The Dragon's Path

Chapter 16

Cithrin
After the night skating on the mill pond and the throat-closing fear of the day that came after, her nights took on a pattern. First, bone-deep exhaustion. Then, after she curled into the wool, a glorious hour of rest before her eyes popped open, her mind racing, her heart tight and nervous. Some nights, she would see the doughy Antean nobleman finding the hidden chests again, only this time he shouted out, and his soldiers came. Her mind spun through nightmare images of what had almost been. Sandr killed. Opal slaughtered. Master Kit riddled with arrows, his blood bright on the snow. Marcus Wester handing her over to the soldiers in exchange for the caravan's safe passage. And then what the soldiers might have done to her. That it hadn't happened gave the fear an almost spiritual power, as if her near escape had incurred a debt whose payment might be heavier than she could bear.
She fought back with memories of Magister Imaniel, the bank, the balances of trade and insurance, intrigue and subtle design that reminded her of home. It didn't bring rest, but it made the cold, dark, wakeful hours bearable, letting her pretend the world followed rules and could be tamed. Then the eastern sky would brighten, and the exhaustion would fall over her like a worked-metal coat, and she'd force herself up, out, and through another impossible day. By the time they reached Porte Oliva, she was living half in a waking dream. Small red animals shifted and danced in the corner of her vision, and the most improbable ideas - she had to swallow all the books to keep them safe, Master Kit could grow wings but didn't want anyone to know, Cary secretly planned to kill her in a jealous rage over Sandr - took on a plausibility they hadn't earned.
Everything she knew of Porte Oliva, she knew at second hand. She knew it sat at Birancour's southern edge and survived on what trade from the east didn't stop at the Free Cities and what from the west made the extra journey to avoid the pirates haunting Cabral. The greatest part of its wealth came as a wayport between Lyoneia and Narinisle. Magister Imaniel had called it everybody's second choice, but he'd said it as if that might not be such a bad role to play. She'd imagined it as a city of rough edges and local prides.
Her arrival itself had been uncanny. She remembered driving her team along hilly, snow-blown roads, and then a Kurtadam boy, sleek as an otter, trotted alongside her cart, his hand outstretched, asking her for coins, and a forest of buildings had sprouted around her. Porte Oliva was the first real city she'd seen apart from Vanai, stone where Vanai was wood, salt where Vanai was freshwater. Her first impressions of it were a blur of narrow streets with high white arches, the smells of shit and sea salt, the voices of full-blooded Cinnae chattering like finches. She thought they'd passed through a tunnel in a great wall, like the old stories of dead men passing from one life to another, but it was just as likely she'd dreamed it.
She remembered nothing about how she'd hired Marcus Wester and his second as her personal guard. Not even why she'd thought it was a good idea.
The captain padded across the stone floor. From the cot against the wall, Yardem Hane snored. Cithrin let herself swim up from her nap and survey the dank little rooms again for the hundredth time. A small fire in the grate muttered, casting red-and-orange shadows on the far wall and belching pine smoke into the air. The window was scraped parchment, and it dirtied what sunlight it let in. The boxes - contents of the cart she'd carried so carefully from Vanai - were stacked along the walls like any cheap warehouse. Only the most valuable of the cart's contents had been put in the sunken iron strongbox. Hardly a tenth of what they carried would fit. Cithrin sat up. Her body felt bruised, but her head was almost clear.
"Morning," Marcus Wester said, nodding politely.
"How long was I asleep?" she asked.
"Half the morning. It's not midday yet."
"Is there any food?"
"Some sausage from last night," he said, nodding toward the small door of warped wood that led to the only other room.
Cithrin rose. For years in her life, half a morning's sleep would have been barely enough to see her through to evening. Now it felt like a luxury. The back room had neither door nor window, so Cithrin lit a thumb-sized stub of candle and carried it back with her. The books, soul and memory of the Vanai bank, hunkered on a wooden palette. A rough oak table supported a carafe of water and a length of greyish sausage. The overwhelming stink came from a tin chamberpot in the corner. Cithrin relieved herself, throwing a double handful of ashes in before putting the lid back in place. She cut a length of sausage and leaned against the table, chewing it. Apple and garlic seasoned the meat. It wasn't nearly as bad as she'd expected.
For almost two weeks, her life had been this. Marcus watched the day, Yardem the night. They ventured outside as little as possible. The only privacy was in the smaller room, and the only light came from the dim window, the fire grate, and a few candles. The supplies were bought with the captain's money. What he'd earned selling the wool, cart, and mules was in a small leather purse by the door to the street. They'd taken less money for the mules than they could have gotten, but Cithrin thought the Firstblood woman who'd taken them in the end would treat them best.
She missed the mules.
