The Dragon's Path

Cithrin

Coffee houses had always had a place in the business of business. In the cold ports of Stollbourne and Rukkyupal, merchants and sea captains hunched over the tiled tables and warmed mittened hands with steaming cups as they watched the winter sun set at midday. Beside the wide, moonlit waters of the Miwaji, the nomadic Southling pods sipped cups of something hardly thinner than mud and declaimed poetry between haggling over fortunes in silver and spice. All through the world that the dragons had left behind, trade and coffee went together.

Or at least that was the way Magister Imaniel had told it. Cithrin had never been outside Vanai, and the bank there had been its own small building. Still, when the time came, Cithrin chose a small cafe with a private back room and rough wooden tables on the street. It was across the square from the Grand Market, so she would be near the rough-and-tumble of the city's trade without having to do her business in one of the shifting stalls. The owner of the cafe - Maestro Asanpur - was an ancient Cinnae man with one milky eye and a touch at making fresh coffee that bordered on magical. He had been very happy to accept a bit of rent that gave Cithrin rights to the privacy of his back room. If the day was cloudy, she could sit in the common room, sip her coffee, and listen to gossip. If the sun came out, she could take one of the white-painted street tables and watch the traffic through the Grand Market.

Ideally, Maestro Asanpur's cafe would become known as a center of banking and business in the city. The better it was known, the more people would come to it, and with them more news and gossip and speculation. Cithrin knew that her own presence was a good beginning, but she likely didn't have enough time to let things take their course. Sooner rather than later, the legitimate Medean bank would come to investigate their new branch, and when that happened, she wanted it to be wildly prosperous.

Which, in the short term, meant a little harmless dishonesty.

Cithrin saw the reaction to Cary's arrival before she saw the woman herself. Gazes shifted through the square like wind passing over a field of grass, then away, and then, more covertly, back again. Cithrin drank her coffee and pretended not to notice as the mysterious woman walked across the square toward the great kiosks where the queensmen who administered the Grand Market stood. Cary had chosen the longest approach possible, and it gave Cithrin time to admire the costume. The cut was Elassean, but the silk wrapping and the beaded veil spoke of Lyoneia. The jewels that adorned her came from Cithrin's own stock, and would have sold for enough to buy the cafe twice over. Taken together, the design spoke of all the trade of the Inner Sea with an authenticity that came from Master Kit's travels there. It wasn't a look often seen in Birancour, and the combination of exoticism and wealth drew attention better than a song. Hornet and Smit walked behind her in boiled leather with the swagger they'd learned on the caravan, indistinguishable from real fighters.

Cary reached the kiosk and spoke with one of the queensmen. They were much too far to hear, but the queensman's posture was clear enough. He gestured across the square toward Cithrin and the cafe. Cary bowed her thanks and turned, taking the walk slowly. When she came close enough to speak with, Cithrin rose.

"Enough?" Cary asked.

"Perfect," Cithrin said. "Come this way."

She led the actors through the common room, the wooden floors creaking under their weight. The interior of the cafe was a series of small rooms set off by low archways. The windows had carved wooden shutters that scented the breeze with cedar. A young Kurtadam girl sat in the back gently playing a bottle harp, the soft notes murmuring through the air. In one of the rooms, an old Firstblood man talking animatedly with a wide-eyed Southling stopped to stare at Cary and her guards. Cithrin caught Maestro Asanpur's eye and held up two fingers. The old man nodded and set to grinding the beans for two small cups. Cithrin meant for anyone paying attention to know that the exotically dressed woman was someone the Medean bank honored. They moved on to the privacy of her hired room.

"So this is all?" Smit said after the door closed behind them, groaning on its leather hinge. "I thought there'd be more to it."

Cithrin sat at the small table. There was enough room for the others, but rather than sit, Hornet went to the thin window, peering out through the blue-and-gold glass to the alley beyond. As Cary started plucking off the borrowed jewelry, Cithrin pulled the iron lockbox out from under her chair, sliding it on a small red carpet to keep from scarring the floor.

"I don't need very much here," Cithrin said. "A record book, a little spare coin. It's not as if I'll be handing out large sums every day."

"Wasn't that the point, though?" Cary said, handing across a bracelet studded with emeralds and garnets. "To get rid of all that stuff?"

