The Dragon's Path

roasting pork and beer competed with the less pleasant smell of close-packed bodies. Marcus kept one hand on his coins as he walked through the press. With so many distractions and people in so small a space, he’d have been shocked if there wasn’t at least one cutpurse looking for a little luck. He saw Yardem first, sitting at a back table, then as he got closer, Enen and Roach, Cithrin and… Barth. That was his name. The Firstbloods were Corisen Mout and Barth, and Corisen Mout had the bad front tooth. Feeling unaccountably pleased with himself, Marcus sat at the table.
    Cithrin raised her eyebrows, asking.
    “It’s done,” Marcus said. “You? Things went well with the governor?”
    “Fine,” Cithrin said. “Paid the fee, left the box.”
    “The receipt?”
    “Burned it,” Cithrin said. “There won’t be a trail back. As long as the governor doesn’t get curious and force the lock, we’re as ready as we’re likely to get.”
    A servant hurried over, put a tankard of ale on the table in front of Marcus, and reached to take Cithrin’s away. She stopped him, and he nodded his bow and darted away.
    “What are the chances that the governor’s baser instincts will get the better of him?” Marcus asked instead of
Howmuch have you drunk?
If she were in danger of losing herself, Yardem would have stopped her. Maybe already had.
    “Life is risk,” she said as Roach, sitting beside her, sipped ale from his own tankard.
    “Yardem was just telling us about the shapes of people’s souls,” Barth said. “Did you know your soul’s a circle?”
    Marcus shot a pained look at Yardem. The flick of an ear was the closest he got to an apology.
    “Don’t listen to anything he says, Barth. He’s religious. It makes him nervous when things are going well.”
    “Wasn’t aware they were going well, sir,” Yardem said dryly.
    Over the next hour, Marcus drank his tankard of ale, ate a plate of roast pork with a black sauce hot enough to bring tears to his eyes, and listened to the talk around the table. Barth kept on Yardem about souls and destiny, but Enen and Roach and Cithrin chewed on more practical matters: how many payments would be coming to the bank proper and how many to the room at the café, how to assure that no one attacked whoever carried the café payments across the city, whether to make arrangements with the queensmen to help enforce their private contracts. All the business and consideration of a bank’s owner to her people. Cithrin spoke like a woman sure of her fate, and Marcus admired her for that.
    The banging of a stick on a tin pan interrupted them.
    “Show’s to start!” Mikel’s voice threaded through the noise of the taproom. “Come and watch the show! Show’s to start!”
    Marcus dropped a few coins on the table, rose, and, half joking, offered Cithrin his hand.
    “Shall we?” he asked.
    She accepted his support with a mocking formality.
    “It’s what we’ve come here for,” she said. Marcus led her and the members of his new company out to the pleasant cool of the courtyard to watch his old one. The crowd was good. Easily fifty people, and more likely to stop as they went in or out. When Master Kit strode out on the boards, his wiry hair pulled back and a sword strapped to his hip, a few people applauded, Marcus among them. Sandr came out a moment later, pretending to pick his teeth with a blunted dagger.
    “You, Pintin, have been my second in command these many years,” Master Kit said, thrusting out his chin in parody of heroism. “From the moments of my highest glory and the depths of my despair, you have followed me. Now once again the hounds of war are loosed, and we must fly before them. The armies of dark Sarakal descend upon the city tomorrow.”
    “Best we get out tonight, then,” Sandr said. The crowd chuckled.
    “Indeed, ours is not to stand and fight the doomèd fight. The city surely shall fall, and before it does, Lady Daneillin—last of her house and gentlest beauty of Elassae—must be taken safe away. That is our great work, Pintin. Our company is to fly this night with the great lady in our charge.”
    “Yeah, problem with that,” Sandr said in his Pintin voice. “The men were on the city wall seeing who could piss the farthest. Seems the magistrate thought it was raining. They’re all in the city gaol.”
    Master Kit paused. The self-importance in his jaw melted.
    “
What?
” he shrieked in comic falsetto. More people laughed. They