Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

Cithrin grabbed at each rumor like one of the ever-present beggars watching for dropped coins. At first, she hadn’t believed it. Cities didn’t die overnight. The streets and canals she’d known all her life couldn’t become ruins just because someone said it, even if the man speaking was an Antean general. It was ridiculous. But with every retelling, every new voice that said the same things, her incredulity faded. Even if they were all only echoing one another, the weight of their combined belief pulled her along.

Vanai was dead.

“Are you all right?” Sandr asked.

Cithrin leaned forward, her legs swinging from the side of the actors’ cart like a child sitting on too high a stool. Around them, the midday crowd shuffled. She watched a reed-thin Cinnae boy thread himself through the press of bodies, following the colorless thatch of his hair. The smell of the sea brine made the air feel cooler than it was. She didn’t know how to answer, but she tried.

“I don’t know. I think so. It’s hard to live in the middle of all this,” she said, nodding at the press of humanity around them, “and really feel the deaths. I mean, I know that Magister Imaniel is gone. And Cam must be too. All the boys who played in the streets are dead, and that makes me sad sometimes. But when I start thinking that it’s all gone—the fresh market and the palaces and the flat barges and all of it—it gets… I don’t know. Abstract?”

“That’s a good word for it,” Sandr said, nodding as if he knew what she meant.

“Nobody knows me now. I’ve lived my whole life in Vanai. It felt like everyone knew who I was. What I was. And now that they’re all gone, there’s nothing holding me to that anymore. Captain Wester, Yardem Hane, you, and Master Kit’s company. You are the people in the world who know me best.”

“It’s hard,” Sandr said, taking her hand.

No, that’s the only good part, she thought. When nobody knows what you are, you can be anything.

“Sandr!” Master Kit called. “It’s time.”

“Yes, sir,” Sandr said, jumping to his feet. He looked down at Cithrin and smiled gently, much the way he did when he took the stage. “You’ll be here when it’s done?”

Cithrin nodded. It wasn’t as if she had someplace else to be. Besides which, Sandr’s sudden change of heart was interesting. She assumed that some more attractive girl had refused him, and he’d fallen back to court her while his confidence healed. He believed, after their moments beside the mill pond, that she was an easy conquest. Cithrin wondered whether she was. More than that, she wondered whether she’d like to be. She slipped off the cart and into the crowd.

Mikel was already there, halfheartedly pretending to be a local. He caught her eyes and grinned. She nodded back, then turned to watch Smit and Hornet lower the stage. When the chains had caught, Master Kit strode out onto the boards. He wasn’t wearing his Orcus the Demon King robes anymore. With Opal gone, the story of Aleren Mankiller and the Sword of the Dragons had been set aside. Instead, a shimmering blue cape flowed from the shoulders of a matching tunic. Bright yellow ribbon gartered green hose, and the most ridiculous shoes seen by human eyes bobbled around his toes.

“Hell- lo !” Master Kit cried in comic falsetto. “I said, hello there! Yes, you, in that wonderful hat. Why don’t you stop for a while. God knows you’ve nothing better to do. And you, there at the back. Come closer, you might see something you like. What? You might. And—”

Master Kit stopped, his face a mask of shock. Cithrin felt a thrill of fear, half turning to follow his gaze.

“Oh, not you, dear,” Master Kit went on in the same false voice, his hand fluttering like a sparrow. “ You keep right on going.”

The crowd laughed. Cithrin and Mikel were meant to lead them, but there were already half a dozen others who had stopped to watch. The Bride’s Curse was a comedic sex play with half a dozen costume changes that could be performed with only one woman. Master Kit had changed the traditional lines to match with the specifics of Porte Oliva: the rhymes appealing to the king had all been remade for a queen, and instead of the evil landlord being disguised as a Yemmu with a false shoulder and mouth tusks, Smit jumped onto the stage in a bead-woven sheep pelt as the world’s least convincing Kurtadam. Cithrin laughed and clapped, not leading the crowd so much as adding to its flow.

When the end came and the players took their bows amid a modest shower of coin, she was almost surprised to find herself returned to her own life. Hiding in Porte Oliva, waiting for the next thieves to attack in the night.

And Vanai dead.

Sandr came out from the cart wiping the paint from his face with a damp rag. The smears at his eyes and mouth made him look younger than he was. Or perhaps they made him seem his age, when he usually passed himself as a worn coin.

“Went well,” he said through a grin.

“It did,” Cithrin agreed.

“Buy you that meal now, if you’d like,” he said. Over his shoulder, Cithrin caught a glimpse of Cary scowling at them from the cart and imagined what she would see. Sandr, the leading man. Cithrin, the naïve second-choice girl. Or perhaps Sandr, member of the troupe, and Cithrin, the reason Opal was gone. The pinched lips and furrowed brow could have been disapproval of her or of Sandr. Cithrin didn’t know which it was.

Find out, Magister Imaniel said from her memory or else his grave.

Cithrin lifted a hand only as high as her waist, barely a wave. Cary returned it, and then pointed at Sandr and tilted her head. Really? If she’d been angry about Opal, at most she would have smiled and waved. Surprised by relief, Cithrin shrugged. Cary rolled her eyes and went back into the cart.

“What?” Sandr said, looking over his shoulder. “Did I miss something?”

“Just Cary,” Cithrin said. “You said something about a meal?”

The taproom nearest her rooms served plates of chicken and pickled carrots that they claimed went well with the dark beer. Sandr paid five extra coins for the privilege of a private table with a single bench, kept apart from the commons by a draped cloth too humble to be called a curtain. He slid onto the bench at her side, with a tankard of black beer and a wide mug of fortified wine for her. His leg settled easily beside hers, as if the touch were perfectly normal. Cithrin considered shifting to leave a few inches between them. Instead, she drank a generous mouthful of the wine, enjoying the bite of it. Sandr smiled and sipped at his own beer.

This was, she realized, a negotiation. He wanted to do some of the things he’d just finished mocking in the sex play, and he in turn was willing to offer up food and alcohol, attention and sympathy. And, whether he knew it or not, experience. Implicit exchange was something Magister Imaniel had talked about several times, and always with disdain. He’d liked the precision of measuring coin. Here, in the warmth of the taproom, the tastes of salted meat and fortified wine warming her blood, Cithrin wasn’t sure she agreed. Surely imprecision had its place.

“I’m sorry about Vanai,” Sandr said, using the same gambit he’d tried before the play.

Now what was the effect of saying that? Reminding her how badly she needed reassurance and the feeling of connection, she supposed. Making the things he offered seem valuable. Still, he’d made that point earlier. Stating it again was a mistake. Maybe if he’d interspersed it with other tactics. He could devalue her side of the exchange. If, for instance he’d criticized her dress or the cut of her hair, making it clear that lying down at her side wasn’t likely worth so much. The danger there being that she might take offense and end the negotiation. Or pretend offense as a way of forcing him to raise his offer.