by Stephen Deas
‘You put a top on it.’
‘Because of the rain,’ said Li drily. ‘You never thought to mention that in your world it rains all the time!’
‘You never thought to ask.’
The front of the sled bristled with lightning throwers and gold-glass shields. The rest was a mishmash of harnesses welded into glass, of leather straps and ropes and buckles tying down crates and barrels. Two ranks of golden spheres lined its underbelly. More lightning throwers protruded there, and there were glass tubes loaded with Taiytakei black-powder rockets tipped with globes of trapped fire. Mounted behind the rider’s seat was a battery of them on a steel pivot mount a bit like a small scorpion. Bellepheros laughed.
‘You’ve made your own dragon, Li.’ He walked around the sled, looking at it, over it, under it. ‘Rockets, eh? Some dragon lords from the northern realms would strap scorpions on the backs of their war-dragons.’
Li touched a piece of gold-glass shaped like a bucket. It rose into the air. She guided it to the river and grinned as it sank and filled and then floated back. ‘Sleds have more uses than you think! I was imagining the desert again, you see. Where water is hard to find and doesn’t constantly fall out of the sky without ever stopping. Do you have deserts here?’
‘In the north. I don’t know what’s there any more. The Black Moon never went so far. I suppose I have no idea where Zafir has roamed on her dragon.’
They loaded as much from the redoubt as the sled could carry. Potions to kill, to hide, to strangle a dragon’s memories and make them dull. Not enough for the thousand who haunted the Worldspine, not yet, but enough to start. Enough for the Black Moon, if they could find a way to make him drink them. The night was half done when they stopped, the sky as black as tar under rolling clouds that covered moon and the stars, the air filled with the familiar hiss of rain, but Bellepheros and Liang worked on, roaming the old redoubt. They took as much food as they could find, more water from the river, lamps and potions and pouches of herbs and minerals, leaves and roots and powdered stone, anything Bellepheros thought might have a use. They returned to Li’s sled when they were done to find the long shadows of dawn already creep-crawling along the cliffs of the valley outside. The dragons that had once stood sentinel over the crags were gone. Bellepheros couldn’t see a single one.
‘Even so, we shouldn’t fly in the day,’ he said. ‘The dragons will see—’
‘Dragons?’ Li snorted. ‘I’ve seen dragons every day for the last week.’
She was full of fire now, and so was he, nothing like the wasted, exhausted creature he’d been before he found her. Seeing her again was like a new life coursing through him, although he still balked as she climbed onto the sled and beckoned him to follow, knowing how utterly petrified he was going to be the moment he saw the ground fall away.
‘Just close your eyes, Belli.’ She took his hand as he climbed onto the sled. ‘Close your eyes and hold my hand. I’ll keep us safe.’
He huddled under the battery of Taiytakei rockets and curled into as tight a ball as he could manage, wedged in and pressed against her, wrapped in an old dusty fur. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see and tried to think of happy days long ago, and the next thing he knew the sun was a long way past its zenith, and Li was shaking him awake, and the sled was blissfully on the ground under a canopy of trees, and the caves of the redoubt were far away. He felt it in the air – thicker, warmer, dry. They were still in the mountains but out of their deep heart.
‘Welcome back,’ Li said, a little drily. ‘We passed the eyrie a while ago but now I don’t know which way to fly.’
Bellepheros tried to unfold himself and whimpered at the pain of it. His knees, as usual. Locked fast from being cramped up for so long. None of his joints wanted to move, and his legs had gone to sleep. Took a few minutes before he could stand on his own.
‘You’re getting worse,’ Li said.
‘I know. It’s the dragon-disease. These last months …’ He might have said more, but she cupped a hand around the back of his head and pulled him close and kissed him, and Bellepheros, once grand master alchemist of the Order of the Scales who had held the fate of kings and realms in his hands, entirely forgot how much his old knees hurt. Chay-Liang kissed him for a long time and then gently eased him to the ground and held him tight.
‘Alchemists don’t take lovers,’ said Bellepheros hoarsely. ‘Well, we’re not supposed to. The disease …’
She shut him up by kissing him again.
‘I’m an old man, Li.’
