The King's Blood

Cithrin

The last Dragon Emperor slept before her. Each jade scale was as wide as her open palm. The eyelids were slit open enough to show a thin sliver of bronze eye. The folded wings were as long as the spars of a roundship. Longer. Cithrin tried to imagine the statue coming to life. Moving. Speaking in the languages that had made the world.

On one hand, the bulk and beauty and implicit physical power of the thing was humbling. The claws could have ripped a building apart. The mouth, had it opened, would have fit a steer. But size alone didn’t define it. The sculptor had also managed to capture a sense of the intellect and rage and despair in the shape of the dragon’s eyes and the angle of its flanks. Morade, the mad emperor against whom his clutch-mates had rebelled. Morade, whom Drakkis Storm-crow schemed against. Morade, whose death was the emancipation of all the races of humanity.

At her side, Lauro Medean scratched his arm.

“They say that the dragons could sleep as long as stone when they wanted to,” he said. “It was part of the war. The dragons would bury themselves or put themselves in deep caves. Hidden. And then when the armies had their back or flank, the dragons would spring back to life. Come boiling up out of the ground. Slaughter everybody.”

Komme Medean’s son was a year older than her, but he acted much younger. He shared his father’s brown skin and dark hair, and when she looked carefully, she could see where the young man’s face would broaden, his jowls sink, and he would look even more like Komme. She wondered how old a man had to be before gout took him. He smiled at her.

“You want to go inside?”

“I’ve come a long way not to,” she said.

Coming to Carse, the thing she’d worried about least was the journey. Bandits, pirates, illness, wildcats. She knew of them all, and understood the risks of them better than most. Her work from childhood had been to understand risk. In a journey of a thousand miles taken by a hundred ships, about how many would be lost. In summer. In winter. Along the coast. Crossing the blue water to Far Syramys. How often caravans were killed or simply vanished. The actuarial tables were in her mind, and more than that the tools with which the tables were built. She could estimate chance better than a gambler, and so the journey held no terror.

The handing over of the reports had been worse. She knew that the branch was doing well, but not what would be well enough, or what the other branches were doing, or how her improvised branch in Porte Oliva affected the greater strategies of the holding company. It wasn’t risk that frightened her, but the inability to figure it, to place a number against it. To be unknown was worse than to be dangerous.

And of all the things that had kept her from sleep in the long weeks since she’d left Porte Oliva, the worst was this: how would she manage to stay long enough to win over the holding company? She had come to do a job, and she didn’t know how she would insinuate herself into the day-to-day life of the business well enough to keep them from sending her back.

When the occasion came, it hadn’t been a problem at all. She was a figurehead in Porte Oliva, a curiosity in Carse, and Komme Medean was more than happy to have her where she wasn’t even a social presence in the company. Oddly, she didn’t resent it. She had the feeling—true or not—that Komme Medean was willing to play this game with her. Willing to see if she could charm and impress him. And that along the way, he would throw obstacles in her path.

His son, for example.

As they walked past the great jade statue, the Grave of Dragons opened out before them. Cut down into the living earth, the tiers of the grave were wider than streets, curving and turning like the drawing of a riverbed, but too perfect to have been cut by any real water. The stone flowed out for over a mile, ten tiers deep, and at each level, the tombs.

The bodies, if they had ever really been there, were gone centuries ago. But the dragon’s jade altars still showed the clawmarks of the dead. Most had three great toes at the front and one in the rear, but some had only two in the front. Some two in front, and two in back. In the deepest tomb, a single massive dragon’s footprint sank into the ground almost as deep as Cithrin’s waist. Mineralized lines on the sides showed where rain had collected in it as if in a pond, and dried away. It was clean and empty now.

“Go ahead if you want,” Lauro Medean said. “It’s all right. Everyone does.”

Cithrin smiled, looked around, and then lowered herself into the footprint and lay down, stretching her arms above her. Her feet and fingertips couldn’t quite touch the edges at the same time. She imagined the dragon floating through the sky above her, blotting out the sun. Once, it had. Once, they had flown in this air, above these cliffs. The thought took her breath away.

When she stood, she saw Lauro’s grin.

“Funny?” she asked, putting up her hand. He took it—he had a strong grip—and helped her back out. They began walking back.

“It’s just I’ve grown up here. I never get impressed because it’s always been here. I like seeing people see it for the first time. It means something to them that it never does to me.”

“All this,” she said, gesturing at the empty tombs and the death prints, “has been here, right here, since before the beginning. People have been cleaning and neglecting and cleaning these graves almost since before there were people. And that doesn’t move you?”

“Maybe it should,” Lauro said, shrugging. “But no. It’s just the Grave. It’s this amazing thing to people who don’t know it, but it’s no more impressive to me than the sea or the sky or the cliffs, and I see all of them every day.”

“Hmm,” Cithrin said.

“What?”

“I work with Marcus Wester,” she said. “I think that knowing him is a bit like that too.”

The two great surprises of the holding company were first that Paerin Clark, the auditor she had extorted into letting her keep a place in Porte Oliva, was also living at the holding company’s unofficial holdfast inside the city. The second was that he was pleased to see her.

