The Dragon's Path Read online

  A Timzinae in a thick wool robe walked down the road toward them. Geder motioned, and his six archers fanned out on the road behind him. The Tralgu sat forward and flicked an ear.

  “You’re master of this ’van?” Geder asked.

  “I am,” the Timzinae said. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I am Lord Geder Palliako of Rivenhalm and representative of King Simeon and Imperial Antea,” Geder said. “Where are you coming from?”

  “Maccia. Going back there too. Bellin’s snowed over.”

  Geder stared down at the black eyes. The nictatating membranes slid closed and open again, blinking without blinking. Geder wasn’t sure if it was a lie. It was possible, of course, that there was more than one ’van in the Free Cities with a Tralgu guard. This might still be a false alarm.

  “You’ve stopped here?”

  “Axle came loose on one of the carts. Only just got it strapped back in place. What’s this all about?”

  “Who’s your guard captain?” Geder asked.

  The ’van master, turned, spat, and pointed to a man leaning against one of the carts. A Firstblood with a blank, friendly face and an air of restrained violence. Wheat-colored hair touched by grey. Broad across the shoulder. It might have been Marcus Wester. It might have been a thousand other men.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Tag,” the ’van master said.

  One of the soldiers in the road behind him spoke, his voice too low for Geder to make out the words. Another replied. He felt a blush crawling up his neck. Either the man was lying to him or he wasn’t, and every moment that Geder hesitated, he felt more like a fool.

  “Get your guards out onto the road,” he said. “Put the carters with their carts.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  Someone chuckled. Geder’s embarrassment turned to rage.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll have you killed,” he shouted. “And because you had the temerity to question me, I’ll have every weapon and piece of armor in a pile on the road ten paces from your guardsmen. And if I find so much as a work knife overlooked, I’ll leave your corpse for the crows.”

  The nictatating membrane slid open and closed. The caravan master turned around and trudged back toward the carts. Geder motioned his second closer.

  “Send men around the sides. If anyone tries to sneak away, bring them back alive if you can. Dead if you have to. We’re searching this place down to the pegs and nails.”

  “The mill house too?” the second asked.

  “Everything,” Geder said.

  The Timzinae nodded and moved back, calling to his men. Geder watched the carts, anger and embarrasment giving way to anxiety. The captain and the caravan master exchanged a few words, and the captain looked up. He frowned at Geder, shrugged, and turned away. If there was going to be resistance, it would come now and it would come hard. Geder shifted in his saddle, the still-healing wound in his leg aching in anticipation. Movement came from the mill house, from every cart. How many soldiers would they have? If the full wealth of the Medean bank was sitting in those carts, every carter would be a swordsman or an archer. Geder’s scalp began to crawl. If they had bowmen hidden in those carts, he’d be sprouting arrows. Fear shifted in his belly like he’d eaten bad fish. Trying to seem casual, he turned his horse and trotted to the rear of their formation.

  To judge by the expressions of the soldiers, he hadn’t fooled anybody.

  The first of the guards lumbered out from the carts, half a dozen swords in her arms like firewood. She dropped them on the ground where Geder had ordered. Then a thin boy hardly old enough to be a soldier with two unstrung bows and a backload of quivers. Slowly, the unpromising parade went on, the sad pile of arms and armor growing until ten guards and a wild-haired cunning man marched out to the road in wool and cotton, counted ten paces from the heap, and stood in the clear, hugging themselves against the cold.

  “Move in,” Geder said.

  The soldiers walked forward, blades drawn. The carters stood by their carts and smiled or frowned or looked around in confusion. Geder rode a slow turn around the little encampment. The sound of the search seemed to follow him—voices fierce and querulous, wood clacking, metal clanging against metal. He watched as his men pulled ingots of pig iron out of a cart and dropped them to the ground. One man scratched at the metal to be sure it was only what it seemed, then spat and turned back to the search.

