Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

Yardem took the box from the old actor’s hands and lifted it to the top of the pile.

“But if you doubt everything,” the Tralgu said, “how can anything be justified?”

“Tentatively. And subject to later examination. It seems to me the better question is whether there’s any virtue in committing to a permanent and unexamined certainty. I don’t believe we can say that.”

Captain Wester made a noise in the back of his throat like a dog preparing for the attack. Cithrin felt herself start to cringe back, but didn’t let her body follow the impulse through.

“We can say,” the captain said, “that wasting good air on the question won’t get the work done any faster.”

“Sorry, sir,” the Tralgu said.

Master Kit nodded his apology and went back down the thin wooden stairs to the street. Sandr and Hornet, coming up with a box of gems between them, flattened themselves to the wall to let him pass. Cithrin shifted, giving them room enough to pass the new box to Yardem, and Yardem enough to find a place for it in the new rooms. A cold, damp breeze and the smell of fresh horse droppings wafted through the open windows along with the daylight. Cithrin thought it seemed like springtime.

“Was he a priest as a boy?” Marcus said, pointing down the stairway with his chin. “He starts talking about faith and doubt and the nature of truth, it’s like we’re back in the ’van getting a sermon with every meal.”

“What he says makes sense,” Yardem said.

“To you,” Marcus replied.

“Suppose he might have been a priest. It’s Master Kit,” Hornet said with a shrug. “If he told us he’d walked up the mountainside and drank beer with the moon, I’d probably believe it. We’ve got two more boxes the size of that one, and then all those wax blocks.”

“Wax?” Marcus asked.

“The books,” Cithrin said, but the words came out as a croak. She coughed and began again. “The books and ledgers. They’re sealed against the damp.”

Which is a good thing, she thought, since we sank them in a mill pond. Immediately, she imagined a crack in the sealing wax. Pages and pages of smeared ink and rotting paper hidden by the protecting wraps. What if the books were ruined? What would she tell Magister Imaniel then? What would she tell the bankers in Carse?

“Well, bring them up,” Marcus said. “We’ll find a place for them somewhere.”

Hornet nodded, but Sandr was already going down the stairs. He hadn’t even looked at her. She told herself it didn’t bother her.

Cithrin was very aware that the new rooms didn’t entirely meet with Captain Wester’s approval. Unlike the place in the salt quarter, these were on the second story with woodplank floors that reported any motion to the floor below in a language of creaks and pops. The shop on the first floor was a gambler’s stall, which meant any number of people of any status might come and go throughout the day. But the lock at the base of the stair was sturdy, surrounding streets less prone to the drunken and the lost, and the windows without balcony or simple access. Additionally, there was an alley window out which the pisspot could be emptied, and the change of location had landed her five doors down from a taproom where they could buy food and beer.

Cary and Mikel came up next. Cary was grinning.

“Boy on the street asked us what we were hauling,” Cary said.

Cithrin could see the tension in Captain Wester’s face as he walked to the window and peered out.

“What did you tell him?”

“Paste jewels for the First Thaw celebrations,” Cary said. “Opened one of the boxes for him, too. You should have seen it. He looked so disappointed. ”

Cary laughed, not seeing the anger on Captain Wester’s face. Or perhaps seeing it and not caring. During the days when they’d looked for new rooms and prepared to shift the smuggled wealth of Vanai to its new hiding place, Opal had only been mentioned once when Smit had joked that she’d found a way to keep from having to do any of the hard work. Nobody had laughed.

Cithrin still had to fight herself to believe that it had happened. That Opal had meant to slaughter her and take the money was hard enough to comprehend. That Captain Wester had killed her for it was worse. Of course the others were angry. Of course they resented the captain. And Yardem. And her. They had to. And here they were, hauling boxes and making jokes. Cithrin found that she trusted them—each and every one of them—not because they were trustworthy, but because she wanted them to be.

She’d made the mistake with Opal, and she was watching herself make it again. That knowledge alone twisted her badly enough she hadn’t slept or eaten well since the night she’d woken up with five dead men around her.

Master Kit came up the stairs, a double armful of wrapped books before him. Then Sandr and Hornet with the last of the boxes. With everything from the cart, there wasn’t much room left for them all. Sandr was trapped standing beside her. When he saw her looking at him, he blushed and nodded the bird-fast twitch he might use to greet someone in the street.

“I believe this is the last of it,” Master Kit said as Yardem lifted the books from him.

“Thank you for this,” Cithrin said. “All of you.”

“It’s the least we could,” Smit said. “We’re only sorry it happened this way.”

“Yes, well,” Cithrin said. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Why don’t the rest of you go on,” Master Kit said. “I’ll try to catch up in a bit.”

The actors nodded and left. Cithrin heard their voices through the window as their cart pulled away. Captain Wester stalked around the room as if his restlessness and impatience would make the floorboards quieter and more certain. Yardem stretched out on the cot nestled between piles of boxes and closed his eyes, resting before the night came. Master Kit rose and held a hand out to her.

“Cithrin,” he said, “I was hoping we might walk together.”

She looked from the old actor’s hand to Captain Wester and back.

“Where?” she said.

“I didn’t have anyplace particularly in mind,” Master Kit said. “I thought the walking might be enough.”

“All right,” Cithrin said, and let him help her to her feet.

Outside, the street traffic shifted like water; broad and slow in the wide square to the east, faster in the narrow channel of the street. A Cinnae man stood outside the gambler’s stall, calling to the men and women walking past. Great fortune could be theirs. Luck favored the brave. They could soften the loss of business by wagering against themselves. Odds offered on any fair wager. He sounded bored.

Horse-drawn carts labored through the press, and a team of Timzinae walked behind them with flat-bladed shovels, picking up their droppings. Half a dozen children screamed and chased each other, splashing through puddles of mud and grime and worse. A laundry cart rattled by, pulled by a Firstblood girl no older than Cithrin, but with lines of hardship already forming in the angles of her mouth. Master Kit strode forth and Cithrin let him lead, unsure whether she was walking behind him or at his side.

The street opened into a square Cithrin hadn’t seen before. A huge church loomed to the east. Voices raised in song wove through the chill air, praising God and working through harmonic puzzles as if the two pursuits were one. Master Kit paused when she did, listening with her. The smile on his face softened into something touched with sorrow.

“It is lovely, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?” Cithrin asked.

He leaned against a stone wall and gestured out. The square, the song, the sky above them.

“I suppose I meant the world. For all the tragedy and pain, I do, at least, find it beautiful.”