The Dragon’s Path

by Abraham Daniel

  Cithrin held the paper, uncertain where to look—it, the man, the captain. After what seemed entirely too long, she shook herself.

  “If you’ll let Maestro Asanpur know you’ve come on my business, he’ll see you in comfort.”

  “You are very kind, Magistra.”

  Cithrin waited until the man disappeared into the café before she pulled the thread. It cut through the paper with a rattle. Trembling a little, she pressed the opened page onto the table. The script was beautifully shaped, the work of a professional scribe. To Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice and agent of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, I, Idderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva by special commission of Her Royal Highness and on and on and on. Her fingertips slid down the page. I request your private attention as a voice of trade and a citizen of Porte Oliva concerning certain matters central to the health and vigor of the city and on and on and on. And then, near the bottom of the first page, she stopped.

  The solicitation and arrangement of joint civic security as concerns the safe conduct of maritime trade in the coming year…

  “Good God,” she said.

  “What is it?” Captain Wester said. His voice was low and steady. He sounded ready for her to say they had to kill the messenger and flee the city. Cithrin swallowed to loosen her throat.

  “If I am reading this correctly,” she said, “the governor is asking us to propose a joint venture with the city to escort the trade ships from Narinisle.”

  “Ah,” Wester said. And then, “You know I don’t understand what you just said, yes?”

  “He’s putting together a fleet. Fighting ships to see the traders safely up and back. And he’s looking for someone with the purse to fund it.”

  “Meaning us?”

  “No,” she said, her mind running through the implications with an eerie and cool precision. “He’ll want several parties to make proposals, but he’s inviting us into the fight. He’s asking the Medean bank to make a proposal to underwrite a single-city fleet.”

  The captain grunted as if he understood. Cithrin was already miles ahead of him and running fast. If Porte Oliva could make itself a more attractive port than the Free Cities, more ships would contract from here. Insurance rates would drop, as the trade seemed less risky. That would hurt anyone who had been trading on insurance alone. And Maccia would hate it, and Cabral would take it poorly if the escort went that far. She wondered what the chances were of direct retaliation against the escort ships.

  “Is that the kind of thing we’d be likely to do?” Wester asked from some other part of the world.

  “If we took the commission and did the thing well, we’d have connections all through the south and a thumb on the Inner Sea. We’d have something to give the holding company more valuable than a cartload of gold,” Cithrin said. “They couldn’t object to what we’ve done.”

  “So it is something we might take on, then.”

  The knot in Cithrin’s belly was still there, but something about it changed. She found herself smiling. Grinning.

  “Win this,” she said, holding up the pages, “and we win everything.”

  The meeting at the governor’s palace pretended to be nothing. A half dozen men and women sat in a garden courtyard. Queensmen poured out scented water and spiced wine. The governor was a small man, thick-bellied and balding. He treated all his guests with grace and kindness, and as such was practically useless as a guide to who among the assemblage were important. She had hoped to follow his cues, paying attention to the people with whom he spent the most time. Instead, she was left to wonder.

  There was an older Kurtadam man, his pelt graying across the face, throat, and back, who represented a chartered collaboration of the shipwrights’ guild and two local merchant houses. A Cinnae man with slightly too much rouge on his cheeks turned out to be the owner of a mercenary company large enough to rent itself to kings. Sitting alone under the spreading fronds of a palm tree, a Tralgu woman drank water and ate shrimp, listening to everything said with a concentration that left Cithrin unnerved. All of them had agendas and histories, interests and weaknesses. Magister Imaniel would have been able to glance across the room and draw conclusions. Or at least educated guesses. Cithrin, on the other hand, was still a year too young to claim her inheritance. The wine was excellent. The conversation friendly and convivial. She felt like she was swimming in a warm ocean, waiting for something to come up from the depths, take her by the leg, and draw her down to the cold.

