The Dragon's Path

head. It reached as far as her thighs. Close enough. She trotted to the corner of the room, her fingers brushing the floor until she found it: a leather thong and brass key that Qahuar Em always wore next to his skin.
    Well. Almost always.
    The bricks were cool against the soles of her feet, and thesound of her footsteps was as near to silence as made no distinction. The compound was near the port, the rooms small and close, but arrayed around a small courtyard garden. The four servants were full-blooded Jasuru, and of them, only the door slave stayed in his place through the night. Qahuar Em might be the voice of a great Lyoneian clan, but space was expensive in Porte Oliva, and having a more lavish home than the local nobles was a kind of boasting that would serve him poorly. Cithrin turned a corner in the darkness and counted three doors on her left. The third was oak bound in iron. She found the keyhole and carefully put the stolen key in. When she turned it, the clack of the mechanism sounded as loud as a shout. Her heart raced, but no one raised the alarm. She opened the door and slipped into Qahuar’s private office.
    The shutters were closed and barred, but once she’d undone them, the light of the quarter moon was enough to make out the general shapes of things. There was a writing desk. A strongbox bolted to the floor. A latticework holder, filled with scrolls and folded letters. A hooded lantern with rings of carved flint and worked steel on a string. Cithrin struck sparks to the wick, then quickly closed and barred the shutters. What had been shadows and silhouettes sprang to life in shades of dim orange and grey. The strongbox was locked, and the key to the office wouldn’t fit it. The writing desk was bare apart from a thumb-sized bottle of green ink and a metal stylus. She went to the scrolls and letters, moving quickly, methodically from one to the next, being sure to keep each stack in order and put them back precisely as they were.
    She was aware of the anxiety pressing at her gut and the rapid beat of her heart, and she pushed it all aside. She would let herself feel again later, when there was time. A letter fromthe governor thanking Qahuar for his gift. The chocolate had been exquisite, and the governor’s wife especially extended her gratitude. Cithrin put the letter back. An unfurled scroll listed the names and relationships of several dozen people, none of whom meant anything to her. She put it back.
    Outside the shuttered window, a salt thrush sang. Cithrin ran her fingers through her hair. Something in this had to be of use. Somewhere in the papers, Qahuar would have said something that told something of what his offer to the governor would be. She reached for another letter, and her arm brushed the lantern. Glass and metal shifted, teetered, and she grabbed it. A second more and it would have fallen. Shattered. Lit the room on fire. Cithrin put it carefully in the middle of the writing desk and went back to her search with trembling hands.
    Hours seemed to pass before she found it. A long scroll of fine cotton. The lines of cipher were spaced widely enough that Qahuar had been able to write the message beneath them. Cithrin ran her fingertips along his words. It had been written by an elder of the clan, and it was everything Cithrin had hoped to discover. They could commit fifteen ships to the effort. Each would be manned with a full crew of two dozen sailors. She kept on reading, her fingers making a soft hushing against the cloth. In compensation, they would ask sixteen hundredths of every transaction in each port for ships accompanied and protected, or nineteen if they asked the clan to guarantee. The elder estimated the initial outlay at two thousand silver, with a profit to the clan of five hundred in a season. The agreement would have to be for a full decade.
    Magister Imaniel had often talked about the tools of memory. Ink was best, but writing the figures down andsneaking them out of the house was a risk she didn’t have to take. Fifteen ships of two dozen men.
    “At the age of fifteen, she’d had two dozen men,” Cithrin said to herself.
    Sixteen hundredths without guarantee, or nineteen with. So the guarantee was worth three.
    “Sixteen for the company, and three more for love.”
    Two thousand to begin, with an estimated profit of five hundred each year of a ten-year agreement.
    “She gave two thousand kisses, took five hundred back, and died alone ten years after