The Dragon's Path

Cithrin

Cithrin stood at the top of the seawall, the city spread out behind her and the vast blue of sea and sky ahead. At the edge where the pale, shallow water of the bay turned to deep blue, five ships stood. The towering masts were trees rising from the water. The furled sails thickened the spars. The small, shallow boats of the fishing fleet were rushing into port or else out of the traffic as dozens of guide boats raced out, fighting to be the first to reach the ships and take the honor of guiding them in.

The trade ships from Narinisle had arrived. Five ships, arriving together and flying the banners of Birancour and Porte Oliva. When they had left, there had been seven. The other two might have become separated by storm or choice or scattered in an attack. They might arrive the next day or the next week or never. On the docks below her, merchants waited in agonies of hope and fear, waiting for the ships to come near enough to identify. And then, once the ships were in their berths, the fortunate among the sponsors would board, compare contracts and bills of lading, and discover whether profits were assured. The unfortunate would wait on the docks or in the port taprooms, digging at the sailors for news.

And then, once the captains of the ships had answered their sponsors, once the laborers had begun the long business of hauling the goods from ship to warehouse, once the frenzy of trade and goods and the exchange of coin had passed over Porte Oliva like a wind across the water, it would be time to begin the preparation for the next year’s journey. Shipyards would make repairs. The new sponsors would offer contracts and terms to the captains. And Idderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva, would consult with the captains and the masters of the guilds, and graciously accept the proposals to change this from one port city among many to the center of trade for a generation to come.

And in her hand, written in green ink on paper as smooth as poured cream, was the letter that forbade her from being part of any of it. She opened it now and considered it again. It was ciphered, of course, but she had spent long enough with Magister Imaniel’s books and papers that she could read it as clearly as if it had been in a normal script.

Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour, you are to cease all negotiation and trade in our name immediately. Paerin Clark, a senior auditor and representative of the holding company, will attend you as soon as can be arranged. Until that time, no further contracts, deposits, or loans are to be made or accepted. This is unconditional.

It was signed by Komme Medean himself, the old man’s script jagged and shaking from gout. She had shown it to no one. In the eight days since it had come, she’d wrestled with the order. It was the first she’d ever had from the holding company, and precisely what she’d expected. The auditor would come, just as she’d planned at the start. He would recover the bank’s funds, lost from Vanai. All her daydreams of keeping the bank alive, or steering it the way the guide boats were now preparing to lead the trade ships to safety, would end. She would be herself again. Not Tag the Carter, not a smuggler hiding in the shadows, and not Magistra Cithrin. Only without Besel and Cam and Magister Imaniel. Without Vanai.

And so, with respect, she preferred not to.

With a soft breath too slight to call itself a sigh, she ripped the page. Then again, and again, and again. When the pieces were as small as individual numbers and symbols of the cipher, she threw them over the edge of the seawall and watched them spin and flutter.

On the water, the guide boats were crowded around the trade ships. She imagined the voices of the men shouting up to the captains, the captains shouting back. As she watched, the first of the ships began the short, final leg of its annual journey. She turned away and walked back to her bank. The front door stood open to the breeze. As she walked through, Roach jumped to his feet as if she’d caught him doing something. Behind him, Yardem stretched and yawned hugely.

“Where have you been?” Captain Wester said.

“Watching the trade ships arrive, just the same as everyone else in the city,” she said. She felt unaccountably light. Almost giddy.

“Well, your coffee brewer sent three people on from the café so far this morning asking after you. They came looking here.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That you were busy, but I expected you’d be back in the café after midday,” Wester said. “Was I lying?”

“You? Never,” she said, and laughed at the suspicion on his face.

Despite the heat, Cithrin wore a dark blue dress with full sleeves and a high collar to the meeting at the governor’s palace. Her hair was tucked into a soft cap and pinned in place with a silver-and-lapis hairpin that was from the last of the jewelry she had hauled from Vanai. It would have been more appropriate for a cool day in autumn and left a trickle of sweat running down her back, but the thought of something more revealing in front of Qahuar Em seemed uncomfortable. And of course wearing the necklace or brooch that he’d given her would have been inappropriate.

When he greeted her in the passageway outside the private rooms, his bow was formal. Only the angle of his smile and the merriment in his dark eyes gave a hint of their nights together. He wore a sand-colored tunic with black enameled buttons to the neck, and she found herself aware of the shape of his body beneath it. She wondered, now that they weren’t to be rivals any longer, what would become of the attachment. The servant, a pale-haired Cinnae woman, bowed as they went through the doorway.

A single dark-stained table dominated the room, a bank of windows behind it looking out into the branches of a tree. The shifting branches gave the room a sense of shadow and cool that it didn’t deserve. The Cinnae mercenary rose to his feet as Cithrin stepped into the room and sat again when she did. The Tralgu woman and the representative of the local merchant houses didn’t attend.

