The Dragon’s Path

by Abraham Daniel

  A Cinnae woman hurried past, her robes wrapped with pink-and-orange gauze, her face pale as the moon. A dog barked from the shadowed mouth of an alleyway. Three Kurtadam men walked past her, beads clicking and jingling in their pelts, said something she didn’t understand, and then laughed together. She ignored them. The glow of her own windows shone just up ahead. If anyone were to attack her now, she’d only have to call out and Captain Wester and Yardem Hane would come. It was a pleasant thought, and enough to make her feel safe whether she was or not.

  She pulled herself up the stairs to the steady creaking of Captain Wester’s pacing footsteps. She opened the door to his scowl.

  “You’ve been out for quite a while,” he said.

  Cithrin shrugged.

  “How much have you been drinking?”

  Cithrin walked over to the cot and sat beside the Tralgu. Yardem smelled like open fields and damp dogs. She repressed the urge to scratch his wide back. Captain Wester was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t recall exactly,” she said. “I wasn’t paying for most of it.”

  Wester hoisted an eyebrow.

  “The thaw’s almost come. We have to make a decision,” she said, her words precise and unslurred.

  “That’s true,” the captain said, crossing his arms. The failing daylight from the windows softened the lines of his scowl and the grey at his temples. He looked young. Cithrin remembered that Opal had found the man attractive and wondered whether she did. She’d lived with him for weeks. Months, counting the time on the road. She wondered for the first time whether his mouth would taste like Sandr’s, then pulled her mind back to the moment, more than half repulsed by her own musings.

  “No matter how we try to reach Carse,” she said, “the danger is that someone will kill us and take the money.”

  “Old news,” Captain Wester said.

  “So we need to take the money ourselves,” she said, understanding as she said it what she’d been considering all night. “We need to use it.”

  “Probably the wisest thing we could do,” the captain said. “Take what we can carry and vanish.”

  “No,” she said. “I mean take all of it.”

  The Tralgu at her side flicked a jingling ear. Captain Wester licked his lips and looked down.

  “If we took all of it, we’d be in the same situation we are now,” he said. “We’d still have to hide the money or protect it. Only we’d have your friends in Carse after our heads. That’s not an improvement. We can talk about this when you’re sober,” he said.

  “No, listen to me. We’ve been acting like smugglers. We aren’t. You’ve always said we can’t keep this much money quiet and we can’t keep it safe. Opal proved that. So we shouldn’t keep it quiet.”

  Wester and Yardem exchanged a silent glance, and the captain sighed. Cithrin stood and walked across to the unsealed books. Her feet were perfectly steady. Her hands didn’t waver as she pulled out the black leather binding. She opened to the first pages and handed them to the captain.

  “Documents of foundation,” she said. “We write up a copy of our own, but for Porte Oliva instead of Vanai. We’ve got a hundred documents with Magister Imaniel’s signature and thumb. We can pick some minor contract and use it to forge letters of foundation. File the documents with the governor, pay the fees and bribes, and then I can invest all of this.”

  “Invest it,” the captain said as if she’d said eat it.

  “The silk and tobacco and spices I can place on consignment. Even if they’re stolen from the merchants, the bank would be paid. We can do the same with the jewelry or sell it outright for funds, and then make loans. Or buy into local businesses. We’ll have to hold back some portion. Five hundredths, perhaps? But with the name of the Medean bank behind me, I could turn over nine-tenths of what we have in this room into papers of absolutely no value to anyone else before the trade ships come from Narinisle. What was left wouldn’t be too tempting to guard.”

  “You are very, very drunk,” Wester said. “The way you steal is you take something and then you leave.”

  “I’m not stealing it. I’m keeping it safe,” Cithrin said. “This is how banks work. You never keep all the money there to be stolen by whoever finds a way to break your strongbox. You put it out into the world. If you take a loss or someone steals your working funds, you still have all your incomes and agreements. You can recover. And if it all goes wrong, what? We get thrown in prison?”

  “Prison is bad,” Yardem rumbled.

  “Not as bad as killed and dropped in the sea,” Cithrin said. “If you do what I say, the chances of keeping the money go up and the consequences of failure go down.”

  “You want,” Captain Wester said, his voice tight, “to take a great deal of money that isn’t yours and start your own branch of the bank that you’re stealing the money from? They’ll come for you.”

  “Of course they will,” Cithrin said. “And when they do, I’ll have what’s theirs and more besides. If I’ve done it right.”

  Cithrin saw the disbelief in his face wavering on the border between amusement and outrage. She stamped her foot.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to my voice, Captain. I can do this.”

  Marcus

  Be careful,” Marcus said.

  “I am being careful, sir.”

  “Well, be more careful.”

  Seven previous attempts lay on the floor between them: contracts and agreements between dead men over burned wealth, meaningless now. But, as Cithrin had said, each of them bore the signature and bloody thumbprint of Magister Imaniel of Vanai. The trick was to dip the parchment into the wax so that it covered the name and thumb, but nothing else. Then the page could be set in a wash of salt and rendered oil to loosen the ink. After a day in the bath, they could use a scrivener’s stone to scrape away the ink, then a wash of urine to bleach away any remaining marks. In the end, they would have a blank page, ready to take whatever carefully practiced words Cithrin put on it, already signed and endorsed by the former head of the bank. A man, the story would have it, who foresaw the coming death of his city at Antean hands and concocted a scheme to refound his branch in Porte Oliva with Cithrin as his agent.

