He told her he didn't mind if she stayed a few days before he went to bed. She told him she woudl try to be gone in a day or two after she went to the bank, got some jin out, and found somewhere to stay. He told her she should cash it all out if there was much in there, and there was. In his living room, she emptied out her barrel bag with the oostersteel locks and the peacock green terraneen leather accents to bring along with her, but she didn't know where any networked banks were in Misk, and Volkov was already gone when she woke up.
When he told her she could stay, Arnica thought he might have been asking. When he got back from wherever he was, she would ask him where a bank was. In the meantime, she combed her hair out, took a shower, and washed off the feeling of whiskal and gincho. Tow months ago, when the year turned, she told herself she was going to drink less this year, in 3096, and try to find someone who didn't work for the government to fuck and date and maybe marry, even, the way civlians did. If only just to spite her mother, Vikram Volkov, and maybe two or three guardsmen. So far, it seemed unlikely either resolution would stick.
She found tea in Volkov’s kitchen when she searched, though she believed he didn’t know it was there, for she found it in a container of mixed steeping bags: coffee, nutrient packets, and chocolate. There wasn’t much else. Three ji eggs in the refrigerator, a triangle of butter, and some very hard, very cold bread that likely would have succumbed to mold long ago in any other residence. On the counter, there was a pack of toast-sheets, a jar of nut butter, and three apples. She ate nothing. Perhaps he had plans for the items. She didn’t feel much like eating, anyway.
Instead, Arnica Osten sat on the sofa on which Dunne Volkov slept the night before, drank stale Castian red tea, and sorted through a pile of newspapers and laminate magazines on the table in front of the sofa. It was not a sofa table.
She supposed he was the King. They were the king's old newspapers and it was hte king's scratchy, synthetic wool sofa. It was the king's stale tea. Or it would be soon. Maathen wouldn't live much longer. A month seemed optimistic. He looked like a corpse only 24 hours ago, when he had summoned her to his bedroom, asked her to mix and congeal the bloodseal, and told her to bring it to Misk.
Sometime around eleven o’clock in the morning, the front door to 7 Yilmisk began to unlock, and Arnica considered she might have been scared had she been any less tired or any less numb, and so instead, she told herself that it must be Volkov, himself, for who else had a key?
Except she already knew the answer to that. That boy. What was his name? Omi? Omni. It was Omni. Definitely. He was wearing the same shirt he had been the night before. So horribly chartreuse. Arnica considered she might have hated chartreuse more than any other color and a good portion of the known world. But who didn't?
"You're still here?"
Omni asked, thouhg she didn't think he intended it to sound how it did.
"That's cool. Guess you are staying in Misk for a while. It's not so bad here, really."
He shrugged and smiled and she smiled back because he seemed nervous. She wasn't sure why or if he was just always a little bit nervous.
"Dunne here?"
"No."
She shook her head.
"I'm not sure where he is."
"Oh. I was gonna see if he wanted to get some food."
The boy sat down in the half-shredded armchair in front of the window and kicked his feet up on the side of the mantle of a shuddered fireplace.
"You wanna get breakfast? You ever had Misk style crepes?"
"I don't remember them."
She set down a two month old issue of Techne> on a stack of old specialty magazines. She wanted to ask what Volkov was doing with so many magazines. She didn't.
"Sure. Do you happen to know where a UCC branch is around here?"
"What's that?"
The boy's eyes narrowed.
"Ohhhh...shit yeah, yeah, the big bank. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. You want me to take you there? We can get food over there--it'll be better, I bet."
Thank you. If you don't have anything else to do, I would really appreciate it."
"Nah."
He shook his head.
"I gotta work at three, but nothin till then. And Gowri's still at Thallia's so..."
He rolled his eyes and she didn't ask who Thallia was.
It was a twenty-minute walk to the bank, a grand historic building in the Middle Iskan style with clearly reproduced moon windows and an obviously rebuilt patch of stone that had only been sanded to mimic the smooth, grey sublimity of miskstone. The boy told her he would wait for her outside, because he wasn’t dressed for the bank. Arnica smiled and wondered if she was.
When she reached the counter, also a replica of some long extinct ore, the teller ran her identification and her account number, narrowed his gaze, chewed the inside of his cheek, and frowned. He looked at her for a good twenty seconds before he spoke and when he did, he told her her accounts had been frozen by the Unified Ministry. It was a very, very unusual occurrence. And when it did happen, it was in instances of financial crime, and yet her account was not marked for crime, at all, only frozen and so, regrettably, there was nothing he could do for her at the moment but submit a request for more information. She declined the offer. She didn’t really need any more information.
300,589 jin frozen, 87 jin loose in her wallet.
Arnica Osten had been very many things in her life, most of them sad, but never poor.
Omni Sindal, who was neither Dunne Volkov's assistant nor son nor friend, asked her if she was alright when she stepped back into the cold breeze of the 2nd month, and she pretended she was.
It was unlikely the boy even had 87 jin to his name.
She told him she would pay for breakfast in exchange for his service as a guide.
It couldn't possibly be more than 10j. It was Misk.