The Dragon's Path

chair.
Ah well,
Cithrin thought.
Life as a fugitive wasn’t so bad last winter. At least this time I can wear my own clothes.
Paerin Clark opened his eyes.
    “You sign nothing,” he said. “All agreements are signed by the notary and the notary alone. Negotiations don’t happen without the notary present. If you’re overruled, you accept it. Control rests with the holding company. You’re a figurehead. Nothing more.”
    “I can live with that,” she said. And also, unspoken:
Until I can change it, I can live with that.
    “And you return the missing book with evidence of your age to me. Before I leave the city.”
    “No,” Marcus said. “She gives you that, she’s got no purchase. You could go back on everything, and she’d have nothing.”
    “She’ll have to trust me.”
    Cithrin swallowed. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to sing.
    She nodded. Paerin Clark was still for a long moment, then he picked up the papers he’d been writing, sighed, and ripped them into small squares.
    “It seems I have a somewhat different report to write,” he said, smiling wryly. “Congratulations on your new bank, Magistra.”

Geder
     
    T he funeral rites of Phelia Maas were somewhat overshadowed by the execution of her husband. Geder, given the choice, had opted for the execution, as had the majority of the great names at court. King Simeon’s throne sat on a raised dais. Aster sat beside him in a smaller chair of the same design. King and prince both wore black ermine. Then there was the broad expanse of the chamber, Feldin Maas kneeling in its center. His ankles and wrists were bound with wire, and even from the gallery behind the woven rope, Geder could see the bruises on the man’s legs and the long black scabs across his back. Ten executioners stood in a rough circle around the prisoner. Their masks were steel and made to look like snarling animals, and their blades were dull and rusted.
    A single drum beat out its dry call. It was the only sound apart from some idiot whispering at the back the crowd. Geder tried to ignore the people and focus on the spectacle. Even though he’d arrived late, the assembled nobles had made room for him, so he had an excellent view just at the edge of the gallery. Dawson Kalliam and his two sons stood next to him. Geder was wearing his black leather cloak from Vanai, but the cut of it was all wrong now. His body had changed shape over the summer, and it hung loose on him.He wished he’d thought to get it recut. Everyone who wasn’t watching Feldin Maas die seemed to be looking at him.
    King Simeon, gray in the face and severe, lifted his arm. The drum went silent. The mass of people in all three levels of the gallery took in their breath. Even the idiot at the back stopped talking.
    “You have the courtesy of a final statement, traitor,” the king said.
    Feldin Maas shook his head slowly.
No.
    The king’s arm fell. The executioners moved in, each man sinking the point of his blade hard into the man’s flesh. Geder had been led to believe that the blades were fairly dull, and the force each of the killers used reinforced the idea. Maas cried out once, but only once. When the executioners stood back, he lay in a spreading pool of blood, the ten blades sticking out of his body. The assembly around him let its breath out with a sound like wind through trees.
    King Simeon stood. Behind him, Prince Aster looked like a statue of himself carved from pale stone. Geder wondered what it would be like for a boy just past his ninth naming day to know that a grown man had been plotting to kill him and then watch the man die brutally.
    “This is the right and proper fate of all who swear false loyalty to the Severed Throne,” he said. “Let all who stand witness to this justice carry forth the word that all traitors to Antea will suffer and all will die.”
    The applause and shouts of approval burst forth all around. Geder joined in, and Dawson Kalliam leaned close to him, shouting to be heard.
    “This is yours too, Palliako.”
    It was a kinder way of putting it than he’d used before the ceremony started. Then he’d said,
You’ve given Simeon a spine at last.
    The drum began again, and king and prince turned and walked out in solemn procession. Servants dressed in red came to carry out the body. Maas was to be displayed, swords still in place, for seventeen days. What was left after that would be thrown into the Division with the kitchen scraps and sewage, and anyone who