The Dragon’s Path (17 page)

“You can’t be serious,” Dawson said. “Are they going to drive mules through the palaces? Keep goats in the Kingspire gardens?”

“Don’t suggest it to them,” the king said, reaching for the bowl of soap.

“It’s a gambit,” Dawson said. “They’ll never do it.”

“You don’t understand how split the court is, old friend. Issandrian is well loved by the lowborn. If they gain power, he gains with them. And now with Klin as his purse in Vanai, I don’t see that I have a great deal of leverage.”

“You can’t mean—”

“No, there can’t be a farmer’s council. But there’s peace to be made. At midsummer, I’m sending Aster to be Issandrian’s ward.”

The great bronze fingertips dripped. A passing cloud dimmed the light. King Simeon sat quietly lathering his arms, expressionless as the implications unfolded themselves between them.

“He’d be regent,” Dawson said, his voice thick and strangled. “If you died before Aster came of age, Issandrian would be regent.”

“Not a sure thing, but he’d have a claim to it.”

“He’s going to have you killed. This is treason.”

“This is politics,” Simeon said. “I had hoped Ternigan would keep the city for himself, but the old bastard’s independent-minded. He knows Issandrian’s cabal is on the rise. Now he’s done them a favor without quite throwing himself in their camp. I’ll have to woo him. They’ll have to woo him. He’ll be sitting in Kavinpol getting kissed on both cheeks.”

“Curtin Issandrian will
kill
you, Simeon.”

The king lay back, dark water running up his arms and darkening his hair. A scum of soap floated and spun on the water.

“He won’t. As long as he has my son, he can call my tunes without the bother of sitting on a throne.”

“Then break him,” Dawson said. “I’ll help you. We can build a cabal of our own. There are men who haven’t forgotten the old ways. They’re
hungry
for this. We can rally them.”

“We can, yes, but to what end?”

“Simeon. Old friend. This is the moment. Antea needs a true king now. You have it in you to be that man. Don’t send your boy to Issandrian.”

“The time’s not right. Issandrian’s on the rise, and opposing him now will only add to the strife. Better to wait until he stumbles. My work now is to see that we don’t follow the dragon’s path along the way. If I can give Aster the kingdom without a civil war, it will be legacy enough.”

“Even if it’s not the true Antea?” Dawson said, an ache gathering behind his eyes. “What honor is there in a kingdom that’s lost its heritage to these preening, self-important children?”

“If you’d said it before Ternigan handed him Vanai, I might have agreed. But where’s the honor in fighting a battle you can’t win?”

Dawson looked at his hands. Age had thickened his knuckles and cold chapped his skin. The smell of soap mocked his nose. His boyhood friend, his lord and king, sighed and grunted, shifting in his bath like an old man. Somewhere in Osterling Fells, Curtin Issandrian and Feldin Maas were drinking his wine, toasting each other. Laughing.
Dawson’s cheeks ached, and he forced himself to relax his jaw.

Where’s the honor in fighting a battle you can’t win?
hung in the air between them. When he could keep the disappointment out of his voice, Dawson spoke.

“Where else would it be, my lord?”

T
he dragon’s roads behind them, the world turned to snow and mud. The cart beneath her lurched through ruts and holes, the mules before her strained and slipped, and the wheels grumbled and spat through the churn the carts ahead of her had left. Cithrin sat, reins in her numbed fingers, her breath making ghosts, and watched the low hills give way to plains, the forests thin and snow-sheeted scrub and brambles take their place. In springtime, the land surrounding the Free Cities might be green and alive, but now it seemed empty and eternal.

They passed a field with stacks of rotting hay that testified to some farmer’s tragedy. A vineyard where row after row or trellis supported black, dead-looking woody vines. Now and again, a snow hare would bound along, almost too far away to see. Or a deer would stray near until one of the carters or the guards shot an arrow toward it in hope of fresh venison. From what she could tell, they never hit.

