The Dragon's Path

Cithrin

Distracted by the rigors of her disguise and the wealth hidden in her cart, Cithrin had not been careful.

"What were you thinking, boy?" the caravan master demanded. Cithrin looked at his feet, her cheeks burning and her throat thick with shame. The red dust of the caravanserai's yard caked their boots, and fallen leaves rimed with frost littered the ground.

"I'm sorry," she said, the cold turning her words white.

"They're mules," the caravan master said. "They need caring for. How long has this been going on?"

"A few days," she said, her lips hardly moving.

"Speak up, boy! How long?"

"A few days," she said.

A pause.

"All right. The feed cart can get by with three on the team. You tie the sick one to a tree out there, and I'll bring you one to take its place."

"But if we leave him, he'll die," Cithrin said.

"That's the thought, yes."

"But it's not his fault. You can't just leave him to die all by himself."

"All right. I'll bring you a knife, and you can bleed him out."

Cithrin's outraged silence was eloquence enough. The caravan master's clear interior eyelids slid closed and open again, blinking without looking away from her.

"If you'd rather drop out of the 'van, you're welcome," he said. "We're going too slow already. I'm not going to stop everything because you can't keep your team. You let me know what you decide."

"I won't leave him," she said, surprised by her own words. Horrified that she meant them. She couldn't drop out of the 'van.

"He's a mule."

"I won't leave him." The words felt better that time.

"Then you're an idiot."

The caravan master turned, spat, and walked away. Cithrin watched him as he stalked back to the stone walls and thin-thatched roof of the shelter. When it became clear he wasn't coming back, she went back to the stable. The larger of her mules stood in his stall, his head lowered. His breath was thick and ragged. Cithrin stepped in beside him, her hand stroking his thick, wiry coat. The mule raised his head, flicked an ear, and sagged down again.

She tried to picture herself tying the animal to a tree and leaving him there for sickness and snow to kill. She tried to imagine slitting his warm, fuzzy throat. How would she get the money to Carse now?

"I'm sorry," Cithrin said. "I'm not really a carter. I didn't know."

She'd thought at first that the slowness of her cart was her own fault, that the gap that opened in the afternoons between her and the cart before hers meant she wasn't pushing the team when she should, or that some fine point of negotiating turns was beyond her. It was only when the larger mule had coughed - a wet, phlegmy sound - that she realized he was ill. Magister Imaniel had kept a religious household, but Cithrin prayed that the animal would recover on his own.

He hadn't.

The caravanserai - a ruin barely maintained by those who passed through it - was on the side of a wide, sloping hill, the first foothill of the high, snow-peaked mountain range that marked the end of the Free Cities and the beginning of Birancour. Even now, distance-blued peaks rose from the horizon. The pass through them marked the shortest path between Vanai and Carse.

Carse. The word itself had taken on almost religious significance for her. Carse, the great city of Northcoast overlooking the peaceful sea. The home of white towers above chalk cliffs, of the Council of Eventide, of the Grave of Dragons. The seat of the Medean bank, and the end of her career as a smuggler and refugee. She had never been there, but her longing for it was like wanting to go home.

She could go alone. She'd have to. Only she didn't know the way. Or how to nurse a sick mule back to health. Or what she'd do if another bandit crew stepped out of the forest. The mule heaved in a huge breath and then coughed: deep, wet, and rasping. Cithrin stepped forward and rubbed his wide, soft ears.

"We can find a way," she said as much to herself as the animal. "It'll be all right."

"Probably, it will," a man's voice said.

The cunning man, Master Kit, stood at the stable door, the woman called Opal at his side. Cithrin moved half a step in toward her mule, her arm around its sloping neck as if to protect it. Or be protected by it. An anxious thrill quickened her breath.

"This is the poor thing, then?" Opal said, pushing past the cunning man. "Tired-looking, ain't he?"

Cithrin nodded, looking down to avoid their eyes. Opal slipped into the stall, walked around the mule once, pausing to press her ear to the beast's side. Then, singing a low song in words Cithrin didn't recognize, she knelt before its head and gently pried open its lips.

