The Dragon's Path

boxes. The wealth of a city that didn’t exist anymore. The gems and trinkets, silk and spices traded to let the lucky escape the flames. All of it together wouldn’t buy back one of the dead. Not even for a day.
    So what was the point of it?
    “Her plan isn’t bad,” Marcus said. “But I have the right to hate it.”
    “I can respect that position,” Master Kit said with a grin. “Shall we prepare the oil bath for the future foundational documents of the Medean bank in Porte Oliva before the women come back?”
    Marcus sighed and rose.
    W hen the morning came, Marcus walked beside her. The mornings were still cold, but not so much that he could see his breath. Men and women of the three predominant races of the city passed one another as if the differences in their eyes and builds and pelts were of no particular concern. The morning mist drifted through the great square, greying the dragon’s jade pavement. The condemned of the city shivered in the cold where all could see. Two Firstblood men hung as murderers. A Cinnae woman sat in the stocks with chains around her ankles as a recalcitrant debtor. A Kurtadam man hung by his knees and barely able to draw breath. Smuggling. Marcus could feel Cithrin pause. He wondered what the penalty would be for what they were about to do. It seemed unlikely to have precedent in the judges’ tables.
    The wide copper-and-oak doors of the governor’s palace were already open, a stream of humanity pouring in and out from the center of authority. Cithrin lifted her chin. Smit had painted her face before they left. Faint, greyish lines around her eyes. Rose-grey blush coloring her cheeks. She wore a black dress that flattered her hips, but the way a matron might be flattered. Not a girl fresh from her father’s home. She could have been thirty. She could have been fifteen. She could have been anything.
    “Come with me,” she said.
    “Don’t walk from your ankles,” he said, and she slowed, taking the brickwork steps one at a time.
    Within the palaces, the sunlight filtered through great walls of colored glass. Red and green and gold spilled across the floors, the twinned stairways. It mottled the skins of the people walking through, leaving Marcus with the sense of being in some enchanted grotto from a children’s song, where all the fish had been changed to minor political officials. Cithrin took a long, shuddering breath. For a moment, he thought she would leave. Turn on her heel, flee, and leave the whole mad folly behind. Instead, she stepped forward and put a hand on the arm of a passing Kurtadam woman.
    “Forgive me,” Cithrin said. “Where would I find the Prefect of Trades?”
    “Up the stairs, ma’am,” the Kurtadam said with a soft southland lisp. “He’ll be a Cinnae like yourself. Green felt table, ma’am.”
    “My thanks,” Cithrin said, and turned toward the stairs. The Kurtadam woman’s gaze stayed on Marcus, and he nodded as they passed. As a bodyguard, he felt out of place. There were a few queensmen here, scattered among the crowd, but no other private guards that he could see. He wondered if the real Medean bank would have brought him along or left him outside.
    At the top of the stair, Cithrin paused, and he did as well. The prefectures were set haphazardly about the room like a huge child had taken up the tables and scattered them. There were no aisles, no rows. Each table stood at an angle to the ones around it, and if there was a system to the chaos, Marcus couldn’t see it. Cithrin nodded to herself, gestured that he should stay close, and waded into the mess. A third of the way across, she came to a table covered with green felt wherea Cinnae man in a brown tunic sat paging through stacks of parchment. A small weighing scale perched beside him, a row of weights behind it like soldiers at attention.
    “Help you?” he said.
    “I’ve come to submit letters of foundation,” Cithrin said. Marcus felt his heart speeding up, like the moments before a battle. He crossed his arms and scowled.
    “What class of trade, ma’am?”
    “Banking,” Cithrin said, as if she were doing something perfectly normal. The Prefect of Trades looked up as if seeing her for the first time.
    “If you mean a gambling house—”
    “No,” Cithrin said. “A branch house. The holding company is in Carse. I have the papers, if you’d like.”
    She held them out. Marcus was certain he caught a whiff of old urine, that the section of the page that the