The Order of the Scales

by Stephen Deas

  Alchemists. They’re like alchemists. The snappers are their dragons and the powder is the potion to keep them docile. He had no idea if it was true, but it seemed to fit. Idly he tried to imagine the same scene without the feathered men, with the snappers freed from whatever dulled their urge to hunt. All the men he could see, all gone. He’d killed a couple of snappers in his time, when the ground had favoured him and his arrows had flown true. He had no illusions about how lucky he’d been.

  Now give them wings and fire and make them a hundred times bigger. He shook his head. It was hard, even thinking about it, not to be afraid. He tried looking at the men camped around him. Bandits, vagabonds, dust traders. What will you do when the dragons awake? What will you do when Snow comes out of the mountains? Will you fare any better than the rest? No. You’ll be food, just like everyone else. He tried imagining them as dragon-knights when Snow came. The carnage in his mind’s eye looked much better that way. Then he went and found himself a good place to sleep. The woman followed him, mute, like a lost dog. That would end soon enough. They’d get a boat and it would take him into the heart of the realms and she’d abandon him the first chance she got. For some reason the thought made him sad. Alone again.

  Never that, Kemir.

  The dragon, still there now and then. Neither of them, it seemed, knew why. She mostly left him alone now, ever since Kataros had fed him whatever potion had pulled him out of his fever. But he could feel her, always, still there, a tiny feather-tickle against his skull.

  As soon as the sun rose, Kemir shook the woman. They picked their way through the confusion on the banks of the river to where a cluster of boats had appeared, waiting to take anyone who could pay in gold to the City of Dragons. He held Kataros’ hand without thinking much about it, almost dragging her through the mass of men and crates. Picked a boat on a whim, haggled without any real enthusiasm. Then sat and stared at nothing very much until the river sped them on their way. The Fury was riding fast and high, swollen with snowmelt. The river knows what’s coming, he thought. Even the water wants to get away. Now and then he opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn’t find any words. What was he going to say? That in a few weeks the world would end? That they were all going to die? Beg her to stay with him so he could sell her as a slave to the Taiytakei?

  Eventually she got bored and wandered off among the other passengers. She always came back, though, never strayed far, always sheltered close as the sun began to set. He even saw her smile when she thought he wasn’t looking. It had been a long time since he’d seen anyone happy, if that was what it was. No, he didn’t have the heart to tell her what was waiting for them both.

  ‘Are we going to the City of Dragons?’ she asked as she sat beside him on their first night afloat. ‘I grew up in the City of Dragons. In the Palace of Alchemy. I never saw much of the city. Then they took me away to the mountains.’

  He could smell her, and that made him want her. He tried not to think about that. ‘You can go wherever you want. I’m going to Furymouth.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed.

  ‘I’m going to see the sea.’ He laughed, in spite of himself. ‘If you’ve got any sense, you’ll come with me. We can find a great ship to take us to another land where there aren’t any dragons. Or any dragon-knights. I’ve been to the City of Dragons too. It’s not for me.’

  She was looking at him. Asking him with her eyes to say more.

  ‘What’s to say? It’s a city filled with rich men who despise anyone who is beneath them and grovel at the feet of any lords or princes that happen to pass them by. And there are a lot of those.’ Far too many. He could remember the first time he’d been there as though it was yesterday. The first time he’d flown on the back of a dragon. ‘Well, that’s how I saw it.’

  She didn’t reply. In her face he saw how bitter he sounded.

  ‘I went there with Sollos,’ he added quietly. ‘My cousin.’ It felt as though half a lifetime had passed since he’d died. ‘We had an errand to run. A bloody one that ended badly and gave me one of my prettier scars.’ Without thinking, he touched his chest. ‘No, nothing much I want to remember about the City of Dragons. It’s pretty, I’ll give it that.’ Hard to forget, though, that first sight of it. Sitting on the back of some war-dragon, finally seeing the mountains of the Purple Spur fall away into the empty space that was the Hungry Mountain Plain. At the far tip of the Spur, water, glittering on the ground. The fabled Mirror Lakes. Kemir’s voice dropped low. ‘I’d never been to the City of Dragons before, never seen the Adamantine Palace, but we’d sold our swords around dragon-knights for long enough to know all the stories of how beautiful the city was from the air. And it was.’ Nestled against the southernmost foot of the mountains, backed into a sheer wall of rock that must have been at least half a mile high, it had still gleamed in the sun. High above, the waterfalls of the Diamond Cascade pitched over the edge of the cliff. A fine spray of water kept the city permanently fresh and cool, and if you looked for it, you could always find a rainbow on any sunny day, hovering somewhere among the low towers. He smiled thinly. ‘Yes, from a distance, it’s probably the most beautiful place in the world. But under its pretty skin, it’s ugly.’ The towers of the city had shimmered and shone their best that day, snatches of rainbow colours floating in between them. Yet the silvery jewel of the Speaker’s Palace had put them all into shade.

