The Dragon's Path

  The man sat at her desk. He was writing now, the illegible symbols of cipher coming from the nib of his pen without need of a code book. He nodded to Cithrin and then to Marcus, finished the line of script, and turned to them.

  “Mistress bel Sarcour,” he said. “I had one last question for you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  His tone had changed markedly. She could hear the respect in it. That was fair. She’d earned it.

  “Of course.”

  “I’m fairly sure I’ve guessed the answer, but there’s a sum placed aside in the most recent books. Six hundred twelve weight of silver?”

  “The quarter’s profit for the holding company,” she said.

  “Yes,” the auditor said. “That’s what I thought. Please, have a seat both of you.”

  Marcus gave her the stool, choosing to stand behind her.

  “I have to say, I am impressed with all this. Magister Imaniel trained you very, very well. We have, of course, suffered some loss. But in the main, the contracts you’ve made seem sound. The city fleet project was, I think, ill-advised, but since they refused your offer we don’t have to concern ourselves with that.”

  Cithrin wondered what it was about the fleet that the auditor found problematic, but he was still speaking.

  “I am making my report to the holding company now. My primary finding is that what you have done here was honestly intended to be in the interests of the bank as a whole. We are, unfortunately, obligated to a length of contract in Porte Oliva that doesn’t match what we’d like, but I know you were doing the best you could. And while some aspects of your behavior were certainly outside the law, I see no advantage to seeking any legal redress.”

  “He means we got away with it?” Marcus asked.

  “He does,” Cithrin said.

  “Good to know.”

  Paerin tapped his fingertips against the top of the desk, the deep lines of a frown marking his high forehead.

  “I don’t want to be forward, and I can’t, of course, make any guarantees,” he said, “but there may be a position for a woman with your talents in Carse. I would need to discuss it with Komme Medean and some of the other directors. But if you would like to make a career as a banker, I think you could find a start there.”

  You still have the option of walking away, Marcus had said less than hour earlier. She still did. It was time to burn that hope.

  “I would prefer to have a start here,” Cithrin said. “Have you considered my proposal?”

  Paerin Clark looked at her blankly. Then, embarrassed for her, he nodded.

  “Yes, that. No. We will be putting a recognized member of the bank in charge of the branch until it can be dissolved. Keeping you in your present position isn’t possible.”

  Marcus chuckled.

  “Does it make me a bad man that I was hoping he would say that?” he asked.

  Cithrin ignored him. When she spoke, she sat straight and looked the auditor in the eye.

  “You’ve overlooked something, sir. There’s a record book from Vanai that isn’t among these. It’s an old one, though. It doesn’t touch directly on your audit.”

  Paerin Clark shifted his chair to face her. He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “It is the book that records my status as ward of the bank,” Cithrin said. “It shows my legal age, and the date upon which I can begin to sign legally binding contracts. That would be next summer.”

  “I don’t see how that—”

  Cithrin gestured to the books, the piles of paper and parchment, the entire mechanism of her bank.

  “None of these contracts is legal,” she said. “I am not legally permitted to enter into any agreement. I’m ten months too young.”

  Paerin Clark’s expression was the same bland smile he’d worn the first day he’d come. It might only have been her imagination that he was a shade paler. Cithin swallowed to loosen the knot in her throat.

  “If the information in that book becomes public,” she said, “the bank will have to resort to direct appeal to the governor to either enforce the contracts anyway or reclaim the sums that were given out. I’ve met the governor, and I think that he is unlikely to take money away from his citizens to give to a bank that’s in a hurry to abandon his city.”

  “And the book in question is where?” Paerin Clark asked.

  “In a strongbox deposited with the governor under my name privately and separately from the bank. And the key to the box is in the keeping of a man with no incentive to see the bank succeed here. If I tell him what it unlocks, you can burn all these papers to light your cookfires.”

