by Stephen Deas
No, you won't,' said a voice behind him. An edge burned across his throat. His mouth filled with something hot and salty and he started to choke. He staggered and coughed and blood gushed out of his mouth. He turned and then fell over. He could hear singing. The Picker was standing over him, holding a knife so thin that you could see right through it. Or you could have, if it hadn't had Jostan's blood all over it.
'Suppose you should have gone with the others.' The Picker shrugged and walked away, and all Jostan could see was the sky, fierce and bright. The singing was getting louder. He heard Semian somewhere far away, bellowing promises of blood and fire and victory, and then the singing swallowed everything.
And then it stopped and there was nothing.
Two
Of Princes and Queens
8
The Lovers
'Can I kill your bride yet?' Speaker Zafir curled her arm around Prince Jehal and stretched her long neck, tilting back her head, inviting Jehal to sink his teeth into her throat. He duly obliged, nibbling gently at her skin. A few feet to one side of him was a bed. Their bed, high up in the topmost room of the Tower of Air, scattered with silk sheets from the silkworm farms on Tyan's Peninsula. His farms.
'That would hardly be wise, my love.' A few feet the other way was a gaping open arch. More silk fluttered in the breeze. Beyond that, a tiny balcony; then nothing but air and the hard ground of the Speaker's Yard a hundred feet below. He liked it up here. For the view across the palace and the City of Dragons beyond and then the sheer dark cliffs of the Purple Spur and the glittering rain from the Diamond Cascade.
And yes, for the bed too. Although sometimes, when push came to shove as it always did when they were alone, he wondered what would happen if he pushed for the window instead. Two speakers lulling to their death in such quick succession would show such a lack of imagination though…
'I was wondering whether to have her poisoned, or whether I should simply slit her throat.'
Tedious, tedious. Jehal put on his best smile. How many times had they talked about this? He gave a petulant little sigh and stepped away from her, a little closer to the arch and the empty air. 'Must we go over this again? Lystra is Queen Shezira's daughter. Her other two daughters are already riled enough. They have well over three hundred dragons between them and they want your head. The speaker is supposed to weld the realms into a unity of peace and harmony, not start a war. You should let Shezira and King Valgar go.'
Zafir snorted and turned away from him. 'Let them go, let them go – that's all you ever say. I'm beginning to think you're far too attached to this new family of yours. Let them go? Why? So Shezira can wage war on me? I'd rather face the skinny little rag of a daughter that rests so uncomfortably on her throne. So Valgar can stir trouble on my borders? Let his feeble-minded wife be the thorn in my side.'
She was flaunting herself, letting him see the slit of her under-gown, the long gash of naked skin beneath, all the way to the small of her back. She knew exactly what she was doing, of course. He felt himself stir. 'Not so feeble, my love. She is undoubtedly supporting the Red Riders.'
Zafir threw back her head and laughed and brushed her fingers over the silk sheets on the bed. 'The Red Riders? Twenty dragons loose on my borders, and so far all they've done is burn a few peasants. If that's the best she can do then I've no fear of her. No, they're just loose ends that our idiot Night Watchman failed to clean up when Shezira murdered my husband. Let them brood in the Worldspine for a few weeks. They'll go home soon enough.'
'They stole five of your dragons and they burned Drotan's Top.'
'And I've already taken three of them back. They tickled my feet, Jehal, that's all. Drotan's Top was some huts on a hill. And they didn't burn it. They didn't dare.'
'I remember your face when you first heard the news, my love. Dark and stormy as the Endless Sea.'
She pouted at him. 'They won't be allowed to do it again. The Red Riders are barely even a nuisance now. I'm inclined to let them be for a while. We can make some sport with them after I kill their queen.'
Jehal shifted on his feet. 'They make me nervous.' If I were you, I'd stamp on them. But I'm not, and sometimes it amuses me to watch you falter. He smiled at her. 'Hyrkallan leads them and he's no fool'
Now she yawned. 'Then he'll know to give up and go home.' 'Don't be so sure, my love. He might just burn something that matters first.' He moved behind her and ran his fingers along the skin of her spine. 'Show some grace. Let Shezira go. Let the cloud of suspicion hang over her for the rest of her reign. Let everyone wonder whether Hyram fell or whether he was pushed. The longer you hold her, the more your enemies will rally under her banner. Let her go and some will start to question her. Your Red Riders will quietly fade and disperse.'