  But that’s her world, he reminded himself. Not yours. He tried to remember that he was supposed to be dragging her to Furymouth with him. Making her a slave in exchange for passage away.

  Sounds like the sort of thing a dragon-knight would do.

  Oh shut up.

  He stood up, pushing Kataros away. Seeking out his own space to clear the memories from his head. ‘Beautiful on the outside, rotten on the inside. After the arrow I took out in the swamps the year before, I suppose I should have known better.’ He shivered. ‘We went there to kill a man. Turned out he was bonded to a blood-mage. We were lucky to live. And you know what? After we’d failed to get rid of him, after we winkled out a blood-mage in the middle of the city, what does Queen Shezira’s knight-marshal do? Does she expose him? Does she have the mage hunted down and hanged? No, she pays him the queen’s gold instead.’ He sat down and raised a hand in mute apology. ‘I saw him, a year later, at Outwatch. Both of them, in the queen’s eyrie, the blood-mage masquerading as an alchemist. The Picker. That’s what they called him.’ He sighed. ‘Creepy bastard.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a Scales,’ she said, but he didn’t really hear.

  Early the next morning, the boat stopped at another riverside shanty town. Kemir and Kataros got off while the boatman busied himself getting ready for the long haul through Gliding Dragon Gorge to Plag’s Bay, where the only road for hundreds of miles wound its way up and out of the gorge and eventually to the City of Dragons. Kataros would get off there. Kemir didn’t think he’d be stopping her.

  Oh well. Just have to sell myself into slavery then.

  He looked back up the river. The valley was already deep and steep here, but you could still see the peaks of the Worldspine in the distance. Back there they were mountains. Here they were more craggy hills. Ahead lay the Maze. A dozen or more rivers, each carving their own way down from the heights of the Purple Spur. The mountains stole all the clouds, and so the Maze was a barren hard mess of hard rock, sand and dusty earth where it never, ever rained. Of towering mesas and stone pinnacles, of canyons, rivers, rapids, waterfalls and flash floods. No one lived here. No one except bandits.

  Absently he looked at his fingers. No rings. That was good. The Order of the Finger hid away in the Maze. They had a liking for rings, or so he’d heard.

  The dragon was out there too. Snow. Didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Even thinking about her, he could feel his connection to her stir. Maybe she’d fly out of wherever she was hiding, burn them all and be gone again. And no one would ever know.

  Well bring it on, dragon. You know I�
��ll be waiting.

  As the boat pulled out from the bank once more and the current took hold and dragged it away, he found it hard not to look back. With a force of will, he pulled himself away and marched to the bows, staring ahead at the wide expanse of water ahead. Kataros came to stand beside him.

  ‘It’s all there behind me,’ he said quietly. The woman surely couldn’t care less, but some things needed to be said, if only to the wind. ‘Everything I was is gone. All that matters is whether I can run fast enough to get away. Nothing else.’ Nothing else at all.

  To his surprise, she took his hand in hers. He wondered what that meant. ‘I know,’ she said, and squeezed.

  ‘Do you think there’s much to see between here and the sea? I’ve never been south.’

  ‘I think there’ll be a war,’ she said.

  17

  Narammed’s Bridge

  Jehal peered over the dragon’s shoulder as Wraithwing circled what was left of the landing fields. Jeiros had described the place well. Most of it was blackened soil, the grass just beginning to regrow. There had been buildings once, but they’d been smashed and weeds were growing up among them. A mile to the west and a mile high, the cliffs of the Purple Spur threw long afternoon shadows out across the northern edge of the Hungry Mountain Plain. A thousand trickles of meltwater ran down from the sheer stone walls and merged into a maze of creeks and streams, everything converging into the steep-sided scar that ran across the land. The valley of the Sapphire River. The last water before the deserts of the north.

