The Dragon’s Path (8 page)

She couldn’t be stupid, though. She couldn’t get herself drunk. Someone shouted out Sandr’s name and the guard leapt to his feet. He didn’t pick up the skin.

“Over here, sir,” Sandr said, walking in toward the fire. Wester and his Tralgu were gathering up their soldiers. Cithrin looked out into the grey and shifting darkness, in toward the fire, and then carefully, casually scooped up the wineskin, tucking it into her jacket.

She walked back to her cart, avoiding the others as she went. Someone was singing, and another voice lifted to join the song. A night bird called out. Cithrin clambered up. Dew was forming on the wool cloth, tiny droplets catching the
glow of the moon. She wondered whether she ought to lower the tarp, but it was dark, and she didn’t particularly want to. Instead, she snuggled into among the bolts, snuck the wineskin out of her jacket, and had just one more drink. A small one and only one.

She had to be careful.

T
he sword’s arc changed at the last second, the steel blade angling up toward his face. Had Dawson been as young as his opponent, the move would have had its intended effect: he would have flinched back from it, turned, and left himself open. But he had been dueling for too many years. He shifted his own blade an inch to the side and pushed the unexpected thrust a hair’s breadth wide of its mark.

Feldin Maas, Baron of Ebbinbaugh and Dawson’s opponent in this little battle as in everything, spat on the ground and grinned.

The original slight had been a small one. Despite Dawson having a greater landholding, Maas had demanded to be served before him at the king’s court three days before on the strength of having been named Warden the Southern Reach. Dawson had explained Maas’s mistake. Maas had made an insult of his concession. The pair of them had come near blows there in the great hall. And so the question was to be resolved here, in the fashion of old.

The dueling yard was a dry, dusty ground long enough for jousting and narrow enough for a meeting like this one: short blades and dueling leathers. To one side, the great walls and towers of the Kingspire rose up, taller than trees. To the other, the Division a thousand feet deep that split the city and gave the Severed Throne its name.

They disengaged and resumed the slow, tense circling. Dawson’s right arm was so tired it felt as if it was burning, but the tip of his sword didn’t waver. It was a point of pride that after thirty years on the field of honor, he was still as strong as the first day he’d stepped in. The younger man’s blade was slightly less steady, his form apparently more careless. It was a physical lie, and Dawson knew better than to believe it.

Their leather-soled boots hushed against the earth. Feldin thrust. Dawson parried, counterthrust, and now Feldin stepped back. The grin was less certain, but Dawson didn’t let himself feel pleasure. Not until the bastard wore a Kalliam scar. Feldin Maas swung low and hard, twisting the blade fast from the wrist. Dawson parried, feinted to the right and attacked to the left. His form was perfect, but his enemy had already shifted away. They were both too experienced on the battlefield for the old tricks to carry much effect.

Something unexpected was called for.

In a true battle, Dawson’s thrust would have been suicidal. It left him open, off balance, overextended. It was artless, and so it had the effect he’d intended. Feldin leaped back, but too slowly. The resistance of metal cutting skin translated through Dawson’s blade.

“Blood!” Dawson called.

In the space of a heartbeat, Dawson saw Feldin’s expression go from surprise to rage, from rage to calculation, and from calculation to a cool, ironic mask. For an instant, he still prepared a counterattack. There would be no parrying it. Young Feldin was tempted, Dawson realized. Honor, witnesses, and rule of law aside, Feldin Maas had been tempted to kill him. It made the victory taste all that much better. Feldin stepped back, put his hand to his ribs, and lifted
bloodied fingers. The physicians ran forward to assess the damage. Dawson sheathed his sword.

“Well played, old man,” Feldin said as they stripped off his shirt. “Using my honor as your armor? That was almost a compliment. You wagered your life on my gentle instincts.”

“More your fear of breaking form.”

A dangerous glint came to the younger man’s eyes.

“Here, we’ve just finished one duel,” the chief physician said. “Let’s not have another.”

