The Dragon’s Path (14 page)

When a low, grey dawn finally came, Cithrin hadn’t slept. Her head ached, and her back felt as if someone had beaten her with a hammer. Opal, humming to herself, rebuilt the fire, boiled a pan of water with a sprinkling of leaves in it, and checked on their patient. When Cithrin joined her, the mule felt cooler to the touch, his eyes looked brighter, his head stood at its more usual angle. In the next stall, the other mule cleared her throat and grumbled.

“Is she getting sick too?” Cithrin asked. The very idea made her want to weep.

“She may, but she hasn’t yet,” Opal said. “Probably just jealous that the old boy here’s getting all the attention.”

“Should we go, then? I mean, is it safe to get back to the ’van?”

“This afternoon, maybe,” Opal said. “Better that he have his strength back. Start him with a half day’s work.”

“But—”

“We’ve been this way before. We’ll catch them up before they go over the pass. They’ll stop at Bellin, send up scouts.”

Cithrin knew the name, but she couldn’t place it. Opal glanced over at her.

“Bellin,” Opal said. “Trading town just before the pass. You really don’t know much about hauling in a caravan, do you?”

“No,” Cithrin said, both sullen and embarrassed at being sullen.

“Bellin’s not much, but they’re friendly to travelers. Master Kit took us there for a month once. New people coming through the road every few days, no one staying long. It was like being a traveling company without the traveling.”

A breath of cold wind stirred the straw. In the brazier, the coals brightened and the thin flame danced. Cithrin’s mind felt slow and sodden with fatigue. What would a guard company do with a month of passing traders and merchants and missionaries? Protect them inside the town walls where they needed it the least?

“I should go,” Cithrin said. “Check the… check the cart.”

“Make sure it hasn’t gone anywhere,” Opal said, as if she was agreeing.

In practice, being only with Opal was better than being with the full ’van. With just one person to keep track of, Cithrin could find moments to let her guard down, be herself instead of Tag. When the time came and they harnessed the mules, it wasn’t all that different from being alone. Opal did most of the talking, and that was for the most part about how to manage the team. Cithrin knew that Tag should have been bored by the lectures, but she drank them in. In the first half day, she learned a hundred things she’d been doing wrong. When they bedded down that night in a wide meadow beside the road, she was a better carter than she’d been in all the long weeks since Vanai.

She wanted to thank the guard for all she’d done, but she was afraid that if she started she might not stop. Gratitude would become friendship, and friendship confession, and then her secrets would be spilled. So instead she made sure that Opal got the best food and the softer place to sleep.

In the darkness, the two of them lay on the soft wool. The moon and stars were gone, wrapped in clouds, and the darkness was absolute. Cithrin’s mind skittered and shifted, thin with exhaustion. And still, sleep was slow to come. In the middle of the night, she felt Opal’s body pressing next to her own and woke up in a panic, afraid that the guard was attacking her or seducing her or both, but she was only cold and half asleep. She spent the rest of the night drawn by the warmth of Opal’s body and trying to hold herself apart for fear of compromising her disguise.

In the dark, the weeks between her and Carse seemed eternal. She imagined that she could feel the casks and boxes hidden just beneath her. The books and ledgers, silk and tobacco leaf and spice. Gems and jewelry. The weight of responsibility and fear was like someone pressing on her chest. When, just before dawn, she finally slept deeply
enough to dream, she found herself at the edge of a cliff, trying to keep a hundred stumbling babies from pitching into the abyss.

She woke with a cry, and she woke to snow.

Wide, fat flakes dropped from the sky, grey against the white of clouds. The trees caught it, the bark seeming to turn black by contrast. The dragon’s jade of the road was gone, their path marked only by a clear space between the trunks. The horizon had been erased. Opal was already fixing the mules in their harness.

“Can we really go in this?” Cithrin asked, forgetting to deepen her voice.

“Better had. Unless you’d prefer to settle here.”

“It’s safe, though?”