  The bridge itself was still in one piece. You could see why Vishmir had built another one further to the east where the Sapphire valley flattened out. Narammed’s was nothing more than a lot of planks suspended high above the rushing waters by some ropes, all swaying gently in the wind. Jehal felt somehow let down. He’d expected something grand. This was where Narammed had forged the Speaker’s Peace?

  Let down by the bridge, perhaps, but not by the dragons waiting beside it. Hyrkallan’s outriders had seen him coming from miles away. Counted his dragons and then flown back to their master to say that the speaker and the Lesser Council had come to honour their truce. Waiting on the ground on the north side of the bridge were two of the biggest dragons in the realms. Hyrkallan’s B’thannan and Sirion’s Valediction. Almost as big as the monster that Prince Tichane brought to Zafir’s council when she condemned Shezira. Almost. Beside them were a motley collection of hunters and war-dragons, all of them made small by the two monsters. He spared a lingering glance for the hunters, but none of them had any colours that he hadn’t seen before. Nothing here to add to his eyries.

  Meteroa’s eyries. His uncle had been the one with the passion for breeds.

  He landed Wraithwing on the south side, walked him up close to the bridge. The dragon stared out across the chasm. His muscles were tense. He tossed his head and snarled. That was dragons for you. Always looking for a fight.

  You had to wonder who’d gone to the trouble of building a bridge out here and why they’d bothered. Most likely some nameless company of Adamantine Men had done it simply because they could. All he knew was what Jeiros had told him, that Narammed had come here in his later years, when his power was almost secure, to broker a final peace with the northern kings after he’d betrayed their trust and made a peace with the south. Rather like this. Except when Narammed met them in the middle of the bridge, he’d had the strength to force them to their knees. Can’t see Hyrkallan bending much of anything this time. My neck, maybe, if he can get his hands on it.

  The sight of Meteroa’s severed finger haunted him.

  ‘No one else knows,’ Jeiros had said up in the Spur where no one could possibly overhear. ‘Valmeyan has come out of the mountains. Zafir lives. They have taken the Pinnacles and doubtless Furymouth as well. They send you this gift.’ Valmeyan had sent his message with one of Meteroa’s riders on one of Meteroa’s dragons, and yet somehow the alchemist had intercepted both before they could reach Jehal. Just as the Night Watchman had intercepted the message from the north. They might as well have told him to his face that he was superfluous.

  Jehal dismounted. His bad leg was playing up again, making it difficult to keep his footing on the soft blackened earth. Armoured figures were already standing on the far side of the bridge, waiting for him. Or waiting for someone. He limped towards them.

  Zafir. Never mind his uncle – he’d be the first to say there were far worse things than losing a finger. Valmeyan was a dragon-king. He’d treat his prisoners well enough. Jehal might have to part with a small fortune to get his eyrie-master back, but he’d come back fat and well fed. No, that wasn’t the fear that gnawed at him. What mattered was that Valmeyan had Lystra and Zafir. Were they both his prisoners now? Jeiros seemed to think not. Zafir alive. Was that a feeling of hope or dread? He’d gone to Evenspire to murder her and then wept when someone else had beaten him to it.

  Lystra, Zafir. Zafir, Lystra. He reached the middle of the bridge. Cursed thing swayed so much he felt like he was trying to balance on the back of a horse. Hyrkallan and two other riders were coming out to meet him. When he looked down, the empty space and the churning water below made his head spin, but if he didn’t look down, he was quite sure he’d fall. Damn stupid place to make a peace. One good gust of wind and we’ll all be tossed in the river and half the realms will be looking for new kings. Maybe Hyrkallan had had the same thought. Maybe he and Sirion would simply push him into the river and get on with the serious business of talking to men whose opinions actually mattered. Ironic, really, after what had happened to Hyram.

  The clever thing would be to step aside right now. Let Hyrkallan and Valmeyan destroy each other and then swoop back to pick up the pieces when they were done.

  And then King Sirion was in front of him, with Hyrkallan at his side almost spitting in Jehal’s face. Ancestors, but the man was big!

