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

‘Valleyford.’ He blinked, almost expecting the town to suddenly reappear as he remembered it. It had been completely destroyed. He shivered. He’d liked Valleyford. It had been his sort of town. A huge glorified marketplace really, but still enough for thousands to live there, swapping goods travelling down the river from the Worldspine and from the Evenspire Road with cargoes sailing up from Furymouth, Farakkan, Purkan, places like that down the river. Caravans fresh from the Pinnacles crossed the river here on their way to Bazim Crag, while weary merchants from as far away as Bloodsalt finally reach the end of Yinazhin’s Way at Valleyford. If there was anything you couldn’t get in Valleyford, there was a good chance you couldn’t get it anywhere, at least not outside the Taiytakei markets in Furymouth, and that was one place Kemir had never been.

All gone. Wiped into a black and scorched smear of nothing, the last lazy wafts of smoke rising from the ruins. Maybe five thousand people had lived in Valleyford.

‘There were alchemists here,’ murmured Kataros.

‘And the speaker’s soldiers too.’ Kemir’s head felt numb. No one in their right mind would do something like this. Burning alchemists was worse than any mere treason. And yet here it was, done.

No human in their right mind. He shivered again. ‘Why are we stopping?’ Other boats were here too, some of them already moored against the shore, others milling about in the shallow waters away from the main current, not sure what to do. Some of them were lumbering cargo barges like the one Kemir was on. Most were little river skiffs.

A loud voice broke the stillness. One of the refugees from Plag’s Bay had declared himself captain. ‘Right. Enough lollygagging. Form a shore party.’

For a few minutes, Kemir thought they meant to lend a hand with things like looking for survivors, digging them out of the wreckage, looking after the injured, that sort of thing. It was only when the barge started jockeying for position with two other barges at one of the surviving jetties that he realised his mistake. There was shouting and swearing, and he heard it in the curses. Plunder. They were there to take whatever they could get away with. And if we find some survivors, we might just help them, but only if they can pay for it, eh? And all this less than a day after your own homes were burned to cinders.

The barge won its battle for a place at the waterfront, Kemir pushed past the sailors and jumped ashore. He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so much – not all that long ago he’d have been at the front of the queue if there was any plundering to be done – but if there was anyone he could find still alive then he was going to take them with him, back on the barge, whether they had money to pay for his help or not.

‘Hoi! You!’ The self-proclaimed barge captain. Kemir turned and shot back a glance of such venom that he saw the man flinch. He let his hand flicker to the hilt of his knife and made sure of his bow too. Anyone could sail a barge down a river with the current, Kemir reckoned. Didn’t need to be any one particular person at all.

He cocked his head. ‘Problem?’

The man pinched his lips. ‘We sail when we sail. We’ll not wait on stragglers.’

‘I bet you won’t.’ Kemir turned away, muttering under his breath.

The barge had arrived too late. There must have been a hundred or more river folk already picking through the skeleton of the town. Kemir, as he walked deeper into the smouldering ash, saw at least one body, stripped bare, with a fresh knife wound. Further still and the heat of the embers drove him back. He turned away. No survivors here. Instead he tried a little further down the river, away from the main harbour, where a small cluster of river skiffs had pulled up to the bank and men were busy at work. In the midst of them a group of men, poorly armed but armed nonetheless, stood around a strangely familiar figure, almost as if they were supervising the looting.

The blood-mage. Kithyr. He was carrying something long wrapped in black cloth. Kemir stopped dead. Took two quick paces forward and then stopped again.

I could shoot him. In the head. Blood-mage or not, that should do the trick. Unless I miss, but I’m not going to miss. So that would just leave the problem of doing it in broad daylight with about a hundred people to remember my face. Not to mention his motley collection of bodyguards. Of course, they might not care after their master’s dead… The mage turned. He looked straight at Kemir. Ah. And now he’s seen me. Makes it a lot harder to shoot a man when he can see the arrow coming. Turn away, Kemir. Turn away. Let him stay and fight the dragons. Evil for evil. Not your fight now, not any more.

With an effort, Kemir turned his back on the mage. He was wasting his time. Should have stayed on the boat. As he walked back, he thought he saw the Picker too, watching him. Another man I’d like to kill. Pay you back for the scar you put on me. Well you can both stay and fight dragons. Good luck to you.

He stopped for a moment where a small cluster of sad-looking men and women sat around in clothes stained with ash and smoke. Survivors. Six of them. Two old men, a boy who was close to being a man but hadn’t quite made it yet and a women with two small children, a little family miracle. They didn’t have anything, so the looters from the river had ignored them.

The old Kemir would have raised an eyebrow, shrugged a shoulder and walked on by. But that old Kemir was dead, drifting in the water somewhere back up the Fury like the old shed skin of a snake. The new Kemir took a deep breath and stepped closer.

‘Dragons?’ Why am I asking? What else would burn a whole town flat?

No one answered. No one bothered to even look at him. He could see their point. Whatever they’d had had long been taken from them.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can get you down the river to the next town.’ What was that? Arys Crossing? If it was still there. ‘You’ll have food until we get there.’

One of the old men slowly looked up at him. ‘And then?’

‘And then you get to thank me for my kindness. You have to work the rest out for yourselves. I have my own troubles. Stay if you want.’ He shrugged and turned away.

‘Wait!’ The woman with the children. No surprise there. He waited.

‘Any more?’

Both the old men shook their heads. The boy thought about it, then nodded. Too young to be a man, really, but that’s what you’ll have to be. That’s what war does. Turns boys into men because it’s kinder than calling them orphans.

‘Dragons,’ he said again, as he led them back to the barge. ‘Did they have riders on them, the dragons that did this?’

The woman spat. ‘Don’t get dragons with no riders.’

She hurried her children past Kemir, but he saw one of them turn and look at him with big wide fearful eyes. The boy shook his head.

No. No riders.

Home.

Snow shuffled into the cave. It was small and cramped, pressing down on her. There was no space to spread her wings. Caves were no places for dragons. She could see the one she was looking for, though, tucked away into the body of a hatchling.

She brushed past the charcoal statue that had once been the master of Outwatch. It fell and smashed on the flat stone floor.

I am chained, Beloved Memory of a Lover Distant and Lost.

I do not bear that name now. Snow squeezed further in. She stretched out her neck and peered at the little hatchling. Black. How dull.

The hatchling hissed at her. White. How gaudy.

Lazily, Snow took the chain around the hatchling’s neck and tore it from the cave wall. Then she nuzzled gently with her teeth at the links around the hatchling’s throat and bit the metal delicately in two. There. You are free. Outside, the air filled with the roars and shrieks of the other dragons. Her dragons, the others she had freed. They would not forget that. A debt was a debt.