The Dragon's Path

his breath barely audible under the chorus of crickets singing outside the window. The bedding beneath her, around her, was softer than skin and still damp with sweat.
    She’d thought that the first time was supposed to hurt, but it hadn’t. She wondered how many of the other things she’d heard about sex were wrong. If she’d been raised by a mother, there might have been someone to ask. Still, for someone who hadn’t had any clear idea what she was doing, the experiment seemed to have been a success. Qahuar had been drunk enough to abandon his discretion, and she’d followed his lead. A few kisses, a few caresses, and then he’d lifted off her dress, laid her back on his bed, and she’d had to do very little from there. The business of thrusting and grunting had been intimate and absurd, but she found herself thinking of him a bit more fondly afterward. Perhaps the bond that sex made grew from that combination of shared indulgence and indignity.
    Still, she was pleased that he was asleep. She was sober now, and between the excitement of the evening and her present sobriety, she had no illusions that rest would come to her. If he’d been awake, trying to maintain a conversation or play the host, it would only have been awkward. Betterthat he should snore and embrace his pillow and leave her free to think.
    If the spring shipping had gone quickly, if the blue-water trade was a bit early, if a hundred things that neither she nor anyone in the city had any way of knowing had happened, the first ships from Narinisle might arrive tomorrow. Or it might be weeks, as much as a month, before the traders knew what their fortunes were. The reports of the captains would carry the last information she needed—the activity of the pirates, the state of the northern ports, the possibility of civil war in Northcoast or of further military action from Antea. The governor would be expecting her proposal shortly after that.
    She imagined the auditor arriving. Maybe Komme Medean himself. She would greet him with a smile and lead him up to her rooms. Or perhaps it would be at the café. That would be even better. The milk-eyed Maestro Asanpur would lead him back into the private room, and she would rise from her table to greet him. She’d have the books ready, the accounting made. She imagined him as an old man with fierce eyes and wide hands.
    He would look over her statements, her contracts, and his expression would soften. The confusion and rage would wash away, leaving admiration behind. Had she really done so well with the bank’s money? Had she really saved it all, and more besides? In the darkness, she practiced raising her eyebrow just so.
    “It was nothing,” she said, softly but aloud.
    She would take the box from beneath her chair with her annual report and her contribution to the holding company. He would look it over, nodding. And then, when everything had been made whole, only then would she bring out the agreement with the governor of Porte Oliva, and hand overthe keys to the southern trade. She imagined his hands trembling as he saw the brilliance of all she’d done. A half-breed girl with no parents, and she had managed this.
But only,
she’d say,
only if my branch is accepted.
    “The Porte Oliva bank is
mine,
” she said, and then in the low, rough voice of her imaginary auditor, “Of course, Magistra.”
    She grinned. It was a pretty thought. And truly, why not? She’d been the one who kept the wealth of Vanai from being captured by the city’s prince or the Anteans. She’d been the one to protect it. Once she’d proven that she could manage the bank, why wouldn’t the holding company leave her in place? She’d have earned her bank and the life that went with it. The auditor would see that. Komme Medean would see it. She could do this.
    Some tiny, invisible insect crawled over her hand and she brushed it away. Her rival and lover muttered something, shifting. She smiled at his sleeping back, the rough texture of his skin. She would be almost sorry to beat him out. But only almost.
    As if from a previous life, Yardem Hane’s landslide of a voice spoke in her memory.
There’s no such thing as a woman’s natural weapon.
She saw now that it wasn’t true.
    When she slipped out of bed, he didn’t stir. In the darkness, her clothes were lost somewhere in a tangle on the brickwork floor. She didn’t want to risk waking him, so when she found the tunic he’d tossed aside, she pulled it over her