The Dragon's Path

under them, and they rose.
    The southern gate opened into a rough square. Geder had been there before, and knew what the chaos of beggars, merchants, and guards, oxen and carts and feral dogs looked like. This was like walking into the Camnipol dreamed by a boy who had only heard its glories described. Three hundred people at the least stood behind another honor guard, waving banners of House Palliako. A platform stood to the right with men in embroidered cloaks and cloth-of-gold tunics. There was the Baron of Watermarch. Beside him, a young man in the colors of House Skestinin. Not the lord himself, but perhaps his eldest son. Perhaps half a dozen more whom Geder’s reeling mind half recognized before the litter moved on. And then, at the end, his head held high and tears streaming down his cheeks, Geder saw his father’s face, and he saw the pride in it.
    The crowd followed, cheering and tossing handfuls of flowers and paper-wrapped candies. The sound of them overwhelmed any hope of conversation, so he could only stare at Lord Kalliam in amazement.
    At a meeting of half a dozen streets, the litter hesitated. Near the Kingspire, the buildings grew three and four storieshigh and people hung out of every window, watching him pass. A girl high and to his left pitched out a fistful of bright-colored ribbon, the threads dancing in the air as they fell. Geder waved to her, and something veritiginous and sweet washed through him.
    Despite what he’d done, he was a hero.
Because
of what he’d done. It was more than relief; it was reprieve, forgiveness, and absolution. He lifted his arms, drinking in the adulation like a starving man. If it was a dream, he’d rather die than wake from it.
    I t was a difficult decision,” Geder said, leaning across the table and talking loud. “To raze a city like that is a terrible thing. I didn’t choose that path lightly.”
    “Absolutely not,” the second son of the Baron of Nurring said, hardly slurring his words at all. “But that’s the point, isn’t it? Where’s the valor in doing the easy thing? There isn’t any. But to face the dilemma. Take action.”
    “Definitive action,” Geder said.
    “Exactly,” the boy replied. “Definitive action.”
    The revel grounds connected to Dawson Kalliam’s mansion. It wasn’t as grand as the ballrooms and gardens on an actual holding, but it was near. And to have so much room inside the walls of the Undying City said more than three times the space in the countryside. Candles glowed up and down the high-domed walls, and blown glass lanterns hung from threads too thin to see in the dusk. Wall-wide doors opened to fresh gardens that still smelled of turned earth and early flowers. The feast and dance had run their course. Half a dozen highborn men had taken to the dais to proclaim the virtues of Geder’s actions in the Free Cities.
    There had been none of the weakness, timidity, andcorruption that had poisoned the generals of Antea for too long now, they said. Geder Palliako had shown his mettle not only to the Free Cities, not only to the world. He had shown it to his own countrymen. Through his actions, he had reminded them all what purity could accomplish. Even the king had sent a messenger with a written notice recognizing Geder’s return to Camnipol.
    The applause had been intoxicating. The respect and admiration of men who hadn’t so much as nodded to him in any of his times at court. Then the dance. Geder generally avoided that particular court pastime, but Dawson Kalliam’s wife Clara had insisted that that he accompany her around the garden yard at least once, and by the time he’d made the circuit, he felt almost surefooted. He’d made another few rounds with a few younger, unattached women before his thighs and ankles began to protest sharply enough to stop him. Jorey had brought his leather cloak, and as the day cooled toward night and the wine and beer flowed a bit more freely, Geder was glad of it.
    “The mark of a real leader,” Geder said, and then lost the thread. “The mark of a leader…”
    “I hope you’ll excuse me,” his father said. “Geder, my boy?”
    Geder rose to his feet and his drinking companion nodded his respect and turned away, his steps generally steady.
    “It’s getting late for an old man,” Lerer Palliako said, “but I couldn’t go without seeing you. You have exceeded anything I could have hoped. I haven’t seen people talking about our family in terms like this since…