The Dragon’s Path (5 page)

“Men,” he said. “Yesterday, Lord Ternigan sent new orders. Vanai has entered into alliance with Maccia. Our reports are that six hundred sword-and-bows are on the march to reinforce Vanai even as we speak.”

The captain paused to let that sink in, and Geder frowned. Maccia was an odd sort of ally for Vanai. The two cities had been at each other’s throats over the spice and tobacco trades for more than a generation. Vanai was built of wood, he’d read, mostly
because
Maccia controlled the quarries while
timber floated down the river from the north. But perhaps there was something more going on than he knew.

“These reinforcements will not save Vanai,” Alan said. “Especially because when they arrive, they shall find us in control of the city.”

Geder felt his frown deepen, and a sense of sick foreboding rise in his gut. It was perhaps five days by water from Maccia to Vanai, and they were at least a week from the border. To reach Vanai before the reinforcements meant…

“Today, we begin a hard march,” Alan said. “We will sleep in our saddles. We will eat while we walk. And in four days’ time, we will take Vanai by surprise and show her what the power of the Severed Throne means! To the King!”

“To the King!” Geder said in chorus with the others, raising his hand in salute even as he tried not to weep.

They had known. Last night, they had known. Already, Geder could feel the ache growing in his spine and his thighs. The throbbing in his head redoubled. As the formation broke, Jorey Kalliam met his eyes and then looked away.

Here was the prank. Being tipped into the sludge of the latrine had only been the start. After that, insist on the buffoon accepting apology. Get him in warm water. Fill him full of wine. Make him dance. The memory of reciting his father’s dirty rhymes and dancing the little jig came back like a knife in his back. And all so that they could announce the forced march while fat idiot Palliako tried not to puke himself at formation. They’d taken his last night of sleep, and for days they would have the pleasure of watching him suffer.

The camaraderie of the sword. The brotherhood of the campaign. Warm, meaningless words. It was no different here than back home. The strong mocked the weak. The handsome pitied the plain. Everywhere and aways, the powerful
chose who was in favor and who could be made light of. Geder turned and stalked back to his tent. His squire had the slaves ready to strike it. He ignored them and walked into his last moment’s privacy before the battle that was still days away. He reached for his book.

It wasn’t where he’d left it.

A chill that had nothing to do with autumn ran down his spine.

He’d been drunk when he came back. He might have moved it. He might have tried to read it before he slept. Geder searched his cot, then under his cot. He looked through his uniforms and the wood and leather chest that held all his other things. The book wasn’t there. He found himself breathing faster. His face felt hot, but whether it was shame or anger, he couldn’t let himself think. He stepped out of his tent, and the slaves jumped to attention. The rest of the camp was already being loaded onto wagons and mules. There wasn’t time. Geder nodded to his Dartinae squire, and the slaves got to work putting his things in order. Geder walked across the camp again, his steps slowed by fear. But he had to have his book back.

The captain’s tent was already struck, the leather unfastened from the frames, the frames broken down and stowed. The bare patch of earth where Geder had capered last night was like a thing from a children’s story, a fairy castle that vanished with the dawn. Except that Sir Alan Klin was there, his leather riding cloak hanging from his shoulders and his sword of office at his hip. The master of provender, a half-Yemmu mountain of a man, was taking orders from the captain. Geder’s rank technically gave him the right to interrupt, but he didn’t. He waited.

“Palliako,” Klin said. The warmth of the previous night was gone.

“My lord,” Geder said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but when I woke up this morning… after last night…”

“Spit it out, man.”

“I had a book, sir.”

Sir Alan Klin closed his noble, long-lashed eyes.

“I thought we’d finished with that.”

“We did, sir? So you know the book? I showed it to you?”

The captain opened his eyes, glancing about at the ordered chaos of the breaking camp. Geder felt like a boy bothering a harried tutor.

“Speculative essay,” Klin said. “Palliako, really? Speculative essay?”

