The Dragon's Path

  Vincen Coe boiled past her, shouting and swinging his stolen blade like a scythe in a meadow. Maas fell back into the hallway from the sheer animal force of the attack. For a moment, the doorway was clear. Geder Palliako stood over the fallen woman, his jaw slack and his face pale. Clara pushed him, moving him toward the door.

  “Go!” she shouted. “Before they seal us in!”

  Geder and the priest hurried out. The sound of blade against blade almost made Clara pause. I’ll surrender, she thought. They wouldn’t harm a woman. It was an idiot’s thought. A reflex. Against all instinct, she ran out toward the fighting.

  If the corridor had been wider, Feldin and his two guards would already have gotten around Vincen and cut him down. Instead, the huntsman swung hard and fast, his blade filling the space, holding them at bay. Sweat was pouring down his face, and his breath was fast. Feldin waited with a duelist’s eyes, looking for an opportunity.

  “Run!” Vincen shouted. “I’ll win you what time I can!”

  Geder Palliako needed no more urging. He turned, sprinting down the hall toward the staircase and double doors. She caught a glimpse of the wooden box still in his hand. She took four steps after him, but turned back. The priest moved just behind her, retreating from the fight, but not fleeing. Vincen’s shoulders worked like a laborer’s.

  “Oh,” she heard herself say. “Oh, not this. Not this.”

  Feldin’s blade swung high and hard, batting Vincen’s swing aside. The guard to Feldin’s left thrust past him, and Vincen grunted, leaping back. There was blood on the guard’s blade. Vincen’s blood, spilling on the floor.

  “You can’t win,” the priest said, his voice loud and throbbing. Clara looked up at him, tears in her eyes, but he smiled and shook his huge head. “Lord Maas, listen to my voice. Listen to me. You cannot win.”

  “I will see your guts,” Maas shouted.

  “You won’t. Everything you love is already gone. Everything you hoped for is already lost. You can’t win. The fight is over. You’ve lost everything already. You have no reason to fight.”

  Feldin surged forward, but even Clara could see the change in his stance. His swing was more tentative, his weight on his back foot, as if reluctant to engage the fight he had just been winning. Vincen drew back, limping badly. His leathers were red and wet. Feldin didn’t step forward.

  “You saw her die, Lord Maas,” the priest said. “You saw her fall. She has gone, and you can’t bring her back. Listen to my voice. Listen to me. The fight’s lost. Nothing you can do here matters. You can feel that. That thickness in your throat. You feel it. You know what it means. You cannot win. You cannot win. You cannot win.”

  One of the guards moved forward, his blade before him, but his gaze kept cutting back to Feldin. Feldin, whose eyes were caught on nothing. Vincen started to close with the man, but Clara rushed forward, put her hand on his arm, pulled him back.

  “You can feel the despair in your belly, can’t you? You feel it,” the priest said. His voice was sorrowful, as if he regretted every word. Each syllable throbbed and echoed within itself. “You feel it in your heart. You’re drowning in it, and it will never end. There is no hope. Not now. Not ever. You cannot win, Lord Maas. You cannot win. There is nothing for you. You’ve lost it all, and you know it.”

  “Lord Maas?” his guard said.

  The point of Feldin’s blade lowered to the floor like he was drawing a vertical line in the empty air. In the candlelight, it was hard to see, but she thought there were tears on his mask-empty face. The guards looked at each other, confused and unnerved. Feldin dropped his sword to the ground, turned, and walked away down the corridor. Clara trembled. The huge priest put one hand on her shoulder, one on Vincen Coe’s.

  “We should leave before he changes his opinion,” the priest said.

  They backed down the hallway, leaving a track of blood. The guards took a few uncertain steps toward them, then back toward their retreating lord. They reminded Clara of nothing more than hunting dogs given two conflicting commands. When they reached the double doors, Vincen stumbled. The priest lifted him up, slinging him over a shoulder. It took them minutes to find a door that led out, what seemed half the night to negotiate the darkened gardens and reach the edge of Maas’s estate. A thick hedge marked the border, and the priest knelt by it, rolling Vincen Coe’s body to the ground. There were voices in the night. Shouting and calling. Searching, Clara thought, for them.

