The Order of the Scales (2 page)

Fire and moths. He could feel his hunger for it even so. Raw unthinking craving.

Quickly, before he could change his mind, he wrapped the spear in a blanket of black silk, smothering his hunger as he smothered the silver. He climbed softly back up the stairs and reached out his senses into the Speaker’s Tower. The Chamber of Audience was still empty. The guards standing outside were still asleep. He slipped between them and pulled the darkness of the night around him like a cloak, hugging it to his chest. A faint light seemed to creep out of the spear again, out of its silk wrapping as if it knew his purpose and was trying to betray him. He felt his heart beating as he ran. He was exposed. A hundred guards walked the walls around him, above him, looking down on him.
They must see me. They must . . .

They didn’t. He slipped from the Speaker’s Yard into the Fountain Court and then into the Gateyard. He stopped by the stables there to catch his breath, to tell himself his fear was foolish. The guards on the walls wouldn’t see him. Their eyes were cast towards the City of Dragons and the black mass of the Purple Spur beyond, looking for dragons. On a night like this they’d be pressed to see even one of those.
I’m afraid of my own fear, jumping at shadows . . .
That wasn’t right. He was a blood-mage. He had the power to literally rip men apart, to turn them inside out. He could barely even remember the last time he’d been afraid.

Was it the spear?

No. Whatever was inside it had been asleep for a long time and slumbered still. Awake, an edge of fear was the least it would bring.

He waited until his breathing eased. His heart still pounded, but that was good. That meant blood flowing fast, that his power was at its strongest.

In the stables he had a horse already saddled. He mounted and crossed the Gateyard. People would see him now, or if they didn’t, they would hear him. That was to be expected. Under his skin, blood shifted, sculpted, arranged his features in subtle new ways. When he reached the gates, the Adamantine Men were already coming out of their guardhouse. They shone lanterns in his face and peered at him.

‘Who’s there?’

Kithyr threw back his hood. The face they saw now was that of alchemist Grand Master Jeiros. A fitting disguise, Kithyr thought. One that amused him, alchemists and blood-mages viewing each other as they did.

‘Grand Master.’ The soldiers bowed. They looked a little confused.

‘The gate, if you please,’ mumbled Kithyr. His face was that of the alchemist, but his voice was his own. He was counting on the soldiers not knowing the difference.

‘We are at war. The gates are closed at night,’ said one of the soldiers. Presumably he was the one in charge. Kithyr pulled a flask out of his cloak and held it out to the man.

‘Cold night eh?’ he muttered.

The man looked askance at the flask. Then he shrugged, accepted it and took a swig. ‘Still can’t open the gates at night. Night Watchman’s orders for as long as the speaker’s away.’ The soldier wiped his lips on his sleeve and handed back the flask. Kithyr waited a few seconds. The liquid in the flask was mostly brandy, as strong and as vicious a spirit as he could find. What wasn’t spirit was blood. His blood. He waited and then he felt the connection form, felt himself reaching inside the soldier.

‘I am Jeiros,’ he said softly. Who he sounded like didn’t matter any more. ‘Even now, I may pass. That is my authority.’

The soldier nodded. ‘Very well. Open the gate.’

His men looked confused and didn’t move. ‘Sir?’

‘Come on, lads! This isn’t just anyone. This is the grand master himself, and that makes him the man who gives the orders around here until the speaker returns. So if he wants to go out moonlighting into the city in the middle of the night, who are we to stop him?’ The soldier leered. Annoying.

‘I have business of the realms, man. If I wanted whores I’d have them sent.’
There’s no love lost between the Adamantine Men and the alchemists either
, he reminded himself.
Tolerate it. We’ll soon be gone.

