The Order of the Scales (31 page)

The barge won its battle for a place at the waterfront, Kemir pushed past the sailors and jumped ashore. He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much – not all that long ago he’d have been at the front of the queue if there was any plundering to be done – but if there was anyone he could find still alive then he was going to take them with him, back on the barge, whether they had money to pay for his help or not.

‘Hoi! You!’ The self-proclaimed barge captain. Kemir turned and shot back a glance of such venom that he saw the man flinch. He let his hand flicker to the hilt of his knife and made sure of his bow too. Anyone could sail a barge down a river with the current, Kemir reckoned. Didn’t need to be any one particular person at all.

He cocked his head. ‘Problem?’

The man pinched his lips. ‘We sail when we sail. We’ll not wait on stragglers.’

‘I bet you won’t.’ Kemir turned away, muttering under his breath.

The barge had arrived too late. There must have been a hundred or more river folk already picking through the skeleton of the town. Kemir, as he walked deeper into the smouldering ash, saw at least one body, stripped bare, with a fresh knife wound. Further still and the heat of the embers drove him back. He turned away. No survivors here. Instead he tried a little further down the river, away from the main harbour, where a small cluster of river skiffs had pulled up to the bank and men were busy at work. In the midst of them a group of men, poorly armed but armed nonetheless, stood around a strangely familiar figure, almost as if they were supervising the looting.

The blood-mage. Kithyr. He was carrying something long wrapped in black cloth. Kemir stopped dead. Took two quick paces forward and then stopped again.

I could shoot him. In the head. Blood-mage or not, that should do the trick. Unless I miss, but I’m not going to miss. So that would just leave the problem of doing it in broad daylight with about a hundred people to remember my face. Not to mention his motley collection of bodyguards. Of course, they might not care after their master’s dead . . .
The mage turned. He looked straight at Kemir.
Ah. And now he’s seen me. Makes it a lot harder to shoot a man when he can see the arrow coming. Turn away, Kemir. Turn away. Let him stay and fight the dragons. Evil for evil. Not your fight now, not any more.

With an effort, Kemir turned his back on the mage. He was wasting his time. Should have stayed on the boat. As he walked back, he thought he saw the Picker too, watching him.
Another man I’d like to kill. Pay you back for the scar you put on me. Well you can both stay and fight dragons. Good luck to you.

He stopped for a moment where a small cluster of sad-looking men and women sat around in clothes stained with ash and smoke. Survivors. Six of them. Two old men, a boy who was close to being a man but hadn’t quite made it yet and a women with two small children, a little family miracle. They didn’t have anything, so the looters from the river had ignored them.

The old Kemir would have raised an eyebrow, shrugged a shoulder and walked on by. But that old Kemir was dead, drifting in the water somewhere back up the Fury like the old shed skin of a snake. The new Kemir took a deep breath and stepped closer.

‘Dragons?’
Why am I asking? What else would burn a whole town flat?

No one answered. No one bothered to even look at him. He could see their point. Whatever they’d had had long been taken from them.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can get you down the river to the next town.’ What was that? Arys Crossing? If it was still there. ‘You’ll have food until we get there.’

One of the old men slowly looked up at him. ‘And then?’

‘And then you get to thank me for my kindness. You have to work the rest out for yourselves. I have my own troubles. Stay if you want.’ He shrugged and turned away.

‘Wait!’ The woman with the children. No surprise there. He waited.

‘Any more?’

Both the old men shook their heads. The boy thought about it, then nodded.
Too young to be a man, really, but that’s what you’ll have to be. That’s what war does. Turns boys into men because it’s kinder than calling them orphans.

‘Dragons,’ he said again, as he led them back to the barge. ‘Did they have riders on them, the dragons that did this?’

The woman spat. ‘Don’t get dragons with no riders.’

She hurried her children past Kemir, but he saw one of them turn and look at him with big wide fearful eyes. The boy shook his head.

No. No riders.

Home.