  “Under here,” he said. “Watch over him. I’ll bring a cart.”

  Clara knelt, pushing herself in through the twigs and leaves. The hedge had little space beneath it, but there was some. Vincen Coe dragged himself in after her, digging his elbows into the litter of dead leaves and old dirt. His face was ashen, and everything from his belly down was wet and slick. In the darkness, the blood wasn’t red, but black. She pulled him in close to her as best she could without proper leverage. She had the sudden visceral memory of being thirteen, hiding in her father’s gardens while one of her uncles dashed about pretending he didn’t know where she was. She shook her head. The memory was too innocent for the moment.

  Vincen rolled onto his back with a groan.

  “How bad is it?” she whispered.

  “Unpleasant,” Vincen said.

  “If Maas uses his dogs, we’re as good as found.”

  Vincen shook his head, the leaves under him making the softest crackling sound.

  “By now, I’m sure everything on the estate stinks of me,” he said. “Take them till morning to find which blood’s freshest.”

  “Still feeling well enough to joke, I see.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Clara struggled to rise, squinting through the leaves. There was more shouting now. And, unless she was mistaken, the crash of swordplay. She felt sure she heard Jorey’s voice raised in command. In the close confines of their shelter, she felt the huntsman’s fast, shallow breath as much as heard it.

  “Be strong a bit longer,” she said. “Just a bit longer.”

  When he reached his hand to her, she thought it might be the last gesture of a dying man, but his fingers curled around the back of her neck, drawing her toward him with a definite strength. His lips were rough against hers, surprising and intimate and strong. Clara was shocked, but then gave a little internal shrug. The young man might be dead in the next few minutes, so really where was the harm?

  When he released her, his head dropping the inch back to the ground, Clara wiped her mouth with the back of a well-soiled hand. Her lips felt pleasantly bruised, her mind by turns scandalized, flattered, and amused.

  “You forget yourself,” she said reprovingly.

  “I do, my lady,” the huntsman said. “With you, I often do.”

  His eyes fluttered closed. His breath remained painful and quick, and Clara lay in the darkness, willing it to continue until she heard voices she knew as her own household, and started shouting for help.

  Marcus

  Qahuar Em scratched his chin, his head tilted at a considering angle. Marcus kept his expression bland. The table they sat across was polished oak with a burned-in knotwork pattern. It didn’t have the green banker’s felt that Cithrin used. Marcus had expected that it would, but perhaps the customs were different in Lyoneia. The tiny box that sat on the table was black iron with a lid that hinged on the side and the image of a dragon on the front. If there was some significance to the design she had chosen, he didn’t know it.

  “I’m sorry,” Qahuar Em said. “This is confusing.”

  “Nothing odd about it,” Marcus said. “Banks and merchant houses hold items of interest for each other all the time, I’m told.”

  “When they’re closely allied, and one has people in a city where the other doesn’t,” Qahuar said. “Neither of those applies here.”

  “Strange circumstances.”

  “Which you aren’t going to explain to me.”

  “I’m not,” Marcus agreed.

  Qahuar reached over and pick
ed up the little box, cupping it easily in one palm. The lid opened with a clank, uncovering a brass key shorter than a finger bone. Marcus scratched his ear and waited for the man to speak.

  “Why do I think this is going to be connected to something disagreeable and embarrassing?” Qahuar asked, making it clear from his tone that an answer would be welcome but wasn’t expected.

  “I’m authorized to sign a statement that it’s here at the request of Magistra bel Sarcour,” Marcus said. “Press the key into wax and I’ll put my thumb across it so there’s no question we’re talking about the same one. Anything you like.”

  The box closed again. The near-scaled fingertips tapped the oak with a sound like the first hard drops of a thunderstorm.

  “I’m prepared to take no for an answer,” Marcus said.

