The Dragon's Path

and rotted in the air. Between them the history of the city lay bare, each stratum showing an age and empire on which the one above had been founded.
    Dawson, wrapped in a simple brown cloak, could have passed for a scavenger from the midden at the Division’s base or a smuggler making his way to the obscure underground passages that laced Camnipol’s foundation. Vincen Coe might have been his conspirator or his son. The morning frost kept their footsteps slow. The smell of the rising air was nauseating—sewage, horse manure, rotting food, the bodies of animals and of men barely better than animals.
    Dawson found the archway. Ancient, flaking stone shaped in classic form, an inscription eroded to illegibility but not yet washed away. Within, the darkness was absolute.
    “I don’t like this, my lord,” the huntsman said.
    “You don’t need to,” Dawson said, and walked proudly into the gloom.
    Winter’s hand still pressed on Camnipol, but its power was breaking. The underground was alive with tiny sounds: the chitter of the first insects of the coming spring, the sharp trickle of thaw streams, and the soft breath of the land itself preparing to wake itself again into green spring. It would be weeks yet, and then it would seem to come overnight. It occurred to Dawson as he paused in a wide, vaulted tile of an abandoned bathing chamber, how many things followed that same pattern. The seemingly endless stasis followed by a few small signs, and then sudden catastrophic change. He pulled the letter from his pocket and leaned back toward Coe to read it again in the torchlight. Canl Daskellin had written that one of the doorways would be marked with a square. Dawson squinted into the darkness. Perhaps Daskellin had a younger man’s eyes…
    “Here, my lord,” Coe said, and Dawson grunted. Now that it was pointed out, the mark was clear enough. Dawson walked down the short, sloping hall that turned into a stairway.
    “No guards yet,” Dawson said.
    “There are, sir,” Coe said. “We’ve passed three. Two archers and one manning a deadfall.”
    “Well hidden, then.”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “You don’t sound reassured.”
    The huntsman didn’t answer. The hall met a huge stone, its surface polished and glazed so well that the torchlight seemed to double. Dawson followed his shadow around a slow curve until an answering light appeared. Dragon’s jade carved into unbreakable pillars held up a low ceiling. A dozen candles filled the dusty air with soft light. And there, sitting in a carved round, was Canl Daskellin with Dawson’s old acquaintance Odderd Faskellan on his left anda pale Firstblood man Dawson didn’t recognize on his right.
    “Dawson!” Canl said. “I was beginning to worry.”
    “No need,” Dawson said, waving Vincen Coe back toward the shadows. “I’m only pleased I was in the city. I’d hoped to spend part of the year in Osterling Fells.”
    “Next year,” Odderd said. “God willing, we’ll all be back to normal next year. Though with this latest news…”
    “There’s news, then?” Dawson said.
    Canl Daskellin gestured to the seat across from him, and Dawson lowered himself into it. The pale man smiled politely.
    “I don’t think we know each other,” Dawson said to the smile.
    “Dawson Kalliam, Baron of Osterling Fells,” Daskellin said with a grin of his own. “May I introduce the solution to our problems. This is Paerin Clark.”
    “The pleasure is mine, Baron Osterling,” the pale man said. His voice had the slushy accent of Northcoast. Dawson felt the small hairs on his arm rise. The man had no title. He wasn’t Antean. And yet he was here.
    “What’s the news,” Dawson said. “And how does our new friend here enter into it?”
    “He’s married to the youngest daughter of Komme Medean,” Odderd said. “He lives in Northcoast. Carse.”
    “I wasn’t aware we had business with the Medean bank,” Dawson said.
    “Issandrian knows what we’ve been doing,” Daskellin said. “Not only Vanai. The men we placed to stir trouble with the farmers, the move to strip Feldin Maas of his southern holdings. Everything.”
    Dawson waved the words away as if they were gnats. He was more concerned that this banker appeared to know itall as well. Issandrian would have discovered their traps and schemes eventually.
    “He’s petitioned King Simeon to sponsor games,” Odderd said. “Issandrian and Klin and Maas, and half a dozen more besides. They’re putting up