  “You’re bluffing. If this comes out, you’re guilty of forgery, theft. Misrepresentation. You’ll be in gaol for the rest of your life, and all we’ll lose is money.”

  “I can get her out of here,” Marcus said. “A city’s complement of queensmen half incapacitated from laughing at you? I can get her out of Birancour and in a decent house by midwinter.”

  “We are the Medean bank,” Paerin Clark said. “You can’t outrun us.”

  “I’m Marcus Wester. I’ve killed kings, and I’m lousy at bluffing. Threaten her again, and—”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Cithrin said. “Here’s my offer. Keep the branch as it is, but install a notary from the holding company. We say it’s to help with the workload. I’m the face and voice, but the notary oversees all the agreements.”

  “And when I refuse?”

  She wanted a drink. She wanted a warm bed and man’s arms around her. She wanted to know for certain that she was doing the right thing.

  “I burn this branch to the ground,” she said.

  The world balanced on the edge of a blade. The auditor closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair. Ah well, Cithrin thought. Life as a fugitive wasn’t so bad last winter. At least this time I can wear my own clothes. Paerin Clark opened his eyes.

  “You sign nothing,” he said. “All agreements are signed by the notary and the notary alone. Negotiations don’t happen without the notary present. If you’re overruled, you accept it. Control rests with the holding company. You’re a figurehead. Nothing more.”

  “I can live with that,” she said. And also, unspoken: Until I can change it, I can live with that.

  “And you return the missing book with evidence of your age to me. Before I leave the city.”

  “No,” Marcus said. “She gives you that, she’s got no purchase. You could go back on everything, and she’d have nothing.”

  “She’ll have to trust me.”

  Cithrin swallowed. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to sing.

  She nodded. Paerin Clark was still for a long moment, then he picked up the papers he’d been writing, sighed, and ripped them into small squares.

  “It seems I have a somewhat different report to write,” he said, smiling wryly. “Congratulations on your new bank, Magistra.”

  Geder

  The funeral rites of Phelia Maas were somewhat overshadowed by the execution of her husband. Geder, given the choice, had opted for the execution, as had the majority of the great names at court. King Simeon’s throne sat on a raised dais. Aster sat beside him in a smaller chair of the same design. King and prince both wore black ermine. Then there was the broad expanse of the chamber, Feldin Maas kneeling in its center. His ankles and wrists were bound with wire, and even from the gallery behind the woven rope, Geder could see the bruises on the man’s legs and the long black scabs across his back. Ten executioners stood in a rough circle around the prisoner. Their masks were steel and made to look like snarling animals, and their blades were dull and rusted.

  A single drum beat out its dry call. It was the only sound apart from some idiot whispering at the back the crowd. Geder tried to ignore the people and focus on the spectacle. Even though he’d arrived late, the assembled nobles had made room for him, so he had an excellent view just at the edge of the gallery. Dawson Kalliam and his two sons stood next to him. Geder was wearing his black leather cloak from Vanai
, but the cut of it was all wrong now. His body had changed shape over the summer, and it hung loose on him. He wished he’d thought to get it recut. Everyone who wasn’t watching Feldin Maas die seemed to be looking at him.

  King Simeon, gray in the face and severe, lifted his arm. The drum went silent. The mass of people in all three levels of the gallery took in their breath. Even the idiot at the back stopped talking.

  “You have the courtesy of a final statement, traitor,” the king said.

  Feldin Maas shook his head slowly. No.

  The king’s arm fell. The executioners moved in, each man sinking the point of his blade hard into the man’s flesh. Geder had been led to believe that the blades were fairly dull, and the force each of the killers used reinforced the idea. Maas cried out once, but only once. When the executioners stood back, he lay in a spreading pool of blood, the ten blades sticking out of his body. The assembly around him let its breath out with a sound like wind through trees.

  King Simeon stood. Behind him, Prince Aster looked like a statue of himself carved from pale stone. Geder wondered what it would be like for a boy just past his ninth naming day to know that a grown man had been plotting to kill him and then watch the man die brutally.