  “The magistra and I didn’t part on the best of terms,” Qahuar said, pronouncing his words carefully. “She sent you rather than come herself. I find it hard to believe she’s come to trust me.”

  “There’s ways you can trust an enemy you can’t always trust a friend. An enemy’s never going to betray your trust.”

  “I think she would say I’d betrayed hers, and I can argue she did mine.”

  “Proves my point. You two were being friendly back then,” Marcus said with a smile they both knew he didn’t mean.

  A soft knock came at the meeting room door. A full Jasuru woman in robes of grey and scarlet nodded to both men.

  “The men from the shipyard, sir.”

  Qahuar nodded, and the woman retreated, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  “Going well, that?” Marcus asked.

  “Well enough. It will take a year at least to have everything in order, but time moves both ways. Actions can have effects long before they themselves happen.”

  “Angry letters from the king of Cabral, for example?”

  “Sometimes I wish I’d lost,” Qahuar said. And then, “For more reasons than one. Captain, we’re men well acquainted the world. I think we understand each other. Would you answer a question?”

  “You won’t mind if I lie?”

  “Not at all. You’re a man whose name is known all through the west. At the head of a private army, you could command any price you ask, but you’re working guard captain for a branch bank. You aren’t open to bribery. And—forgive me—you don’t like me very much.”

  “None of that’s a question.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “I’ve loved a lot of people, and the word hasn’t meant the same thing twice,” Marcus said. “The job is to protect her, and I’m going to do the job this time.”

  “This time?”

  Marcus shrugged and kept quiet. The bastard had gotten him to say more than he meant already. Marcus had to give it; Qahuar was good at what he did. The half-Jasuru stood up, his lips pursed. Slowly, deliberately, he put the box in the pouch at his belt.

  “I hope I’m not going to regret this,” he said.

  “I expect it won’t matter to you one way or the other,” Marcus said. “For what it’s worth, though, I appreciate your taking it on.”

  “You know it’s not as a favor to you?”

  “Do.”

  Qahuar Em held out a broad hand. Marcus rose to his feet and took it. It was an effort not to squeeze a little hard, just to show he could. The man’s bright green eyes looked amused. And maybe something sadder as well.

  “She’s a lucky woman,” Qahuar said.

  God, let’s hope so, Marcus thought but didn’t say.

  Autumn had come to Porte Oliva overnight. Trees that had been lush and full were dropping leaves that were still green in the center. The sunset winds were loud with their skittering. The bay had turned the color of tea, and stank at midday like a compost heap. The queensmen patrolling the twilight streets wore overcoats of wool and green caps that covered their ears. Marcus walked the narrow streets near the port, feeling the first bite of night’s chill, and decided maybe he liked the city after all.

  He found Master Kit and the others in a torchlit courtyard between a taphouse and an inn. Smit and Hornet were still putting the last adjustments on the stage supports while Master Kit barked instructions to them, not even in costume yet. A young woman was pacing behind them. She was fair-haired with large eyes that left Marcus thinking of babies and a tight-bound dress that showed her figure. Her hands were knotted before her, fingers wrestling one another like fighters in a melee.

  Marcus walked over to Master Kit. Instead of saying hello, he nodded to the woman.

  “New one?”

  “Yes,” the old actor said. “I have hope for this one.”

  “Had hope for the last one too.”

  “Fair enough. I have expectations of this one,” Master Kit said. “Calls herself Charlit Soon, and I find she rehearses wonderfully. Tonight we’ll see how she does with an audience. If she stays through tomorrow, I think I’ve found my full company.”

  “And she’s what? Twelve years old?”

  “Cinnae blood some generations back,” Master Kit said. “Or that’s the story, anyway. She believes it, and it may even be true.”

  “But you don’t believe it?”

  “I withhold judgment.”

  As if she’d heard them, the new actor glanced over at them and then away. Sandr jumped out the back of the cart and waved to Marcus. Either his fear had faded or he was a decent actor. Marcus waved back. Mikel, thin and weedy as ever, came out from the taphouse with a bucket of sawdust, Cary following behind with a broom.