  Provided they could put the wax in the right spot. Marcus leaned forward, fingers reaching toward the side of the document.

  “If you just—”

  “Sir?”

  “Yardem?”

  The Tralgu’s ears sloped backward, set so close to his head that the earrings rested on his scalp.

  “Go over there, sir.”

  “But I—”

  “Go.”

  Marcus tapped at the air just before the parchment, grunted, and turned away. The boxes in the small rooms above the gambler’s stall had been shifted and rearranged, making what had been one small room into two tiny ones. Outside, a warm spring wind hissed, rattling the shutters and making the world in general seem uneasy and restless. It had been a long time since Marcus had broken the thaw in a southern port, and the rich salt-stink of the bay reminded him of yesterday’s fish. Cithrin sat on a stool, dressed in her carter’s rough, with Cary squeezed in close beside her. Master Kit stood a few steps away, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “That was better,” Master Kit said, “but I think you’ve gone a little too far in the other direction. I don’t want you to seem burdened. Instead of thinking of weight, imagine how you would move in a heavy wool cloak.”

  Cary put her hand to Cithrin’s back.

  “You’re too tight here,” Cary said. “Relax that and put the tension up here.”

  Cithrin frowned, tiny half moons appearing at the corners of her mouth.

  “Like your breasts were too heavy,” Cary said.

  “Oh,” Cithrin said, brightening. “Right.”

  She rose from her stool, took a step toward Master Kit, turned, and sat back down. Marcus couldn’t have said what had changed in the way the girl moved, only that it was different. Ol
der. Master Kit and Cary smiled at each other.

  “Progress,” Master Kit said. “Unquestionable progress.”

  “I think we’re ready to walk down to the square,” Cary said.

  “With my blessing,” Master Kit said, stepping back until he was almost pressed to Marcus’s belly. The two women made their way across the thin strip of floor to the head of the stairway, hand in hand.

  “Lower in the hips,” Master Kit said. “Sink into them. Don’t walk from your ankles.”

  The creak of boards descended until the pair were out in the street and gone. The wind gusted up the stairway, and the door at the bottom slammed shut. Marcus blew out his breath and sat on the newly vacant stool.

  “I think she’s quite good,” Master Kit said. “Not much natural sense of her own body, but no particular fear of it either, and I find that’s half the work.”

  “That’s good,” Marcus said.

  “It seems the cuts on her thumbs are scarring nicely. I expect she’ll have a good callus when that’s through. Like she’s been signing contracts for years. Did you put lye in the wounds?”

  “Ash and honey,” Marcus said. “Just as good, and it doesn’t tend to go septic.”

  “Fair point. I thought that calling her three-quarters Cinnae was a good choice. If she’s nearer full-blood, the Firstblood thickness may read more as years than parentage.”

  “I’ve always thought Cinnae look to be about twelve anyway,” Marcus said. “Terrible in a fight. No weight behind the blows.”

  Master Kit leaned a shoulder against the wall. His dark eyes flitted across Marcus as if the actor were reading a book.

  “And how are you, Captain?”

  “I hate this,” Marcus said. “I hate this plan. I hate that we’re forging documents. I hate that Cithrin pulled you and yours into it. There’s nothing about the entire scheme I don’t hate.”

  “And yet it seems you’ve chosen to come along.”

  “I don’t have a better idea,” Marcus said. “Except fill our pockets and walk away. That’s still got some charm.”

  “So why don’t you do that? The boxes are here. I’d say you’ve more than earned your pay.”

  Marcus let out a mirthless chuckle and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. From the far side of the room, Yardem made a satisfied grunt. The wax dip had worked this time.

  “There are going to be consequences,” Marcus said. “She can’t just say it’s all hers now and make it true. It’s like walking into Cabral and casually announcing that you’re the new mayor of Upurt Marion, and all the port taxes go to you now. And what’s it going to upset? We don’t know. By the end of the season, every trading house and royal court is going to have a theory of what exactly Komme Medean is signaling by investing in Porte Oliva. It’s going to mean something about the relationship of Birancour and Cabral, and whether the freight from Qart-hadath is landing here or there. Why isn’t there a branch here already? Is it because the queen warned them off? We might be violating half a dozen treaties and agreements right now, and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “I agree with all of that,” Master Kit said. “The risk seems real.”

  “We’re about to be the bold, unexpected move on the part of a bank with a great deal of money and influence, and don’t think for a moment that they’ll appreciate our putting our hand to the tiller.”

  “And that’s why you dislike the plan?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said.

  Master Kit looked down. The wind stilled, then gusted again, pressing against the little rooms and stirring the air.

  “Why do you dislike this plan, Captain?” the actor said.

