The Dragon's Path

  “Spread out,” he called back down the line. “Broken file. We want to look bigger than we are.”

  The call came back, voice after voice repeating the call. Timing was going to matter a great deal. The land looked different in the sunlight. The cove wasn’t as distant as it had seemed in the night. Marcus sat high in his saddle.

  “Come on,” he murmured. “See us. Look over here and see us. We’re right here.”

  A shiver along a wide branch. The leaves bent back light brighter than gold. A horn blared.

  “That was it,” Yardem rumbled.

  “Was,” Marcus said. He pictured the little shelters, the sailors scuttling for their belongings, for their boats. He counted ten silent breaths then pulled his shield to the front and drew his sword.

  “Sound the charge,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

  When they rounded the bend that led into the cove, a ragged volley of arrows met them. Marcus shouted, and his soldiers picked up the call. From the far end of the strip of sand, ten archers stood ground, loosing arrows and preparing to jump into the last hide boat and take to the safety of the water, the ships, and the sea. The other boats were already away, rowing fast toward the ships and loaded with enough men to defeat Marcus’s force.

  The first was a dozen yards from shore and already sinking.

  In the bright water, hidden by the glare of the sun, nearly a dozen Kurtadae with long knives put new holes in the boats.

  Marcus pulled up, waving to his own archers to take the shoreline while the Jasuru charged the enemy and their boat, howling like mad animals. A few figures appeared on the ships, staring out at the spectacle on shore and in the tidepool. The first boat vanished. The second was staying more nearly afloat as the men in it bailed frantically with helmets and hands. They weren’t rowing, though. It wouldn’t get them any farther.

  Marcus lifted his hand and his archers raised bows.

  “Surrender now and you won’t be harmed!” he shouted over the surf. “Or flee and be killed. Your choice.”

  In the surf, one of the sailors started kicking for the ships. Marcus pointed at him with his sword. It took three volleys before he stopped. As if on cue, the black bobbing heads of Ahariel and the other Kurtadae appeared in a rough line between the sinking boats and the ships. As Marcus watched, the swimming Kurtadae lifted their knives above the water, like the ocean growing teeth.

  “Leave your weapons in the water,” Marcus called. “Let’s end this gently.”

  They emerged from the waves, sullen and bedraggled. Marcus’s soldiers took them one by one, bound them, and left them sitting under guard.

  “Fifty-eight,” Yardem said.

  “There’s a few still on the ships,” Marcus said. “And there’s the one we poked full of arrows.”

  “Fifty-nine, then.”

  “Still outnumbered. Badly outnumbered,” Marcus said. And then, “We can exaggerate when we take it to the taphouse.”

  A young Firstblood man walked out of the sea. His beard was braided in the style of Carbal. His eyes were bright green, his face thin and sharp. His silk robe clung to his body, making his potbelly impossible to hide. Marcus kicked his horse and trotted up to him. He looked like a kitten that fell in a creek.

  “Macero Rinál?”

  The pirate captain looked up at Marcus with contempt that was as good as acknowledgment.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Marcus said.

  The man said something obscene.

  Marcus had his tent set up at the top of the rise. The stretched leather clung to the frames and kept the wind out, if not the flies. Macero Rinál sat on a cushion wrapped in a wool blanket and stinking of brine. Marcus sat at his field desk with a plate of sausage and bread. Below them, as if on a stage, Marcus’s forces were involved with the long process of unloading the surrendered ship, hauling the cargo to land, and loading it onto wagons.

  “You picked the wrong ship,” Marcus said.

  “You picked the wrong man,” Rinál said. He had a smaller voice than Marcus had expected.

  “Five weeks ago, a ship called the Stormcrow was coming west from Maccia in the Free Cities heading for Porte Oliva in Birancour. It didn’t make it. Waylaid, the captain said. Is this sounding familiar?”