“More for the exercise in translation,” Geder lied, suddenly ashamed of his true enthusiasm.

“It was… courageous of you to admit the vice,” Klin said. “And I think you made the right decision in destroying it.”

Geder’s heart knocked against his ribs.

“Destroying it, sir?”

Alan looked at him, surprise on his face. Or possibly mock surprise.

“We burned it last night,” the captain said. “The two of us together, just after I took you back to your tent. Don’t you remember?”

Geder didn’t know whether the man was lying or not. The night was a blur. He remembered so little. Was it possible that, lost in his cups, he had forsworn his little failure of sophistication and permitted it to be set to fire? Or was Sir Alan Klin, his captain and commander, lying to his face? Neither seemed plausible, but one or the other had to be true. And to admit not knowing was to confess that he couldn’t hold his wine and prove again that he was the joke of the company.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Geder said. “I must have been a little muddled. I understand now.”

“Be careful with that.”

“It won’t happen again.”

Geder saluted, and then, before Klin could respond, stalked off to his mount. It was a gelding grey, the best his family could afford. He lifted himself to the saddle and yanked the reins. The horse turned sharply, surprised by his violence, and Geder felt a stab of regret through his rage. It wasn’t the animal’s fault. He promised himself to give the beast a length of sugarcane when they stopped. If they stopped. If this twice-damned campaign didn’t drag on to the end of all days and the return of the dragons.

They took to the road, the army moving at the deliberate pace of men who knew the walk wouldn’t end. The hard march began, rank following rank down the wide, dragon’s jade road. Geder sat high in his saddle, holding his spine straight and proud out of sheer will and anger. He had been humiliated before. Likely he would be humiliated again. But Sir Alan Klin had burned his book. As the morning sun rose, the heat drawing cloaks from shoulders, the glorious leaves of autumn glowing around them, Geder realized that he had already sworn his oath of vengeance. And he’d done it standing before his new and mortal enemy.

It won’t happen again,
he’d said.

And it wouldn’t.

C
ithrin’s only vivid memory of her parents was being told of their deaths. Before that, there were only wisps, less than ghosts, of the people themselves. Her father was a warm embrace in the rain and the smell of tobacco. Her mother was the taste of honey on bread and the thin, graceful hand of a Cinnae woman stroking Cithrin’s leg. She didn’t know their faces or the sounds of their voices, but she remembered losing them.

She had been four years old. Her nursery had been painted in white and plum. She’d been sitting by the window, drinking tea with a stuffed Tralgu made of brown sacking and stuffed with dried beans. She’d been straightening its ears when her Nanné came in, face even paler than usual, and announced that the plague had taken master and mistress, and Cithrin was to prepare herself to leave. She would be living somewhere else now.

She hadn’t understood. Death was something negotiable to her then, like whether or not to wear a particular ribbon in her hair, or how much sweet oats to eat in the morning. Cithrin hadn’t cried so much as felt annoyance with the change of plan.

It was only later, in her new, darker rooms above the banking house, that she realized it didn’t matter how loud she screamed or how violently she wept. Her parents would
never come to her because, being dead, they didn’t care anymore.

Y
ou worry too much,” Besel said.

He reclined, splayed out, looking utterly comfortable on the worn wooden steps. He looked comfortable anywhere. His twenty-one summers made him four years older than Cithrin, and he had dark, curly hair and a broad face that seemed designed for smiling. His shoulders were as thick as a laborer’s, but his hands were soft. His tunic, like her own dress, was dyed the red and brown of the bank. It looked better on him. Cithrin knew he had half a dozen lovers, and she was secretly jealous of every one of them.

They were sitting on a wooden bench above the Arched Square, looking down at the bustle and clutter of the weekly fresh market, hundreds of tightly packed stalls of bright cloth and thin sticks growing out from the buildings at the square’s edge like new growth on an old tree. The grand canal of Vanai lapped at the quay on their right, the green water busy with narrow boats and pole barges. The market buzzed with the voices of the fishmongers and butchers, farmers and herbmen, all hawking their late summer harvest.

