The Dragon's Path

She accepted his support with a mocking formality.

  “It’s what we’ve come here for,” she said. Marcus led her and the members of his new company out to the pleasant cool of the courtyard to watch his old one. The crowd was good. Easily fifty people, and more likely to stop as they went in or out. When Master Kit strode out on the boards, his wiry hair pulled back and a sword strapped to his hip, a few people applauded, Marcus among them. Sandr came out a moment later, pretending to pick his teeth with a blunted dagger.

  “You, Pintin, have been my second in command these many years,” Master Kit said, thrusting out his chin in parody of heroism. “From the moments of my highest glory and the depths of my despair, you have followed me. Now once again the hounds of war are loosed, and we must fly before them. The armies of dark Sarakal descend upon the city tomorrow.”

  “Best we get out tonight, then,” Sandr said. The crowd chuckled.

  “Indeed, ours is not to stand and fight the doomèd fight. The city surely shall fall, and before it does, Lady Daneillin—last of her house and gentlest beauty of Elassae—must be taken safe away. That is our great work, Pintin. Our company is to fly this night with the great lady in our charge.”

  “Yeah, problem with that,” Sandr said in his Pintin voice. “The men were on the city wall seeing who could piss the farthest. Seems the magistrate thought it was raining. They’re all in the city gaol.”

  Master Kit paused. The self-importance in his jaw melted.

  “What?” he shrieked in comic falsetto. More people laughed. They were warming to it.

  Marcus leaned toward Yardem Hane.

  “I’m not like that, though,” he said. “All that high dramatic talk and sucking my gut in. That’s not what I’m like.”

  “Not at all, sir,” Yardem said.

  Two days later, Cithrin sat across the café table from him. A light rain pattered outside the open doors and windows, the stones at the entrance of the Grand Market darkened almost black. Behind him, two Kurtadam men were talking about the latest news from Northcoast. Another war of succession seemed almost certain. Marcus told himself he didn’t care, and for the most part that was true. The world smelled of coffee and raindrops.

  “If we have the free coin, I’m thinking about sponsoring one of the Narinisle ships next year,” Cithrin said.

  Marcus nodded.

  “There’s going to be uncertainty about the new fleet idea. Especially at first. If it’s a success, even just for the first couple of years, it’s going to increase the traffic through Porte Oliva. That could be a very good thing for us, so long as we’re in position. Known to everyone. Trusted.”

  “All that assuming,” Marcus said.

  Cithrin swallowed. She’d lost weight in the last weeks, and her skin, while always pale, was growing pallid. It was odd to him that none of the men who came asking her patronage for a loan or offering to deposit their wealth with her for a discreet return appeared to notice that the anxiety was eating her. She wasn’t sleeping enough. But she wasn’t drinking herself to sleep either. That counted as strength enough for him.

  “All that assuming,” she agreed. And then, “Do you ever wish we’d run? Filled our pockets and just… gone?”

  “Ask me again once the auditor’s left,” Marcus said.

  She nodded. The ancient, half-blind Cinnae man limped in from the back. The rain seemed to have no good effect on his hips. Cithrin raised her empty cup, and Maestro Ansanpur nodded with a knowing smile and turned back around.

  “Magister Imaniel always said that waiting was the hardest thing,” she said. “That the easiest way to lose was to get impatient. Do something for the sake of doing something and not because it’s right. That always sounded obvious when he said it. He and Cam were the nearest thing I had to parents. I was with the bank almost as soon as I could walk. He knew everything about money and risk and how to appear one way when you’re actually something else.”

  “He’d have made a good general, sounds like,” Marcus said.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t like soldiers, though. He didn’t like war. I remember he used to say that there are two ways to meet the world. You go out with a blade in your hand or else with a purse.”

  “Really? And here I thought there was money to be made from war.”

  “There is,” Cithrin said. “But only if you’re standing in exactly the right place. In the larger sense, there’s always more lost in the fight than there is won. The way he said things, it sounded like we were all that kept the swords in their scabbards. War or trade. Dagger and coin. Those were the two kinds of people.”

  “Sounds like you miss him.”

  Cithrin nodded, then shrugged, then nodded again.

  “I do, but not the way I thought I would. I thought it would all be about wanting to ask him what he knew, but most times when I think of him, it’s just that it would be nice to hear his voice. And I don’t even think of him as often as I’d expected.”

  “You’ve changed since you saw him,” Marcus said. “That’s one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don’t go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can’t push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren’t the same person who was in pain.”

  “And did that work for you?”

  “Hasn’t yet,” Marcus said.

  Maestro Asanpur returned with a fresh cup in his trembling hand. He placed it before Cithrin with a faint clink of fine ceramic. She blew across the surface of it, scattering the steam with her breath. When she sipped it, her smile lit the old Cinnae’s face.

  “Thank you, Maestro,” she said.

  “Thank you, Magistra,” he said, and limped forward to close the shutters against the chill.

  The patter of the raindrops grew heavier, the splashes like little detonations of white against the grey. She was right. Waiting for battle was the hardest part. Unless you got a dagger in your gut during the battle. Then that was hardest. Or you got through just fine and saw your men dead around you. Then that was.

