The Dragon’s Path (48 page)

She’d thought that the first time was supposed to hurt, but it hadn’t. She wondered how many of the other things she’d heard about sex were wrong. If she’d been raised by a mother, there might have been someone to ask. Still, for someone who hadn’t had any clear idea what she was doing, the experiment seemed to have been a success. Qahuar had been drunk enough to abandon his discretion, and she’d followed his lead. A few kisses, a few caresses, and then he’d lifted off her dress, laid her back on his bed, and she’d had to do very little from there. The business of thrusting and grunting had been intimate and absurd, but she found herself thinking of him a bit more fondly afterward. Perhaps the bond that sex made grew from that combination of shared indulgence and indignity.

Still, she was pleased that he was asleep. She was sober now, and between the excitement of the evening and her present sobriety, she had no illusions that rest would come to her. If he’d been awake, trying to maintain a conversation or play the host, it would only have been awkward. Better
that he should snore and embrace his pillow and leave her free to think.

If the spring shipping had gone quickly, if the blue-water trade was a bit early, if a hundred things that neither she nor anyone in the city had any way of knowing had happened, the first ships from Narinisle might arrive tomorrow. Or it might be weeks, as much as a month, before the traders knew what their fortunes were. The reports of the captains would carry the last information she needed—the activity of the pirates, the state of the northern ports, the possibility of civil war in Northcoast or of further military action from Antea. The governor would be expecting her proposal shortly after that.

She imagined the auditor arriving. Maybe Komme Medean himself. She would greet him with a smile and lead him up to her rooms. Or perhaps it would be at the café. That would be even better. The milk-eyed Maestro Asanpur would lead him back into the private room, and she would rise from her table to greet him. She’d have the books ready, the accounting made. She imagined him as an old man with fierce eyes and wide hands.

He would look over her statements, her contracts, and his expression would soften. The confusion and rage would wash away, leaving admiration behind. Had she really done so well with the bank’s money? Had she really saved it all, and more besides? In the darkness, she practiced raising her eyebrow just so.

“It was nothing,” she said, softly but aloud.

She would take the box from beneath her chair with her annual report and her contribution to the holding company. He would look it over, nodding. And then, when everything had been made whole, only then would she bring out the agreement with the governor of Porte Oliva, and hand over
the keys to the southern trade. She imagined his hands trembling as he saw the brilliance of all she’d done. A half-breed girl with no parents, and she had managed this.
But only,
she’d say,
only if my branch is accepted.

“The Porte Oliva bank is
mine,
” she said, and then in the low, rough voice of her imaginary auditor, “Of course, Magistra.”

She grinned. It was a pretty thought. And truly, why not? She’d been the one who kept the wealth of Vanai from being captured by the city’s prince or the Anteans. She’d been the one to protect it. Once she’d proven that she could manage the bank, why wouldn’t the holding company leave her in place? She’d have earned her bank and the life that went with it. The auditor would see that. Komme Medean would see it. She could do this.

Some tiny, invisible insect crawled over her hand and she brushed it away. Her rival and lover muttered something, shifting. She smiled at his sleeping back, the rough texture of his skin. She would be almost sorry to beat him out. But only almost.

As if from a previous life, Yardem Hane’s landslide of a voice spoke in her memory.
There’s no such thing as a woman’s natural weapon.
She saw now that it wasn’t true.

When she slipped out of bed, he didn’t stir. In the darkness, her clothes were lost somewhere in a tangle on the brickwork floor. She didn’t want to risk waking him, so when she found the tunic he’d tossed aside, she pulled it over her head. It reached as far as her thighs. Close enough. She trotted to the corner of the room, her fingers brushing the floor until she found it: a leather thong and brass key that Qahuar Em always wore next to his skin.

Well. Almost always.

