The Dragon’s Path

by Abraham Daniel

  Ice and snow turned the dark cobbles white. Carts went slowly, and mules carefully. Horses walked haltingly for fear of slipping, breaking a leg, and being slaughtered on the street where they fell. The Camnipol winter stole even the dignity of a waiting carriage, but the meeting with Daskellin had left Dawson so pleased with himself that he barely minded. He let the servant girl belt on his overcoat of dark leather with silverwork seams and bloodstone hooks, put on the broad-brimmed hat that matched it, and marched himself out into the streets toward his home and Clara.

  He’d spent his boyhood in Camnipol, following his father through the rituals of power during the day and then drinking, singing, and carousing with the other highborn boys through the nights. Even now, decades later, the snow-caked stone held memories under it. He passed the thin alley where Eliayzer Breiniako had run naked after losing a bet with him the night they’d both turned fourteen. Then the wide turning that led to the streets where all the Timzinae and Jasuru made their homes: the quarter of bugs and pennies. He passed under Morade’s Arch, where the last, mad Dragon Emperor had died in his clutch-mate’s talons; the arc of the dragon’s jade rose up almost as high as the Kingspire itself and so thin and finely worked it seemed any wind would tip it over. He passed the Chancel of Sorrial, with its soot-blackened southern wall. The cathouse where his father had taken him on his tenth birthday and bought him his first night with a woman.

  The single white cloud of the sky glowed beneficently on the city, dispelling shadows. A baker’s cart coming back from the market square dropped a crate of almonds, and a dozen children seemed to appear from no place, grabbing at the nuts before the carter could stop them. On the western wall, he could look down over the great plains of Antea like God looking down on the world. The wind through the streets bit and rasped on his lips and cheeks. It was the perfect city. Everything had happened here, from the fall of dragons, to the elevation of the White Prophet, to the slave riots that had brought House Antea to refound a Firstblood empire in the city that dragons built. The stones stood witness to centuries, to ages.

  And now, perhaps for the first time, Dawson was taking his place in the city that he loved. He had begun the work for which Camnipol would remember him. Dawson Kalliam, Baron of Osterling Fells, who purified the court and guarded Antea on the right and proper path. Kalliam, who gathered the defenders of righteousness. Who destroyed the agents of chaos and change.

  The Undying City invited him to get drunk on his memories and the vision of a future bent to his will—a future where Curtin Issandrian and Feldin Maas were left to scuttle through filthy snow on winter business instead of him—and Dawson succumbed. If there were any warning signs before the attack, he missed them entirely.

  The road curved, following the shape of the promontory’s edge, and in the triangular park where two wide streets became one, three men in dark wool overcoats and leggings stood together in deep conversation. Their breath came out white as feathers, white as the sky. Dawson strode toward them, expecting them to give way before a Baron of the Court. Hard eyes met his. The men didn’t move.

  Annoyance intruded on Dawson’s revery, then the thought that they might not recognize his rank and station. The nearest of the men opened his coat and drew a wide, curved knife. The others moved to flank. Dawson barked out a short laugh of disdain and disbelief, and the knife man rushed him. Dawson danced back, trying to draw his own sword. Even before he had his blade clear of the scabbard the thug on his left struck his elbow with a weighted club. Dawson’s hand went numb and his sword fell silently to the icy ground. The knife man swung, his blade slicing through the leather overcoat and into the flesh of Dawson’s chest. Dawson yelped and jumped back.

  It was the farthest thing from a duel. There was no beauty in the men’s movements or style, no sense of honor. Not even the grace of formal training. The knife man held his blade like a butcher, and his partners with their clubs penned Dawson in as if he might turn and flee, squealing like a frightened sow. Dawson drew himself to his full height, pressing fingers to the torn coat. The fingers of his gloves came away bloody.

  “You have just made your last mistake,” Dawson said. “You have no idea who you’re facing.”

  The knife man smiled.

