The Dragon's Path

by Daniel Abraham

  The wide copper-and-oak doors of the governor’s palace were already open, a stream of humanity pouring in and out from the center of authority. Cithrin lifted her chin. Smit had painted her face before they left. Faint, greyish lines around her eyes. Rose-grey blush coloring her cheeks. She wore a black dress that flattered her hips, but the way a matron might be flattered. Not a girl fresh from her father’s home. She could have been thirty. She could have been fifteen. She could have been anything.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  “Don’t walk from your ankles,” he said, and she slowed, taking the brickwork steps one at a time.

  Within the palaces, the sunlight filtered through great walls of colored glass. Red and green and gold spilled across the floors, the twinned stairways. It mottled the skins of the people walking through, leaving Marcus with the sense of being in some enchanted grotto from a children’s song, where all the fish had been changed to minor political officials. Cithrin took a long, shuddering breath. For a moment, he thought she would leave. Turn on her heel, flee, and leave the whole mad folly behind. Instead, she stepped forward and put a hand on the arm of a passing Kurtadam woman.

  “Forgive me,” Cithrin said. “Where would I find the Prefect of Trades?”

  “Up the stairs, ma’am,” the Kurtadam said with a soft southland lisp. “He’ll be a Cinnae like yourself. Green felt table, ma’am.”

  “My thanks,” Cithrin said, and turned toward the stairs. The Kurtadam woman’s gaze stayed on Marcus, and he nodded as they passed. As a bodyguard, he felt out of place. There were a few queensmen here, scattered among the crowd, but no other private guards that he could see. He wondered if the real Medean bank would have brought him along or left him outside.

  At the top of the stair, Cithrin paused, and he did as well. The prefectures were set haphazardly about the room like a huge child had taken up the tables and scattered them. There were no aisles, no rows. Each table stood at an angle to the ones around it, and if there was a system to the chaos, Marcus couldn’t see it. Cithrin nodded to herself, gestured that he should stay close, and waded into the mess. A third of the way across, she came to a table covered with green felt where a Cinnae man in a brown tunic sat paging through stacks of parchment. A small weighing scale perched beside him, a row of weights behind it like soldiers at attention.

  “Help you?” he said.

  “I’ve come to submit letters of foundation,” Cithrin said. Marcus felt his heart speeding up, like the moments before a battle. He crossed his arms and scowled.

  “What class of trade, ma’am?”

  “Banking,” Cithrin said, as if she were doing something perfectly normal. The Prefect of Trades looked up as if seeing her for the first time.

  “If you mean a gambling house—”

  “No,” Cithrin said. “A branch house. The holding company is in Carse. I have the papers, if you’d like.”

  She held them out. Marcus was certain he caught a whiff of old urine, that the section of the page that the wax had protected showed three shades darker than the rest. The prefect would laugh, call the queensmen, end the game here before it began.

  The Cinnae man took the parchment as if it were spun glass. He frowned, his gaze skipping over the words. He stopped and looked up at Cithrin. His pale face flushed.

  “The… the Medean bank?” he said. Marcus saw the conversations around them shudder and stop. More eyes were turning their way. The prefect swallowed. “Will this be a restricted license or free?”

  “I believe the letter calls for free,” Cithrin said.

  “So it does. So it does. A full and unencumbered branch of the Medean bank.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” the man said, and fumbled, reading for her name on the papers. “No, Mistress bel Sarcour, only I hadn’t been told to expect it. If the governor knew, he’d have been here.”

  “Not called for,” Cithrin said. “Would I pay the fees to you?”

  “Yes,” the prefect said. “Yes, that would be fine. Let me just…”

  For what felt like a day and likely took less than half an hour, Cithrin fenced with the bureaucrat. Payment was delivered from the bank, assayed, accepted, and receipts issued. The man scribbled a note on a sheet of pink onionskin, pressed an inked signet on the page, signed, and had Cithrin put her name over his signature. Then he offered her a small silver blade. As if she had done it a thousand times before Cithrin cut her thumb and pressed her print onto the page. The prefect did likewise.

