Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

Instead, he turned away. The shifting dust of snow moved over the ice like ripples on water. Geder walked along the edge, trying not to feel the girl’s gaze on him. Some idiot had been skating. White marks showed where blades had cut across the thin ice. Lucky they didn’t break through. He’d read an essay once outlining the time it took each of the thirteen races to die in icy water. Well, twelve, really. The Drowned weren’t…

Geder stopped almost before he knew what stopped him. On the edge of the pond, a long, low drift of snow swept out onto the ice. The white blade marks vanished into it, and then out of it again as if the skater had passed directly through the little drift. Or it hadn’t been there until after the skater had passed. Geder walked closer. The snow itself looked odd. It didn’t have the ice-crust he expected, and it was smooth as broom-swept sand. Geder looked up. The guards were on the far side of the caravan. His own soldiers grouped at the mouth of the mill house. He walked around the curious snow.

Deep scores and marks marred the surface of the ice. Poking out just at ankle height, something black and square. He squatted, brushing the snow away. A box, half drowned in recently cut ice and then covered over. And others beside it, all of them crusted over with thin ice and hidden by the carefully arranged snowdrift. He looked up. The girl carter was standing now, craning her neck to see him, her hands knotted at her belly. Geder took out his knife and forced the latch. Topaz, jade, emerald, pearl, gold and silver filigree as delicate as frost. Geder pulled back like the gems had stung him, and then, as he understood what he was seeing, felt a sunrise in his chest, relief and pleasure rushing through him, unknotting his muscles and bringing a grin to his face.

He’d done it. He’d found the missing caravan and the hidden wealth of Vanai. No more of Geder Palliako, the expendable idiot. No more apologizing for what he liked to read or the roundness of his belly. Oh, no. His name would be carried back to Camnipol and King Simeon on a carriage of gold by horses with rubies on their reins. He would be the talk of the court, praised and honored and celebrated in the highest circles of the kingdom.

Except, of course, that he wouldn’t. The name that would be celebrated in Camnipol was Alan Klin’s.

Alan Klin, who’d humiliated him. Who’d burned his book.

Geder took a long, deep breath, let it out slowly, and closed the lid. A moment later, he opened it again, dug two double handfuls of gems out, and poured them down his shirt. The lovely little stones gathered around his belly where his belt cinched tight. He closed his jacket to cover the lumps, lowered the lid again, and scraped the snow back over it. As he stood, a wide, black joy filled him and made his first pleasure seem weak. When he walked back to the carts, he didn’t need to remind himself to hold his head high. The girl watched him approach. Geder grinned at her like he was greeting an old friend or a lover. An accomplice. Briefly, he lifted a single finger to his lips. Don’t tell.

The girl’s eyes went wide. Half a breath later she nodded, only once. I won’t. He could have kissed her.

When he found his second, the Timzinae had finished leading the common soldiers through the mill house. Geder noticed that the conversation among the soldiers stopped when he walked in the room, but this time it didn’t bother him. The interior of the house smelled of mold and smoke, and the signs of the caravan’s night in the shelter marked the stones of the flooring. A broom leaned against the far wall. Its head was wet, and a thin puddle of water darkened the stones beneath it. Geder pointedly ignored it.

“What have you found?” he asked.

“Nothing, my lord,” the second said.

“We’re wasting time here,” Geder said. “Gather the men. We should move on.”

The second looked around. One of the soldiers—a young Timzinae with black scales that shone like he’d polished them—shrugged.

“My lord, we haven’t turned the basement. If you’d like—”

“Do you really think there’s a point to it?” Geder asked. When the second didn’t reply at once: “Honestly.”

“Honestly, no.”

“Then let’s get the men together and go.”

The caravan master, sitting on a stool, made a rough impatient noise in the back of his throat. Geder turned to him.

“On behalf of empire and king, I apologize for this inconvenience,” he said with a bow.

“Think nothing of it,” the ’van master said sourly.

Outside, the soldiers fell into position as they had every time before. Geder lifted himself to his own saddle carefully. His belt held. The gems and jewels dug at his skin, pinching a little at his sides. None fell out. The caravan guards watched with well-feigned lack of interest as Geder drew his sword in salute, turned his horse, and moved forward at a gentle walk. With every step they took away from the caravan, he felt his spine relax. The sun, already sliding down toward the horizon, half blinded him, and he craned his neck, counting the soldiers behind him to make sure no one had doubled back or been left behind. None had.

At the top of the ridge, Geder paused. His second came to his side.

“We can make camp at the same place as last night, my lord,” he said. “Strike out south and west in the morning.”

Geder shook his head. “East,” he said.

“Lord?”

“Let’s go east,” Geder said. “Gilea’s not far, and we can spend a few days someplace warm before we go back to Vanai.”

“We’re going back?” the second asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“May as well,” Geder said, struggling against his smile. “We aren’t going to find anything.”

Winter business.

The words themselves reeked of desperation. From the longest night to first thaw, noblemen took to their estates or they followed the King’s Hunt. They took stock of what sort of men their sons were becoming, reacquainted themselves with wives and mistresses, looked over the tax revenue from their holdings. To the highborn, winter meant domesticity and the work of the hearth. Much as he loved Camnipol, passing through the wind-chilled, smoke-stinking streets put Dawson in the company of professional courtiers, merchants, and other men of uncertain status. But his cause was just, and so he bore the insult to his dignity.

Nor was he the only one to suffer it.

“I don’t understand why you hate Issandrian so deeply,” said Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch, Protector of Northport, and His Majesty’s Special Ambassador to Northcoast. “He’s entirely too pretty and full of himself, it’s true, but if you take being self-impressed and ambitious as sinning, you won’t find any saints in this court.”

Dawson sat back in his chair. Around them, the Fraternity of the Great Bear seemed almost empty. Seats and cushions upholstered in raw silk or Cabral damask sat empty. Black iron braziers squatted in rooms built to be cool in midsummer. The servant girls, so often hard-pressed to tend the needs of the fraternity members, haunted the shadows and doorways, waiting for a sign that something might be wanted. At summer’s height, there might be a hundred men of the best breeding in the empire drinking and smoking and conducting affairs of court in these grand and comfortable rooms. Now, if Dawson spoke too loud, it echoed.

“It isn’t the man,” Dawson said. “It’s the philosophy behind him. Maas and Klin are no better, but Issandrian holds their leashes.”

“Philosophical differences hardly seem to justify… What? Conspiracy?”

“Philosophy always becomes action. Issandrian and Maas and the others are willing to play to the lowest kind of man in order to gain power.”