The Order of the Scales (14 page)

Vale bowed deeply. ‘I would like almost nothing more, Your Holiness.’

Jehal shooed him away and then watched him go.
As long as you get to watch me dangle in one of Zafir’s cages, eh? Pity I had them all cut down after Evenspire.
Jeiros was no use either. The alchemist had the power to pull Vale’s strings if he really tried, but the poor man was too busy watching potion supplies across the realms slowly run dry. In the Palace of Alchemy they were talking about a cull, about sending orders to every eyrie-master to poison their dragons. No one had bothered to mention this to Jehal – he was only the speaker, after all – but it was hard to get particularly worked up about something so inane. At a time like this not one single eyrie-master would heed such an order. The fact that Jeiros was thinking of it merely served to show how distracted he was. At some point, he supposed, he would have to have the master alchemist explain why they couldn’t just make more of the stuff.

We can agree on one thing: we need this phony war to end. The way I want it to.

He took his time while Vale prepared the palace for battle, just in case – picking his best clothes, then picking his nails, idling away his time while his servants and soldiers rushed around. When they were finally done, he hobbled out of the Tower of Air, the wound in his leg still aching from the morning. Riding a horse was a pleasure Vale and Shezira’s crossbow had taken from him probably for ever; instead he allowed himself to be carried in a covered chair down the hill from the Adamantine Palace. He was surprised by how peaceful it was. They didn’t hurry – no need for that – and he was left with little to do but stare at the glory of the City of Dragons, with all its little square towers, the ornate palaces around the edge of the nearest Mirror Lake. The cliffs of the Purple Spur behind the city seemed larger and darker than usual, while the water of the Diamond Cascade glittered and shimmered in the morning sun. Now and then, as the wind changed, little rainbows came and went, chasing each other up and down the cliff amid the falling spray. All very pretty.

Or at least it would have been if the rain wasn’t still tipping out of the skies. You didn’t notice these things, he thought. Not when you were forever riding around here and there, this way and that, getting to some place as fast as you could on the back of a horse or better yet a dragon. He’d never been one for stopping to admire the scenery back when he’d been a prince. Then he’d become a king, and now he was Speaker of the Realms. He was where he’d always wanted to be, and there was nowhere else to go. There was nowhere to race to any more. Nothing to do but stop and take a look at what was around him.

The impatience came back quickly enough, though. Once he was on Wraithwing’s back in a cloud of warm steam, getting slowly wetter and wetter while he waited for Jeiros and Aruch and the Night Watchman to follow him. Cursed dragons kept you warm in the cold, but ancestors help you if it rained after you’d flown them hard. He’d seen whole eyries vanish in a cloud of tepid fog so thick that a man couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. You didn’t go out in an eyrie fog, not unless you wanted to get stepped on.

Suddenly there was Jeiros, and the Grand Master Alchemist of the Nine Realms was climbing up onto Wraithwing’s back as well. The alchemist slid in behind Jehal and began strapping himself into his harness.

‘Well this is unexpected,’ said Jehal as Jeiros settled himself. ‘Comfortable there? I thought we were all obliged to fly on different dragons.’

‘Is it always like this when it rains? I don’t remember. I did most of my eyrie time in Bloodsalt. If it rained
there
we thought the end of the world was coming.’ Jeiros flapped at the mist. ‘The Lesser Council must not fly together. Any of us can fly with you. I got here first.’ He sounded uncomfortable.

‘Ah.’
Yes, remind me again that I’m merely some near-worthless figurehead.

‘I imagine that Wraithwing’s back will be the safest place to be, will it not?’

‘That depends very much on whom you fear, master alchemist.’
How easy it would be for one of our passengers to suffer some terrible misfortune. Let’s not pretend that I wasn’t tempted to have the Night Watchman fall out of his harness once he was a few thousand feet up in the air.
Jehal gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, since you’re the one who makes sure I don’t wake up in the middle of the night being dragged out of my bed by a gang of Adamantine Men. I suppose I should be happy to have
you
close.’

Jeiros smiled and gently shook his head. ‘Vale understands your worth.’

‘Yes.’
But is that enough?
‘If this is a trap, Wraithwing will be a prize target for Hyrkallan’s riders.’

‘Yes, and that’s why I’m here, to deter such treachery, although I think it unlikely. I thought
you
might pick another.’

He’d had the same thought, but what was a speaker to do? Hide all the time? Show how weak and fearful he was? No. Enough of hiding and skulking. Enough of poisons and knives in the dark. ‘I’ve never been to Narammed’s Bridge.’

‘There’s wasn’t much to see even before the Red Riders burned it down. Only a few fields and some farms, some huts and a stone house. Hyram used to keep a good stable there with some very fine horses, but Sirion took them after Hyram fell.’

‘Is there actually a bridge?’
What did you say? After Hyram
fell?

‘There was, once. I don’t know if it survived the fire.’

‘You don’t know?’
After Hyram fell? Not after Hyram was pushed?

‘For a time it was the only bridge across the Sapphire River. Before Narammed became the first speaker. Afterwards it used to mark the end of the speaker’s realm and the start of the Evenspire Road.’ The alchemist shrugged. ‘Vishmir built a bigger bridge at Samir’s Crossing. There are probably dozens of other places with Narammed’s name on them and I don’t doubt that a few more of them happen to be bridges. This one just happens to have an eyrie built beside it.’ He frowned. ‘Had, at least, before the Red Riders burned it. It was where Narammed hammered out his peace with the northern eyries. It has a symbolism for them, I suppose.’

‘Do you think Shezira killed Hyram?’ Jehal didn’t change his tone at all.
Just dropped casually into the conversation as if it hardly mattered at all.

Behind him, Jeiros stiffened. ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it, Your Holiness?’