‘And I’m an old woman.’ She shifted abruptly and sat cross-legged beside him, but when Bellepheros tried to get up as well she pushed him down. ‘Tell me about your Silver King, old man,’ she said. ‘How did your blood-mages bring him down? What do we have to do?’
‘There are more stories about that than I have fingers.’ Bellepheros wrinkled his nose. ‘When the dragons forgot who they were, the Silver King showed the blood-mages how to bend them to their will, how to ride them and fly them, but as to how they brought him down?’ He sighed. ‘I don’t know. No one remembers. It was never written. If dragons and half-gods are the same under their skins then the best I can think of is to use the same potions we once used against dragons, the ones the Silver King taught us. What does the Black Moon mean to do, Li? Do you know? What does he want? Vengeance against the Silver King who once slew him and cast him into the abyss of Xibaiya? But he’s taken that. What was left of the Isul Aieha is turned to dust.’
‘The Black Moon turned against the first gods, Belli, the forbidden ones the Elemental Men would have us forget. He is the half-god who shattered the earth itself, who slew one goddess and aimed to slay three more. He will try again. Him and his dragon-queen beside him. He will gather the monsters he once made, and he will ride them through every world and burn them. I know you want to remake this world as you remember it, Belli, but you cannot. It has already burned. I’m sorry.’
‘What do we do if the potions don’t work?’
Li laughed. ‘Then we take the spear that killed him once before and we run it through him for a second time, that’s what!’
‘Zafir went looking for it. She probably has it by now.’
Li straddled him and leaned in close. ‘You see, I was thinking about that, and what you said when Mai’Choro Kwen’s assassin poisoned me. You saved me with your blood, and then afterwards you told me there would be consequences. That I would feel things. That you would know things about me. That it made a link between us. A bond of sorts. I have felt that, and it is sometimes quite wonderful. But you said that you could … do other things. Yes?’
‘Li! I never did and I never would!’
‘I know, Belli. I know. But you could, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you make me act against my own will.’
Bellepheros swallowed hard. Li was leading him to blood-magic and the darkness every alchemist carried and fought, even as her lips brushed his face, as she nuzzled his ear. ‘Could I? Li, if I wanted to, I could probably make you cut your own throat. But I don’t want to, and I never will!’
‘How many potions have you made for her, Belli?’ Li whispered.
‘You mean Zafir?’
‘Yes. Does she not have that bond with you too?’
‘She does.’
‘Then let her carry the spear. Let her be the one to do it. Make her do it.’ He could feel the glee in her. ‘They will neither of them even see it coming!’
‘Li … I can’t …’ Except of course he could. It wasn’t a matter of if or how. It was a matter of who he was and of choices and consequences, of elemental right and wrong.
‘Then we’ll probably die, Belli,’ Li breathed, ‘as the Black Moon is not likely to conveniently drink your poison and die. But we’ll still try because if not us then who? Do you see, you daft old man, why I don’t care muc
h for your stupid Statue Plague just now? If it comes to it, if we live long enough for it to matter, you can make potions for us both and be glad that we’re alive at all.’
She wrapped him in her arms then, and for a while Bellepheros forgot all about dragons and dead friends, about the Black Moon and the end of the world.
38
The Alchemists
Zafir planted the spear between her feet in front of Lystra’s men and their scorpions. She cocked her head. Her eyes raked them and settled on Lystra, waiting to see if Lystra would turn on her before the chance to do so slipped away like so much sand.
‘There are dragons under the Spur,’ Zafir said. ‘Dragons in your kingdom, Queen Lystra. They come in from the Silver River. There are dragons at the Adamantine Palace too, seeking entrance there. Dragons everywhere to bring ruin to the last of us.’ Old pride slithered like a snake in her belly. There would be no bending the knee now, no pretence of humility. ‘May we enter or not?’
Lystra spat, ‘Do you still hurt from where my axe nearly took your ankle?’
‘A twinge now and then.’