Mostly it was cold. And the days were still getting shorter.

The caravan master stopped them for the night at an abandoned mill. Cithrin pulled her cart to a stop beside the ice sheet of the pond, unhooked her mud-spattered mules, and rubbed them clean as they ate. The sun hung low and bloody in the west. Opal came to check on her, and the woman’s mild eyes seemed pleased by what she saw.

“We’ll make an honest carter of you yet, my dear,” she said.

Cithrin’s smile hurt her cold-burned cheeks. “A carter, maybe,” she said. “Honest is another question.”

The older woman’s eyebrows rose. “More humor,” Opal said. “The world may stop turning. Are you coming to the meal?”

“I don’t think so,” Cithrin said, looking at one of the mules’ hoofs. The small sore she’d seen the day before was still there, but hadn’t gotten worse. “I don’t like being with them.”

“Them?”

“The others. I don’t think they like me. If it wasn’t for me, they’d all be in Bellin sitting around a fire grate. And the captain…”

“Wester? Yes, he is a bit of a bear, isn’t he? I still don’t know quite what to make of him myself,” Opal said, her voice dry and speculative and on the edge of flirtation. “Still, I’m sure he wouldn’t bite unless you asked him.”

“All the same,” Cithrin said. “I think I’ll stay with the cart.”

“I’ll bring you a plate, then.”

“Thank you,” Cithrin said. “And Opal?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

The guard smiled and dropped a small, ironic curtsey. Cithrin watched her walk back toward the mill house. Someone was lighting a fire in there, thin smoke rising from the stone chimney. Around her, the snow glowed gold and then red, and then between one moment and the next, grey. Cithrin laid blankets on her mules and lit a small fire of her own. Opal returned with a plate of stewed greens and wheat cakes, then went back to the voices and music. Cithrin stood to follow her and then sat back down.

As she ate, the stars came out. Snow made the pale blue light of a three-quarter moon seem brighter than it should have been. The cold grew, and Cithrin huddled closer to her small fire. The chill seeped in, pressing on her. Narrowing her. Later, when the captain and the Tralgu had gone out scouting and the others had gone to sleep, she’d sneak into the mill house and find a corner to curl up in. At breakfast, she’d avoid the stares and curiosity of the other carters and come back to her mules as quickly as she could. Daylight was scarce, and the caravan master didn’t leave much time for idle banter. These long, dark, cold hours between work’s end and sleep were the worst part of her day. She passed them by retreating into her mind.

She might begin by singing herself songs or recalling plays and performances she’d gone to as part of the bank. Before long, though, she found herself returning to Magister Imaniel and his constant dinner-table testing. The difference between a gift given for a consideration and a formal loan, the paradox of two parties following reason and yet coming to a solution to no one’s advantage, the strategies of a single contract and the strategies of a contract that is continually renewed. The puzzles were the playthings of her childhood, and she came to them now for comfort and solace.

She found herself estimating the worth of the caravan as a whole, how much they might have gained in Carse and how much more or less they would have to offer in Porte Oliva to make the two journeys balance. She thought about Bellin, and whether taxation on passage or on boarding would make the township richer. At what point it would make as much sense to abandon the carts as to keep on. Whether Magister Imaniel had been wise to invest in a brewery and also insure it against fire. In the absence of real information,
it was no more than a game, but it was the game that she knew best.

Banking, Magister Imaniel said, wasn’t about gold and silver. It was about who knew something no one else did, about who could be trusted and who not, about seeming one thing and being another. With the questions she asked herself, she could conjure him and Cam and Besel. She could see their faces again, hear their laughter, and sink into another time and place. One where she was loved. Or no, not truly. But at least where she belonged.

Even as the night around her grew colder, the knot in her belly loosened. Her tight-curled body grew softer and more at ease. She fed larger sticks into the fire, watching the flames first dim under the weight of the wood, and then brighten as it caught. The heat touched her face and hands, and the wool wrapped around her kept the worst of the night at bay.