  “This is the right and proper fate of all who swear false loyalty to the Severed Throne,” he said. “Let all who stand witness to this justice carry forth the word that all traitors to Antea will suffer and all will die.”

  The applause and shouts of approval burst forth all around. Geder joined in, and Dawson Kalliam leaned close to him, shouting to be heard.

  “This is yours too, Palliako.”

  It was a kinder way of putting it than he’d used before the ceremony started. Then he’d said, You’ve given Simeon a spine at last.

  The drum began again, and king and prince turned and walked out in solemn procession. Servants dressed in red came to carry out the body. Maas was to be displayed, swords still in place, for seventeen days. What was left after that would be thrown into the Division with the kitchen scraps and sewage, and anyone who tried to pull it out for a more respectful burial would be hung. Somewhere behind Geder, hidden by the nobles of Antea, the doors opened. With the king gone and the ceremony finished, conversation rose to a deafening roar. Geder couldn’t make out what anyone was saying over the noise of everyone else, so he just followed the subtle movement of the crowd and made his way out.

  In the great halls of the Kingspire, the nobility of Antea broke into a hundred small groups. Dispersed, the din of the talk was less deafening if not particularly more comprehensible. He saw people pretending not to look at him, and he had some idea what they were saying: Palliako claims he was wandering the Keshet, but he came back knowing all about the plot on Prince Aster and burning Vanai was all part of his plan and I told you his bringing loyal soldiers back just before the mercenaries tried to take the city was no coincidence. He walked through the hall slowly, bathing in it.

  “Sir Palliako. A word.”

  Curtin Issandrian and Alan Klin walked up to him looking like bookends in the library of the damned. Geder smiled. Curtin Issandrian put out his hand.

  “I’ve come to thank you, sir. I owe you a great debt.”

  “You do?” Geder asked, leaving the man’s hand floating in the air between them.

  “If it weren’t for you, I would still be in alliance with a secret traitor to the crown,” Issandrian said. “Feldin Maas was a friend, and I let that friendship blind me to his nature. Today has been a terrible day for me, but it has been necessary. And I thank you for it.”

  Geder wished Basrahip had been there, just to know if Issandrian were what he pretended to be. Another time, though. There were months and years still to come when he and his Righteous Servant could ferret out every secret in the court. A little magnanimity now wouldn’t hurt anyone. He took Issandrian’s hand.

  “You’re a good man, Geder Palliako,” Issandrian said, speaking just loudly enough to be overheard. “Antea is fortunate to have you.”

  “Thank you, Lord Issandrian,” Geder said, matching him. “It is a strong man who can admit he was misguided. I respect you for it.”

  They dropped hands, and Alan Klin came forward, his own hand extended. Geder grinned and took it, pulling the man close.

  “Sir Klin!” he said, grinning. “It’s been too long.”

  “It has. It truly has.”

  “Do you remember that night on the march to Vanai when I got drunk and burned that essay I showed you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” Klin said, laughing as if they were sharing a nostalgic moment.

  Geder laughed too, and then let the amusement drain from his face.

  “So do I.”

  He dropped Klin’s hand, turned, and walked away feeling like the ground itself was rising to meet his footsteps. Outside, the day was blue skies and chill winter wind. His father stood near the steps that led down to the carriages, watching the chaos of horses, wood, and wheels. He held a pipe in his hand, but there seemed to be no fire in it.

  “So did the political process come to its logical end?” Lerer asked.

  “Didn’t you watch?”

  “I’m too old for blood sports. If the thing needs doing, then do it, but don’t make a theater piece out of it.”

  “But the king has to make an example, doesn’t he? He’s trying to keep Asterilhold from interfering with us,” Geder said. He felt hurt that his father hadn’t watched Maas die. “They were going to kill Prince Aster.”