  “I am the cousin of Prince Esteban of Carbal. You and your magistrates have no power over me,” Rinál said, lifting his chin as he spoke. “I invoke the Treaty of Carcedon.”

  Marcus took a bite of sausage and chewed slowly. When he spoke, he drew the syllables out.

  “Captain Rinál? Look at me. Do I seem like a magistrate’s blade?”

  The chin didn’t descend, but a flicker of uncertainty came to the young man’s eyes.

  “I work for the Medean bank in Porte Oliva. My employers insured the Stormcrow. When you took the crates off that ship, you weren’t stealing from the sailors who were carrying them. You weren’t even stealing from the merchants who owned them. You were stealing from us.”

  The pirate’s face went grey. The leather flap opened with a rustle and Yardem came in. His earrings were back in place.

  “News?” Marcus said.

  “The cargo here matches the manifests,” Yardem said. He was scowling, playing to the dangerous reputation of the Tralgu. Marcus assumed it amused him. “We’re in the right place, sir.”

  “Carry on.”

  Yardem nodded and left. Marcus took another bite of sausage.

  “My cousin,” Rinál said. “King Sephan—”

  “My name’s Marcus Wester.”

  Rinál’s eyes grew wide and he sank back on the cushion.

  “You’ve heard of me,” Marcus said. “So you know that the appeal-to-noble-blood strategy may not be your best choice. Your mother was a minor priestess who got drunk with a monarch’s exiled uncle. That’s your protection. Me? I’ve killed kings.”

  “Kings?”

  “Well, just the one, but you take the point.”

  Rinál tried to speak, swallowed to loosen his throat, and then tried again.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to reclaim our property, or as much of it as you have left. I don’t expect it’ll make up the losses, but it’s a beginning.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “You mean if I don’t take you to justice? I’m going to come to an understanding with you.”

  A cry rose up from the beach below them. Dozens of voices raised in alarm. Marcus nodded to the captive, and together they walked out into the light. On the bright water below them, the ship farthest from the shore was afire. A plume of white smoke rose from it, and thin red snake-tongues licked at the mast, visible even from here. Rinál cried out, and as if in answer a roll of sudden black smoke bellied out from the flame.

  “Don’t worry,” Marcus said. “We’re only burning one of them.”

  “I’ll see you dead,” Rinál said, but there was no power in his voice. Marcus put a hand on the man’s shoulder and steered him back into the shade of the tent.

  “If I kill you or if I burn all your ships,” Marcus said, “then by this time next year, there’s just going to be another bunch like yours in the cove. The bank’s investments are just as much at risk. Nothing changes, and I have to come back here and have this same talk with someone else.”

  “You’ve burned her. You burned my ship.”

  “Try to stay with me,” Marcus said, lowering Rinál back to the ground. The pirate put his head in his hands. Marcus took the two steps to his field desk and took out the paper Cithrin had prepared for him. He’d meant to drop it haughtily at the pirate’s feet, but the man seemed so shaken he tucked it into his lap instead.

  “That’s a list of the ships we insure out of Porte Oliva. If I have to find you again, offering yourself to the magistrate is the best thing that could happen.”

  The breeze shifted and the smell of burning pitch filled the tent and spoiled the taste of the sausages. The leather walls chuffed like
tiny sails. Rinál opened the papers.

  “If the ship’s not listed here…”

  “Then it’s no business of mine.”

  “I’m not the only ships on these waters,” he said. “If someone else…”

  “You should discourage them.”

  The color was starting to come back to Rinál’s cheeks. The shock had begun to fade and the old righteousness return, but it was tempered now. The voices coming up from the water were brighter now, laughing. Those would be Marcus’s soldiers. A wagon creaked. It was time to move on.

  “You’ll travel with us as far as Cemmis township,” Marcus said. “That’s not too far to walk back from before your people get sick from thirst.”

  “You think you’re such a big man, no one can take you down,” the pirate said. “You think you’re better than me. You’re no different.”