Snow shuffled into the cave. It was small and cramped, pressing down on her. There was no space to spread her wings. Caves were no places for dragons. She could see the one she was looking for, though, tucked away into the body of a hatchling.

She brushed past the charcoal statue that had once been the master of Outwatch. It fell and smashed on the flat stone floor.

I am chained, Beloved Memory of a Lover Distant and Lost.

I do not bear that name now.
Snow squeezed further in. She stretched out her neck and peered at the little hatchling.
Black. How dull.

The hatchling hissed at her.
White. How gaudy.

Lazily, Snow took the chain around the hatchling’s neck and tore it from the cave wall. Then she nuzzled gently with her teeth at the links around the hatchling’s throat and bit the metal delicately in two.
There. You are free.
Outside, the air filled with the roars and shrieks of the other dragons.
Her
dragons, the others she had freed. They would not forget that. A debt was a debt.

The stone of the cave trembled and shook, distant impacts striking the ground above. Snow felt them tug at her, pulling her away to join in the destruction. There was the tower to be toppled. Farms filled with little ones to be burned. Food, lots and lots of joyous food, roaming in the fields. They would gorge themselves when they were done here. As long as they didn’t touch the little ones. The Embers at the alchemist caves with their poisoned blood had taught her
that
lesson.

You called. We came.
Another tremor shook the cave, louder and closer this time. On the top of the cliff they were bringing down the tower. Snow backed away towards the entrance, eager to be gone.
Are your wings strong? Will you fly with us?

The hatchling called Silence darted to the heavy door that led into the warren of tunnels, all much too small for a dragon to cleanse, but not for a newborn so fresh from the egg. Snow bared her teeth in approval.
Burn them then, but do not eat them.
Slowly and carefully she turned around and readied herself to launch into the air.
The silver ones have returned. I have felt them.

Then when we are done with the little ones, let us find them.

And then?

They were our kindred. They abandoned us. They are no longer welcome in this world.

They made us. We served them.
Snow felt strangely uncertain when it came to the silver ones.
I remember them fondly.

I do not.

Abruptly, Silence smashed down the little door and snaked away through it, clutching in his fore-claws the length of chain that had once been fastened around his neck. Snow paused for a moment to savour the thought of him, little black hatchling that he was, black shadow of death that he had been and would be again, scuttling like silent lightning through the little ones’ tunnels, ripping them apart in the dark.

She pushed herself out into the air and spread her wings. Above her, at the top of the slope, the great tower of Outwatch had been decapitated, its top smashed to the ground. Several dragons were still there, circling around it, tearing at it, lashing it with their tails or simply flying into it. As she watched, another great slab of stone-work cracked and sloughed away, ripping open the middle third of the tower. Three dragons immediately poured fire into the breach, even though any little ones were surely long gone by now.

She went eagerly to join them. Yes, it felt so very
good
to be home.

Kemir watched the river, and the river, it seemed, watched Kemir. In a perverse sort of way, Valleyford had made him feel better about leaving the realms. Kithyr, the Picker, all the dead burned bodies, the reek and stench of smoke and ash. Yes, he could be happy enough with those all behind him. The other boats from Valleyford were around them, some a little way ahead, letting the current take them. Larger ones out in the full strength of the river, and by the banks flotillas of tiny rafts, little more than a few planks of wood lashed together, poled along in the shallows by wrinkled old cormorant fishermen. Sometimes he thought he saw the blood-mage or the Picker on one of the boats. When that happened, his hand always reached for his bow with a will of its own. But when he looked again he was always wrong. He began to wonder if he’d imagined it all.

‘If we put ashore,’ he said to Kataros, ‘I want you to keep close to me. There were people at Valleyford.’ He put her hand on his chest. ‘The man who gave me that scar, he was there.’ He saw the fright on her face and tried to smile. ‘It was a long time ago. I’ve no reason to make our paths cross again.’ Although whenever he said that, whenever he even thought it, he always felt a little spike of fire. A last smouldering ember for . . . not for revenge. All the Picker had really done was defend himself, but the yearning was still there. Unfinished business.