‘I suppose it is. But still relevant, don’t you think? Given who we’re going to see?’

‘The Speaker’s Council declared her guilty . . .’

‘
Zafir
declared her guilty.’ Jehal twisted to show off his teeth. ‘You said fell, not pushed, just now. You think it was an accident. You think Shezira was innocent.’

‘Vale—’

‘Vale knows. I know. Now it turns out you know too. We all know. Shezira never touched Hyram.’ He twisted himself further towards the alchemist. ‘
I
tried to stop her. You let Zafir murder her, you and Vale.’

The alchemist’s face hardened. ‘You were the one who put her on the throne, Your Holiness.’

‘Yes. You’ve got me there.’

Jeiros’ expression remained stony. Jehal turned away.
I suppose of all of us you’re the least to blame. If you knew how much I miss her, you’d have to wonder at my sanity, master alchemist. Mine and hers. If I could bring her back, I just might.
The pain of losing her, now she was gone, was almost a physical thing. He had to pinch himself to remember that Zafir would have murdered Lystra and probably, eventually, all of them.

He closed his eyes and tried to forget the smell of her, the taste of her, the touch of her, until at last the rest of the dragons were finally ready, until Wraithwing powered into the air and set off to fly the few short hours around the edge of the Purple Spur to Narammed’s Bridge.

That was, until the grand master alchemist signalled him to land high in the empty peaks and told him that Zafir wasn’t dead after all. As Jehal’s dragons circled uncertainly overhead, Jeiros whispered it in his ear where no one else would hear, and when Jehal shook his head and wouldn’t believe a word of it, the alchemist showed him what had come from the Pinnacles.

His uncle Meteroa’s ring, still wrapped around his finger.

Your ways are not our ways. When your world crumbles, you may expect nothing from me but laughter.

The first thing that broke his fall was the top of a tree and an explosion of soft snow. Kemir tumbled down, twisting and crashing off sloping branches, clutching at them with his gauntleted hands, ripping out fingerfuls of twigs and spines and more snow. Something punched his face, twisting his helm sideways so he couldn’t see. He clattered off a branch hard enough to wind him even though the dragon-scale armour took the worst of it. His shoulder ricocheted off another branch. Pain burst through the length of his arm. He screamed and then the freezing white ground slammed into him and knocked his breath away.

He wasn’t dead. It took him a moment to realise that, another moment to realise that he was freezing cold. That was something to be grateful for. Cold numbed the pain.

Also he couldn’t breathe. His helm was gone and his face was pressed into the crushed snow.

He tried to move. Had to. Managed to lift his face and gasped a deep breath. Cold or not, his arm shrieked every time he so much as touched it. Broken. Definitely broken.

He managed to roll onto his back. The other arm seemed to work and so did his legs. His ribs and his spine snarled with a hundred stabbing pains, but nothing was actually refusing to move. He wasn’t hacking up blood, so that was good.

He’d been thrown down a mountain by a dragon. For a few seconds panic overtook him. He scrambled to his feet, clawing and kicking his way out of the snowdrift and never mind how much everything hurt. The snow was deep on the slope here, held in place by the press of trees. He clutched at a trunk, eyes screwed shut, weeping at the pain. Another part of him wanted to laugh. He was alive. Thrown down a mountain by a dragon and he was alive. The tree branches had broken his fall as well as his bones, the snow and the dragon-armour had done the rest.
Ancestors!
It was enough to make a man want to climb right back up, kick the dragon in the face and shout,
Missed me!

Yes. If he could move at all. The pain was crushing now, coming at him from everywhere. He sagged. Climbing anything was out of the question. If he hadn’t been afraid of how much it would hurt, he might have curled up into a ball and simply rolled the rest of the way down the slope.

No, no, no. Stop. Think. You’re an outsider. You survive. The pain will go, but now you need to move.

Shelter first. A place the dragons couldn’t reach him. He had no idea whether Snow had meant to kill him or simply hadn’t thought before tossing him away.
Our kind. So fucking fragile, eh? Well here I am, dragon. Still breathing.

Shelter. Food. Then water, although it was the Worldspine, so water was easy. And so were the food and the shelter, come to think about it. Back where the alchemists had been hiding. Made him want to laugh.

He started to make his way down the slope among the trees, wading down through snow that reached well past his knees, stumbling and staggering his way from one tree to the next, stopping at each to catch his breath. Every few steps he lost his balance and tipped over, falling as best he could to protect his broken arm. And then he had to get up again. By the time he got to the bottom of the slope, he was exhausted, gasping for breath. He had no idea how long it had taken. There weren’t any dragons, though. Snow hadn’t come for him.

He was near the lake, or what was left of it. The bridge he’d found last night was gone, the nice neat little channel that had been dug beneath it had vanished too, both washed away without a trace. Where the sluice had been was now surrounded by a wide expanse of mud and slime. Here and there rivulets ran through a dozen and more new channels gouged out of the earth. The last trickles, rushing to find a way down the mountain. There was nothing left except one pole driven deep into the ground, the post that had once held up one end of the sluice itself. That and the huge sheet of ice, sprinkled with a fine dusting of snow, shattered into giant shards as thick as his wrist.

Kemir stared at it. He’d done this. Done it for Snow. Joined in the spirit of smashing and burning.

Ungrateful . . .

He looked back, up through the steep stand of conifers towards the castle. He’d been struggling through the trees and the snow for what felt like hours, but the castle wasn’t that far away, now that he looked back. The dragons were still up there, all four of them. As he looked, one of them pushed the remains of half a tower over the edge of the slope. Stones as big as horses tumbled down into the darkness under the trees. The forest shuddered. Pieces of masonry big enough to crush a house toppled over and chased each other, driving a miniature avalanche before them. A tree cracked and toppled sideways, shaking loose a cloud of snow.