  It didn’t help untie her knots that everyone seemed to view her with curiosity. The voice and agent of the Medean bank, newly arrived in the city, and throwing off everyone’s plans. None of them, Cithrin told herself, had expected her to be a player in this game. She was badly behind in understanding the politics at play in the courtyard with its brightly colored finches and sun-warmed flagstones, but she had mysteries of her own. The longer she remained a cipher to them, the more she could make sense of the game. She handed her empty glass to one of the queensmen and took another. Wine kept the fear at bay.

  “Magistra bel Sarcour,” the governor said, appearing at her elbow. “You were in Vanai, yes? Before the Antean aggression.”

  “Just before,” Cithrin said.

  “Lucky you got out,” the Tralgu woman said. Her voice was as low as Yardem Hane’s, but it didn’t have the same warmth.

  “I am,” Cithrin said, keeping her tone neutral and polite.

  “What do you make of the fate of the city?” the governor asked. Cithrin had anticipated the question, and she had her answer at the ready.

  “Antea has a long history of military interference in the Free Cities,” Cithrin said. “Magister Imaniel and I were expecting the occupation a season earlier than it came. That the Anteans didn’t intend to hold the city was only clear in the last few weeks before they arrived.”

  “You think they always intended to destroy Vanai?” a man behind the governor said. He had the features of a Firstblood, but golden skin with a roughness to it that reminded Cithrin of a Jasuru. His eyes were a shocking green. His name was Qahuar Em, and he spoke for a group part trading association and part nomadic tribe from the north reaches of Lyoneia. From his appearance, she guessed he was half Jasuru, though Cithrin hadn’t known that was possible.

  “We had a strong suspicion,” she said to him.

  “But why would the Severed Throne do such a thing?” the governor asked.

  “Because they’re a bloodthirsty bunch of unmodified northern savages,” the Tralgu woman said. “Barely better than monkeys.”

  “The story I’d heard was that the burning was unexpected, even by King Simeon,” the Cinnae mercenary said. “The local commander took the action as some sort of political theater piece.”

  “Doesn’t argue against my monkeys-with-swords thesis,” the Tralgu woman said, and the governor chuckled.

  “I’m not surprised that there’s more than one interpretation,” Cithrin said. “Still, you’ll forgive me if I’m pleased that I followed the information that we had.”

  “I heard that Komme Medean was moving his interests to the north, and Antea in particular,” the graying Kurtadam said. “Damned odd seeing him take an aggressive position in the south.”

  Cithrin felt a flutter of concern. If the bank were involving itself in the northern countries—Antea, Asterilhold, Northcoast, Hallskar, and Sarakal—she might well have stepped on toes by founding a branch at the far end of the continent. It wasn’t something she was ready to address, so the conversation had to be moved away from the issue and quickly. She smiled the way she imagined Magister Imaniel might have.

  “Is there really such a thing as purely northern interests?” she asked. “Narinisle is in the north, and it seems to concern all of us.”

  The air in the courtyard seemed to still. She’d pulled the hidden meaning of all their banter and laid it on the table. She wondered whether she’d just been rude, so she smiled and sipped her wine, acting as if it had been inten
tional. Qahuar the half-Jasuru smiled at her, nodding as if she’d won a point in a game.

  “Narinisle may be in the north,” the graying Kurtadam said, “but the problems are all in the south, aren’t they? King Sephan and his unofficial pirate fleet.”

  “I agree,” the Cinnae mercenary captain said. “The only way that trade can be made safe is if Cabral agrees that it is. And that can’t be done on the water alone.”

  The Tralgu woman grunted and put down the shrimp that she’d been eating.

  “You aren’t going to go on about putting a land force together to protect ships again, are you?” she said. “Porte Oliva starts a land war with Cabral, and the queen’ll burn us down as an apology to King Sephan faster than the Anteans lit Vanai. We’re a city, not a kingdom.”

  “Done right, you don’t have to use it,” the Cinnae said, bristling. “And it isn’t an invasion force. But the escort that protects trade ships needs to be able to put swords onto land. The pirate problem can’t be solved if they can run into a cove someplace and declare themselves safe.”

  Cithrin sat on a high stool, cocked her head, and listened as the façade of politeness began to crack. Like an artist putting a mosaic together one chip at time, she began to make out the shape of divisions and arguments in the group around her.

