The Dragon's Path

  Through her doorway, she saw the three guards put down the basin. It was as tall as Marcus’s knee and it sloshed.

  “What are you doing?” Cithrin asked, her voice smaller and weaker than she’d expected it to be.

  Ignoring her, Yardem handed a round stone jar to the captain and started lighting the candles and lamps in the main room. The two Kurtadam saluted and went back down the stairs. Cithrin sat up, steadying herself with one hand. Marcus walked toward her, and before she could stop him, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her off the bed. Her knees hit the floor with a thud and a stab of pain.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted.

  “I tried talking first,” Wester said, and pushed her into the basin. The water was warm. “Take those rags off or else I will.”

  “I am not going to—”

  In the growing light of the candles, his expression was hard and implacable.

  “I’ve seen girls before. I’m not going to be shocked. I’ve got soap here,” he said, pressing the stone jar into her hand. “And be sure to wash your hair. It’s greasy enough to catch fire.”

  Cithrin looked at the jar. It was heavier than she’d expected, with a tight-fit lid. She didn’t know the last time she’d washed herself. When he spoke again, his voice was resigned.

  “Either you do it, or I will.”

  “Don’t watch,” she said, and as she did, she realized that she was agreeing to a contract whose terms she didn’t yet know. All she felt was relief that they hadn’t left her.

  Marcus made in impatient sound, but turned to face the stairway. Yardem coughed discreetly and stepped into the bedroom. Cithrin pulled off the carter’s clothes and knelt in the basin. The air felt cold against her skin. A carved wood bowl floated beside her, and she used it to rinse herself. She hadn’t realized how filthy she’d felt until she didn’t anymore.

  A familiar voice came from the stairway.

  “Is she there?” Cary asked.

  “She is,” Marcus said. “Just toss it up for now.”

  The actor grunted, and Marcus moved forward, catching a bundle of rope and cloth out of the air.

  “We’ll be downstairs,” Cary said, and Cithrin’s street door opened and closed. Marcus untied the rope and passed a length of soft flannel out behind him. Cithrin took the towel from his hand.

  “Got a clean dress here too,” he said. “You say when you’re decent.”

  Cithrin stepped out of the bath shivering and dried herself quickly. The water in the basin was dark, a scum of suds floating on the top. Shrugging on the dress, she recognized it as one of Cary’s. The cloth smelled of face paints and dust.

  “I’m decent,” she said.

  Yardem came out of her bedroom. He’d fashioned her blanket into a sack and filled it with empty wineskins and bottles. The tun and her remaining bottle were in with the dead. She reached out, ready to tell him to leave those, that she wasn’t done with them. The Tralgu cocked an ear, his earring jingling. She let him pass.

  “I’ve got food coming,” Marcus said. “You have all the bank’s records in here?”

  “There’s a transaction ledger at the café,” she said. “And copies of a few of the contracts.”

  “I’ll send someone. I am posting a guard at the foot of the stairs and under that window. No drink stronger than coffee comes in. You stay in here until you figure out what we’re going to do to keep your bank for you.”

  “There isn’t anything,” she said. “I’ve been forbidden from any more negotiation or trade.”

  “And God knows we wouldn’t want to break any rules,” Marcus said. “Whatever you need, you say the words. Everyone gets a good self-pitying drunk now and again, but it’s over. You stay sober and you do what needs doing. Understood?”

  Cithrin stepped in close and kissed him. His lips were still and uncertain, the stubble around them rough. He was the third man she’d ever kissed. Sandr and Qahuar and Captain Wester. He stepped back.

  “My daughter wasn’t much younger than you.”

  “Would you have done this to her?” she asked, gesturing at the basin.

  “I’d have done anything for her,” he said. And then, “I’ll have the bath taken away, Magistra. Do you want us to get some coffee since we have to get the books from the café anyway?”

  “It will be closed by now. It’s night.”

  “I’ll have an exception made.”

  “Then yes.”