  Marcus leaned against the field desk, looking down at the pirate. In truth, Rinál was a young man. For all his bluster and taking on airs, he was the same sort who tripped drunk men in taprooms and groped women in the street. He was a badly behaved child who, instead of growing to manhood, found a few ships and took his bullying out in the world where it could turn him a profit.

  A dozen replies came to Marcus. When you’ve watched your family die, say that again and Grow up, boy, while you still have the chance and Yes, I’m better than you; my ship isn’t burning.

  “We’ll leave soon,” he said. “I have guards posted. Don’t try to go without us.”

  Outside, the little two-masted ship roared in flame. Black smoke billowed from her, carrying sparks and embers up to wheeling birds. Marcus walked down the rise to where the carts were lining up, prepared to head back home. One of his younger Kurtadae was in the medical wagon, his arm being shaved and bound. Beneath the pelt, his skin looked just like a Firstblood’s.

  Three of the enemy sailors were laid out under tarps. The rest, bound in ranks with arms bent back, were sullen and angry. Marcus’s men were grinning and trading jokes. It was like the aftermath of a battle, only this time there’d hardly been any bloodshed. The wet sand was smooth and even where the waves washed their footprints away. The mules, ignoring the smell of flames and the banter of soldiers, pulled wagons filled with silks and worked brass back toward the road. The smells of salt and smoke mixed.

  Marcus felt the first tug of darkness at the back of his mind. The aftermath of any fight—great battle or taproom dance—always had that touch of bleakness. The brightness and immediacy of the fight gave way, and the world and all its history poured back in. It was worse when he lost, but even in victory, the darkness was there. He put it aside. There was real work to be done.

  Yardem stood by the head wagon, a Cinnae boy on a lathered horse at his side. A messenger. As he approached, the boy dropped down and led his mount away to be cared for.

  “Where do we stand?” Marcus asked.

  “Ready to start back, sir. But might be best if I led the column. The magistra wants you back at the house as soon as you can get there.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Yardem shrugged eloquently.

  “An honest war,” he said.

  Entr’acte

  The Apostate

  The apostate groaned, rolling over on his thin mattress. The first bare light of dawn outlined the stable door, and in his blood, the spiders shuddered and danced, agitated as they had been for weeks now. In the twenty years he had traveled the world, the taint in his blood had never troubled him as much as these last weeks. Around him, the others still slept, their deep and regular breath reassuring as a thick wool blanket. The stables were warm, or warmer at least than sleeping in the cart would have been. He wouldn’t have to break a skin of ice off the water bucket before he drank. When he sat up, his spine ached. Maybe from the coming winter, maybe from the years weighing down his shoulders, maybe from the restlessness of the creatures that lived in his skin.

  One of the horses snorted in its stall, shifting uneasily. From the shadows, there was a tiny gasp. He went still, straining to hear.

  “I won’t finish,” a familiar voice whispered. “I swear I won’t finish.”

  The apostate closed his eyes. It never changed. All through the world, likely all through the ages and epochs of humanity, some things simply never changed. He swallowed, readying his voice. When he spoke, the words carried through the stables and out into the yard.

  “Sandr! If you get that girl pregnant, I will be sorely tempted to tie off your cock with a length of wire, and I swear it will not improve your performance.”

  The voice that had gasped squeaked in alarm, and Sandr rushed into the dim light, pulling at his tunic to cover himself.

  “There’s no one here, Master Kit,” the boy lied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Which performance do you mean?” Smit asked in a sleepy voice. “Seems to me that if you’re talking about stagecraft, tying yourself down might be a decent exercise in concentration.”

  “Help him play a hunchback,” Cary said through a yawn.

  “There’s no one here,” Sandr said again. “You’re all imagining things.”