  Midday came and went. A chill wind picked up, setting the snow to skitter and swirl around their ankles. The soldiers unloaded each cart, looked under them, examined the horse and mules, and began going through the mill house. Geder got off his horse at the edge of the mill pond and looked at the bare carts, the frigid carters, the ineffectual sun in the watery sky. One of the carters—a sickly-looking girl with pale hair and skin—crouched by bolts of fallen wool and pretended not to watch Geder. He knew what she saw. A puffed-up nobleman bullying her and her friends. He wanted to go to her, to explain that it wasn’t like that. That he wasn’t like that.

  Instead, he turned away. The shifting dust of snow moved over the ice like ripples on water. Geder walked along the edge, trying not to feel the girl’s gaze on him. Some idiot had been skating. White marks showed where blades had cut across the thin ice. Lucky they didn’t break through. He’d read an essay once outlining the time it took each of the thirteen races to die in icy water. Well, twelve, really. The Drowned weren’t…

  Geder stopped almost before he knew what stopped him. On the edge of the pond, a long, low drift of snow swept out onto the ice. The white blade marks vanished into it, and then out of it again as if the skater had passed directly through the little drift. Or it hadn’t been there until after the skater had passed. Geder walked closer. The snow itself looked odd. It didn’t have the ice-crust he expected, and it was smooth as broom-swept sand. Geder looked up. The guards were on the far side of the caravan. His own soldiers grouped at the mouth of the mill house. He walked around the curious snow.

  Deep scores and marks marred the surface of the ice. Poking out just at ankle height, something black and square. He squatted, brushing the snow away. A box, half drowned in recently cut ice and then covered over. And others beside it, all of them crusted over with thin ice and hidden by the carefully arranged snowdrift. He looked up. The girl carter was standing now, craning her neck to see him, her hands knotted at her belly. Geder took out his knife and forced the latch. Topaz, jade, emerald, pearl, gold and silver filigree as delicate as frost. Geder pulled back like the gems had stung him, and then, as he understood what he was seeing, felt a sunrise in his chest, relief and pleasure rushing through him, unknotting his muscles and bringing a grin to his face.

  He’d done it. He’d found the missing caravan and the hidden wealth of Vanai. No more of Geder Palliako, the expendable idiot. No more apologizing for what he liked to read or the roundness of his belly. Oh, no. His name would be carried back to Camnipol and King Simeon on a carriage of gold by horses with rubies on their reins. He would be the talk of the court, praised and honored and celebrated in the highest circles of the kingdom.

  Except, of course, that he wouldn’t. The name that would be celebrated in Camnipol was Alan Klin’s.

  Alan Klin, who’d humiliated him. Who’d burned his book.

  Geder took a long, deep breath, let it out slowly, and closed the lid. A moment later, he opened it again, dug two double handfuls of gems out, and poured them down his shirt. The lovely little stones gathered around his belly where his belt cinched tight. He closed his jacket to cover the lumps, lowered the lid again, and scraped the snow back over it. As he stood, a wide, black joy filled him and made his first pleasure seem weak. When he walked back to the carts, he didn’t need to remind himself to hold his head high. The girl watched him approach. Geder grinned at her like he was greeting an old friend or a lover. An accomplice. Briefly, he lifted a single finger to his lips. Don’t tell.

  The girl’s eyes went wide. Half a breath
later she nodded, only once. I won’t. He could have kissed her.

  When he found his second, the Timzinae had finished leading the common soldiers through the mill house. Geder noticed that the conversation among the soldiers stopped when he walked in the room, but this time it didn’t bother him. The interior of the house smelled of mold and smoke, and the signs of the caravan’s night in the shelter marked the stones of the flooring. A broom leaned against the far wall. Its head was wet, and a thin puddle of water darkened the stones beneath it. Geder pointedly ignored it.

  “What have you found?” he asked.

  “Nothing, my lord,” the second said.

  “We’re wasting time here,” Geder said. “Gather the men. We should move on.”

  The second looked around. One of the soldiers—a young Timzinae with black scales that shone like he’d polished them—shrugged.