  “I heard rumor you might be leaving Porte Oliva.”

  “It’s one possibility,” Master Kit said. “We’ve played here almost an entire theatrical season. I think cities can get full on plays. Show too many, and I believe people become complacent. I don’t want what we do to lose its magic. I was thinking of taking the company up to the queen’s court at Sara-su-mar.”

  “Before the winter, or after?”

  “I’ll know more after Charlit’s been onstage for a few nights,” Master Kit said. “But probably before. When the ships leave for Narinisle.”

  “Well, do what’s right, but I’ll be sorry to see you go.”

  “I take it you’re staying for the foreseeable future?” Kit said. Mikel began spreading the sawdust on the flagstone paving of the courtyard to soak up the damp, Cary sweeping along behind him. It seemed like an odd thing to do. The yard was only going to fill up with mud and piss and rain again.

  “I can count the foreseeable future in days,” Marcus said. “Weeks at best.”

  “You’d be welcome to travel with us,” Master Kit said. “Yardem and Cithrin too. I think we all miss being caravan guards, just a little. It wasn’t a role we’d ever had before, and I don’t expect we will again.”

  “Master Kit?” Sandr called from behind the cart. “One of the swords is missing.”

  “I believe it’s with Smit’s bandit robe.”

  “It isn’t.”

  Master Kit sighed, and Marcus clapped him on the shoulder and left him to his work.

  Lantern flames and barn heat made the interior of the taproom warmer than the streets. The scent of roasting pork and beer competed with the less pleasant smell of close-packed bodies. Marcus kept one hand on his coins as he walked through the press. With so many distractions and people in so small a space, he’d have been shocked if there wasn’t at least one cutpurse looking for a little luck. He saw Yardem first, sitting at a back table, then as he got closer, Enen and Roach, Cithrin and… Barth. That was his name. The Firstbloods were Corisen Mout and Barth, and Corisen Mout had the bad front tooth. Feeling unaccountably pleased with himself, Marcus sat at the table.

  Cithrin raised her eyebrows, asking.

  “It’s done,” Marcus said. “You? Things went well with the governor?”

  “Fine,” Cithrin said. “Paid the fee, left the box.”

  “The receipt?”

  “Burned it,” Cithrin said. “There won??
?t be a trail back. As long as the governor doesn’t get curious and force the lock, we’re as ready as we’re likely to get.”

  A servant hurried over, put a tankard of ale on the table in front of Marcus, and reached to take Cithrin’s away. She stopped him, and he nodded his bow and darted away.

  “What are the chances that the governor’s baser instincts will get the better of him?” Marcus asked instead of How much have you drunk? If she were in danger of losing herself, Yardem would have stopped her. Maybe already had.

  “Life is risk,” she said as Roach, sitting beside her, sipped ale from his own tankard.

  “Yardem was just telling us about the shapes of people’s souls,” Barth said. “Did you know your soul’s a circle?”

  Marcus shot a pained look at Yardem. The flick of an ear was the closest he got to an apology.

  “Don’t listen to anything he says, Barth. He’s religious. It makes him nervous when things are going well.”

  “Wasn’t aware they were going well, sir,” Yardem said dryly.

  Over the next hour, Marcus drank his tankard of ale, ate a plate of roast pork with a black sauce hot enough to bring tears to his eyes, and listened to the talk around the table. Barth kept on Yardem about souls and destiny, but Enen and Roach and Cithrin chewed on more practical matters: how many payments would be coming to the bank proper and how many to the room at the café, how to assure that no one attacked whoever carried the café payments across the city, whether to make arrangements with the queensmen to help enforce their private contracts. All the business and consideration of a bank’s owner to her people. Cithrin spoke like a woman sure of her fate, and Marcus admired her for that.

  The banging of a stick on a tin pan interrupted them.

  “Show’s to start!” Mikel’s voice threaded through the noise of the taproom. “Come and watch the show! Show’s to start!”

  Marcus dropped a few coins on the table, rose, and, half joking, offered Cithrin his hand.

  “Shall we?” he asked.