The Dragon's Path

  “Aster’s a boy,” Clara said. “I’ve had three of them. One doesn’t raise boys so much as try to keep fragile things out of their reach.”

  “Men aren’t any different,” Phelia said. “They never think about what might break.”

  Clara sucked on the stem of the pipe and blew out a cloud of sweet grey smoke before she spoke.

  “That is the issue, isn’t it? We have a problem, and it’s spilled over from our court into Northcoast and Asterilhold. Sarakal and Hallskar are likely taking notice as well.”

  “I know it.”

  “Well then, dear,” Clara said, keeping her voice light, “how shall we solve it?”

  “I don’t know why it’s all such a concern. There were ages when Asterilhold, Antea, and Northcoast all answered to the High Kings. Everyone’s intermarried with everyone else. We’re practically a single kingdom already. When you think about it.”

  “That is so utterly true,” Clara said, sitting beside her cousin. Phelia was plucking at her dress with her fingertips now, picking away threads and lint that weren’t there.

  “I just don’t see why there should be any fuss about swords and bows and such. Nobody can possibly want that, can they? What would fighting gain anyone? It isn’t as if we aren’t already practically one kingdom.”

  “Yes, but as long as there’s one throne in Camnipol and another in Kaltfel, they’ll rattle their swords at one another,” Clara said. “It’s what they do, isn’t it?”

  Phelia started. Her eyes were wider than they should have been, and her hands gripped her knees until the blood was all gone from her knuckles. Now that was interesting. Clara cleared her throat and went on, pretending not to notice.

  “The problem is how to give everyone a way to keep their honor intact without asking very much of them. I know Dawson won’t bring himself to see reason unless we can find a path to it that doesn’t involve stooping under something. I assume your Feldin’s very much the same.”

  “But he’s won. Feldin feels he’s won, and if the prince does come to live with us…”

  Clara waited.

  “You know I admire Dawson,” Phelia said. “He’s always been so staunch. Even when he was being rude to Feldin, it was more from the way Dawson lives in the world as he would like it to be. I never thought it was out of anger or spite.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call my darling husband a man without spite, but I take your meaning, yes.”

  Phelia giggled nervously. Her shoulders were hunched like someone braced against a blow.

  “Did you hear that Rania Hiren’s pregnant?” Phelia asked. Clara debated for less than a heartbeat, and decided to let her cousin change the subject.

  “Not again. How many times is this?”

  “Eight, if you count the live births. There were three stillborn.”

  “I’m amazed she has the stamina,” Clara said. “And her husband must be a man of some quality. Rania’s the dearest soul under the sky, but after the twins, she did start to look a bit like a mop’s head. It isn’t her fault, of course. It’s just her skin.”

  “I have the same sort, though,” Phelia said. “I dread to think what I’ll look like after my first child.”

  “You’re young, dear. I’m sure you’ll be able to get your figure back. I suppose it’s rude for me to ask how work has been on that particular project?”

  Phelia blushed, but she also relaxed. Bed gossip and the intricacies of the female flesh might be indelicate, but they were safer than politics and the rumors of war. Throughout the hour, Clara let them talk of nothing in particular, always leaving opportunities for Phelia to return them to the topic of their husbands and the threat hanging over the city like smoke from a fire. At no point did Phelia take the opportunities offered her. That said quite a bit in itself.

  When the time came to take her leave, Clara found Vincen Coe precisely where he had been, scowling at the empty air. As they walked down the stairs, Phelia took Clara’s arm, leaning into her with each step; the visit seemed to have calmed her as much as it had uneased Clara herself. At the door, Vincen reclaimed his blades from the Jasuru as Clara embraced Phelia in farewell. Her bearers brought the sedan chair to the ready, and Clara took her shawl back from the footman. It wasn’t until she was out of the private square that the last of the tobacco ran out and Clara realized she’d accidentally stolen Phelia’s pipe. She knocked the bowl clean on the side opposite from Vincen so as to keep the ashes from falling on him.

