The Dragon's Path

wax had protected showed three shades darker than the rest. The prefect would laugh, call the queensmen, end the game here before it began.
    The Cinnae man took the parchment as if it were spun glass. He frowned, his gaze skipping over the words. He stopped and looked up at Cithrin. His pale face flushed.
    “The… the
Medean
bank?” he said. Marcus saw the conversations around them shudder and stop. More eyes were turning their way. The prefect swallowed. “Will this be a restricted license or free?”
    “I believe the letter calls for free,” Cithrin said.
    “So it does. So it does. A full and unencumbered branch of the Medean bank.”
    “Is that a problem?”
    “No,” the man said, and fumbled, reading for her name on the papers. “No, Mistress bel Sarcour, only I hadn’t been told to expect it. If the governor knew, he’d have been here.”
    “Not called for,” Cithrin said. “Would I pay the fees to you?”
    “Yes,” the prefect said. “Yes, that would be fine. Let me just…”
    For what felt like a day and likely took less than half an hour, Cithrin fenced with the bureaucrat. Payment was delivered from the bank, assayed, accepted, and receipts issued. The man scribbled a note on a sheet of pink onionskin, pressed an inked signet on the page, signed, and had Cithrin put her name over his signature. Then he offered her a small silver blade. As if she had done it a thousand times before Cithrin cut her thumb and pressed her print onto the page. The prefect did likewise.
    And it was done. Cithrin took the onionskin, folded it, and slipped it in the purse that hung from her belt. Marcus followed her back down the stairs and out to the square. The sun had burned off the mist now, and the sounds of human traffic were the same low roar he’d become accustomed to.
    “We’re a bank,” Cithrin said.
    Marcus nodded. He would have felt better if there had been someone to fight. Or at least threaten. The anxiety of what they’d just done wanted some release. Cithrin took a handful of coins from her purse and held them out to him.
    “Here,” she said. “That’s to hire on more guards. Now that it’s my money, we might as well spend it. I’m thinking a dozen men, but use your best judgment. We’ll want day and night guards, and then a few to accompany goods when we transfer them. I didn’t haul these silks all the way from the Free Cities to have some back-alley thief take them now. I’ve got my eye on a couple of places the bank might operate from that give a better impression than squatting over a gambling shop.”
    Marcus looked at the coins. They were the first she’d ever paid him, and so what she’d just said was her first true order. The warmth in his chest was as surprising as it was powerful.
    However it unfurled from this, whatever the consequences, the girl had done what damn few would have had the nerve for. This from the half-idiot carter boy he’d met in Vanai last autumn.
    He was proud of her.
    “Is there a problem?” Cithrin asked, real concern in her voice.
    “No, ma’am,” Marcus said.

Dawson
     
    I ssandrian’s parade began at the edge of the city, snaked through the low market, then north along the broad king’s road, past the gates of the Kingspire, and then east to the stadium. The broad streets teemed with the subjects of King Simeon, sworn loyalists of the Severed Throne, all standing on their toes to catch a glimpse of the slave races arrived to turn Antea into the puppet of Asterilhold. The roar of the assembled voices was like the surf, and the smell of their bodies threatened to overwhelm the gentle scents of springtime. Some follower of Issandrian’s cabal had paid the rabble to carry banners and signs celebrating the games and Prince Aster. From where Dawson sat, he saw one—beautiful blue-dyed cloth with the prince’s name in letters of silver—held aloft on poles, but with the wrong side up. It was Issandrian’s revolt in a nutshell: the words of nobility hefted by men who couldn’t read them.
    The noble houses had their viewing platforms set in order and position according to the status of each family’s blood. The place each man stood told where he put his allegiance. The state of the court as a whole could be read in a glance, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. Banner colors from a dozen houses fluttered about king and prince, and more of them belonged to Issandrian’s cabal than not. Even Feldin Maas’s grey and green. King Simeon sat high