  Yardem appeared at the far side of the square, a darker shadow in a world made from them. He didn’t run, didn’t even hurry. Marcus watched the Tralgu endure his way past the queensmen and the market. With each step, he seemed to grow more solid. More real. He ducked his head as he came in the door.

  “Sir.”

  “All right,” Marcus said, his throat and chest tight. “All right.”

  Cithrin stood up. She looked calm. It would have taken living with her for the better part of a year to see the fear in her eyes and the angle of her chin.

  “The auditor’s come, then?” she said.

  Yardem flicked his ears and nodded.

  “He has, ma’am.”

  Cithrin

  Paerin Clark.

  Sometime during her years in Vanai, she must have heard the name. The syllables had a familiarity without detail, like a name from history or myth. Drakis Stormcrow. The Risen Guard. Aesa, Princess of Swords.

  Paerin Clark.

  Cithrin plucked at her skirt, keeping the lines of it neat and straight. Her heart pounded against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her belly was a solid knot that veered between cramping and nausea. She wanted something to drink. Something powerful that would loosen her muscles, calm her, give her courage. Instead she held herself the way Master Kit had taught her, her shoulders low and back, her spine loose, and prayed that she looked like a woman in full possession of her powers instead of a half-grown girl in her mother’s clothes.

  The mild-looking man sat at her desk, in her rooms, with his legs crossed and his fingers laced across his knee. His hairline was receding. His shoulders were narrow. He could have been anybody. He could have been no one. His notebook lay open on the table, a steel pen across it, but he didn’t write notes. Not even ciphered ones. He asked his questions gently, and smiled when she spoke. His Northcoast accent was soft at the co
rners. Where other men’s words hissed, his shushed.

  “Magister Imaniel had no part in this, then?”

  “No, none,” Cithrin said. “The intention was solely that we should take the bank’s Vanai assets to Carse. As far as Magister Imaniel knew, we were doing just that. If the snows hadn’t come early to the pass at Bellin, we would have followed that plan.”

  “And the decision to divert to the south?”

  “That was Captain Wester’s.”

  “Tell me more about that.”

  No voices came from below them. Captain Wester and the guards were gone, sent out of the house by Clark. A dozen sword-and-bows that he’d brought with him had taken their place. The silence seemed wrong. Eerie. The rain pattered against the windows like a thousand tiny fingers poking at her, and the thunder muttered ominously in the distance. Cithrin recounted everything she could in the detail she could manage. Being intercepted by the Antean forces, smuggling the cart into Porte Oliva, hiding in the salt quarter.

  “And only Captain Wester and his Tralgu were acting as guard at this point?”

  “I don’t know that I’d call Yardem ‘his Tralgu.’ ”

  “They were the only two guards?”

  “Yes,” Cithrin said.

  “Thank you.”

  She told about the attack by Opal, about Marcus’s fears of leaving the city and his fears of staying. She was careful, when she described forging the documents, to keep her tone calm and matter-of-fact. Magister Imaniel had always said that appearing guilty gave them the impression there was something to feel guilty for. When she admitted to filing false papers with the governor of Porte Oliva, the auditor didn’t comment or even change expression. Once she was past the history of founding her false branch of the bank and began to outline her investments, loans, consignments, and commissions, she felt herself starting to relax.

  She talked for the greater part of the evening. Her voice grew hoarse, and her back began to ache from sitting too long in one position. If Paerin suffered the same, he didn’t show it.

  “How much did Captin Wester advise you on these strategies?”

  “He didn’t,” Cithrin said. “He didn’t try, and I didn’t ask him to.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not a banker. I gave him a budget that I thought was appropriate for the protection of the gold we kept here and for the moving of any substantial amounts within the city, but that’s all.”

  “I see. Well. Thank you, Mistress bel Sarcour. That was the most interesting story I’ve heard in some time. I assume all the books and records are here?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve also taken a room at a café by the Grand Market, but all of those records have been brought here.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I would also like to make a suggestion? If I may.”

  Paerin Clark raised his eyebrows. Cithrin took a deep breath.

  “Due to circumstances,” she said, “I have been identified closely with the bank here in the city. With the branch being so recently established, I think it wouldn’t be in anybody’s interest to change that. Once you’ve completed your audit, I hope you’ll consider keeping me on as the public face of the branch.”

  Clark took up his pen and closed the still-unmarked notebook.

  “I think you have misunderstood the situation,” he said. “This… let’s call it misadventure… has embarrassed the Medean bank in general and Komme Medean in particular. It has disrupted negotiations in Herez and Northcoast, and taken resources, myself included, away from some profoundly important situations. From what you’ve told me, I expect you’ve been taken in by a mercenary captain for reasons I haven’t fathomed yet. But I am very, very good at what I do. If there’s anything here you haven’t told me, I will find it. I’m going to spend as long as it takes to review every transaction you’ve made. I already have three men going through the city asking about your activity. If there’s anything that’s not in these books, I’ll find that too. And public gaol in Porte Oliva is far from the worst thing that can happen from here.

