The Order of the Scales Deas - The Order of the Scales

The alchemist on the ground put a feeble struggle and then gave up.

Yes. Like that, and every bit as futile. Sometimes we will play with you before we eat you. We will not be able to resist. We are, as you once told me, like children. It is true.

She tapped her claw on the last alchemist, very softly but still enough to make him squeal. This one knows. Your kind war upon one other. Realms here have seized power and prepare to make war against realms there. And all the while your king in the mountains watches and bides his time to strike, but it matters not to us which realm is which. Your kind has fallen to chaos. You will not even see us coming until it is far, far too late. She tapped the alchemist again. Tell him, alchemist. Tell him what you have told me. The claw pressed harder into the alchemist’s chest. He screamed.

‘Potions!’

Tell him, alchemist.

‘The potions! They’re running out!’

Yes. The potions are running out. At last Kemir sensed a colour to Snow’s thoughts. Anticipation. Glee. Joy. Lots of all of them. Our first fight was not so wasted after all. They are running out of potions. They can no longer make them quickly enough to contain us. The man this alchemist calls master speaks of a cull to conserve their supplies. So that is where we will start. With potions. Her thoughts grew black and savage. A cull, Kemir. A cull of dragons. Your kind mean to poison us. Every one of us.

Abruptly she lifted her claw, balled it into a fist and brought it down on the alchemist with enough force to make the earth quiver. She completely crushed everything between his neck and his knees. A fine spray of blood spattered Kemir’s face.

‘You going to eat me now after all that, or not?’ He managed to keep his voice steady, at least. Would it be so bad to be dead? To join his ancestors? To find Sollos again?

Your nest-mate Nadira wanted to die and you would not believe me. Now do you see? Your emptiness is the same.

‘Bones and piss, dragon.’ His bow wasn’t strung, so he went for his knives, one in each hand, and hurled himself at Snow’s head. Completely futile, but maybe, just maybe, he could grab a hold of her and stick a knife in one eye far enough to do some real damage. He was quick, very quick…

Somehow her head wasn’t there. Instead, the end of her tail whipped in from one side and snatched him out of the air with such speed it almost wrenched his spine apart. So fast… how could something so big be so blindingly fast?

I see you move in your head, Kemir, that is how. I know what you will do before even your feet understand. She sat back, lifted her head in the air and dangled him high up in front of her. I have thought about this often, what I will do with you when I no longer have a use for you. I had thought I would simply eat you, but now in this moment I am not hungry. So I will let you go. For what little service you have rendered, you are free to leave us. Run, Kemir. Long and far. When I am hungry again, I will come for you.

‘And how long and far will be enough, dragon?’

Snow seemed to laugh. There is never an enough, Kemir.

‘Then perhaps I’ll stay here and see if I can put your eye out after all. Or perhaps you’d better just get on with it and eat me.’

If that is what you would prefer, I will ask the other dragons. We have eaten well, but perhaps one of them still has an appetite.

‘And then? What about you, Snow. What do you do?’

I will take my sleeping brothers and sisters far away where we will not be found until they awake. And then we will come, and our hunger will be endless. I am surprised at you, little one Kemir. Most of your kind have not been given such a generous choice, and yet I do sense that you are… ungrateful.

‘You sound a lot like a rider.’

Arrogant? Cruel? Heartless? Without mercy? Look at me, Kemir. Look at what I am. Your riders are nothing more than men draped with an illusion of power. You have fought and killed such men. They are as small and fragile as the rest of you. Look at me, Kemir. Your arrows will not even punch through my scales. Your scorpions are to me as an insect’s bite is to you. LOOK AT ME! The thought thundered into Kemir’s head. His arms fell limp, almost dropping his knives. He stared at the dragon, helpless. Arrogant? This is not arrogance, Kemir. This is the natural order our creators intended, that is all. Arrogance is built on hubris. We do not imagine the magnitude of our strength, Kemir. We see it around us, in the ruins of this castle. Do not talk to me of arrogance, little one. Arrogance is thinking your kind have any say in your destiny. Arrogance is thinking you could do anything more than amuse us.

She lowered him back to the ground. He was shaking, still rooted to the spot, his feet refusing to move as Snow very slowly wrapped her fore-claw around him. ‘What about cruel? What about heartless? What about mercy?’ The words stuttered out of his mouth, kicked out between reluctant lips by the part of him that refused to crumble. Ever.

What of them? She picked him up and lifted him into the air, peering at him as she rose onto her back legs and towered fifty feet above the ground. We play when we are playful. We rage when we are angry. We eat when we are hungry. We pay as little attention to what our food is called as your kind do, Kemir. If that is cruel and without heart or mercy then that is what we are. I might wonder if we even understand the meanings you give to these words. With a languid, almost careless motion she dropped him and then caught him again, this time between her teeth. He could feel her breath blowing past him in heavy slow gusts. He’d once, before he’d learned better, imagined that dragons’ breath always reeked of rotten meat, but in fact there was usually almost no scent to it at all. Snow smelt warm and slightly acrid, with a whiff of fresh blood.

Tell me what you want, Kemir. Shall I let you go? If I do, one of us, one day, will find you.

For a moment he twitched and wriggled, unable to stop the animal instinct that screamed at him to tear himself free, even if he had to rip himself half to pieces to escape. Snow held him fast.

It is hard to be so gentle, Kemir. If I am distracted I might forget you are there for a moment. That is how little you mean to me.

Most of her teeth were like sword-edges, long and hard and sharp as razors, built for shearing flesh and bone and nothing else. Her larger fangs were the size of his thigh. He couldn’t imagine what prey they were meant to pin.

Oh the world was once full of many creatures that are now lost. A few were made like us. Others came when the world was first made. They are all gone now. We ate them. We are what is left.

With a soft gasp, Kemir pissed himself. He started to sob. Fear. That’s all it took. Enough of it would break anything, and he’d finally found what was enough to break him. The last little part, the part that had always held out no matter what the world did to him, cracked and fell to pieces.

There. Finally you understand what I am. With that, she took him back in her claws and casually tossed him away over the edge of the mountain.

Jehal slid languidly out of bed and hobbled to his dresser. Discarded silks littered the floor. Bright yellows and greens and blues. The best colours, the best dyes, the finest silk. It all came from the silk farms on Tyan’s Peninsula, close to his home in Furymouth.

‘Does it hurt?’ The voice came from somewhere under the tangle of soft furs piled up on the bed.

‘No,’ he lied. ‘Not at all.’ Three months had passed since Shezira had tried to neuter him. He threw on a robe and went to stand in one of the windows. Vale was out there somewhere, the Night Watchman who’d placed the crossbow in Shezira’s hands the day before he’d cut off her head. He’d be down below, stomping up and down and shouting at his men most likely. At any other time, Jehal would simply have had Vale hanged, drawn and left to die in a cage outside the gates, that old ritual that Zafir had so gleefully revived. But I need him, and he needs me, and however much we’d love to slit each other’s throats, neither of us can stand alone. Put him away for later. When the war peters out, they’ll either make me speaker or they won’t. If they do, I can do what I like with him. If they don’t, well then does it really matter? I should savour the view while I’ve got it.