  “Think I do, m’lord,” he said, and struck again. The blade would have sunk deep into Dawson’s belly if decades of training hadn’t pulled him back and to the side. The club man on the left swung hard, catching him on the shoulder. As Dawson sank to his knees, it occurred to him for the first time that these were not simple street toughs looking for a few coins. It was a trap, and it was meant for him.

  The club man on his right danced back and forward and back on the balls of his feet, weapon raised high and ready to come down with a skull-shattering blow. Dawson raised his arm, and the attacker vanished with a grunt. The assassins turned. A new man in grey hunter’s wool rolled on the cobbles, locked in the club man’s violent embrace. When they broke, the new man leapt up. His clothes were soaked in red, as was the short sword in his hand. The thug didn’t rise.

  “Lord Kalliam,” the new man shouted, and tossed his blade. Dawson watched it arc through the air, blood and steel. Time seemed to slow. The grip was dark leather, well used. The blade itself had a blood channel running down its center. Dawson reached out, plucking the sword from the air. The remaining club man swung at him, and, still on his knees, Dawson parried the attack.

  The fallen attacker groaned, lifted himself with one hand, then slipped back into the spreading pool of red.

  Dawson rose. The two assassins glanced at each other, and Dawson read the fear in them. True, he was hurt and his rescuer now unarmed. True, the numbers were merely even. And still, to go so suddenly from three men and a victim to an almost equal battle shook their confidence. The club man took a step back, half turning as if he might flee. Dawson felt his lips curl. These men were cowards.

  He swung his borrowed sword fast, low, and hard. The man danced back, parrying awkwardly. To Dawson’s right, the knife man shouted and leapt for Dawson’s unarmed ally. The pain of Dawson’s wounds faded, the chill of his own blood freezing on his chest brought a feral grin to his mouth. The club man fell back a step, and Dawson pressed in, his knees bent, his weight low, his body balanced and ready. When the weighted club made its next swing, Dawson pushed inside its arc, taking the blow on his ribs as he thrust the blade forward. The club man’s breath went out of him in a white, feathery rush. There was armor under that overcoat. The assassin wasn’t dead, but he was staggered. Dawson turned, brought a heel down on the man’s instep, swung the pommel of his sword in a short, hard jab at his face. The unmistakable crunch of breaking cartilage transferred itself to Dawson’s wrist.

  The assassin bent low and rushed him, trying to bowl him over by main force. Dawson slid back, his boots finding little purchase on the icy street. The thug weighed more than him, and he was counting on that to save him in the grapple. He had misjudged Dawson’s character.

  Dawson dropped the sword, grabbed the thug’s dark hair in his left hand, not to pull the man’s head away but to steady it. He drove his thumb deep in the man’s eye socket, bending at the knuckle. Something soft and terrible happened, and the man shrieked high and pained and frightened. Dawson pushed him away, and the man stumbled to his knees, hands pressed to his ruined eye and shattered nose.

  The knife man and Dawson’s rescuer were circling one another. The rescuer’s arms were spread and weaponless. A cut on his left arm bled, scattering droplets of scarlet on the white ice and black cobbles. A crowd was gathering on the street. Men, women, children with eyes wide and hungry taking in the violence without daring to intervene. Dawson kicked the mewling club man to the pavement and pulled the strap of his club from around his wrist. The knife man’s glance spoke panic, and Dawson drew the weighted club whirring through the air, testing its balance and weight.

  The knife man bolted, dark boots throwing bits of snow up behind him as he pelted away. The crowd p
arted, letting the thug escape rather than risk a swing of his little blade. Peasants, commoners, and serfs making way for one of their own. He wanted to feel some outrage that the simple citizens of Camnipol would allow the man to flee, but he didn’t. Cowardice and the safety of the herd was the nature of the lowborn. He could as well blame sheep for bleating.

  The first assassin to fall lay perfectly still, the blood around him steaming. The second club man was growing quiet too, slipping into shock. Dawson’s rescuer squatted on bent ankles, considering his wounded arm. He was young, thick arms and shoulders and rough, knife-cropped hair. The shape of his face was familiar.

