The Dragon's Path

wouldn’t,” Cithrin said. “That’s the point. If they have silver and beads, they must not be trash. Call them… I don’t know. Hallskari salt dyes. New process, very rare. No other dresses like them in the Grand Market. Start them at two hundred silver, drop down to one hundred thirty.”
    “Why would anyone agree to pay that?”
    “Why wouldn’t they? When it’s a new thing, no one knows its fair price. If nobody knows better, you can do anything.”
    The merchant shook his head, but it wasn’t refusal. The Firstblood woman’s eyebrows crawled toward her hairline. Cithrin dug out a honeyed nut. The roar and echo of voices around them was as good as silence. Cithrin waited forthe space of four breaths as the merchant wrestled in his mind.
    “If only one person in the whole Grand Market believed it,” Cithrin said, “you’d cover the cost of all ten dresses. Hooks, beads, and everything. If
two
people did…”
    The merchant was quiet for two breaths more.
    “You know entirely too much about dresses,” he said.
    I don’t know
anything
about dresses,
she thought. The merchant barked out a laugh. He reached for the rose dress and tossed it at Cithrin in mock disgust.
    “Forty,” he said to her, then turned to the Firstblood woman. “Do you see this? Look at this face. That is a truly dangerous woman.”
    “I believe you,” the Firstblood said as Cithrin, grinning, counted out coins.
    An hour later, she was walking down the half-open ways of the Grand Market, her dress folded in a tight, rose-colored bundle under one arm, and the world around her a bright, benign place. The dress would need altering to make it fit her body, but that was a minor point. More than any object she’d gained, she enjoyed the idea of being
a truly dangerous woman.
    The sun had only just begun its slide into the west. Cithrin took herself toward the public baths, thinking of an hour’s time in warm water and steam. Maybe even a few coins spent on a balm to drive away the fleas and lice that travel and her new, tiny rooms had given her. The baths sat at the northern edge of a wide public square. Pillars rose into the air, tall as trees, though whatever shelter they’d supported had been gone long enough that the rain had worn channels in the supports. Patches of brown, winter-killed grass lay like carpets in the open spaces, and twig-fingeredbushes caught dead leaves and scraps of cloth. Cithrin walked past a cart selling hot soup and a weedy Kurtadam with a pair of marionettes dancing at his feet beside a beggar’s bowl with a few bronze coins. Across the square, a troupe of players had changed their cart to a stage, edging out a pair of disgruntled puppeteers. Pigeons wheeled overhead. A group of Cinnae women walked together, pale and thin and lovely, their dresses flowing around their bodies like seaweed in the tide, and their voices all accents and music. Cithrin wanted to watch them, but without being seen. She’d never known a full-blooded Cinnae well. And yet her mother had been one, would have looked in place as part of just such a group.
    The women turned up the wide steps that led to the baths, and Cithrin had started to follow when a familiar voice caught her up short.
    “Stop!”
    She turned.
    “Stop now, and come near. Hear the tale of Aleren Mankiller and the Sword of Dragons! Or if you are faint of heart, move on.”
    On the players’ stage, an older man strode across the planks, his voice ringing through the square. His beard jutted out, and his hair had been combed high. He wore gaudy theatrical robes, and his voice rang and slithered among the great pillars. There was no mistaking Master Kit, the cunning man. Cithrin walked toward the stage, wondering whether she was dreaming. Half a dozen other citizens of Porte Oliva had paused, drawn in by the patter, and the crowd itself drew a crowd. Cithrin stood on a patch of dead grass, amazed. Opal stepped out wearing a robe that made her seem ten years younger. Then Smit, wearing a simplelaborer’s cap and speaking in a broad Northcoast accent. Then Hornet in gilt armor, and behind him, striding onto the boards as if he owned the world and everything in it, Sandr. Cithrin laughed with delight, and other hands joined in her clapping. Mikel and Cary, both in among the crowd, nodded to her. Catching Cary’s gaze, Cithrin pantomimed a drawing a sword and then gestured at the stage.
I thought you were soldiers, and you were this?
Cary shifted her head