by Marc Turner
Sniffer.
The Untarian was stretched out on the sun-drenched flagstones, her shirt pulled up to expose her midriff, her trousers rolled up to her knees. She lay so still that Kempis thought she was dead.
Then he noticed the half-eaten runefish beside her.
The corners of his mouth turned up, but he caught the smile before it could spread. He’d spent an age in the flooded corridors searching for the woman, and all that time she’d been up here, topping up her tan? She’d known the stone-skin’s target was the emira. She’d known Kempis had been heading for the throne room. It should have been a simple matter for her to swim down and check if he was there. But then perhaps she had. Perhaps she’d seen him battling the stone-skin and decided she didn’t like the odds he was facing.
Slipping on his boots, Kempis crossed to her terrace. He stood over her.
Sniffer’s eyes remained closed. She had to know it was him, else she would have looked up at his approach.
He drummed a foot on the ground.
At last Sniffer opened an eye. “Do you mind, sir? You’re in my sun.”
Kempis scowled. Then, when no suitably caustic retort came to mind, he stepped past and continued south along the terrace after the two Chameleons.
Damned Untarian, he thought. Everything that had gone wrong today was her fault. If she hadn’t gone after the female stone-skin, he would never have been in the Shallows when Orsan came ashore. Loop and Duffle would still be alive, and then Kempis would not have come to the palace seeking revenge against Loop’s killer. He couldn’t even say the worst of this business was over, what with Mazana Creed having waylaid him in the throne room. On the contrary, his troubles were just beginning. How typical of Sniffer that, on her last day in the Watch, she should stir up the manure for him.
The slap of the Untarian’s webbed feet sounded behind.
“I came looking for you,” she said as she drew level. “When you weren’t on the terraces or in the courtyards, I assumed you were fish food.”
“I can see that cut you up real bad,” Kempis muttered. “What happened when we got separated? I thought a shark—”
“I’ve told you before, Untarians can swim as fast as most sharp-teeths over short distances.”
“Then why all the squawking?”
“To warn you, idiot! What do you think the sharp-teeth would have done if it’d caught you with your legs in the water? Tickled your feet?”
There was nothing Kempis could say to that, so he kept his head down and continued walking.
The heat was building to a head-throbbing intensity, and the septia wiped a hand across his brow. Not all of the palace buildings had terraces, so as he worked his way southward he had to scramble over gently sloping roofs that creaked beneath him. He passed a courtyard still submerged in water, the archway leading into it plugged by bodies. In the next yard five servants had gathered to escape the floods and the fighting. With hollow eyes they watched Kempis stride by. An old woman shouted up to him for news, but the septia was in no mood to respond.
Sniffer whistled through her gills as she walked beside him. “We’re leaving, then? It’s over?”
“For now.”
“You found the stone-skin?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Dead.”
The Untarian waited for him to continue. “That’s it?”
Kempis shrugged. Mazana Creed had told him to keep his mouth shut about what had happened in the throne room. Normally that wouldn’t have stopped him, but in this instance he suspected Sniffer was better off not knowing.
“So what now?” the Untarian asked as they clambered over a terrace railing and onto a roof of ebonystone tiles bleached gray by the sun. “We just forget this business with the stone-skins?”
“I wish.”
“Oh?”
Kempis hesitated, then said, “Turns out those two stone-skins might not be the only ones in Olaire. I’ve been told to sniff out the others.”
“By the emira?”
“Emira’s dead.”
“Then who?”
“Mazana Creed,” the septia said, his tone betraying his disgust. “I’m to report to her personally from now on.”
There was a smile in Sniffer’s voice. “For someone who claims not to like bluebloods, you sure seem to be spending a lot of time round them lately.”
Like he had a choice! If Kempis had refused the Storm Lady’s request, he would have been feeding the fish by now. He had no option but to dance to her tune—until he worked out how to leave this wretched island without setting foot on a boat, that is. Nothing good ever came of mixing with the bluebloods.