"Opal takes care of our team, when we have one," Master Kit said. "I've come to put my trust in her when it comes to things with hooves."

Cithrin nodded, torn between a rush of gratitude and discomfort at being so close to the guardsmen. Opal rose and sniffed carefully at the mule's ears.

"Tag, is it?" she said, and Cithrin nodded. "Well, Tag, can you tell me if the old boy was listing to one side? Did you have to correct him?"

Cithrin tried to remember, then shook her head no.

"That's something," Opal said, and then over her shoulder to Master Kit, "I don't think it's in his ears, so that's for the best. He's wheezing, but he doesn't have water in his lungs. At a guess, keep him warm a couple of days, he'll stand true as sticks. Needs more blankets, though."

"Two days," Master Kit said. "I would be surprised if Captain Wester were comfortable with that."

The mule's labored breath and the murmur of the morning breeze through the boughs roughened the silence. Cithrin felt the knot in her belly tightening into something like nausea.

"One fewer guard won't make any damn difference," Opal said. "I'll stay with Tag, and when the old boy's well enough, we'll catch you up. Won't be more than a day or two, and one cart with a good team moves faster than a full 'van."

The cunning man crossed his arms, considering. Cithrin felt a rush of hope.

"Can you do that?" Master Kit asked her. His eyes were gentle, his voice as soft as old flannel.

"I can, sir," Cithrin said, keeping her voice low and masculine. The cunning man nodded.

"I don't suppose there's any harm in suggesting it," he said. "But perhaps you would allow me to approach them, Tag?"

She nodded, and the old man smiled. He turned and walked back toward the quarters, leaving Cithrin, Opal, and the animals to themselves.

The relief took the edge off her fear. And perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing, in its way. With Opal dressing in her leathers and Cithrin disguised as a man, they weren't likely to arouse suspicion. It would be a few days away from the greater company, so she would only have to avoid discovery by Opal. And their supposedly different sexes would give a plausible excuse for privacy.

And yet the fear didn't entirely fade. It came, she told herself, from knowing more than the people around her. She could almost hear Magister Imaniel now, sitting at the evening meal with Cam and Besel, dissecting exactly how a merchant or prelate had behaved differently than expected, and what it implied that they had. Cithrin knew that Tag the Carter carried enough wealth to buy a small army, but no one else did. The risk of lagging behind the body of the 'van was no more than she would have faced if she'd truly carried a load of undyed wool. Her chances only seemed worse because she knew the stakes of the bet were high. She was undiscovered. No one was searching for her or what she carried, the mule would be made well, and she wouldn't face a journey to Carse by herself. Everything would be fine.

"First time out?" Opal said.

Cithrin glanced at her and nodded.

"Well, don't let it worry you, dear," the guard said. "We take care of our own."

It didn't occur to Cithrin for hours to wonder exactly why a mercenary guard would include a semi-competent carter in our own, and by then the plan was set and the caravan with Captain Wester and Master Kit was gone down the road to the mountains and to Carse.

They passed the day in caring for the sick beast: warming the stable, rubbing down the mule, forcing an odd concoction that smelled of tar and licorice into its mouth. By nightfall, the mule held its head higher and its cough seemed less violent. That night, Cithrin and Opal slept in the stables, wrapped in thin blankets. An ancient iron brazier between them threw off enough heat to keep the room from freezing, but only just. In the darkness outside, something shrieked once and then not again. Cithrin closed her eyes, resting her head on one arm, and willed herself to sleep. She envied Opal's slow, even breath. Her own body tensed and shivered, her mind jumped from one fear to another, conjuring a hundred possible disasters. The bandits who had attacked the 'van before might arrive in the night, rape and murder them both, and make off with the bank's money. Opal might discover her secret and, mad with avarice, slit her throat. The mule might relapse and leave her stranded in the autumn cold.