Most were Firstblood and black-chitined Timzinae, but here and there Cithrin caught sight of the pale, slight body of a full-blooded Cinnae, the wide head and mobile, houndlike ears of a Tralgu, the thick, waddling gait of a Yemmu. Growing up in Vanai, Cithrin had seen at least one example of nearly every race of mankind. Once, she had even seen one of the Drowned in a canal, staring up at her with sorrowful black eyes.

“I don’t understand how the bank can side with Imperial Antea,” she said.

“We’re not siding with them,” Besel said.

“We’re not siding with the prince. This is a
war.
”

Besel laughed. He had a good laugh. Cithrin felt a moment’s anger, and then immediately forgave him when he touched her hand.

“This is a theater piece,” he said. “A bunch of men are going to meet on a field outside the city, wave sticks and swords at each other, tumble about enough to satisfy honor, and then we’ll open the gates to the Antean army and let them run things for a few years.”

“But the prince—”

“Exiled. Or imprisoned, but probably exiled. This goes on all the time. A baroness in Gilea marries a prince in Asterilhold, and King Simeon decides Antea needs a counterbalance in the Free Cities. So he finds a reason to declare war on Vanai.”

Cithrin frowned. Besel seemed so amused, so unconcerned. By his light, her fear seemed naïve. Foolish. She dug in her heels.

“I’ve read about wars. The history tutor doesn’t make it sound like that at all.”

“Maybe real wars are different,” Besel said with a shrug. “If Antea ever marches on Birancour or the Keshet, I’ll pull all wagers. But this? It’s less than a spring storm, little bird.”

A woman’s voice called Besel’s name. A merchant’s daughter wearing a deep brown bodice and full skirts of undyed linen. Besel rose from Cithrin’s side.

“My work’s before me,” he said with a glimmer in his eye. “You should get back to the house before old Cam starts getting anxious. But seriously, trust Magister Imaniel. He’s been doing this longer than any of us, and he knows what he’s about.”

Cithrin nodded, then watched as Besel took the steps two
at a time, down to the dark-haired girl. He bowed before her, and she curtseyed, but it all looked false to Cithrin. Formality used as foreplay. Likely Besel didn’t think Cithrin knew what foreplay was. She watched sourly as he took the woman by the elbow and led her away into the pale streets and bridges of the city. Cithrin plucked at her sleeves, wishing—not for the first time—that the Medean bank had adopted colors that flattered her more. Something green, for instance.

If her parents had both been Firstblood or Cinnae, she might have had family to take her in. Instead, her father’s titles in Birancour had been reclaimed by the queen and awarded to someone else. Her mother’s clan in Princip C’Annaldé had politely declined to take a half-blood child.

If not for the bank, she would have been turned into the streets and alleys of Vanai. But her father had placed a part of his gold with Magister Imaniel, and as inheritor, Cithrin became the bank’s ward until she was old enough to press her bloodied thumb to contracts of her own. Two more summers, it would be. She would see her nineteenth solstice, become a woman of property, and move, she supposed, out of the little apartments near the Grand Square where the Vanai branch of the Medean bank did its business.

Assuming, of course, that the invading army left the city standing.

Walking through the fresh market, she saw no other particular signs of fear on the faces around her. So perhaps Besel was right. God knew the man seemed sure of himself. But then, he always did.

She let herself wonder whether Besel would see her differently when she wasn’t the bank’s little girl any longer. She paused at a stall where a Firstblood woman sold perfumes, oils, and colored hair-cloths. A mirror hung on a rough
wood post, inviting the customers to admire themselves. Cithrin considered herself for a moment, lifting her chin the way women with real families might.

“Oh, you poor thing,” the woman said. “You’ve been sick, haven’t you? Need something for your lips?”