  He nodded and went back down the stairway. Cithrin sat at her little desk. The sound of rain above her mixed with the voices below. There was nothing to be done, of course. All the best efforts and intentions in the world couldn’t change a single number inked in her ledgers. She looked anyway. Yardem and the two Kurtadam came and hauled the basin away again. Roach appeared with a bowl of fish-and-cream soup that tasted of black pepper and the sea. A mug of beer would have gone with it perfectly, but she knew better than to ask. Water was good enough for now.

  Her mind felt fragile, a thing that might fall apart at any little jostle, but she tried to imagine herself as the auditor from Carse. What would he see when he looked at all this? She went through the initial listing of inventory that she’d made. Silk, tobacco, gems, jewels, spices, silver, and gold. The pudgy Antean at the mill pond had stolen some, and her estimate of the loss was included, the numbers in black strokes against the cream-colored paper. So there was the beginning. Now to what she’d done with it.

  Turning the pages had a sense of nostalgia. The dry hiss of the paper, and here was another artifact of the golden age that had just passed. The contract and receipt from when she’d bought the rooms from the gambler. The onionskin permit and seal that had marked the opening of the bank. She traced her fingertips over it. It hadn’t been a full season since she’d begun. It seemed more than that. It seemed a lifetime. Then the agreements of consignment from the spicer and the cloth merchants. Her valuation, theirs, and the final income from sale. The jewelry had always been the problem. She found herself wondering if there might have been a better way to be rid of it than the one she’d chosen. Maybe if she’d waited until the ships from Narinisle had come in. Or placed them on consignment with a trading house with a heavy export trade. Then she wouldn’t have been flooding her own market. Well, next time.

  Distant thunder rolled softly through the steady tapping of rain. Roach, soaked to his scales, brought up the lockbox from the café, a huge earthenware mug of coffee, and a note from Maestro Asanpur hoping that she would feel better soon and saying that the café felt too large without her in it. It was almost enough to reduce her to tears again, but that would have confused the Timzinae boy, so she forced herself to keep composure.

  The best trade she’d worked had been the horizontal semi-monopoly with the brewer, cooper, and taphouses. Each person in the chain of production was in business with the bank, and so as soon as the grain and water arrived at the brewery, every trade benefited her, and put her in the position to guarantee business to the next link. If she could make arrangements with a few farmers for dedicated access to their grain crops, it would be a locked-in gold-producing mechanism.

  But that would be for the next person, whoever they were. Cithrin sipped at her coffee. It had been a good thought, though, and well performed. In a year, when the remnants of her parents’ investment in the bank came to her, she would have to see if there was some much smaller version of the same plan. It would be painful, she thought, going from Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour to the bank’s ward again for that last year. But once she reached her naming day, and could enter into business for herself…

  The skin on her arm puckered, the fine hairs standing up. Her neck prickled. A feeling of cold fire lit her spine. She closed the books she’d written, shoved them aside, and went back to the older ones, written by other hands now dead. The records of Vanai. The small red-inked notation that marked her arrival at the bank. She closed the book with trembling hands.

  Captain Wester had been right.
>
  There was a way.

  Dawson

  I won’t hear it,” King Simeon said. The months hadn’t been kind to him. His skin was greyer than it had been, his lips an unhealthy blue. Sweat beaded his brow though the room wasn’t particularly warm. “God, Dawson. Listen to yourself. You’re back from exile for one day—one—and already you’re back at it.”

  “If Clara’s right and Maas is plotting against Aster’s life—”

  Simeon slapped his palm to the table. The meeting chamber echoed with it, and the silence that followed was broken only by the songs of finches and the babbling of the fountain outside the windows. The guards around the back wall remained impassive as always, their armor the black and gold of the city, their swords sheathed at their hips. Dawson wondered what they would have said, had they been asked. Someone must be able to talk sense to Simeon, though it clearly wasn’t him.

  “If I’d listened to your advice,” the king said, “Issandrian would be leading a popular revolt against me right now. Instead, he was here yesterday, bending his knee, asking my forgiveness and swearing on his life that the mercenary riot wasn’t his plan or doing.”

