The Dragon's Path

  Geder popped the sausage into his mouth. It tasted salty and rich, with an almost occult aftertaste of sugar and smoke. He’d never eaten anything like it before, and if it had been made of lizard eyes and bird feet, he’d have eaten them anyway. They tasted that good. Of the sixteen communal plates that the slaves carried around the table, this was his favorite. Although the green leaves with red spots and oil was a close second.

  “I’m not looking,” he said through his full mouth, “for something that will get me gold.”

  “Honor, then.”

  Geder smiled ruefully.

  “Speculative essay isn’t something that gives a man great honor. At least not among my people. No, I’m going because I’ve heard about a thing that existed a long time ago, and I wanted to see what I could find out about it. Write down what I’ve learned and what I suspect, so that someday someone can read it and add what they know.”

  And, he thought, stay away from the turmoil in Camnipol and find a corner at the farthest edge of the world where the trouble’s least likely to reach me.

  “And then?”

  Geder shrugged.

  “That’s all,” he said. “What more would there be?”

  The Jasuru prince frowned, drank from a mug either cast in the shape of a massive skull or else made from one, and then grinned, pointing a long worked-silver talon at him.

  “You’re a holy man,” the prince said.

  “No. God no. Not me.”

  “A cunning man, then. A philosopher.”

  Geder was about to protest this too, but then caught himself.

  “Maybe a philosopher,” he said.

  “A man, his mount, and the horizon. I should have seen it. This project is a spiritual matter.”

  The prince lifted his massive arm, barked something that sounded like an order. The hundred men and women at the long tables—knights or only sword-and-bows, Geder couldn’t be sure—raised a shout, laughing and sneering and pushing one another. A few long moments later, a pair of guards appeared at the edge of the square, each with an iron chain in his hand. The chains led back into the darkness, slack in a way that left Geder thinking they were mostly ceremonial.

  The woman who came into the light at the end of the chains looked ancient. The broadness of her forehead and the swirling black designs on her skin marked her as a Haavirkin even before she lifted her long, three-fingered hand in salute. Geder had met Haavirkin before when the elected king of Hallskar sent ambassadors to court, but he’d never seen one as old or with the same sense of utter dignity.

  The guards walked before the woman as she approached the prince. Geder couldn’t tell from the noise of the crowd whether they were mocking her or celebrating her presence. Her eyes swept over Geder, sizing him up.

  “This is my seer,” the prince said to him. And then to the woman, “This man is our guest. His travels the Keshet on a spiritual matter.”

  “He does,” the woman agreed.

  The prince grinned like she’d given him a present. He put his hand on Geder’s arm in an oddly intimate gesture.

  “She is yours for tonight,” the prince said. Geder frowned. He hoped that this wasn’t a question of having a bed servant, though he had heard stories about that kind of thing from old stories about the Keshet. He coughed and tried to think of a way clear, but the seer only lifted her hand. Another servant hurried forward with a wooden stool, and the Haavirkin sat on it, staring at Geder’s face.

  “Hello,” Geder said to her, his voice uncertain.

  “I know you,” she said, then turned and spat on the ground. “When I was a girl, I had a dream about you.”

  “Um,” Geder said. “Really?”

  “She is very good,” the prince said. “Very wise.”

  “My uncle had an illness,” the seer said, “only it had no signs. No fever, no weakness, nothing, so there was nothing we knew to cure.”

  “But then how can you say he was sick?”

  “It was a dream,” the seer said patiently. “He ate bitter herbs to cure himself, and afterward the water he drank tasted sweet. But there wasn’t anything in it but water. The sweet was in him, and it wasn’t sweet really. Only that it wasn’t bitter. It didn’t have the power to cure anything.”

  The seer took his hand, her long fingers exploring the joints of his fingers as if she were searching for something. She lifted his palm to her nose and sniffed at it. Geder’s skin crawled, and he tried to pull away.

  “You will see her thrice,” she said, “and you will be different people each time. And each time, she will give you what you want. You have already seen her once.”

  The seer lifted her eyebrows, as if to say, Do you understand?

  That was supposed to be about me? Geder thought.

  “Thank you,” Geder said, and she nodded as much to herself as to anyone else. The dancing torchlight made the black marks on her skin seem to shift with a motion of their own.

  “That’s all?” the Jasuru prince said.

  “That is all that I have for him,” the seer said mildly. She rose to her feet, the chains leading from her neck jingling. “You and I will speak, but later.”

  She made her obeisance, turned, and walked back out through the low scrub and dust, the wooden tables of Keshet warriors and shadows. The chain bearers followed her as if she were leading them. The silence was broken only by the sound of the chain and the mutter of fire from the torches. Geder thought he saw surprise, even shock, on the faces of the knights, but he didn’t understand it. Something had just happened, but he couldn’t say what.

  The prince scratched at the scales along his jaw and neck like a Firstblood stroking a beard. He grinned, sharp dark teeth like a wall.

  “Eat! Sing!” he called, and the knights’ voices and clamor rose again as they had before. Geder took another sausage and wondered what he’d just missed.