  “My lord, we haven’t turned the basement. If you’d like—”

  “Do you really think there’s a point to it?” Geder asked. When the second didn’t reply at once: “Honestly.”

  “Honestly, no.”

  “Then let’s get the men together and go.”

  The caravan master, sitting on a stool, made a rough impatient noise in the back of his throat. Geder turned to him.

  “On behalf of empire and king, I apologize for this inconvenience,” he said with a bow.

  “Think nothing of it,” the ’van master said sourly.

  Outside, the soldiers fell into position as they had every time before. Geder lifted himself to his own saddle carefully. His belt held. The gems and jewels dug at his skin, pinching a little at his sides. None fell out. The caravan guards watched with well-feigned lack of interest as Geder drew his sword in salute, turned his horse, and moved forward at a gentle walk. With every step they took away from the caravan, he felt his spine relax. The sun, already sliding down toward the horizon, half blinded him, and he craned his neck, counting the soldiers behind him to make sure no one had doubled back or been left behind. None had.

  At the top of the ridge, Geder paused. His second came to his side.

  “We can make camp at the same place as last night, my lord,” he said. “Strike out south and west in the morning.”

  Geder shook his head. “East,” he said.

  “Lord?”

  “Let’s go east,” Geder said. “Gilea’s not far, and we can spend a few days someplace warm before we go back to Vanai.”

  “We’re going back?” the second asked, his voice carefully neutral.

  “May as well,” Geder said, struggling against his smile. “We aren’t going to find anything.”

  Dawson

  Winter business.

  The words themselves reeked of desperation. From the longest night to first thaw, noblemen took to their estates or they followed the King’s Hunt. They took stock of what sort of men their sons were becoming, reacquainted themselves with wives and mistresses, looked over the tax revenue from their holdings. To the highborn, winter meant domesticity and the work of the hearth. Much as he loved Camnipol, passing through the wind-chilled, smoke-stinking streets put Dawson in the company of professional courtiers, merchants, and other men of uncertain status. But his cause was just, and so he bore the insult to his dignity.

  Nor was he the only one to suffer it.

  “I don’t understand why you hate Issandrian so deeply,” said Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch, Protector of Northport, and His Majesty’s Special Ambassador to Northcoast. “He’s entirely too pretty and full of himself, it’s true, but if you take being self-impressed and ambitious as sinning, you won’t find any saints in this court.”

  Dawson sat back in his chair. Around them, the Fraternity of the Great Bear seemed almost empty. Seats and cushions upholstered in raw silk or Cabral damask sat empty. Black iron braziers squatted in rooms built to be cool in midsummer. The servant girls, so often hard-pressed to tend the needs of the fraternity members, haunted the shadows and doorways, waiting for a sign that something might be wanted. At summer’s height, there might be a hundred men of the best breeding in the empire drinking and smoking and conducting affairs of court in these grand and comfortable rooms. Now, if Dawson spoke too loud, it echoed.

  “It isn’t the man,” Dawson said. “It’s the philosophy behind him. Maas and Klin are no better, but Issandrian holds their leashes.”

  “Philosophical differences hardly seem to justify… What? Conspiracy?”

  “Philosophy always becomes action. Issandrian and Maas and the others are willing to play to the lowest kind of man in order to gain power.”

  “You mean the farmer’s council.”

  “That’s one place,” Dawson said. “But if they are willing to champion rabble, how long is it before the rabble choose to champion themselves? Already we have restrictions on slavery, on bed servants, on land service. All of that within our lifetimes. And all from men like Issandrian, courting favor from laborers and merchants and whores.”

  Canl Daskellin gave out a low grunt. Between the thin winter light silhouetting him and the almost Lyoneian darkness of his skin, Dawson could hardly make out his expression. Still, he hadn’t disagreed. And if he hadn’t had concerns of his own, he wouldn’t have come.

  “It’s time for the true spirit of Antea to put things right,” Dawson said. “These hounds think they run the hunt. They must be broken, and if we wait until Prince Aster is living under Issandrian’s roof…”

  The silence finished his thought more eloquently than any words could. Daskellin shifted forward in his chair, muttering something obscene under his breath.

