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tan slopes below. “Most of the mines are low enough they can be worked year round.”
    “What kind of mines?” he asked, and I stared. What kind of highsider wouldn’t know the answer to that, let alone someone supposedly involved with a banking house? Most families who’d made it big in Ninavel had done so through the mines or the selling of their products. Banking house, my ass. Unless...maybe Kiran was newly come to Ninavel? But no, from the way he’d gaped around at the desert beyond the city gate like a Tainter on his first job highside, I’d swear he’d never set foot outside Ninavel in his life.
    “Gold, silver, copper, iron, you name it, these mountains have got it.” I kept my tone casual, but watched his face. “Why else do you think old Sechaveh went to all the trouble of building the city here in the first place?”
    Just for a second, surprise showed in his eyes. But then they turned thoughtful, and he nodded. “Oh yes, I see. He founded the city here and then could make his money back from the mines.”
    “In vaultfuls,” I said. What other reason could there be? The Painted Valley held nothing else but sand and sagebrush. Ninavel had to import or conjure everything needed to survive. Without the enormous wealth from the mines, the city would’ve failed in a season. Instead, Sechaveh and his heirs were now richer than the most outrageous tales of Varkevian sultans, and plenty of others had clawed their way to riches on his coat hem in the hundred years since he’d founded Ninavel. Sechaveh himself was a popular tavern topic streetside. Some said he had to be a mage, arguing no man could live as long as he had without magic. Others disagreed, pointing out his large numbers of descendants and the well-known fact that mages can’t have kids. They said Sechaveh was so wealthy he could pay for immortality the way other men paid for healing charms.
    “About the mountains...” Kiran’s face shone with eager interest. I waved a hand at him to continue. So long as he stuck to questions any new hire straight from an inner district might ask, he could ask away. “What you said this morning—do you really go alone up there?”
    “Yup.”
    His eyes went wide as a snow owl’s. “But why?”
    “Convoys only need real climbing outriders in the early and late seasons. In high summer, it’s no problem to travel through. A man’s gotta eat the rest of the year round.” I didn’t bother telling him the real reason for my solo trips. I couldn’t imagine anything better than a summer spent climbing in the Whitefires. I’d long since given up trying to explain the allure of the high peaks to my city friends. Most of them just thought I was crazier than a rabid kitfox.
    “But...” He frowned. “How do you make money, then, if you’re not with a convoy?”
    “The Whitefires hold plenty of profitable goods, if you know where to look.” His confused frown didn’t change, so I went on. “Take carcabon stones. Charm dealers’ll pay good coin for any big enough to boost a charm’s power, and the cliffs here are studded with ’em. Chefs drool over cloudberries, midwives want jullan leaves...you get the idea. I find stuff, bring it back, sell it and resupply, then head back up. Until the season’s over and the winter storms come, and then nobody goes up there until spring.”
    “Oh! I never...” He cut himself off, real short. Then tried to hide it by rattling on. “What do you do in the winter?”
    If he’d been about to say he’d never known where highside delicacies like cloudberries came from, then thank Khalmet he’d shut up in time. Old Harken wasn’t even pretending to sleep, now. I realized Kiran was still waiting for my answer.
    “If I have a good enough summer, I don’t have to do anything in the winter.” Which wasn’t a lie, exactly, but I certainly wasn’t going to get into details on the shadow games I played in the city. Especially since they’d all involved Jylla.
    “Ho,