Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

“You mean the farmer’s council.”

“That’s one place,” Dawson said. “But if they are willing to champion rabble, how long is it before the rabble choose to champion themselves? Already we have restrictions on slavery, on bed servants, on land service. All of that within our lifetimes. And all from men like Issandrian, courting favor from laborers and merchants and whores.”

Canl Daskellin gave out a low grunt. Between the thin winter light silhouetting him and the almost Lyoneian darkness of his skin, Dawson could hardly make out his expression. Still, he hadn’t disagreed. And if he hadn’t had concerns of his own, he wouldn’t have come.

“It’s time for the true spirit of Antea to put things right,” Dawson said. “These hounds think they run the hunt. They must be broken, and if we wait until Prince Aster is living under Issandrian’s roof…”

The silence finished his thought more eloquently than any words could. Daskellin shifted forward in his chair, muttering something obscene under his breath.

“You’re sure the king intends to take that step?”

“I heard it from his own mouth,” Dawson said. “Simeon is a good man, and he could be a good king too, but not without our loyalty. He’s waiting for his chance to put Issandrian in his place. And I am going to provide that chance.”

Soft voices came from the passage beyond, and then faded again. From the street, the clacking of steel-shod hooves. Canl drew a small clay pipe from his jacket and lifted his hand. A servant girl scurried over with a taper. With the first fragrant blue cloud of smoke, she retreated. Dawson waited.

“How?” Daskellin asked. His voice had taken on the firmness of an interrogator. Dawson smiled. The battle was half won.

“Deny Issandrian his strength,” Dawson said. “Recall Alan Klin from Vanai. Alienate Issandrian from the farmers. Shatter his circle.”

“Meaning Maas and Klin.”

“To start, but he has other adherents as well. But that isn’t enough. They gained influence because the men who understand what noble blood means are divided.”

Daskellin took a long draw on his pipe, the ember glowing bright and then fading as he exhaled.

“And thus your conspiracy,” he said.

“Loyalty to the king is no conspiracy,” Dawson said. “It’s what we should have been doing all along. But we slept, and the dogs snuck in. And, Canl, you know that.”

Daskellin tapped the clay stem against his teeth. His eyes narrowed.

“Whatever it is,” Dawson said, “say it.”

“Loyalty to King Simeon is one thing. Becoming the tool of House Kalliam is something else. I am… disturbed by the changes Issandrian and his cabal are suggesting. But trading one man of ambition for another is no solution.”

“You want me to show I’m not Issandrian?”

“I do.”

“What proof do you want?”

“If I help to recall Klin from Vanai, you cannot profit from it. Everyone’s quite aware that your son is under Klin’s command there. Jorey Kalliam cannot take the protectorship of Vanai.”

Dawson blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again.

“Canl,” he began, but Daskellin’s eyes narrowed. Dawson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke, his voice was harder than he’d meant it to be. “I swear before God and the throne of Antea that my son Jorey will not take protectorship of Vanai when Alan Klin is called home. Further, I swear that no one of my house will take profit from Vanai. Now, will you swear the same, old friend?”

“Me?”

“You have a cousin in the city, I think? I’m sure you wouldn’t want to give the impression that your own support of the throne is merely self-serving?”

Daskellin’s laughter boomed and rolled, a deep sound and warm enough to push back the teeth of winter, if only for a moment.

“God wept, Kalliam. You’ll make altruists of us all.”

“Will you swear?” Kalliam said. “Will you make common cause with the men who are loyal to King Simeon and to put the restoration of tradition ahead of your own glory?”

“True servants to the throne,” Daskellin said, half amused.

“Yes,” Dawson said. There was no room for lightness in his voice. He was hard as stone, his intentions fashioned from steel. “True servants to the throne.”

Daskellin sobered.

“You mean this,” he said.

“I do,” Dawson said.

The dark eyes flickered over Dawson’s face, as if trying to penetrate a disguise. And then as it had with half a dozen men before him—men whom Dawson had chosen because he knew they were as hungry for it as he himself was—pride bloomed in the dark face. Pride and determination and a sense of becoming part of something greater and good.

“Then yes,” Daskellin said softly, “I will.”

The Division was the most obvious of the partitions within the city, but it was far from the only one. On both sides of the bridges, nobility held to their mansions and squares while the lesser people lived in smaller, narrower ways. Living north of the Kestrel Square meant you were of high stature. Having your stables by the southern gate meant you had good blood, but a squandered fortune. The city was complex in ways that only her citizens could know. The streets were not the only dimension in which class could be measured. The poorest and most desperate tunneled down to coax new life out of the ruins of previous ages on which the modern city was built, living in darkness and squalor, but saving them at least from the indignities of winter.

Ice and snow turned the dark cobbles white. Carts went slowly, and mules carefully. Horses walked haltingly for fear of slipping, breaking a leg, and being slaughtered on the street where they fell. The Camnipol winter stole even the dignity of a waiting carriage, but the meeting with Daskellin had left Dawson so pleased with himself that he barely minded. He let the servant girl belt on his overcoat of dark leather with silverwork seams and bloodstone hooks, put on the broad-brimmed hat that matched it, and marched himself out into the streets toward his home and Clara.

He’d spent his boyhood in Camnipol, following his father through the rituals of power during the day and then drinking, singing, and carousing with the other highborn boys through the nights. Even now, decades later, the snow-caked stone held memories under it. He passed the thin alley where Eliayzer Breiniako had run naked after losing a bet with him the night they’d both turned fourteen. Then the wide turning that led to the streets where all the Timzinae and Jasuru made their homes: the quarter of bugs and pennies. He passed under Morade’s Arch, where the last, mad Dragon Emperor had died in his clutch-mate’s talons; the arc of the dragon’s jade rose up almost as high as the Kingspire itself and so thin and finely worked it seemed any wind would tip it over. He passed the Chancel of Sorrial, with its soot-blackened southern wall. The cathouse where his father had taken him on his tenth birthday and bought him his first night with a woman.

The single white cloud of the sky glowed beneficently on the city, dispelling shadows. A baker’s cart coming back from the market square dropped a crate of almonds, and a dozen children seemed to appear from no place, grabbing at the nuts before the carter could stop them. On the western wall, he could look down over the great plains of Antea like God looking down on the world. The wind through the streets bit and rasped on his lips and cheeks. It was the perfect city. Everything had happened here, from the fall of dragons, to the elevation of the White Prophet, to the slave riots that had brought House Antea to refound a Firstblood empire in the city that dragons built. The stones stood witness to centuries, to ages.