The Dragon's Path

that?”
    Someone chuckled. Geder’s embarrassment turned to rage.
    “Because if you don’t, I’ll have you killed,” he shouted. “And because you had the temerity to question me, I’ll have every weapon and piece of armor in a pile on the road ten paces from your guardsmen. And if I find so much as a work knife overlooked, I’ll leave your corpse for the
crows.
”
    The nictatating membrane slid open and closed. The caravan master turned around and trudged back toward the carts. Geder motioned his second closer.
    “Send men around the sides. If anyone tries to sneak away, bring them back alive if you can. Dead if you have to. We’re searching this place down to the pegs and nails.”
    “The mill house too?” the second asked.
    “Everything,” Geder said.
    The Timzinae nodded and moved back, calling to his men. Geder watched the carts, anger and embarrasment giving way to anxiety. The captain and the caravan master exchanged a few words, and the captain looked up. He frowned at Geder, shrugged, and turned away. If there was going to be resistance, it would come now and it would come hard. Geder shifted in his saddle, the still-healing wound in his leg aching in anticipation. Movement came from the mill house, from every cart. How many soldiers would they have? If the full wealth of the Medean bank was sitting in those carts, every carter would be a swordsman or an archer. Geder’s scalp began to crawl. If they had bowmen hidden in those carts, he’d be sprouting arrows. Fear shifted in his belly like he’d eaten bad fish. Trying to seem casual, he turned his horse and trotted to the rear of their formation.
    To judge by the expressions of the soldiers, he hadn’t fooled anybody.
    The first of the guards lumbered out from the carts, half a dozen swords in her arms like firewood. She dropped them on the ground where Geder had ordered. Then a thin boy hardly old enough to be a soldier with two unstrung bows and a backload of quivers. Slowly, the unpromising parade went on, the sad pile of arms and armor growing until ten guards and a wild-haired cunning man marched out to the road in wool and cotton, counted ten paces from the heap, and stood in the clear, hugging themselves against the cold.
    “Move in,” Geder said.
    The soldiers walked forward, blades drawn. The carters stood by their carts and smiled or frowned or looked around in confusion. Geder rode a slow turn around the little encampment. The sound of the search seemed to follow him—voices fierce and querulous, wood clacking, metal clangingagainst metal. He watched as his men pulled ingots of pig iron out of a cart and dropped them to the ground. One man scratched at the metal to be sure it was only what it seemed, then spat and turned back to the search.
    Midday came and went. A chill wind picked up, setting the snow to skitter and swirl around their ankles. The soldiers unloaded each cart, looked under them, examined the horse and mules, and began going through the mill house. Geder got off his horse at the edge of the mill pond and looked at the bare carts, the frigid carters, the ineffectual sun in the watery sky. One of the carters—a sickly-looking girl with pale hair and skin—crouched by bolts of fallen wool and pretended not to watch Geder. He knew what she saw. A puffed-up nobleman bullying her and her friends. He wanted to go to her, to explain that it wasn’t like that. That
he
wasn’t like that.
    Instead, he turned away. The shifting dust of snow moved over the ice like ripples on water. Geder walked along the edge, trying not to feel the girl’s gaze on him. Some idiot had been skating. White marks showed where blades had cut across the thin ice. Lucky they didn’t break through. He’d read an essay once outlining the time it took each of the thirteen races to die in icy water. Well, twelve, really. The Drowned weren’t…
    Geder stopped almost before he knew what stopped him. On the edge of the pond, a long, low drift of snow swept out onto the ice. The white blade marks vanished into it, and then out of it again as if the skater had passed directly through the little drift. Or it hadn’t been there until after the skater had passed. Geder walked closer. The snow itself looked odd. It didn’t have the ice-crust he expected, and it was smooth as broom-swept sand. Geder looked up. The guards were on the far side of the caravan. His own soldiersgrouped at the mouth of the mill house. He walked around the curious