  He felt a stab of annoyance, and then the cool, almost sick feeling of the right answer swimming into his mind. He scratched his leg, feeling the tooth of the cloth against his fingertips. His hands seemed older than they should. When he thought of them, they still looked like they had when he’d first been on campaign. Strong, smooth, capable. Now there was as much scar to them as skin. The nail of his right thumb had been cut half off once, and it hadn’t grown back quite right. The knuckles were larger than they had been. The calluses had more yellow to them. He turned them over, considering his palms as well. If he looked closely, he could still make out the dots of white where a dog had bitten him once, a lifetime ago.

  “She knows the risks, but she doesn’t understand them,” Marcus said. “I can say everything to her I just said to you, and she’ll answer me back. Argument for argument. She’ll say the regained capital justifies the decision. That the holding company isn’t liable for her, nor are the other branches, so anything they make back is a step above where they were when the money was simply lost.”

  “And yet,” Master Kit said.

  “I know how to protect her from thugs and raiders. I know how to fight pirates. I don’t know how to protect her from herself, and hand to God, that girl is the worst danger she’ll ever face.”

  “It can be hard, can’t it? Losing control,” Master Kit said.

  “I don’t control her,” Marcus said.

  “I think you do, but I’m open to being proven wrong. What are three decisions she’s made before this? In the time you’ve known her, I mean.”

  Yardem Hane loomed up behind the actor, wiping oil from his fingers onto a bit of grey cloth. For a moment, Marcus thought it might offer distraction, but the Tralgu’s passive expression told him that he’d come to listen to the conversation, not to end it.

  “She got that dress of hers,” Marcus said. “And she chose to go to your performances.”

  “Two, then?” Master Kit said.

  “She picked the fish for dinner,” Marcus said.

  “And how would you compare that with other contracts you’ve had?” Master Kit asked. “I don’t believe you have thought of Cithrin as your employer so much as the little girl who’d swum out near the riptide. Has she paid you?”

  “She hasn’t,” the Tralgu rumbled.

  “You can stay out of this,” Marcus said. “She couldn’t. She didn’t have any money of her own. All of this belongs to someone.”

  “And now,” Master Kit said, “it seems she might be able to offer gold. And make decisions of greater weight than whether to have fish or poultry. Or what dress to buy. If this scheme of hers works, she’ll be choosing where to live, how and whether to protect herself, and all the other thousand things that come with her trade. And I suspect you’ll be here as well, at her side and protecting her. But only as her hired captain.”

  “Which isn’t what I’ve been doing all along?” Marcus said.

  “Which isn’t what you’ve been doing,” Master Kit said. “If you had been, you’d have asked Cithrin before you killed Opal.”

  “She’d have told me not to.”

  “And I think that’s why you didn’t ask. And why you dread the time when you have to ask, and you have to defer to her judgment even if you think she’s wrong.”

  “She’s a little girl,” Marcus said.

  “All women were little girls once,” Master Kit said. “Cithrin. Cary. The queen of Birancour. Even Opal.”

  Marcus said something obscene under his breath. Outside in the street, the gambler’s man called out. Great fortune could be theirs. Odds offered on any fair wager.

  “I am sorry about Opal,” Marcus said.

  “I know you are,” Master Kit said. “I am too. I knew her for a very long time, and I enjoyed her company for more than half of that. But she was who she was, and she made her choices.”

  “You were her lover, weren’t you?” Marcus said.

  “Not recently.”

  “And she was a part of your company. She traveled with you. She was one of your people.”

  “She was.”

  “And you let me kill her,” Marcus said.

  “I did,” Master Kit said. “I believe there is a dignity in consequences, Captain. I think there’s a kind of truth in them, and I try to cultivate a profound respect for truth.”

&
nbsp; “Meaning this is Cithrin’s mistake to make.”

  “If that’s what you heard me say.”

  Yardem flicked an ear, his earrings jingling against each other. Marcus knew what the Tralgu was thinking. She’s not your daughter. Marcus set his foot against the wall of boxes. The wealth of a city that didn’t exist anymore. The gems and trinkets, silk and spices traded to let the lucky escape the flames. All of it together wouldn’t buy back one of the dead. Not even for a day.

  So what was the point of it?

  “Her plan isn’t bad,” Marcus said. “But I have the right to hate it.”

  “I can respect that position,” Master Kit said with a grin. “Shall we prepare the oil bath for the future foundational documents of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva before the women come back?”

  Marcus sighed and rose.

  When the morning came, Marcus walked beside her. The mornings were still cold, but not so much that he could see his breath. Men and women of the three predominant races of the city passed one another as if the differences in their eyes and builds and pelts were of no particular concern. The morning mist drifted through the great square, greying the dragon’s jade pavement. The condemned of the city shivered in the cold where all could see. Two Firstblood men hung as murderers. A Cinnae woman sat in the stocks with chains around her ankles as a recalcitrant debtor. A Kurtadam man hung by his knees and barely able to draw breath. Smuggling. Marcus could feel Cithrin pause. He wondered what the penalty would be for what they were about to do. It seemed unlikely to have precedent in the judges’ tables.