The Dragon's Path

by Daniel Abraham

  He turned away.

  Dawson left in a single open carriage. He sat on the forward seat, looking back toward the city, Clara sat at his side. Vincen Coe on the bench beside the teamster. Carts with his belongings would come more slowly, but they would come. The path to Osterling Fells would carry them over the dragon’s roads for half a day, and the dragon’s jade under their wheels was smoother than the streets of Camnipol.

  “There isn’t any chance of coming upon them, is there?” Clara asked.

  “Who?”

  “One of them,” Clara said. “Lord Issandrian or Lord Klin. Or Lord Maas. It would by entirely too awkward, I think. I mean really, what does one say? I can’t see inviting them to share a meal, but it would be rude not to. Do you think we should tell the driver to keep distance if he sees another carriage? If we can pretend not to have realized who they are, we can all keep to form. Unless it’s Maas. Phelia must be in ruins over this.”

  Despite everything, Dawson smiled. He took his wife’s hand in his. Her fingers were thicker than when he’d first known her. His own, rougher. Time had changed them both in some ways, and in some ways left them untouched. From the first day of their marriage, before even, he’d known she saw a different world than he did. It was part of what he loved in her.

  “I’m sure we won’t,” he said. “Issandrian and Klin won’t be taking this road, and there’s no reason for Maas to leave court. Not now.”

  Clara sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “My poor man,” she said.

  He craned his neck a bit, kissing the hair just above her ear, then put his arm around her shoulders.

  “It won’t be so bad,” he said, trying to sound as if he believed it. “I missed the winter in Osterling Fells. This can make up for it. We’ll summer at home, run back to Camnipol for the closing of court, and then turn back for the winter.”

  “Can we?” Clara said. “We could stay through the winter if you’d rather. We don’t have to make two trips.”

  “No, love,” he said. “It’s not just to see the autumn pageant. I’ll want to see how things have played in court before winter anyway. It only seems like I’m indulging you. I’m really a selfish boor.”

  Clara chuckled. A few miles later, she began snoring gently. Coe, noticing, handed down a wool blanket in silence, and Dawson covered Clara without rousing her. The sun sank behind them, reddening. Shadows spilled across the landscape, and the trilling, shrill birds of evening announced themselves.

  Dawson was leaving the field of battle, but the fight would go on without him. Issandrian, Maas, Klin. They weren’t killed, nor had they acted alone. Maas and his allies in court would do everything in their power to see their names raised again to respectability. Daskellin would doubtless take the helm of Dawson’s own group, or at least that part of it that could stomach the bland little banker from Northcoast. Simeon would dance between the blades and tell himself there was a place at the middle where everything could balance, that peace could be kept if he only never made a stand.

  A weak king might survive if he had a loyal court, but in casting Dawson out, Simeon had exiled the only man who had truly championed him. Nothing good could come now. The court was being led through an idiot’s dance, made up of men with their own agendas. Shortsighted, self-serving idiots.

  It would take a miracle to redeem King Simeon now. The best hope of the kingdom was that Prince Aster be sent as ward of a family that could show him what kingship was better than the king himself. Dawson indulged himself for a moment in the fantasy of taking the prince under his own wing and teaching him what Simeon could not. Clara murmured in her sleep, pulling the blanket more tightly around her.

  The sun dipped down to the horizon, the walls and towers of Camnipol obscured by the power of its fire. For a moment, Dawson imagined the light came from a great conflagration. Not the sunset, but Camnipol burning. It had the weight of prophecy.

  Shortsighted, self-serving idiots. A burning city.

  Dawson wondered, almost idly, where Geder Palliako had gotten to.

  Cithrin

  Coffee houses had always had a place in the business of business. In the cold ports of Stollbourne and Rukkyupal, merchants and sea captains hunched over the tiled tables and warmed mittened hands with steaming cups as they watched the winter sun set at midday. Beside the wide, moonlit waters of the Miwaji, the nomadic Southling pods sipped cups of something hardly thinner than mud and declaimed poetry between haggling over fortunes in silver and spice. All through the world that the dragons had left behind, trade and coffee went together.