  “I suppose,” Lerer said. “Still. I’ll be damned pleased to be home, get the stink of Camnipol off my skin. We’ve been away from Rivenhalm too long.”

  If we are to understand the freedom of humanity, we must first understand its enslavement. The root of all races—even the Firstblood—exists in the reign of dragons, and the end of that reign must by necessity mark the beginning of a peculiarly human history. It is not an exaggeration to say that the last breath of the last dragon was the first moment of the age of humanity in all its variety. But like all freedom, it was bounded and defined by that which came before. Our knowledge of the Dragon Empire is imperfect at best, but I contend that the discovery of the cave-palaces beneath Takynpal gives us our best view into what I have chosen to call the Age of Formation.

  Geder flipped ahead, rereading pages he had translated before. The paper was brown with age, and fragile. He disliked handling it for fear that the pages would crack and flake away in his fingertips, but he needed to get as close to the original texts as he could. It seemed to him that there had to be something—some word or phrase that could have been translated in more than one way—that would mention the existence and history of the goddess.

  The door of his sitting room swung open and Basrahip came in. He still wore his robes from the temple in the mountains, but he’d accepted a pair of leather-soled boots for walking on the cobbled streets of Camnipol. Among the rich red tapestries and soft upholstered chairs of the Palliako room in Camnipol, he looked entirely out of place. A desert weed in an arrangement of roses. He smiled at Geder and bowed.

  “Been walking again?” Geder said.

  “I knew tales of the great cities of the world, but nothing I had imagined could be so grand and so corrupt,” the priest said. “A child not more than seven summers old lied to me. And for no reason.”

  “What did he say?”

  The huge priest lumbered to a chair just across from Geder and lowered himself into it, the wood creaking under him as he spoke.

  “That he could tell my future for three copper coins. He knew it was untrue. A child.”

  “He was a beggar,” Geder said. “Of course they’re trying to cheat you. They need the money for food. I think you should be careful where you walk, though. There are parts of the city that aren’t safe. Especially after dark.”

  “You live in an age of darkness, my friend. But this city will be beautiful beyond measure when it is pure.”

  “Have you been to the temple?” r />
  “I have,” Basrahip said. “It is a beautiful building. I am looking forward to the day when I can make it my own.”

  “The paperwork shouldn’t take long. Before the close of court, certainly, and that’s less than a week now. But there’s not much to do in Camnipol over the winter months.”

  “I have tasks enough.”

  “So I’ve been reading,” Geder said, “and there’s something bothering me.”

  “Yes?”

  “The goddess is eternal. She was there at the birth of the dragons. She was there all through the Dragon Empire, but the only references I see to the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku come at the very end, during the final war. And then they talk about it as if Morade created it, the way Asteril made the Timzinae or Vailoth made the Drowned. I just don’t understand how that can be right.”

  “Perhaps then it cannot,” the priest said. “You should put less trust in written words, my friend. They are the stone eggs of lies. Here. I will show you. Read something from your book there.”

  Geder flipped the pages, fingertips shifting across the words until he found a passage that was easily rendered.

  “It was the fourth century of the Dragon Vailoth’s rule when these policies changed.”

  “Is that true?” the priest asked him. “Is it untrue? Do you mean what you say? No, old friend. It’s neither. Your voice carries nothing. They are only words you repeat emptily. To write a thing down is to kill it. Only in the living voice can the truth be known. My brothers and I have listened to one another, passing the voice of the goddess down from generation to generation, and with every new speaking from the start, we have known what we heard to be true. These books you have? They are ink on paper. Objects. Soulless. You would be wiser not to put your faith in them.”

  “Oh,” Geder said. “That’s… I’d never looked at things that way. Does that—?”

  “Geder?”

  Lerer Palliako stood in the doorway. His tunic was the blue and gray of House Palliako, formally cut with silver buttons on the sleeve. His hand clutched the doorway, as if he needed it to keep himself steady.