The Dragon's Path

of burning hair. It had been years since he’d woken calling for his wife and daughter. For Alys and Merian. He’d hoped the nightmares had passed forever, but clearly they had returned, at least for the time.
    He’d lived through them before. He could again.
    The ’van master sat at his side, their white-plumed breaths falling in and out of time. Crows watched them from snow-caked trees, shifting their wings like old men. The snow was wet, but not more than a foot thick on the road. It would be worse once they turned off the dragon’s roads.
    “Can’t believe we’re doing this,” the ’van master said for the hundredth time. “They didn’t even
tell
me.”
    “They didn’t think of you as a smuggler,” Marcus said.
    “Thought of me as a dupe.”
    “Me too,” Marcus said. And then to the Timzinae’s outraged look, “No,
they
also thought
I
was a dupe. Not that
I
also thought
you
were.”
    The ’van master sank into a bitter silence. The cliffs of Bellin faded behind them. It promised to be a miserable winter. When they stopped for the night, putting up tents in the fast-fading twilight, Marcus walked through the camp withYardem at his side. Conversations paused when they came near. Smiles grew false and unconvincing. Resentment soaked the caravan like oil on a wick. He’d have to be sure nothing happened to light it. It was no worse than he’d expected. When he came to his own tent, she was waiting for him.
    Tag the Carter was gone, vanished from the world as if he’d never been. The actors had helped her wash the worst of the dye from her hair, and without the lichenous whiskers her face seemed almost unnaturally clean. Youth and her Cinnae blood conspired to make her coltish, but a few years would change her into a woman.
    “Captain Wester,” she said, then swallowed nervously. “I didn’t get to say how much I appreciate this.”
    “It’s what I do,” Marcus said.
    “All the same, it’s more than I could have asked, and… Thank you.”
    “You aren’t safe yet,” Marcus said, more sharply than he’d meant. “Save your gratitude until you are.”
    The girl flushed, her cheeks like rose petals on snow. She half bowed, turned, and walked away, footsteps crunching in the snow. Marcus watched her go, shook his head, and spat. Yardem, still at his side, cleared his throat.
    “This girl’s not my daughter,” Marcus said.
    “She’s not, sir.”
    “She doesn’t deserve my protection more than any other man or woman in this ’van.”
    “She doesn’t, sir.”
    Marcus squinted up into the clouds.
    “I’m in trouble here,” he said.
    “Yes, sir,” Yardem said. “You are.”

Dawson
     
    T he King’s Hunt pressed through the thick-falling snow, the calling of the hounds made fainter and eerie by the grey. Dawson Kalliam leaned in toward his horse’s steaming neck, feeling the great animal launch itself into the air. He saw the icy ditch as a blur beneath them, and then it was gone, and the impact of their landing gave way again to the wind-swift chase. Behind him, half a dozen voices rose, but not the king’s. Dawson ignored them. To his left, a grey horse with red leather hunter’s barding loomed out of the snow. Feldin Maas. Others rode close behind, nothing more than snow-drowned shadows. Dawson leaned closer to his mount, digging heels into its flanks, urging it faster.
    The hart had run long and hard, nearly outwitting the hunstmen and their dogs twice. But Dawson had ridden the hills of Osterling Fells in all weather since he was a boy, and he knew the traps of them. The hart had turned down a blind canyon, and it would not return from it. The kill, of course, would be King Simeon’s. The race now was to be the first to reach their prey.
    The lower branches of a pine stood startling green against the void, marking where the hart had passed. Dawson turned, feeling Feldin Maas and the others crowding close behind him. Someone was shouting. The howls and yaps ofthe hounds grew louder. He set his teeth, willing himself forward.
    Something surged on his right. Not the grey. A white horse without barding. Its rider had no helmet or cap, and the long red-gold hair announced Curtin Issandrian as clearly as a pennant. Dawson dug his heels again, and his horse leapt forward. Too fast. He felt the drumming, pounding rhythm of the gallop roughen and the horse struggled to keep its feet. The white surged forward, passing him, and a moment later the grey with Feldin Maas was at