The Dragon’s Path (51 page)

Voices led Dawson to the back of the building. Five of his huntsmen stood or sat around the table of an ancient stump, raw cheese and fresh bread on the wood. They were young men, stripped to their hose in the heat. Dawson felt a moment’s deep nostalgia. Once he’d been much like them. Strong, sure of his body, and able to lose himself in the joys of a warm day. And when he had been, Simeon had been at his side. The years had robbed them both.

One caught sight of him and leapt to his feet in salute. The others quickly followed. Vincen Coe was in the back, his left eye swollen and dark. Dawson strode over to them, ignoring all but the wounded man.

“Coe,” he said. “With me.”

“My lord,” the huntsman said, and hurried to Dawson’s side. Dawson walked fast down the wide track that led from the holding down toward the pond to the north. The shadows of the spiraling towers striped the land.

“What happened to you?” Dawson said. “You look like you tried to catch a rock with your eyelids.”

“Nothing of importance, lord.”

“Tell me.”

“We drank a bit too much last night, lord. One of the new boys got a bit merry and… made a suggestion I found offensive. He repeated it, and I found myself moved to correct him.”

“He called you a catamite?”

“No, my lord.”

“What, then?”

In spring, before the start of the court season, the pond
was clear as water from a stream. In autumn, after Dawson’s return from court, it could be as dark as tea. He’d rarely seen it in the height of summer, the green of the water building on the reflections of the trees to make something almost emerald. Half a dozen ducks made their way across the water, their wakes spreading out behind them. Dawson stood at the edge where the grass had the dampness of mud beneath it. Vincen Coe’s uncomfortable silence became more interesting with every passing breath.

“I could ask the others,” Dawson said. “They’ll tell me if you won’t.”

Vincen looked out over water to the distant mountains.

“He impugned the honor of Lady Kalliam, my lord. And made some speculations that…”

“Ah,” Dawson said. Sour rage haunted the back of his mouth. “Is he still here?”

“No, my lord. His brothers carried him back to his village last night.”

“Carried him?”

“I didn’t leave him in fit state to walk, sir.”

Dawson chuckled. Flies danced across the water before him.

“She’s going back to Camnipol,” Dawson said. “She has the idea that she can make peace with Maas.”

The young huntsman nodded once, but didn’t speak.

“Say it,” Dawson said.

“With permission, sir. That’s not wise. It’s hardest drawing blood the first time, and that’s already happened. It only gets easier.”

“I know it, but she’s determined.”

“Send me instead.”

“I’m sending you in addition,” Dawson said. “Jorey’s still in the city. He can give you a better picture of where things
stand. You protected me when this all started. I need you to protect her now.”

The two men stood together. Voices came from behind them. The kennel master shouting to his apprentice. The laughter of the huntsmen. It all seemed to come from another world. One not so far in the past when things had been better and safer and still right.

“Nothing will hurt her, my lord,” Vincen Coe said. “Not while I live.”

T
hree days after Clara left, riding off in the open carriage that had brought them with Vincen Coe riding close behind, the unwelcome guest arrived.

The heat of the day had driven Dawson out of the holding proper and into the winter garden. Out of its season, it looked plain. The flowers that would offer up blooms of gold and vermillion in the falling days of the year looked like tough green weeds now. Three of his dogs lay panting in the heat, dark eyes closed and pink tongues lolling out. The glasshouse stood open. Closed, it would have been hotter than an oven. The garden slept, waiting for its time, and when that time came, it would transform itself.

By then, Clara would have returned. He had spent time away from her, of course. He had court business and the hunt. She had her circle and the management of the household. And yet when she left him behind, the solitude was harder to bear gracefully. He woke in the mornings wondering where she was. He lay down at night wishing she would walk in through the dressing room door, alive with news and insight and simple inane gossip. Between the two moments, he tried not to think of her, or of Feldin Maas, or the possibility of her being used somehow against him.

“Lord Kalliam.”

The servant was a young Dartinae girl, new to his service. Her eyes burned in the manner of her race.

“What is it?”

“A man’s come asking audience, my lord. Paerin Clark, sir.”

“Don’t know him,” Dawson said, but half a breath later, he did. The pale banker, agent of Northcoast, and seducer of Canl Daskellin. Dawson stood. At his feet, the dogs sat up, looking from him to the servant girl and back while they whined softly. “Is he alone?”

The girl’s eyes widened, suddenly anxious.

“He has a retinue, my lord. A driver and footmen. And I think his private man.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the lesser hall, my lord.”

“Tell him I’ll see him in a moment,” Dawson said. “Bring him ale and bread, put his men in the servants’ hall, and then get me my guard.”

The pale man looked up when the doors of the lesser hall swung open and stood when Dawson entered. That Dawson had four swordsmen in hunting leathers behind him didn’t so much as raise the man’s eyebrows. The bread on the plate before him had a single bite taken from it, the pewter ale tankard might not have been touched.

“Baron Osterling,” the banker said with a bow. “Thank you for seeing me. I apologize for arriving unannounced.”

“Are you running Canl Daskellin’s errands now, or he running yours?”

“I’m running his. The situation in the court is delicate. He wanted you informed, but he doesn’t trust couriers and some things he wouldn’t want written in his hand regardless.”

“And so he sends the puppet master of Northcoast?”

The banker paused. The faintest touch of color came to his skin, and the polite smile he always wore.

“My lord, without giving offense, there are one or two points it might be best if we clarified. I am a subject of Northcoast, but I am not a member of its court, and I am not here at the bidding of my king. I represent the Medean bank and only the Medean bank.”

