The Dragon's Path

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.

“Was he a priest as a boy?” Marcus said, pointing down the stairway with his chin. “He starts talking about faith and doubt and the nature of truth, it’s like we’re back in the ’van getting a sermon with every meal.”

“What he says makes sense,” Yardem said.

“To you,” Marcus replied.

“Suppose he might have been a priest. It’s Master Kit,” Hornet said with a shrug. “If he told us he’d walked up the mountainside and drank beer with the moon, I’d probably believe it. We’ve got two more boxes the size of that one, and then all those wax blocks.”

“Wax?” Marcus asked.

“The books,” Cithrin said, but the words came out as a croak. She coughed and began again. “The books and ledgers. They’re sealed against the damp.”

Which is a good thing, she thought, since we sank them in a mill pond. Immediately, she imagined a crack in the sealing wax. Pages and pages of smeared ink and rotting paper hidden by the protecting wraps. What if the books were ruined? What would she tell Magister Imaniel then? What would she tell the bankers in Carse?

“Well, bring them up,” Marcus said. “We’ll find a place for them somewhere.”

Hornet nodded, but Sandr was already going down the stairs. He hadn’t even looked at her. She told herself it didn’t bother her.

Cithrin was very aware that the new rooms didn’t entirely meet with Captain Wester’s approval. Unlike the place in the salt quarter, these were on the second story with woodplank floors that reported any motion to the floor below in a language of creaks and pops. The shop on the first floor was a gambler’s stall, which meant any number of people of any status might come and go throughout the day. But the lock at the base of the stair was sturdy, surrounding streets less prone to the drunken and the lost, and the windows without balcony or simple access. Additionally, there was an alley window out which the pisspot could be emptied, and the change of location had landed her five doors down from a taproom where they could buy food and beer.

Cary and Mikel came up next. Cary was grinning.

“Boy on the street asked us what we were hauling,” Cary said.

Cithrin could see the tension in Captain Wester’s face as he walked to the window and peered out.

“What did you tell him?”

“Paste jewels for the First Thaw celebrations,” Cary said. “Opened one of the boxes for him, too. You should have seen it. He looked so disappointed.”

Cary laughed, not seeing the anger on Captain Wester’s face. Or perhaps seeing it and not caring. During the days when they’d looked for new rooms and prepared to shift the smuggled wealth of Vanai to its new hiding place, Opal had only been mentioned once when Smit had joked that she’d found a way to keep from having to do any of the hard work. Nobody had laughed.

Cithrin still had to fight herself to believe that it had happened. That Opal had meant to slaughter her and take the money was hard enough to comprehend. That Captain Wester had killed her for it was worse. Of course the others were angry. Of course they resented the captain. And Yardem. And her. They had to. And here they were, hauling boxes and making jokes. Cithrin found that she trusted them—each and every one of them—not because they were trustworthy, but because she wanted them to be.

She’d made the mistake with Opal, and she was watching herself make it again. That knowledge alone twisted her badly enough she hadn’t slept or eaten well since the night she’d woken up with five dead men around her.

Master Kit came up the stairs, a double armful of wrapped books before him. Then Sandr and Hornet with the last of the boxes. With everything from the cart, there wasn’t much room left for them all. Sandr was trapped standing beside her. When he saw her looking at him, he blushed and nodded the bird-fast twitch he might use to greet someone in the street.

“I believe this is the last of it,” Master Kit said as Yardem lifted the books from him.

“Thank you for this,” Cithrin said. “All of you.”

“It’s the least we could,” Smit said. “We’re only sorry it happened this way.”

“Yes, well,” Cithrin said. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Why don’t the rest of you go on,” Master Kit said. “I’ll try to catch up in a bit.”

The actors nodded and left. Cithrin heard their voices through the window as their cart pulled away. Captain Wester stalked around the room as if his restlessness and impatience would make the floorboards quieter and more certain. Yardem stretched out on the cot nestled between piles of boxes and closed his eyes, resting before the night came. Master Kit rose and held a hand out to her.

