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

‘That one?’ She was looking at his leg now, and the long jagged line that ran up the inside of his thigh from just above the knee.

‘That one.’ Kemir’s smile faded. ‘That’s an old one, that one. Very old and very stupid.’ He looked at himself. There wasn’t a part of him that hadn’t been cut, slashed, bashed or bruised over the years. ‘You should see my back.’ He chuckled, then turned around in the water. ‘Most of that’s a flogging I got half a dozen years ago. The rest of it is another flogging I got a couple of years before. I’m a mess.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

Kemir rolled onto his back and spread out his arms, floating. The cool air blowing down the canyon from the mountains of the Purple Spur chilled his skin. He squinted. She looked good, he thought. He was noticing that a lot at the moment. A part of him was horrified at himself, but it was a part that was losing.

She turned her back to him and peeled off her shirt. Her back was a mass of scars too. Healed but still recent, still red and shining. He stared at her.

‘Flogging is for thieves,’ he said, bemused.

‘Yes.’ She didn’t move.

‘I used to steal all the time. Stealing from kith and kin is one thing. Stealing from the dragon-lords and their servants doesn’t count. Although…’ He shrugged and grimaced and scratched at the scars on his back. ‘They don’t quite see it that way, and the flogging hurts much the same either way. But how does an alchemist get to be a thief?’

Kataros turned around. She stood, naked, at the edge of the pool.

‘I didn’t steal. They flogged me anyway.’

‘Who.’

She laughed, the dust killing any bitterness. ‘My family. My brother and sister alchemists.’

‘For what, if you didn’t steal?’ She was an alchemist then. Alchemist, Scales. Same difference, wasn’t it? They all had everything they could possibly want simply given to them, didn’t they?

‘They did this because I took a man to my bed for my own pleasure and told him secrets I was not supposed to tell. They said I must stop, but I didn’t. They said I couldn’t be an alchemist after all, that I would have to be a Scales, and I still didn’t stop. So they flogged me. Dragons, that’s what a Scales serves, not men. I was stealing too, you see. Stealing secrets and a little pleasure I was not meant to have. That’s why they whipped me.’

Kemir looked her up and down. Dirt streaked her arms. Her skin was red and raw in places. Her face was pinched and hungry. Her breasts were full, though, and her belly pleasantly round. No one would ever call her beautiful, but men would hunger for her nonetheless. As Kemir looked at her he felt himself stiffening, even as he remembered her screams of the last two nights, before the river men had silenced them with dust. I make myself sick.

‘I can live with that,’ he lied.

‘So I see.’ Kataros didn’t move. She was staring right through him, as though weighing him up. She had a slight smirk on her face.

‘Sorry. It’s been a long time, that’s all.’ Why am I apologising?

She must have read his mind. She arched her back and stretched her arms. ‘I never wanted to be a Scales. I wanted to be an alchemist.’ She licked her lips.

Kemir shrugged again. ‘Never struck me as much of a way to live.’ He couldn’t help looking her up and down, searching for any sign of Hatchling Disease. It was there, if you took the trouble to look. The beginnings. A little roughness to the elbows and to the knees. Always the joints that went first.

She took a step into the water. Kemir didn’t know what she wanted from him. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted himself. Well, that wasn’t quite true. A part of him knew exactly what he wanted.

‘I took myself to my dragon-rider lover’s bed again too, after the wounds had closed enough for me to lie on my back.’

‘Because he gave you no choice?’

‘No. There’s always a choice.’ She took another languid step closer and smiled. ‘Because I liked it.’

Dust. He could smell it on her breath even. Her eyes were enormous. It was making her this way. Kemir stood up. He had a lump in his throat and a lust like he couldn’t remember. He’d happily have forced himself on her right there and then except that was probably what she wanted. Likely as not, Snow was probably still watching them from somewhere. But that only made him want her more. ‘Look, I really don’t care. I’ve spent half my life selling my sword, and when I had money, I spent it on women and drink. Sometimes I spent it on boys. Give me money and I’ll do the same again. But you’re being this way because you’ve got a head full of dust. I’d like to fuck you, alchemist, as you clearly see, but I’m not what you’d want if your head was right. We’ll get this done and then you can find yourself a man who’ll look after you, because I won’t.’

Her eyes didn’t move from his erection. ‘I don’t want to be looked after. And I’m not an alchemist any more.’ Kemir hesitated, and in that moment he lost. Kataros took a step forward. ‘I don’t even know you, sell-sword. All I know is that dragons came when you called and they had no riders. I don’t know what you are, but they came. I just want you…’ She reached out towards him.

‘Listen, woman. All I want is to go out in as big a blaze of glory as possible and take as many dragon-riders with me as I can. It’s been like that for a long time, and that’ll never change. I’ll not be trading my sword for a farm and a field full of pigs, never would, never will. Those dragons you saw, they didn’t come because I called. They came because they felt like it, and they’ll be burning the realms to ashes soon enough. You know why I helped you? I was going to take you to Furymouth and sell you to the Taiytakei and use the money to buy me a ship to somewhere else before that happened. Now?’ He shook his head. ‘I still might. Either way I’m gone. Done here. Even if I have to sell myself into slavery, it’s Furymouth and a ship to somewhere far away.’

His words flew straight through her and out the other side, unheard, as if she was a ghost. She took another step. ‘Maybe that’s what I want too.’

‘No, it’s not.’ He took a step as well. Couldn’t help himself. He stopped in front of her and ran a rough and eager hand down from her face to her belly. ‘Don’t burn with me when I go. No need. You leave and you make your own life whenever it suits you. I won’t try to stop you. You know that.’ Words going in and out again, but then he was saying them as much to make them said as anything. As if saying them would somehow make them come true.

She touched a hand to his face. ‘You’re trembling.’

‘The air’s cold.’

She grinned. ‘Then we’d better warm you up.’ She pressed herself against him and reached between his legs.

Kemir gasped. ‘From the inside,’ he growled. He ran his hands down her back and pulled her even closer. She bit his ear.

‘I’ve seen bigger,’ she whispered. ‘Even on dragon-riders.’

‘You must be talking about those scars again.’ Kemir grunted as he pushed Kataros back to the edge of the pool and then to the ground. ‘The ones with the biggest scars are the ones who met me. The lucky ones, that is.’ She pulled him down with her, opened her legs and pulled him inside her. They clung to each other, silent but intense. There was nothing gentle about either of them, but when they were done they held each other for a long time, until Kemir finally rose and returned to the pool.

‘I think I have more scars than when we started,’ he muttered. Kataros gave a throaty laugh, but the smile that flicked across her face was a blank one. She set about building a fire, scavenging from among the dead river men, oblivious to the slaughter around her. Then she built a nest of blankets and fell asleep. Kemir, when he was done with the pool and the sun had dried him, lay beside her, sharing her warmth. He stared up at the sky, high above the canyon walls. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t feel quite as empty now. He should, should have felt even worse, but he didn’t.