Coming back through the bronze gates now, Lauro called out to the pale man sitting on a bench. Paerin Clark waved to them, paused, and then waved them over. As they drew near him, Lauro tried to take Cithrin’s hand and made do with putting his arm around her shoulder.

“Brother,” Paerin Clark said. Technically it was true, as Paerin was married to Lauro’s sister, but Cithrin couldn’t really imagine the two being part of the same family. “What have you two been doing?”

“I took Cithrin to the Grave of Dragons,” Lauro said. “She’d never seen it.”

“And did you enjoy it, Magistra?”

“I did, and thank you,” Cithrin said. She could feel a small discomfort in the way Lauro held himself beside her, thrown off by the easy formality of her talk with Paerin. And there was the smallest spark of amusement in the older man’s eyes. If Lauro wanted to play at familiarity with her, she would play at being an adult with Paerin and throw the young boy off his stride. Comfort was never the fate of an obstacle.

“I was wondering if I might borrow the magistra’s company for a few minutes. Something’s come up I wanted to discuss with her. Bank business.”

“Of course,” Lauro said, a little coolly. He took his arm from around Cithrin’s shoulder and bowed to her. “Thank you for the pleasure of your company.”

“No, thank you, Lauro,” she said.

She sat on the bench at Paerin Clark’s side and watched as the son of Komme Medean walked away through the courtyard. Clark, she noted, shifted over slightly to be sure that the two of them were not touching.

“May I ask you a question?” he said.

“Of course.”

“What are you hoping to win here?”

Cithrin glanced at him sharply, but his face was as blank and pleasant as always. In all her life, Cithrin had never known anyone better at not giving information away. As good, but not better.

“I thought I’d made that clear,” she said, trying for the brash half-humor she used with Komme Medean.

“No,” Paerin said, and there was no lightness in his voice. “What you’ve said is what you want. What I’m asking is why you want it. What are your ambitions?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand the question. I want to run my bank.”

“Yes, but why is that what you want?”

“Because it’s mine,” she said.

Paerin took a deep breath and shifted on the bench so that he was half facing her. The tree above him cast shadows across his face, and for a moment he reminded her of children’s pictures of forest ghosts.

“Do you want to be rich?” he asked.

“I suppose,” she said.

“Then that isn’t the answer. Do you want power?”

“I want the power that belongs to me,” she said. “I want what I’ve earned.”

“Even if you’ve earned it through forgery and fraud?”

“I haven’t harmed anyone,” Cithrin said, crossing her arms. “What I’ve done was good business. I kept my contracts. They’re only not legal because I’m too young.”

“Not for much longer, though,” Paerin said, more than half to himself. He tapped his fingers against his knee, frowning. “Are you aware that Komme’s been shoving Lauro at you to find out if you’re fishing for a husband?”

“He could have asked. I’m not. I don’t want someone to run my bank for me. If I did, I’d marry Pyk Usterhall and be done.”

Paerin laughed.

“There’s an image. All right. There’s something I’d like you to do tonight,” he said. “Not a feast, just a meal. But the man who’s coming is important.”

“All right,” she said. “Why do you want me there?”

On the street, a horse neighed and a carter shouted. The breeze shifted the shadows across the pale man’s face. She waited while he weighed his answer.

“I recall being your age,” he said, portioning out each word, “and I remember what it was like to look for something without knowing what it was. You have one of the best minds for coin and the powers of coin that I’ve ever seen, but you lack experience. That’s not a criticism, it’s only true. And there’s a negotiation happening tonight. I would like you to be there. See how the game is played.”

Cithrin turned this over in her mind. Her heart was beating a little faster, and she felt the flush in her cheeks. This might be the opportunity she’d come all this way to find.

“May I ask you a question?” she said.

“That seems fair.”

“Why is that what you want?”

He nodded. Almost a minute passed.

“You’re young. You’re still making yourself into the woman you’re going to be, looking for the project that your life will become. People sometimes need help to find that. I am older, and in a position of some power, and I think you may become the sort of person I would like to owe me favors later on.”

The smile forced its way to Cithrin’s lips. It felt like victory.

“And here I thought it was altruism,” she said.

“Oh, Magistra.” Paerin Clark smiled. “We don’t do that here.”

The meal began just before sundown around a table of wooden planks no grander than a laborer might sit at. Platters filled the space between: clams in garlic sauce, pasta and cream, bottles of wine, loaves of fresh-baked bread. Komme Medean sat at one end, the swelling in his ankle and knee gone down enough that they looked almost normal. Cithrin and Lauro sat along one side across from Paerin Clark and his wife, Chana, who looked even more like her father than Lauro did. At the other end of the table, the Antean nobleman with skin as dark as coffee. Canl Daskellin, Baron of Watermarch and Protector of Northport and the Regent’s Special Ambassador to Northcoast, grinned and broke bread with his hands.

“Think how I feel,” Daskellin said. “I’m sent on a fast boat with desperate pleas for King Tracian to help us in the war, and by the time I get here, we’ve all but won. It doesn’t make me look smarter, let’s say.”