“Cithrin,” he said, “I was hoping we might walk together.”

She looked from the old actor’s hand to Captain Wester and back.

“Where?” she said.

“I didn’t have anyplace particularly in mind,” Master Kit said. “I thought the walking might be enough.”

“All right,” Cithrin said, and let him help her to her feet.

Outside, the street traffic shifted like water; broad and slow in the wide square to the east, faster in the narrow channel of the street. A Cinnae man stood outside the gambler’s stall, calling to the men and women walking past. Great fortune could be theirs. Luck favored the brave. They could soften the loss of business by wagering against themselves. Odds offered on any fair wager. He sounded bored.

Horse-drawn carts labored through the press, and a team of Timzinae walked behind them with flat-bladed shovels, picking up their droppings. Half a dozen children screamed and chased each other, splashing through puddles of mud and grime and worse. A laundry cart rattled by, pulled by a Firstblood girl no older than Cithrin, but with lines of hardship already forming in the angles of her mouth. Master Kit strode forth and Cithrin let him lead, unsure whether she was walking behind him or at his side.

The street opened into a square Cithrin hadn’t seen before. A huge church loomed to the east. Voices raised in song wove through the chill air, praising God and working through harmonic puzzles as if the two pursuits were one. Master Kit paused when she did, listening with her. The smile on his face softened into something touched with sorrow.

“It is lovely, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?” Cithrin asked.

He leaned against a stone wall and gestured out. The square, the song, the sky above them.

“I suppose I meant the world. For all the tragedy and pain, I do, at least, find it beautiful.”

Cithrin felt her lips press tight. She wanted to apologize for what had happened to Opal, but that would only put Master Kit in a position where he had to apologize again, and she didn’t want to do that. Words and thoughts banged against each other, none of them quite right for the moment.

“What will you do now?” she said.

Kit took a deep breath and let it out slowly before turning away from the song.

“I expect we’ll stay here for the time being. I don’t think Cary’s quite ready to take on the full burden of Opal’s roles, but by the end of the summer, with some rehearsal and serious work, I expect she will be. Between the armies of Vanai and now Opal, the company’s a bit thinner than I like. I hope we’ll be able to recruit a few good people. I’ve found port cities often collect itinerant actors.”

Cithrin nodded. Kit waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t, went on.

“Besides which, I find myself rather fascinated by your Captain Wester.”

“He’s not my Captain Wester,” Cithrin said. “He’s made it perfectly clear that he’s his own Captain Wester.”

“Has he, then? I stand corrected,” Master Kit said. The church song swelled, what could have been a hundred voices rising and falling, throbbing against each other until it seemed like some other voice threatened to speak through them. God whispering. It seemed to pull Master Kit’s attention, but when he spoke he hadn’t lost the conversation’s thread. “I believe the dragons left a legacy in this world that is… destructive. Corrosive by nature, and doomed to cause pain. Unchecked, it will eat the world. Wester is one of the few people I’ve met who I thought might stand against it.”

“Because he’s so stubborn?” Cithrin asked, trying to make it a joke.

“Yes, because of that,” Master Kit said. “And, I suppose, the shape of his soul.”

“He was a general in Northcoast a long time ago,” Cithrin said. “Something happened to his wife, I think.”

“He led Prince Springmere’s army in the succession. There were battles against the armies of Lady Tracian that should have been lost, but Captain Wester won them.”

“Wodford and Gradis,” Cithrin said. “But people also talk about… Ellis?”

“Yes. The fields of Ellis. They say it was the worst battle in the war, that no one wanted it and no one could back down. The story is he was so important that the prince grew afraid that another of the pretenders might seduce his loyalty. Convince him to change sides. Springmere had his family killed and his rival implicated. The captain’s wife and daughter died in front of him, and badly even as these things go.”

