The Dragon's Path

at cards.”
    Smit, the jack-of-all-roles, pulled a long face. “Are we playing guards or nursemaids?” the man said.
    “We’re doing whatever gets the ’van to Carse safe,” Marcus said. “We’ll protect them from ourselves if we have to.”
    “Mmm. Good line,” Cary, the thin woman, said.
“Protect them from ourselves if we have to.”
    Marcus narrowed his eyes, frowning.
    “They’re writing a new play,” Master Kit said. “A comic piece about an acting troupe hired to pretend they’re caravan guards.”
    Yardem grunted and flicked an ear. Maybe annoyance, maybe amusement. Likely both. Marcus chose to ignore it.
    “We’ve got a dozen and a half carters,” Marcus said. “Add the ’van master and his wife. You’ve traveled with these people for weeks. You’ve watched them. You know them. What problems are we going to have?”
    “The man hauling the tin ore,” Smit said. “He’s been spoiling for a fight since those raiders. He’s not going to last a season without one unless someone starts sharing his bed or puts him down hard.”
    “I’d thought the same,” Marcus said, allowing himself a moment’s pleasure. The actors were much more perceptive than his usual men. Given the circumstances, that would help. “What else?”
    “The quarter-Dartinae,” Opal, the older leading woman, said. “He’s been avoiding the ’van master’s sermons almost as much as you have, Captain. A constant diet of scripture isn’t going to sit well with him.”
    “The girl in the false whiskers,” Mikel, the thin boy, said. “She’s looking mightily fragile.”
    “Oh, yes.
Her,
” Cary said.
    “And God knows what she’s really hauling,” Opal said, her tone all agreement. “Gets jumpy as a cat whenever anyone gets too near her cart. Won’t talk about it either.”
    Marcus raised a hand, commanding silence.
    “
Who?
” he said.
    “The girl in the false whiskers,” Master Kit said. “The one that calls herself Tag.”
    Marcus looked at Yardem. The Tralgu’s expression mirrored his own blank surprise. Marcus lifted an eyebrow.
Did you know?
Yardem shook his head once, earrings jingling.
No.
    And God knows what she’s really hauling.
    “With me, Yardem,” Marcus said, pulling his boots back on.
    “Yes, sir,” the Tralgu rumbled.
    The carters and and ’van master were in a separate network of rooms and tunnels. Marcus went through the smoke-hazed halls and common rooms, Yardem looming at his side. The other guards or actors, or whatever they were, trailed along behind like children playing follow-me-follow-you. With every room that Tag wasn’t in, Marcus felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. His mind ran back over everything that had happened on the road, every time he’d spoken to the boy, everything that the ’van master had said about him. There was very little. Almost nothing. Always,the boy had kept himself—and, more the point, his cart—to himself.
    The last of the rented rooms looked out over the dark and snow-carpeted hills. Behind him, Marcus heard the high, excited voices of the carters asking what was happening. The chill, wet air smelled as much of rain as snow. Lightning sketched the horizon.
    “He’s not here, sir.”
    “I see that.”
    “She can’t have gone,” Opal said from behind them. “Girl hardly knew how to steer the cart without something in front for the mules to follow.”
    “The cart,” Marcus said, walking out into the gloom.
    The carts that hadn’t been unloaded were near the low stone warehouses. Half a foot of snow covered them, making them all seem taller than they truly were. Marcus stalked among them. Behind him, someone lit torches, the fires hissing in the still-falling snow. Marcus’s shadow shuddered and danced on the wool cart. The snow on its bench was hardly an inch thick. Marcus hooked a foot on the iron loop beside the wheel and hauled himself up. Once atop it, he pulled back the tarp. Tag lay curled in a ball like a cat. Now that the words had been said, Marcus could see where the whiskers were unevenly placed, the dye in the hair patchy. What had been an underfed, half-dim Firstblood boy resolved into a girl with Cinnae blood.
    “Wh-what—” the girl began, and Marcus grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to her feet. Her lips were blue from the cold.
    “Yardem?”
    “Here, sir,” the Tralgu said from the cart’s side.
    “Catch,” Marcus said and shoved her over. The girl yelpedas she fell, and then Yardem had