What would happen, she wondered, if a bank offered a greater loan to those who’d repaid an old one before the set time? The borrowers would gain more gold by the arrangement, and the bank would see its profits more quickly.
And yet,
Magister Imaniel said in her mind,
if everyone benefits, you’ve overlooked something.
There was some consequence that she was missing…

“Cithrin.”

She looked up. Sandr, half crouched, scuttled from the shadows between the carts. One of the mules lifted his head, snorted a great plume of white breath, and went back to his rest. As Sandr sat, she heard an odd clanking of metal and the telltale sloshing of wine in a skin.

“You didn’t,” she said, and Sandr grinned.

“Master Kit won’t mind. He stocked up again as soon as we reached Bellin, getting ready for the winter. Only now
he’s got to haul it through the back end of the world. We’ll be doing him a favor, lightening the load.”

“You are going to get in so much trouble,” she said.

“Never happen.”

He opened the skin with a gloved hand and held it out to her. The smell of the fumes warmed her almost before the wine. Rich and strong and soft, it washed her mouth and tongue, flowed down her throat. The warmth of it lit her like she’d swallowed a candle. There was no sweetness to it, but something deeper.

“
God,
” she said.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Sandr said.

She grinned and took another long drink. Then another. The warmth spread into her belly and started pressing out toward her arms and legs. Reluctantly, she passed it back.

“That’s not all,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

He pulled a canvas bag out from beneath his cloak. The cloth reeked of dust and rot, and something in it shifted and clanked as he put it on the snow. His eyes sparkled in the moonlight.

“They were in the back storeroom. And a bunch of other things. Smit found them really, but I thought of you and I traded him.”

Sandr pulled out a cracked leather boot laced with string. A complication of rusted metal clung to the sole, dark and dingy except for a knifelike blade running the length that shone bright and new-sharpened.

“Ever skated?” Sandr asked.

Cithrin shook her head. Sandr pulled two pairs of boots out of the sack, the ancient leather grey in the dim light. She took another long drink of the wine.

“They’re too big,” he said, “but I put some sand inside.
Sand’s good because it shifts to fit the shape of your foot. Cloth just bunches up. Here, try them.”

I don’t want to,
Cithrin thought, but Sandr had her foot in his hand, stripping off her boot, and he was so pleased with himself. The skate was cold and the bent leather bit into the top of her foot, but Sandr pulled the string laces tight and started on her other foot.

“I learned how in Asterilhold,” Sandr said. “Two… no, God, three years ago. I’d just joined the troop and Master Kit had us in Kaltfel for the winter. So cold your spit froze before it hit the ground, and the nights went on forever. But there’s a lake in the middle of the city, and the whole time we were there, you could cross it anywhere. There’s a winter city they build on the ice every year. Houses and taverns and all. Like a real town.”

“Really?” she said.

“It was brilliant. There. I think that’s done it. Let me get mine on.”

She took another mouthful of the fortified wine, and it pressed its heat out toward her fingers and toes. Somehow, they’d already gone through half the skin. She felt it in her cheeks. And the fumes made her head feel muzzy and bright. Sandr struggled and grunted, the knife-shoe of the skates creaking and rattling. It seemed impossible that anything so awkward would actually work until he had the last strap in place, half walked and half wobbled to the pond, and then pressed himself out onto the ice. Between one breath and the next, he became grace made flesh. His legs scissored and shifted, the blades hissing as they scored the ice. His body shifted and swooped as he slid across the pond and then back, his arms graceful as a dancer’s.

“They’re not bad,” he called. “Come on. You try.”

Another drink of wine, and then one more for luck, and
Cithrin maneuvered herself out. Cold air bit at her, but only with dull teeth. Her ankles shifted as she fought to make sense of this new way of balancing. She tried to push off the way Sandr did, and fell hard on the ice. Sandr laughed his delight.