The Dragon’s Path (6 page)

Cithrin shook her head, stepping back. The woman snatched her by the sleeve.

“Don’t run off. I’m not afraid. Half my clients are here because they’ve been unwell. We can wash that pale right off you, dear.”

“I haven’t,” Cithrin said, finding her voice.

“Haven’t?” the woman said, steering her toward a stool at the stall’s inner corner. The scent of roses and turned earth made the air almost too thick to breathe.

“I’m not sick,” she said. “My mother’s Cinnae. It’s… it’s normal.”

The woman cast a pitying look at her. It was true. Cithrin had neither the delicate, spun-glass beauty of her mother’s people nor the solid, warm, earthy charms of a Firstblood girl. She was in between. The white mule, the other children had called her. Neither one thing nor the other.

“Well, all the more, then,” the woman said consolingly. “Just sit you down, and we’ll see what we can do.”

In the end, Cithrin bought a jar of lip rouge just so she could leave the stall.

Y
ou could just let him have a bit,” Cam said. “He is the prince. It isn’t as if you won’t know where to find him.”

Magister Imaniel looked up from his plate, his expression pleasant and unreadable. The candlelight reflected in his eyes. He was a small man with leathery skin and thin hair who could seem meek as a kitten when he wished, or become a demon of cold and rage. In all her years, Cithrin had never
decided which was the mask. His voice now was mild as his eyes.

“Cithrin?” he said. “Why won’t I lend money to the prince?”

“Because if he doesn’t want to pay you back, you can’t make him.”

Magister Imaniel shrugged at Cam. “You see? The girl knows. It’s bank policy never to lend to people who consider it beneath their dignity to repay. Besides which, who’s to say we have the coin to spare?”

Cam shook her head in feigned despair and reached across the table for the salt cellar. Magister Imaniel took another bite of his lamb.

“Why doesn’t he go to his barons and dukes, borrow from them?” Magister Imaniel asked.

“He can’t,” Cithrin said.

“Why not?

“Oh, leave the poor girl alone for once,” Cam said. “Can’t we have a single conversation without it turning into a test?”

“We have all their gold,” Cithrin said. “It’s all here.”

“Oh dear,” Magister Imaniel said, his eyes widening in false shock. “Is that so?”

“They’ve been coming for months. We’ve sold letters of exchange to half the high families in the city. For gold at first, but jewels or silk or tobacco… anything worth the trade.”

“You’re sure of that?”

Cithrin rolled her eyes.

“Everyone’s sure of that,” she said. “It’s all anyone talks about at the yard. The nobles are all swimming away like rats off a burning barge, and the banks are robbing them blind while they do it. When the letters of credit get to Carse
or Kiaria or Stollbourne, they aren’t going to get back half of what they paid for them.”

“It is a buyer’s market, that’s true,” Magister Imaniel said with an air of satisfaction. “But inventory becomes an issue.”

After dinner, Cithrin went up to her room and opened her windows to watch the mist rise from the canals. The air stank of the autumn linseed oil painted onto the wood buildings and bridges against the coming snow and rain. And beneath that, the rich green bloom of algae in the canals. She imagined sometimes that all the great houses were ships floating down a great river, the canals all connected in a single vast flow too deep for her to see.

At the end of the street, one of the iron gates had come loose from its stays, creaking back and forth in the breeze. Cithrin shivered, closed the shutters, changed for bed, and blew out her candle.

Shouts woke her. And then a lead-tipped club banging on the door.

She threw open the shutters and leaned out. The mist had cleared enough that the street was plain before her. A dozen men in the livery of the prince, five of them holding pitch-reeking torches, crowded the door. Their voices were loud and merry and cruel. One looked up, his dark eyes catching hers. The soldier broke into a grin. Cithrin, not knowing what was happening, smiled back uneasily and retreated. Her blood felt cold even before she heard the voices—Magister Imaniel sounding wary, the guard captain laughing, and then Cam’s heartbroken cry.

Cithrin ran down the stairway, the dim light of a distant lantern making the corridors a paler shade of black. Part of her knew that running toward the front door was lunacy,
that she should be running the other direction. But she’d heard Cam’s voice, and she had to know.