Her hair felt greasy and lank. Her only clothes were the ones she'd been given when she became Tag the Carter. She finished the sausage and walked back out.
"I need clothes," she said. "I'm not wearing this until spring."
"All right," the captain said. "Only don't go far until you know the streets. And don't call attention to yourself. The fewer people realize we're here, the safer we are."
It was what he said every time, as if she would have forgotten since the day before. The Tralgu shifted in his sleep and sighed. She took the purse, tucked it in her pocket, and opened the door. The daylight was like a flood.
"Cithrin!"
She turned back. The captain was squatting by the fire, stirring the ashes with a blade, but his eyes were on her and full of concern.
"Be careful out there," he said.
"I know the stakes," she said, and stepped into the street.
The salt district was a maze. Buildings two stories high leaned over streets so narrow people couldn't pass without touching. The curve of the land shaped everything, making it impossible to see very far in any direction, and intersections that seemed to promise a wider path were as likely to end blind. Voices of men and women, Kurtadam, Cinnae, and Firstblood, filled the air. If a man shouted at his wife in this district, the echoes would carry the melody of his anger even as it washed away his individual words.
Children lurked in the windows and doorways, feral as cats. A few days' warm weather had melted the filthy snow and left black puddles lurking in the corners, covered with thin skins of ice. There might have been a thousand paths in and out, but Cithrin knew one, and she kept to it. A few minutes' walk and there was a five-way intersection with one pathway leading northeast. A wider swath of white-hazed sky glowed above it, and Cithrin followed it toward the market, the docks, and the flow of money that kept Porte Oliva alive.
The Grand Market wasn't an open square, but a network of covered walks. The rough cobbles of the street gave way to pale tiles. The archways sloped up like hands in folded prayer, great pale windows spilling light down between the stone and iron fingers. Men and women sang and played flutes. Pupeteers played through their little dramas, changed slightly to include a local merchant or political figure in the story. Servants from the great houses and palaces pushed along, enormous wicker baskets on their heads, to supply the dinners of the powerful. The small independent moneylenders - small fish compared to the leviathan of the Medean bank - set up their green felt boards and beam balances. Travelers and sailors came up from the docks to admire the chaos. Merchants called out their wares: bread and fish and meat, cloth and spice and spiritual guidance and never two days in the same configuration.
Every morning before the first light of dawn, merchants lined up at great kiosks waiting for the queensmen to arrive, escorting ornate iron chests from the governor's palace. Each merchant paid a fee and drew a ticket from the chest saying which of the thousands of alcoves and intersections would be theirs for the day. No moneylender, butcher, baker, or farmer could rely on making his fortune by holding a particular space. Or so it would be if the system weren't rigged. Cithrin had only been twice, but she doubted anything so carefully designed to give the appearance of fairness could keep from corruption.
She bought herself a burlap pocket of fire-warmed raisins and honey nuts, preparing herself for the search, but it wasn't long before she found the dressmaker she'd been hoping for, and only five alcoves from where she'd seen him last. The proprietor was a full-blood Cinnae man, thin and tall and pale, with rings on every finger and teeth that looked as if they'd been filed sharp. He had five tables arranged in a half circle with a sixth in the middle with his best wares on display. Cithrin paused, looking up at three dresses as if she were only passing time. The Cinnae stood at the side, shouting at a Firstblood woman who had her arms crossed and her face set in an almost godlike scowl. A crate lay between them, the pale wood soaked dark.
"Look! Look what the water's done to the dye!" the merchant said.
"I didn't drop them off the boat," the woman said.
"Neither did I."
"You signed papers for ten dresses. Here's ten dresses."
"I signed for ten dresses I could sell!"
Cithrin stepped closer. From what she could see, the dresses were simply cut. The seawater had run the dyes, yellow into blue into pale pink, and stippled all with spots of white like a handful of scattered sand. The Cinnae shot a look at her, annoyance narrowing his eyes.
"You need something?"
"A dress," Cithrin said around a mouthful of raisins. The merchant looked at her skeptically. Cithrin took her purse from her pocket and opened it. The silver caught the sunlight, and the merchant shrugged.
"Let me show you what we have," he said, turning away from the still-fuming Firstblood woman. From the center table, he took the first dress. Blue and white with embroidered sleeves, it seemed to breathe lavender petals. The merchant smoothed the cloth.
"This is our finest piece," he said. "Expensive, yes, but worth every coin. For a hundred and twenty silver, you won't find a better garment anywhere in the market. And that includes recutting it for your frame, of course."
Cithrin shook her head.
"That's not the one you sell," she said.
The merchant, replacing the dress on its stand, paused. Her phrase had struck him.