  The feast left Geder’s stomach unsettled. He lay in his tent listening to the soft summer wind moving through the desert, and failing to will himself to sleep. He heard his squire’s soft snores, smelled the fine Keshet dust that seemed to get into everything, and tasted the spiced meats from the feast, the pleasure of them long since gone. Moonlight pressed in at the edges of the tent, turning the darkness silver. He felt restless and torpid at the same time.

  The sweet was in him, and it wasn’t sweet really. Only that it wasn’t bitter. It didn’t have the power to cure anything.

  Of all the seer’s ramblings, those were the words that gnawed at him, as troubling as the spices. It seemed to him now that the Haavirkin woman had been talking about Vanai and Camnipol. If he thought about it, he could still feel the scar healing in his leg where the bolt had struck him. In exactly the same way, the smallest shift of his attention could remind him of the black knot in his chest that had bent him down on the long ride back from Vanai. He couldn’t quite recall the shape of his dead mother’s face, but the silhouette of the woman against the flames towering above Vanai was as clear to him as the tent around him now. Clearer.

  The celebrations and revels that had greeted him in Camnipol should have washed that away, and for a time they had. But not forever. It had been sweet—he’d thought at the time that it was—but maybe it hadn’t been. Certainly it had felt glorious when it was going on. He’d risen in the court. He’d saved the city from the mercenary insurrection. And yet here he was, in exile again, fleeing from political games he didn’t understand. And as unpleasant as the unease in his belly might be, it was still better than the nightmares of fire.

  In truth, what had happened in Vanai wasn’t his fault. He had been used. The lost sleep, the constant dread, even the suspicion that during all his revels and celebrations Alan Klin and his friends had been laughing down their sleeves at him. They were the scars he bore.

  He turned the thought over in his mind. The court games that soaked the Kingspire and Camnipol weren’t anything he’d ever chosen to put himself into. The relief he’d felt coming back from Vanai to adul
ation and approval were hollow to him now, and at the same time, he wanted it back. It had let him forget the voice of the flames for a little while. But like the Haavirkin seer’s dreamed water, the sweetness hadn’t been sweet, just relief from the bitterness. And it hadn’t cured anything.

  If he only understood what had happened, if he could see through the games and the players, he’d know who was really to blame. And who his own friends really were.

  He shifted to his side, pulling his blankets with him. They smelled of dust and sweat. The night was too warm to justify them, but he found the cloth comforting. He sighed and his belly gumbled. The Haavirkin seer had been right in her way. Maybe she was as wise at the prince said. Geder considered finding her in the morning, asking her more questions. Even if it were all superstition and nonsense, it would give him something to think about in the long, isolated nights in the desert.

  He didn’t notice that he was falling asleep until he woke. Sunlight glowed the fresh yellow of wildflowers, and the brief dew made the world smell cooler than it was. He pulled on his hose and a tunic. It was rougher wear than he’d had last night, but he wasn’t going to a princely feast. And after all, this was the Keshet. Standards were likely different. The wooden buildings still stood, and Geder marched out toward them, his gaze shifting, looking for the sentries. He didn’t see them.

  He didn’t see anyone.

  When he reached the structures, the great open square where he’d dined less than a day before, they were deserted. When he called out, no one answered. It would have been like a children’s song where they’d all been ghosts, except he could follow the footprints and smell the horse droppings and see the not-quite-dead coals still lurking white and red in the firepit. The horses were gone, the men and women, but the wagons remained. The heavy winches that the prince’s servants used to construct their sudden towns were still where they had been. He even found the long chains that the seer had worn, wrapped around a bronze spool and dropped in the dust.

  He went back to his own camp, where his squire was just putting down a meal of stewed oats and watered cider. Geder sat at his field table, looking at the tin bowl, then up at the abandoned camp.

  “They left in the middle of the night,” Geder said. “Took what they could carry without making noise and slipped away in the darkness.”

  “Perhaps the prince was robbed and murdered by his men,” his squire said. “Things like that happen in the Keshet.”

  “Lucky we weren’t caught up in it,” Geder said. His oats were honey-sweet. His cider had a bite to it, despite the water. His squire stood quietly by while Geder ate and the other servants struck camp. The sun was hardly two handspans above the horizon when Geder finished. He wanted to be away, back on his own path, and the eerily silent camp left well behind.

  He did wonder, though, what else the Haavirkin had seen, and what she had told her prince after the foreign guest had left.

  Marcus

  I would prefer to give it to Magistra bel Sarcour directly,” the man said. “No disrespect, sir, but my contracts don’t have your thumb on them.”

  He was a smallish man, the top of his head coming no higher than Marcus’s shoulder, and his clothes smelled like his shop: sandalwood, pepper, cumin, and fennel. His face was narrow as a fox, and his smile looked practiced. The lower rooms of the Medean bank of Porte Oliva had Marcus, Yardem, Ahariel the stout Kurtadam, and the ever-present Roach. The weight of their blades alone was likely as much as the spicer, and yet the man’s disdain for them radiated like heat from a fire.

  “But since she isn’t here,” Marcus said, “I’m what you’ve got to work with.”

