The Dragon's Path

were warming to it.
    Marcus leaned toward Yardem Hane.
    “I’m not like that, though,” he said. “All that high dramatic talk and sucking my gut in. That’s not what I’m like.”
    “Not at all, sir,” Yardem said.
    T wo days later, Cithrin sat across the café table from him. A light rain pattered outside the open doors and windows, the stones at the entrance of the Grand Market darkened almost black. Behind him, two Kurtadam men were talking about the latest news from Northcoast. Another war of succession seemed almost certain. Marcus told himself he didn’t care, and for the most part that was true. The world smelled of coffee and raindrops.
    “If we have the free coin, I’m thinking about sponsoring one of the Narinisle ships next year,” Cithrin said.
    Marcus nodded.
    “There’s going to be uncertainty about the new fleet idea. Especially at first. If it’s a success, even just for the first couple of years, it’s going to increase the traffic through Porte Oliva. That could be a very good thing for us, so long as we’re in position. Known to everyone. Trusted.”
    “All that assuming,” Marcus said.
    Cithrin swallowed. She’d lost weight in the last weeks, and her skin, while always pale, was growing pallid. It was odd to him that none of the men who came asking her patronage for a loan or offering to deposit their wealth with her for a discreet return appeared to notice that the anxiety was eating her. She wasn’t sleeping enough. But she wasn’t drinking herself to sleep either. That counted as strength enough for him.
    “All that assuming,” she agreed. And then, “Do you ever wish we’d run? Filled our pockets and just… gone?”
    “Ask me again once the auditor’s left,” Marcus said.
    She nodded. The ancient, half-blind Cinnae man limped in from the back. The rain seemed to have no good effect on his hips. Cithrin raised her empty cup, and Maestro Ansanpur nodded with a knowing smile and turned back around.
    “Magister Imaniel always said that waiting was the hardest thing,” she said. “That the easiest way to lose was to get impatient. Do something for the sake of doing something and not because it’s right. That always sounded obvious when he said it. He and Cam were the nearest thing I had to parents. I was with the bank almost as soon as I could walk. He knew everything about money and risk and how to appear one way when you’re actually something else.”
    “He’d have made a good general, sounds like,” Marcus said.
    “No,” she said. “I don’t know. Maybe. He didn’t like soldiers, though. He didn’t like war. I remember he used to say that there are two ways to meet the world. You go out with a blade in your hand or else with a purse.”
    “Really? And here I thought there was money to be made from war.”
    “There is,” Cithrin said. “But only if you’re standing in exactly the right place. In the larger sense, there’s always more lost in the fight than there is won. The way he said things, it sounded like we were all that kept the swords in their scabbards. War or trade. Dagger and coin. Those were the two kinds of people.”
    “Sounds like you miss him.”
    Cithrin nodded, then shrugged, then nodded again.
    “I do, but not the way I thought I would. I thought it would all be about wanting to ask him what he knew, but most times when I think of him, it’s just that it would be nice to hear his voice. And I don’t even think of him as often as I’d expected.”
    “You’ve changed since you saw him,” Marcus said. “That’s one of the things Yardem used to tell me that actually made sense. He said that you don’t go through grief like it was a chore to be done. You can’t push and get finished quicker. The best you can do is change the way you always do, and the time comes when you aren’t the same person who was in pain.”
    “And did that work for you?”
    “Hasn’t yet,” Marcus said.
    Maestro Asanpur returned with a fresh cup in his trembling hand. He placed it before Cithrin with a faint clink of fine ceramic. She blew across the surface of it, scattering the steam with her breath. When she sipped it, her smile lit the old Cinnae’s face.
    “Thank you, Maestro,” she said.
    “Thank
you,
Magistra,” he said, and limped forward to close the shutters against the chill.
    The patter of the raindrops grew heavier, the splashes like little detonations of white against the grey. She was right. Waiting for battle was the