  “You’re sure the king intends to take that step?”

  “I heard it from his own mouth,” Dawson said. “Simeon is a good man, and he could be a good king too, but not without our loyalty. He’s waiting for his chance to put Issandrian in his place. And I am going to provide that chance.”

  Soft voices came from the passage beyond, and then faded again. From the street, the clacking of steel-shod hooves. Canl drew a small clay pipe from his jacket and lifted his hand. A servant girl scurried over with a taper. With the first fragrant blue cloud of smoke, she retreated. Dawson waited.

  “How?” Daskellin asked. His voice had taken on the firmness of an interrogator. Dawson smiled. The battle was half won.

  “Deny Issandrian his strength,” Dawson said. “Recall Alan Klin from Vanai. Alienate Issandrian from the farmers. Shatter his circle.”

  “Meaning Maas and Klin.”

  “To start, but he has other adherents as well. But that isn’t enough. They gained influence because the men who understand what noble blood means are divided.”

  Daskellin took a long draw on his pipe, the ember glowing bright and then fading as he exhaled.

  “And thus your conspiracy,” he said.

  “Loyalty to the king is no conspiracy,” Dawson said. “It’s what we should have been doing all along. But we slept, and the dogs snuck in. And, Canl, you know that.”

  Daskellin tapped the clay stem against his teeth. His eyes narrowed.

  “Whatever it is,” Dawson said, “say it.”

  “Loyalty to King Simeon is one thing. Becoming the tool of House Kalliam is something else. I am… disturbed by the changes Issandrian and his cabal are suggesting. But trading one man of ambition for another is no solution.”

  “You want me to show I’m not Issandrian?”

  “I do.”

  “What proof do you want?”

  “If I help to recall Klin from Vanai, you cannot profit from it. Everyone’s quite aware that your son is under Klin’s command there. Jorey Kalliam cannot take the protectorship of Vanai.”

  Dawson blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again.

  “Canl,” he began, but Daskellin’s eyes narrowed. Dawson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke, his voice was harder than he’d meant it to be. “I swear before God and the throne of Antea that my son Jorey will not take protectorship of Van
ai when Alan Klin is called home. Further, I swear that no one of my house will take profit from Vanai. Now, will you swear the same, old friend?”

  “Me?”

  “You have a cousin in the city, I think? I’m sure you wouldn’t want to give the impression that your own support of the throne is merely self-serving?”

  Daskellin’s laughter boomed and rolled, a deep sound and warm enough to push back the teeth of winter, if only for a moment.

  “God wept, Kalliam. You’ll make altruists of us all.”

  “Will you swear?” Kalliam said. “Will you make common cause with the men who are loyal to King Simeon and to put the restoration of tradition ahead of your own glory?”

  “True servants to the throne,” Daskellin said, half amused.

  “Yes,” Dawson said. There was no room for lightness in his voice. He was hard as stone, his intentions fashioned from steel. “True servants to the throne.”

  Daskellin sobered.

  “You mean this,” he said.

  “I do,” Dawson said.

  The dark eyes flickered over Dawson’s face, as if trying to penetrate a disguise. And then as it had with half a dozen men before him—men whom Dawson had chosen because he knew they were as hungry for it as he himself was—pride bloomed in the dark face. Pride and determination and a sense of becoming part of something greater and good.

  “Then yes,” Daskellin said softly, “I will.”

  The Division was the most obvious of the partitions within the city, but it was far from the only one. On both sides of the bridges, nobility held to their mansions and squares while the lesser people lived in smaller, narrower ways. Living north of the Kestrel Square meant you were of high stature. Having your stables by the southern gate meant you had good blood, but a squandered fortune. The city was complex in ways that only her citizens could know. The streets were not the only dimension in which class could be measured. The poorest and most desperate tunneled down to coax new life out of the ruins of previous ages on which the modern city was built, living in darkness and squalor, but saving them at least from the indignities of winter.