  And it was done. Cithrin took the onionskin, folded it, and slipped it in the purse that hung from her belt. Marcus followed her back down the stairs and out to the square. The sun had burned off the mist now, and the sounds of human traffic were the same low roar he’d become accustomed to.

  “We’re a bank,” Cithrin said.

  Marcus nodded. He would have felt better if there had been someone to fight. Or at least threaten. The anxiety of what they’d just done wanted some release. Cithrin took a handful of coins from her purse and held them out to him.

  “Here,” she said. “That’s to hire on more guards. Now that it’s my money, we might as well spend it. I’m thinking a dozen men, but use your best judgment. We’ll want day and night guards, and then a few to accompany goods when we transfer them. I didn’t haul these silks all the way from the Free Cities to have some back-alley thief take them now. I’ve got my eye on a couple of places the bank might operate from that give a better impression than squatting over a gambling shop.”

  Marcus looked at the coins. They were the first she’d ever paid him, and so what she’d just said was her first true order. The warmth in his chest was as surprising as it was powerful.

  However it unfurled from this, whatever the consequences, the girl had done what damn few would have had the nerve for. This from the half-idiot carter boy he’d met in Vanai last autumn.

  He was proud of her.

  “Is there a problem?” Cithrin asked, real concern in her voice.

  “No, ma’am,” Marcus said.

  Dawson

  Issandrian’s parade began at the edge of the city, snaked through the low market, then north along the broad king’s road, past the gates of the Kingspire, and then east to the stadium. The broad streets teemed with the subjects of King Simeon, sworn loyalists of the Severed Throne, all standing on their toes to catch a glimpse of the slave races arrived to turn Antea into the puppet of Asterilhold. The roar of the assembled voices was like the surf, and the smell of their bodies threatened to overwhelm the gentle scents of springtime. Some follower of Issandrian’s cabal had paid the rabble to carry banners and signs celebrating the games and Prince Aster. From where Dawson sat, he saw one—beautiful blue-dyed cloth with the prince’s name in letters of silver—held aloft on poles, but with the wrong side up. It was Issandrian’s revolt in a nutshell: the words of nobility hefted by men who couldn’t read them.

  The noble houses had their viewing platforms set in order and position according to the status of each family’s blood. The place each man stood told where he put his allegiance. The state of the court as a whole could be read in a glance, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. Banner colors from a dozen houses fluttered about king and prince, and more of them belonged to Issandrian’s cabal than not. Even Feldin Maas’s grey and green. King Simeon sat high above it all, dressed in velvet and black mink, and managed to smile despite what was before him.

  A column of Jasuru archers marched through the streets, the bronze scales of their skins oiled and glittering like metal in the sun. They carried the stripped-hide banners of Borja. Dawson made a rough count. Two dozen, say. He noted it down as the archers paused before the royal stand and saluted King Simeon and his son. Prince Aster returned the gesture with the same wide grin that he had each company before and would each one still to come.

  “Issandrian’s a cruel bastard,” Dawson said. “If you’ve come to steal the boy’s place, you should have the dignity not to put r
ibbons on it.”

  “For God’s sake, Kalliam, don’t say that sort of thing where people might hear you,” Odderd Faskellan said. Behind them, Canl Daskellin chuckled.

  On the road, five Yemmu lumbered. Their jaw tusks were dyed improbable colors of green and blue, and they towered over the watching crowd of Firstbloods. They didn’t seem to have armor or weapons apart from the freakish size of their race. The five stopped before the king and made their salute. Prince Aster returned it, and one of the Yemmu men lifted his voice in a rolling, barbaric call. The others joined in, one voice layering over the other until the sounds seemed to braid. A soft breeze tugged at Dawson’s cloak, and the trees that lined the street bobbed and shuddered. The air called in from all directions. The voices deepened, and the Yemmu at the center of the pack lifted a great, meaty fist. They were whipped by the tiny whirlwind.

