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

And then nothing. She’d vanish into some eyrie and he’d never see her again. He tried to steel himself for that, but it wasn’t really working so he settled for not thinking about it. In the warm sun his head started to loll, and then suddenly they were there. Plag’s Bay. Exactly how he remembered it. Wagons and horses and cattle and boats, filled with shouting and swearing and sweat. The town sat at the bottom of a notch in Gliding Dragon Gorge, standing guard over the only road up for a hundred miles. At the top was Watersgate and the start of the Evenspire Road which wound out across the Hungry Mountain Plains, past the City of Dragons and the Adamantine Palace to the Sapphire River, Samir’s Crossing and Narammed’s Bridge, then on through hundreds of miles of desert and nothing until it reached Evenspire and the Blackwind Dales and eventually Sand. Everything that flowed from the south to the north or back the other way came through Watersgate and Plag’s Bay. They were the crossroads between the north and the south, the east and the west, and they didn’t let you forget it.

His head ached, a dull thump inside his skull. Too much sleeping in the sun.

He jumped off the boat and pulled Kat down after him, then paid the boatmen with a gold dragon each and hurried away before they thought to demand any more. He looked along the water at the boats, dozens and dozens of them. Plenty that would take him on down the river. And then he looked up at the cliffs, at the gash in their side and the winding road to Watersgate and the City of Dragons.

She’s going away now. She’s going to leave you.

His headache was getting worse.

‘What do we do now?’ She had his arm, hugging it close in the press of people. He couldn’t think. Too much noise, too much light, the pounding in his skull. They were being watched. He could feel the tension. People were looking at Kat, looking at him.

He shivered. There were taphouses along the dockside, cheap beer for thirsty boatmen. He dragged her to the nearest of them. Sat her down and threw a silver dragon at someone for some beer and to be left alone. At least it was quieter in here. Darker. Cooler. He took the pouch of dust from his shirt. Dust made you brave and filled you with lust. He had no idea how it was for headaches, but it couldn’t possibly make things worse and it was good for the other pains, the ones that were made of memories. He took a generous pinch himself then offered it to Kat. For the first time she shook her head.

If dust wouldn’t make his headache go away, enough beer would do the trick. Maybe if he passed out in a drunken stupor, she’d quietly slip out without him. Maybe.

She leaned towards him. Her eyes seemed wide and full of hope, so far from how Kemir felt inside. Here it came. The moment when she left him.

‘I always wanted to have a shop,’ she whispered. ‘Could we have a shop?’

‘What?’ He had to take a moment to understand what she’d said. ‘A shop?’

‘I didn’t want to be a Scales. Didn’t want to be an alchemist either, but whoever my mother and father were, they sold me to the Order before I could even walk. I don’t remember them. I was good at potions, and at… at the other things. I don’t want to be a Scales though. I don’t want Statue Plague. I used to think about having a shop. I could have been a proper alchemist if I hadn’t…’ She looked away. ‘I thought I could have a shop. Making my potions and selling them. And herbs and things. I was good at potions.’

Wearily, Kemir turned to face her. His head pounded. ‘Kat, I was there when the dragons who destroyed your eyrie nearly burned the alchemists into the earth. And you want me to be a shopkeeper?’ Out of the sun, it was impossible to tell whether her eyes were still dilated with dust from the boat or whether it was simply the gloom.

‘I had a dragon-rider who was sweet on me for a while,’ she said without any real trace of regret. ‘When I was still in the Palace of Alchemy. I used to slip out to meet him. He took me into a shop in the city once. There was a man there who was quite young selling herbs and roots and bark and things like that, but he sold sweet-meats too, and little cakes. My rider asked him for a potion. The man had to make it and we waited. There were children coming in all the time, and he was selling them his little cakes for a penny apiece. They were all so happy. That’s what I’d like to do.’

‘You want me to sell cakes to children?’ He couldn’t think of anything less likely.

She pressed into him as she spoke. ‘It took him an hour to make the potion my rider wanted, and he made me drink it there and then. It tasted sour, like vinegar, and it burned my mouth even though it was cold. And then he took me back to the eyrie and I bled for three days, so bad I could barely stand. I thought I was going to die. I thought he’d poisoned me. I didn’t see him again.’

‘Dawn Torpor,’ muttered Kemir. ‘I suppose you had his child in your belly. I suppose he didn’t like that.’

‘I was learning to be an alchemist, silly. I knew exactly what it was. But it was much worse than I’d heard. ‘She laughed. For a moment Kemir forgot about his throbbing arm, his headache, everything. For a moment her laugh was the most amazing thing in the world. Beautiful even. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard someone laugh.

Kat looked at him with a lopsided smile. ‘What?’

‘You actually want to be with me?’

She gave him that strange look that he didn’t understand. ‘You called down your dragons from the sky for me, Kemir.’

‘They weren’t mine.’

‘Before they came, when I thought I was going to die, all I could think of were the children I’d seen in that shop, buying cakes for a penny, and how happy they were.’

‘You don’t want a shop.’ Kemir chuckled, despite himself. He closed his eyes. The beer was working. Or the dust. Or something was. His head felt better, if only a little. ‘Sounds like you want a husband, that’s what you really want. A husband and sons and daughters and a quiet life doing something useful and making things grow.’ He shivered. A part of him wanted to scream and run away, but there wasn’t anywhere for it to go. And why not? Would it be so bad? Raise some strong sons. You could call one of them Sollos.

Yes. And then I could watch them die in some stupid pointless war, or be broken by some thoughtless lord, or maybe we won’t get far enough away, and Snow could eat them. No thanks.

‘Isn’t it funny? I thought those men were going to kill me, and that’s what I thought about. And something else came to me too – the Order will think I’m dead. I’m free.’

His dragons? The very idea made him want to laugh, but he was feeling too sleepy to say anything.

‘Kemir, they won’t let me be an alchemist and I don’t want to be a Scales. I don’t want to go back to the Palace of Alchemy. You said you’d guard me to the end of the world. Can you guard my shop too?’ She moved her chair around so she was beside him, squeezed herself against him.

Beer and dust worked their magic. His head was clearing. For the first time in a very long time he almost felt good. Traders came through Watersgate from everywhere. A man here could find whatever he was looking for, if he asked the right questions. Down in Plag’s Bay there were boats headed to Furymouth, two or three a day. Two weeks down the river and he’d be there. Or anywhere. They could go anywhere.

He pushed himself away from her. Looked her up and down. Nothing special. Nothing special at all. Yet she’d become the last thing he had left.

‘Boots.’ He glanced at her bare feet. ‘I owe you a pair of boots.’

She smiled, nervously. ‘Yes.’

‘Where do you want to start this shop then?’ Kemir the shopkeeper? How Sollos must be laughing at him, but secretly he’d be proud and they both knew it. Kat smiled at him and he tried to grin back. ‘I’ll stand at the door. Or I’ll stand outside all the other shops and menace people.’ There won’t be any people. We’ll be burned.