When a low, grey dawn finally came, Cithrin hadn't slept. Her head ached, and her back felt as if someone had beaten her with a hammer. Opal, humming to herself, rebuilt the fire, boiled a pan of water with a sprinkling of leaves in it, and checked on their patient. When Cithrin joined her, the mule felt cooler to the touch, his eyes looked brighter, his head stood at its more usual angle. In the next stall, the other mule cleared her throat and grumbled.

"Is she getting sick too?" Cithrin asked. The very idea made her want to weep.

"She may, but she hasn't yet," Opal said. "Probably just jealous that the old boy here's getting all the attention."

"Should we go, then? I mean, is it safe to get back to the 'van?"

"This afternoon, maybe," Opal said. "Better that he have his strength back. Start him with a half day's work."

"But - "

"We've been this way before. We'll catch them up before they go over the pass. They'll stop at Bellin, send up scouts."

Cithrin knew the name, but she couldn't place it. Opal glanced over at her.

"Bellin," Opal said. "Trading town just before the pass. You really don't know much about hauling in a caravan, do you?"

"No," Cithrin said, both sullen and embarrassed at being sullen.

"Bellin's not much, but they're friendly to travelers. Master Kit took us there for a month once. New people coming through the road every few days, no one staying long. It was like being a traveling company without the traveling."

A breath of cold wind stirred the straw. In the brazier, the coals brightened and the thin flame danced. Cithrin's mind felt slow and sodden with fatigue. What would a guard company do with a month of passing traders and merchants and missionaries? Protect them inside the town walls where they needed it the least?

"I should go," Cithrin said. "Check the... check the cart."

"Make sure it hasn't gone anywhere," Opal said, as if she was agreeing.

In practice, being only with Opal was better than being with the full 'van. With just one person to keep track of, Cithrin could find moments to let her guard down, be herself instead of Tag. When the time came and they harnessed the mules, it wasn't all that different from being alone. Opal did most of the talking, and that was for the most part about how to manage the team. Cithrin knew that Tag should have been bored by the lectures, but she drank them in. In the first half day, she learned a hundred things she'd been doing wrong. When they bedded down that night in a wide meadow beside the road, she was a better carter than she'd been in all the long weeks since Vanai.

She wanted to thank the guard for all she'd done, but she was afraid that if she started she might not stop. Gratitude would become friendship, and friendship confession, and then her secrets would be spilled. So instead she made sure that Opal got the best food and the softer place to sleep.

In the darkness, the two of them lay on the soft wool. The moon and stars were gone, wrapped in clouds, and the darkness was absolute. Cithrin's mind skittered and shifted, thin with exhaustion. And still, sleep was slow to come. In the middle of the night, she felt Opal's body pressing next to her own and woke up in a panic, afraid that the guard was attacking her or seducing her or both, but she was only cold and half asleep. She spent the rest of the night drawn by the warmth of Opal's body and trying to hold herself apart for fear of compromising her disguise.

In the dark, the weeks between her and Carse seemed eternal. She imagined that she could feel the casks and boxes hidden just beneath her. The books and ledgers, silk and tobacco leaf and spice. Gems and jewelry. The weight of responsibility and fear was like someone pressing on her chest. When, just before dawn, she finally slept deeply enough to dream, she found herself at the edge of a cliff, trying to keep a hundred stumbling babies from pitching into the abyss.

She woke with a cry, and she woke to snow.

Wide, fat flakes dropped from the sky, grey against the white of clouds. The trees caught it, the bark seeming to turn black by contrast. The dragon's jade of the road was gone, their path marked only by a clear space between the trunks. The horizon had been erased. Opal was already fixing the mules in their harness.

"Can we really go in this?" Cithrin asked, forgetting to deepen her voice.

"Better had. Unless you'd prefer to settle here."

"It's safe, though?"

"Safer than the option," Opal said. "Help me with this buckle. My hand's half frozen."