  Cunning men, then. Dawson made a note.

  “Do you think the blow will come before the games commence?” Daskellin asked as if wondering aloud about the chance of rain.

  “There doesn’t have to be a blow, does there?” Odderd asked.

  “More likely during,” Dawson said. “But anything’s possible.”

  “Reconsider Paerin Clark’s offer,” Daskellin said.

  “I will not,” Dawson said.

  “We have to. Or aren’t you seeing the same display I am? If we’re standing against this, we need allies. And, frankly, gold. Do you have a way to get them? Because as it happens, I do.”

  A troop of swordsmen marched past. Fifty of them, all in the bright-burnished armor of Elassae, and evenly divided between black-scaled Timzinae and wide-eyed Southling. Cockroaches and night-cats. Races created in slavery to serve their dragon masters, marching into the center of Firstblood power.

  “If we can’t win as Anteans, we deserve to lose,” Dawson said.

  The shocked silence behind him meant he’d gone too far. He noted the swordsmen.

  “I began this because I believed you were right, old friend,” Daskellin said. “I didn’t say I’d crawl into your grave.”

  “Something—” Odderd began, but Dawson ignored him.

  “If we win this by putting ourselves out to bid, we’re no better than Maas or Issandrian or Klin. So yes, Canl, I will go to my grave for Antea. And with one loyalty. Not so many hundredths to the throne and so many on a green table in Northcoast.”

  Daskellin’s face went still as coal.

  “You’re talking out of fear,” he said, “and so I’ll excuse—”

  “Both of you, shut up!” Odderd snapped. “Something’s happening.”

  Dawson followed the man’s gaze. On the royal platform, an older woman in the colors of the Kingspire bent her knee before King Simeon. A youth was at her side, leather-armored and still dusty from the road. Prince Aster was looking at his father, the parade forgotten. King Simeon’s mouth moved, and even at distance, Dawson recognized shock in his expression.

  “Who’s the boy?” Canl Daskellin said, almost to himself. “Who brought him news?”

  Footsteps came from the wooden stairs behind them, and Vincen Coe appeared. The huntsman bowed to the two other men, but his eyes were on Dawson.

  “Your lady wife sent me, lord. You’re needed at home.”

  “What’s happened?” Dawson said.

  “Your son’s returned,” Coe said. “There’s news from Vanai.”

  He what?” Dawson said.

  “He burned it,” Jorey said, leaning forward on the bench and scratching a dog between its ears. “Poured oil in the streets, closed the gates, and burned it down.”

  The year that had passed since Dawson had seen his youngest son had changed the boy. Sitting in the sunroom, Jorey looked more than a year older. His cheekbones had the thin look that came with time on campaign, and the smile that had always lurked just behind whatever expression he wore was gone. Exhaustion pulled at the boy’s shoulders, and he smelled of horse sweat and unwashed soldier. It struck Dawson like a detail from a dream that Jorey and Coe could have passed for cousins. Dawson rose and the floor tilted oddly beneath him. He walked to the windows and looked out at the gardens. Snow still haunted the shadows, and the first press of green was softening the bark of the trees. At the back, cherry trees bloomed white and pink.

  Geder Palliako burned Vanai.

  “He didn’t even have us loot it,” Jorey said. “There wasn’t time, really. He sent out a courier the day before. I’ve killed horses trying to beat him here.”

  “You nearly did,” Dawson heard himself say.

  “Does he know that you were the one who put Geder in place?”

  It took Dawson almost a breath to understand the question, and by then his mind was on to questions of its own.

  “Why did Palliako do it?” Dawson said. “Was he trying to undermine me?”

  Jorey was silent for a long moment, looking into the dumb, bright eyes of the dog before him as if they were in some private conversation. When at last he spoke, his words were tentative.

  “I don’t think so,” Jorey said. “Things were going poorly. He made some bad decisions, and they were bearing fruit. He knew that no one took him seriously.”