The gates started to open. Kithyr feigned patience. One of the guards was missing. The soldier hadn’t gone back into the gate-house either. A silver to a copper he’d gone to wake up the Night Watchman. Kithyr offered his flask around to the other soldiers while he waited. A few of them took it, which would help if it came to a fight. Others looked at him with a deep suspicion and shook their heads. As soon as the gate was open enough, Kithyr kicked his horse into a canter. He was out of the palace in a flash, on his way down the hill to the City of Dragons. He didn’t linger. The Night Watchman had a suspicious, devious and thorough sort of mind and wasn’t the sort to let little things slide. He’d come down to the gate. It was entirely possible that he’d go and bang on the grand master alchemist’s door even in the middle of the night just to make sure he was really gone. Kithyr might have hours or days or he might have a mere handful of minutes before his deception was unmasked. Once that happened, they’d know him for what he was. There was only one way for even a grand master alchemist to be in two places at once. The cry would rise up.
Blood-mage!
And the hunt would begin.

He had long enough, though. Long enough to get from the palace to the City of Dragons. Long enough to leave his horse in the stables of an inn. Long enough to hide the spear under the straw, change into some clothes that were hidden in the saddlebags of the next horse along and walk a street or two to the house of a wealthy grain merchant. Long enough to knock on the servants’ entrance and be let inside by a man he’d enslaved months ago. Half the merchant’s house was under his power now. The other half had no idea who or what he was. He was just another assayer, a man who occasionally weighed out their grain and checked their measures.

‘Master weigher.’ A man stirred from where he’d been dozing by the kitchen fire. This one didn’t move and bow like the servant, and his eyes cut the gloom like knives.

‘Master Picker,’ murmured Kithyr. ‘It’s done. Go, if you want to see it.’

The Picker grumbled something and unfolded himself from his chair. He went outside without another word. In the morning Kithyr would find the spear again. He would take it, wrapped in its silk, and in King Jehal’s city he would hand it over for what the Picker and the Taiytakei had promised him they would bring. The power of the Silver King himself. For the spear, they said, that power could be his. Years of planning. Years of learning. Years of preparation, and only one last chasm to cross.

Between here and Furymouth, there was the small matter of a dragon-war in the way.

We are the masters of the dragons, no matter what the kings and queens of the realms might think. They sit in their palaces and wallow in their decadence and toss out their decrees and edicts, but without us they are nothing.

We hold the keys to their power and they know it. We are their slaves and their puppets and their eyes are ever watching us, for they all, deep down, wonder the same thing:
Who does my eyrie-master truly serve? Is he bound to the alchemists as his position demands? Has he been bought by my enemies? Or is he mine, owned heart and soul? Have my bribes and threats been enough?

Thus are our lives both rich and glorious, yet prone to unexpected interruptions and abrupt ends.

Meteroa almost made it. He could actually see the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the doors that led out onto the eyrie rocks when the first flame strikes came in and a plume of fire erupted down the passage towards him. He had just enough time to slam shut the visor on his helm and spread out his arms, as if he could somehow catch the flames and stop them from reaching Queen Lystra behind him.
Whatever happens to her happens to you
. Jehal’s words. Meteroa was quite sure that Jehal meant every one of them.

The fire swallowed him up, weak and at the end of its reach, not enough to even stagger him. His dragon-scale shrugged off the heat. He whipped around for Lystra, his heart in his mouth for an instant, but she was still there, reeling slightly, open-mouthed, maybe a little red-faced and singed at the edges, but otherwise unhurt. The baby, wrapped in its blankets, started to cry again. Meteroa pushed her back down the hallway.

‘Wait here out of sight! If I shout at you to come, then
run
!’
If we manage to get out of here, a red face and scorched hair will be a small price to pay.

He reached the outside of the eyrie, cowering in the grand doorway, blinking in the sudden sunlight. The sky was bright blue, the air filled with fire and dragon-cries. Circling the Pinnacles were the dragons themselves. Hundreds of them. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

Vishmir’s cock!
He ducked back inside as another dragon strafed the eyrie-top and then another.

So much for getting out.

Two riders cowered beside him. He cast his eyes about, looking for something – anything – that might inspire him. Low battlements surrounded the top of the fortress, carefully designed to give cover from dragon-fire. Tall spikes littered the place. They looked like decoration, but Meteroa knew better: under clay tiles were solid iron prongs embedded deep into the mountain, there to deter dragon-landings. Most of the rest of the flat top of the peak was taken up by the Reflecting Garden, a bizarre relic of the Silver King, with its fountain that conjured water from the air, its channels and pools where water flowed upwards and wouldn’t lie flat. The handful of ornate little buildings between the garden and the tiny eyrie that made up the rest of the fortress were no more than a glorified entrance hall into the labyrinth beneath.

