, out of breath and delighted, the way he always was when he had news nobody else had heard yet.
"There's a notice," he panted. "At the Guild Hall. A big one. Painted."
"What does it say?"
Fenn couldn't read. But he had made a tanner's apprentice read it to him three times until he had it by heart, and now he recited it with his chest puffed out, like a town crier.
"By order of the Guildmaster of Corrinford: until the Harvest Festival, members who draw coin at this branch that was deposited at any other shall pay two parts in a hundred instead of three. Guild coin is safe in every branch of the kingdom. Thirty-one doors, from Corrinford to the sea."
He took a breath.
"And then underneath, smaller, it says: A trust house has one."
Behind his grille, Corvin made a noise like a kettle coming to the boil.
I stood very still behind the counter with my hands folded.
A rate cut, I thought. A limited-time promotional rate cut, with a comparative advertisement underneath.
That's the most bank thing that has happened to me since I arrived in this world.
I feel strangely at home.
"They're mocking us," said Corvin.
"They're competing with us," I said. "It's different."
"How?"
"Nobody bothers competing with something that doesn't matter."
Corvin opened his mouth, closed it, and went back to his columns, muttering.
The Guildmaster came himself that afternoon.
I heard him before I saw him. Borrik, at the door, said "Guildmaster" in a voice I had never heard him use before, respectful and a little nervous, the voice of a big dog greeting a bigger one. Then the door darkened.
Rook Varga was about fifty, and very nearly as broad as the doorway. He had been a fighter once, and his body still remembered it, though it had begun, in the last few years, to soften at the middle. His head was bald and brown on top, with a long grey braid hanging down the back of his neck. His face looked like a boulder that had been left out in the weather for a very long time: broad, creased, broken-nosed, and completely calm. Along his left forearm, below the rolled sleeve, ran a pale crescent of old scars, the clear print of a very large set of teeth.
He was chewing a stick of liquorice root, slowly, like a cow working at its cud.
Behind him, in her green Guild coat, with a ledger under her arm and her face perfectly professional, walked Liesl.
She didn't look at me.
Oh, I thought. Oh no. She's on duty.
Rook Varga walked the length of the Trust House without a word. He looked at the oak counter. He looked at the grilles. He looked at the queue tokens in their tray, and picked one up, turned it over, and put it back. Then he went outside again and stood in front of my painted board for a long time, reading every line, his jaw working steadily on the liquorice.
When he came back in, he stood in front of my counter.
"Miss Halim," he said. His voice was slow and deep, like a cart rolling over a wooden bridge. "Rook Varga. I run the Guild's branch here in Corrinford."
"Good afternoon, Guildmaster," I said. My Service Smile arrived exactly on time. "How may I help you?"
He looked at the smile for a moment, without expression.
"You've got twenty-three accounts," he said.
"Twenty-five, since yesterday."
"Twenty-five." He chewed. "The Guild has eleven hundred members in Corrinford. Thirty-one branches, from here to the sea. Every one of those branches can tell you, before you've finished asking, exactly how much coin a member has, down to the last bit." He spread one huge, scarred hand flat on my counter. "How many branches have you got?"
"One."
"One." He nodded slowly. "Every branch in the kingdom," said Rook Varga, "but yours."
It wasn't a threat. That was the strange thing. He said it the way Corvin said figures. A fact, laid on the counter between us.
"That's true," I said.
He looked faintly surprised. Then, behind the slow chewing, something like interest moved in his small, deep-set eyes.
"Borrik's put his wages with you."
"Yes."
"Adventurers' coin belongs in the Guild, Miss Halim. That's how it's always been. The Guild looks after its own."
"I don't want anyone's coin, Guildmaster," I said. "Only what they decide to bring me. Mister Borrik's Guild Card is still in his pocket, right next to his passbook. He chose to carry both."
Rook Varga looked at me for a long time.
Then he took the liquorice root out of his mouth, examined the chewed end of it, and put it back.
"Hm," he said.
And he turned and walked out, ducking slightly under the lintel, with his grey braid swinging.
Liesl followed him. At the door, for just a moment, she glanced back at me over her shoulder. Her face was still perfectly professional.
But her eyes said, very clearly, I'm sorry.
She came to the Trust House the next morning, just after we opened.
She was in her late twenties, thin and straight-backed, with sharp cheekbones, chapped red hands and dark hair scraped back into a knot so tight it looked painful. Her eyes were red-rimmed. A toddler sat on her hip, sucking two fingers, and a boy of about six held onto the edge of her skirt with both fists and stared at Borrik's axe with enormous eyes.
She didn't take a queue token. She walked straight up to my grille, and stood there, and for a moment didn't seem to know what to say.
"Good morning," I said gently. "How may I help you?"