“Good year,” the Cinnae man said. “Have you been down to the ships, Magistra?”

“I haven’t had the opportunity,” Cithrin said. “My schedule’s been remarkably full.”

“You should make the time. There were boxes of the most fascinating baubles this year. Little globes of colored glass that chime when you rub them. Quite lovely. I bought three for my granddaughter.”

“I hope the world has been treating you gently, sir,” Qahuar Em said. His voice was almost sharp. Why would he be angry? she wondered.

“Quite well,” the Cinnae said, ignoring the tone. “Quite excellently well, thank you.”

The private door slid open and the governor stepped in. His round face was sweat-sheened, but cheerful. When they began to rise, he waved them back to their seats.

“No need for ceremony,” he said, easing himself into his own chair. “Can I offer any of you something to drink?”

Qahuar Em shook his head, the Cinnae mercenary doing the same half a moment later as if he’d been waiting to see what Qahuar would do. Cithrin’s belly tightened in warning. Something was going on that she didn’t understand.

“Thank you both for coming,” the governor said. “I very much appreciate the work you have all done, and your dedication to Porte Oliva, to me, and to the queen. I am excited to have such excellent minds turning toward the welfare of the city. This is always the most difficult part, isn’t it? Making the decision?”

His wistful sigh said he was enjoying himself. Cithrin answered with a tight smile. Qahuar wasn’t meeting her eyes.

“I have been over the proposals very carefully,” the governor said. “Either of them would have been, I think, an excellent pathway to the prosperity of the city. But I think the flexibility of the five-year contract offered by the gentlemen here present would better serve than the eight that the Medean bank requires.”

Cithrin felt her breath leave her. Despite the heat, something cold settled into her throat and breast. Qahuar Em hadn’t been offering five years. It had been ten.

“Eight years is a very long time,” the Cinnae mercenary said, nodding slowly. His grave expression was a poor mask for his pleasure.

“Between that and the somewhat higher annual fees,” the governor said, “I am very sorry to turn away your proposal, Magistra Cithrin.”

“I quite understand,” Cithrin said as if someone else were speaking. “Now that it’s settled, might I enquire what rates Master Em offered?”

“Oh, it’s a partnership,” the Cinnae said. “Not just his clan, you know. We’re in this together, he and I.”

“I can’t think that there’s need to go into the details,” Qahuar Em said, still not looking at her. His attempts to spare her more humiliation were worse than the mercenary’s gloating.

“It isn’t as though it won’t be known,” the governor said. “Out of courtesy and respect, Magistra, the fees asked were ten hundredths without guarantee or fourteen with.”

The wrong numbers. They were the wrong numbers. It was supposed to be sixteen and nineteen, not ten and fourteen. The offer she’d found in his office had been a trap, and she had fallen into it.

“Thank you, my Lord Governor,” Cithrin said with a nod. “The holding company will very much appreciate your candor.”

“There will be no acrimony, I hope,” the governor said. “The Medean bank is new to our city, but very much honored.”

“None at all,” Cithrin said. Given the hollowness in her chest, she was surprised the words didn’t echo. This couldn’t be happening. “Thank you very much for the courtesy of meeting with me. But I assume you gentlemen have details to discuss.”

They all rose when she did, the governor taking her hand in his greasy fingers and pressing it to his lips. She kept her smile amused and world-wise in defeat, a mask of who she wished she had been. She bowed to the Cinnae mercenary and then to Qahuar Em. The emptiness in her shifted, and something painful bloomed in its place.

She walked carefully from the room, down the stairs, and out through the entrance hall to the square beyond. The sky was an opalescent white, the breeze hot as breath against her cheek. The sweat dampened her armpits, her back, her legs. She stood for a few minutes, confused and stunned. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She needed to get back inside. There were details she needed to work out, contracts to be signed and witnessed. There was the great project to be done. She wasn’t supposed to be out here. She should be inside.

The first sob was like retching: sudden, reflexive, and violent. Not here, she thought. Oh, God, if it’s going to happen, don’t let it happen here where the whole damned city can watch. Long, fast strides, her thighs pulling against the fabric of her dress to gain every inch. She reached the mazework streets. She found an alleyway, followed its turns and windings to a shadowed corner, and squatted there on the filthy paving stones. She couldn’t stop the sobs now, so she pressed her arm against her mouth to keep them quiet.

She’d lost. All of her expectations, all of her plans, and she’d lost. They’d given her contract to someone else, and left her a stupid, ugly half-breed slut crying herself dry in an alley. How had she thought she could win? How could she ever have believed?