The distance between Kempis and the two Chameleons was closing, so he slowed lest the strangers think he was following them. As he crossed the next roof one of its tiles shifted underfoot, and he windmilled his arms to keep his balance. Sniffer, waiting for him on the terrace beyond, chuckled.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said as he joined her. “Bright Eyes wasn’t a stone-skin, right? So how does she fit into this?”
“Woman was a hired sword—remember Enli Alapha?”
“Hired by the stone-skins?”
“’S my guess. Stone-skins only went for the emira once Bright Eyes was dead. Maybe they were forced to get their hands dirty when their lackey screwed up. Or maybe they meant for her to be a decoy.”
“What makes you so sure the stone-skins were the ones pulling her strings? How do you know they weren’t hired swords themselves?”
Because of what Jambar said in the throne room, that’s how. Kempis did not voice the thought, however. I know who the stone-skins are and why they are here, the Remnerol had told Imerle. I know what is coming.
Kempis had a fair idea himself. After the stink the stone-skins had kicked up today, the septia didn’t need a shaman to tell him they meant trouble. Odds were, war was coming, but why? Before this morning he’d never heard of a stone-skin, never mind seen one in the flesh. What reason did they have for setting their sights on the Storm Isles? And why had they gone not just for Storm Lords but for any water-mage that crossed their path? What threat did the sorcerers pose?
Ahead the roof came to an end, and beyond it Kempis saw the main gates. He snatched a look into the grounds below. The sea must have risen and receded here previously, for the flagstones glistened with moisture. Corpses lay in the street beyond the gates. More were crushed against the flanking walls, as if some broom-wielding titan had passed this way recently and swept the bodies aside like so many fallen leaves. Among the corpses a figure moved: a young Gray Cloak with a wispy red beard. Curled up round a chest wound, he shivered as if with fever.
Kempis cocked his head to listen for any noise that might signal a hidden force in one of the palace arches. The only sounds he could hear, though, were the hiss of the sea behind, the cawing of starbeaks overhead, and screams from the west of the city. He lowered himself backward from the roof before dropping the final way.
Ignoring the pleading cries of the wounded Gray Cloak, he led Sniffer through the gates.
He took a winding course round the flank of Kalin’s Hill, avoiding the main roads and pausing at each intersection to check for trouble. A short while later he came to the place where he and Duffle had watched the emira’s forces launch their assault on Olaire. He looked down on the city. Fires raged through the Shallows, and a pall of smoke hung over the district. The Gilgamarian ship remained suspended where he’d last seen it. Its decks were crawling with figures—scavengers, most likely, come to plunder what they could before the vessel was claimed by the flames.
The sea had retreated from the areas flooded by the wave of water-magic. The streets of the Deeps were choked with floating corpses, and Kempis realized that Loop’s and Duffle’s would be among them. He made a sour face. When he’d left the throne room earlier he had vowed—not for the first time—never to come within spitting distance of the sea again. If he was to retr
ieve his companions’ bodies, though, he would have to make an exception.
To the west the battle for the docks had ended. Half a dozen gray-sailed ships were now berthed at quayside. Gray Cloaks patrolled the waterfront. Farther east the Harbor Barracks must have fallen to the invaders, for the flag flying from its tower was the emira’s fiery wave. The only fighting still taking place was going on in the streets round the Founder’s Citadel. The fortress’s gates had been shut. Its battlements were manned by Storm Guards, but there were too few defenders to withstand a concerted attack from the raiders if it came. The Storm Guards wouldn’t need to hold out for long, though—just until news reached the invaders that their commander and paymaster, Imerle, was dead.
“Where to now?” Sniffer said.
Where indeed? Looking south Kempis saw the black-tiled roof of Lappin’s gambling den at the edge of the Gambler’s Quarter. Lappin would be doing a roaring trade, what with looters coming by to gamble away their ill-gotten gains. The septia’s palms began to itch. “You can go where you like,” he said. “I’m off to spend a little time at Lappin’s, play some flush, and see if I can win back what I owe.”
Sniffer raised an eyebrow. “I’ve always wondered why someone with your luck spends so much time gambling.”
“With the day I’ve had my luck’s due a change. When that happens I want to be somewhere I can make some money from it.”
