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.
Porte 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 dangerous enough that local boatmen could earn their living guiding ships from the deep ocean safely into port and then out again. In the thousand years since its foundation, the city had never been taken by force, though twice it had been seduced. The dragon’s road led to it, the green pathway curving up over hills long since washed away, so that the carts traveled across the tops of wide-sloping arches as the ground dropped away beneath them.
As they drew nearer the city, the road became more crowded. Where Vanai had been rich with the black- chitined Timzinae, the crowd here showed the pale, ethereal faces of Cinnae and the oily, short, bead-adorned fur of Kurtadam in greater numbers even than Firstblood. The press of carts and bodies thickened, and Marcus started to see swordsmen in with copper torcs and the green and gold of Birancour. Queensmen. The guardians of the city, though the queen herself kept to the greater cities of Sara-su-mar and Porte Silena in the north. Marcus watched the caravan master approach one of the older queensmen, lean forward as if to speak above the chirr and murmur of the crowd. A few coins traded hands, and without any obvious change, the carts soon found themselves moving faster than before, passing the foot traffic and hand barrows. Marcus knew they had reached the Porte Oliva proper when the beggars and mendicants appeared.
Please, my lord, I have a child.
My husband is a sailor. His ship is three months late, and there’s no money for food.
God tells us to be generous.
Marcus paced alongside the carts, ignoring the words and gestures, watching for the thieves and cutpurses who always lived in crowds like these. The other guards followed his example, and likely knew more about sleight of hand than he did. It was odd how well suited the players were to every part of guarding a ’van besides the actual guard duty. He reached the last cart and turned to start for the front again. Three carts ahead, Master Kit leaned down and pressed a coin into an old man’s hand.
“Don’t encourage them,” Marcus called. “They’re all liars.”
“Not all, Captain,” Kit called back with a grin. “Only most.”
He passed the wool cart where the smuggler girl, still in her rough carter’s clothes, drove her team. Put beside the full-blood Cinnae on the road, it was easier to see her as something besides a frail Firstblood girl. Her hair wasn’t as fine as theirs, her features were thicker, her skin had more color, but the resemblance was there. She noticed him watching her, and tried out a smile. He ignored her with the same studied intention as the beggars, and for similar reasons. Riding on, the sense of anticipation and dread sat in his gut. The conversation would come, and it would be today, and the wise thing-the right thing, the thing that would let his nightmares fade again-was to refuse the girl. At the lead cart, Yardem met his gaze impassively.
Once, centuries before, the city had ended at the great stone embattlements. Now the towering white stone walls were in the middle of a busy market quarter. Fishmongers shouted out their catch on the north side of the arched tunnel that led to the inner city, and after they passed through, indistinguishable men and women called out the same fish. The architecture of war slept in the middle of a living community like a great hunting cat torpid from the kill. Beyond it, the dragon’s road widened and stopped at a huge open square.
The crowd pressed here as thick as they had on the road. A great marble temple high as five men standing one atop the other loomed on the eastern end, the governor’s palace of red brick and colored glass on the west. God’s voice and the law’s arm, twin powers of the throne. And between them, scattered through the square, wooden platforms rose with prisoners suffering their punishments. A Kurtadam man with rheumy eyes and severed hands held a sign between his stumps announcing himself a thief. A Firstblood woman smeared in shit and offal sat under the carved wooden symbol of a procuress. Three Cinnae men hung dead from a gallows, flies darkening the soft flesh around their eyes; a murderer, a rapist, and a child-user respectively. Together, the platforms served as a short, effective introduction to the local laws.
The caravan master left them standing for the better part of an hour as he vanished into the governor’s palace, returning with small stone figures on leather thongs to place on the carts as proof the road taxes had been paid. With a shout, he led them down a side road of hard, pale brick to the yard.
Journey’s end. Marcus made his way to the front cart. The caravan master had a cloth sack waiting for him. It jingled when he held it out.
“You can count it,” the Timzinae said.
“That’s fine,” Marcus said.
The ’van master’s brows lifted, then he shrugged.
“Suit yourself. But don’t come later saying it was short.”
“Won’t.”
“All right, then.”
Marcus nodded and turned away. He took out his share and Yardem’s, then despite what he’d said, he counted the rest. It was all there.
The players were at their own cart, still wearing their armor and swords. The road had changed them and it hadn’t. They were harder now, and each of them could handle a sword like a soldier. On the other hand, they laughed and joked now as much as they had in the tavern in Vanai. Sandr and Smit were competing now to see who could hold a handstand longest. Cary, Opal, and Mikel traded quips and barbs as they saw to their mules. Master Kit sat on the cart’s high bench, watching over it all like a benevolent saint from the old stories. Marcus went to him.
“It appears we’ve managed the trick, then,” Master Kit said. “I hadn’t expected it to be quite so eventful.”
“Make a fine comedy,” Marcus said,
“I think the world is often like that.”
“Like what?”
“Comic, but only at the right distance.”
“Likely true,” Marcus said as he handed the money to Master Kit. “What are you going to do now?”
“I suspect Porte Oliva’s as good a venue as any, and suppose we’ll try our luck at our original trade. After a bit of a rest, maybe. There’s a long tradition of puppeteers here, and I’m hoping we might be able to recruit a new actor or two with those skills.”
“It was good working with you,” Marcus said. “Went better than I expected, considering. I expect I’ll see you about the city. We’ll stay until thaw.”
“Thank you for not emasculating Sandr. I still hope to make a decent leading man of him one day.”
“Luck with that,” Marcus said.
“Take care of yourself, Captain Wester,” Master Kit said. “I find you a fascinating man.”
And that was over as well. To his left, the caravan master was passing to each cart in turn, taking signatures and inventories. Yardem appeared at Marcus’s side.
“We’ll need men,” the Tralgu said.