"The girl at the Guild sent me," she said. "The one with the braid. She said, I can't help you. But I know someone who'll listen." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she steadied it. "My name's Maren Tallow. My husband was Wil Tallow. He went into the Greywood nine days ago with four others. Three came back."
I didn't say anything. In customer service, you learn that some sentences need room after them.
"He had coin in the Guild," said Maren. "Twelve crowns. Eight years of it. He was saving for a cottage with a garden, out past the mill, so the children could have—" She stopped. "I went to the Guild Hall to ask for it. They said only a registered member can draw on a member's coin. I'm not a member. The children aren't members." Her hand tightened on the toddler. "They said if no member claims it within a year, it goes into the Guild's fund for fallen members. That's the charter."
She looked at me with her red-rimmed eyes.
"Twelve crowns. It's his. It's ours. And they're going to keep it."
I couldn't promise her anything. I told her that, honestly, the way I would have told any customer back home whose problem lay with another bank. But I asked her if she would let me come to the Guild Hall with her.
I left Corvin at the counter, and Tamsin on the door, and walked across the square with Maren and her two children. The boy held onto my hand by the time we reached the fountain. I'm not sure when he took it.
At the Guild Hall, Liesl was behind the middle window. She saw us come in, saw me, and her professional smile froze for exactly one heartbeat before it recovered.
"Miss Halim," she said. "Mistress Tallow."
"Good morning, Miss Varn," I said, as formally as she had. "Mistress Tallow would like to make a formal enquiry about her late husband's account. And I would like to read the Guild's charter, please. The section that applies."
Liesl blinked. "The charter?"
"The terms and conditions," I said. "I'd like to read them. All of them."
Some lessons, I thought, you only need to learn once.
Liesl hesitated. Then she reached under the counter and brought out a thick, battered book bound in green leather, and opened it to a page about two-thirds of the way through, and turned it toward me.
I read.
It took a while. The charter was old, and written in long, winding sentences that seemed designed to make your eyes slide off them. But I had spent four years reading the small print on deposit agreements, insurance riders and credit card terms, and the Guild's charter was not, in the end, any worse than those.
Section eleven. Of the coin of members fallen.
It said exactly what Maren had been told. A dead member's coin could only be drawn by a registered member. Unclaimed after a year, it passed to the fund for fallen members, to be spent at the Guildmaster's discretion.
And then, below it, in a short paragraph that looked as if it had been added much later, in slightly different ink:
Section eleven, clause four. A member may, at any time, name an heir in the ledger of his home branch. The coin of a member fallen shall then be paid to that heir upon proof of death.
I read it twice.
Then I looked up at Liesl.
"Did Wil Tallow name an heir?"
Liesl checked the branch ledger. It took her a long time to find the right page, because, I suspected, she already knew the answer and didn't want to reach it.
"No," she said quietly.
"Was he ever asked if he wanted to?"
Liesl didn't answer.
"When a member registers," I said, "does the Guild tell them about clause four?"
The silence went on for a long moment. Behind Liesl, a clerk at the next window had stopped writing.
"No," said Liesl at last, very low. "It's not on the registration form. It's not on anything. Nobody asks for it, so nobody's told."
So the option exists, I thought, and nobody is ever offered it.
Back home, we'd call that a failure of disclosure. And someone would get a very unpleasant letter from the regulator.
Maren had gone very white.
"So if somebody had just told him," she said. "If somebody had just said—"
"Mistress Tallow."
The voice was slow and deep, like a cart rolling over a wooden bridge. Rook Varga stood in the doorway of the back office, his grey braid over his shoulder and the stick of liquorice root motionless between his teeth. I didn't know how long he had been listening.
He walked over to the counter. He looked down at Maren, and at the toddler on her hip, and at the boy holding my hand.
"Wil Tallow," he said. "Took the east trail with Dunn's crew. Good man with a spear." He was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Maren said nothing. Her jaw was tight.
"The charter's the charter," said Rook Varga. "It's written in Aubrelle, by the Grandmaster, not by me. I can't change a word of it. And I can't hand a member's coin to someone who isn't named. If I did it for you, I'd have to do it for every widow and every cousin who walks in claiming to be one, and half of them would be lying." He took the liquorice out of his mouth. "But the fallen members' fund is mine to spend. From that, I can give you two crowns. Today."
Two crowns.
Not twelve. Not the cottage with the garden past the mill. Two.
Maren stared at him for a long time. I could see her deciding whether pride was worth more than two crowns to a woman with two children and no husband.
It wasn't. It never is.
"Thank you, Guildmaster," she said, in a voice like broken glass.
Rook Varga nodded once. He looked at me, briefly, with his small, deep-set eyes, and something passed behind the boulder of his face that I couldn't read at all.