When the worst had passed, she stood again. She wiped the tears and snot on her sleeve, wiped the grime off her dress, and began the walk to her rooms. Humiliation rose on her shoulders and whispered in her ear. How much did Qahuar tell his partners? Did he brag about getting her legs apart? That old Cinnae mercenary had likely had every part of her flesh described to him before she’d walked into the room. Qahuar had known everything she’d done before she did it, planned it. Had his servants been warned not to interfere with her late-night invasion of his office? Had they been watching from the shadows, laughing at the idiot girl who thought herself clever?

At the bank, she heard the voices of the guards—Marcus and Yardem and the new Kurtadam woman—through the door, neither angry nor laughing. The tulips bobbed in the breeze, their petals broken and splayed, the red turning black at the base. She wanted to go in, but her hand would not reach for the latch. She stood for what seemed like hours, willing herself to go in to the nearest thing she had to friends or family or love. Her employees. She wanted Yardem Hane to come out and find her. For Cary to come walking down the street. For Opal to rise from her ocean grave and choke her to death where she stood.

Cithrin went upstairs. She stripped off her dress and sat on the bed in her shift. Her sweat wouldn’t dry, wouldn’t cool her.

She’d lost. Even now, it didn’t make sense. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. She’d lost. The weeping was gone now. The pain was gone, though she had the sense that it was only resting, sleeping like a hunting cat after a kill. It would be back. For the moment, she felt nothing. She felt dead.

She’d lost. And the auditor was coming.

The sun traced its arc through the high air. Cithrin sat. The sounds of the street changed, the heat-dazed traffic of the day slowly giving way to the brighter, more energetic voices of evening. She needed to piss, but she put it off. Impossible to think there was any moisture left in her after soaking in sweat and tears. And still, her body performed its functions whether she approved or not. When the urging became too much to ignore, she found her night pot and used it. Once she was in motion, it was easier to move. She pulled off her shift, leaving it puddled on the floor, and found a light, embroidered dress, more attractive because it was already in her hands. She pulled it on, walked down the stairs and out into the street without bothering to lock the door behind her.

The taproom had all the shutters open, the sea breeze passing through it. No candles or lanterns were lit to keep even that slight additional heat away, so the rooms were dim despite the sunlight. The servant girl was one she recognized, thick-faced with night-black hair down to her shoulder blades. A tiny dog pranced nervously around the girl’s ankles. Cithrin walked toward the back table, her table. Someone was there, half hidden by the rough cloth.

Qahuar Em.

Cithrin forced herself to walk forward. She sat across from him. A loose shutter clapped against its frame twice and went quiet. The man’s expression was mild and rueful. A half-empty tankard of ale rested on the table.

“Good evening.”

She didn’t answer. He clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“I was hoping I might offer you a meal, a bottle of wine. An apology. It was unkind of the governor to bring you in that way.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” she said.

“Cithrin—”

“I don’t want sight or sound of you ever again for as long as I live,” she said, each word cool and sharp and deliberate. “And if you come near me, I will ask my captain of guard to kill you. And he’d do it.”

Qahuar’s expression hardened.

“I see. I admit I am disappointed, Magistra. I’d thought better of you.”

“You’d thought better of me?”

“Yes. I hadn’t imagined you the sort of woman to throw tantrums. But clearly I’ve misjudged. I would remind you that you were the one who put yourself in my bed. You are the one who crept through my halls. It’s mean and small of you to blame me for anticipating it.”

You don’t know what this was, Cithrin thought. You don’t know what it meant for me. They’re going to take away my bank.

Qahuar stood and placed three small coins on the table to pay the taproom. The light caught the roughness of his bronze skin, making him look older. This summer was her eighteenth solstice. It was his thirty-fifth.

“We’re traders, Magistra,” he said. “I very much apologize that the delivery of the news was unpleasant, but I cannot be sorry that I can take this agreement to my clan elders. I hope you have a more pleasant evening.”

He pushed back the bench, wood rasping against the stone floor, and stepped around her.

“Qahuar,” she said sharply.

He paused. She gathered herself. The words were cast in lead, almost too heavy to pull up her throat.

“I’m sorry I betrayed you,” she said. “Tried to betray you.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “It’s the game we play.”

Some time later, the taproom’s servant came, took up the coins, and cleared away Qahuar Em’s drink. Cithrin looked up at her.

“Your usual?”

Cithrin shook her head. Everything from her throat down to her belly felt solid as stone. She lifted her hand, surprised to find her soft cap still there. She pulled it off, let down her hair, and held the silver-and-lapis pin up. It seemed almost to glow with its own light in the gloom. The servant girl blinked at it.

“That’s very beautiful,” she said.

“Take it,” Cithrin said. “Bring me what you think it’s worth.”

“Magistra?”

“Fortified wine. Farmer’s beer. I don’t care. Just bring it.”