"Not by handing it out like candy," Cithrin said. "There are only so many good investments to make in a city. It takes effort finding which ones are worth having. This is where I talk with people. Negotiate agreements, sign contracts. It's all arranged here, but I don't want to have all the guards standing around intimidating people."

"Why not?" Hornet said. "I would."

"Better to put them at ease, I expect," Cary said, and a soft knock came at the door. Smit opened it to Maestro Asanpur carrying a tray with two small bone-colored cups. Cithrin unlocked the iron box. As Maestro Asanpur presented the coffee to Cary, Cithrin folded the jewelry into soft cloth and put it into the box beside the red leather record book and her purse of small coin. The lock was crude but solid, the key reassuringly heavy on its leather necklace. Cithrin tucked the key away. Cary sipped the coffee and made a small, appreciative sound.

"Another advantage of the site," Cithrin said.

"We can't stay," Hornet said. "Master Kit's bent on having the Tragedy of Four Winds ready to put on before the trade ships from Narinisle come."

"Are you going to try to sponsor one?" Cary asked.

"A ship or a tragedy?" Cithrin asked dryly.

"Either one."

"Neither," she said.

In truth, the trade ships from Narinisle had been very much on Cithrin's mind.

The great wealth in the world lay in the patterns of commerce. The Keshet and Put might have olive trees and wine enough for every city in the world, but no mines there produced gold and the iron was in rough, roadless terrain and difficult to reach. Lyoneia grew fabulous woods and spices, but struggled to grow enough grain to feed its people. Far Syramys with its silks and dyes, magic and tobacco, promised the rarest goods in the world, but the blue-water trade to reach them was so uncertain that more fortunes were lost than made in going there. Everywhere, there was imbalance, and the surest path to profit was to be between something valuable and someone who valued it.

On land, that meant control of the dragon's roads. No merely human assembly of stone and mortar could match the permanence of dragon's jade. All the great cities grew where they did because of the arrangements of paths made when humanity was a single race and the masters of the world flew on great scaled wings. Dragons themselves had rarely if ever lowered themselves to travel the roads. They were the servants' stairs of the fallen empire, and they determined the flow of money for all land trade.

The trackless sea, however, could be remade.

Each autumn, ships in the south loaded themselves with wheat and oil, wine and pepper and sugar, and, paid with gold adventurous or desperate enough, made the trek to the north. Northcoast, Hallskar, Asterilhold, and even the northern coast of Antea would buy the goods, often for less than the same items that had traveled overland. The trade ships might take on some cargo in those ports - salt cod from Hallskar, iron and steel from Asterilhold and Northcoast - but most would take their money and hurry to the open ports of Narinisle to wait for the blue-water trade from Far Syramys. This was the great gamble.

Accidents of wind and current made the island nation of Narinisle the easiest end port for ships from Far Syramys, and if a trade ship could exchange its cargo and money for a load freshly arrived from those distant lands, an investor might triple her money. If not, she risked seeing her trade ship return from Narinisle with only what could be bought from the local markets, making a much smaller profit, assuming prices went with her. Or the ship could be lost to pirates, or it might sink and everything either lost entirely or ransomed back at exorbitant rates and glacial slowness from the Drowned.

And when the ships returned to their southern ports and the fortunes of those who had sponsored them rose or fell, the sponsorship of this fleet of gold and spice that sailed together without alliance and answered to no single flag reshuffled. A house that had placed its wager on a single ship and did well might make enough to hire half a dozen the next year. Someone whose ship had been lost would scramble to find ways to survive in their new, lessened circumstances. If they had been wise and insured their investment, they might gain back enough to try again by appealing to someone like Cithrin.

The ships would already have left Narinisle. Soon, the seven that had set out the year before from Porte Oliva would return, and not long after that, someone would come to her and ask that the bank insure them to sponsor a ship for the next year's work. Without knowing which captains were best, without knowing which families were best positioned to buy a good outgoing cargo, she would be left with little better than instinct. If she took all those who came to ask, she'd be sure to take too many bad risks. If she took no one, there would be no chance for her bank to prosper and nothing to show the holding company when they came. This was the species of risk that her life was built on now.

Betting on pit dogs seemed more certain.

"A few insurance contracts, maybe," Cithrin said, as much to herself as to Cary and the others. "Part sponsorship in a few years, if things go well."