Zafir waved him away. 'The world thinks* Valgar tried to have me killed. I'd look laughably weak if I let him go.'
Here we go again. 'Fine, fine. Hang Valgar if you have to hang someone. But let Shezira go.'
'She pushed my husband off a balcony.'
'No, she didn't. He was drunk and he fell, and you were glad to be rid of him. Not only is that something that most of the kings and queens will believe, it happens to be true.' Not quite true, actually, but that's one little secret I'll keep to myself.
'I want Lystra gone, Jehal. Before she gives birth to your heir. Otherwise I'll have to get rid of both of them, and that means two assassins and paying twice as much money. Better to get them both together, eh?'
On some days the window called more loudly than on others. He growled, a mixture of frustration and desire, pushing the thought away. Not yet. 'I am here, my love. Lystra is far away, pining for me no doubt, as any woman would, but not actually having me. I am here, I am yours and only yours. I haven't even touched another woman since you took the Adamantine Spear in the Glass Cathedral and became mistress of the realms.' Although the ancestors know how I've been tempted. More and more of late. I might start with your vapid little sister.
She turned back to him and smiled. It always worked, appealing to her vanity. A hand reached out and stroked his cheek. 'O Jehal, I find that very hard to believe. Is it really true?'
'You know it is, my love.' He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close again. 'I have eyes only for you, no matter how far away you are.'
'Mmm. Don't I know it.' She had a lecherous look on now. Almost done.
'If Lystra dies, her sisters will see your hand in it, guilty or not. You've taken their mother, whom they feared. They grumble and moan and rattle their swords, but that's all. Take the sister they love and they'll fly straight for your throat.'
'My throat or yours?' Zafir tipped her head back again. She shivered as Jehal wrapped his fingers around her neck.
'Both.' He pushed her back, hard and fast enough to startle her, until she was pressed against the bedroom wall. An arch to either side. See, that's how easy it could have been. His other hand felt for her knee and then started upward, pushing its way between the silken layers of her gown. She gave a little gasp and pushed herself into him as he found the heat between her legs.
'I know how much you like to talk of murder.'
'No. This is just the only way I know to shut you up.' He tugged at the drawstrings of his trousers. Her hands moved to his, eager to help.
'Then I'm sure we'll talk of murdering your starling-bride again,' she murmured. After that she didn't say much for quite a while. Not unless the squeals and moans carried some veiled meaning beyond the obvious.
Afterwards, when Zafir fell asleep in his' arms, Jehal lay awake. He stared at the ceiling of the great open chamber at the top of the Tower of Air. The walls around them were little more than a ring of huge arches opening out onto the balcony that encircled the upper level of the tower. He got up and went to stand in one, naked, teased by the wispy gauze of silk that hung rippling in the warm breaths of wind that puffed off the plains. Spread below lay the Adamantine Palace, the heart of the speaker's power. Four huge
open yards, each large enough to assemble two thousand men, and overlooking each yard was a massive tower. The Gatehouse first, the oldest, the strongest and the largest tower in the palace, where the alchemists and the Night Watchman and the other senior servants made their beds. Then the vast space of the Gateyard, lined with stables and barracks. After that, the elegant Towers of Dusk and Dawn, black granite and white marble, the Fountain Court and the squat bulk of the Speaker's Tower, the place where the speaker and his or her servants traditionally made their home. Then the largest space of all, the Speaker's Yard, wrapped around the hulking misshapen tumour of glassy stone that was the Glass Cathedral. After that, the palace became a little smaller. The Tower of Air was the tallest tower in the palace, but it was slender and lacking in space, a fitting monument to the vanity of the speakers. Finally there was the Circle Court, the azure Tower of Water and the City Tower. Proper towers again, fit for visiting kings and queens.