Then he went back into his office and closed the door.
That evening, I sat at Brenna's long table with my pen, Corvin's straightedge, and a fresh sheet of paper, and designed a new form.
Back home, we had a word for it. Ahli waris. The heir. But it was never this simple. Who inherited depended on religion and custom, and it was settled long after the funeral, with letters and witnesses. Here, I decided, it would be one box on a form.
Maren Tallow had needed that box more than anything else in the world.
I ruled the boxes carefully. Account number. Name of the depositor. Name of the heir. Relationship. Signature or thumbprint of the depositor. Officer. At the bottom, in small, clear letters: On proof of death, the balance of this account shall be paid to the heir named above.
Corvin read it over my shoulder.
"Proof of death," he said. "Your stamp can't tell whether a man is dead."
"No," I said. "It can only prove what he agreed to while he was alive. The proof of death comes the ordinary way. A witness. The Guild's own record. The Reeve's register."
"And the heir?"
"Brings the form, and the passbook, and gets the coin." I looked at him. "No charter. No member's roll. No one has to remember to ask for it, because it's on every account, and I'll explain it to every customer myself."
Corvin was quiet for a moment.
"The Guild won't like it," he said.
"No," I said. "I don't suppose they will."
Maren Tallow was the first to sign one.
She came back to the Trust House the next morning with her two crowns from the fallen members' fund, and asked if she could put them somewhere they would be safe. I opened a Savings Account for her, number C1000026. Then I slid the new form across the counter.
"If anything happens to you," I said, "who should this go to?"
She looked at the form for a long time. Then she looked down at her son, who was holding onto the brass rail of the counter and staring at my stamp, and at the toddler asleep on her shoulder.
"Both of them," she said. "Half each."
I wrote it down. Davin Tallow, son. Ellie Tallow, daughter. Half each. Maren signed with a small, careful signature. I signed in the officer's box and stamped across the seam.
Gold.
Maren touched the edge of the form with one chapped fingertip, very lightly.
"Wil would've liked this," she said.
Before she left, I wrote a note on a slip of paper and folded it into her hand. It had Hettie Brook's name on it. The washerwomen on the river steps were always short of hands, and Hettie had told me, loudly, at the market, that she owed me a favor.
I didn't put up a notice. I didn't need to.
Borrik told the Guild Hall. Hettie Brook told the river. And by the end of the week, there was a new kind of customer standing in my queue.
They came in pairs, mostly. A man in leather or chain mail, scarred, smelling of the Greywood, with a Guild Card in his pocket and an awkward look on his face. And beside him, a woman with a basket, or a baby, or a list of questions written on the back of her hand.
They didn't want to move their Guild coin. Most of them kept their Guild Cards for the road. But they opened a Savings Account at the Trust House, and put some of their earnings in it, a little every week. And on every single account, they named an heir.
Wives. Mothers. Children. Once, a younger brother. Once, with a great deal of blushing and a long glare from Borrik at the door, a girl the adventurer was only planning to marry.
"What if she says no?" Borrik asked him.
"Then I'll come back and change it," said the young man, red to the ears.
"You can't change it," said Borrik. "It's gold."
"He can," I said. "He just writes a new form. The new one replaces the old one. Nothing is ever erased. It's all on the record."
The young man looked deeply alarmed at the idea that his romantic history would be preserved in gold for all eternity. He signed anyway.
By the sixth day, I was validating twenty records a day, sometimes more. Not only new accounts: every deposit and withdrawal from the customers we already had, and an heir form for each of them who came back to name one. My headache had become a permanent guest. It moved in at mid-morning, settled behind my eyes, and refused to leave until I had slept. My fingers stayed cold. Twice I caught myself reading the same line of the ledger three times without understanding it.
Corvin watched me without saying anything. But he started bringing a mug of Marga's honey-and-ginger to the counter every day at noon, and setting it down beside my stamp without a word, and taking it away again only when it was empty.
On the seventh evening, after we had closed, there was a knock on the Trust House door.
Liesl stood on the step in her green Guild coat. Not her brown dress. Her coat. She hadn't been home yet.
"Half my morning queue," she said, "is at your door."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"No, you're not."
I thought about it honestly. "No," I agreed. "I'm not. But I'm sorry it's hard for you."
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she let out a breath and sat down on the step, and after a moment, I sat down beside her. The river ran under the bridge in the dark. Somewhere behind us, Tamsin shifted her weight against the doorframe and very politely pretended to be deaf.
"I'm the one who refused Maren Tallow," Liesl said quietly. "At my window. I read her section eleven, the way I've read it a hundred times. And she just stood there with the baby." She stared at the water. "I've worked that counter for four years. I never once read clause four. I never knew it was there."