"Insurance. Sponsorship. What's the difference?" Smit asked.

Cithrin shook her head. It was like he'd asked the difference between an apple and a fish; she didn't know where to start.

"Cithrin forgets that we didn't all grow up in a counting house," Cary said and drank down the last of her coffee. "But we should go."

"Let me know when the new play's ready," Cithrin said. "I'd like to watch it."

"See?" Smit said. "I told you we'd have a patron."

They left through the alley, transformed from mysterious woman of business and her guards back to seafront players. Cithrin watched them go through her thin window, the glass distorting them as they went. A patron. It was true she wouldn't be able to go and lead the crowd with Cary and Mikel anymore. She probably wouldn't be able to go out to a taproom with Sandr. Cithrin bel Sarcour, head of the Medean bank of Porte Oliva, drinking with a common actor? It would be terrible for the bank's reputation and her own.

The loneliness that came with the thought had little to do with Sandr.

When, an hour later, Captain Wester arrived, Cithrin was out on the street, sitting at the same table where Cary had found her. He nodded his greeting and sat across from her. The sunlight brought out the grey in his hair, but it also brightened his eyes. He handed a sheet of parchment across to her. She looked over the words and figures, nodding to herself as she did. The receipt looked fine.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"No problems," he said. "The tobacco's at the seller's stall. He argued over a few of the leaves, but I told him he either took all of it or none."

"He shouldn't have done that," Cithrin said. "He should be negotiating with me."

"I may have mentioned something like that. He accepted the delivery. The pepper and cardamom goes out tomorrow. Yardem and a couple of the new men will take that."

"A start," Cithrin said.

"Any word from Carse?" Marcus asked. The question sounded almost casual.

"I've sent a dispatch," Cithrin said. "I used Magister Imaniel's old cipher, and a slow courier, but I expect they'll have it by now."

"And you said what?"

"That the branch had placed its letters of foundation and was beginning trade as Magister Imaniel and I had planned," Cithrin said.

"Not telling them the truth of it, then."

"Letters go astray. Couriers take extra payment to unsew and copy them. I don't expect anyone to intercept it, but if they do, it will look exactly like what it's supposed to be."

Marcus nodded slowly, squinting up into the sun.

"Any reason you picked a slow courier?"

"I want time to put things in order before they come," she said.

"I see. There's something we should - "

A deeper shadow than the cloud's fell over the table. Lost in her conversation, she hadn't seen the man approach, and so now he seemed to have sprouted out of the pavement. Taller than Captain Wester, but not so tall as Yardem Hane, he wore a wool tunic and leggings, a blue-dyed cloak several layers thick against the spring cold, and a bronze chain of office. For the most part his features were Firstblood, but slight and fair enough that he might have had a grandfather among the Cinnae.

"Forgive me," he said, his voice scrupulously polite. "Am I addressing Cithrin bel Sarcour?"

"You are," Cithrin said.

"Governor Siden sent me," the man said.

Fear punched the breath out of her. They'd discovered the forgery. They were sending the guard. She cleared her throat and smiled.

"Is there a problem?" she asked.

"Not at all," the messenger said, and produced a small letter, the smooth paper neatly folded and the sides sewn and sealed. "But he did suggest I wait in the event that you wished to reply."

Cithrin held the paper, uncertain where to look - it, the man, the captain. After what seemed entirely too long, she shook herself.

"If you'll let Maestro Asanpur know you've come on my business, he'll see you in comfort."

"You are very kind, Magistra."

Cithrin waited until the man disappeared into the cafe before she pulled the thread. It cut through the paper with a rattle. Trembling a little, she pressed the opened page onto the table. The script was beautifully shaped, the work of a professional scribe. To Magistra Cithrin bel Sarcour, voice and agent of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva, I, Idderrigo Bellind Siden, Prime Governor of Porte Oliva by special commission of Her Royal Highness and on and on and on. Her fingertips slid down the page. I request your private attention as a voice of trade and a citizen of Porte Oliva concerning certain matters central to the health and vigor of the city and on and on and on. And then, near the bottom of the first page, she stopped.

The solicitation and arrangement of joint civic security as concerns the safe conduct of maritime trade in the coming year...

"Good God," she said.

