The King's Blood(63)
C
arse. The white chalk cliffs began half a day before the city came into sight, rising from the seashore like a glacier. The sea itself seemed to take on a paleness, and the hazy sky was lighter than blue. The first signs of human life—or rather of the dozen races who built above that water—were the fishing ships. Small and black, they were coming back toward the cliffs now, or else making their way north toward the smaller towns nearer the water.
Despite being on the sea, Carse was not, properly speaking, a port. It sat at the end of the dragon’s roads in the north and looked down over the waves. A great network of docks encrusted the base of the cliffs, but few merchants chose to use them. Rather they would travel to where the cliffs ended and haul their goods overland to the great city. Cithrin and the other passengers, having little to carry, got off at the docks and made their way up the switchbacks that rose to Carse proper. She found it somewhat unnerving to see the other, older paths still marking the cliffs, but eroded and crumbling past usefulness. One day the white chalk that paled her shoes and dress as she staggered up the cliff, her balance not yet accustomed to the stillness of earth, would be that same impassable ruin. Only hopefully not today.
At the top of the cliffs, the trail bent east, transforming itself into broad iron stairs that led up to a great courtyard and the city itself. If it had been designed to impress someone walking up to it this way, it could hardly have been better. The council tower rose up, ten stories high, its stone as smooth as skin. The top floor sported a dozen windows on each side with colored glass in each, ready to announce the edicts and decisions of the Council of Eventide whenever it met. Even in the height of war, the tower was sacrosanct. No king or prince would cross the theologians and cunning men who made up the council, and Carse would have been less of a jewel in any crown without it.
Beyond that, a jade dragon larger than the ship she’d sailed there in lay curled with its great snout tucked under a carved wing. Cithrin had read of the Grave of Dragons and the statue of sleeping Morade, last of the Dragon Emperors, at its mouth. Even warned, it took her breath away.
But the city hadn’t been built to be seen from the top of the cliff. It had been made to be seen from the air. Buildings had fallen and been rebuilt, what could burn, ancient armies had burned and restored and burned again, but in its heart, Carse was a city of dragons. Its streets and squares were wide to make room for great bodies that had not walked them in more than centuries. The great perches where, according to story, the dragons once met were kept clean and ready, as if someday the masters of humanity might return.
Cithrin had spent her childhood in Vanai with narrow streets and canals, her adulthood in the tight ways and white walls of Porte Oliva. Carse was huge and grey, stately and sober and dignified. The wide streets felt like a boast, the high towers rose like trees. A single man in fine chainmail, a blade at his side, walked through the street, and Cithrin realized with a start that he was part of the city guard. In Porte Oliva, the queensmen traveled in pairs at the minimum and more often groups of five or six. The prince’s guard in Vanai had worn ostentatious gilt armor and carried leaddipped clubs for beating down those who they saw fit. To have a single man with no apparent allies in sight was either high folly or the mark of a city where violence was rare. She wasn’t sure if she felt safer or more threatened.
On the street corner, a cunning man conjured flashes of lightning from the air, tiny booms of thunder accompanying him like an aggressive drum. He had no beggar’s box. Cithrin wasn’t sure if she was meant to watch him or keep moving on.
It took her an hour to find the Medean bank. The front was even more modest than her own counting house; a black door between a fish-seller’s shop and a small, disreputable temple. Only the symbol of the bank and a wooden sign in the shape of a coin marked it. She motioned to her guards that they should stay in the street. Anxiety snaked through her belly and exhaustion plucked at the muscles of her legs and back. The calm of watching the Thin Sea was like a dream half recalled.
She stood before the door, breathing deeply. In her memory, Master Kit reminded her to hold her weight low in her hips and walk with her chin higher. She remembered his voice saying, You can do this.
She could, but she didn’t have to. No one was expecting her. She could have Barth or Corisen Mout take the books in, and they could go back home without ever imposing on Komme Medean or anyone else. If she didn’t go in, they couldn’t turn her away or belittle her. As long as she didn’t try, she wouldn’t fail.
She pushed the door open and walked through.