The guards were already gone when she reached the door. Magister Imaniel stood perfectly still, a lantern of tin and glass glowing in his hand. His face was expressionless. Cam knelt beside him, her wide fist pressed against her mouth. And Besel—perfect Besel, beautiful Besel—lay on the stone floor, bloody but no longer bleeding. Cithrin felt a shriek growing in the back of her throat, but she couldn’t make a sound.

“Get me a cunning man,” Magister Imaniel said.

“It’s too late,” Cam said, her throat thick with tears.

“I didn’t ask. Get me a cunning man. Cithrin, come here. Help me carry him in.”

There was no hope, but they did as they were told. Cam pulled on a wool cloak and hurried off into the gloom. Cithrin took Besel’s heels, Magister Imaniel his shoulders. Together, they hauled the body into the dining room and laid him on the wide wooden table. There were cuts on Besel’s face and hands. A deep gouge ran from his wrist almost to his elbow, the sleeve torn by the blade’s passage. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t bleed. He looked as peaceful as a man asleep.

The cunning man came, rubbed powders into Besel’s empty eyes, pressed palms to his silent chest, called the spirits and the angels. Besel took one long, ragged breath, but the magic wasn’t enough. Magister Imaniel paid the cunning man three thick silver coins and sent him on his way. Cam lit a fire in the grate, the flames giving Besel the eerie illusion of motion.

Magister Imaniel stood at the head of the table, looking down. Cithrin stepped forward and took Besel’s cold and
stiffening hand. She wanted badly to cry, but she couldn’t. Fear and pain and terrible disbelief raged in her and found no escape. When she looked up, Magister Imaniel’s gaze was on her.

Cam spoke. “We should have given it over. Let the prince take what he wants. It’s only money.”

“Bring me his clothes,” Magister Imaniel said. “A clean shirt. And that red jacket he disliked.”

His eyes were moving now, darting as if reading words written in the air. Cam and Cithrin exchanged a glance. Cithrin’s first, mad thought was that he wanted to wash and dress the body for burial.

“Cam?” Magister Imaniel said. “Did you hear me? Go!”

The old woman heaved herself up from the hearth and trundled quickly into the depths of house. Magister Imaniel turned to Cithrin. His cheeks were flushed, but she couldn’t say if it was rage or shame or something deeper.

“Can you steer a cart?” he asked. “Drive a small team? Two mules.”

“I don’t know,” Cithrin said. “Maybe.”

“Strip,” he said.

She blinked.

“Strip,” he said. “Your night clothes. Take them off. I need to see what were working with.”

Uncertainly, Cithrin lifted her hands to the stays at her shoulders, undid the knots, and let the cloth fall to the floor. The cold air raised gooseflesh on her skin. Magister Imaniel made small noises in the back of his throat as he walked around her, making some evaluation she couldn’t fathom. The corpse of Besel made no move. She felt the echo of shame. It occurred to her that she had never been naked in front of a man before.

Cam’s eyes went wide when she returned, her mouth making a little
O
of surprise. And then, less than a heartbeat later, her expression went hard as stone.

“No,” Cam said.

“Give me the shirt,” Magister Imaniel said.

Cam did nothing. He walked over and lifted Besel’s shirt and jacket from her. She didn’t stop him. Without speaking, he dropped the shirt over Cithrin’s head. The cloth was soft and warm, and smelled of the dead man’s skin. The hem dropped down low enough to restore some measure of modesty. Magister Imaniel stood back, and a bleak pleasure appeared at the corners of his eyes. He tossed Cithrin the jacket and nodded that she should put it on.

“We’ll need some needlework done,” he said, “but it’s possible.”

“You mustn’t do this, sir,” Cam said. “She’s just a girl.”

Magister Imaniel ignored her, stepping close again to pull Cithrin’s hair back from her face. He tapped his fingers together as if trying to remember something, bent to the fire grate, and rubbed his thumb through the soot. He smudged Cithrin’s cheeks and chin. She smelled old smoke.

“We’ll need something better, but…” he said, clearly speaking only to himself. “Now… what is your name?”

“Cithrin?” she said.

Magister Imaniel barked out a laugh.