  “Now, before I get started, I have one last question. I will ask you this only once. If you tell me the truth, I am in a position to see you’re treated mercifully. If you lie, I can make your life unbearable. You understand?”

  She should have been frightened. That was what Clark intended, certainly. Instead, an odd peace flowed into her. He was bullying her. He was condescending to her. He was underestimating her. And so her last reservations were laid to rest. The man was an ass, and anything she did to him would be justified.

  “I understand,” she said. She saw him hesitate, hearing something in her voice he hadn’t expected. She smiled. “What was your question?”

  “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked

  That I’m going to beat you, Cithrin thought. That I am going to win.

  “If you have any questions, Master Clark, I am at your disposal,” Cithrin said. “But my numbers balance.”

  For the next week, she lived in exile, sitting in the café or walking through the city streets during the days, sleeping at night at an inn not far from her bank. The auditor called upon her daily with lists of questions and clarifications: Why was the rate of interest specified in this contract, but not in another? Why was a particular sum withdrawn from the bank’s reserves, and when would it be returned? Why was this loan accepted when another apparently of greater merit was refused? Cithrin sat in her rooms—hers, dammit—and allowed herself to be subjected to the examination. She knew every answer, and after a few days, it became something of a game to watch Clark try to catch her out. He was smart, and he knew his business. She even found herself respecting him. He had been doing this work since Cithrin was a hardly more than a child.

  But then, so had she.

  The ships left for Narinisle. They carried pressed oil, wine, cotton cloth, and the dreams and hopes of the merchant houses of Porte Oliva. But they didn’t carry any agreements of capital from the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, because the audit was still progressing. Next year, maybe.

  Cithrin stood on the seawall and watched the ships depart, towed out past the dangers of the bay, and then sails rising up and filling like spring flowers in bloom. She stood silently until they faded into the grey between sea and sky, and then she watched the haze. Seagulls called and turned in the wide air, complaining or celebrating. At her side, Captain Wester crossed his arms.

  “Another one came to the café this morning,” he said. “Your brewer lady and her son.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Yardem talked with them. He said the same as the others. The audit’s normal for a new branch, and please to go along with whatever the man asks. She wasn’t happy. Wanted to talk with you. Didn’t like it when he said that the two of you comparing notes would only make the auditor’s job harder. Accused Yardem of accusing her of something.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Cithrin said. “I’d stop this all if I could.”

  “I know.”

  Cithrin pulled her cloak closer around her and turned away from the limitless sea back toward the city. Her city. She wasn’t sure when it had become hers.

  “With luck, we’ll be back to normal before long.”

  He fell in at her side. She couldn’t say if she matched his stride or if he matched hers.

  “You still have the option of walking away,” he said. “I can go get the key back. You can reclaim the box from the governor’s palace. It wouldn’t be so bad. Carse is a decent enough city. Even if there is trouble with the succession, you’d be safe there. No one tries to put Carse under siege. Give it a year, take your money. You could do anything.”

  “I couldn’t do this,” Cithrin said.

  “Fair point.”

  They walked down long, whitewashed steps and along the wall toward the salt quarter. Somewhere along the way, they passed the spot where Opal had died, but she didn’t recognize it and she didn’t ask. A small wire-haired dog trotte
d by, yipped at them, and sped away when Marcus pretended to reach down for a rock to throw.

  “Notice you haven’t been drinking,” he said.

  I would drown a small child for a bottle of wine, Cithrin thought, but I am going to need my wits, and there won’t be any warning.

  “I don’t miss it,” she said.

  “You haven’t been sleeping.”

  “Don’t miss that either.”

  The inn that had become their home while the bank itself remained under occupation sat at the corner of two of the larger of Porte Oliva’s narrow streets. Its white walls and wooden roof looked cold under the low clouds. As they came near, a man stepped out of the doorway. She saw Marcus become alert without changing his stride. She felt a low burning in her throat.

  The man came toward them. One of Paerin Clark’s guards.

  “He wants to see me?” Cithrin asked.

  “Same as always, miss,” the guard said. “I think he’s finished up.”

  Cithrin took a deep breath. The time had come.

  “May I bring the captain along?”

  “Don’t see why not.”

  The walk back to the bank was short, but Cithrin felt every step of it. It occurred to her that the dress she was wearing was the first she’d bought when she came to Porte Oliva, the one she’d invented Hallskari salt dyes for in exchange for a five-coin reduction. The dress of a truly dangerous woman. She tried to take it as a good omen.

  A Kurtadam boy walked by selling paper funnels with honeyed almonds, and Cithrin stopped to buy one. She popped two in her mouth, gave one to Marcus. Paerin’s guard waited, and she tipped the paper toward him. Smiling, he took two. So he was willing to accept gifts from her. That meant he was either a cold bastard to the bone, or the news from the auditor was good. No, she thought, it meant the guard believed it was good.

  For twenty days, she had been denied her room. Walking back up the stairs, she was prepared to choke down outrage, but when she reached the top, everything was precisely as it had been. Paerin Clark might have been a ghost for all the trace he left of himself.