"You don't sell that one," Cithrin repeated. "It's not there to be sold. It's to make the next one seem reasonable. You offer the rose-colored one next? If you're starting at a hundred and twenty, you'll price it at... What? Eighty?"
"Eighty-five," the Cinnae said sourly.
"Which is too much," Cithrin said. "But I'll give you forty-five. That covers your cost and gives you a little profit."
"Forty-five?"
"It's a fair price," Cithrin said, taking another handful of raisins.
The merchant's jaw hung open an inch. The Firstblood woman beside the crate chuckled. Cithrin felt a sudden warmth in her belly, a release like the first drink of strong wine. She smiled, and for the first time in days, it came easily.
"If you give it to me for forty," Cithrin said, nodding at the ruined dresses, "I'll help you turn a profit on those."
The merchant stepped back, his arms crossed in front of him. Cithrin feared she'd overplayed him until he spoke.
"How would you propose that?" he said. His words had a touch of amusement.
"Forty," she said.
"Convince me."
Cithrin walked back to the crate and rifled through the dresses. They were all the same design. Cheap cloth with tin hooks and thread eyes, a bit of embroidery at the sleeve and collar.
"Where do you see the fewest goods from?" she asked. "Hallskar?"
"We don't see much from there," the merchant agreed.
"So switch out these hooks for silver," Cithrin said. "And put glass beads here at the collars. Three or four, but bright. Something to catch the eye."
"Why would I waste good silver and beads on trash like this?"
"You wouldn't," Cithrin said. "That's the point. If they have silver and beads, they must not be trash. Call them... I don't know. Hallskari salt dyes. New process, very rare. No other dresses like them in the Grand Market. Start them at two hundred silver, drop down to one hundred thirty."
"Why would anyone agree to pay that?"
"Why wouldn't they? When it's a new thing, no one knows its fair price. If nobody knows better, you can do anything."
The merchant shook his head, but it wasn't refusal. The Firstblood woman's eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. Cithrin dug out a honeyed nut. The roar and echo of voices around them was as good as silence. Cithrin waited for the space of four breaths as the merchant wrestled in his mind.
"If only one person in the whole Grand Market believed it," Cithrin said, "you'd cover the cost of all ten dresses. Hooks, beads, and everything. If two people did..."
The merchant was quiet for two breaths more.
"You know entirely too much about dresses," he said.
I don't know anything about dresses, she thought. The merchant barked out a laugh. He reached for the rose dress and tossed it at Cithrin in mock disgust.
"Forty," he said to her, then turned to the Firstblood woman. "Do you see this? Look at this face. That is a truly dangerous woman."
"I believe you," the Firstblood said as Cithrin, grinning, counted out coins.
An hour later, she was walking down the half-open ways of the Grand Market, her dress folded in a tight, rose-colored bundle under one arm, and the world around her a bright, benign place. The dress would need altering to make it fit her body, but that was a minor point. More than any object she'd gained, she enjoyed the idea of being a truly dangerous woman.
The sun had only just begun its slide into the west. Cithrin took herself toward the public baths, thinking of an hour's time in warm water and steam. Maybe even a few coins spent on a balm to drive away the fleas and lice that travel and her new, tiny rooms had given her. The baths sat at the northern edge of a wide public square. Pillars rose into the air, tall as trees, though whatever shelter they'd supported had been gone long enough that the rain had worn channels in the supports. Patches of brown, winter-killed grass lay like carpets in the open spaces, and twig-fingered bushes caught dead leaves and scraps of cloth. Cithrin walked past a cart selling hot soup and a weedy Kurtadam with a pair of marionettes dancing at his feet beside a beggar's bowl with a few bronze coins. Across the square, a troupe of players had changed their cart to a stage, edging out a pair of disgruntled puppeteers. Pigeons wheeled overhead. A group of Cinnae women walked together, pale and thin and lovely, their dresses flowing around their bodies like seaweed in the tide, and their voices all accents and music. Cithrin wanted to watch them, but without being seen. She'd never known a full-blooded Cinnae well. And yet her mother had been one, would have looked in place as part of just such a group.
The women turned up the wide steps that led to the baths, and Cithrin had started to follow when a familiar voice caught her up short.
"Stop!"
She turned.
"Stop now, and come near. Hear the tale of Aleren Mankiller and the Sword of Dragons! Or if you are faint of heart, move on."