  ‘Viper!’ Hyrkallan spat from where he stood on Sirion’s right; Queen Almiri was on Sirion’s left. She looked twice as old as he remembered, the paleness of her skin setting off the dark rings under her eyes. Hard to get a good night’s sleep when your realm’s been burned to ash, eh?

  She hissed at him as though she’d read his mind. ‘Son of a whore.’ She turned to Sirion. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  Jehal met her gaze. All the contempt she threw in his face, well, he’d just throw it right back. ‘I am the speaker, Your Holiness.’ Jeiros and the Night Watchman were behind him. The old priest, Aruch, was sat on the blasted earth among the dragons, too old and unsteady to come out onto the bridge.

  Almiri took a quick step forward and shouted in his face. ‘You are a traitor and a murderer! Evenspire burned because of you!’

  ‘Really?’ He didn’t let himself flinch but met her assault with a faint smile. ‘Because I thought it was Zafir who burned your castle. I seem to remember fighting against her on that particular occasion. Perhaps I am mistaken, or perhaps you and yours had already fled the skies by then and were too far away to see.’

  If Sirion hadn’t gripped her shoulder, Jehal thought she might have flung herself at him to rip him to pieces with her bare hands while they tumbled into the rushing waters below. ‘You lying, cess-born stain on the floor of a—’

  ‘Enough.’ Sirion didn’t even raise his voice and Almiri stopped at once. Fascinating. Good to know who pulls her strings. Not her sister, then. And speaking of sisters, I wonder where little Jaslyn might be. Not here, it seems.

  Sirion’s voice was cold. ‘We are here to request a council of kings and queens so that a new speaker may be chosen.’ He gave Jehal a hard look. ‘It’s a pity there are only four of us. Five and we could have have held it here and now.’

  Jehal smirked in his face. ‘Four? Lord Hyrkallan has helped himself to the last of Shezira’s daughters, has he?’ Well that answers that, then. He turned to Hyrkallan. ‘Congratulations, brother. Although I still think I got the best of them.’

  Hyrkallan growled throug
h his teeth. ‘Queen Jaslyn is a true queen of the north.’

  Jehal cocked his head. ‘Really? The impression I got was of a woman who hadn’t quite grown up yet, cold and hard and far more interested in her dragons than her people.’ His brow furrowed. ‘Although now I think about it, maybe you are right and she is her mother’s daughter.’ He forced a smile. ‘Your Holiness. I’m sure the alchemists will post a notice in the Glass Cathedral shortly. Did you bring the sealed bands with you? I’m sure the other realms will be aching to know that the north has a new king.’

  ‘We are betrothed, King Viper, not yet wed.’

  ‘Oh. Then we are three kings, not four.’ Jehal put on his disappointed face. ‘And I had so looked forward to comparing sisters with you, Lord Hyrkallan. Lystra turned out to be quite a surprise when it came to our conjugal duties. Quite enthusiastic, if a little crude. I wondered whether her big sister had similar appetites. Or perhaps some different hidden desires. She strikes me as the sort, after all.’ He watched as Hyrkallan’s face turned storm-cloud purple. It’s always so easy with your type. ‘Queen Lystra and Queen Jaslyn are very close, after all. I heard a rumour from my eyrie-master that they might be’ – he pursed his lips – ‘very close indeed. Perhaps, if an alliance is to be agreed between our realms, we might seal it in a very particular way.’ He glanced at Sirion. ‘Hyram acquired some very large beds in his time as speaker. I’d been wondering what to do with them.’

  He didn’t get any further. Hyrkallan let out a roar and lunged. Jehal tried to dance out of reach but his injured leg betrayed him and buckled. He staggered and then fell back. The bridge twisted, rolling him to one edge until it caught him with its ropes. Hyrkallan had his sword out by now, every intention of using it, and neither Sirion or Queen Almiri showed any sign of stopping him. In fact, if anything, they looked positively pleased. A cripple baiting an armoured knight? I really need to have words with my mouth. Jehal closed his eyes, but the blow never came. Instead, he heard steel clash on steel. When he opened his eyes again, Vale was standing over him. He had Hyrkallan’s blade caught on his own. The Night Watchman was shaking his head.