The bricks were cool against the soles of her feet, and the
sound of her footsteps was as near to silence as made no distinction. The compound was near the port, the rooms small and close, but arrayed around a small courtyard garden. The four servants were full-blooded Jasuru, and of them, only the door slave stayed in his place through the night. Qahuar Em might be the voice of a great Lyoneian clan, but space was expensive in Porte Oliva, and having a more lavish home than the local nobles was a kind of boasting that would serve him poorly. Cithrin turned a corner in the darkness and counted three doors on her left. The third was oak bound in iron. She found the keyhole and carefully put the stolen key in. When she turned it, the clack of the mechanism sounded as loud as a shout. Her heart raced, but no one raised the alarm. She opened the door and slipped into Qahuar’s private office.

The shutters were closed and barred, but once she’d undone them, the light of the quarter moon was enough to make out the general shapes of things. There was a writing desk. A strongbox bolted to the floor. A latticework holder, filled with scrolls and folded letters. A hooded lantern with rings of carved flint and worked steel on a string. Cithrin struck sparks to the wick, then quickly closed and barred the shutters. What had been shadows and silhouettes sprang to life in shades of dim orange and grey. The strongbox was locked, and the key to the office wouldn’t fit it. The writing desk was bare apart from a thumb-sized bottle of green ink and a metal stylus. She went to the scrolls and letters, moving quickly, methodically from one to the next, being sure to keep each stack in order and put them back precisely as they were.

She was aware of the anxiety pressing at her gut and the rapid beat of her heart, and she pushed it all aside. She would let herself feel again later, when there was time. A letter from
the governor thanking Qahuar for his gift. The chocolate had been exquisite, and the governor’s wife especially extended her gratitude. Cithrin put the letter back. An unfurled scroll listed the names and relationships of several dozen people, none of whom meant anything to her. She put it back.

Outside the shuttered window, a salt thrush sang. Cithrin ran her fingers through her hair. Something in this had to be of use. Somewhere in the papers, Qahuar would have said something that told something of what his offer to the governor would be. She reached for another letter, and her arm brushed the lantern. Glass and metal shifted, teetered, and she grabbed it. A second more and it would have fallen. Shattered. Lit the room on fire. Cithrin put it carefully in the middle of the writing desk and went back to her search with trembling hands.

Hours seemed to pass before she found it. A long scroll of fine cotton. The lines of cipher were spaced widely enough that Qahuar had been able to write the message beneath them. Cithrin ran her fingertips along his words. It had been written by an elder of the clan, and it was everything Cithrin had hoped to discover. They could commit fifteen ships to the effort. Each would be manned with a full crew of two dozen sailors. She kept on reading, her fingers making a soft hushing against the cloth. In compensation, they would ask sixteen hundredths of every transaction in each port for ships accompanied and protected, or nineteen if they asked the clan to guarantee. The elder estimated the initial outlay at two thousand silver, with a profit to the clan of five hundred in a season. The agreement would have to be for a full decade.

Magister Imaniel had often talked about the tools of memory. Ink was best, but writing the figures down and
sneaking them out of the house was a risk she didn’t have to take. Fifteen ships of two dozen men.

“At the age of fifteen, she’d had two dozen men,” Cithrin said to herself.

Sixteen hundredths without guarantee, or nineteen with. So the guarantee was worth three.

“Sixteen for the company, and three more for love.”

Two thousand to begin, with an estimated profit of five hundred each year of a ten-year agreement.

“She gave two thousand kisses, took five hundred back, and died alone ten years after that.”

There were more details in the scroll—the specifications of the ships, the names of individual captains, the routes the trade would be encouraged to take—and she read as much of it as she could, but at the base, she had what she needed.

She put the scroll back where it had been, then put the lantern in its place and blew the flame out. Used to the light as she’d become, the darkness seemed absolute. The smell of spent wick was acrid and sharp. She closed her eyes and, tracing fingers along the wall, found her way to the door. She slipped into the corridor, turned the lock, and, almost skipping, went back to Qahuar’s sleeping chamber. She put the key in the corner where she’d found it, stripped off the tunic, and slipped quickly back into bed.

