The Dragon's Path

her in a headlock. Her cries were wild and Yardem grunted once as a lucky blow struck. Marcus ignored the struggle. The wool was damp and stank of mildew. He lifted up bolt after bolt, letting them drop to the ground. The girl’s cries became sharper, and then quiet. Marcus’s hand found something hard.
    “Pass me a torch,” he called.
    Instead, Master Kit scrambled up beside him. The old man’s face expression said nothing. In the torchlight, Marcus pulled up the box. Blackwood with an iron fastener and hard leather hinges. Marcus drew his dagger and slashed at the hinges until there was enough play to let him push the blade between lid and box.
    “Be careful,” Master Kit said as Marcus bore down on the knife.
    “Late for that,” Marcus said, and the lock gave with a snap. The box hung open, limp and broken. Inside, a thousand bits of cut glass glittered and shone. No. Not glass. Gems. Garnets and rubies, emeralds and diamonds and pearls. The box was full to the brim with them. Marcus looked down into the hole he had left in the wool and snow. There were more boxes like it. Dozens of them.
    He looked at Master Kit. The old man’s eyes were wide with shock.
    “All right,” Marcus said shortly, letting the box fall closed. “Come on.”
    On the ground, the other guards were clustered around Yardem and the girl. Yardem still held the girl in his wide arms, ready to choke her asleep. Tears were flowing down her cheeks. The set of her jaw was all defiance and grief. Marcus pinched off a bit of the whiskers from her cheek, rubbed them between his fingers, and let them drop to the ground. Beside the Tralgu’s bulk, she seemed barely morethan a child. Her eyes met Marcus’s, and he saw the plea there. Something dangerous shifted in his chest. Not rage, not indignation. Not even sorrow. Memory so vibrant and bright it was painful. He told himself to turn away.
    “Please,” the girl said.
    “Kit,” he said. “Take her inside. Our quarters. She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even the ’van master.”
    “As you say, Captain,” Master Kit said. Yardem loosened his grip and stood a half step back. His eyes were locked on the girl, ready to incapacitate her again if she attacked. Master Kit held out a hand to her. “Come along, my dear. You’re among friends.”
    The girl hesitated, her gaze jumping from Marcus to Yardem to Master Kit and back again. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t sob. He’d known another girl once who’d cried the same way. Marcus pushed the thought aside. Master Kit led her away. The others, as if by habit, followed the master actor and left the soldiers to themselves.
    “The cart,” Marcus said.
    “No one comes near it, sir,” Yardem said.
    Marcus squinted up into the falling snow. “How old do you think she is?”
    “Part Cinnae. Makes it hard to tell,” Yardem rumbled. “Sixteen summers. Seventeen.”
    “That was my thought too.”
    “Same age Merian would have been.”
    “Near that.”
    Marcus turned back toward the cliff. Light glimmered in the stone-carved windows, and the ancient, snow-filled script carved into the cliffside above shone deep grey against the black.
    “Sir?”
    Marcus looked back. The Tralgu was already sitting onthe cart’s bench and wrapping the wool around himself in the style of Pût nomads to keep his body warm and his sword arm free.
    “Don’t let what happened at Ellis affect your judgment. She’s not your daughter.”
    The emotion in Marcus’s chest shifted uneasily, like a babe troubled in its sleep.
    “No one is,” he said and walked into the darkness.
    A cup of warm cider, Master Kit’s sympathetic ear, and half an hour got the full tale. The Medean bank, the original carter’s death, the desperate smuggler’s run to Carse. The girl wept through half of it. She’d left the only home she’d known and the nearest she had to family. Marcus listened to it all with arms crossed, the scowl etching into his face. What caught him were the small things about her—the way her voice grew stronger when she talked about letters of exchange and the problem of capital transport, the habit she had of pushing her hair out of her eyes even when it wasn’t there, the protective angle of her shoulders and her neck. Tag the Carter had been beneath his notice. Cithrin bel Sarcour, amateur smuggler, was a different matter.
    When she was done, Marcus left her with the actors, took Master Kit by the elbow, and steered him out through the thin