  “It seems I owe you my thanks,” Dawson said. To his surprise, he was out of breath.

  The new man shook his head.

  “I should have come sooner, my lord,” the young man said. “I stayed too far back.”

  “Too far back?” Dawson said. “You’ve been tracking me?”

  The man nodded and would not meet his eyes.

  “Why is that?” Dawson asked.

  “Your lady wife, my lord,” the man said. “She took me into service after you turned me out. She tasked me with keeping you safe, sir. I’m afraid I’ve done a poor job.”

  Of course. The huntsman from the kitchens who’d returned the bit of horn soaked in dog’s blood and insult. Vincen Coe, the name had been. He’d never asked Clara what she’d done to see to the boy, but of course she couldn’t simply reinstate him over her husband’s express words. And certainly it would be beneath him to say he’d been unjust with the boy.

  “You’re mistaken,” Dawson said.

  “Lord?”

  “I’ve never seen you before, and I wouldn’t have turned a man of your courage and talent out of my service.”

  “Yes… I mean, no, my lord.”

  “That’s settled, then. Come along with me, we’ll get these little scratches daubed.”

  Coe stood.

  “My sword, my lord?”

  “Yes. We may have need of that,” Dawson said, gesturing to where it lay, grimed with blood and snow and soot. “It seems I’m frightening all the right men.”

  Marcus

  Fire and blood. Merian shrieked her pain and fear and indignation as only a child could blend them. Her eyes were fixed on him, her arms reaching out. Marcus fought his paralysis, forced his arms to reach for her, and in moving them, woke himself.

  The screams of the dead lingered in the cool air as he lifted himself up, still expecting in his half-dream to see the wheat fields and high, stately windmills of Ellis. Instead, the wide star-crowded sky of Birancour arched above him, the looming darkness of the mountains behind him to the east without even the suggestion of dawn. The burning smell of memory gave way to the sweet, astringent scent of ice lily and the distant presentiment of salt that was the sea.

  He lay back in his bedroll and waited for the dream to fade. By long habit, he attended to his body. The constricting tightness in his throat eased first, then in his chest. The gut-punch ache in his belly faded slowly and vanished. Soon there was only the permanent hollow beneath his ribs, and he knew it was safe to stand.

  They were battle scars. Some men lost a leg or a hand. Some men lost their eyes. Marcus had lost a family. And just as old soldiers knew when rain was coming from the ache of healed bones, he suffered now. It didn’t mean anything. It was just his own private bad weather, and like bad weather, it would pass. It was only for the moment that the dreams were getting worse.

  The caravan slept, carters and mules both, in the deep night. The watch fire glittered on the hillside above him, no brighter than a star, but orange instead of blue. Marcus made his way toward it. The dry grass hushed against his boots and field mice skittered away. Yardem Hane sat silhouetted by the small fire, back turned to keep the light from blunting his eyes. Beside him sat a less familiar form. Marcus moved close enough to make out their words.

  “The shape of a soul?” Master Kit asked. “I think I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Just that. A soul has a shape,” Yardem said. His wide hands patted the air in front of him. “And fate is formed by it. Whatever the world delivers to you, the shape of your soul determines what you do with it, and the actions you take make your destiny.”

  Marcus turned his foot, scraping the ground loud enough to announce himself.

  “Morning, Captain,” Yardem said without turning to look.

  “You filling our cunning man’s head with your superstitious hairwash?”

  “I am, sir.”

  “Be careful, Kit,” Marcus said, walking into the dim circle of light. “Yardem used to be a priest, you know.”

  Master Kit’s eyebrows rose and he looked his question from Marcus to Yardem. The Tralgu shrugged eloquently.

  “Ended poorly,” Yardem said.

  “It’s not a faith I’d heard of before,” Master Kit said. “I have to say I find the ideas fascinating. What shape is your own soul?”

  “I’ve never seen my soul,” Yardem said.

  Marcus sat. The warmth of the fire touched his back. High above them, a falling star streaked from east to west, fading almost before Marcus saw it. The silence felt suddenly awkward.