“Oh,” Cithrin said. “What happened to Springmere? I know he lost the succession, but…”

“Our friend Marcus found out what had really happened, took his revenge, and then dropped out of history. I think most people assumed he died. In my experience, the worst thing that can happen to a man in that position is that he live long enough to see how little vengeance leaves after it. I don’t think he has many illusions left to him, which is why he’s…” Master Kit shook himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wander off like that. Getting old, I think. I had wanted to say again that I’m sorry for what happened, and I am deeply committed to seeing that it not happen again.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I would also like to offer whatever help I can in seeing you safely to Carse. I feel we owe you more than a day’s free labor. A bit odd, I know, but I think pretending to be soldiers for so long left us all with a bit of the camaraderie of the sword.”

Cithrin nodded, but she felt her brow furrow even before she knew quite why. The church song sank in a final, conclusive cadence, and silence seemed to flow into the world like a wave. Seagulls looped through the high air, yellow beaks and steady, unflapping wings.

“Why do you apologize for everything you say?” she asked.

Master Kit turned to her, bushy eyebrows hoisted.

“I wasn’t aware that I did,” he said.

“You just did it again,” Cithrin said. “You never say anything straight out. It’s all I believe this or I’ve found that. You never say, The sun rises in the morning. It’s always, I think the sun rises in the morning. It’s like you’re trying not to promise anything.”

Master Kit went sober. His dark eyes considered her. Cithrin felt a chill run down her spine, but it wasn’t fear. It was like being on the edge of finding something that she’d only guessed was there. Master Kit rubbed a palm across his chin. The sound was soft and intimate and utterly mundane.

“I’m surprised you noticed that,” he said, then smiled at having done it again. “I have a talent for being believed, and I’ve found it to be problematic. I suppose I’ve adopted habits to soften the effect, and so I try not to assert things unless I’m certain of them. Absolutely certain, I mean. I’m often surprised by how little I’m absolutely certain of.”

“That’s an odd choice,” Cithrin said.

“And it encourages me to take myself lightly,” Master Kit said. “I find a certain value in lightness.”

“I wish I could,” she said. The despair in her voice surprised her, and then she was weeping.

The actor blinked, his arms shifting uncertainly, and Cithrin stood in the open street embarrassed by her own sobbing, but powerless to stop. Master Kit wrapped an arm around her and led her forward to the steps of the church. His cloak was cheap wool, rough and still smelling of lanolin. He draped it over her shoulders. She leaned forward, her head on her knees. She felt the fear and the sorrow, but only at a distance. But the landslide had begun, and there was nothing she could do now but let it go. Master Kit placed his hand on her back, just between her shoulder blades, and rubbed gently, like a man soothing a baby. After a while, the sobs grew less violent. The tears dried. Cithrin eventually found her voice.

“I can’t do this,” she said. How many thousand times had she told herself that since the day Besel died? But always to herself. This was the first time she’d said the words aloud to anyone. They tasted sour. “I can’t do this.”

Master Kit took his arm back, but still shared his rough, cheap cloak. A few of the people walking by stared, but most ignored them. The old actor’s skin smelled like a spice shop. Cithrin wanted to curl up there on the cold stone steps, sleep, and never wake up.

“You can,” Master Kit said.

“No, I—”

“Cithrin, stop. Listen to my voice,” Master Kit said.

Cithrin turned. He looked older than she remembered him, and it took a moment to realize it was because he wasn’t smiling, even in the corner of his eyes. There were pouches under his eyes. His jowls sagged, and the stubble of his beard was more white than black. Cithrin waited.

“You can do this,” he said. “No, just listen to me. You can do this.”

“You mean you think that I can,” she said. “Or you expect that I will.”

“No. I meant what I said. You can do this.”

Something in the back of Cithrin’s mind shifted. Something in her blood altered, like the surface of a pond rippling when a fish has passed too close beneath it. The overwhelming sorrow was still there, the fear that she would fail, the sense of being at the mercy of a wild and violent world. None of it went away. Only with it, there was something else. Hardly brighter than a firefly in the darkness of her mind, there was a new thought: Perhaps.

Cithrin rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands and shook her head. The sun had shifted farther and faster than she’d expected. She didn’t know how long ago they’d left the new rooms.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“I felt I owed it to you,” Master Kit said. He seemed tired.

