The Dragon’s Path (29 page)

“My Lord Protector wished to see me?” Jorey said.

Geder tried out a smile.

“Who’d have guessed it, eh? Me, Lord Protector of Vanai.”

“I think we all would have put long odds,” Jorey said.

“Yes. Yes, it’s why I wanted to speak with you in particular,” Geder said. “Your father’s active in court, isn’t he? And you write to him. You said that you write to him?”

“I do, my lord,” Jorey said. His spine was stiff, his eyes set straight ahead.

“Yes, that’s good. I was wondering if… that’s to say, ah, do you know why?”

“Why what, my lord?”

“Why me?” Geder said, and his voice had a thin violin-string of whine at the back that embarrassed him.

Jorey Kalliam, son of Dawson Kalliam, opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned. The lines at his mouth and brow made him seem older. Geder took a small handful of pistachios from their dish, cracking the shells open and eating the soft, salty meat within less from hunger than for something to do with his hands.

“You put me in an awkward position, my lord.”

“Geder. Please, call me Geder. And I’ll call you Jorey. If that’s all right. I think you’re the nearest thing to a friend I have in this city.”

Jorey took a long breath, and as he let it hiss out between his teeth, his eyes softened.

“God help you,” Jorey said. “I think I am.”

“Then can you tell me what’s happening at court that Ternigan would put
me
here? I don’t have a patron at court. It’s my first campaign. I just don’t understand it. And I hoped you might.”

Jorey gestured to a chair, and Geder realized after a moment that he was asking permission to sit. Geder waved him on and sat across from him, hands clasped between his knees. Jorey’s eyes shifted as if he were reading something from the air. Geder ate another nut.

“Of course, I don’t know Ternigan’s mind,” he said. “But I know things at home are unsettled. Klin is allied with Curtin Issandrian, and Issandrian’s been championing some changes that haven’t all gone over well. He’s made enemies.”

“Is that why Ternigan called him back?”

“It’s likely part, but if Issandrian’s power at court is starting to waver, Ternigan might want someone who wasn’t affiliated with him. You said you don’t have a patron at court. That might be the reason he chose you. Because House Palliako hasn’t taken a side.”

Geder had read of any number of situations like it. The White Powder Wars, when Cabral had played host to exiles from Birancour and Herez both. Koort Ncachi, the fourth Regos of Borja, who was supposed to have had a court so corrupt he named a random farmer as regent. Considered at that angle, Geder saw a way that his new position could be made explicable. And still…

“Well,” he said with an awkward grin, “I suppose I should be grateful my father doesn’t go to court, then. I’m sorry, though, that yours does. I really thought Ternigan might give the city to you.”

Jorey Kalliam turned his face to the window. His brows were furrowed. In the grate, the fire murmured its secrets to itself, and in the square, a thousand pigeons rose as if they
were part of a single body and whirled through the white winter sky.

“It wouldn’t have been a favor,” Jorey said at last. “Court games aren’t fair, Palliako. They don’t judge men by their worth, and they aren’t about what’s just. Guilty men can hold power their whole lives and be wept for when they pass. Innocent men can be spent like coins because it’s convenient. You don’t have to have sinned for them to ruin you. If your destruction is useful to them, you’ll be destroyed. This, all of this? It isn’t your fault.”

“I understand,” Geder said.

“I don’t think you do.”

“I know I didn’t earn this,” Geder said. “Raw luck’s given me this chance, and now it’s my work to deserve it. I didn’t think Lord Ternigan put me over the city because he respected me. I’m convenient. That’s fine. Now I can make him respect me. I can steer Vanai. I can
make
it work.”

“Can you?” Jorey said.

“I can try,” Geder said. “I’m sure my father’s been bragging about this to everyone he can find. House Palliako hasn’t taken a new title since my grandfather was Warden of Lakes. I know it’s something my father wanted, and with me here now…”

“This isn’t fair,” Jorey said.

“It’s not,” Geder said. “But I swear I’ll do what I can to make it up to you.”

“Make it up to
me
?” Jorey said, as if Geder had suddenly dropped in from some other conversation.

Geder rose, took the two water mugs from the tray, and put one in Jorey’s hand. With all the seriousness he could muster, he raised his glass.

“Vanai is mine,” Geder said, and this time it sounded almost true. “And if there is anything within it that would
do you the honor you deserve, I’ll find it. This city should have been yours, and we both know it. But since it’s dropped in my lap instead, I swear here, between the two of us, that I won’t forget that it was luck.”

The expression on Jorey Kalliam’s face might have been pity or horror or raw disbelief.

“I need you beside me,” Geder said. “I need allies. And on behalf of Vanai and House Palliako, I would be honored if you were one of them. You’re a valiant man, Jorey Kalliam, and one whose judgment I trust. Will you stand with me?”

The silence left Geder apprehensive. He held his glass determinedly aloft and quietly prayed Jorey would return the salute.

“Did you practice that?” Jorey asked at last.

“A bit, yes,” Geder said.

Jorey rose to his feet and raised his own glass. The water splashed and slid down his knuckles.

“Geder, I will do what I can,” he said. “It may not be much, and God’s witness, I don’t see how this ends well, but I’ll do what I can to make things right for you.”

“Good enough,” Geder said, and drank his water through a grin.

The rest of the day was as much a test of endurance as a parade of honors. The afternoon began with a congratulatory feast presented by the representatives of the major guilds of Vanai, two dozen men and women each pressing for his attention and favor. After that, he held audiences with a representative from Newport who was angling to make changes in the overland shipping charges, but over the course of a long, contentious hour wouldn’t make it precisely clear what the changes were. Then, at Geder’s request, the chief taxation auditor reviewed all of Klin’s previous reports to Lord Ternigan and the crown. Geder had expected that
meeting to be little more than a summation of how much gold had been sent north, but it ended up going twice as long as he’d intended with discussions of the difference between high- and low-function tariffs and “presentation on account” against “presentation in earnest” that left him feeling like he’d been reading something in a language that he hadn’t yet mastered.

