The Dragon's Path Read online

  He knew what had to happen next.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Marcus said.

  Geder

  Geder had known, of course, that Klin’s favorites had been given the better accommodations, and that men like himself had taken the leavings. The scale of the insult, however, hadn’t been clear. He sat on a low divan upholstered in silk. High windows spilled light over the floors like God upending a milk jug. Incense touched the air with vanilla and patchai. The goldwork and gems that glowed over the fire grate hadn’t been wrenched apart in the sack. Even before the soldiers of Antea had taken the streets below, it had been understood that the prince’s house was sacrosanct. Not because it was the prince’s, but because it was Ternigan’s. And then Klin’s. And now, unthinkably, his own.

  “My Lord Protector?”

  Geder jumped to his feet as if he’d been caught touching something he shouldn’t. The chief of household was an old Timzinae slave, his dark scales greying and cracked. He wore the grey and blue of House Palliako now, or as close to them as could be scrounged.

  “Your secretaries await, sir,” the Timzinae said.

  “Yes,” Geder said, plucking at the black leather cloak he’d brought from his old rooms. “Yes, of course. Take me there.”

  The orders had come three days before. The Lord Marshal had called Alan Klin back to Camnipol, to the despair of some, the delight of others, and the surprise of no one. The astonishing development was who Ternigan had chosen as his replacement until such time as King Simeon named a permanent governor. Geder had read the order ten times at least, checked the seal and signature, and then read it again. Sir Geder Palliako, son of Viscount of Rivenhalm Lerer Palliako, was now Protector of Vanai. He had the order still, folded in a pouch at his belt like a religious relic: mysterious and awesome and entirely unsafe.

  His first thought after the first wave of raw disbelief had passed was that Klin had discovered Geder’s betrayal, and that this was his revenge. As he stepped into the meeting chamber, Klin’s appointees peopling every seat except the one on the dais at the front reserved for himself, Geder had the suspicion again. His belly sloshed and he felt his hands trembling. His blood felt weak as water as he took the two steps up and lowered himself uncomfortably into the presentation seat. Once, the room had been a chapel, and the icons of gods in whom Geder didn’t believe surrounded him. Unsympathetic eyes gazed up at him, expressions blank at best, openly contemptuous at worst. A handful of seats were empty. Loyalists of House Klin who had chosen to resign commission and return with him to Antea rather than submit to the new order. Geder wished he could have gone with them.

  “Lords,” Geder said. He sounded like someone was strangling him. He coughed, cleared his throat, and began again. “My lords, you will have read by now the orders of Lord Marshal Ternigan. I am, of course, honored and as surprised as I’m sure all of you are as well.”

  He chuckled. No one else made a sound. Geder swallowed.

  “It’s important that the city not suffer from a sense of unease during this change. I would like each of you to continue on with the directions and orders given by Lord Klin so that the… ah… change that we are—”

  “You mean the policies that have him pulled back to Ternigan?” The questioner was Alberith Maas, eldest son of Estrian Maas and nephew of Klin’s close ally Feldin.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The orders,” the young man said. “They’re the same ones that put Lord Klin in the crown’s poor grace, and you want us to keep to them?”

  “For now,” Geder said, “yes.”

  “A bold decision, my Lord Protector.”

  Someone sniggered. Geder felt a rush of shame, and then anger. His jaw tightened.

  “When I order a change, Lord Maas, I’ll see that you know of it,” he said. “We will all have to work to raise Vanai up from its present disorder.”

  So don’t cross me, or I’ll put you in charge of cleaning weeds out of the canals, Geder thought, but didn’t say. The young man rolled his eyes but kept silent. Geder took a deep breath, letting the air curl slowly out through his nostrils. His enemies sat before him, looking up. Men of greater experience, with greater political connections, and who had not been given the power that Geder now held. For the most part they would be polite. They would say the right things, though often in the wrong tone of voice. In private, they would shake their heads and laugh at him.

  Humiliation fueled his rage.

  “Alan Klin was a failure.” It was nothing he’d meant to say, and he threw the words out like a slap across the jowls. “The Lord Marshal gave him Vanai, and Klin pissed it away. And each of you were part of that failure. I know you are going to leave here and share your jokes and roll your eyes and tell yourselves it’s all a terrible mistake.”

  He leaned forward now. The heat in his cheeks felt like courage.

  “But, my very good lords, let me make this clear. I am the one Lord Ternigan chose. I am the one he picked to turn Vanai from an embarrassment into a jewel in King Simeon’s crown. And I intend to do so. If you would rather make light of me and of the duty we are given, say it now, take your things, and crawl back to Camnipol on your bellies. But stand off my path!”

  He was shouting now. The fear was gone, the humiliation with it. He didn’t remember standing, but he was on his feet now, his finger pointing a general accusation at the group. Their eyes were wide, their brows risen. He could see unease in the angle of their shoulders and the way they held their hands.

  Good, he thought. Let them wonder who and what Geder Palliako is.

  “If Lord Klin has left pressing business, I’ll hear it now. Otherwise, I will have reports from each of you by tomorrow on the state of the city in general, your particular responsibilities within it, and how you propose to do better.”

  There was silence for the space of four heartbeats together. Geder let himself feel a trickle of pleasure.

  “Lord Palliako?” a man said from the back. “There’s the grain taxes?”

  “What about them?”

  “Lord Klin was entertaining a proposal to change them, sir. But he didn’t give a decision before he left. You see, fresh grain coming in from the countryside is taxed at two silver to the bushel, but sold from storage in the city runs two and a half. The local granaries appealed.”

  “Put them all at two and a half,” Geder said.

  “Yes, Lord Protector,” the man said.

  “What else?”

  There was nothing more. Geder stalked from the room quickly, before the heat of his temper could fully cool. When the brief certainty of anger passed, it passed completely. By the time he returned to his drawing room—his drawing room—he was shaking from head to foot. He sat by the window, looking out on the main square of the city, and tried to guess whether he was on the verge of laughter or tears. Below him, dry leaves skittered. The canal lay bare and dry, a team of slaves of several races hauling armfuls of weeds and filth out of it. A handful of Firstblood girls ran across the square, screaming in their play. He told himself that they were his now. Slaves, girls, leaves. All of it. It frightened him.

  “Geder Palliako, Lord Protector of Vanai,” he said to the empty air, hoping that by speaking the words they would become plausible. It didn’t work. He tried to imagine what Lord Ternigan had intended when he’d chosen him. Nothing made sense. He took the letter out again, unfolded it, read each word, each phrase, searching for something to reassure him. There was nothing there.

  “My Lord Protector,” the old Timzinae said. Geder jumped less this time. “Lord Kalliam has come, as you asked.”

  “Bring him in,” Geder said. The old servant hesitated, as if on the verge of pointing out a breach of etiquette, but turned away after only a bow. Geder wondered if meeting in the private drawing room was supposed to be reserved for special occasions. He’d have to find a book on Vanai court etiquette. Next time he spoke to his hired scholars, he’d mention it.

  Jorey Kalliam stepped into the room
. He was in his best uniform, and bowed before Geder formally. Either Jorey was also exhausted and apprehensive, or else Geder was seeing all the world as a mirror. The Timzinae wheeled a cart in behind him laden with small shell dishes of pistachios and candied pears. Once the servant had poured them both crystal mugs of cool water, he retreated. The discreet click of the door latch left them alone.

  “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 sen
se 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.

  Cithrin

  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.