The Order of the Scales (40 page)

They flew the short distance back to Hammerford along the Fury, skimming the river in the futile hope that the mystery almost-alchemist might happen by some miracle to be drifting along on a boat in plain sight. Jeiros wondered idly what would happen if you fed Abyssal Powders to a dead dragon. If such a thing was even possible. That was the trouble with being an alchemist. You almost couldn’t help wondering about things like that. You couldn’t help wondering about a spear that had shown up where it wasn’t supposed to and had turned a pair of dragons into statues as close to right under your nose as made no difference either. The dead man was only a sell-sword. How did he know the difference between the Adamantine Spear and some other spear that just happened to be all metal and shiny? How had he made it work? Damn thing had sat in the Adamantine Palace for two hundred years without showing the slightest sign of being magical, despite all the legends it carried. And then, just when you needed it, it woke up. Yes, you had to wonder about that.

And while you were in a wondering frame of mind, you had to ponder what a blood-mage and some mysterious fellow who could apparently appear and disappear at will were doing with it. And why they’d chosen to steal it at this particular point in history and not last year or next. You had to think about the how too. And what a blood-mage and King Jehal had to do with one another. No, you couldn’t help wondering all of those things, even though you knew perfectly well that you weren’t likely to get a quick answer to any of them, and what was likely to be the end of the world wasn’t much more than a week away unless you did something about it right here and now.

He sighed. He’d been grand master of the Order of the Scales for over half a year now, and he couldn’t think of a single time when he’d actually enjoyed himself. His predecessor, Bellepheros, had at least enjoyed himself
sometimes
, Jeiros was fairly sure of that.
And then just when it was all about to get difficult, you vanish. What did you know, old man?

There was something more to all of this. Something he was missing. He’d have to talk to Vioros about that. Assuming they both lived long enough to have a proper conversation.

In Hammerford Jehal’s riders were waiting for him, agitated. A pair of them stood either side of a woman sitting disconsolate on the burnt earth, battered and bedraggled. A third rider was with them. All four looked confused and alarmed, as though they hadn’t a clue what to do. The third rider was also holding a spear.
The
spear. Unmistakable. Unbelievable, but there it was, somehow showing up again where it was needed. Jeiros had to rub his eyes to be sure, but no, it was still there. The spear that apparently had decided to wake up and kill dragons. If he peered hard, he might even have recognised the woman from some quieter moment in the Palace of Alchemy.

‘Found her flapping about on the edge of the river on a fishing raft,’ said the first rider, one of Hyrkallan’s northerners. ‘Trying to steal it.’

The woman started forward. ‘Master alch—’ Which was as far as she got before one of her guards kicked her in the back. Jeiros snatched the spear and gave it to Vioros. Best to seize it before one of the riders thought of taking it back to the Pinnacles to give to Jehal. He cast a brief eye over the woman from the river. He had no idea who she was, but he was sure he’d seen her face once before. He could see the traces of Hatchling Disease on her, just the start of it. On her way to being a Scales, just as the sell-sword had said.

He gave her to Vioros as well. Jehal’s riders closed around them. He could see the riders from Sand eyeing them up, ready to keep this stupid war going for another round. Well good.
Let
them eye each other. It would serve as a distraction.

So now we have a weapon. One we thought wasn’t real, but one that can apparently turn a dragon into stone. If they would be kind enough to come at us one at a time, I might even find that useful.
But there were a thousand dragons at the Pinnacles. If he started stabbing them one after the other, someone was bound to notice and make him stop. And then when they’d taken it from him, there would be arguing, fighting, bloodshed, over whether it would be Jehal or Hyrkallan who held it at the end of the day. No. There were betters plan than that.

He took Vioros aside. ‘This is our hope. This kills dragons. We have this one thing, and that is better than none. Go to the Adamantine Palace. Find the Night Watchman. Tell him this from me. Tell him I will do my part and he must now do his. Tell him it’s black. Pitch black. Tell him exactly that and nothing else. Is that clear? And then give him the spear.’