“Safer than the option,” Opal said. “Help me with this buckle. My hand’s half frozen.”

Cithrin clambered down from the cart and did as she was told. Before long, they were forging ahead. The wide iron cartwheels became caked with wet snow and the mules began to steam. Without discussion, Opal had taken the reins and the whip. Cithrin huddled beside her, miserable. Opal squinted into the weather and shook her head.

“The good news is there won’t be bandits.”

“Really? And what’s the bad?” Cithrin said bitterly.

Opal looked over at her, eyes wide with surprise and delight. Cithrin realized it was the closest thing to a joke she’d made since the caravan left Vanai. She blushed, and the guard beside her laughed.

B
ellin had only half a dozen buildings. The rest of the town crouched inside a wide cliff, doorways and windows carved into the grey stone thousands of years before by inhuman hands. Soot stained the wall where chimneys slanted out
into the world. Snow clung to huge runes carved into the mountainside, a script Cithrin had never seen before. The peaks themselves were invisible apart from a sense of looming darkness within the storm. The familiar carts of the ’van were black dots against the white, horses and carters already sheltered within the rock. She helped Opal set their cart in place, unhitch the mules, and guide them safely into the stable where the ’van’s other animals were already tucked away.

The guards were there, sitting around a banked smith’s furnace, Mikel and Hornet, Master Kit and Smit. Sandr grinned at them both as they came in, and the Tralgu second in command lifted a wide hand without turning from his conversation with the long-haired woman, Cary. Opal’s pleasure at seeing them almost made Cithrin happy too.

“There must be something,” Cary said, and Cithrin could tell it wasn’t the first time she’d said it.

“There’s not,” Yardem rumbled. “Women are smaller and weaker. There’s no weapon that can make that an advantage.”

“What are we talking about?” Opal asked, sitting by the open furnace. Cithrin sat on the bench at her side, only realizing afterward that it was the same position they’d held on the cart. Master Kit chuckled and shook his head.

“I think Cary would prefer to train with weapons that better exploit her natural abilities,” Master Kit said.

“Like being small and weak,” Sandr said. Without looking over, Cary flicked a clod of earth at his head.

“Short bow,” Cary said.

“Takes power to pull back a bow,” Yardem said. He seemed on the edge of apology. “With a sling and stone, it matters less, but it still matters. A spear has better reach, but takes more muscle. A blade needs less strength, but calls
for more reach. A strong, big woman’s better than a small, weak man, but there’s no such thing as a woman’s natural weapon.” The Tralgu shrugged expansively.

“There has to be
something,
” Cary said.

“There doesn’t,” Yardem said.

“Sex,” Sandr suggested with a grin. Cary threw another clod at his head.

“How are your mules, Tag?” Master Kit asked.

“Better,” Cithrin said. “Much better. Thanks to Opal.”

“It was nothing,” Opal said.

“I’m pleased it worked out,” Master Kit said. “I was beginning to worry that we’d leave you behind.”

“Wouldn’t have happened,” a voice said from behind them.

Cithrin twisted in her seat, and her chest went tight with anxiety. Captain Wester stalked into the room. Snow caked his wide leather cloak and matted his hair. His face was so bright, it looked like the cold had slapped him. He walked to the heat, scowling.

“Welcome back, sir,” the Tralgu said. The captain didn’t so much as nod.

“I take it the scouting went poorly, then,” Master Kit said.

“No worse than expected,” Marcus Wester said. “The ’van master’s breaking it to the others right now. There’s no getting through that pass. Not now, not for months.”

“
What?
” Cithrin said, her voice sharp and unexpected. She tried to swallow the word as soon as she’d said it, but the captain took no particular notice of her.

“Snow came early, we took too long, and we didn’t get lucky,” he said. “We’ll get some warehouse space for the goods and bunks for the rest of us. Not much room, so it’ll be close quarters. We’ll make for Carse in the spring.”