Or a place to hide when dragons were burning the shit out of everything. He crouched down and squinted, looking for a dragon he recognised, Prince Hyrkallan’s B’thannan or King Sirion’s Redemption. He didn’t know what dragon Queen Jaslyn rode any more. He didn’t see either of those, though. What he did see was Prince Tichane’s colossal Unmaker, heading straight towards the eyrie-top. The dragon was clutching a cage in his fore-claws, the sort of cage that the Mountain King used for carrying slaves. And soldiers. Meteroa ducked as another flight of dragons flew overhead, raking the top of the fortress with fire again. Clearing the ground for a landing.

The King of the Crags. Ancestors! If they knew how few men he had here . . .

He bolted back down the entrance stair and ran through the huge hall below. The High Hall, where Queen Zafir and Queen Aliphera before her had welcomed kings and queens and even speakers. One wall was open to the sky, letting the sun sweep in through a row of ornate carved columns while the rest lay in thick shadow, littered with paintings and statues, layered with exquisite rugs and tapestries – or at least that’s the way it had been before Valmeyan’s dragons had filled it with fire. All that was left now were blackened statues, a few charred shards and a haze of smoke. Meteroa hugged the far wall, away from the light in case one of the dragons came back for another go. His riders and his men-at-arms were waiting for him in a second hall lit by shafts of sunlight from above. Milling about, scared, uncertain. Useless.

‘Down!’ he shouted. He paused. Valmeyan could bring as many men as he wanted. The tunnels and halls of the Pinnacles were the perfect place for a small band of riders to hold off almost any number. They’d been built for exactly that. And as for dragons . . . The fortress had been carved out of the stone long before the coming of the Silver King, back when the dragons had flown free. He could seal himself inside and live off Queen Zafir’s siege stocks and probably last almost for ever. Question was, should he bother? There were rules to war. Written in
Principles.
His dragons were already lost, and to add to his problems there were men still loyal to Zafir lurking in the lower tunnels. If you believed the stories, there were ways out down there, catacombs and tunnels that led all the way down to a scattering of secret doors among the cellars of the Silver City a mile below. There were supposed to be tunnels that ran for a hundred miles and more, as far as the banks of the Fury. There was even supposed to be an underground river, fed by the waters of the Reflecting Garden, which tumbled and splashed through the heart of the mountain from its very top. If any of those rumours were true, Zafir’s men would know them. Whereas he didn’t.

Not a nice thought. Of course, if you believed
all
the stories, the tunnels were also filled with dark devices of the Silver King that would rip a man’s soul from his flesh. So maybe not such a troublesome thought after all.

Meteroa slammed his fists together. Plenty of Princess Kiam’s servants had chosen to stay and serve their new masters rather than flee into the tunnels. They weren’t soldiers. To them, one dragon-lord was as good as another. Maybe one of them knew the way. If they did, they’d sell their knowledge. ‘Jubeyan, Gaizal, Xabian, you stay with me to welcome our guests. Hyaz, take Queen Lystra down past the Grand Stair. Hold there. If there are tunnels down to the Silver City, it’ll be the servants who know them. Find a man who can show you the way. If I do not return ahead of Valmeyan’s soldiers, do whatever you must to escape. Above all else, your duty is to preserve the life of your prince and your queen and bring them to King Jehal. Do you understand?’ Outside, everything had fallen dangerously quiet. No shrieks of dragons, no roars of fire. Valmeyan must have landed. ‘Don’t take any other servants with you. Lock them away if you can. I’m sure they’ll all be just as keen to serve the King of the Crags as they were to serve us. They’ll none of them mind the purse of gold that will doubtless be their reward if they help Valmeyan to catch you.’
Best if you slaughtered them, but I suppose I’ll not mention that.