  “You were eavesdropping, I assume?” she said, loudly enough to carry over the noise of the street.

  “Not at all, my lady.”

  “Oh please, Vincen,” she said. “I’m not dim. How much did you hear?”

  A few moments later, the huntsman shrugged.

  “Almost all, my lady. She spoke a bit softly when she was discussing her fertility problems, and you were laughing at the comments about Lord Sonnen’s mistress.”

  “You heard the first part, then. About my husband and hers?”

  “I did.”

  “Why do you suppose she would be concerned about Asterilhold and Antea sharing a common history? Being ‘practically one kingdom’?”

  “At a guess, my lady, because she expects they may be again.”

  He glanced at her, and his expression—guarded, calm, grim—told her that they were in agreement. Whatever the intricacies of blood and marriage, precedent and politics, Antea and Asterilhold could never be united while Simeon and Aster lived. And Phelia, never meaning to say it, thought unification possible. Even likely. And Aster was quite likely going to be living under her roof.

  It seemed to follow that Feldin Maas and his foreign backers intended to kill Prince Aster.

  “Well,” Clara said with a sigh. “So much for making peace.”

  Cithrin

  Wind rattled the shutters and hissed at the windows. The morning sun was too bright to bear. By simply existing, the world made Cithrin want to vomit. She rolled over on her bed, pressing her hand to her throat. She didn’t want to stand up, and she certainly wasn’t walking to the Grand Market. The attempt alone would kill her.

  There was a vague uneasiness muttering at the back of her mind, a reason that staying here would be a problem. She was supposed to go to the café because…

  Because…

  Cithrin said something obscene, then, without opening her eyes, repeated it slowly, drawing out the sounds. She was supposed to meet with a representative of the tanner’s guild to talk about insuring their trade when the ships went back out. It wouldn’t be long now. Days, perhaps. Not more than two weeks. Then the thrice-damned ships would go out, traveling up the coast while the season still held. They’d make their stops in the north, make what trades they could, and then hunker down for the winter, waiting for the ships from Far Syramys to reach the great island of Narinisle and begin the whole blighted thing over again. And so it would go, on and on and on until the end of all things, whether Cithrin got out of bed or not.

  She sat up. Her rooms were in disarray around her. Bottles and empty wineskins crowded the floor. Another gust pushed against the windows, and she felt the air around her press in and then out. It was nauseating. She stood up slowly and walked across to look for a dress to put on that didn’t stink of sweat. Sometime during the night, it appeared she’d knocked against the night pot, because a puddle of cold piss was well on its way to staining the floorboards. The only clothes that didn’t look filthy were the trousers and rough shirt she’d worn as Tag the Carter. For what she had to do, they’d suffice. There were still half a dozen silver coins in her purse, and she shoved them into Tag’s pocket.

  By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she felt more nearly human. She stepped out into the street for a moment, then back in through the bank’s front door.

  “Roach,” she said, and the little Timzinae jumped to attention.

  “Magistra Cithrin,” he said. “Captain Wester and Yardem just left to collect payment fr
om the brewer just north of the wall and the two butchers in the salt quarter. Barth and Corisen Mout went with them. Enen’s asleep in the back because she drew night watch, and Ahariel is going to get some sausages and come back.”

  “I need you to run an errand for me,” Cithrin said. “Go to the café and let the man from the tanner’s guild know I won’t be there. Tell him I’m unwell.”

  The boy’s nictatating membranes clicked over his eyes nervously.

  “Captain Wester said I should stay here,” Roach said. “Enen’s asleep, and he wanted someone awake in case—”

  “I’ll stay down here until someone gets back,” Cithrin said. “I may feel like slow death, but I can still raise a shout if it’s called for.”

  Roach still looked uncertain. Cithrin felt a stab of annoyance.

  “I pay Wester,” she said. “I pay you too, for that. Now go.”

  “Y-yes, Magistra.”

