Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

Cithrin raised her eyebrows, asking.

“It’s done,” Marcus said. “You? Things went well with the governor?”

“Fine,” Cithrin said. “Paid the fee, left the box.”

“The receipt?”

“Burned it,” Cithrin said. “There won’t be a trail back. As long as the governor doesn’t get curious and force the lock, we’re as ready as we’re likely to get.”

A servant hurried over, put a tankard of ale on the table in front of Marcus, and reached to take Cithrin’s away. She stopped him, and he nodded his bow and darted away.

“What are the chances that the governor’s baser instincts will get the better of him?” Marcus asked instead of How much have you drunk? If she were in danger of losing herself, Yardem would have stopped her. Maybe already had.

“Life is risk,” she said as Roach, sitting beside her, sipped ale from his own tankard.

“Yardem was just telling us about the shapes of people’s souls,” Barth said. “Did you know your soul’s a circle?”

Marcus shot a pained look at Yardem. The flick of an ear was the closest he got to an apology.

“Don’t listen to anything he says, Barth. He’s religious. It makes him nervous when things are going well.”

“Wasn’t aware they were going well, sir,” Yardem said dryly.

Over the next hour, Marcus drank his tankard of ale, ate a plate of roast pork with a black sauce hot enough to bring tears to his eyes, and listened to the talk around the table. Barth kept on Yardem about souls and destiny, but Enen and Roach and Cithrin chewed on more practical matters: how many payments would be coming to the bank proper and how many to the room at the café, how to assure that no one attacked whoever carried the café payments across the city, whether to make arrangements with the queensmen to help enforce their private contracts. All the business and consideration of a bank’s owner to her people. Cithrin spoke like a woman sure of her fate, and Marcus admired her for that.

The banging of a stick on a tin pan interrupted them.

“Show’s to start!” Mikel’s voice threaded through the noise of the taproom. “Come and watch the show! Show’s to start!”

Marcus dropped a few coins on the table, rose, and, half joking, offered Cithrin his hand.

“Shall we?” he asked.

She accepted his support with a mocking formality.

“It’s what we’ve come here for,” she said. Marcus led her and the members of his new company out to the pleasant cool of the courtyard to watch his old one. The crowd was good. Easily fifty people, and more likely to stop as they went in or out. When Master Kit strode out on the boards, his wiry hair pulled back and a sword strapped to his hip, a few people applauded, Marcus among them. Sandr came out a moment later, pretending to pick his teeth with a blunted dagger.

“You, Pintin, have been my second in command these many years,” Master Kit said, thrusting out his chin in parody of heroism. “From the moments of my highest glory and the depths of my despair, you have followed me. Now once again the hounds of war are loosed, and we must fly before them. The armies of dark Sarakal descend upon the city tomorrow.”

“Best we get out tonight, then,” Sandr said. The crowd chuckled.

“Indeed, ours is not to stand and fight the doomèd fight. The city surely shall fall, and before it does, Lady Daneillin—last of her house and gentlest beauty of Elassae—must be taken safe away. That is our great work, Pintin. Our company is to fly this night with the great lady in our charge.”

“Yeah, problem with that,” Sandr said in his Pintin voice. “The men were on the city wall seeing who could piss the farthest. Seems the magistrate thought it was raining. They’re all in the city gaol.”

Master Kit paused. The self-importance in his jaw melted.

“ What? ” he shrieked in comic falsetto. More people laughed. They were warming to it.

Marcus leaned toward Yardem Hane.

“I’m not like that, though,” he said. “All that high dramatic talk and sucking my gut in. That’s not what I’m like.”

“Not at all, sir,” Yardem said.

Two days later, Cithrin sat across the café table from him. A light rain pattered outside the open doors and windows, the stones at the entrance of the Grand Market darkened almost black. Behind him, two Kurtadam men were talking about the latest news from Northcoast. Another war of succession seemed almost certain. Marcus told himself he didn’t care, and for the most part that was true. The world smelled of coffee and raindrops.

“If we have the free coin, I’m thinking about sponsoring one of the Narinisle ships next year,” Cithrin said.

Marcus nodded.

“There’s going to be uncertainty about the new fleet idea. Especially at first. If it’s a success, even just for the first couple of years, it’s going to increase the traffic through Porte Oliva. That could be a very good thing for us, so long as we’re in position. Known to everyone. Trusted.”

“All that assuming,” Marcus said.

Cithrin swallowed. She’d lost weight in the last weeks, and her skin, while always pale, was growing pallid. It was odd to him that none of the men who came asking her patronage for a loan or offering to deposit their wealth with her for a discreet return appeared to notice that the anxiety was eating her. She wasn’t sleeping enough. But she wasn’t drinking herself to sleep either. That counted as strength enough for him.

“All that assuming,” she agreed. And then, “Do you ever wish we’d run? Filled our pockets and just… gone?”

“Ask me again once the auditor’s left,” Marcus said.

She nodded. The ancient, half-blind Cinnae man limped in from the back. The rain seemed to have no good effect on his hips. Cithrin raised her empty cup, and Maestro Ansanpur nodded with a knowing smile and turned back around.

“Magister Imaniel always said that waiting was the hardest thing,” she said. “That the easiest way to lose was to get impatient. Do something for the sake of doing something and not because it’s right. That always sounded obvious when he said it. He and Cam were the nearest thing I had to parents. I was with the bank almost as soon as I could walk. He knew everything about money and risk and how to appear one way when you’re actually something else.”

“He’d have made a good general, sounds like,” Marcus said.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t like soldiers, though. He didn’t like war. I remember he used to say that there are two ways to meet the world. You go out with a blade in your hand or else with a purse.”

“Really? And here I thought there was money to be made from war.”

“There is,” Cithrin said. “But only if you’re standing in exactly the right place. In the larger sense, there’s always more lost in the fight than there is won. The way he said things, it sounded like we were all that kept the swords in their scabbards. War or trade. Dagger and coin. Those were the two kinds of people.”

“Sounds like you miss him.”

Cithrin nodded, then shrugged, then nodded again.

“I do, but not the way I thought I would. I thought it would all be about wanting to ask him what he knew, but most times when I think of him, it’s just that it would be nice to hear his voice. And I don’t even think of him as often as I’d expected.”

“You’ve changed since you saw him,” Marcus said. “That’s one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don’t go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can’t push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren’t the same person who was in pain.”