"What is it?" Captain Wester said. His voice was low and steady. He sounded ready for her to say they had to kill the messenger and flee the city. Cithrin swallowed to loosen her throat.

"If I am reading this correctly," she said, "the governor is asking us to propose a joint venture with the city to escort the trade ships from Narinisle."

"Ah," Wester said. And then, "You know I don't understand what you just said, yes?"

"He's putting together a fleet. Fighting ships to see the traders safely up and back. And he's looking for someone with the purse to fund it."

"Meaning us?"

"No," she said, her mind running through the implications with an eerie and cool precision. "He'll want several parties to make proposals, but he's inviting us into the fight. He's asking the Medean bank to make a proposal to underwrite a single-city fleet."

The captain grunted as if he understood. Cithrin was already miles ahead of him and running fast. If Porte Oliva could make itself a more attractive port than the Free Cities, more ships would contract from here. Insurance rates would drop, as the trade seemed less risky. That would hurt anyone who had been trading on insurance alone. And Maccia would hate it, and Cabral would take it poorly if the escort went that far. She wondered what the chances were of direct retaliation against the escort ships.

"Is that the kind of thing we'd be likely to do?" Wester asked from some other part of the world.

"If we took the commission and did the thing well, we'd have connections all through the south and a thumb on the Inner Sea. We'd have something to give the holding company more valuable than a cartload of gold," Cithrin said. "They couldn't object to what we've done."

"So it is something we might take on, then."

The knot in Cithrin's belly was still there, but something about it changed. She found herself smiling. Grinning.

"Win this," she said, holding up the pages, "and we win everything."

The meeting at the governor's palace pretended to be nothing. A half dozen men and women sat in a garden courtyard. Queensmen poured out scented water and spiced wine. The governor was a small man, thick-bellied and balding. He treated all his guests with grace and kindness, and as such was practically useless as a guide to who among the assemblage were important. She had hoped to follow his cues, paying attention to the people with whom he spent the most time. Instead, she was left to wonder.

There was an older Kurtadam man, his pelt graying across the face, throat, and back, who represented a chartered collaboration of the shipwrights' guild and two local merchant houses. A Cinnae man with slightly too much rouge on his cheeks turned out to be the owner of a mercenary company large enough to rent itself to kings. Sitting alone under the spreading fronds of a palm tree, a Tralgu woman drank water and ate shrimp, listening to everything said with a concentration that left Cithrin unnerved. All of them had agendas and histories, interests and weaknesses. Magister Imaniel would have been able to glance across the room and draw conclusions. Or at least educated guesses. Cithrin, on the other hand, was still a year too young to claim her inheritance. The wine was excellent. The conversation friendly and convivial. She felt like she was swimming in a warm ocean, waiting for something to come up from the depths, take her by the leg, and draw her down to the cold.

It didn't help untie her knots that everyone seemed to view her with curiosity. The voice and agent of the Medean bank, newly arrived in the city, and throwing off everyone's plans. None of them, Cithrin told herself, had expected her to be a player in this game. She was badly behind in understanding the politics at play in the courtyard with its brightly colored finches and sun-warmed flagstones, but she had mysteries of her own. The longer she remained a cipher to them, the more she could make sense of the game. She handed her empty glass to one of the queensmen and took another. Wine kept the fear at bay.

"Magistra bel Sarcour," the governor said, appearing at her elbow. "You were in Vanai, yes? Before the Antean aggression."

"Just before," Cithrin said.

"Lucky you got out," the Tralgu woman said. Her voice was as low as Yardem Hane's, but it didn't have the same warmth.

"I am," Cithrin said, keeping her tone neutral and polite.

"What do you make of the fate of the city?" the governor asked. Cithrin had anticipated the question, and she had her answer at the ready.

"Antea has a long history of military interference in the Free Cities," Cithrin said. "Magister Imaniel and I were expecting the occupation a season earlier than it came. That the Anteans didn't intend to hold the city was only clear in the last few weeks before they arrived."

"You think they always intended to destroy Vanai?" a man behind the governor said. He had the features of a Firstblood, but golden skin with a roughness to it that reminded Cithrin of a Jasuru. His eyes were a shocking green. His name was Qahuar Em, and he spoke for a group part trading association and part nomadic tribe from the north reaches of Lyoneia. From his appearance, she guessed he was half Jasuru, though Cithrin hadn't known that was possible.