  The chartered collaboration between the shipwrights and the merchant houses was pressing for a limited escort restricted in its range to within a few days’ sail from Porte Oliva. Protect the neighborhood, their argument went, and the trade ships will come of their own accord. It would cost less, and so the offsetting tariffs could be small. Listening to the Cinnae man and Tralgu woman press, Cithrin was fairly certain the merchant houses in question traded in insurance. The limited escort still left a great territory of water unsafe, the chance of piracy and loss high, and so the return on insurance wouldn’t go down.

  The Cinnae man, on the other hand, was a militarist, because what he brought to the table was a military force. If the others could be made to agree that only a massive force of arms—and especially the sword-and-bows of a mercenary company—would ensure that piracy end, he would be in the best position to provide it. Naturally, none of the others agreed.

  The Tralgu woman’s argument centered on a treaty between Birancour and Herez that Cithrin didn’t recognize. She would need to find a copy to understand how it applied, but simply knowing what she didn’t know felt like a little victory.

  As the wrangle went on, her smiles felt less and less forced. Her mind danced through each phrase her enemies used, drew connections, set up speculations that she would research once the evening was done. The governor kindly, gently kept the tone from escalating to blows, but stopped short of making peace. This was what he’d brought them here for. This was how he worked. Cithrin held that information as well.

  After her third glass of wine, she felt certain enough to put her own argument out.

  “Forgive me,” she said, “but it seems that we’ve all become somewhat fixed on piracy as the only problem. But there are other things that can happen to a trade ship. If I understand correctly, three ships were lost in a storm five years ago.”

  “No,” the Tralgu woman snapped.

  “Those sank off Northcoast,” the Kurtadam said. “They never got as far as Narinisle.”

  “And yet the investment in them was just as lost,” Cithrin said. “Is the question we’re considering how to protect trade? Or is it only how to make pirates a lesser risk than storms? It seems to me that an escort ship should be able to answer any number of crises.”

  “You can’t have an escort that follows the ships everywhere and answers every problem,” the Cinnae man said.

  “The initial cost would be high,” Cithrin said, as if that were the objection he’d raised. “It would require a commitment from Porte Oliva long enough to ensure a reasonable expectation of return. And likely some understanding with ports in the north.”

  She said it all as if it were idle speculation; a chat among friends. They all knew what she’d just said.

  The Medean bank would protect trade ships from Porte Oliva as far as they wished to go and all the way home again. She had enough money that she could pour gold into the project and not see a return for years. And the bank, with its holding company in Carse, had connections throughout the northern countries. If it was a grander vision than she’d meant to bring to the table, that was fine. The others could compare how many soldiers they had, how cheaply they could do something small, how treaties and trade agreements could be brought to bear. Cithrin could say, I am the biggest dog in this pit. I can do what you cannot.

  She liked the feel of it.

  The courtyard was silent for a moment, then as the Kurtadam drew in an angry breath, the half-Jasuru with the green eyes spoke.

  “She’s right,” he said.

  Qahuar Em was sitting at the governor’s side. In the light that spilled down from the saturated blue sky, his skin had taken an almost bronze tone, like a statue brought to life. When he smiled, she saw that his teeth, white as a Firstblood’s, had the hint of Jasuru points to them.

  “You’re joking,” the Kurtadam said, sounding deflated.

  “You could do it by halves,” he said, his gaze shifting to the Kurtadam for a moment before shifting back to Cithrin. “But what would stop Daun from doing the same? Or Upurt Marion? Newport or Maccia? You could make Porte Oliva a little bit safer, and be more popular as a place to trade for a few years while other cities followed your example. Or you could move decisively, dominate trade in the region, and capture the trade route for a generation. It just depends what your goals are, I suppose.”

  Cithrin found herself smiling at him even as it occurred to her that he’d spoken even less than she had. She’d need to watch him, she thought. And as if he’d read her mind, he grinned.