  The boy darted out to the street. Cithrin stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching the dark legs scissor and stretch as he ran. Far down the street, he dodged a cart loaded with fresh-caught fish, turned the corner, and vanished. Cithrin counted slowly to twelve, giving him time to reappear. When he didn’t, she walked out into the street and pulled the door shut behind her. The wind was against her and kicking up bits of dust and straw, but she squinted her way to the taproom.

  “Good morning, Magistra,” the keeper said as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. “Back already?”

  “Seems I am,” she said, fishing the silver coins back out of her pocket. “I’ll take what this buys.”

  The keeper took the coins, lifting and dropping his hand as he estimated their weight.

  “Your boys know how to go through wine,” he said.

  “They don’t drink it,” she said, grinning. “It’s all for me.”

  The man laughed. It was a new kind of lie she’d only just discovered, telling the bleak truth lightly and letting everyone around her mistake it for a joke. They don’t drink it; it’s all for me. Come winter, I’m as likely to be in the stocks as free. Nothing I do matters.

  He came back with two dark bottles of wine and a small tun of beer. Cithrin tucked the tun under her arm, took a bottle in either hand, and waited as he opened he door for her. Now the wind was at her back, pushing her on like it wanted her to get back home. The sky was blue above her with a skin of white clouds high in the air, but it smelled like rain. Porte Oliva autumns had a reputation for rough weather, and summer was in its last days now. A little cloudburst now and again hardly seemed worth complaining about.

  She didn’t go back into the main rooms, heading for her own door instead. Maneuvering up the stairs was hard with the tun still under her arm. She hit the corner of the wall at the top with her elbow. The impact was enough to leave her fingers tingling, but she didn’t drop the bottle.

  She’d forgotten about the puddle of piss, but she was feeling well enough now to open her window and pour the night pot’s contents into the alley. She swabbed up the rest with a dirty shift, then threw that out the window too. She’d eaten a link of gristly sausage and a heel of black bread the day before. She knew she ought to be hungry, but she wasn’t. She pulled off her carter’s boots, pulled open the first of the wine bottles, and lay back on her bed, her back against the little headboard.

  The wine was sweeter than she was used to, but she could feel the bite of it. Her stomach rebelled for a moment, twisting like a fish on a fire, and she slowed down to sips until it calmed. Her head throbbed once, the beginning of an ache. The wind paused, leaving her in silence. She heard the voices of the two Kurtadam guards rising from below her.

  The woman—Enen—laughed. Warmth and calm slid into Cithrin’s blood. She took one last, long drink straight from the bottle’s neck, turned, and set the wine on the floor. The darkness behind her eyes was comfortable and deep. The roar of the wind kicking back up seemed to come from a great distance, and her mind, such as it was, sparked and slipped. Connections came together in unlikely, unrepeatable ways.

  She had the sense that Magister Imaniel had left her something for Captain Wester. She thought that it had to do with the canal traffic in Vanai connecting to the docks in Porte Oliva, and also with herbs and spices packed in snow. Without drawing a line between awake and dozing or dozing and asleep, Cithrin’s consciousness faded to darkness. Time stopped, started when she became vaguely aware of angry voices, very far away, and stopped again.

  “Get up.”

  Cithrin forced her eyes open. Captain Wester stood in the doorway, his arms crossed. The light was dim, the city in twilight and cloud.

  “Get out of bed,” he said. “Do it now.”

  “Go away,” she said.

  “I told you to get out of that God damned bed!”

  Cithrin pushed up on one arm. The room shifted, unsteady.

  “And do what?” she said.

  “You’ve missed five meetings,” Marcus said. “People are going to start talking, and when they do, you’re done. So stand up and do what needs doing.”

  Cithrin stared at him, her mouth slack with disbelief and a rising anger.

  “Nothing needs doing,” she said. “It’s done. I’m done. I had my chance, and I lost it.”

  “I met Qahuar Em. He’s not worth pouting over. Now you—”

  “Qahuar? Who cares about Qahuar?” Cithrin said, sitting up. She didn’t remember spilling wine on her tunic, but it tugged where dried wine had adhered to her skin. “It was the contract. I tried for it, and I lost. I had the world by the hair, and I lost. I failed.”