“What kind of name is that for a fine strapping boy like yourself? Tag. Your name is Tag. Say that.”

“My name is Tag,” she said.

Magister Imaniel’s face twisted in scorn. “You talk like a girl, Tag.”

“My name is Tag,” Cithrin said, roughening her voice and mumbling.

“Fair,” he said. “Only fair. But we’ll work on it.”

“You can’t do this,” Cam said.

Magister Imaniel smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“The prince has crossed a line,” he said. “The policy of the bank is clear. He gets nothing.”

“You
are
the policy of the bank,” Cam said.

“And I am
clear.
Tag, my boy? A week from now, you are going to go to Master Will, down in the Old Quarter. He’s going to hire you to drive a cart in a caravan bound for Northcoast. Undyed wool cloth he’s moving to keep from losing it in the war.”

Cithrin didn’t nod or shake her head. The world was spinning a little, and everything had the sense of being part of a terrible dream.

“When you reach Carse,” Magister Imaniel continued, “you take the cart to the holding company. I’ll give you a map and directions. And a letter that will explain everything.”

“It’s weeks on the road!” Cam shouted. “Months, if there’s snow in the pass.”

Magister Imaniel turned, rage lighting his eyes. His voice was low and cold.

“What would you have me do? Keep her here? She’s no safer in our beds than passing for a carter in a caravan. And I will
not
simply accept the loss.”

“I don’t understand,” Cithrin said. Her voice sounded distant in her ears, as if she were shouting over surf.

“The prince’s men are watching us,” Magister Imaniel said. “I must assume they’re watching anyone in the bank’s employ. And, I expect, the bank’s ward, Cithrin the half-Cinnae. Tag the Carter, on the other hand…”

“The carter?” Cithrin said, echoing him more than thinking thoughts of her own.

“The cart’s false,” Cam said, her voice thick with despair. “Besel was set to take it. Smuggle out all the money we can.”

“The gold?” Cithrin said. “You want
me
to take the gold to Carse?”

“Some, yes,” Magister Imaniel said. “But gold’s heavy. We’re better sending gems and jewelry. They’re worth more. Spices. Tobacco leaf. Silk. Things light enough they’ll pack tight and won’t break the axles. And the account books. The real ones. As for the coins and ingots… well, I’ll think of something.”

He smiled like the mask of a smile. Besel’s corpse seemed to shift its shoulders in the flickering light. A draught of cold air rubbed against her bare thighs, and the knot in her belly tightened until she tasted vomit in the back of her mouth.

“You can do this thing, my dear,” Magister Imaniel said. “I have faith in you.”

“Thank you,” she said, swallowing.

C
ithrin walked through the streets of Vanai, her stomach in knots. The false mustache was the sort of thin, weedy thing a callow boy might cultivate and be proud of. Her clothes were a mix of Besel’s shirts and jackets resewn in the privacy of the bank and whatever cheap, mended rags could be scrounged. They hadn’t dared to buy anything new. Her hair was tea-stained to an almost colorless brown and combed forward to obscure her face. She walked with the wider gait Magister Imaniel had taught her, a knot of uncomfortable cloth held tight against her sex to remind her that she was supposed to have a cock.

She felt worse than foolish. She felt like a mummer in clown face and comic shoes. She felt like the most obvious fraud in the city, or the world. And every time she closed her
eyes, Besel’s corpse waited for her. Every voice that called out started her heart skipping faster. She waited for the knife, the arrow, the lead-tipped cudgel. But the streets of Vanai didn’t notice her.

Everywhere, the final preparations for the war were being made. Merchants nailed their windows closed. Wagons clogged the streets as families who had chosen not to flee to the countryside changed their minds and left and others that had gone changed their minds and returned. Criers in the service of the prince announced the improbable thousand men on the march now from their new allies, and the old Timzinae men by the quayside laughed and said they’d all be better off Antean than married to Maccia. Press gangs scattered people before them like wolves snapping at hens. And in the Old Quarter, the tall, dark, richly carved doors of Master Will’s shop were flung wide. The street was jammed with carts and wagons, mules and horses and oxen. The caravan was forming in the square, and Cithrin made her way through the press of the crowd toward the wide, leather-capped form of Master Will.