"We had a strong suspicion," she said to him.

"But why would the Severed Throne do such a thing?" the governor asked.

"Because they're a bloodthirsty bunch of unmodified northern savages," the Tralgu woman said. "Barely better than monkeys."

"The story I'd heard was that the burning was unexpected, even by King Simeon," the Cinnae mercenary said. "The local commander took the action as some sort of political theater piece."

"Doesn't argue against my monkeys-with-swords thesis," the Tralgu woman said, and the governor chuckled.

"I'm not surprised that there's more than one interpretation," Cithrin said. "Still, you'll forgive me if I'm pleased that I followed the information that we had."

"I heard that Komme Medean was moving his interests to the north, and Antea in particular," the graying Kurtadam said. "Damned odd seeing him take an aggressive position in the south."

Cithrin felt a flutter of concern. If the bank were involving itself in the northern countries - Antea, Asterilhold, Northcoast, Hallskar, and Sarakal - she might well have stepped on toes by founding a branch at the far end of the continent. It wasn't something she was ready to address, so the conversation had to be moved away from the issue and quickly. She smiled the way she imagined Magister Imaniel might have.

"Is there really such a thing as purely northern interests?" she asked. "Narinisle is in the north, and it seems to concern all of us."

The air in the courtyard seemed to still. She'd pulled the hidden meaning of all their banter and laid it on the table. She wondered whether she'd just been rude, so she smiled and sipped her wine, acting as if it had been intentional. Qahuar the half-Jasuru smiled at her, nodding as if she'd won a point in a game.

"Narinisle may be in the north," the graying Kurtadam said, "but the problems are all in the south, aren't they? King Sephan and his unofficial pirate fleet."

"I agree," the Cinnae mercenary captain said. "The only way that trade can be made safe is if Cabral agrees that it is. And that can't be done on the water alone."

The Tralgu woman grunted and put down the shrimp that she'd been eating.

"You aren't going to go on about putting a land force together to protect ships again, are you?" she said. "Porte Oliva starts a land war with Cabral, and the queen'll burn us down as an apology to King Sephan faster than the Anteans lit Vanai. We're a city, not a kingdom."

"Done right, you don't have to use it," the Cinnae said, bristling. "And it isn't an invasion force. But the escort that protects trade ships needs to be able to put swords onto land. The pirate problem can't be solved if they can run into a cove someplace and declare themselves safe."

Cithrin sat on a high stool, cocked her head, and listened as the façade of politeness began to crack. Like an artist putting a mosaic together one chip at time, she began to make out the shape of divisions and arguments in the group around her.

The chartered collaboration between the shipwrights and the merchant houses was pressing for a limited escort restricted in its range to within a few days' sail from Porte Oliva. Protect the neighborhood, their argument went, and the trade ships will come of their own accord. It would cost less, and so the offsetting tariffs could be small. Listening to the Cinnae man and Tralgu woman press, Cithrin was fairly certain the merchant houses in question traded in insurance. The limited escort still left a great territory of water unsafe, the chance of piracy and loss high, and so the return on insurance wouldn't go down.

The Cinnae man, on the other hand, was a militarist, because what he brought to the table was a military force. If the others could be made to agree that only a massive force of arms - and especially the sword-and-bows of a mercenary company - would ensure that piracy end, he would be in the best position to provide it. Naturally, none of the others agreed.

The Tralgu woman's argument centered on a treaty between Birancour and Herez that Cithrin didn't recognize. She would need to find a copy to understand how it applied, but simply knowing what she didn't know felt like a little victory.

As the wrangle went on, her smiles felt less and less forced. Her mind danced through each phrase her enemies used, drew connections, set up speculations that she would research once the evening was done. The governor kindly, gently kept the tone from escalating to blows, but stopped short of making peace. This was what he'd brought them here for. This was how he worked. Cithrin held that information as well.

After her third glass of wine, she felt certain enough to put her own argument out.

"Forgive me," she said, "but it seems that we've all become somewhat fixed on piracy as the only problem. But there are other things that can happen to a trade ship. If I understand correctly, three ships were lost in a storm five years ago."

"No," the Tralgu woman snapped.