Qahuar murmured and reached out an arm to drape over her belly.

“You’re cold,” he said, the words thick.

“I’ll be warm soon,” she said, and felt his smile as much as she saw it. He nuzzled against her, and she tried to let herself relax into him. She closed her eyes and repeated her rhyme in the privacy of her mind.

At the age of fifteen, she’d had two dozen men, sixteen for company and three more for love. She gave two thousand
kisses, took five hundred back, and died alone ten years after that.

W
ell, you look exhausted,” Captain Wester said, leaning against the wall beside the pot of tulips where the old gambler’s caller used to stand. “I was starting to think we’d have to put together a raiding party, take you back by force.”

“I told you I wouldn’t be back,” Cithrin said, walking past him toward her private entrance. He followed her as if she’d invited him.

“You’re supposed to be meeting with that woman from the needlemakers’ guild at midday. She’s likely on her way to that coffee house right now. Unless you’re planing to wear that same dress—”

“I can’t see her,” Cithrin said, walking up the stairs. She heard his footsteps falter, then hurry to catch up. When he spoke, his voice was careful and polite. It sounded like he was talking from half a mile away.

“Do you want to give her a reason?”

“Send someone. Tell her I’m ill.”

“All right.”

Cithrin sat down on her divan, scowling up at the man. His arms were crossed over his chest, his mouth pinched. He wasn’t really much older than Qahuar Em. Cithrin pulled off one of her shoes and massaged her foot. The sole was filthy. Her dress hung from her as if the cloth itself was exhausted and sweating.

“I didn’t sleep,” she said. “I can’t help her anyway.”

“If you say so,” Wester said, nodding curtly. He turned to leave, and her sudden rush of distress flooded her. She hadn’t known how badly she didn’t want to be alone.

“Did everything go well while I was gone?” she said, her voice tripping out of her.

Wester stopped at the head of the stairs.

“Went fine,” he said.

“Are you angry with me, Captain?”

“No,” he said. “I’m going to go tell the needlemakers’ woman that you’re too ill to see her. I take it we’ll send her a note when you’re feeling better?”

Cithrin pulled off her other shoe and nodded. Wester went down the stairs. The door clacked closed behind him. Cithrin lay back. The night had been everything she’d hoped, but the first blue light of dawn had left her exhausted. Her body felt limp and shaky the way it had all those nights with the caravan when sleep had escaped her. She’d convinced herself that those days were over, but she’d been wrong. And now, say it or not, Wester was angry, and she was surprised how much his disapproval stung.

She thought of calling him back, of explaining that she’d allowed herself to be seduced for a reason. That going to Qahuar Em’s bed had only been a ploy. The more she rehearsed the words, the worse they sounded. Voices rose up from the floor beneath her. The guards that Wester had hired. From the sound, they were playing at dice. Her spine ached. Someone below her shouted in dismay, and others groaned along in sympathy. She closed her eyes, hoping that being back in her own rooms would relax her enough that she could rest. Instead, her mind jumped and hopped, faster and faster, like a ball rolling down an infinite hill.

Fifteen ships could be split into three equal groups of five or else five of three, so perhaps Qahuar’s clan was expecting the merchant ships to divide into three major ports—likely Carse, Lasport, and Asinport. But what if they were expecting the trade to go on past Asterilhold to Antea or Sarakal or Hallskar? Two dozen men in a single ship wasn’t a small thing, but would Lyoniean sailors do well in the colder
waters of the north? Could she argue, with her ties to Carse, that she’d be able to provide ships more experienced in the native waters? And if she made the argument, would it be true?

And why had Opal betrayed her? And why had God let Magister Imaniel die? And Cam? And her parents? And did Sandr still want her? Would Cary still be her friend? Did Master Kit still approve of who and what she was? What did other people do when they had no friends and their lovers were their enemies? There had to be some better way to do things.