The Dragon's Path

scheme that Marcus hadn’t questioned was a different thing.
    “Seems to be working,” Yardem said. “Still more jewelry than I’d like in the basement, but we’ve got enough swords to scare off stray knives. I don’t know much about it, but it seems she’s likely to earn back the money she’s spending or near to it.”
    “So that when the big men from Carse swoop down here, they’ll find it all more or less intact,” Marcus said. “She can hand it over to them, wash her hands, and there’s no harm done.”
    “That’s the plan,” Yardem said carefully.
    “Do you see her handing it back to them?”
    Yardem stretched his long, thick arms, turning to look atthe open brewery as if he were bored and it was in the way. Marcus waited in silence, hoping that the Tralgu would disagree and expecting that he wouldn’t.
    “She’s going to try to keep it,” Yardem said.
    “She doesn’t know she’s thinking about it, but yes,” Marcus said. “She’s good at this. Maybe very good. And she’s not the kind of girl who stops when she likes something too much.”
    Yardem nodded slowly.
    “How’s she going to do it?” he asked.
    Marcus sipped his ale, washing his mouth with it, then spat it onto the courtyard stones. A dozen pigeons lifted off from the rooftop, spinning across the wide blue overhead.
    “I don’t understand half of what she’s doing now,” he said. “Do you?”
    “No.”
    “I don’t know what she’ll try. Likely she doesn’t either. But when she sees it, she’s going to reach for it. Whether it’s a good idea or not.”

Geder
     
    T he days that followed Geder’s return to Camnipol flowed around him like river water around a stone. Gatherings at the houses of the highest families in Antea filled his days, celebrations for his own victory in Vanai and for the coming anniversary of Prince Aster’s naming took the nights. Almost the day after his unexpected revel, he began seeing black leather cloaks the image of his own appearing among the brightly dyed fashions of the court. Men who had never bothered to cultivate a connection to House Palliako had begun calling on him. If his father seemed put off by the attention, that was understandable. Changes that came suddenly could feel catastrophic even when they were changes for the better.
    The only things that would have made the ripening spring better would have been rooms within the city itself instead of night after night of heading out before the city gates closed and sleeping in his campaign tent and for the nightmares to stop.
    “I don’t understand why I shouldn’t order the disband,” Geder said, spreading a spoonful of apple butter over his morning bread. “If I don’t do it soon, Lord Ternigan’s sure to.”
    “He doesn’t dare,” Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch,said. “Not until all the foreign swords and bows are safely out of Camnipol.”
    “It’s a disgrace,” Marrisin Oesteroth, Earl of Magrifell, said, nodding. “Armed rabble in the streets of Camnipol. And hardly even a Firstblood among them. I don’t know what Curtin Issandrian was thinking, bringing the slave races. Next he’ll be honoring Price Aster with pigs and monkeys.”
    Around them, the lesser gardens of House Daskellin glowed in the late morning sun. The golden blossoms of daffodils nodded in the breeze. To the east, the reconstructed stadium loomed, stories tall and painted white and red. The games for the prince were to start the next day, but the preliminary spectacles had been running for days—bear baiting, show fights, archery competition. And with them, a growing tension that reminded Geder of the still, heavy heat of the clear summer day before a storm night.
    “Did you smell those Yemmu cunning men?” Odderd Faskellan, Viscount of Escheric and Warden of the White Tower, asked with a snort. “The stink coming off them made my eyes water from the platform. And the Southlings.”
    The plain-faced man at Geder’s side—Paerin Clark, he was called, and with no other title given—drank from his cup as if to hide his expression, but the others around them nodded and grunted their agreement and disapproval.
    “They fuck their own sisters,” Marrisin Oesteroth said and took a drink of cider. “It’s not their fault that they do. Dragons made them that way. Keep their bloodlines true, just like hunting dogs.”
    “Really?” Geder asked. “I read an essay that said that was a myth started by the Idikki Fellowship after