At the day’s end, he retired to the bed chamber that had once belonged to the prince of Vanai. It could have fit Geder’s previous accommodations in a corner and left room for two more like it. The windows looked out over a garden of leafless oaks and snowbound flowerbeds. In spring, it would be like having a private forest. Geder’s new bed was warmed by an ingenious network of pipes that led to and from a great fire grate, the pump driven by the rising air. The contraption burbled to itself, sometimes directly beneath Geder, as if the feather mattresses had eaten something that disagreed with them. Geder lay in the dim, firelit room for almost an hour after the last servant had been dismissed. Though he was exhausted, sleep would not come. When he rose, it was with the delicious sense of doing something he ought not do, clear in the knowledge that he would get away with it.

He lit three candles from the fire, blackening the wax a bit with the smoke, and set them beside his bed. Then from the small cache of his own things brought here by his squire, he plucked the creaking binding of the book he’d most recently bought. He’d read it through already, and marked the section that he found most interesting so that he could find it easily.

Legends of the Righteous Servant, also called Sinir Kushku in the language of the ancient Pût, place it as the final and greatest weapon of Morade, though the degree to
which this is simple confabulation with the dragon’s network of spies and the curiously insightful nature of his final madness remains unclear.

Geder put his finger over the words, fighting to remember what he knew of the languages of the east.

Sinir Kushku.

The End of All Doubt.

I
’m saying there is evil in the world,” Master Kit said, hefting the box on his hip, “and
doubt
is the weapon that guards against it.”

Yardem took the box from the old actor’s hands and lifted it to the top of the pile.

“But if you doubt everything,” the Tralgu said, “how can anything be justified?”

“Tentatively. And subject to later examination. It seems to me the better question is whether there’s any virtue in committing to a permanent and unexamined certainty. I don’t believe we can say that.”

Captain Wester made a noise in the back of his throat like a dog preparing for the attack. Cithrin felt herself start to cringe back, but didn’t let her body follow the impulse through.

“We can say,” the captain said, “that wasting good air on the question won’t get the work done any faster.”

“Sorry, sir,” the Tralgu said.

Master Kit nodded his apology and went back down the thin wooden stairs to the street. Sandr and Hornet, coming up with a box of gems between them, flattened themselves to the wall to let him pass. Cithrin shifted, giving them room enough to pass the new box to Yardem, and Yardem enough to find a place for it in the new rooms. A cold, damp breeze and the smell of fresh horse droppings wafted through the
open windows along with the daylight. Cithrin thought it seemed like springtime.

“Was he a priest as a boy?” Marcus said, pointing down the stairway with his chin. “He starts talking about faith and doubt and the nature of truth, it’s like we’re back in the ’van getting a sermon with every meal.”

“What he says makes sense,” Yardem said.

“To you,” Marcus replied.

“Suppose he might have been a priest. It’s Master Kit,” Hornet said with a shrug. “If he told us he’d walked up the mountainside and drank beer with the moon, I’d probably believe it. We’ve got two more boxes the size of that one, and then all those wax blocks.”

“Wax?” Marcus asked.

“The books,” Cithrin said, but the words came out as a croak. She coughed and began again. “The books and ledgers. They’re sealed against the damp.”

Which is a good thing,
she thought,
since we sank them in a mill pond.
Immediately, she imagined a crack in the sealing wax. Pages and pages of smeared ink and rotting paper hidden by the protecting wraps. What if the books were ruined? What would she tell Magister Imaniel then? What would she tell the bankers in Carse?

“Well, bring them up,” Marcus said. “We’ll find a place for them somewhere.”

Hornet nodded, but Sandr was already going down the stairs. He hadn’t even looked at her. She told herself it didn’t bother her.

Cithrin was very aware that the new rooms didn’t entirely meet with Captain Wester’s approval. Unlike the place in the salt quarter, these were on the second story with woodplank floors that reported any motion to the floor below in a language of creaks and pops. The shop on the first floor was
a gambler’s stall, which meant any number of people of any status might come and go throughout the day. But the lock at the base of the stair was sturdy, surrounding streets less prone to the drunken and the lost, and the windows without balcony or simple access. Additionally, there was an alley window out which the pisspot could be emptied, and the change of location had landed her five doors down from a taproom where they could buy food and beer.

Cary and Mikel came up next. Cary was grinning.

“Boy on the street asked us what we were hauling,” Cary said.

Cithrin could see the tension in Captain Wester’s face as he walked to the window and peered out.

“What did you tell him?”

“Paste jewels for the First Thaw celebrations,” Cary said. “Opened one of the boxes for him, too. You should have seen it. He looked so
disappointed.
”

Cary laughed, not seeing the anger on Captain Wester’s face. Or perhaps seeing it and not caring. During the days when they’d looked for new rooms and prepared to shift the smuggled wealth of Vanai to its new hiding place, Opal had only been mentioned once when Smit had joked that she’d found a way to keep from having to do any of the hard work. Nobody had laughed.

Cithrin still had to fight herself to believe that it had happened. That Opal had meant to slaughter her and take the money was hard enough to comprehend. That Captain Wester had killed her for it was worse. Of course the others were angry. Of course they resented the captain. And Yardem. And her. They had to. And here they were, hauling boxes and making jokes. Cithrin found that she trusted them—each and every one of them—not because they were trustworthy, but because she wanted them to be.

She’d made the mistake with Opal, and she was watching herself make it again. That knowledge alone twisted her badly enough she hadn’t slept or eaten well since the night she’d woken up with five dead men around her.