Spring. The word hit Cithrin in the gut. She looked at the flames dancing in the furnace, felt a trickle of snowmelt tracing its way down her spine. Despairing laughter bubbled at the back of her throat. If she let it out, it would turn to tears, and it wouldn’t stop. A season spent in disguise. Moving everything in her cart to a warehouse and back without being discovered. Months to Carse instead of weeks.

I can’t do this,
she thought.

N
ightfall came early. Only half of the carts had been emptied, and the caravan master was all but chewing his own wrists over it. Marcus didn’t think it would be a problem. The storm had come from the west, and the mountains would squeeze the worst of the snow out. They might be tunneling up from the roofs in Birancour, but Bellin was in the rain shadow. They’d be fine. At least when it came to snow.

Yardem had arranged a separate barracks for the so-called guards. Two small rooms with a shared fire grate, but in the town proper, tucked snugly in the living rock. Carved swirls and whorls caught the firelight, and the walls seemed to breathe and dance. Marcus pulled off the soaked leather of his boots and leaned back, groaning. The others were about him, lounging and talking and negotiating for the best sleeping spaces. The ease the actors took in close company wasn’t all that different from real sword-and-bows, and the jokes were better. Even Yardem seemed half relaxed, and that wasn’t a common thing.

Still, Marcus’s work wasn’t done.

“Meeting,” he said. “Our job’s changed now. Best that we talk that through, not find ourselves surprised later.”

The chatter stilled. Master Kit sat beside the fire, his wiry grey hair standing like smoke gone still.

“I don’t see how the ’van can afford this,” the actor said. “Even with small quarters, it’s going to cost having us kept and fed for a full season.”

“Likely they’ll lose money,” Marcus said. “But that’s the caravan master’s problem, not ours. We aren’t here to see a profit turned. Just everyone kept safe. On the road, that means bandits. Holed up for a winter, that means no one gets stir crazy or starts sleeping with someone, makes someone else jealous, or gets in mind to cheat too much at cards.”

Smit, the jack-of-all-roles, pulled a long face. “Are we playing guards or nursemaids?” the man said.

“We’re doing whatever gets the ’van to Carse safe,” Marcus said. “We’ll protect them from ourselves if we have to.”

“Mmm. Good line,” Cary, the thin woman, said.
“Protect them from ourselves if we have to.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes, frowning.

“They’re writing a new play,” Master Kit said. “A comic piece about an acting troupe hired to pretend they’re caravan guards.”

Yardem grunted and flicked an ear. Maybe annoyance, maybe amusement. Likely both. Marcus chose to ignore it.

“We’ve got a dozen and a half carters,” Marcus said. “Add the ’van master and his wife. You’ve traveled with these people for weeks. You’ve watched them. You know them. What problems are we going to have?”

“The man hauling the tin ore,” Smit said. “He’s been spoiling for a fight since those raiders. He’s not going to last a season without one unless someone starts sharing his bed or puts him down hard.”

“I’d thought the same,” Marcus said, allowing himself a moment’s pleasure. The actors were much more perceptive than his usual men. Given the circumstances, that would help. “What else?”

“The quarter-Dartinae,” Opal, the older leading woman, said. “He’s been avoiding the ’van master’s sermons almost as much as you have, Captain. A constant diet of scripture isn’t going to sit well with him.”

“The girl in the false whiskers,” Mikel, the thin boy, said. “She’s looking mightily fragile.”

“Oh, yes.
Her,
” Cary said.

“And God knows what she’s really hauling,” Opal said, her tone all agreement. “Gets jumpy as a cat whenever anyone gets too near her cart. Won’t talk about it either.”

Marcus raised a hand, commanding silence.

“
Who?
” he said.

“The girl in the false whiskers,” Master Kit said. “The one that calls herself Tag.”

Marcus looked at Yardem. The Tralgu’s expression mirrored his own blank surprise. Marcus lifted an eyebrow.
Did you know?
Yardem shook his head once, earrings jingling.
No.

And God knows what she’s really hauling.