Dawson drew his dagger in salute. Feldin pushed the servants aside and drew his own. The blood pouring down his side was a good sign. This newest scar would be deep. Dawson sheathed his dagger, turned, and left the dueling ground behind him, his honor intact.

C
amnipol. The divided city, and seat of the Severed Throne.

From the time of dragons, it had been the seat of Firstblood power in the world. In the dim, burned ages after the great war had brought the former lords of the world low and freed the slave races, Camnipol had been the beacon of light. Black and gold and proud upon her hill, the city had called home the scattered Firstblood. Fortunes might have waxed and waned through the centuries, but the city stood eternal, split by the Division and held by the might of the Kingspire, now the home of King Simeon and the boy prince Aster.

The Silver Bridge spanned the Division from the Kingspire to the noble quarter that topped the western face. The ancient stone rested on a span of dragon’s jade no thicker than a hand’s width, and permanent as the sun or the sea. Dawson rode in a small horse-drawn carriage, eschewing the newer tradition of being pulled by slaves. The wheels
rattled and flocks of pigeons flogged the air below him. He leaned out his window, looking down through the strata of ruins and stone that made the Division’s walls. He’d heard it said that the lowest of the ancient buildings, down in the huge midden at the great canyon’s base, were older than the dragons themselves. Camnipol, the eternal city. His city, at the heart of his nation and his race. Apart from his family, Dawson loved nothing better.

And then he had crossed the great span of air, and the driver turned into his narrow private square. His mansion rose up, its clean, sweeping lines elegant free of the gaudy filigree with which upstarts like Feldin Maas, Alan Klin, and Curtin Issandrian tarted up their homes. His home was classic and elegant, and it looked out over the void to the Kingspire and the wide plain beyond it, the noblest house in the city, barring perhaps Lord Bannien of Estinford’s estate.

His servants brought out the steps, and Dawson waved away the offered hands as he always did. It was their duty to offer, and his dignity required that he refuse. The ritual was the important thing. The door slave, an old Tralgu with light brown skin and silver hair at the tips of his ears, stood by the entryway. A silver chain bound him to the black marble column.

“Welcome home, my lord,” the slave said. “A letter has come from your son.”

“Which son?”

“Jorey, my lord.”

Dawson felt a twist in his gut. Had it been from one of his other children, he could have read the news with unalloyed pleasure, but a letter from Jorey was a letter from the loathed Vanai campaign. With trepidation, he held out his hand. The door slave turned his head toward the door.

“Your lady wife has it, my lord.”

The interior of the mansion was dark tapestry and bright crystal. His dogs bounded down the stairway yipping with excitement; five wolfhounds with shining grey fur and teeth of ivory. Dawson scratched their ears, patted their sides, and walked back to the solarium and his wife.

The glass room was a consolation he gave his Clara. It spoiled the lines of the building on the north side, but she could cultivate the pansies and violets that grew in the hills of Osterling. The reminder of home made her more nearly content during the seasons in Camnipol, and she kept the house smelling of violets all through the winter. She sat now in a deep chair, a small desk at her side, the tables of dark blooms arrayed around her like soldiers on parade. She looked up at the sound of his steps and smiled.

Clara had always been perfect. If the years had taken some of the rose from her cheeks, if her black hair was shot with white, he could still see the girl she had been. There had been rarer beauties and sharper poets when Dawson’s father had chosen the womb that would carry his grandchildren. But instead he had picked Clara, and it had taken Dawson no time at all to appreciate the wisdom of that choice. She was good at heart. She might have been a paragon in all other things, but if she had not been good, those other virtues would have turned to ash. Dawson leaned down, kissing her lips as he always did. It was a ritual like refusing the footman’s help and scratching the hounds’ ears. It gave life meaning.

“We’ve heard from Jorey?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “He’s fine. He’s having a wonderful time in the field. His captain is Adria Klin’s boy Alan. He says they’re getting along quite nicely.”