  Or at least that was the way Magister Imaniel had told it. Cithrin had never been outside Vanai, and the bank there had been its own small building. Still, when the time came, Cithrin chose a small café with a private back room and rough wooden tables on the street. It was across the square from the Grand Market, so she would be near the rough-and-tumble of the city’s trade without having to do her business in one of the shifting stalls. The owner of the café—Maestro Asanpur—was an ancient Cinnae man with one milky eye and a touch at making fresh coffee that bordered on magical. He had been very happy to accept a bit of rent that gave Cithrin rights to the privacy of his back room. If the day was cloudy, she could sit in the common room, sip her coffee, and listen to gossip. If the sun came out, she could take one of the white-painted street tables and watch the traffic through the Grand Market.

  Ideally, Maestro Asanpur’s café would become known as a center of banking and business in the city. The better it was known, the more people would come to it, and with them more news and gossip and speculation. Cithrin knew that her own presence was a good beginning, but she likely didn’t have enough time to let things take their course. Sooner rather than later, the legitimate Medean bank would come to investigate their new branch, and when that happened, she wanted it to be wildly prosperous.

  Which, in the short term, meant a little harmless dishonesty.

  Cithrin saw the reaction to Cary’s arrival before she saw the woman herself. Gazes shifted through the square like wind passing over a field of grass, then away, and then, more covertly, back again. Cithrin drank her coffee and pretended not to notice as the mysterious woman walked across the square toward the great kiosks where the queensmen who administered the Grand Market stood. Cary had chosen the longest approach possible, and it gave Cithrin time to admire the costume. The cut was Elassean, but the silk wrapping and the beaded veil spoke of Lyoneia. The jewels that adorned her came from Cithrin’s own stock, and would have sold for enough to buy the café twice over. Taken together, the design spoke of all the trade of the Inner Sea with an authenticity that came from Master Kit’s travels there. It wasn’t a look often seen in Birancour, and the combination of exoticism and wealth drew attention better than a song. Hornet and Smit walked behind her in boiled leather with the swagger they’d learned on the caravan, indistinguishable from real fighters.

  Cary reached the kiosk and spoke with one of the queensmen. They were much too far to hear, but the queensman’s posture was clear enough. He gestured across the square toward Cithrin and the café. Cary bowed her thanks and turned, taking the walk slowly. When she came close enough to speak with, Cithrin rose.

  “Enough?” Cary asked.

  “Perfect,” Cithrin said. “Come this way.”

  She led the actors through the common room, the wooden floors creaking under their weight. The interior of the café was a series of small rooms set off by low archways. The windows had carved wooden shutters that scented the breeze with cedar. A young Kurtadam girl sat in the back gently playing a bottle harp, the soft notes murmuring through the air. In one of the rooms, an old Firstblood man talking animatedly with a wide-eyed Southling stopped to stare at Cary and her guards. Cithrin caught Maestro Asanpur’s eye and held up two fingers. The old man nodded and set to grinding the beans for two small cups. Cithrin meant for anyone paying attention to know that the exotically dressed woman was someone the
Medean bank honored. They moved on to the privacy of her hired room.

  “So this is all?” Smit said after the door closed behind them, groaning on its leather hinge. “I thought there’d be more to it.”

  Cithrin sat at the small table. There was enough room for the others, but rather than sit, Hornet went to the thin window, peering out through the blue-and-gold glass to the alley beyond. As Cary started plucking off the borrowed jewelry, Cithrin pulled the iron lockbox out from under her chair, sliding it on a small red carpet to keep from scarring the floor.

  “I don’t need very much here,” Cithrin said. “A record book, a little spare coin. It’s not as if I’ll be handing out large sums every day.”

  “Wasn’t that the point, though?” Cary said, handing across a bracelet studded with emeralds and garnets. “To get rid of all that stuff?”

