The Dragon's Path

an account of a sailing voyage and thinks he’s a captain.”
    “And you want Ternigan to name Geder Palliako in Klin’s place?”
    “If half of what I’ve heard is true,” Dawson said with a smile, “there’s no one better suited to lose Vanai.”

Marcus
     
    N ight in the salt district of Porte Oliva wasn’t quiet. Even in the deep night when no moon lit the street, there were sounds. Voices lifted in song or anger, the scuttling and complaints of feral cats. And, in the rooms he and Yardem had hired, the slow, regular breath of the girl, sleeping at last. Marcus had come to know the difference between the way she inhaled when she was sleeping and when she was only willing herself to. It was an intimacy he never spoke of.
    Yardem squatted on the floor by the glowing embers of the fire, ears forward, eyes focused on nothing. Marcus had seen the Tralgu sit through whole nights like that; motionless, waiting, aware without insisting upon awareness. Yardem never fell asleep on watch, and he never struggled to rest when he was off duty. Marcus, blanket-wrapped and sleepless, envied him that.
    The cold of winter was still on the city, but it wouldn’t be many more weeks before the sea lanes opened. A ship from Porte Oliva to Carse would be faster than going overland through Birancour. And as long as he could keep it from captain and crew what exactly they were hauling—
    The scraping sound was soft, there and gone again in an eyeblink. Leather sole against stone. Yardem sat up a degree straighter. He looked over at Marcus, then pointed once toward the opaque parchment window, and then at the door.Marcus nodded and rolled slowly off the cot, careful not to let the canvas creak beneath him. He took a slow step toward the window as Yardem shifted toward the door. When Marcus drew his knife, he kept his left thumb against the steel to keep it from singing when it cleared the scabbard. Cithrin snored delicately behind him.
    Whoever they were, they’d done this before. The door burst open at the same instant a man leaped through the parchment window. Marcus kicked low, his boot slamming against the man’s knee. While the man struggled to regain his balance, Marcus slit his throat, and two more men poured in after him. They had daggers. Swords would have been awkward in so small a space. Marcus had hoped they’d have swords.
    Yardem grunted the way he did when he lifted something too heavy, and an unfamiliar voice cried out in pain. The knife man on Marcus’s left made a flurry of short swings designed to catch his eye and force him back while the one on the right shifted to flank him. They were thickly built, but not massive. Firstblood or Jasuru rather than Yemmu or Haavirkin. Marcus ignored the false attack, feinting instead to keep the man on his right from getting around him. The first man took the opening and slid his blade in. Marcus felt the pain bloom on his ribs, but he ignored it. Behind him, a bone snapped, but no one screamed.
    “We surrender,” Marcus said, and slid forward, his ankle hooking behind the rightmost attacker’s leg. When he brought his knife out, the man instinctively stepped back, stumbling. Marcus sank his blade in the man’s groin, but the effort left him open again. The remaining attacker, having drawn blood once, swooped in for the kill. Marcus twisted, the enemy blade skittering across his shoulder. Marcus dropped his own knife and took a grip on the otherman’s elbow, but the attacker moved in close, bending Marcus back with a combination of weight and leverage. The hot breath stank of beer and fish. The embers glittered on scaled skin and evil, pointed teeth. Jasuru, then. Marcus felt the tip of the Jasuru’s blade prick his belly. Another push and the knife would open him like a trout.
    “Yardem?” Marcus grunted.
    “Sir?” Yardem said, and then, “Oh. Sorry.”
    A dagger sprouted from the Jasuru’s left eye, the blood sheeting down from the wound, black in the monochrome dimness. The attacker pressed forward even as he died, but Marcus felt the strength leave the man and stepped back to let the body fall.
    Three men lay by the torn window, dead or bleeding dry. Another lay motionless on the floor, one arm sprawled into the fire grate and starting to burn, and the last slumped against the wall at Yardem’s feet, head at an improbable angle. Five men. Strong and experienced. This, Marcus thought, was very,
very
bad.
    “What’s the matter?” Cithrin asked