Stupid
, he told himself. Yet his hand still reached.

A bit later Kataros wrapped herself around his arm and stroked his hair. ‘When we cross the sea, will the ship be like this one?’

‘I’ve never seen the ships that cross the Endless Sea. I’ve heard they’re huge, like floating castles. End to end longer than the biggest dragon, with masts as tall as the Tower of Air and sails the size of clouds. They’re graceful and elegant with slender curves, or else they’re squat and fat with great big bellies. I once heard that each ship comes with more than a hundred Taiytakei sailors on board and that they take twice that many slaves away with them.’ He spat. ‘Slaves.’ That was something he’d regret one day. That he’d never get anything back for the family and home he’d lost. That the King of the Crags would never know his name. Never hear it and fear it, never suffer, somehow, for what his riders had done to Kemir’s home.

He glanced down the barge, looking for the woman and her boys he’d rescued from Valleyford. Another little thing he’d done right. They were on their own now though, he’d had to be clear about that. Couldn’t be turning into a walking orphanage.

‘Dragons and ships don’t mix,’ said Kataros. ‘I heard that once. From my rider. He said that when dragons saw ships, they always went into a frenzy. They couldn’t help themselves.’

Kemir squeezed her hand. ‘Dragons are death to ships. I heard that too.’
Aren’t they death to everything?
He glanced up at the sky, scanning the banks of the river and the low rolling landscape beyond. Out here on the river they were exposed. Easy prey. He’d been jumpy the whole day, and couldn’t shake the feeling even now, with the sun sinking towards the distant spires of the Pinnacles. ‘When we reach Furymouth, we’ll go straight to the harbour. Nothing else. We’ll find one of those Taiytakei sailors and work out a way to get on a ship, and we’ll go. I wouldn’t worry about dragons once you’re on their ships. Dragons will leave them alone.’
At least they did the last time, when the ships passed the islands that don’t appear on any map. Or was it the silver men aboard them that that made Snow so nervous?

The Silver Kings . . .

Again he looked around, never quite free of the idea that some part of Snow was always with him, always watching, always listening.

‘I’ve never seen a Taiytakei. We were not allowed to go near them. It’s forbidden to any who even begin the path of alchemy.’

‘You can’t miss them. Skin painted as blue as a summer sky or else black as night. They cover themselves with gold and jewels and lots of bright feathers. Look like something between a giant bird and a prince with half his treasury stuck to him.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I don’t think I ever heard of one being robbed though. Strange, huh?’ Now he stood up, hauling Kataros to her feet beside him. The sun was getting low. ‘Come on, let’s go down below where’s its dark for a bit.’ He squeezed her and she giggled. It was best not to think about dragons. Anyway dark fell quickly in this part of the realms. They were probably safe. Best to think about something else. And Kat, when he let her, was good at making him think about something else. Or maybe that was the little pinches of dust they both took.

No more dragons. No more alchemists. No more riders, no more knights, no more smell of burned flesh and scorched hair.

At dawn he was up, sitting in his favourite spot in the bows where nobody would bother him, eyes searching again. Not searching for anything in particular, just searching, as always, for something. Kat was still snoring down below. He watched the shore as the boat turned towards it, towards another town built up on the bank: Hammerford, Valleyford’s poor orphan cousin. More a fishing town than a market, although that never stopped the locals from getting all dressed up in their colourful market best to sell their goods down at the waterfront to the traders on the river. They were already there now, dressed up as usual, selling their wares although they surely must know what had happened up the river. Kemir wondered at that. Why didn’t they run? Why didn’t everyone run?

Other boats from Valleyford had arrived ahead of them. For a while he watched them instead. Then he watched the town. He was getting good at watching things. The person he’d been before Snow had never been one for watching, was much more interested in getting on and doing. The new Kemir, it seemed, was much more content to do nothing at all. That was probably good if he was going to be a shopkeeper.