  “Not by handing it out like candy,” Cithrin said. “There are only so many good investments to make in a city. It takes effort finding which ones are worth having. This is where I talk with people. Negotiate agreements, sign contracts. It’s all arranged here, but I don’t want to have all the guards standing around intimidating people.”

  “Why not?” Hornet said. “I would.”

  “Better to put them at ease, I expect,” Cary said, and a soft knock came at the door. Smit opened it to Maestro Asanpur carrying a tray with two small bone-colored cups. Cithrin unlocked the iron box. As Maestro Asanpur presented the coffee to Cary, Cithrin folded the jewelry into soft cloth and put it into the box beside the red leather record book and her purse of small coin. The lock was crude but solid, the key reassuringly heavy on its leather necklace. Cithrin tucked the key away. Cary sipped the coffee and made a small, appreciative sound.

  “Another advantage of the site,” Cithrin said.

  “We can’t stay,” Hornet said. “Master Kit’s bent on having the Tragedy of Four Winds ready to put on before the trade ships from Narinisle come.”

  “Are you going to try to sponsor one?” Cary asked.

  “A ship or a tragedy?” Cithrin asked dryly.

  “Either one.”

  “Neither,” she said.

  In truth, the trade ships from Narinisle had been very much on Cithrin’s mind.

  The great wealth in the world lay in the patterns of commerce. The Keshet and Pût might have olive trees and wine enough for every city in the world, but no mines there produced gold and the iron was in rough, roadless terrain and difficult to reach. Lyoneia grew fabulous woods and spices, but struggled to grow enough grain to feed its people. Far Syramys with its silks and dyes, magic and tobacco, promised the rarest goods in the world, but the blue-water trade to reach them was so uncertain that more fortunes were lost than made in going there. Everywhere, there was imbalance, and the surest path to profit was to be between something valuable and someone who valued it.

  On land, that meant control of the dragon’s roads. No merely human assembly of stone and mortar could match the permanence of dragon’s jade. All the great cities grew where they did because of the arrangements of paths made when humanity was a single race and the masters of the world flew on great scaled wings. Dragons themselves had rarely if ever lowered themselves to travel the roads. They were the servants’ stairs of the fallen empire, and they determined the flow of money for all land trade.

  The trackless sea, however, could be remade.

  Each autumn, ships in the south loaded themselves with wheat and oil, wine and pepper and sugar, and, paid with gold adventurous or desperate enough, made the trek to the north. Northcoast, Hallskar, Asterilhold, and even the northern coast of Antea would buy the goods, often for less than the same items that had traveled overland. The trade ships might take on some cargo in those ports—salt cod from Hallskar, iron and steel from Asterilhold and Northcoast—but most would take their money and hurry to the open ports of Narinisle to wait for the blue-water trade from Far Syramys. This was the great gamble.

  Accidents of wind and current made the island nation of Narinisle the easiest end port for ships from Far Syramys, and if a trade ship could exchange its cargo and money for a load freshly arrived from those distant lands, an investor might triple her money. If not, she risked seeing her trade ship return from Narinisle with only what could be bought from the local markets, making a much smaller profit, assuming prices went with her. Or the ship could be lost to pirates, or it might sink and everything either lost entirely or ransomed back at exorbitant rates and glacial slowness from the Drowned.

  And when the ships returned to their southern ports and the fortunes of those who had sponsored them rose or fell, the sponsorship of this fleet of gold and spice that sailed together without alliance and answered to no single flag reshuffled. A house that had placed its wager on a single ship and did well might make enough to hire half a dozen the next year. Someone whose ship had been lost would scramble to find ways to survive in their new, lessened circumstances. If they had been wise and insured their investment, they might gain back enough to try again by appealing to someone like Cithrin.