  “Go ahead,” Marcus said. “Tell him if you want to.”

  “Tell me what?” Master Kit asked.

  “I have seen the captain’s. I was at Wodford the day of the battle. The captain rode by, taking count of the troop, and… I saw it.”

  “And what shape was it?” Master Kit asked

  “A circle standing on its edge,” Yardem said.

  “What did you take that to mean?”

  “That he rises when brought low and falls when placed high,” Yardem said.

  “He needed magical visions to see that,” Marcus said. “Most people just take it as given.”

  “But always?” Master Kit said. “Surely if God wanted to change the shape of a man’s soul—”

  “I’ve never seen God,” Yardem said.

  “But you believe in him,” Master Kit said.

  “I’m reserving judgment,” Yardem said. Master Kit considered that.

  “And what about you, Captain?” he asked. “Stories are you were a pious man once.”

  “I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said.

  “Charity toward whom?”

  “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,” Marcus said. “Do we have any food left?”

  The dawn crept in softly, the outline of the mountains to the east growing clearer against the stars, then the few finger-thin clouds began to glow pink and gold and light seemed to come from nowhere, to rise up from the earth like a mist. The carts changed from near-invisible hulks to wood and iron. Pot metal clanked from across the camp as the caravan master’s wife began cooking the morning’s mash of stewed grain and honeyed pork. The landscape changed from endless featureless darkness to hills and trees, scrub and stream. Yardem ran the guards through their morning drills while Marcus walked through the camp and pretended there was no cart in the caravan he cared about more than another.

  The girl, Cithrin, followed the same routine as the others. She cared for her mules, she ate her food, she scraped the mud out of her axle holes. If she needed help, she asked Opal or Master Kit. Never the caravan master, never Marcus himself. But never Sandr either, and the boy had been avoiding her like his life depended on it, so that was for the best. Marcus watched her without being obvious. She’d gotten better since they’d left Vanai. Since they’d left Bellin, for that. But there were dark pouches under her eyes and the awkwardness of exhaustion in her movements.

  Marcus found the caravan master squatting beside the lead cart, a wide scroll of inked parchment on the dirt before him: a map of south Birancour probably centuries out of date, but it would still show where the dragon’s roads were. His wife, breakfast duties finished, was putting their team in harness.

  “Day,” the caravan master
said. “Day and a half at most, and we’ll get onto a real road again.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Another three, and we’ll be in Porte Oliva. You’ve been there before?”

  “A time or two,” Marcus said. “It’s a good winter port. Doesn’t get too cold. The queen’s governor isn’t too heavy a tax hand.”

  “We’ll stop there, then.”

  “Roads should be clear to Carse by early spring,” Marcus said.

  “Not for me,” the caravan master said, folding the map. “We reach Porte Oliva, and we’re done. The ’van stops there.”

  Marcus frowned and crossed his arms.

  “There are some problems with that,” he said. “The job is to see all this to Carse.”

  “Your job is to protect the caravan,” the Timzinae said. “Mine is to say where it goes and when it stops. Porte Oliva has a market. Road trade to Cabral and Herez, not to mention the rest of the cities in Birancour. Ships to Lyoniea, and the blue-water trade to Far Syramys. The cargo I was contracted to haul will sell well enough there.”

  “The cargo you were contracted for,” Marcus repeated, turning the words over like they tasted wrong.

  “Is there something else I should care about?” The caravan master’s chin jutted forward. “You’re worried I might inconvenience the smuggler?”

  “Last I heard, the Medean bank doesn’t trade in Birancour,” Marcus said. “You’ll be sitting that girl on a pile of money high as a tree with nothing to protect her. Might as well hang a sign on her neck.”

  The ’van master tossed his folded map on the seat of his cart and began hauling himself up beside it. His wife blinked a silent apology to Marcus and looked away.

  “That girl and her drinking and smuggling and sinning with your guardsmen can watch out for herself,” the ’van master said. “We were blind lucky with that Antean bastard. There’s no reason to expect we’ll be as fortunate next time.”