Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

The prince scratched at the scales along his jaw and neck like a Firstblood stroking a beard. He grinned, sharp dark teeth like a wall.

“Eat! Sing!” he called, and the knights’ voices and clamor rose again as they had before. Geder took another sausage and wondered what he’d just missed.

The feast left Geder’s stomach unsettled. He lay in his tent listening to the soft summer wind moving through the desert, and failing to will himself to sleep. He heard his squire’s soft snores, smelled the fine Keshet dust that seemed to get into everything, and tasted the spiced meats from the feast, the pleasure of them long since gone. Moonlight pressed in at the edges of the tent, turning the darkness silver. He felt restless and torpid at the same time.

The sweet was in him, and it wasn’t sweet really. Only that it wasn’t bitter. It didn’t have the power to cure anything.

Of all the seer’s ramblings, those were the words that gnawed at him, as troubling as the spices. It seemed to him now that the Haavirkin woman had been talking about Vanai and Camnipol. If he thought about it, he could still feel the scar healing in his leg where the bolt had struck him. In exactly the same way, the smallest shift of his attention could remind him of the black knot in his chest that had bent him down on the long ride back from Vanai. He couldn’t quite recall the shape of his dead mother’s face, but the silhouette of the woman against the flames towering above Vanai was as clear to him as the tent around him now. Clearer.

The celebrations and revels that had greeted him in Camnipol should have washed that away, and for a time they had. But not forever. It had been sweet—he’d thought at the time that it was—but maybe it hadn’t been. Certainly it had felt glorious when it was going on. He’d risen in the court. He’d saved the city from the mercenary insurrection. And yet here he was, in exile again, fleeing from political games he didn’t understand. And as unpleasant as the unease in his belly might be, it was still better than the nightmares of fire.

In truth, what had happened in Vanai wasn’t his fault. He had been used. The lost sleep, the constant dread, even the suspicion that during all his revels and celebrations Alan Klin and his friends had been laughing down their sleeves at him. They were the scars he bore.

He turned the thought over in his mind. The court games that soaked the Kingspire and Camnipol weren’t anything he’d ever chosen to put himself into. The relief he’d felt coming back from Vanai to adulation and approval were hollow to him now, and at the same time, he wanted it back. It had let him forget the voice of the flames for a little while. But like the Haavirkin seer’s dreamed water, the sweetness hadn’t been sweet, just relief from the bitterness. And it hadn’t cured anything.

If he only understood what had happened, if he could see through the games and the players, he’d know who was really to blame. And who his own friends really were.

He shifted to his side, pulling his blankets with him. They smelled of dust and sweat. The night was too warm to justify them, but he found the cloth comforting. He sighed and his belly gumbled. The Haavirkin seer had been right in her way. Maybe she was as wise at the prince said. Geder considered finding her in the morning, asking her more questions. Even if it were all superstition and nonsense, it would give him something to think about in the long, isolated nights in the desert.

He didn’t notice that he was falling asleep until he woke. Sunlight glowed the fresh yellow of wildflowers, and the brief dew made the world smell cooler than it was. He pulled on his hose and a tunic. It was rougher wear than he’d had last night, but he wasn’t going to a princely feast. And after all, this was the Keshet. Standards were likely different. The wooden buildings still stood, and Geder marched out toward them, his gaze shifting, looking for the sentries. He didn’t see them.

He didn’t see anyone.

When he reached the structures, the great open square where he’d dined less than a day before, they were deserted. When he called out, no one answered. It would have been like a children’s song where they’d all been ghosts, except he could follow the footprints and smell the horse droppings and see the not-quite-dead coals still lurking white and red in the firepit. The horses were gone, the men and women, but the wagons remained. The heavy winches that the prince’s servants used to construct their sudden towns were still where they had been. He even found the long chains that the seer had worn, wrapped around a bronze spool and dropped in the dust.

He went back to his own camp, where his squire was just putting down a meal of stewed oats and watered cider. Geder sat at his field table, looking at the tin bowl, then up at the abandoned camp.

“They left in the middle of the night,” Geder said. “Took what they could carry without making noise and slipped away in the darkness.”

“Perhaps the prince was robbed and murdered by his men,” his squire said. “Things like that happen in the Keshet.”

“Lucky we weren’t caught up in it,” Geder said. His oats were honey-sweet. His cider had a bite to it, despite the water. His squire stood quietly by while Geder ate and the other servants struck camp. The sun was hardly two handspans above the horizon when Geder finished. He wanted to be away, back on his own path, and the eerily silent camp left well behind.

He did wonder, though, what else the Haavirkin had seen, and what she had told her prince after the foreign guest had left.

I would prefer to give it to Magistra bel Sarcour directly,” the man said. “No disrespect, sir, but my contracts don’t have your thumb on them.”

He was a smallish man, the top of his head coming no higher than Marcus’s shoulder, and his clothes smelled like his shop: sandalwood, pepper, cumin, and fennel. His face was narrow as a fox, and his smile looked practiced. The lower rooms of the Medean bank of Porte Oliva had Marcus, Yardem, Ahariel the stout Kurtadam, and the ever-present Roach. The weight of their blades alone was likely as much as the spicer, and yet the man’s disdain for them radiated like heat from a fire.

“But since she isn’t here,” Marcus said, “I’m what you’ve got to work with.”

The spicer’s eyebrows rose and his tiny little lips pressed thin. Yardem coughed, and Marcus felt a stab of chagrin. The Tralgu was right.

“However,” Marcus went on, “if you’ll accept our hospitality for a few minutes, sir, I’ll do my best to find her.”

“That’s better,” the man said. “Perhaps a cup of tea while I wait?”

I could kill you with my hands, Marcus thought, and it was enough to evoke the smile that etiquette called for.

“Roach?” Marcus said. “If you could see our guest is comfortable?”

“Yes, Captain,” the little Timzinae said, jumping up. “If you’ll come this way, sir?”

Marcus stepped out the door and onto the street, Yardem following him as close as a shadow. The evening sun was still high in the western sky. The pot of tulips in front of the bank was in full, brilliant bloom, the flowers sporting bright red petals veined with white.

“You take the Grand Market,” Yardem said, “I’ll check the taproom.”

Marcus shook his head and spat on the paving stones.

“If you’d rather find her, I can go to the Grand Market,” Yardem said.

“Stay here,” Marcus said. “I’ll be right back.”

Marcus walked down the street. Sweat pooled between his shoulder blades and down his spine. A yellow-faced dog looked up at him from the shadow of an alleyway, panting and too hot to bark. The streets were emptier now than they would be after sunset, the light driving people to shelter more effectively than darkness. Even the voices of the beggars and street sellers seemed overcooked and limp.