jumped and hopped, faster and faster, like a ball rolling down an infinite hill.
Fifteen ships could be split into three equal groups of five or else five of three, so perhaps Qahuar’s clan was expecting the merchant ships to divide into three major ports-likely Carse, Lasport, and Asinport. But what if they were expecting the trade to go on past Asterilhold to Antea or Sarakal or Hallskar? Two dozen men in a single ship wasn’t a small thing, but would Lyoniean sailors do well in the colder waters of the north? Could she argue, with her ties to Carse, that she’d be able to provide ships more experienced in the native waters? And if she made the argument, would it be true?
And why had Opal betrayed her? And why had God let Magister Imaniel die? And Cam? And her parents? And did Sandr still want her? Would Cary still be her friend? Did Master Kit still approve of who and what she was? What did other people do when they had no friends and their lovers were their enemies? There had to be some better way to do things.
The tears welled up in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She didn’t feel sad. She barely felt anything at all besides tired and annoyed with herself. She was suffering some sort of little fit, and she could wait until it passed. The dice game shifted, and two men’s voices caught up a tune, coming together and apart.
Cithrin forced herself to sitting. Then standing. Then she stripped off last night’s clothes and put on a simple skirt and blouse. She tied back her hair until she saw the little bite marks that Qahuar had left on her neck and let her hair back down. She filled the little basin by her bedside, washed her face. The paints Cary had left were there, and Cithrin considered remaking Magistra Cithrin of the Medean bank. She decided against it-she had little enough energy as it was-and went downstairs.
When she opened the door, the company went quiet. The two Firstblood men looked at each other and then away. The paler of them was blushing visibly. The Kurtadam man nodded.
“Sorry about that, Magistra,” he said. “Didn’t think you were here.”
Cithrin waved the concern away.
“Yardem?” she said.
“In the back room, Magistra,” the Kurtadam said.
Cithrin walked past the guards to the rear, then through into the darkness. Yardem Hane lay on a long, low cot, fingers laced over his belly. His eyes were closed, his ears folded and soft. Cithrin was just about to turn around, putting the conversation off for another time, when he spoke.
“Help you, ma’am?”
“Um. Yes. Yardem,” she said. “You know the captain as well as anybody.”
“That’s true,” the Tralgu said, his eyes still closed and his voice calm.
“I think I may have upset him,” she said.
“You wouldn’t be the first, ma’am. If it gets to be a problem, the captain will tell you.”
“All right.”
“Anything else, ma’am?”
The Tralgu didn’t move apart from the ride and fall of his chest.
“I slept with a man, and now I’m going to betray him,” she said, and her voice sounded as grey and hard as slate. “I have to do it to keep my bank, but I think I feel guilty about it.”
Yardem opened one soft black eye.
“I forgive you,” the Tralgu said.
Cithrin nodded. She shut the door behind her when she left, then walked back out the street and up her private stair. The voices below her were quiet now, aware that the owner of the house might hear them. She sat at her writing desk, took out the books, and began drafting the proposal that would beat out Qahuar Em.
Geder
Geder couldn’t say exactly when they left the dragon’s road. At first, it was only that wind and weather had heaped dirt and desert hardpack over the path, even as it passed through a few of the sprawling caravanserais that passed for cities in the Keshet. Then the last of the great meeting places fell away behind him, and the jade of the roadway became rarer, the brown of the earth and yellow-grey of desert grass more common. Then the path was only visible as a stretch where the scrub and weeds were smaller, their roots blocked inches from the surface.
And then it was gone, and Geder was riding through the mountains and valleys at the eastern edge of the world. The trees were thin and twisting, with thick, almost ropey bark that seemed designed to imitate stone. At night, tiny lizards with bright yellow tails skittered across the ground and through the tents. Morning often found one or more dead in the horses’ feed sacks. Water became scarce enough that every muddy wisp of a creek meant his five servants would fill everything that would hold moisture, and even so Geder often saw their supply fall to less than half. Every night, he heard the servants talking about bandits and unclean spirits that haunted the empty places in the world. Even though no new dangers appeared, he slept poorly.
Geder had spent most of his life within the limits of Antea. Travel had meant the journey from Rivenhalm to Camnipol, or along the king’s winter hunt to Kavinpol, Sevenpol, Estinport. He’d been Kaltfel, royal city of Asterilhold, once as a boy to watch an obscure relation be married. And he had gone on campaign to Vanai under Lord Ternigan, and then Sir Alan Klin. He’d never imagined himself traveling alone or nearly so in lands so barren and cut off that the local villagers had never heard of Antea or the Severed Throne. But when he came to a stand of shacks clumped around a thin, hungry-looking lake, the wary men who came out to meet him shook their heads and shrugged.
He could as well have told them he’d come from the stars or the deep lands under the earth. It would have meant as much, and possibly more. The mountains’ inhabitants were Firstblood, but of a uniform olive complexion with dark eyes and thick wiry hair that made them seem like members of a single extended family. Some few knew the civilized languages well enough to trade with the outposts, but for the greater part they spoke in a local patois that Geder could almost put together from some of the ancient books he’d read. He felt he’d ridden into the dim past.
“Sinir,” Geder said. “Are these the Sinir mountains?”
The young man looked over his shoulder at the dozen men who had come from the village and licked his lips.
“Not here,” the man said. “East.”
On the one hand, everyone he met in the empty, ragged mountains seemed to recognize the word, to know what he meant when he asked. On the other, the Sinir mountains had been just a bit to the east for almost two weeks now, retreating before him like a mirage. The thin, dusty paths snaked through the valleys or along the sides of steep, rocky slopes. They were little more than deer trails, and more than once Geder had found himself wondering if he’d left behind all human habitation, only to find another small, desperate village around the next turning.
“Can you show me?” Geder asked. “Can one of your men take me there? I’ll pay you with copper.”
Not that copper would have any effect on these people. Coins meant nothing here more than small, particularly bright stones would have done. His black leather cloak would have more use out here, but he didn’t want to part with it, and besides, no one he’d met since he left the Keshet for the unmarked lands had shown the slightest interest in his offers. He asked out of habit. Because he had always asked before. He had no real hope that they would accept the bargain.
“Why do you want to go there?” the young man asked.
“I’m looking for something,” Geder said. “An old place. Very old. It has to do with the dragons.”
The man licked his lips again, hesitated, and nodded.
“I know the place you mean,” he said. “Stay here tonight, and I can take you in the morning.”
“Really?”
“You want the old temple, yes? Where the holy men live?”
Geder leaned back. It was the first he had heard about a temple or priests, and his heart sped up. There were stories and references in several of the essays on the fall of the Dragon Empire that talked about pods of sleeping dragons lulled into a permanent sleep and hidden in the far corners of the world. This might be a hidden pod of books, scrolls, legends, and tradition. If he could convince the local priest class to let him read the books, or