  The scrape of a board at the stable’s back marked the girl’s escape, whoever she was. The apostate rose to sitting. Hornet lit a lantern, the warm light chasing away the darkness. With groans and complaints, the company came to life. As they always did. Charlit Soon, the new actress, was looking daggers at Sandr. Yet another irritation the apostate would have to soothe. He wondered, and not for the first time, how anyone without the spiders could keep an acting company together for any length of time. But perhaps they couldn’t.

  “Up,” he said. “I’m sure there’s work to be done that will make us more money than lying here in the dark. Up, you mad, beautiful bastards, and let us once more take the hearts and dreams of Porte Oliva by storm.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Cary said, rolled over, and fell back to sleep.

  The first time he’d met Marcus Wester, the apostate had given him a private name: the man without hopes. In the last year, the despair had faded a bit, but sometimes Wester would still make his little jokes—I’m too stubborn to die or You don’t need love when there’s laundry to wash—and the people around him would chuckle. Only the apostate knew how deeply the man meant what he said.

  It was what made the mercenary captain interesting.

  The taproom near the bank had the advantage in these cold months of keeping food and a warm fire. Cary and Charlit Soon would set up in the common room some nights, singing songs from the lighter comic operas and making between them enough to feed the whole company for three days.

  “Always best to keep your political assassinations discreet,” Wester said. “Really, that was where I went wrong. Well, it’s not the first place I went wrong.”

  “One of the places, sir,” Yardem Hane said.

  “Will it keep Northcoast from violence, do you think?”

  “They poisoned a man so he’d vomit himself to death,” Marcus said. “That’s violence. But with his claim disposed, I don’t see any swords taking the field, no. So that’s good for the Narinisle trade. And apparently Antea’s decided not to descend into civil war either.”

  “I didn’t know they were on the dragon’s path,” the apostate said, taking a sip of his ale. During winter, they kept it in the alley under guard, so it was as cold as the rooms were warm.

  “Didn’t either. This new notary gets reports from everyplace, though. It’s one of the advantages of being part of a bank where the bank people know about you. Anyway, it seems the only thing that kept the court in Camnipol from turning on each other like a pack of starving dogs was a religious zealot from the Keshet.”

  “Really?”

  “Well,” Wester said, “he’s a real Antean noble, but apparently he spent time in the Keshet and came back with a bad case of the faith. Exposed some sort of plot, turned the court on its ears, and built a temple just down the street from the Kingspire to celebr
ate.”

  “There’s nothing sinister about building temples, sir,” Yardem said. “People do it all the time.”

  “Not in celebration,” Wester said. “People go to God when they’ve got trouble. Things are well, there’s not much point sucking after the divine.”

  Yardem flicked a jingling ear and leaned toward the apostate.

  “He says these things to annoy me.”

  “Always works.”

  “It does, sir,” the Tralgu lied.

  “And the Goddess of Round Pies seems especially dim.”

  “Round pies?” the apostate asked.

  “The cult’s got a symbol. Big red banner with a white bit in the middle, and what looks like eight bits of pie all stuck together.”

  “Eight points on a compass,” Yardem said.

  No, the apostate thought, dread pouring into him like dark water. No, the eight legs of a spider.

  “You all right, Kit?” Wester asked. “You’re looking pale.”

  “Fine,” the apostate said. “Just fine.”

  But in his mind there was a single thought:

  It’s begun.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book is never as solitary a job as I expect. This project especially has benefited by the time and attention of people besides myself. I owe debts of gratitude to Walter Jon Williams, Carrie Vaughn, Ian Tregillis, Vic Milán, Melinda Snodgrass, and Ty Franck, who were there when the lightning struck, and Jim Frenkel, who did what he could. Also my agents Shawna McCarthy and Danny Baror, who have been better than gold on this as on everything. And I would especially like to thank the crew at Orbit. My editors Darren Nash and DongWon Song have made working on the project a joy, and the deep professionalism and consideration I’ve seen from everyone on staff in New York and London have continually impressed. This would be less of a book without each of them.

  Any errors and infelicities are entirely my own.

  Publications by Daniel Abraham