  “You failed?”

  Cithrin spread her arms, gesturing at the rooms, the city, the world. Pointing out the obvious. Wester stepped closer. In the dim light, his eyes seemed bright as river stones, his mouth as hard as iron.

  “Did you watch your wife and daughter burn to death in front of you? Because of you?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he nodded. “So it could have been worse. You aren’t dead. There’s work that needs doing. Get up and do it.”

  “I’m not permitted. I had a letter from Komme Medean that I’m not allowed to trade in his name.”

  “So instead you curled up in a mewling ball in his name? I’m sure he’ll be thrilled. Get out of bed.”

  Cithrin lay down, pulling her pillow to her chest. It smelled foul, but she held it anyway.

  “I don’t take orders from you, Captain,” she said, making the last word an insult. “You take money from me, so you do what I tell you. Now go away.”

  “I won’t let you throw away everything you’ve worked for.”

  “I worked to keep the bank’s money safe, and I’ve done it. So you’re right. I win. Now go away.”

  “You want to keep it.”

  “Stones want to fly,” she said. “They don’t have wings.”

  “Find a way,” he said, almost gently.

  It was too much. Cithrin shouted wordless rage, sat up, and threw the pillow at him as hard as she could. She didn’t want to cry anymore, and here she was, crying.

  “I told you to get out!” she screamed. “No one wants you here! I am canceling your contract. Take your wages and your men and lock the door behind you.”

  Wester took a step back. Cithrin’s chest went hollow, and she tried to swallow back the words. He bent down, picked up her pillow between thumb and finger, and lobbed it back to her. It landed on the bed at her side with a soft sound like someone being punched in the stomach. He nudged one of the empty wineskins with the toe of his boot and took a long, deep breath.

  “Remember that I tried to talk you back to your senses,” he said.

  He turned. He walked away.

  She had anticipated the pain, braced herself for it, so it wasn’t the anguish of knowing he would leave her that surprised. The surprise was that even knowing, even being ready for it, the despair could still swamp her. It felt like something had died halfway between her throat and her heart, and was curled there inside her body, rott
ing. She heard him walking down the stairs, each step quieter than the one before. Cithrin snatched up her filthy pillow and screamed into it. It felt like days, just screaming, her body shaking from hunger and exhaustion and the poison of wine, beer, and ale. The muscles in her back and belly were threatening to cramp, but she could no more stop screaming and weeping than she could choose not to breathe.

  There were voices below her. Marcus Wester and Yardem Hane. She heard Yardem rumble something that she recognized form its cadence as Yes, sir though the syllables before and after it were a confusion. Then a smaller, higher voice. Roach, perhaps.

  They’d all go. All of them.

  It didn’t matter.

  Nothing mattered. Her parents were dead so long ago she didn’t remember them. Magister Imaniel and Cam and Besel, all dead. The city of her childhood was burned and broken. And the bank, the one thing she had ever made for herself, would be taken from her as soon as the auditor arrived. She couldn’t bring herself to think that a few guards leaving early could matter.

  But it did.

  Slowly, very slowly, the storm within her stilled. It was full dark now, and tiny raindrops tapped against the window like fingernails. She reached for the wine bottle beside the bed and was surprised to find it empty. But there was still the other bottle. And the tun of beer. She would be all right. She only needed to get her strength back. A few more minutes were all she needed.

  She hadn’t quite roused herself when the footsteps came. First the steady tramp at the base of the stairway, and then, before it even reached the top, heavier thudding. Something hit the wall of the house, and Yardem grunted. There was a wet sound that might have been rain pouring off the roof, but seemed nearer than that. A light glowed. A lantern in Wester’s hand. And behind him, Yardem Hane and the two Kurtadam guards struggling with a copper basin easily four feet long.

  “We should have brought it first and filled it later,” Enen said, her voice straining.

  “We’ll know next time,” Marcus said.