The Dragon's Path

as he exhaled.
    “And thus your conspiracy,” he said.
    “Loyalty to the king is no conspiracy,” Dawson said. “It’s what we should have been doing all along. But we slept, and the dogs snuck in. And, Canl, you
know
that.”
    Daskellin tapped the clay stem against his teeth. His eyes narrowed.
    “Whatever it is,” Dawson said, “say it.”
    “Loyalty to King Simeon is one thing. Becoming the tool of House Kalliam is something else. I am…
disturbed
by the changes Issandrian and his cabal are suggesting. But trading one man of ambition for another is no solution.”
    “You want me to show I’m not Issandrian?”
    “I do.”
    “What proof do you want?”
    “If I help to recall Klin from Vanai, you cannot profit from it. Everyone’s quite aware that your son is under Klin’s command there. Jorey Kalliam cannot take the protectorship of Vanai.”
    Dawson blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again.
    “Canl,” he began, but Daskellin’s eyes narrowed. Dawson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke, his voice was harder than he’d meant it to be. “I swear before God and the throne of Antea that my son Jorey will not take protectorship of Vanai when Alan Klin is called home. Further, I swear that no one of my house will take profit from Vanai. Now, will you swear the same, old friend?”
    “Me?”
    “You have a cousin in the city, I think? I’m sure you wouldn’t want to give the impression that your own support of the throne is merely self-serving?”
    Daskellin’s laughter boomed and rolled, a deep sound and warm enough to push back the teeth of winter, if only for a moment.
    “God wept, Kalliam. You’ll make altruists of us all.”
    “Will you swear?” Kalliam said. “Will you make common cause with the men who are loyal to King Simeon and to put the restoration of tradition ahead of your own glory?”
    “True servants to the throne,” Daskellin said, half amused.
    “Yes,” Dawson said. There was no room for lightness in his voice. He was hard as stone, his intentions fashioned from steel. “True servants to the throne.”
    Daskellin sobered.
    “You
mean
this,” he said.
    “I do,” Dawson said.
    The dark eyes flickered over Dawson’s face, as if trying to penetrate a disguise. And then as it had with half a dozen men before him—men whom Dawson had chosen because he knew they were as hungry for it as he himself was—pride bloomed in the dark face. Pride and determination and a sense of becoming part of something greater and good.
    “Then yes,” Daskellin said softly, “I will.”
    T he Division was the most obvious of the partitions within the city, but it was far from the only one. On both sides of the bridges, nobility held to their mansions and squares while the lesser people lived in smaller, narrower ways. Living north of the Kestrel Square meant you were of high stature. Having your stables by the southern gate meant you had good blood, but a squandered fortune. The city was complex in ways that only her citizens could know. The streets were not the only dimension in which class could be measured. The poorest and most desperate tunneled down to coax new life out of the ruins of previous ages on which the modern city was built, living in darkness and squalor, but saving them at least from the indignities of winter.
    Ice and snow turned the dark cobbles white. Carts went slowly, and mules carefully. Horses walked haltingly for fear of slipping, breaking a leg, and being slaughtered on the street where they fell. The Camnipol winter stole even the dignity of a waiting carriage, but the meeting with Daskellin had left Dawson so pleased with himself that he barely minded. He let the servant girl belt on his overcoat of dark leather with silverwork seams and bloodstone hooks, put on the broad-brimmed hat that matched it, and marched himself out into the streets toward his home and Clara.
    He’d spent his boyhood in Camnipol, following his father through the rituals of power during the day and then drinking, singing, and carousing with the other highborn boys through the nights. Even now, decades later, the snow-caked stone held memories under it. He passed the thin alley where Eliayzer Breiniako had run naked after losing a bet with him the night they’d both turned fourteen. Then the wide turning that led to the streets where all the Timzinae and Jasuru made their homes: the quarter of bugs and pennies. He passed under Morade’s Arch, where the last,