Komme Medean chortled and nodded.

“I know just how you feel,” he said. “I was trying to win a concession in a sugar plantation on an island off Elassae. Year and a half of negotiation, and I was just sending back the final contracts to their council when the whole damn thing burned flat. Wound up with a concession on a salt cinder in the Inner Sea. Thank God I hadn’t paid for it yet.”

“I remember that,” Cithrin said.

“Do you now?” Komme said.

Canl Daskellin’s gaze turned to her, and she realized how thin the ice was she’d just put herself on. If it came out she’d been living at the Vanai branch, it might come out why. If anyone looked into her age, there could be a great deal at stake.

“Heard about it from Magister Imaniel,” she said without missing a beat. “It was done out of the Vanai branch, wasn’t it?”

Komme Medean pursed his lips as if in thought.

“I suppose it was, now you mention it,” he said. And another danger was stepped past.

“This new regent of yours,” Paerin Clark said. “Geder Palliako. It’s not a name I’ve heard often. I’m surprised we didn’t see a more familiar man.”

“I hope you aren’t looking at me,” Daskellin said. “No, Palliako’s father is a viscount. Unremarkable man. His son’s something different, though. He stopped the showfighters’ coup. He exposed Feldin Maas. There’s a strong case that this war is his private project from the start.”

“What sort of man is he?” Chana asked, then winked broadly at Cithrin and said, “I hear he isn’t married.”

They all laughed because it was expected.

“He’s a strong man,” Daskellin said. “He comes almost from outside the court, and it makes him very independent. His own thoughts. His own plans.”

“Ambitious?” Komme asked, cracking open a clam and pulling out the flesh.

“He’d have to be,” Canl said. “People underestimated him at first. That’s happening less now. His unofficial patron is Dawson Kalliam, and I think he’s got the feeling of riding a tiger.”

“Bad enemy to have,” Paerin said.

“That,” Daskellin said, “is the regent in a phrase. Would someone pass me that wine? I seem to have finished mine.”

“No,” Komme Medean said, feigning horror. “Never that.”

The meal went on until well after dark. The conversation ranged over art and politics and the indignities of travel. Everyone was very casual, and traded jokes and stories. The wine was very good, and left Cithrin feeling a little above herself, warm and happy and more relaxed than was strictly wise. Before he left, Daskellin shook all the men’s hands and embraced Komme Medean like a brother. He also kissed Cithrin on the lips, so he might have been more than a bit tipsy himself.

After he left, servants came in and cleared the table, bringing a stool for Komme’s bad leg. It had gotten visibly worse during the evening, but it was only now that he showed that it bothered him. The others took their seats, and so Cithrin did too.

“Well?” Komme said, his voice perfectly sober and crisp. “What do we have?”

“The regent’s unpredictable,” Chana said. “And Daskellin doesn’t like him.”

“Fears him, though,” Paerin Clark said.

“Do you think so?” Lauro said. “He seemed to speak well of him to me.”

“No,” Cithrin said. “Fears him is right. And there was something else, I couldn’t make out. He’s uneasy about the war. Even though they’re winning it. Why is that?”

It was eerie. All her childhood had been spent around a different table with Magister Imaniel and Cam and Besel having conversations much like this. Analysis, debate, discussion. Dissection. And now here she was in a strange place with different people and utterly at home.

“Either he doesn’t think it’s going to end with Asterilhold or he expects the balance of power in court to shift because of it,” Chana said. “Did you see how nervous he looked when I joked about the regent not having a wife?”

“You’re thinking there might be a political marriage with Asterilhold?” Komme said. “Unification?”

“I think it’s on his mind and he doesn’t want it,” Chana said. “Does he have a daughter?”

“Yes,” Paerin said. “And of the right age.”

“Well then,” Chana said as if the matter were settled.

“I’m not sure,” Komme said. “I think there was something more to it than that. How much do we know about Palliako’s allies?”

“Very little,” Paerin said. “His reputation is as a scholar. And newly pious.”

“Pious, eh? That may be an issue. King Tracian should send a group,” Komme said. “Sound out the court. This new war went awfully well for Antea. It’d be good to know if this Palliako’s gotten a taste for blood. If this doesn’t end with Asterilhold, that will change quite a few calculations.”

“I’ll speak with his majesty,” Paerin Clark said. “I’m fairly sure he’s of a similar mind. Not anything official, I think. Not an embassy. A dozen important people from court. A few powerful merchants.”

“Meaning you,” Lauro said. He sounded peevish.

“Meaning me,” Paerin Clark said. “I have some other contacts in Antea it might be wise to visit. See what we can find.”

Cithrin found herself nodding, but her mind was elsewhere. The wine fumes confused her, but only a bit. In her memory, Paerin Clark was saying, You lack experience. It’s not a criticism, it’s only true. As if the truth couldn’t be critical. Something in the back of her mind shifted. This wasn’t the moment for more brashness. This was when to show some range. She could do that. She cleared her throat and lifted her hand like a schoolgirl asking to be recognized. Komme Medean nodded.

“With your permission, sir,” she said, “when the group goes to Camnipol, I’d like to go too.”