  “If it wasn’t his, it was someone’s,” Dawson said.

  “I am your king, Baron Osterling. I am perfectly capable of guiding this kingdom safely.”

  “Simeon, you are my friend,” Dawson said softly. “I know how you sound when you’re frightened to your bones. Can you put it off until next year?”

  “Put what off?”

  “Fostering your son. Naming his protector. The closing of the court is three weeks from now. Only say that the events of the season have distracted you from the decision. Take time.”

  Simeon rose. He walked like an old man. Outside the window the leaves were still green, but less so than they had been. The summer was dying, and someday very soon the green would fade, red and gold taking the field. Beautiful colors, but still death.

  “Maas has no reason to wish Aster ill,” Simeon said.

  “He’s in contact with Asterilhold. He’s working with them—”

  “You worked with Maccia to reinforce Vanai. Lord Daskellin danced with Northcoast. Lord Tremontair is keeping assignations with the ambassador from Borja, and Lord Arminnin spent more time in Hallskar than Antea last year. Shall I slaughter every nobleman with connections outside the kingdom? You wouldn’t live.” Simeon’s breath was fast and shallow. He leaned against the windowsill, steadying himself. “My father died when he was a year younger than I am now.”

  “I remember.”

  “Maas has allies. Everyone who loved Issandrian and Klin turned to him when they left.”

  “Mine turned to Daskellin.”

  “You don’t have allies, Dawson. You have enemies and admirers. You couldn’t even keep Palliako’s boy near you when he was the hero of the day. Lerer sent him off to the edge of the world rather than let him take another revel from you. Enemies and admirers.”

  “Which are you, Majesty?”

  “Both. Have been since you flirted that Cinnae girl away from me at the tourney when we were twelve.”

  Dawson chuckled. The king’s smile was almost abashed, and then he was laughing too. Simeon came back and collapsed into his chair.

  “I know you don’t approve,” he said. “But trust me that I’m doing the best I can. There are just so many things to balance, and I’m so tired. I am unbearably tired.”

  “At least don’t give Aster to Maas. I don’t care if he is the most influential man at court just now. Find someone else.”

  “Thank you for your advice, old friend.”

  “Simeon—”

  “No. Thank you. That’s all.”

  In the antechamber, the servants gave Dawson back his sword and dagger. It seemed years since Simeon had insisted on the old formality of coming to private audience unarmed. This was how far they had all fallen. Dawson was still adjusting the buckle when he stepped outside. The air was warm, the sun heavy in the sky, but the breeze had an edge to it. The soft, pressing air of summer was gone. The seasons were changing again. Dawson turned away the footman’s assisting hand and climbed into his carriage.

  “My lord?” the driver asked.

  “The Great Bear,” Dawson said.

  The whip cracked, and the carriage lurched off, leaving the blocky towers and martial gates of the Kingspire behind. He let himself lean back into the seat, the jolts and knocks sending jabs of pain up his spine. First the journey back from Osterling Fells and then the better half of the day waiting for his majesty to clear an audience for him had worn him down more than it once would have.

  When he’d been a young man, he’d ridden from Osterling Fells to Camnipol, stopping only to trade horses, arrived just before the queen’s ball, and spent the whole evening until the dawn dancing. Mostly with Clara. It seemed like a story he’d heard told of someone else, except that he could still see the dress she’d worn and smell the perfume at the nape of her neck. He turned the memory aside before his wife’s younger incarnation aroused him. He wanted to walk upright when he reached the club, and while he was old, he wasn’t dead.

  The Fraternity of the Great Bear rose up, its façade the black stone and gold leaf of the Undying City. Coaches and carriages were thick in the street, drivers pushing to position themselves where their particular masters would walk the fewest steps from carriage to door. The air stank of the fresh horse droppings being ground to paste under a hundred hooves. Dawson toyed with the idea of getting out here and walking in just to escape, but it was beneath his station, so he made do with abusing the driver for his slowness and incompetence. By the time the footmen of the club hurried out with a step for him, he almost felt better.