“Should we go back?”

“If you’re ready, I think we should.”

Evening came later than Cithrin expected, another sign that winter was beginning to lose its grip. Yardem Hane sat on the floor, his huge legs crossed, and ate rice and fish from a plate. Captain Wester paced.

“If we pick the wrong ship,” the captain said, “they’ll murder us, throw our bodies to the sharks, and spend the rest of their lives living high in some port in Far Syramys or Lyoneia. But we’d only have the customs house here and the one in Carse to go past. On the road, we might have to weather half a dozen tax collectors.”

Cithrin looked at her own plate of fish, her belly too knotted to eat. Every word Wester said made it worse.

“We could backtrack,” Yardem said. “Go to the Free Cities, and north from there. Or back to Vanai, for that.”

“Without a caravan to hide in?” Marcus said.

The Tralgu shrugged, conceding the point. Behind the constant motion of the captain’s legs, the wax-sealed books of the Vanai bank glowed in the candlelight. Cithrin’s anxiety circled back to them, images of cracked seal and rotting leather spines dancing through her head like a nightmare that wouldn’t fade.

“We could buy a fishing boat,” Yardem said. “Sail it ourselves. Hug the coast.”

“Fighting off pirates with our forceful personalities?” Marcus said. “Cabral is half rotten with free ships stealing the trade they can, and King Sephan isn’t about to stop them.”

“No good options,” Yardem said.

“None. And weeks still before we can take the bad ones,” Marcus said.

Cithrin put her plate on the ground and walked past Captain Wester. She took the topmost of the books, looked around the dim, gold-lit room, and found the short blade Yardem had used to carve cheese at midday. The blade was shining clean.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked.

“I can’t choose the right ship,” Cithrin said, “or the right path, or a caravan to hide in. But I can see that the books aren’t wet, so I’m doing that.”

“We’ll just have to seal them again,” Marcus said, and Cithrin ignored him. The wax was as thick as her thumb, and came off in stubborn chunks. A layer of cloth beneath it gave way to a softer inner layer of wax, and then parchment wrapping. The book hidden inside it all could have been fresh from Magister Imaniel’s desk. Cithrin opened it, and the pages hissed against each other. The familiar marks of Magister Imaniel’s handwriting were like a memory from childhood, and Cithrin almost wept again seeing them. Her fingers traced sums and notations, balances, transactions, details of contract and return rate. Magister Imaniel’s signature and the brown, cracked blood of his thumb. She let them wash over her, familiar and foreign at the same time. Here was the deposit the bank had taken from the bakers’ guild, and there in blue ink, a record of the payments made as recompense, month by month, for the years they’d held the money. She turned the page. Here was the record of loss on shipping insurance from the year that the storms had come up from Lyoneia later than ever before. The sums shocked her. She hadn’t guessed that the loss had been so profound. She closed the book, took her blade, and found another. Marcus and Yardem were still talking, but they could have been in another city for all it mattered to her.

The next book was older, and she followed the history of the bank in it, from the letters of foundation that began it through the years of transactions, almost until the day she’d left. The history of Vanai written in numbers and ciphered notes. And there, in red, a small notation of Cithrin bel Sarcour accepted as ward of the Medean bank until she reached legal age and took over the balance of her parents’ deposits, less the costs of keeping her. There were as many words spent on a grain shipment or investment in a brewery. The death of her parents, the beginning of the only life she’d known, all on a single line.

She got another book.

Marcus stopped talking, ate his dinner, and curled up on the cot. The half moon rose. Cithrin traced the history of the bank like she was reading old letters sent from home. Wax and cloth and parchment mounded around her like wrapping paper. Growing in the back of her mind, almost forgotten in the fascination of old ink and dusty paper, was a sense of possibility. Not confidence—not yet—but its precursor.

It was only when Yardem woke her by taking the leather-bound book from her hand that she realized that—for the first time since Opal—she’d slept dreamless through the night.