The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [46]
Valentine looked at her. “You weren’t listening?”
She shook her head. “A weird echo. It made it hard to hear anything. It happened with Edgar before.” She paused, thoughtfully. “And before that, with his cousin.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
“It’s not important now. What happened?”
“Wyndham-Vie wanted to hold Beckett. Mr. Stitch intervened.” He unfolded the parchment Stitch had given him, and read it. “We’re meant to investigate eighteen-twenty Corimander Street. Beckett thinks Wyndham-Vie took something important from it.” He shouted the address up to Harry, the driver.
“What’s that?” She’d heard Valentine fussing with the parchment.
“Stitch gave it to me. It’s a Writ of Search. For any and all holdings of…the Royal Academy of Sciences?”
There was a long pause, as the coach rattled off.
“How…” Skinner’s voice was very soft. “How was he?”
Valentine grimaced, and was glad that the knocker couldn’t see his expression. Still, he supposed she could hear it in his voice anyway. “Bad. I don’t…I don’t know if it was the disease or the drug…” He took a deep breath and unknowingly let a small piece of himself dissolve away. A tiny vein of iron replaced what he lost. “Stitch will see to him. We’ve got work to do.”
Sixteen: The House on Corimander Street
Paper money was introduced to Trowth in the late seventeenth century. Until that time, gold, silver and copper had been the most widely-used currencies, and an individual coin was, literally, worth its weight. The coins were kept in a variety of banks in the neighborhood that was, at the time, called Bankhouse. The banks competed with each other to offer the most secure storage of their patrons’ wealth: huge subbasements were dug beneath the buildings, and impregnable vaults constructed. Towards the end of the century, more than sixty banks had built over a hundred thick-walled vaults with great iron doors to store piles of gold.
When Owen I Gorgon took the throne, he immediately had all of the wealth in Bankhouse seized. Patrons were first issued promissory notes, which were gradually replaced by printed bills set to the store of gold in the newly-built Imperial Reserve. Ostensibly, this was because the Reserve was more secure even than the vaults in Bankhouse. In fact, it was because Owen’s predecessor, James Agon I Daior, had emptied the Royal Treasury.
The consequence of Owen Gorgon’s actions, which would be known later as the Great Forfeiture, were numerous: firstly, Trowth once again had a viable treasury to fund government projects. Secondly, all of the vaults in Bankhouse were suddenly empty. Thirdly, all of the wealthy families that had made their homes in the district gradually relocated to the district called New Bank, where the view was better and the houses were much nicer.
The district was still technically called Bankhouse: a pedestrian would be able to see the name written on every verdigris-covered bronze street sign, had they still been legible. The citizens of Trowth simply referred to it as Old Bank. In the wake of the Forfeiture, a variety of both public and private interests found uses for the extremely secure Vaults in Old Bank. The Vaults under Montgomery Station, for example, would eventually find use with the Committee for Public Safety as holding cells. Some would be used by the Ministry for Internal Security, others by the War Powers Ministry, which was responsible for funding the pressgangs.
The Vault at eighteen-twenty Corimander Street was not marked. It didn’t even look like a vault so much as it looked like the town-house of a moderately wealthy family, able to afford to purchase the property but not to invest very much money in its upkeep. The stone walls were dirty, the heavy wooded sills and shutters were black and rotten from salt air. The entire upper stories had a disused look about them, which may have been appropriate; if the building was used solely as a Vault, most of the interest would be invested in the lower-level floor-space.
“Come with me,” Valentine implored. He climbed out of the coach, brandishing his