  The conversation went on for another hour, but the wind had shifted. The Kurtadam restricted himself to petulant asides, the mercenary reframed the military aspect as part of a wider strategy, and the Tralgu lapsed back into silence. The undercurrent of anger and suspicion was palpable, and the governor seemed quite pleased with the entire proceeding. When Cithrin left, her beaded shawl wrapped around her shoulders, it was hard to remember to step like a woman twice her age. She wanted to walk from the ankle.

  She waited on the steps looking out across the square toward the great marble temple, pretending a piety she didn’t feel. The sun sank lower in the west, shining into the temple’s face and making the stone glow. The moon, already risen, hung in the cloudless indigo of the sky, a half circle of white and a half of darkness. Between the beauty of city and heaven and the perhaps slightly too much wine she’d drunk, she nearly missed her quarry when he walked by.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  The half-Jasuru turned, looking back over his shoulder as if he didn’t know her.

  “You’re called Qahuar?” she said.

  He corrected her pronunciation gently. Standing on the step below hers, their heads were even.

  “I wanted to thank you for supporting me in there,” she said.

  He grinned. His face was broader than it had seemed in the courtyard. His skin less rough, his eyes softer. It struck her that he was roughly the age she pretended to be.

  “I was going to say the same of you,” he said. “Between us, I think we’ll shake loose the smaller players. I admit, I hadn’t been expecting to compete against the Medean bank.”

  “I hadn’t expected to be competing at all,” she said. “Still, it’s flattering of the governor to think of me.”

  “He’s using you to get better terms from me,” Qahuar said. And then, seeing her reaction, “I don’t mind. If it goes poorly, he’ll be using me to get better terms from you. One doesn’t reach his position by being sentimental.”

  “Still,” Cithrin said.

  “Still,” Qahuar said, as if agreeing.

  They stood silently for a moment. His expression shifted, as if seein
g her for the first time. As if she confused him. No. Not confused. Intrigued. The angle of his smile changed, and Cithrin felt a warmth in her own expression. She found herself particularly pleased that the man was her rival.

  “You’ve made the game more interesting, Magistra. I hope to see you again soon.”

  “I think you should,” Cithrin said.

  Geder

  In the rolling flint hills where Sarakal gave way in no clearly marked fashion to the Keshet, the term prince had a different meaning than Geder was accustomed to. A man might call himself a prince if he controlled a certain amount of land, or commanded a force of soldiers, or had been son or nephew to a prince. Even race had little impact. The princes of the Keshet might be Yemmu or Tralgu or Jasuru, and there was apparently no formal barrier to other races, though in practice no others were.

  Firstblood were especially absent from the wide, arid plains, and Geder found that his small group—himself, his squire, and four men of his father’s service—quickly became an object of curiosity in the towns and villages east of Sarakal. The Firstblood prince, they called him, and when Geder tried to correct them, confusion followed. Translating his rank into the terms of the Keshet was a pointless and probably impossible task, and so when the traveling court of Prince Kupe rol Behur extended Geder its hospitality, he found it easiest to pretend he was more or less an equal to the gold-scaled Jasuru lord.

  “I don’t understand, Prince Geder. You’ve left your land and your people searching for something, but you don’t know what or where it is. You have no claim to it, nor any idea whether claim could be made. What profit do you hope to make?”

  “Well, it isn’t that kind of project,” Geder said, reaching for another of the small, dark sausages from their communal plate.

  When Geder had seen the dust plume from the traveling court rising above the horizon like smoke from a great fire, he’d expected it to be like being on campaign. He’d imagined the tents to be something like the kind he’d slept in to and from Vanai, that he slept in now in his quiet exile. He had misunderstood. He hadn’t ridden into a camp—not even a grand and luxurious one. It was a township of wood-framed buildings with a temple dedicated to a twinned god Geder hadn’t heard of and a square for the prince’s feast. Weeds and scrub in the streets showed that it had not been there the day before. Geder assumed it wouldn’t be there tomorrow. Like something from a legend, it was a city that existed for a single night, and then vanished with the dew. Torches smoked and fluttered in the breeze. The stars glowed down. The summer heat rose from the ground, radiating up into the sky.