The Sangold League

The Sangold League comes out of the desert kingdom in the far south, and it is the world's purse. Exchange, credit, transfer across borders — silver moves back and forth in its ledgers, and the nobles of the seven realms, the Church, even the royal house, all owe Sangold either a favour or a debt.

Its skill lies in a system of accounts. A sum can travel from the desert to the icefield without a cart being harnessed on the way: the payer hands his silver marks across the counter in the city of Sangold, the payee draws them at the branch counter in the city of the Mute March on a tally-note with a matching number, and the books of the two places are reconciled once a season. The tally-note has three coloured threads woven into the paper and cannot be copied; where the accounts do not agree, Sangold swallows the difference itself. That rule was laid down generations ago, and it is where its credit comes from.

The League keeps mercenaries and assassins beneath it, and they are entered in the same ledger, under the heading “collections”. Sangold men make no secret of the item when they talk business; they will raise it themselves — they hold that setting the price out plainly saves trouble on both sides.

But there is a gap in it: no right to strike coin. The dies are in Ironhold's hands. A power that can move all the money and cannot make any, and that dynasty which can make money and is shorter of it every year, must sooner or later show their hands.

The Sangold men have a saying of their trade, copied onto the last page of their contracts for generations:

Money knows no master, only collateral.

Their creed runs along the same line: any disaster can be bought. The king is dead, and what they are working out is which heir is the better wager; the wall has cracked, and that is a matter for the border and has nothing to do with the books. So when a representative of Sangold puts 5,000 silver marks straight into a princess's court, what he is staking is which side that princess will stand on later.