On the players' stage, an older man strode across the planks, his voice ringing through the square. His beard jutted out, and his hair had been combed high. He wore gaudy theatrical robes, and his voice rang and slithered among the great pillars. There was no mistaking Master Kit, the cunning man. Cithrin walked toward the stage, wondering whether she was dreaming. Half a dozen other citizens of Porte Oliva had paused, drawn in by the patter, and the crowd itself drew a crowd. Cithrin stood on a patch of dead grass, amazed. Opal stepped out wearing a robe that made her seem ten years younger. Then Smit, wearing a simple laborer's cap and speaking in a broad Northcoast accent. Then Hornet in gilt armor, and behind him, striding onto the boards as if he owned the world and everything in it, Sandr. Cithrin laughed with delight, and other hands joined in her clapping. Mikel and Cary, both in among the crowd, nodded to her. Catching Cary's gaze, Cithrin pantomimed a drawing a sword and then gestured at the stage. I thought you were soldiers, and you were this? Cary shifted her head coyly and dropped a tiny curtsey before returning to the work of cheering Aleren Mankiller and hissing Orcus the Demon King.
The winter square was too cold. By the end of the first act, Cithrin's ears ached and her nose ran. She wrapped her arms around herself, huddling into her clothes, but nothing could have pulled her away. The story unfolded like a spring flower blooming, the caravan guards she'd known for months becoming actors before her, the actors becoming the parts they played until in the end Aleren Mankiller thrust the poisoned sword into the the belly of Orcus, Sandr and Master Kit half-forgotten echoes of men she used to know. The applause from the crowd was thin but heartfelt, and Cithrin dug out a few coins of her own to add to the shower dancing on the boards.
As the actors broke down the stage, Opal, Mikel, and Smit came out to grin at her and trade stories. Yes, they'd been actors from the start. They'd only played at being guards. Cary recited the opening of the comic piece they were making to commemorate the adventure. Cithrin told them - quietly so as not be overheard - about her rooms with Marcus and Yardem, and Opal made lewd jokes until Smit started to blush and they all lost track of themselves in laughing.
Sandr stood near the cart, frowning furiously and pointedly not looking at them all. Cithrin excused herself from the others and went to him, thinking that he might have been hurt that she was talking to the others and not to him.
"Imagine this," she said. "You never told me."
"Suppose not," Sandr said. He didn't meet her eyes.
"I didn't know," she said. "You were brilliant."
"Thank you."
Master Kit called from the far side of the cart, and Sandr hauled on a thick rope, pulling the stage up to lean against the cart's frame. Sandr tied off the rope, flickered his eyes to Cithrin and away, and nodded.
"I'm not done working. I need to go."
Cithrin stepped back, the pleasure in her heart going hollow.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to - "
"S'allright," Sandr said. "I just..."
Shaking his head, he walked away, ducking under a spar that Smit was bringing down to pack. Cithrin walked back into the square. The milk-colored sky seemed less benign than before. She didn't know whether to approach the players again or walk away, whether she was welcome here or an intrusion. She found herself suddenly aware of her tattered clothes and slept-on hair.
"It isn't you," a woman's voice said. Cary had looped around behind her. Cary, who'd demanded that Yardem tell her which weapon gave a woman advantage. Cary, who'd slung a bow over her shoulder and looked like a veteran of a dozen wars. Cary, who Cithrin didn't actually know.
"What isn't me?" she said.
"Sandr," Cary said, nodding toward a place down the square. "He's the new leading man. Leading men are always pigs for the first few years."
Sandr stood there, smiling. Three girls in rough clothes stood around him. One touched his arm, her fingers flickering on him like a butterfly unsure whether it was safe to land. Cithrin watched him smile at the girl, watched him glance down at her breasts.
"All I'm saying is, it's nothing to do with you," Cary said.
"I don't care," Cithrin said. "It's not as if I cared about him. But I didn't know that... I mean, I thought..."
"We all think that, the first few times," Cary said. "For what it draws, I'm sorry, and I promise I'll put sand in his beer in your name."
Cithrin forced herself to laugh. She didn't know when the knot had come back into her stomach, but it was there now.
"Nothing on my account," she said. "He's just what he is."
"Wise words, sister mine," Cary said. "Do you want to come out with us? We're trying another show outside the governor's palace at dusk."
"No," Cithrin said, too sharply. She tried again. "No, I was just going to the baths and then back to my rooms. Before the captain gets nervous."
"Luck with that. I think he was born nervous. Or watchful, at least," Cary said. "It was good seeing you."
Cithrin turned and walked up the broad steps. Steam billowed out of the bathhouse doors. Voices in argument and in song. Cithrin turned aside, walking past it all. Her jaw hurt, and she made herself unclench it. Part of her wanted to turn back, to go see who Sandr was talking with, whether he'd look her way. Maybe if...
Grit in the chilly air made her eyes water, and she wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. On the way home, she stopped at a public house and drank a mug of the same kind of fortified wine Sandr had brought her that day by the mill pond.
It didn't taste as good.
All well?" Captain Wester snapped as she came in. "You were gone a long time."
"Fine," she said shortly. "Everything's fine."