  Within, the club was a fabric woven from pipe smoke, heat, and music ignored in favor of conversation. Dawson gave his jacket to a servant girl who bowed and scurried away. When he entered the great hall, half a dozen men turned toward him, applauding his return with varying degrees of pleasure and sarcasm. Enemies and admirers. Dawson cut a bow that could be read as acknowledgment or insult depending on who it was given to, scooped up a cut crystal glass of fortified wine, and stalked to the smaller halls on the left.

  A wide, round table sat in the center of one hall, a dozen men around it, many of them talking at once. In among the press of bodies and wit, Issandrian’s long hair and Sir Klin’s artless face. Issandrian caught sight of him and stood. He nodded to Dawson rather than bow. It might only have been a trick of the light, but the man seemed lessened. As if his exile had actually humbled him. The others at his table began to grow quiet, becoming aware that something was happening around them even if they were too dim to know what. Dawson drew his dagger in a duelist’s salute, and Issandrian smiled in what might have been approval.

  At the back of the hall were private meeting rooms, and the least of these was hardly larger than a carriage itself. The dark leather couches ate what little light the candles gave. Daskellin sat in a corner where he could see whoever entered. His back was to the wall, and his sword was undrawn, but near his hand.

  “Well,” Dawson said, lowering himself to the couch opposite, “I see you’ve squandered everything we had in my absence.”

  “Pleasure to see you too,” Canl Daskellin said.

  “How do we go from successfully defending Camnipol from foreign blades to riding behind Feldin Maas? Can you answer that?”

  “Do you want the long answer or the short?”

  “Will the long be less annoying?”

  Daskellin leaned forward.

  “Maas has backing, and we don’t. I had it. Or I thought I did. Then a balance sheet changed or some such, and Clark lit out for Birancour.”

  “It’s what you deserve for working with bankers.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Daskellin said darkly.

  It was as close to an apology as Dawson expected to get. He let the matter slide. Instead, he drained his glass, leaned to the door, and rapped against it until a serving g
irl appeared to refresh his glass.

  “Where do we stand, then?” Dawson asked when she’d gone.

  Daskellin shook his head, breath hissing out through his teeth.

  “If it comes to the field, we can hold our own. There are enough landholders who still hate Asterilhold that it’s easy enough to rally them.”

  “If Aster dies before he takes the throne?”

  “Then we fervently pray his majesty’s royal scepter’s still in working order, because a new male heir is the best hope we have. I’ve had my genealogist look through the blood archives, and Simeon has a cousin in Asterilhold with a legitimate claim.”

  “Legitimate?” Dawson asked, leaning forward.

  “I’m afraid so, and you can’t guess this. He’s a supporter of the principle of a farmer’s council. We lose the quarter of our support with more sense that guts. The others rally around Oyer Verennin or possibly Umansin Tor, both of whom can also make a claim. Asterilhold backs its man with the help of the group Maas and Issandrian have gathered, we fight a civil war, and we lose.”

  Daskellin clapped his hands once. The candle above him sputtered. In the halls of the club, a serving girl shouted and a man laughed. Dawson’s fortified wine tasted more bitter than it had when he started it, and he put the glass down.

  “Could this have been the scheme all along?” Dawson asked. “Was Maas using Issandrian and Klin and all that hairwash about a farmer’s council just for this? We may have been aiming at the wrong target all this time.”

  “Possibly,” Daskellin said. “Or it might have been a chance he saw and decided to take. We’d have to ask Feldin, and I suspect he might not tell us the truth.”

  Dawson tapped the lip of his glass with a finger, the crystal chiming softly.

  “We can’t let Aster die,” Dawson said.

  “Everything dies. Men, cities, empires. Everything,” Daskellin said. “The timing’s the question.”

  Dawson took his dinner with the family in the informal dining hall. Roast pork with apple, honeyed squash, and fresh bread with whole cloves of garlic baked into it. A cream linen cloth on the table. Ceramic dishes from Far Syramys and polished silver utensils. It could as well have been ashes served on scrap iron.