The Adamantine Men of the Spur looked at her. They’d seen the speaker of the nine realms carry the Silver King’s spear and slay a dragon as Narammed the Magnificent himself had done, and to men like these that was all there was. For a long moment Zafir thought about what it would be like to kill Lystra now. She ran the notion around herself, wrapped her thoughts inside it, dressed herself in the feeling of it. She knew how it ought to feel. Delicious. Hot and gleeful. Sweet and salty vengeance, pain returned a hundredfold for everything Jehal had done to her; and yes, for that twinge in her ankle from when she and Lystra had fought. That was how it ought to feel, but with that idea wrapped around her she felt nothing except cobwebs coated with ancient dust. The sensation bewildered her. She didn’t know what to do with it.
I made a promise, she reminded herself. Jaslyn was right there beside her sister. Kill one and you have to kill them all.
Kataros sidled to Lystra’s side and whispered in her ear.
‘You should act, Holiness,’ muttered Tuuran. ‘Half these men are Adamantine. They’ve seen you slay a dragon. If you strike at all, you must do it while you have their hearts.’
Her head swam. Her arms ached and her legs burned and her heart pounded. The looming darkness unbalanced her, unseen demons in the shadows, and all the time the spear seemed to sing in a quiet voice too subtle to hear. She looked for Diamond Eye, for the reassurance of his presence, but the great dragon was quiet and distant, somewhere far away and with troubles of his own.
Lystra met her gaze, cold and steady. She stepped to the front of her men. ‘I will grant entrance to your Adamantine Guard. Your band of night-skin sell-swords may shelter here. For returning my sister and her riders, I grant this.’
Tuuran growled and bristled. ‘Sell-swords?’
‘Hush, Night Watchman.’ Zafir threw an arm across his chest to hold him back. Lystra took another step.
‘But you are neither wanted nor welcome, Zafir, and nor will you ever be. Return what you stole.’ She held out a hand.
Zafir reversed the spear and drove it into the ground between them. Its Adamantine tip bit deep. It quivered, erect. ‘This is why the dragons are here,’ she said. ‘This and this alone.’ What did it matter who carried it now? In the end the Black Moon would do with it as he wished. Lystra reached to take it, and Zafir almost let her, but as Lystra’s fingers touched its shaft she found she had too much pride after all. She drew her sword and levelled it at Lystra’s face. ‘I did not steal it,’ she said. ‘It was always mine, and if you want it then you will have to earn it.’
Lystra stared at her. No sign of fear. ‘Again, then? Sword and axe?’
Tuuran lurched forward to step between them. ‘Holiness!’
Zafir brushed him aside. She nodded to Lystra. ‘Sword and axe and let’s be done with it.’ She tossed the Silver King’s spear to Tuuran. ‘Be quiet and make yourself useful, Night Watchman. Whoever remains, they are your speaker. You will serve Lystra as you served me.’
Again he tried to stand between them. ‘Holiness! It doesn’t have to be like this!’ He rounded on the men at the gates, many of them like him, bred and raised for the legion. ‘In the face of dragons we stand together! Adamantine Men! Do we not?’
‘Tuuran!’
‘Tell your speaker as I tell mine! This is not the way!’
‘Tuuran!’ Zafir slapped his face, then laid a hand to his cheek for a second time, gently now. His eyes gave him away. He was afraid for her. ‘Let it go.’
He growled. ‘Then do not lose, Holiness, for if you do I will follow you to Xibaiya and hunt you down and stand by your side against death itself. You’ll never be rid of me, and I’ll complain a very great deal and at quite some volume at the inconvenience of it all.’
Lystra took up a sword and an axe. She stepped into the cave among the stalagmites and the gloom. ‘I would have beaten you last time –’ she smiled ‘– and so I will again.’ So far from the soft queen Zafir had thought she faced in the Pinnacles all those months before with Jehal’s uncle Meteroa dying on her throne. The men around her then had been Valmeyan’s dragon-knights, allies by necessity more than choice. Lystra had fought like a tiger. She had been winning. The strength and courage of desperation, perhaps.
Spite, that was all. Petty revenge for Jehal’s betrayal over Evenspire, which had driven a knife through her heart deeper than any of the many knives that had come before. Why can’t you just let it go? Was she talking to Lystra or to herself? She wasn’t sure.