Not that he’d need luck if the plan he’d been working on for the last quarter-bell came good. Loop had given him the idea yesterday when he’d spoken about the spirits haunting Olaire. The ghosts were only visible, the mage had said, if they wanted to be seen, so what was to stop Kempis from using one to keep a discreet eye on his opponents’ cards? How he was going to find one of the ghosts and persuade it to help him was a matter he hadn’t figured out yet, but he’d think of something. If Sniffer ever stops buzzing in my ear, that is.
A burst of light came from one of the partly submerged buildings beside the Causeway. Kempis looked over to see a house topple into the water. Fire-magic. At first he thought a fight was going on there.
Then he saw a dragon’s head break the waves at the mouth of the Causeway.
Sunlight reflected off the creature’s blood-red scales, making it appear to Kempis as if the beast were aflame. The dragon had eyes like cauldrons of fire and a neck as long as the masts of the ships in harbor. Was this the same creature that had plucked the fat Gilgamarian from the throne room? Must be, the septia decided—only one dragon was ever let through the Dragon Gate on Dragon Day. And yet he could have sworn the beast he’d seen earlier had had copper scales, not red ones.
The dragon entered the Causeway and devoured some fool who had climbed onto a roof for a better look. Ahead of the creature another explosion flared, and a second house crumbled into ruin. The Gray Cloaks were trying to block off the Causeway, Kempis realized, and thus prevent the beast from reaching the ships in the harbor. So far their efforts had succeeded only in stopping up those parts of the channel closest to the buildings. The center of the Causeway remained clear.
Sniffer’s voice interrupted his musings. “I’ve been thinking about staying on for a while. In the Watch, I mean.”
The septia thought he must have misheard. “What?”
“Just until the stone-skins are caught. Be a shame not to see this through, don’t you think?”
A pause. “You’re serious?”
“Of course. Wouldn’t want you getting lonely now Loop and Duffle have gone.”
Kempis studied her expression. A twinkle in her eyes made him hope she was having him on, yet there was something about the set of her mouth …
Scowling, he turned away. “And I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.”
EPILOGUE
SENAR STOOD on the roof terrace, looking out on a storm-tossed sea bathed in the light of the Watchtower at Ferris Point. Waves heaved and crashed, and rain swept down from the blackness overhead. Not one drop fell on the terrace round Senar, though. Instead it ran down invisible barriers of water-magic above and to either side, making it appear to the Guardian as if he were standing in a glass shell. Alas, those barriers did not blunt the bite of the westerly wind, and Senar clutched the terrace’s handrail as his cloak billowed about him.
Beside him stood Mazana. She was wearing the same red dress and air-magic pendant he’d seen her in when they first met. Her arms were drawn about herself, and Senar took off his cloak and placed it round her shoulders. She gave a small smile but did not thank him. A full day and more had passed since she’d defeated Imerle, yet still the reserve she’d shown in the throne room was evident. The only time Senar had seen that reserve thaw was this morning when she’d been reunited with her half brother, Uriel.
Imerle, the Guardian learned, had sent soldiers to Mazana’s house yesterday with orders to snatch the boy. Mazana, though, had anticipated the move and commanded her dutia, Beauce, to hide Uriel, as well as himself and his troops, in the temple of the Lord of Hidden Faces—leaving just Greave’s followers to greet Imerle’s soldiers when they arrived. Earlier Senar had gone to the temple to collect Uriel and Beauce and bring them to the palace. The journey through Olaire had proved uneventful, but then the fighting between the Storm Guards and Imerle’s forces had quickly died out yesterday when Mazana sent the executioner to parade Imerle’s severed head through the streets.
Senar felt a twinge from his right shoulder and rubbed his hand across it. Through his shirt he could feel the coldness of the dragon scales. When Mazana spoke, he had to lean forward to catch her words above the wind.
“The scales are causing you discomfort?”
“There is no pain. Just a little stiffness.”
“Each year the dragon killed on Dragon Day is butchered for its meat, and each year some of the workers are splashed with its blood. It is said to burn like acid.”
“Then I am fortunate the blood splashed my shirt and not my skin. Clearly the sea weakened its effects when I swam to the throne room.”