Around them all lay the palace walls. Not particularly tall, but they were wide enough to drive a horse and cart right around them. In fact there were several ramps to allow the Adamantine Men to do just that when they were putting their scorpions up. More than anything else, that was what the walls were for: to mount the hundreds upon hundreds of scorpions that would defend the speaker from the dragons of her enemies. The walls, as of now, were empty. Zafir hadn't seen fit to deploy her arsenal. That would show the realms that I am afraid, Jehal…
Jehal stood in the wind and chuckled to himself while his gaze wandered and explored the world outside the palace. Below the low slopes of the Palace Hill, the City of Dragons fed and decorated itself with the wealth and power that oozed from the speaker's presence. Somewhere down there too were the barracks of the ten thousand men of the Adamantine Guard. Past the city, the Diamond Cascade falls poured out from the peaks of the Purple Spur, the water falling so far that it never quite reached the ground but instead filled the city with a perpetual misty haze. The bottomless Mirror Lakes glittered and gleamed and rippled in the breeze. Beside them, the Adamantine Eyrie was currently filled to bursting with riders and dragons from the realms to the south. Very empty of dragons from the north. Through a different arch, the Hungry Mountain Plain stretched away to the south, to the chasm of the Fury River and Gliding Dragon Gorge. Beyond that, far away, lay the warm hills and valleys and meadows of Zafir's home, and then his own, Furymouth, and the sea, and beyond that, perhaps, the lands of the Taiytakei sailors and other places Jehal had never seen. To the east, the plains rolled and twisted into the foothills of the Worldspine, the dominion of the King of the Crags. To the west, they grew slowly more broken and wooded until they reached the Sapphire River and then rose sharply to meet the moors and bogs of King Silvallan's realm. To north, beyond the wall of the Purple Spur, the plains became the great deserts of sand and stone and salt that wrapped the northern realms.
He looked back at Zafir. I stood here naked once, at the windows, when Hyram was about to make you a queen, hooking down at all that was going to be mine. If anyone had seen me here they would have known we were lovers, you and I, and all would have been lost. But they didn't. He tried to look away but it was hard. Too hard. For all her flaws, she was still beautiful. I watched you so many times, through the eyes of the Taiytakei dragon. I watched you writhing and moaning under Hyram, drawing him in to you, and I watched you make yourself sick each time he left. And I watched you writhing and moaning alone, just for me, knowing my eyes were there.
So many fond memories. Below them was the room where he'd watched Zafir poison Hyram and then destroy him as cruelly as she could. Where he'd finished what she'd started and broken Hyram's mind. Where he'd struggled with himself not to throw Hyram off one of the balconies when he was done. Here, from this arch, was where he'd watched, that same night, as Hyram had thrown himself off another one right in front of Queen Shezira, spouting gibberish about kings and queens who'd been dead for decades.
And now…
And now he was slowly getting bored. He sighed and his eyes fell away from Zafir's skin. The Night of the Knives, they called it behind Zafir's back and to her face too. The night Valgar tried to have her assassinated and Shezira pushed Hyram off his tower, if you were inclined to believe Zafir's version of events. The night that Zafir imprisoned a king and a queen, the first time that a speaker had done such a thing in nearly a hundred years. The night that the riders of the north had fought with the Adamantine Guard and left more than a hundred corpses strewn across the palace. The night that the Red Riders had been born.
That had been a month ago. The next day, High Priest Aruch had placed the flawless shaft of the Adamantine Spear into Zafir's hands and her reign had begun. And then…
And then? And then nothing, that's what. More than a month of kick-ing my heels around the palace when I should be back in Furymouth, watching over my realm. A month of listening to Zafir bellyache about Lystra. A whole month of nothing to do except…
Jehal looked at Zafir's naked shape, sprawled out before him.
Well it could be a lot worse, and one must confess to having found a few diversions, I suppose.
Above the bed, two pairs of ruby eyes looked down at him from the rafters. Jehal stared back at them. Two golden mechanical dragons, wedding gifts of the Taiytakei, imbued with magics that let him look through their eyes. Perfect spies and yet now he had no one to spy on. He had to wonder, sometimes, why they'd given him such precious things, and why he'd given one of them to Zafir.
