SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The room upstairs had been built for a quieter kind of business than the one going on below it. Thick rugs, low couches, and a wall of glass that looked out over the main street and turned all that noise into something you could watch without having to hear.

Maela Sorrel poured three glasses without asking whether anybody wanted one, which Trafalgar noted as a small, expert piece of rudeness. She was somewhere past forty and had clearly decided that suited her. Deep blue-black hair pinned up loosely, pale gold eyes, faint scales along the backs of both wrists that caught the lamplight whenever she moved her hands.

”Maela Sorrel,” she said, handing the first glass across. ”I speak for the Canal Houses, which is a long way of saying that when the money in this city has an opinion, it comes out of my mouth.”

”Trafalgar du Morgain. This is Rhosyn.”

”I know both of those already.” She dropped back onto the couch and folded her legs under her. ”You landed yesterday, you had breakfast with Corvyn’s little observer, Nerith kept you an hour, and you were up at the Ancients’ wall this afternoon. Ondrek showed you the water, I assume.”

”He did.”

Maela turned her glass a slow half turn against her knee. ”Now, before we start on anything dreary, let me be a decent host. Would either of you like company sent up? The house is good and I don’t make my guests stand in a queue for it.”

Rhosyn answered before Trafalgar could work out how he wanted to. ”I’m fine, thank you.”

”You’re sure? I’d hate to guess wrong at you.” Maela’s tone stayed perfectly light. ”Whatever you’d want, I can have it here in five minutes. Which way anyone leans has never mattered to me, and it certainly doesn’t in my own building. I’ve never seen the appeal of narrowing my options.”

”Still no.”

”A shame, but noted.” She looked over at Trafalgar with the same open expression. ”And you?”

”Could we move on to something else instead?” Trafalgar leaned back into the couch. ”I’d rather spend the hour on the succession, if you’ll let me.”

”Now that is the most Morgain thing anybody’s said to me this year.” Maela laughed, and the laugh was genuine, which was somehow worse. ”Go on, then. Ask me your questions and I’ll be enormously pleasant to you.”

She wasn’t lying about that part.

The next twenty minutes were the easiest conversation Trafalgar had had since arriving in Meraval.

She answered everything. She talked about the leased stretches of channel and who held which, about the customs schedules and why the second ring hated them, about Corvyn’s fleet eating a third of the city’s freight capacity and calling it defence spending.

She was funny about Ondrek, warm about Nerith, and gave the impression she found the whole succession slightly exhausting in the way one finds a long family dinner exhausting.

And when he counted it up afterward, she had told him nothing at all.

”So the Canal Houses haven’t chosen anyone,” Trafalgar said.

”Not so far.”

”Are you close to it?”

”I wouldn’t say close.” Maela reached over and topped up his glass without being asked. ”You have to understand my position. I don’t have one house behind me, I have eleven, and eleven families with money all want different things on the same afternoon. Anything I commit to, I have to carry to them and survive the argument. So I’ve been careful.”

’That is a beautiful sentence,’ Trafalgar thought. ’It explains everything, it commits to nothing, and she’s clearly used it before.’

”That’s a good answer,” he said. ”It isn’t a true one.”

Maela stopped turning her glass.

”Eleven families,” Trafalgar went on. ”Every one of them holds its charter from House Myrrhvale. The leases, the customs slots, the water your barges run on, all of it comes down from this castle and can go back up to it. You’re not eleven allies of this family. You’re eleven vassals of it. The day somebody finally sits down as head, that person tells the Canal Houses what they’re doing, and the Canal Houses do it. There won’t be an argument for you to survive. You’ll be reading out an instruction.”

For the first time all evening she took a moment before answering, and when she did, the pleasantness had gone somewhere else in her voice.

”Yes,” Maela said. ”All of that is correct, and I’d have preferred you took another week to get there.”

”Then why bother telling me the other version?”

”Because it’s the polite one, and because I like knowing who needs it.”

She set the glass down on the low table between them and left her hand resting beside it.

”There’s nobody in that chair, Lord Morgain. That’s the only reason a woman like me is worth an evening of anyone’s time. Two years ago I signed what I was handed and thanked whoever handed it to me, and the morning after this ends I’ll go back to doing exactly that. So yes, I’ve been careful. I’ve been careful with the only stretch of my life where anybody in Meraval has had to ask me for something instead of telling me.”

He tried it from the other side. ”What would it take?”

”Oh, I’d want to see how it develops.” Maela’s shoulder rose and fell. ”Whoever ends up head of this family, my houses still have to trade with them the morning after. That’s a very long relationship to gamble on a guess.”

”And if you never guess?”

”Then I’ll be on excellent terms with whoever wins, and so will all eleven of them.”

Trafalgar drank, mostly to give himself somewhere to put his face.

’She’s not holding out for a better offer, because she doesn’t need one. Every faction in this city is bidding for her and none of them has thought to ask what it costs her to sit still. Nothing. It costs her nothing. She gets courted by all four sides for two years and then walks in behind the winner on the last day and gets thanked for her patience.’

He turned it over.

’She told me herself that everything her houses hold comes down from this castle, and every bit of it runs through a signature. Nerith spent our whole meeting signing customs paperwork. She didn’t mention it once, and she wouldn’t. If the leases get slow, if the schedules turn inconvenient, if eleven families start losing a little money every week and none of them can prove that anyone did it on purpose, then sitting still has a price on it. And she can’t afford one. This gap is the only power she’s ever going to hold, and she can’t spend it bleeding.’

”You’ve gone quiet on me,” Maela said.

”Just working through what you told me.”

”You’re doing nothing of the sort.” She tilted her head, and there was a light in her face that hadn’t been there while she was being charming. ”You’ve just realised that the only way to move me is to make standing still cost something. Haven’t you.”

Trafalgar didn’t answer that, which was an answer.

Maela laughed, delighted, and rapped her knuckles twice against the arm of the couch. ”Two years. Two years, Lord Morgain, and every single one of them has come at me with an offer. Better rates, better slots, a seat at the table when it’s over. You’re the first one who’s looked at me and thought about the bill instead.”

”I haven’t done anything.”

”You’ve thought about it in my drawing room, which I found more entertaining than anything else that’s happened this week.” She lifted her glass to him. ”Come back and see me. I like people who are honest about being a problem.”

They were most of the way back to the castle before either of them spoke.

The transport tunnel between the third ring and the centre ran quiet at that hour, the lights along it dimmed to something closer to night, and through the reinforced glass the water was simply black. Trafalgar could feel the whole day sitting in his shoulders.

”She gave us nothing,” Rhosyn said.

”True...” Trafalgar rubbed the back of his neck. ”A profitable day, though, all things considered. Corvyn, Kesh, Ondrek and Maela in one go, and now I know what each of them is protecting.”

”And none of them told you anything true.”

”Ondrek did, but only because he thinks the truth works in his favour.” He watched the dark slide past the glass. ”Let’s go to bed and tomorrow I’d like to find out what everyone in this city seems to have decided not to look at.”