‘Pitch black.’ Vioros looked shaken. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Vale knows what it means. When you’re done with that, collect as many alchemists as you can. Seize the palace eyries and put an end to any dragons you do not need. Keep a few, though. A small number. There’s enough potion for that. If I’m not with you in two days, assume I am dead. You will go to every eyrie in the realms. The Night Watchman has already sent men with hammers ahead. Do what needs to be done. Poison every dragon, smash every egg. It won’t be perfect, but it might be enough to save us. Keep a handful, though. Use the stockpile of potion at the Redoubt. There will always be dragons. Vale will need them to hunt the ones that have awoken.’ He nodded to the woman. ‘When you have a moment after all that, find out what she knows.’

That probably wasn’t what Vioros had wanted to hear, but it was all he was going to get, and he was a good enough alchemist to do what he was told.

‘Now.’ Jeiros rubbed his hands and made sure he spoke loudly enough for all the riders around him to hear. ‘Let us see this hidden den of alchemists our dead sell-sword friend told us about. Perhaps there will be some
potion
there.’

It took Vioros a moment to remember, but he’d done his job well before they’d left. A gang of townsfolk appeared almost out of nowhere as Jeiros walked back into the ruined town. He quietly paid them in gold and they hurriedly led him to a cellar half filled with a mish-mash of barrels, kegs, anything that would hold water. By the time Jeiros opened the door, they’d all melted away. For the riders who came with him, Jeiros went through the pretence of discovering a secret stockpile of dragon-taming potions. Hard to feign the enthusiasm, the glee, the surprise, the joy even, that he ought to feel. Hard to believe anyone would even fall for such a ruse. Certainly any alchemist would have seen through it at once. But none of the riders seemed particularly surprised.
Because we are alchemists, and people believe what we say? Or because you simply don’t care and pay such little attention to us? I would like to think the first, but we all know better.

Did it matter? Jeiros didn’t care. What mattered was that he had dozens of barrels filled with river water that everyone believed contained potions and that they were loaded onto the backs of his dragons. Jeiros watched Vioros leave for the Adamantine Palace. To Vale with the spear, where it might be some use. He had a sinking feeling they wouldn’t meet again and he could see that Vioros was thinking that too.
Ha! Now you know how I felt when Bellepheros chose to simply vanish. May your ancestors watch over you. And if you choose to fly to Furymouth and the sea, at least deliver my message first.

As soon as he’d seen Vioros safely gone, Jeiros flew straight back to the Pinnacles and the chaos that had once been Queen Zafir’s eyrie. Dragons, everywhere he looked. And he had nothing to feed them or keep them tame.

‘Right.’ He rounded up the first riders he found. ‘These barrels over there. Those barrels over here.’

It was as easy as that. Switching the barrels full of water for the barrels he’d brought with him from the Adamantine Palace. Barrels full of poison. Then he called all the alchemists at the eyrie to him. He showed them the barrels and told them that Vioros had brought more potion from the north. By the end of the day, his work was done. He didn’t rest until it was too dark to see, though, moving around the eyrie and the surrounding plains, going from one clump of dragons to the next, making sure that every Scales knew their duty. Making sure that every dragon was fed. He endured Hyrkallan’s icy greetings and King Sirion’s hearty slap on the back, and when he discovered that Jehal and nearly a hundred dragons were missing, he shrugged his weary shoulders, wished them all the best and hoped that perhaps Jehal might become the speaker he had it in him to be. And after that, when there really wasn’t anything left to do, he lay back in his tent and stared at the darkness above him and waited for someone to realise what he’d done. They’d hang him. Or they’d burn him. Maybe Jehal would be like Zafir and put him in a cage. They wouldn’t feed him to any of the dragons that happened to survive the night. He was pretty sure of that.

Stabbing dragons with the spear would have been a spectacle. Quietly poisoning them was much more the alchemists’ way.

Zafir flew south. Away from the chaos above the Pinnacles. She’d lost. Somehow, despite everything he’d done to them, Jehal had managed to empty every eyrie in the north to join his cause. She’d stayed long enough to see that Jehal himself led the charge, to see his Wraithwing plunge into Valmeyan’s cloud of dragons. For a while she’d gone looking for him. Let tooth and claw and fire settle what was between them, but the battle was too big, too wild. She hadn’t found him.