“Clearly,” Mazana said, a note of … something in her voice. Senar wondered what she wasn’t telling him. Was there some effect of the dragon’s blood beyond what he already knew?
He rolled his right shoulder and felt the scales rubbing together. The plates ran from the bottom of his neck down his shoulder and arm to just above his elbow. Perhaps it was only his imagination, but it seemed that overnight the scales had extended a hairbreadth farther up his neck. If they were to reach his face …
“What about you?” he asked Mazana, remembering her blood-red eyes in the throne room. “Have you felt Fume’s presence since you left the Founder’s Citadel?”
“I have felt his power,” she said in a tone that indicated the matter was closed. “As did Imerle.”
Senar pursed his lips, suspecting now was not the time to mention the price she’d paid for that power. For while the priestess of the Lord of Hidden Faces hadn’t made an appearance when Senar called at the temple this morning, something told the Guardian she wouldn’t forget Mazana’s debt.
And that Mazana would not like the cost when she remembered.
In response to Mazana’s words he said, “You are lucky that that woman—that kalisch from Gilgamar—killed Imerle when she did. Whatever deal you struck with the emira, she would have betrayed you in the end.”
“Of course she would.”
“Then why did you bargain with her? Because of something Jambar foresaw? The shaman himself will tell you, all he sees are possibilities.”
“What our learned friend Jambar saw, he saw not just in some futures but in all.”
“Then why didn’t he get a whiff of the Augerans’ coming before now? This would not be the first time he has manipulated his patron to serve his own ends. Perhaps he wanted Imerle alive.”
“And pass up the chance to add her knuckle bones to his collection? That is not something he would do lightly, I think.”
Senar’s scowled. Before Imerle’s blood
had even cooled, Jambar had severed the little fingers of both her hands. He had taken the stone-skin’s fingers too. “Even if you are right, with a shaman’s art there can be no guarantees. He failed to foresee Imerle’s death, after all.”
“Yes, he blames you for that. The addition of Fume’s bones to his collection increased his power, but much of what he gained was lost with the bones you destroyed outside his room—he told me of your little disagreement yesterday.”
“Did he also tell you how his power is fueled? By the blood of innocents.”
Mazana’s face darkened. “Stay away from him, Guardian. Soon I may need his gift of foresight.”
Senar did not respond. He had no intention of standing aside while the shaman practiced his grisly work, but Mazana’s expression showed she was in no mood for an argument. In any case he had other things on his mind. After Imerle’s death he’d overheard Jambar telling the Storm Lady about the Augerans’ role in the raising of the Dragon Gate, but when they’d moved on to what the future held, Jambar had steered Mazana out of earshot. When Senar asked Mazana earlier she’d refused to be drawn on the subject, so perhaps it was time to try a different tack. “I understand there was an Augeran in the control room at Dian,” he said. “Evidently Imerle was not the only one intent on smashing the power of the Sabian League.”
“Fortunately for me.”
“Oh?”
“The cities of the League have long bridled beneath the Storm Lords’ yoke. Imerle’s antics might have galvanized them into taking action, but with so many heads of state now lining a dragon’s stomach, those cities will be too embroiled in their own power struggles to challenge me.”
“Giving you time to shore up your position.”
Mazana inclined her head. “Gensu and Thane are dead. With luck, Cauroy too. Which means that even if Mokinda survived, I am now Imerle’s rightful successor.”
“The Storm Lords’ heirs will want to take up their places on the Storm Council.”
“If those heirs are still alive, yes. Thoughtfully, Imerle left no successor. Cauroy’s brood doubtless went down with him on the Majestic”—she ticked them off on her fingers—“and Gensu’s son, I hear, got himself killed in the fight at the harbor. In any event the children of a Storm Lord have no divine right to succeed their parents. First they must prove they are worthy of the honor, for it is only by recruiting the most powerful water-mages that the Storm Lords have maintained their stranglehold on the League.” A smile touched her lips. “As the only surviving Storm Lord, the task of judging the merits of each aspirant will fall on me. Such an important decision cannot be rushed, you understand.”