The Dragon's Path

Yardem said. Master Kit considered that.
    “And what about you, Captain?” he asked. “Stories are you were a pious man once.”
    “I choose not to believe in any gods as an act of charity,” Marcus said.
    “Charity toward whom?”
    “Toward the gods. Seems rude to think they couldn’t make a world better than this,” Marcus said. “Do we have any food left?”
    The dawn crept in softly, the outline of the mountains to the east growing clearer against the stars, then the fewfinger-thin clouds began to glow pink and gold and light seemed to come from nowhere, to rise up from the earth like a mist. The carts changed from near-invisible hulks to wood and iron. Pot metal clanked from across the camp as the caravan master’s wife began cooking the morning’s mash of stewed grain and honeyed pork. The landscape changed from endless featureless darkness to hills and trees, scrub and stream. Yardem ran the guards through their morning drills while Marcus walked through the camp and pretended there was no cart in the caravan he cared about more than another.
    The girl, Cithrin, followed the same routine as the others. She cared for her mules, she ate her food, she scraped the mud out of her axle holes. If she needed help, she asked Opal or Master Kit. Never the caravan master, never Marcus himself. But never Sandr either, and the boy had been avoiding her like his life depended on it, so that was for the best. Marcus watched her without being obvious. She’d gotten better since they’d left Vanai. Since they’d left Bellin, for that. But there were dark pouches under her eyes and the awkwardness of exhaustion in her movements.
    Marcus found the caravan master squatting beside the lead cart, a wide scroll of inked parchment on the dirt before him: a map of south Birancour probably centuries out of date, but it would still show where the dragon’s roads were. His wife, breakfast duties finished, was putting their team in harness.
    “Day,” the caravan master said. “Day and a half at most, and we’ll get onto a real road again.”
    “That’s good.”
    “Another three, and we’ll be in Porte Oliva. You’ve been there before?”
    “A time or two,” Marcus said. “It’s a good winter port. Doesn’t get too cold. The queen’s governor isn’t too heavy a tax hand.”
    “We’ll stop there, then.”
    “Roads should be clear to Carse by early spring,” Marcus said.
    “Not for me,” the caravan master said, folding the map. “We reach Porte Oliva, and we’re done. The ’van stops there.”
    Marcus frowned and crossed his arms.
    “There are some problems with that,” he said. “The job is to see all this to Carse.”
    “Your job is to protect the caravan,” the Timzinae said. “Mine is to say where it goes and when it stops. Porte Oliva has a market. Road trade to Cabral and Herez, not to mention the rest of the cities in Birancour. Ships to Lyoniea, and the blue-water trade to Far Syramys. The cargo I was contracted to haul will sell well enough there.”
    “The cargo you were contracted for,” Marcus repeated, turning the words over like they tasted wrong.
    “Is there something else I should care about?” The caravan master’s chin jutted forward. “You’re worried I might inconvenience the smuggler?”
    “Last I heard, the Medean bank doesn’t trade in Birancour,” Marcus said. “You’ll be sitting that girl on a pile of money high as a tree with nothing to protect her. Might as well hang a sign on her neck.”
    The ’van master tossed his folded map on the seat of his cart and began hauling himself up beside it. His wife blinked a silent apology to Marcus and looked away.
    “
That girl
and her drinking and smuggling and sinning with your guardsmen can watch out for herself,” the ’van master said. “We were blind lucky with that Antean bastard.There’s no reason to expect we’ll be as fortunate next time.”
    And there will be a next time,
he didn’t say. He didn’t need to.
    “If you take my advice,” the ’van master went on, “you’ll take your fee, turn your horse, and ride away from that girl until she’s less than a memory. People like that are only trouble.”
    Marcus bristled.
    “What kind of people do you mean?”
    “Bankers,” the ’van master said, and spat.
    P orte Oliva nestled on a land spur that pressed out into a wide, shallow bay. Even at low tide, the sea protected her on three sides. Reefs and sandbars made the approach from the ocean