Cithrin clambered down from the cart and did as she was told. Before long, they were forging ahead. The wide iron cartwheels became caked with wet snow and the mules began to steam. Without discussion, Opal had taken the reins and the whip. Cithrin huddled beside her, miserable. Opal squinted into the weather and shook her head.

"The good news is there won't be bandits."

"Really? And what's the bad?" Cithrin said bitterly.

Opal looked over at her, eyes wide with surprise and delight. Cithrin realized it was the closest thing to a joke she'd made since the caravan left Vanai. She blushed, and the guard beside her laughed.

Bellin had only half a dozen buildings. The rest of the town crouched inside a wide cliff, doorways and windows carved into the grey stone thousands of years before by inhuman hands. Soot stained the wall where chimneys slanted out into the world. Snow clung to huge runes carved into the mountainside, a script Cithrin had never seen before. The peaks themselves were invisible apart from a sense of looming darkness within the storm. The familiar carts of the 'van were black dots against the white, horses and carters already sheltered within the rock. She helped Opal set their cart in place, unhitch the mules, and guide them safely into the stable where the 'van's other animals were already tucked away.

The guards were there, sitting around a banked smith's furnace, Mikel and Hornet, Master Kit and Smit. Sandr grinned at them both as they came in, and the Tralgu second in command lifted a wide hand without turning from his conversation with the long-haired woman, Cary. Opal's pleasure at seeing them almost made Cithrin happy too.

"There must be something," Cary said, and Cithrin could tell it wasn't the first time she'd said it.

"There's not," Yardem rumbled. "Women are smaller and weaker. There's no weapon that can make that an advantage."

"What are we talking about?" Opal asked, sitting by the open furnace. Cithrin sat on the bench at her side, only realizing afterward that it was the same position they'd held on the cart. Master Kit chuckled and shook his head.

"I think Cary would prefer to train with weapons that better exploit her natural abilities," Master Kit said.

"Like being small and weak," Sandr said. Without looking over, Cary flicked a clod of earth at his head.

"Short bow," Cary said.

"Takes power to pull back a bow," Yardem said. He seemed on the edge of apology. "With a sling and stone, it matters less, but it still matters. A spear has better reach, but takes more muscle. A blade needs less strength, but calls for more reach. A strong, big woman's better than a small, weak man, but there's no such thing as a woman's natural weapon." The Tralgu shrugged expansively.

"There has to be something," Cary said.

"There doesn't," Yardem said.

"Sex," Sandr suggested with a grin. Cary threw another clod at his head.

"How are your mules, Tag?" Master Kit asked.

"Better," Cithrin said. "Much better. Thanks to Opal."

"It was nothing," Opal said.

"I'm pleased it worked out," Master Kit said. "I was beginning to worry that we'd leave you behind."

"Wouldn't have happened," a voice said from behind them.

Cithrin twisted in her seat, and her chest went tight with anxiety. Captain Wester stalked into the room. Snow caked his wide leather cloak and matted his hair. His face was so bright, it looked like the cold had slapped him. He walked to the heat, scowling.

"Welcome back, sir," the Tralgu said. The captain didn't so much as nod.

"I take it the scouting went poorly, then," Master Kit said.

"No worse than expected," Marcus Wester said. "The 'van master's breaking it to the others right now. There's no getting through that pass. Not now, not for months."

"What?" Cithrin said, her voice sharp and unexpected. She tried to swallow the word as soon as she'd said it, but the captain took no particular notice of her.

"Snow came early, we took too long, and we didn't get lucky," he said. "We'll get some warehouse space for the goods and bunks for the rest of us. Not much room, so it'll be close quarters. We'll make for Carse in the spring."

Spring. The word hit Cithrin in the gut. She looked at the flames dancing in the furnace, felt a trickle of snowmelt tracing its way down her spine. Despairing laughter bubbled at the back of her throat. If she let it out, it would turn to tears, and it wouldn't stop. A season spent in disguise. Moving everything in her cart to a warehouse and back without being discovered. Months to Carse instead of weeks.

I can't do this, she thought.