  “He put one of the Free Cities to the torch because he was embarrassed?”

  “Humiliated,” Jorey said. “Because he was humiliated. And because it’s different when it isn’t before you.”

  One of the dogs groaned long and soft. A bluebird fluttered onto a branch, peered in at the two men, and flew off again. Dawson put his fingers to the cold pane of the sunroom’s glass, the heat of his flesh fogging the glass. His mind darted one way and then another. The stream of show fighters and mercenaries coming to Camnipol, paid by Issandrian with coin borrowed from Asterilhold. The bland, implacable expression of Paerin Clark, banker of Northcoast. Canl Daskellin’s anger. And now, the burned city.

  Too many things were moving, all in different directions.

  “This changes everything,” he said.

  “He was different afterward,” Jorey said as if his father hadn’t spoken. “He was always apart from the rest of us, but before it was that he was a buffoon. Everyone laughed at him. They mocked him to his face, and more than half the time he didn’t even notice it. But after, no one laughed anymore. Not even him.”

  The boy’s eyes were toward the window, but he was seeing something else. Something distant, but more real the than the room, the glass, the spring trees in the garden. There was pain in that emptiness, and it was one he recognized. Dawson put aside the chaos. His son needed him, and so however much it howled for his attention, the world would wait.

  Dawson sat. Jorey looked at him, and then away.

  “Tell me,” Dawson said.

  Jorey smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He shook his head.

  “I’ve been to war,” Dawson said. “I’ve seen men die. What you’re carrying now, I’ve carried as well, and it will haunt you as long as you hold it. So tell me.”

  “You didn’t do what we’ve done, Father.”

  “I’ve killed men.”

  “We killed children,” Jorey said. “We killed women. Old men who had nothing more to do with the campaign than to live in Vanai. And we killed them. We took away the water and lit them on fire. When they tried to come over the walls, we cut them down.”

  His voice was trembling now, his eyes horror-wide but tearless.

  “We did an evil thing, Father.”

  “What did you think war is?” Dawson said. “We’re men, Jorey. Not boys swinging sticks at each other and pronouncing the evil wizard’s defeat. We do what duty and honor demand, and often what we do is terrible. I was hardly older than you are now for the siege of Anninfort. We starved them. It wasn’t fire, but it was a slow, painful death for thousands. And the weak die first. Children. Old men. The plague in the city? We put it there. Lord Ergillian sent riders out to find the sick from all around the countryside, and who we found, we named emissary and sent into the city. They were
killed, but not before the illness spread. Every day, women came to the gates with babies in their arms, begging us to take their children from them. Usually we ignored them. Sometimes we took the babes and killed them there, just out of their mother’s reach.”

  Jorey’s face had gone pale. Dawson leaned forward, his hand on the boy’s knee as he had since the child had been old enough to sit. Dawson felt a moment’s sorrow that that thin-limbed boy was gone, and this moment—this conversation so like one he had had with his own father once—was part of that child’s passage out of the world. The child had to go and make way for the man. It gave meaning to the loss, and made it bearable. That was the most Dawson could offer.

  “Anninfort rebelled against the throne,” he said, “and so it had to fall. And in order that it fall, it had to know despair. The ones they brought were on the edge of starvation. They wouldn’t have lived. If the children we killed—the children I killed—brought the end a week sooner than it would have come otherwise, then I did the right thing. And I suffered then as you are suffering now.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jorey said.

  “I didn’t tell you. Men don’t put their burdens on their children. I didn’t tell your mother. It isn’t hers to bear. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Vanai was different. There was no need for it.”

  Dawson opened his mouth to say something—hopefully something wise and comforting—but he felt the thoughts come into place with an almost physical click. Vanai. Issandrian. The armed mercenaries riding to Camnipol under the thin claim of honoring Prince Aster. The occupying force returning from the south, Geder Palliako at its head.

  “Ah,” Dawson said.