“A spy without a kingdom, then. So much the worse.”

“I apologize, my lord,” the banker said. “I see I am not welcome. Please forgive the trespass.”

Paerin Clark bowed deeply and started toward the door, taking the court and Camnipol with him.
Just because you don’t feel comfortable with it doesn’t mean it’s difficult,
Clara said in his memory.

“Wait,” Dawson said, and took a deep breath. “Who’s wearing the prettiest dress at the twice-damned ball?”

“Excuse me?”

“You came for a reason,” Dawson said. “Don’t be such a coward you abandon it the first time someone barks at you. Sit. Tell me what you have to tell.”

Paerin Clark came and sat. His eyes seemed darker now, his face as blank as a man at cards.

“It isn’t you,” Dawson said, sitting across the table and ripping off a crust of the bread. “Not as a man. It’s what you are.”

“I’m the man Komme Medean sends when there’s a problem,” Paerin Clark said. “No more, no less.”

“You’re an agent of chaos,” Dawson said, softly, trying to pull the sting from the words. “You’re a man who makes poor men rich and rich men poor. Rank and order mean nothing to men like you, and they mean everything to men like me. It isn’t you I disdain. It’s only what you are.”

The banker laced his fingers across his knee.

“Will you hear my news, my lord? Despite what you think I am?”

“I will.”

For the better part of an hour, the banker spoke in a low voice, detailing the slow landslide that was happening in Camnipol. As Dawson had suspected, Simeon’s unwillingness to commit his son as the ward of any house came from the fear of making waves. The respect for his kingship was failing on all sides. Daskellin and his remaining allies offered what support they could, but even within the ranks of the faithful, unease was growing. Issandrian and Klin remained in exile, but Feldin Maas was everywhere in the city. It seemed as if the man never slept, and wherever he went, the story he told was the same: the attack of the show fighters had been rigged to throw disgrace on Curtin Issandrian in order that the prince not be sent to his house. The implication was that the convenient appearance of the soldiers from Vanai had been part of a great theater piece.

“Arranged by me,” Dawson said.

“Not you alone, but yes.”

“Lies, beginning to end,” Dawson said.

“Not everyone believes it. But some do.”

Dawson rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Outside, the day was leaning toward night, the sunlight reddening. It was all as he suspected. And Clara was riding into the center of it. The hope she’d offered before she’d left had sounded risky at the time. After this report, it seemed merely naïve. He would have given his hand to have had the banker come a week earlier. Now it was too late. He could as well wish a thrown rock back into his hand.

“Simeon?” Dawson asked. “Is he well?”

“The hard times wear on him,” Paerin Clark said. “And, I think, on his son.”

“I think it isn’t death that kills us,” Dawson said. “I think it’s fear. And Asterilhold?”

“My sources tell me that Maas is in contact with several important men in the court there. There have been loans of gold, and promises of support.”

“He’s raising an army.”

“He is.”

“And Canl?”

“He’s trying to, yes.”

“How long before it comes down to the field?”

“No one can know that, my lord. If you’re careful and lucky, maybe never.”

“I can’t think that’s true,” Dawson said. “We have Asterilhold on one hand and you on the other.”

“No, my lord,” the banker said, “you don’t. We both know I came hoping for advantage, but an Antean civil war won’t profit us. If it does come to pass, we won’t take a side. I’ve done what I can here. I won’t be going back to Camnipol.”

Dawson sat up straighter. The banker was smiling now, and it looked suspiciously like pity.

“You’ve abandoned Daskellin?
Now?
”

“This is one of the great kingdoms of the world,” Paerin Clark said, “but my employer plays his games on larger boards than that. I wish you the best of luck, but Antea is yours to lose. Not mine. I’m traveling south.”

“South? What’s more important than this in the south?”

“There’s an irregularity that needs my attention in Porte Oliva.”

C
ithrin stood at the top of the seawall, the city spread out behind her and the vast blue of sea and sky ahead. At the edge where the pale, shallow water of the bay turned to deep blue, five ships stood. The towering masts were trees rising from the water. The furled sails thickened the spars. The small, shallow boats of the fishing fleet were rushing into port or else out of the traffic as dozens of guide boats raced out, fighting to be the first to reach the ships and take the honor of guiding them in.

The trade ships from Narinisle had arrived. Five ships, arriving together and flying the banners of Birancour and Porte Oliva. When they had left, there had been seven. The other two might have become separated by storm or choice or scattered in an attack. They might arrive the next day or the next week or never. On the docks below her, merchants waited in agonies of hope and fear, waiting for the ships to come near enough to identify. And then, once the ships were in their berths, the fortunate among the sponsors would board, compare contracts and bills of lading, and discover whether profits were assured. The unfortunate would wait on the docks or in the port taprooms, digging at the sailors for news.

And then, once the captains of the ships had answered their sponsors, once the laborers had begun the long business
of hauling the goods from ship to warehouse, once the frenzy of trade and goods and the exchange of coin had passed over Porte Oliva like a wind across the water, it would be time to begin the preparation for the next year’s journey. Shipyards would make repairs. The new sponsors would offer contracts and terms to the captains. And Idderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva, would consult with the captains and the masters of the guilds, and graciously accept the proposals to change this from one port city among many to the center of trade for a generation to come.

And in her hand, written in green ink on paper as smooth as poured cream, was the letter that forbade her from being part of any of it. She opened it now and considered it again. It was ciphered, of course, but she had spent long enough with Magister Imaniel’s books and papers that she could read it as clearly as if it had been in a normal script.