The Dragon's Path

two, three, four, times at the Yemmu fighter’s knee like he was trying to cut down a sapling.
    The Yemmu stumbled and fell, lifting its arms in surrender. Geder spun around.
    The gates had stopped, neither fully open nor closed, and more of the Vanai soldiers were pouring through the gap. The Jasuru archers were nowhere to be seen, and four of the Yemmu had fallen, with half a dozen more locked in battle against a rising tide of Antean swords. Jorey Kalliam was bent over, breathing hard. Blood trickled from his mouth and stained his teeth, but he was smiling.
    “Didn’t know what they were starting when they crossed us,” Jorey said through a foam of his own blood and saliva. Geder grinned.
    *   *   *
    W ell,” Lerer Palliako said, leaning against the parapet of his balcony. “Well, well, well.”
    “They actually took the southern gate,” Geder said. “Closed it and jammed the mechanism. We still can’t open it.”
    Geder shrugged. The twilight was fading and stars coming out. The feasts and balls were all canceled by order of the throne. Blades and blood in the streets of Camnipol had the king’s guard patrolling the streets. King Simeon himself had gathered a select group of nobles in the Kingspire, and set a dusk-to-dawn curfew that meant anyone found in the darkened streets would be slaughtered without question or warning. The houses were being closed and barred, and a fire watch set on the walls of the city. The stadium that had been remade to house Prince Aster’s celebratory games instead had a dozen gladiators hung from makeshift gallows. Twice that number had been bound and dropped off bridges, their bodies unburied at the bottom of the Division.
    The city’s shock and fear seemed to change the air itself. Everything seemed fragile, poised at some great catastrophe. Geder knew he should have been frightened too, but he was exhilarated. An armed revolt in the capital city, and he’d put it down. If he’d been celebrated for the burning of Vanai, he could hardly imagine the glory that would rain down on him now. He was half drunk with the idea of it.
    “I also hear Lord Ternigan has ordered the disband,” his father said.
    “The men were all desperate to defend their houses and families. If Lord Ternigan hadn’t, I likely would have.”
    His father shook his head and sighed. From the window, they could see the Kingspire at the city’s edge, towering above Camnipol and therefore the world. Lights glittered inthe windows like stars or the cookfires of an army. Lerer Palliako cracked his knuckles.
    “Bad times,” he said. “Very bad times.”
    “It won’t go on,” Geder said. “This ends it. There aren’t any more of the gladiators, and if there are, they’ll be hunted down. The city’s saved.”
    “There’s whoever suborned them,” his father said. “Whoever arranged the attack. And the names I can put on that list are too powerful to die on a rope. I never spent time at court when I was a young man. I never made the connections and alliances. I wonder now if I should have. But it’s too late, I suppose.”
    “Father,” Geder said, but Lerer coughed and held up a hand.
    “The disband’s been called, son. You can go anywhere you’d like. Do anything. It might be wise if you were out of Camnipol for a time. Until this is all settled out.”
    Unease cut through Geder’s euphoria for the first time since the fighting stopped. He looked around the night-soaked buildings and streets. Surely his father was jumping at shadows. There was nothing to be afraid of. They’d won. The coup had been stopped.
    This
coup.
This
time.
    “I suppose there’s no harm in going home now,” Geder said. “I have an essay I’m thinking about that I think you’d find interesting. I’m tracking geographic references by time and comparing them with contemporary maps to—”
    “Not Rivenhalm,” Lerer said.
    Geder’s words trailed off.
    “You should leave Antea,” his father said. “You’re too much a part of politics we don’t fully understand. First Vanai, and now this? For the season at least, you should gowhere they can’t reach you. Take a few servants. I’ll give you the money. You can find someplace quiet and out of the way. By autumn, perhaps, we’ll know better where things stand.”
    “All right,” Geder said. He felt very small.
    “And son? Don’t tell anybody where you’re going.”

Dawson
     
    S imeon paced before them all. The king’s face was a mixture of