The Dragon's Path

Cithrin’s consciousness faded to darkness. Time stopped, started when she became vaguely aware of angry voices, very far away, and stopped again.
    “Get up.”
    Cithrin forced her eyes open. Captain Wester stood in the doorway, his arms crossed. The light was dim, the city in twilight and cloud.
    “Get out of bed,” he said. “Do it now.”
    “Go away,” she said.
    “I told you to get out of that God damned
bed
!”
    Cithrin pushed up on one arm. The room shifted, unsteady.
    “And do what?” she said.
    “You’ve missed five meetings,” Marcus said. “People are going to start talking, and when they do, you’re done. So stand up and do what needs doing.”
    Cithrin stared at him, her mouth slack with disbelief and a rising anger.
    “Nothing needs doing,” she said. “It’s done. I’m done. I had my chance, and I lost it.”
    “I met Qahuar Em. He’s not worth pouting over. Now you—”
    “Qahuar? Who cares about Qahuar?” Cithrin said, sitting up. She didn’t remember spilling wine on her tunic, but it tugged where dried wine had adhered to her skin. “It wasthe contract. I tried for it, and I lost. I had the world by the hair, and I lost. I failed.”
    “You failed?”
    Cithrin spread her arms, gesturing at the rooms, the city, the world. Pointing out the obvious. Wester stepped closer. In the dim light, his eyes seemed bright as river stones, his mouth as hard as iron.
    “Did you watch your wife and daughter burn to death in front of you?
Because
of you?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he nodded. “So it could have been worse. You aren’t dead. There’s work that needs doing. Get up and do it.”
    “I’m not permitted. I had a letter from Komme Medean that I’m not allowed to trade in his name.”
    “So instead you curled up in a mewling ball in his name? I’m sure he’ll be thrilled. Get out of bed.”
    Cithrin lay down, pulling her pillow to her chest. It smelled foul, but she held it anyway.
    “I don’t take orders from you,
Captain,
” she said, making the last word an insult. “You take money from me, so you do what I tell you. Now go away.”
    “I won’t let you throw away everything you’ve worked for.”
    “I
worked
to keep the bank’s money safe, and I’ve done it. So you’re right. I win. Now go away.”
    “You want to keep it.”
    “Stones want to fly,” she said. “They don’t have wings.”
    “Find a way,” he said, almost gently.
    It was too much. Cithrin shouted wordless rage, sat up, and threw the pillow at him as hard as she could. She didn’t want to cry anymore, and here she was, crying.
    “I told you to get out!” she screamed. “No one wants you here! I am canceling your contract. Take your wages and your men and lock the door behind you.”
    Wester took a step back. Cithrin’s chest went hollow, and she tried to swallow back the words. He bent down, picked up her pillow between thumb and finger, and lobbed it back to her. It landed on the bed at her side with a soft sound like someone being punched in the stomach. He nudged one of the empty wineskins with the toe of his boot and took a long, deep breath.
    “Remember that I tried to talk you back to your senses,” he said.
    He turned. He walked away.
    She had anticipated the pain, braced herself for it, so it wasn’t the anguish of knowing he would leave her that surprised. The surprise was that even knowing, even being ready for it, the despair could still swamp her. It felt like something had died halfway between her throat and her heart, and was curled there inside her body, rotting. She heard him walking down the stairs, each step quieter than the one before. Cithrin snatched up her filthy pillow and screamed into it. It felt like days, just screaming, her body shaking from hunger and exhaustion and the poison of wine, beer, and ale. The muscles in her back and belly were threatening to cramp, but she could no more stop screaming and weeping than she could choose not to breathe.
    There were voices below her. Marcus Wester and Yardem Hane. She heard Yardem rumble something that she recognized form its cadence as
Yes, sir
though the syllables before and after it were a confusion. Then a smaller, higher voice. Roach, perhaps.
    They’d all go. All of them.
    It didn’t matter.
    Nothing mattered. Her parents were dead so long ago she didn’t remember them. Magister Imaniel and Cam and Besel, all dead. The city of her childhood was burned andbroken. And the bank, the one