The Dragon's Path

Registry who’ll talk to me,” Cithrin said instead of hello. “The trade ships from Narinisle should be coming, and I need to know better how that works. It looks like half the trade in the city happens when those ships come in.”
    “I’ll see what I can find,” Yardem said.
    “Where to today?” Marcus asked.
    “A brewer’s just outside the wall,” Cithrin said. “I met her at the taproom. Her guild’s letting her replace her vats, but she doesn’t have the coin to afford it.”
    “So we’re loaning it to her.”
    “Actually, she’s not permitted to accept loans at interest,” Cithrin said, pulling a light beaded shawl across her shoulders and arranging it the way Master Kit had taught her. “Guild rules. But she is permitted to take money from business partners. So we’re buying part of her business.”
    “Ah,” Marcus said.
    “If she comes short, we’re in a position to take her shop in hand. If I cultivate a relationship with a cooper and a few taphouses, I can arrange the kind of mutual support that makes everyone very happy for a very long time.”
    “Long time,” Marcus said, tasting the words.
    “And anyway, breweries are always good investments,” Cithrin said. “Magister Imaniel always said so. There’s never going to be an off market for ale.”
    Cithrin looked around the room, pursed her lips, and nodded more to herself than to them. Together, they walked back down the stairway, Cithrin stopping to secure the door behind them. In the street, a half dozen children were playing a game that involved kicking an old wineskin and screaming. Cithrin turned toward the entrance, almost bumpingagainst a Kurtadam man. Marcus silently added the construction of an interior door to his list of things that ought to be done. Having to walk outside to go from one set of rooms to the other had been pleasant enough when they were hiding. Now it was just an unnecessary risk.
    The Firstblood men, Corisen Mout and Barth, were laughing with each other but sobered as the three of them came in. Enen was ready, a small leather bag strapped across her shoulders, her hands free and ready. She wore a curved dagger and a weighted baton on her hips. When they walked out to the street, the six of them fell into an easy formation. Despite the close, crowded streets, their path was always clear, the citizens of Porte Oliva standing aside to let them pass. Curious gazes followed them, but only a few especially bold beggars attempted the approach, and they tried for Cithrin. No one came near Enen and her burden of coin. They moved north, through the great wall, and to the spillover buildings of the city beyond it. The press of bodies was more than Marcus liked. The smells of sewer and sweat were thicker here, the streets both more crowded and wider than behind the wall in Porte Oliva’s center.
    The brewer’s, when they reached it, was a two-story shop built around a narrow courtyard with its own well. Wide doors stood open to the yard, the vats and barrels squatting in the yeast-stinking shadows. The brewer, a Cinnae woman so thick about the body and face she could almost have passed for Firstblood, came out to meet them, grinning like they were family.
    “Magistra Cithrin! Come in, come in!”
    Marcus watched as Cithrin and the brewer kissed one another’s cheeks. He nodded to Enen, and she shrugged off the bag of coins and presented it to the girl as if Cithrin were what she appeared to be. None of the new guards thoughtthe bank was anything different than it claimed. There was no reason that they should.
    Cithrin took the bag and gestured to Marcus that he and the others should stay in the yard. He nodded once, and Cithrin and the brewer took one another by the hand and walked into the dim recesses of the brewery, talking like old friends. A Cinnae boy no older than Roach came out wearing a thin leather apron and bearing mugs of fresh ale. It was sweeter than Marcus liked, but with an almost bready aftertaste that he could learn to enjoy. Marcus let the three new guards settle themselves on the stone wall of the well before he met Yardem’s eyes and glanced across the yard. The Tralgu drank down his ale, belched, and ambled along at Marcus’s side.
    “Decent ale,” Marcus said.
    “Is.”
    “What do you think of this scheme of hers?”
    Yardem’s ears flicked back, then forward again, considering. Marcus knew that just by asking he’d changed the Tralgu’s answer. What Yardem thought about a