She took a long deep breath and found that, despite everything since, despite all her months as a slave, despite what the Taiytakei had done to her and she to them, despite the Black Moon and Diamond Eye and the islands and the cave there, the locked dark room and Merizikat, despite all those things Jehal’s betrayal still cut her to stone, a splinter of rusty iron for ever buried deep under her skin. It had no right. He had no right. He was dead and gone and still he hurt her, and it left such a rage inside her. She wanted it finished. Just done.
She whirled and screamed and threw herself at Lystra, sword flying, axe a-swing to make it end. Lystra blocked and dodged. She swept at Zafir’s legs, but she’d tried that trick when they’d fought before and Zafir saw it coming. She jumped as Lystra veered and they crashed together, the two of them pressed up tight, gold-glass against dragonscale. Zafir threw away her sword and axe and wrapped both hands around Lystra’s face, pulling at her helm. They fell, smashing down side by side. Lystra tried to roll away, but Zafir caught her arm and pulled her close again. Lystra’s helm rolled into the shadows. They staggered to their feet. Lystra lunged as a moment of space opened between them. Her sword caught Zafir’s hip and skittered off Taiytakei armoured glass, and then Zafir sprang and bore her down, winding them both. She straddled Lystra and drew back an arm to smash a gold gauntlet into that pretty face, the face Jehal must have wanted more than her own, except with Jehal nothing had ever been about love but always about lust and greed and power and money, and had she ever been any different? No.
The lightning thrower on her arm shone bright. Filled with white fire. She clenched her fist, tighter and tighter. Somewhere among the Adamantine Men a commotion rose. She didn’t look, didn’t hear, but her fist never came down. Lystra twisted. Zafir tumbled off. She rolled and jumped onto Lystra’s back, wrapped an arm around her throat, pulled her up to her feet and held her there, strangling her, a knife whipped from her hip and pressed to the pretty skin of Lystra’s neck. A dragon-rider’s knife for cutting harness ropes.
So easy to slit her throat. Her hand quivered there for a moment, razor-edged steel against smooth, soft skin.
She pushed Lystra away. Tore off her own helmet. Tossed the knife at Lystra’s stumbling feet. ‘If Jehal was here, I would kill him in a thousand ways.’ Not because she’
d loved him, if she ever had. Not because she’d wanted him. But for the betrayal. For doing to her what her mother had done, her step-father, her sister. For tricking her into thinking that she mattered, that despite everything she’d learned she was worth something, and then taking that away. Zafir tipped back her head. ‘Go on then. If you must.’
Lystra picked up the knife. She swayed, battered and uncertain. All she had to do was take a step and then another, and then a slash or a lunge. And before she took that second step Zafir would draw the bladeless knife of the Elemental Men from her scabbard and slice little starling Lystra in two, straight through her dragonscale to end her. She’d stared at death before, offering herself, quietly hoping for it to take her, but not this time, not any more.
‘Holiness! Holiness!’ Someone was shouting. ‘Holiness, there are dragons loose under the Spur. Holiness!’
Lystra set the knife back on the ground. ‘One each,’ she said. ‘But we’re not done, you and I, and my condition doesn’t change: the spear, and then you may enter.’ She held out her hand. ‘Else rot here.’
For a long time Zafir looked around her. At the men on either side. At Tuuran. Then she nodded. ‘Give it to her.’
‘Holiness?’
‘The Black Moon will have it when he returns either way. You know that.’
Lystra took the spear from Tuuran. She turned her back and walked away.
Halfteeth practically threw Snacksize at the stairs. He held his post a moment longer, pressed against the altar. When the fire stopped, that was when he bolted, because he knew that was when a hatchling small enough to fit through the Cathedral’s smashed-down doors had come looking for him. He caught a glimpse of it over his shoulder, leaping and bounding, a great flare and flap of wings. He jumped into the shaft and spun as he did and fired his last lightning throwers. One missed; the other caught the hatchling and knocked it out of the air. The dragon crashed into a jumble of charred smoulder that had once been wooden benches, all pushed aside now, but it wouldn’t stay down for long. In the moment he’d bought himself Halfteeth slid and bounced down the first half-spiral of the stair until he fetched up against Snacksize.