  The ships would already have left Narinisle. Soon, the seven that had set out the year before from Porte Oliva would return, and not long after that, someone would come to her and ask that the bank insure them to sponsor a ship for the next year’s work. Without knowing which captains were best, without knowing which families were best positioned to buy a good outgoing cargo, she would be left with little better than instinct. If she took all those who came to ask, she’d be sure to take too many bad risks. If she took no one, there would be no chance for her bank to prosper and nothing to show the holding company when they came. This was the species of risk that her life was built on now.

  Betting on pit dogs seemed more certain.

  “A few insurance contracts, maybe,” Cithrin said, as much to herself as to Cary and the others. “Part sponsorship in a few years, if things go well.”

  “Insurance. Sponsorship. What’s the difference?” Smit asked.

  Cithrin shook her head. It was like he’d asked the difference between an apple and a fish; she didn’t know where to start.

  “Cithrin forgets that we didn’t all grow up in a counting house,” Cary said and drank down the last of her coffee. “But we should go.”

  “Let me know when the new play’s ready,” Cithrin said. “I’d like to watch it.”

  “See?” Smit said. “I told you we’d have a patron.”

  They left through the alley, transformed from mysterious woman of business and her guards back to seafront players. Cithrin watched them go through her thin window, the glass distorting them as they went. A patron. It was true she wouldn’t be able to go and lead the crowd with Cary and Mikel anymore. She probably wouldn’t be able to go out to a taproom with Sandr. Cithrin bel Sarcour, head of the Medean bank of Porte Oliva, drinking with a common actor? It would be terrible for the bank’s reputation and her own.

  The loneliness that came with the thought had little to do with Sandr.

  When, an hour later, Captain Wester arrived, Cithrin was out on the street, sitting at the same table where Cary had found her. He nodded his greeting and sat across from her. The sunlight brought out the grey in his hair, but it also brightened his eyes. He handed a sheet of parchment across to her. She looked over the words and figures, nodding to herself as she did. The receipt looked fine.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “No problems,” he said. “The tobacco’s at the seller’s stall. He argued over a few of the leaves, but I told him he either took all of it or none.”

  “He shouldn’t have done that,” Cithrin said. “He should be negotiating with me.”

  “I may have mentioned something like that. He accepted the delivery. The pepper and cardamom goes out tomorrow. Yardem and a couple of the new men will take that.”

  “A start,” Cithrin said.

  “Any word from Carse?” Marcus asked. The question sounded almost casual.

  “I’ve sent a dispat
ch,” Cithrin said. “I used Magister Imaniel’s old cipher, and a slow courier, but I expect they’ll have it by now.”

  “And you said what?”

  “That the branch had placed its letters of foundation and was beginning trade as Magister Imaniel and I had planned,” Cithrin said.

  “Not telling them the truth of it, then.”

  “Letters go astray. Couriers take extra payment to unsew and copy them. I don’t expect anyone to intercept it, but if they do, it will look exactly like what it’s supposed to be.”

  Marcus nodded slowly, squinting up into the sun.

  “Any reason you picked a slow courier?”

  “I want time to put things in order before they come,” she said.

  “I see. There’s something we should—”

  A deeper shadow than the cloud’s fell over the table. Lost in her conversation, she hadn’t seen the man approach, and so now he seemed to have sprouted out of the pavement. Taller than Captain Wester, but not so tall as Yardem Hane, he wore a wool tunic and leggings, a blue-dyed cloak several layers thick against the spring cold, and a bronze chain of office. For the most part his features were Firstblood, but slight and fair enough that he might have had a grandfather among the Cinnae.

  “Forgive me,” he said, his voice scrupulously polite. “Am I addressing Cithrin bel Sarcour?”

  “You are,” Cithrin said.

  “Governor Siden sent me,” the man said.

  Fear punched the breath out of her. They’d discovered the forgery. They were sending the guard. She cleared her throat and smiled.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” the messenger said, and produced a small letter, the smooth paper neatly folded and the sides sewn and sealed. “But he did suggest I wait in the event that you wished to reply.”