The Dragon's Path

throne.”
    “Then break him,” Dawson said. “I’ll help you. We can build a cabal of our own. There are men who haven’t forgotten the old ways. They’re
hungry
for this. We can rally them.”
    “We can, yes, but to what end?”
    “Simeon. Old friend. This is the moment. Antea needs a true king now. You have it in you to be that man. Don’t send your boy to Issandrian.”
    “The time’s not right. Issandrian’s on the rise, and opposing him now will only add to the strife. Better to wait until he stumbles. My work now is to see that we don’t follow the dragon’s path along the way. If I can give Aster the kingdom without a civil war, it will be legacy enough.”
    “Even if it’s not the true Antea?” Dawson said, an ache gathering behind his eyes. “What honor is there in a kingdom that’s lost its heritage to these preening, self-important children?”
    “If you’d said it before Ternigan handed him Vanai, I might have agreed. But where’s the honor in fighting a battle you can’t win?”
    Dawson looked at his hands. Age had thickened his knuckles and cold chapped his skin. The smell of soap mocked his nose. His boyhood friend, his lord and king, sighed and grunted, shifting in his bath like an old man. Somewhere in Osterling Fells, Curtin Issandrian and Feldin Maas were drinking his wine, toasting each other. Laughing.Dawson’s cheeks ached, and he forced himself to relax his jaw.
    Where’s the honor in fighting a battle you can’t win?
hung in the air between them. When he could keep the disappointment out of his voice, Dawson spoke.
    “Where else would it be, my lord?”

Cithrin
     
    T he dragon’s roads behind them, the world turned to snow and mud. The cart beneath her lurched through ruts and holes, the mules before her strained and slipped, and the wheels grumbled and spat through the churn the carts ahead of her had left. Cithrin sat, reins in her numbed fingers, her breath making ghosts, and watched the low hills give way to plains, the forests thin and snow-sheeted scrub and brambles take their place. In springtime, the land surrounding the Free Cities might be green and alive, but now it seemed empty and eternal.
    They passed a field with stacks of rotting hay that testified to some farmer’s tragedy. A vineyard where row after row or trellis supported black, dead-looking woody vines. Now and again, a snow hare would bound along, almost too far away to see. Or a deer would stray near until one of the carters or the guards shot an arrow toward it in hope of fresh venison. From what she could tell, they never hit.
    Mostly it was cold. And the days were still getting shorter.
    The caravan master stopped them for the night at an abandoned mill. Cithrin pulled her cart to a stop beside the ice sheet of the pond, unhooked her mud-spattered mules, and rubbed them clean as they ate. The sun hung low and bloody in the west. Opal came to check on her, and the woman’s mild eyes seemed pleased by what she saw.
    “We’ll make an honest carter of you yet, my dear,” she said.
    Cithrin’s smile hurt her cold-burned cheeks. “A carter, maybe,” she said. “Honest is another question.”
    The older woman’s eyebrows rose. “More humor,” Opal said. “The world may stop turning. Are you coming to the meal?”
    “I don’t think so,” Cithrin said, looking at one of the mules’ hoofs. The small sore she’d seen the day before was still there, but hadn’t gotten worse. “I don’t like being with them.”
    “Them?”
    “The others. I don’t think they like me. If it wasn’t for me, they’d all be in Bellin sitting around a fire grate. And the captain…”
    “Wester? Yes, he is a bit of a bear, isn’t he? I still don’t know quite what to make of him myself,” Opal said, her voice dry and speculative and on the edge of flirtation. “Still, I’m sure he wouldn’t bite unless you asked him.”
    “All the same,” Cithrin said. “I think I’ll stay with the cart.”
    “I’ll bring you a plate, then.”
    “Thank you,” Cithrin said. “And Opal?”
    “Yes?”
    “Thank you.”
    The guard smiled and dropped a small, ironic curtsey. Cithrin watched her walk back toward the mill house. Someone was lighting a fire in there, thin smoke rising from the stone chimney. Around her, the snow glowed gold and then red, and then between one moment and the next, grey. Cithrin laid blankets on her mules and lit a small fire of her own. Opal returned with a plate of stewed