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

Kataros looked at him askance. ‘How do you know they were from my eyrie?’

‘The dragon was white. One of the dragons from the eyrie was white.’ He shrugged.

‘And did you see who rode them?’

‘They didn’t have any riders.’

‘When you were at the eyrie, you drank water from the lake.’ She shrugged as if that was the end of the matter. ‘You can fly with the dragons if you do that.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Then you’ve become feverish from your injuries. You’ve been having visions. I’m not surprised. I barely brought you back.’

She looked different. Sounded different. She was talking to him for a start. Not staring into space. Not vacant and empty or wide-eyed and frightened.

‘How long since we left the eyrie.’

She shrugged. ‘A week. More. I’ve lost count.’

‘A week!’

‘We followed the path. We found a road. You made fire and shelter. But now our food is nearly gone. People use this road. Outsiders. You have to talk to them. I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What did you do to me, alchemist?’

‘I kept you alive. I kept the cold at bay and I broke your fever. What caused it I can’t say.’ She shrugged. ‘Since you say you didn’t drink dragon-water.’

There wasn’t much to be said to that. They’d kept each other alive. As for Semian, Kemir wasn’t sure whether what he’d seen had been real or a dream.

Let Semian be dead, he decided. That was for the best.

The morning after he’d stolen the Speaker’s Spear, the blood-mage Kithyr was gone again from the City of Dragons, this time riding out into the Hungry Mountain Plains with a dozen carts and twice as many men from the merchant’s house. As an assayer, Kithyr was good at what he did: precise, shrewd enough to see when he was being cheated, honest enough not to be bought, flexible enough to make an exception when he saw a farmer in real need. The Adamantine Spear lay wrapped in its black silk at the bottom of a wagon full of grain. The Picker came too, driving that very same cart after the regular carter had fallen conveniently ill. As best he could, Kithyr forgot that the spear was there and lost himself in his work. The grain, when they had enough of it, would be carried to the Fury River gorge. It would make its precipitous way down from Watersgate to the river and the waiting barges at Plag’s Bay. He didn’t know where it would go after that, probably up the river rather than down it, but he knew where the spear went. It went with the river, to Furymouth, to the Taiytakei and the half-gods they had brought with them.

In all of Kithyr’s calculations the one thing he’d never contemplated was that no one would even notice what he’d done. In the eye of his mind he’d seen the soldiers on the gate rush to the Night Watchman almost as he was riding through the gates. He’d seen the Night Watchman run to the alchemists and the grand master roused. He’d seen his deception exposed. They’d know him for what he was. Blood-mage! The cry would echo around the palace. Everyone would be torn from their beds. The Night Watchman himself would lead the pursuit, racing into the City of Dragons only a moment too late, tearing the doors off every inn and doss-house. And then, with a great moaning cry of despair, the grand master alchemist would find that the spear was gone and they’d all know what he’d done.

It was what he’d feared and so he’d planned to meet that fear. A lesser man would have bolted for the river, but no. Kithyr and the Picker and their wagons of grain meandered the Hungry Mountain Plains, wandering among the golden fields south of the Sapphire River valley and the rain shadow cast by western edge of the Purple Spur. Every day they bought another wagon of grain, sometimes two, sometimes three. At every stop the wagon train grew bigger, picked up more men. In the evenings, when they stopped for the night to set their camp in the balmy twilight air, Kithyr looked south. Out towards the deep purple blotches of cloud that littered the southern sky. Towards the hidden scar of Gliding Dragon Gorge only a few days away. Towards Plag’s Bay, the gateway to the Fury, the start of the long road to Furymouth, the south, the Taiytakei, the realisation of all the power he’d ever dreamt of. He could run towards it at any moment, but no. He would stay close to the palace and the City of Dragons while the Adamantine Men and their dragons scattered to the four corners of the realms on their search for their precious stolen spear. He would wait for them to be gone. Only then would the journey south begin.

Except it was beginning to look, if he waited for that, like he’d be wandering the plains for a very long time indeed. No hue and cry had been raised. As far as he could tell, no one even knew that the spear was missing. At the very least he’d expected to see soldiers on the roads, riding swiftly to carry the news: Blood-mage abroad. Nothing at all was almost an insult. Now as he watched the setting sun, his feet began to twitch, eager to be gone. Eager to put an end to this.

‘The best thievery is when a man doesn’t even know he’s been robbed,’ mused the Picker. He was wearing a sly smile, watching Kithyr staring at the southern sky.

‘Is it that obvious what I’m thinking?’

The Picker nodded. ‘About as obvious as having it writ all over your face in ink, I should say. Course, I know a few things the rest of these fellows don’t. It might behove you to look a little less troubled, if I may say.’ By ‘the rest of these fellows’ he meant the other carters and teamsters driving their wagons towards the river.

Kithyr nodded. The Picker looked like any other man, but Kithyr knew better. The Picker, although his skin was light, had come from the Taiytakei. If he had powers of his own then Kithyr had never seen them used, but the sense was always there that the Picker could do things. In equal parts, the Picker was here to help him and to keep him honest. He certainly wasn’t averse to the odd murder or two with those strange knives he carried with their invisible blades.

The magician stretched and forced out a smile to briefly smother the frown that lived on his face. ‘If only we knew that was the case.’

‘Careful, was you?’ You could tell he was Taiytakei from the way he spoke. Most men didn’t see past the pale skin and just thought he had a funny accent and a weird way with putting words together, but if you stopped and listened hard enough, it was clear that he came from across the sea.

Kithyr snorted and his smile faded. ‘If you have to ask then my only answer is scorn and disdain.’

‘Got what you went for, maybe. Not the same as careful.’ The Picker picked up a stem of straw off the back of one of the carts and sucked on it. ‘Could be you left a trail wide enough even a dragon-rider fellow could follow.’

‘No.’

‘Well then, stop your worrying.’

The blood-mage stood up and went to the Picker’s cart. The cart where the spear was hidden. He stood by it, frozen.

‘Don’t be messing with my cart.’ The Picker’s voice hardly changed, but now there was a flash of steel lurking inside it. I can do things when I has to… One of the first things the Picker had said, years ago when they’d first come together.

Years. It really was that long. When he, Kithyr, had been little more than a dabbler, and the Picker had casually walked into his life and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. A few things you and I have to do to keep our masters from over the seas happy, and they’ll be letting you into a few secrets as the times goes by. They’d lived up to that promise too, and now here he was, perhaps the strongest blood-mage since the Edict of Vishmir and the purges that had followed.