"Nobody told you," I said.
"That's not an excuse."
"No," I said. "But it's the truth. And now you know."
Liesl was quiet for a long time.
"I believe in the Guild," she said at last. "I do. It's not just a job. It looks after people. The Guildmaster's not cruel, he's just..." She searched for the word. "He's just never had to look at it from the other side of the counter."
"I know."
She turned her head and looked at me. In the lamplight from the door, her freckles stood out across her nose, and her hazel eyes were very steady.
"Don't make me choose, Sekka," she said. "Between the Guild and you."
"I won't," I said.
She searched my face for a moment, the way everyone in this world did, looking for something that my face never showed.
Then, apparently, she found it anyway. She nodded once, stood up, brushed off the back of her green coat, and walked away across the bridge without looking back.
The next morning, there was a new notice at the Guild Hall.
Fenn brought it to me word for word, as usual, having made the same tanner's apprentice read it to him four times this time, because it was longer.
"By order of the Guildmaster of Corrinford: under the charter, section eleven, clause four, any member may name an heir in the ledger of this branch, at any window, at no charge. On proof of death, the member's coin shall be paid to that heir. Every clerk of this branch shall offer this to every member at registration, and to every member who asks."
Fenn looked up at me, scandalized.
"They copied you!"
Behind his grille, Corvin had gone very still. Then he slowly put down his pen, which was the first time I had ever seen him put down a pen in the middle of a column.
"He's taken your idea," he said. "A week after you had it. And painted it on a wall."
"Yes," I said.
"You're not angry."
I thought about it.
Back home, when one bank launched a new savings product with a free gift or a better rate, the bank across the street had copied it within a week. Sometimes within a day. We used to joke at my branch that the fastest way to find out whether a promotion was any good was to check whether our competitors had stolen it by Friday.
If they copy it, our branch manager used to say, it means it worked.
"No," I said. "I'm not angry."
"Why not?"
"Because every adventurer in Corrinford is about to name an heir," I said. "Including the eleven hundred who will never set foot in this building. That's a good thing, Corvin. That's a very good thing." I paused. "And because it means the Guildmaster read his own clause four for the first time, too. It's only his branch, for now. The other thirty would need the Grandmaster in Aubrelle. But it's a start."
Corvin looked at me for a long moment over his cracked spectacles.
"You're a terrible competitor," he said.
"I know."
"It's very annoying."
"I know."
But I noticed he went back to his column with the corner of his mouth turned up.
The Guild's new clause didn't help Maren Tallow. It wasn't written to look backward. Wil's twelve crowns stayed in the Guild's ledger, under the name of a man who had never been asked the one question that mattered, and in a year they would go into the fund for fallen members, to be spent at the Guildmaster's discretion.
I thought about that a great deal over the next few days.
I thought about it when Maren came by on her way home from the river steps, her chapped hands even redder from Hettie's washing tubs, to deposit three bits of her first wages. I thought about it when her son, Davin, stood on tiptoe at my counter to watch the gold run along the edge of her passbook and asked if he could have a stamp too when he was big. And I thought about it at night, by Brenna's oven, when my head hurt too much to sleep.
Nobody can fix everything, I told myself. Not even a bank. Especially not a bank. You fixed the next one. That has to be enough.
It was almost enough.
Day 26. Depositors: 47. Days remaining until the Harvest Festival: 57.
Achievement: 47%.
I looked at the number for a long time, by the light of the oven.
Forty-seven. Almost half. With fifty-seven days still left.
At this rate, I thought, we'll pass a hundred with weeks to spare.
Which is exactly what I used to think at my branch, said a smaller, quieter voice inside my head, every single quarter. Right up until something happened.
I closed the notebook.
The next morning, the queue at the Trust House was shorter than it had been for a week.
Not by much. Two or three people, perhaps. I noticed it the way you notice a draft in a warm room: not quite enough to name, just enough to make you look around for an open window.
At mid-morning, the turnip seller came in to deposit her takings from the market. She was cheerful, as she always was now, and chatted to me through the grille the whole time I was writing her entry.
Then, as I signed in the officer's box, she leaned closer and lowered her voice.
"I don't believe a word of it, mind," she said. "Not a word. But I heard it at the well this morning, so I thought you ought to know."
My pen stopped.
"Heard what?"
The turnip seller glanced over her shoulder at the queue. Then she leaned closer still.
"That nobody's ever actually seen inside your vault," she whispered. "That it's empty. That the foreign girl's been sending all our coin east, a little at a time, in her clean coat. And that one of these mornings, we'll all come down to the bridge, and the door will be locked, and she'll be gone."
I pressed my stamp across the seam.
The ink turned gold, exactly the way it always did.
My face, as always, didn't move.