"Those sank off Northcoast," the Kurtadam said. "They never got as far as Narinisle."

"And yet the investment in them was just as lost," Cithrin said. "Is the question we're considering how to protect trade? Or is it only how to make pirates a lesser risk than storms? It seems to me that an escort ship should be able to answer any number of crises."

"You can't have an escort that follows the ships everywhere and answers every problem," the Cinnae man said.

"The initial cost would be high," Cithrin said, as if that were the objection he'd raised. "It would require a commitment from Porte Oliva long enough to ensure a reasonable expectation of return. And likely some understanding with ports in the north."

She said it all as if it were idle speculation; a chat among friends. They all knew what she'd just said.

The Medean bank would protect trade ships from Porte Oliva as far as they wished to go and all the way home again. She had enough money that she could pour gold into the project and not see a return for years. And the bank, with its holding company in Carse, had connections throughout the northern countries. If it was a grander vision than she'd meant to bring to the table, that was fine. The others could compare how many soldiers they had, how cheaply they could do something small, how treaties and trade agreements could be brought to bear. Cithrin could say, I am the biggest dog in this pit. I can do what you cannot.

She liked the feel of it.

The courtyard was silent for a moment, then as the Kurtadam drew in an angry breath, the half-Jasuru with the green eyes spoke.

"She's right," he said.

Qahuar Em was sitting at the governor's side. In the light that spilled down from the saturated blue sky, his skin had taken an almost bronze tone, like a statue brought to life. When he smiled, she saw that his teeth, white as a Firstblood's, had the hint of Jasuru points to them.

"You're joking," the Kurtadam said, sounding deflated.

"You could do it by halves," he said, his gaze shifting to the Kurtadam for a moment before shifting back to Cithrin. "But what would stop Daun from doing the same? Or Upurt Marion? Newport or Maccia? You could make Porte Oliva a little bit safer, and be more popular as a place to trade for a few years while other cities followed your example. Or you could move decisively, dominate trade in the region, and capture the trade route for a generation. It just depends what your goals are, I suppose."

Cithrin found herself smiling at him even as it occurred to her that he'd spoken even less than she had. She'd need to watch him, she thought. And as if he'd read her mind, he grinned.

The conversation went on for another hour, but the wind had shifted. The Kurtadam restricted himself to petulant asides, the mercenary reframed the military aspect as part of a wider strategy, and the Tralgu lapsed back into silence. The undercurrent of anger and suspicion was palpable, and the governor seemed quite pleased with the entire proceeding. When Cithrin left, her beaded shawl wrapped around her shoulders, it was hard to remember to step like a woman twice her age. She wanted to walk from the ankle.

She waited on the steps looking out across the square toward the great marble temple, pretending a piety she didn't feel. The sun sank lower in the west, shining into the temple's face and making the stone glow. The moon, already risen, hung in the cloudless indigo of the sky, a half circle of white and a half of darkness. Between the beauty of city and heaven and the perhaps slightly too much wine she'd drunk, she nearly missed her quarry when he walked by.

"Excuse me," she said.

The half-Jasuru turned, looking back over his shoulder as if he didn't know her.

"You're called Qahuar?" she said.

He corrected her pronunciation gently. Standing on the step below hers, their heads were even.

"I wanted to thank you for supporting me in there," she said.

He grinned. His face was broader than it had seemed in the courtyard. His skin less rough, his eyes softer. It struck her that he was roughly the age she pretended to be.

"I was going to say the same of you," he said. "Between us, I think we'll shake loose the smaller players. I admit, I hadn't been expecting to compete against the Medean bank."

"I hadn't expected to be competing at all," she said. "Still, it's flattering of the governor to think of me."

"He's using you to get better terms from me," Qahuar said. And then, seeing her reaction, "I don't mind. If it goes poorly, he'll be using me to get better terms from you. One doesn't reach his position by being sentimental."

"Still," Cithrin said.

"Still," Qahuar said, as if agreeing.

They stood silently for a moment. His expression shifted, as if seeing her for the first time. As if she confused him. No. Not confused. Intrigued. The angle of his smile changed, and Cithrin felt a warmth in her own expression. She found herself particularly pleased that the man was her rival.

"You've made the game more interesting, Magistra. I hope to see you again soon."

"I think you should," Cithrin said.