  The spicer’s eyebrows rose and his tiny little lips pressed thin. Yardem coughed, and Marcus felt a stab of chagrin. The Tralgu was right.

  “However,” Marcus went on, “if you’ll accept our hospitality for a few minutes, sir, I’ll do my best to find her.”

  “That’s better,” the man said. “Perhaps a cup of tea while I wait?”

  I could kill you with my hands, Marcus thought, and it was enough to evoke the smile that etiquette called for.

  “Roach?” Marcus said. “If you could see our guest is comfortable?”

  “Yes, Captain,” the little Timzinae said, jumping up. “If you’ll come this way, sir?”

  Marcus stepped out the door and onto the street, Yardem following him as close as a shadow. The evening sun was still high in the western sky. The pot of tulips in front of the bank was in full, brilliant bloom, the flowers sporting bright red petals veined with white.

  “You take the Grand Market,” Yardem said, “I’ll check the taproom.”

  Marcus shook his head and spat on the paving stones.

  “If you’d rather find her, I can go to the Grand Market,” Yardem said.

  “Stay here,” Marcus said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Marcus walked down the street. Sweat pooled between his shoulder blades and down his spine. A yellow-faced dog looked up at him from the shadow of an alleyway, panting and too hot to bark. The streets were emptier now than they would be after sunset, the light driving people to shelter more effectively than darkness. Even the voices of the beggars and street sellers seemed overcooked and limp.

  The taproom was cool by comparison. The candles were unlit to keep from adding even that little extra heat to the darkness, and so despite the brightness of the street, the tables of the common room were dim. Marcus squinted, willing his eyes sharper. There were a dozen people there of several races, but none of them was her. From the back, Cithrin laughed. Marcus threaded his way across the common room, following the familiar tones of her voice to the draped cloth that kept the private tables private.

  “… would have the effect of rewarding the most reliable debtors.”

  “Only until they start becoming unreliable,” a man’s voice said speaking more softly. “Your system encourages debtors to extend, and if that goes on long enough, you change good risks to bad.”

  “Magistra,” Marcus said. “If you have a moment?”

  Cithrin pulled aside the cloth. As Marcus had expected, the half-Jasuru man was with her. Qahuar Em. The competition. A plate of cheese and pickled carrots sat on the table between them alongside a wine bottle well on its way to empty. Cithrin’s dress of embroidered linen flattered her figure, and her hair, which had been pulled back, was spilling in casual disarray down her shoulder.

  “Captain?”

  Marcus nodded toward the alley door. Profound annoyance flashed across Cithrin’s face.

  “I could step out,” Qahuar Em offered.

  “No. I’ll be right back,” Cithrin said. Marcus followed her out. The alley stank of spoiled food and piss. Cithrin folded her arms.

  “The spicer’s come with the commissions for the week,” Marcus said. “He won’t give over to anyone but you.”

  Cithrin’s frown drew lines at the corners of her mouth and between her brow. Her fingers tapped gently against her arms.

  “He wants to talk about something else,” she said.

  “And not with your hired swords,” Marcus said. “That’s my assumption.”

  The girl nodded, attention shifting inward.

  It was moments like this, when she forgot herself, that she changed. The false maturity that Master Kit and the players had trained her into was convincing, but it wasn’t Cithrin. And the giddy young woman who shifted between overconfidence and insecurity wasn’t her either. With her face smooth, her mind moving in its own silence, she gave a hint of the woman that was in her. The woman she was becoming. Marcus looked away from her, down the alley, and told himself that by doing it he was giving her privacy.

  “I should see him,” Cithrin said. “He’s at the house?”

  “Roach and Yardem are with him.”

  “I should hurry, then,” she said, humor warming the words.

  “I can give Qahuar your regrets—”

  “No, tell him I’ll be right back. I don’t want him to leave w
ithout me.”

  Marcus hesitated, then nodded. Cithrin walked off down the alleyway, careful where she stepped, until she reached the corner, turned into the street, and disappeared. Marcus stood in the reeking shadows for a long moment, then ducked back inside. The half-Jasuru was still sitting at the table, chewing a pickled carrot and looking thoughtful. At a guess, the man was a few years younger than Marcus, though the Jasuru blood made it hard to be sure. The vesitigial scales of his skin and the vibrant green eyes reminded Marcus of a lizard.

  “The magistra’s called away for a few minutes. Small business,” Marcus said. “She said she’d be right back.”

  “Of course,” Qahuar Em said, then gestured toward the seat where Cithrin had been. “Would you like to wait with me, Captain Wester?”

  The wise choice would be to walk away. Marcus nodded his thanks and sat.

  “You’re the actual Marcus Wester?” the man asked, motioning to the servant boy for a mug of ale.

  “Someone had to be,” Marcus said.

  “I’m honored. I hope you don’t mind my saying, I’m surprised to see a man of your fame doing guard work, even for the Medean bank.”

  “I’m well enough known among a certain group of people,” Marcus said. “Just walking down the streets, I could be anyone.”

  “Still, after Wodford and Gradis, I’d have thought you could command any price you asked as the head of a mercenary company.”