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

He was back in his favourite room in the palace, in the bedroom at the very top of the slender Tower of Air, looking out over the Speaker’s Yard, the Glass Cathedral, the City of Dragons, the Mirror Lakes, the Purple Spur and the Diamond Cascade beyond, except today it was raining buckets and there wasn’t much to see of any of those. He’d tried Hyram’s rooms for a while, but they made him restless. Too gloomy for his taste. The air was too heavy. Too many ghosts and too much taint of failure and sickness and decrepitude. So he’d come back to the place that had been Zafir’s favourite as well as his own, the place that held all his best memories. It was hard. Strange. Ever since Evenspire, he’d missed her almost constantly. Far more than he’d ever missed her when she was alive.

What I mean, if I’m honest with myself, is that this is the place where I had all the best sex. Speaking of which…

He’d picked her carefully. She had lips and a tongue that worked miracles, they said, and so they had. The pain had been something like having a white hot and very long needle stabbed between his legs and pushed very slowly but surely deeper and deeper, but there had been more to it than that. Something had happened, at least. When she’d stopped and he was gasping, blind with something between ecstasy and agony, her tongue had brushed his lips. There’d been salt. He’d tasted himself on her. She was letting him know.

He still throbbed with the aftermath, pulses of pain enough to make him wince and that wouldn’t go away. Through it, he could hardly stop himself from grinning. I’m still a man. At last I know the answer. Shezira didn’t neuter me after all.

It was a good thing. Not least because it meant he didn’t have to throw the woman in his bed out of a window in order to keep his secret. On the contrary. Now they both knew, he could let her go to spread the word that the speaker was whole. He chuckled to himself and set about dressing. The sun had come up hours ago. There were probably things he ought to be doing.

Yes. All the trivial little palace things that Jeiros and Tassan haven’t dealt with because they’re too busy saving the realms. I’m hardly in a hurry, am I?

By the time he was thinking of putting his boots on, the waves of pain had faded into something that was more a reminder of something sharp than anything truly unpleasant. Gentle snores came from under the furs. Jehal pulled them back and let his eyes wander over the curves underneath. We could try again. Maybe the second time won’t hurt so much?

He was still pondering when someone started hammering at his door and a dragon shot through the air right past his windows, the wind of its wings ripping through the open balconies, staggering him. One silk curtain tore free and dived away into the void, sucked into the dragon’s wake. The woman in his bed was suddenly forgotten. Jehal was out and down the stairs before he could even begin to think. Are we under attack?

Vale was waiting for him at the bottom. Of course he was. He bowed, just a fraction late, just a tad too high and an instant too abrupt. ‘Your Holiness.’ He smiled thinly, reading Jehal’s face. ‘No, we are not being attacked. If we were, I would be on the walls, supervising our defence.’ He glanced at Jehal’s bare feet. ‘Shall I find you some shoes?’

‘Only if you have nothing better to do,’ Jehal snapped. ‘Why is a dragon flying so close to my bed? Whoever was guiding it should be hanged.’

Vale gave the faintest of shrugs. ‘As you wish. They are your riders, Your Holiness. I have asked them before to avoid the palace. There is always the risk that my scorpioneers will not recognise them. I’d be disappointed if we had some sort of an accident. My men have been practising, Your Holiness, and they are really quite good.’ Which was certainly true. Day in, day out, Vale had men on horseback charging around the palace flying target kites from their saddles. The parts of the Hungry Mountain Plain that were in range had become so littered with scorpion bolts that when they’d stopped for a day and offered a penny for each bolt returned to the palace, they’d come in by the cartload.

‘The dragon was a messenger, Your Holiness. There are dragons massing north of the Purple Spur,’ said Vale, when Jehal didn’t speak. ‘I will be glad to make an example of the rider, nonetheless, if that is your command.’

A spike of dread momentarily nailed Jehal’s feet to the earth. ‘Hyrkallan or Sirion. Or both?’

‘Both.’ Vale’s face didn’t betray him at all, but Jehal was sure he heard the faintest twitch of glee in the Night Watchman’s voice.

Yes, we both know you’d be rid of me in a flash if you could have either of them as speaker. But you can’t. Sirion is Hyram’s cousin and Hyrkallan is just some jumped-up dragon-knight. He might be the jumped-up dragon-knight who kicked me out of the sky over Evenspire, but that doesn’t mean you can make him speaker.

Jehal allowed himself a slight smirking smile, the sort calculated to get under Vale’s skin. If anything can. ‘Well, so? What do they want? Come to pay their respects? Come to pay homage to the dead. If that’s the case, I hope your men have been keeping themselves busy in the eyries, raking through dragon-shit for any sign of Zafir. If there’s anything left, it should have come out by now, after all.’ What did come out of the wrong end of a dragon? Something, Jehal knew that much. Did anything survive of the bones and armour of a dragon-rider unfortunate enough to become a dragon-snack? He had no idea. Maybe it all burned to ash on the way through. Meteroa. Meteroa would know about that. When it came to dragons, Meteroa knew most things.

Vale bowed another one of his insolent little bows. ‘Grand Master Jeiros is having a new ring forged. I am not hopeful that we will find the one Zafir wore.’

‘Perhaps finding the spear will be a little easier?’ But the spear had gone somewhere else. And Jeiros must do something about that.

‘Lord Hyrkallan and King Sirion, it seems, wish to parley. With you.’

‘And why am I hearing this from you, Vale Tassan? Where is Hyrkallan’s messenger?’

‘Hyrkallan’s messenger, as you call him, is a rider from your own guard, seized over the Purple Spur. He is in the Gateyard, Your Holiness. The message he bore was sealed and for me. I can’t imagine why or whether he has others. Hyrkallan also says you may keep the dragon, as a token of his good faith.’

‘I can keep my own dragon. How very kind.’ Jehal stared at Vale. Why? Why don’t they simply swarm across the mountains and fall on us? ‘Tell me, Night Watchman, if the full force of the north came at us, would we hold?’

Vale smiled and shook his head. ‘No, Your Holiness. Not even if the Adamantine Men fought to the very last. There would be very little to fight over by the time they were done, however. Perhaps that is what concerns them.’ He half let out a derisive snigger, and for a moment Jehal wasn’t sure at whom it was aimed.

Me. It’s aimed at me. Who else, after all? He sighed, waved a bored hand and turned away. ‘Very well, very well, let them come. Twenty dragons each and a hundred men between them, including servants. The usual promises of hospitality if anyone feels they’re necessary, but really it’s not as if we’re at war with each other.’ Ha! Try making Hyrkallan see it that way!

Vale blinked. ‘Your Holiness, they have requested that you and the Lesser Council come to meet them at Narammed’s Bridge.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I have informed you ahead of the council, but I imagine they will be eager to agree.’

Jehal turned back and beamed at Vale. ‘Marvellous.’ Yes. So absolutely marvellous I’d better be careful I don’t faint with delight. So I can either sit here and do nothing while the Lesser Council and Shezira’s bloody avatars quietly settle on a new Speaker of the Realms that will clearly not be me, or else I can go with some vague hope of putting a stop to whatever they’re planning and conveniently put myself within easy reach. He gave short sigh. Right then. As long as I keep out of reach of Hyrkallan’s arm plus the length of one sword, I suppose we’ll get on just fine. He forced the smile a little wider. ‘Whenever they propose, Night Watchman. The sooner the better. Won’t it be nice to put all this behind us.’