Dawson leaned against a flower table, arms crossed. The twinge in his belly grew worse. Klin. Another of Feldin
Maas’s cabal. It had been like a bone in the throat when the king had placed Jorey under the man, and it still brought a little taste of anger thinking of it.

“Oh, and he says he’s serving with Geder Palliako, but that can’t be right, can it? Isn’t that the strange little pudgy man with the enthusiasm for maps and comic rhyme?”

“You’re thinking of Lerer Palliako. Geder’s his son.”

“Oh,” Clara said with a wave of her hand. “That makes much more sense, because I couldn’t see him going out in the field again at his age. I think we’re all well beyond that. And then Jorey also wrote a long passage about horses and plums that’s clearly some sort of coded message for you that I couldn’t make head or tail of.”

After a moment’s rooting through the folds of her dress, she held out the folded paper.

“Did you win your little fight?” she asked.

“I did.”

“And did that awful man apologize?”

“Better than that, dear. He lost.”

Jorey’s script dotted the pages like well-regulated bird scratches, neat and sloppy at the same time. Dawson skimmed through the opening paragraphs. A few bluff comments about the rigors of the march, an arch comment about Alan Klin that Clara had either not seen or chosen to misunderstand, a brief passage about the Palliako boy who was apparently something of the company joke. And then the important part. He read it carefully, parsing each phrase, picking out the words he and his son had chosen to represent certain key players and strategems.
There aren’t any windfall plums this year.
Meaning Sir Klin was not the client of Lord Ternigan. Klin took his orders because Lord Ternigan was marshal of the army and not through any particular political alliance. That was useful information to know.
My own horse is in real
danger of developing a limp on his right side.
Horse, not mount. Limp, not lameness. Right side, not left. So Klin’s company was favored to remain in conquered Vanai, and Klin himself the likely temporary governor. Ternigan wasn’t planning to take rule of the city on himself. All the more important, then, that the army stall.

Only
stall,
of course. Not
fail.
Never fail. Everything would be in place, if Ternigan’s forces could just withhold victory for a season. That difference between postponement and failure kept his private negotiations with Maccia from crossing the line into treason. As long as the conquest of Vanai was delayed until the spring season, there would be time to get Klin recalled to the court and Jorey put in his place. Governing Vanai would be Jorey’s first step up within the court, and it would take some prestige away from Maas and Klin and their type.

Dawson had worked through the most obscure channels he could, had sent letters to agents in Stollbourne who sent letters to merchants in Birancour who had business in Maccia. Discretion was critical, but he had managed it. Six hundred soldiers would reinforce the free city of Vanai until such time as it was convenient that they not. In spring, they would retreat, Vanai would fall, and by summer Dawson would be drinking with King Simeon and laughing together at his cleverness.

“My lord?”

The servant stood in the solarium’s doorway, bowing his apology. Dawson folded the letter and handed it back to Clara.

“What is it?”

“A visitor, sir. Baron Maas and his wife.”

Dawson snorted, but Clara stood and adjusted her sleeves.
Her face took on an almost serene calm, and she smiled at him.

“Now love,” she said. “You’ve had your play at war. Don’t begrudge us our play at peace.”

Objections sprang to mind like dogs after a fox: dueling wasn’t a game, it was honor; Maas had earned the scar and the humiliation that went with it; receiving him now was empty etiquette, and on and on. Clara hoisted an eyebrow and canted her head to the side. All his bluster drained away. He laughed.

“My love,” he said, “you civilize me.”

“Oh not that, surely,” she said. “Now come along and say something pleasant.”

The receiving room swam in tapestry. Clothwork images of the Last Battle with the dragon’s wings worked in silver thread and Drakis Stormcrow in gold. Sunlight spilled through a wide window of colored glass worked in the heraldic gryphon-and-axe of Kalliam. The furnishings were among the most elegant in the house. Feldin Maas stood by the door as if at attention. His dark-haired, sharp-faced wife flowed forward as Dawson and Clara entered the room.