The Dragon's Path

fortified wine. Alcohol was supposed to soften the mind, but she didn’t feel soft at all. Or at least not in a way that left her unaware. She was more relaxed, certainly. The ever-presentknot in her gut was looser, and she felt more at home in her skin. But her thinking was as clear as ever. Maybe clearer. She had the sense of huge thoughts shifting just beneath her awareness, her mind comparing and scheming with a speed and elegance that she couldn’t quite keep up with herself. She ate some of the pickled carrots, finished the wine, and got another tankard of the beer.
    When she stepped out the door, the sun had already set. Porte Oliva lounged in the grey twilight. Lanterns flickered and glowed. Men and women scurried through the streets, anxious to get home before twilight had entirely faded. The air was cold but not bitter. This wasn’t a mild winter evening so much as a chilly springtime. She let herself drift down the street, her mind plucking at thoughts, turning them over, and dropping them again. How old Sandr seemed on the stage, and how young off it. The emptiness in her heart that was the death of Magister Imaniel and Cam, the almost vertiginous need to fill it, and her almost clinical detachment from her pain. The impending trip to Carse, smuggling wealth she hadn’t stolen. The books of the bank records, sums and ciphers tracing history from the foundational document to the last rush of fleeing aristocracy. Opal’s betrayal and Captain Wester’s loyalty. She remembered something Master Kit had said about the shape of Wester’s soul, and wondered what shape her own soul might take.
    A Cinnae woman hurried past, her robes wrapped with pink-and-orange gauze, her face pale as the moon. A dog barked from the shadowed mouth of an alleyway. Three Kurtadam men walked past her, beads clicking and jingling in their pelts, said something she didn’t understand, and then laughed together. She ignored them. The glow of her own windows shone just up ahead. If anyone were to attack her now, she’d only have to call out and Captain Wester andYardem Hane would come. It was a pleasant thought, and enough to make her feel safe whether she was or not.
    She pulled herself up the stairs to the steady creaking of Captain Wester’s pacing footsteps. She opened the door to his scowl.
    “You’ve been out for quite a while,” he said.
    Cithrin shrugged.
    “How much have you been drinking?”
    Cithrin walked over to the cot and sat beside the Tralgu. Yardem smelled like open fields and damp dogs. She repressed the urge to scratch his wide back. Captain Wester was still looking at her, waiting for an answer.
    “I don’t recall exactly,” she said. “I wasn’t paying for most of it.”
    Wester hoisted an eyebrow.
    “The thaw’s almost come. We have to make a decision,” she said, her words precise and unslurred.
    “That’s true,” the captain said, crossing his arms. The failing daylight from the windows softened the lines of his scowl and the grey at his temples. He looked young. Cithrin remembered that Opal had found the man attractive and wondered whether she did. She’d lived with him for weeks. Months, counting the time on the road. She wondered for the first time whether his mouth would taste like Sandr’s, then pulled her mind back to the moment, more than half repulsed by her own musings.
    “No matter how we try to reach Carse,” she said, “the danger is that someone will kill us and take the money.”
    “Old news,” Captain Wester said.
    “So we need to take the money ourselves,” she said, understanding as she said it what she’d been considering all night. “We need to use it.”
    “Probably the wisest thing we could do,” the captain said. “Take what we can carry and vanish.”
    “No,” she said. “I mean take all of it.”
    The Tralgu at her side flicked a jingling ear. Captain Wester licked his lips and looked down.
    “If we took all of it, we’d be in the same situation we are now,” he said. “We’d still have to hide the money or protect it. Only we’d have your friends in Carse after our heads. That’s not an improvement. We can talk about this when you’re sober,” he said.
    “No, listen to me. We’ve been acting like smugglers. We aren’t. You’ve always said we can’t keep this much money quiet and we can’t keep it safe. Opal proved that. So we shouldn’t keep it quiet.”
    Wester and Yardem exchanged a silent glance, and the captain sighed. Cithrin