No, that wasn't right. He knew exactly why he'd given one to the Speaker of the Realms.
He took another step forward, out onto the balcony until his toes curled over the edge. This time, if anyone saw him, what would it matter? The whole palace knew they were lovers.
This isn't what I wanted. I thought I did, but I was wrong. He glanced back at Zafir, watching her chest slowly rise and fall. If I was speaker, what would I do? Bathe in the power, in the glory, in the knowledge that there was no higher place to be? Yet I see now that the view from up here was far better when it was forbidden.
Shit.
Of all the things that might have happened, of all the things he'd planned for, of all the fates that might have befallen him on his path to this place, here was an outcome he'd never foreseen. He was bored.
Jehal walked back to the bed. He let his eyes linger on Zafir for one last time and listened to her breathing, slow and untroubled. You understand, don't you? That's why you can't simply let Shezira go. Because then it would be over. He leaned down and gently kissed her hair. 'Have a care, my lover,' he whispered. 'Listen to your advisers, for they're no fools. And please let us not become enemies.'
He picked up his clothes, quietly dressed, and slipped away.
9
A Question of Priorities
Vale Tassan, Night Watchman, commander of the Adamantine Men, most feared soldier in the realms, bowed his head and waited.
'What do you mean, he's gone?' For a moment Speaker Zafir went rigid. Vale thought she might be about to throw something at him. Speakers came and went and Queen Zafir was the fourth that Vale Tassan had lived to see. If he'd been permitted an opinion, it might have been that the others had been immeasurably better. Since he wasn't, he did exactly as tradition and the law demanded. He bowed precisely as low as was required, ready for whatever orders would come his way.
'He has left the palace, Your Holiness,' he said calmly and quietly.
'Idiot. Where did he go?'
Vale bowed again. The action was mechanical, a reflex honed over years. He didn't have to think about it any more. 'To the eyrie, Your Holiness. He went with most of his riders to the eyrie, woke up Eyrie-Master Copas, demanded his dragons be roused and they all flew away, Your Holiness. I believe they flew west, towards the Worldspine and Drotan's Top. What's left of it.' Which put him heading towards the Red Riders, but Vale saw no need to mention something so obvious.
If anything, the speaker's anger grew. Vale watched, calmly indif
ferent. Adamantine Men were chosen almost before they could talk. Usually they were orphans or unwanted children of poor folk who couldn't afford another mouth to feed. Some were bastard by-blows of higher-born men, conveniently pushed away to a place where they wouldn't cause any trouble. In the Guard, blood didn't matter. Everyone was the same. Vale might have been the son of a king or a fool, but in his own mind he was a son of the Guard, nothing more and nothing less. He'd stood in shield walls with his brothers, the ones who managed to stay alive, for more than twenty years. Together they defied the strength and fire of the dragons. He might have been alone before the speaker's throne but he always felt his brothers at their posts and at their work, not far away. Queen Zafir's anger meant nothing to him. He waited, silent and still, for her to send him away.
'In the middle of the night.' Zafir shook her head.
'At dawn, Your Holiness. They flew at dawn. As soon as there was enough light for the dragons to fly.'
'He hasn't gone west, Tassan. He's gone south. Back to his home and his starling…' She hesitated. Vale saw it. Other words had been lining themselves up to come out and she'd bitten them back. Vale stood motionless and thought about Speaker Hyram. Hyram the clever and wise. Hyram, who had presided over a decade of peace and prosperity throughout the realms. Hyram, who for reasons Vale would never know had named Zafir, the least worthy candidate by far, to succeed him. And who'd been pushed off a balcony for his trouble. He should have named the King of the Crags. That would have stirred up these fat soft kings we have nowadays. A proper speaker.
He pursed his lips. That was a thought he should not have had. Zafir wasn't looking at him though, so presumably she hadn't noticed. She was looking at Prince Tyrin instead. Tyrin was the fourth or fifth son of King Narghon and Queen Fyon, which made him a cousin of some sort to Jehal. So much had changed in the last month that Vale found himself alarmingly vague about who was who. Princes and princesses seemed to come and go and he was starting to lose track. He supposed he ought to care but somehow he didn't.