Jehal was probably dragon-food by now anyway. As soon as the outcome seemed hopeless, she’d left Valmeyan and Tichane to fight on as best they could. She’d fallen out of the air as though she was dead. Three other dragons had fallen with her, her most trusted riders, plunging towards the ground and then at the last minute levelling out and heading south. Jehal might be gone or he might not, but Lystra wasn’t. Valmeyan hadn’t had the spine to let her see to that. Probably Lystra or her son would end up being speaker one day because of all this. Well she couldn’t take Lystra’s memories of Jehal away from her and she couldn’t take her son, but she could take everything else.
Do unto others as others have done unto you.
So she flew until she found the Fury and then veered to the west, over the sea of mud and huts that called itself Farakkan, past the Yamuna River and on towards the sea. Clifftop was already in ashes. When she reached Furymouth, there were no dragons to meet her, no defenders to ward her off.

In the space of a few minutes the four dragons burned Jehal’s glorious Veid Palace to the ground. That was a start. Jehal’s home city lay waiting for her, naked and helpless. That next.

And then?
She circled out over Furymouth Bay, out over the fleet of Taiytakei ships anchored there.
When I’ve done everything I can to hurt him, what then? They’ve burned my home.
She’d seen the flames behind her as she’d fled. Whoever was left to claim victory at the Pinnacles would doubtless blame her for the burning of the Silver City, but it hadn’t been her, not her dragons, not her orders. The Silver City, almost as much as the Pinnacles themselves, had been the beating heart of the realms. Hers.

They burned my home. Where do I go?

The ships offered the obvious answer.
Come with us. Across the sea where no one will look for you.
Across the sea to what, though? To become a kept woman? To become a curiosity? A courtesan to some rich ship’s captain?

Better than being dead, wasn’t it?

She circled the ships one more time. One of these ships carried dragon eggs, sold to the Taiytakei from Jehal’s eyrie by Valmeyan. In exchange for what, Zafir didn’t know, but she had no doubt the eggs were there.
Sold in exchange for helping him to the Adamantine Throne. Fat lot of good you were.
They were the ones who’d done this. The Taiytakei. She didn’t know how or why, but somehow they’d made this happen. They’d used her. Ayzalmir had had the right of it when he’d burned their ships, banished them, fed the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t run to the snappers in his menagerie.

No. Being a slave wasn’t better than being dead. She skimmed across the sea towards one of the Taiytakei ships, the biggest one with the most flags flying from it, and told her dragon to burn it. Dragons liked burning ships. One thing she’d learned from those few of Meteroa’s riders she’d taken alive in the Pinnacles.

The dragon gleefully veered to obey. It opened its mouth. She felt a sense of exultation . . .

And then nothing. The dragon spasmed once, twisted and fell out of the sky. Its head hit the waves and it somersaulted, spinning the world around Zafir. A wall of salt water crashed into her, thumped into her back, crushing her against her dragon’s neck, and then she was flying again. For a moment it seemed as though she wasn’t strapped to the dragon at all; then they crashed together back into the sea. For a second time she was flung forward, all the breath smashed out of her lungs. She fell limp, almost snapped in two. The dragon ploughed through the waves and slid to a stop. The Taiytakei ship loomed before them. The dragon’s head hung under the waves while its wings spread out over the surface. It wasn’t moving. Somehow, it was dead.

Zafir tried to lift her head, but the effort was too much. She could barely breathe. She lay still, arms wrapped around the dragon’s neck, making little gasping noises as one wing slowly slipped under the water and the dragon began to tip and sink. The straps and webbing dug into her legs and her waist, holding her fast to the monster’s back as it started to slide under the water. Movement was beyond her. Of all things, she was going to drown.

Live.
She had no idea where the thought came from. Someone who cared whether she lived or died. There couldn’t be too many of them left. Must have been her own then.
Live.

The water reached her legs and then her waist. Slowly, slowly sinking. A shock of cold against her skin as it found the joins in her armour. She tried to move. It might have been the hardest thing she’d ever done, but she did it, lifting her face away from the dragon’s neck. That was almost as much as she could manage, but she forced her hands to move to the knot of pain in her belly where the main harness was jammed into her flesh. Her fingers fumbled. Water lapped at her fingers, then at her arms. With one last monumental effort of will, she pushed herself back into the saddle, gave herself the finger-width of space she needed, and pulled the buckle apart.