The Order of the Scales Deas - The Order of the Scales
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- Название:The Order of the Scales
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‘Tyan. After his grandfather.’
‘Who went mad.’ And we won’t be calling him Meteroa either. ‘I’d like to call him Calzarin. After my little brother.’ Who went mad too.
‘Calzarin. It’s a nice name.’
‘Yes.’ He rolled onto his back and stared up at the stars. Nice name. Nice face. Nice arse too, or at least Meteroa obviously thought so. Not so nice on the inside though. We did that to him, Meteroa and I. We ruined him, each in our own way. Tore him up from the inside out. Meteroa with lust and me with loathing. Now look at us all. Are you watching, little brother? Because I don’t feel guilty at all. You deserved everything I did to you, and if you were alive now I’d probably smash your head with a rock. And yes I might be a cripple, and yes I might not be the speaker for very much longer, and yes the realms might be about to burn to ash around me, but I’m alive, little brother. Alive and at least very briefly happy, which is more than you ever were. So if you’re feeling smug, you can go choke on it.
There were times, he thought, when you had to be realistic about things. Sometimes being alive had to be enough of a victory. And however it ends, I so nearly came away with everything. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same, any of you, dear ancestors. We have the same venom for blood. Hyram called the Veid Palace a nest of snakes. How right. How pathetically right.
39
That Which Determines Destiny
They put the dead sell-sword on the back of a dragon and flew him to a quiet place by the river, well outside the town. Jeiros mixed his own blood with a pinch of Abyssal Powders and tipped the congealing mess into the corpse’s mouth. Then he took a deep breath and tried to ignore the smell. The body was already starting to turn in the heat and it had been a long time since he’d talked to a dead man.
‘Hello, corpse,’ he whispered as the head twitched, as the eyes rolled beneath gummy lids and its mouth opened with a quiet moan. He started with the spear. Then the rogue dragons in the Worldspine. Back beyond that to the white, to the attack on the Redoubt, the white dragon’s first awakening, the attack on Queen Shezira’s wedding party that had started it all. He listened patiently to it all. When he was done he had the body burned. The trouble with waking the dead, as he’d learned to his cost, often came with putting them back to sleep again. Dragons sorted that out easily enough.
A Scales. The sell-sword had been with a Scales, of all people. A should-have-been-alchemist who’d done something stupid and been demoted to a Scales. Kataros. Name didn’t mean anything.
An almost-alchemist who’d seen the spear turn two dragons to stone. Who would know the spear for what it was. Who very probably had a sizeable chip on her shoulder. Marvellous.
‘You know what annoys me?’ he grumbled to Vioros when he was done. ‘Someone started this. Someone tried to steal the white, and that’s when she escaped. And I have no idea who did it.’
‘That annoys you?’ Vioros looked at him as though he was mad.
‘I’d at least like someone to blame.’
‘Valmeyan.’
He shrugged. ‘Probably. Now he’s dead, I suppose we’ll never know.’
They flew the short distance back to Hammerford along the Fury, skimming the river in the futile hope that the mystery almost-alchemist might happen by some miracle to be drifting along on a boat in plain sight. Jeiros wondered idly what would happen if you fed Abyssal Powders to a dead dragon. If such a thing was even possible. That was the trouble with being an alchemist. You almost couldn’t help wondering about things like that. You couldn’t help wondering about a spear that had shown up where it wasn’t supposed to and had turned a pair of dragons into statues as close to right under your nose as made no difference either. The dead man was only a sell-sword. How did he know the difference between the Adamantine Spear and some other spear that just happened to be all metal and shiny? How had he made it work? Damn thing had sat in the Adamantine Palace for two hundred years without showing the slightest sign of being magical, despite all the legends it carried. And then, just when you needed it, it woke up. Yes, you had to wonder about that.
And while you were in a wondering frame of mind, you had to ponder what a blood-mage and some mysterious fellow who could apparently appear and disappear at will were doing with it. And why they’d chosen to steal it at this particular point in history and not last year or next. You had to think about the how too. And what a blood-mage and King Jehal had to do with one another. No, you couldn’t help wondering all of those things, even though you knew perfectly well that you weren’t likely to get a quick answer to any of them, and what was likely to be the end of the world wasn’t much more than a week away unless you did something about it right here and now.
He sighed. He’d been grand master of the Order of the Scales for over half a year now, and he couldn’t think of a single time when he’d actually enjoyed himself. His predecessor, Bellepheros, had at least enjoyed himself sometimes, Jeiros was fairly sure of that. And then just when it was all about to get difficult, you vanish. What did you know, old man?
There was something more to all of this. Something he was missing. He’d have to talk to Vioros about that. Assuming they both lived long enough to have a proper conversation.
In Hammerford Jehal’s riders were waiting for him, agitated. A pair of them stood either side of a woman sitting disconsolate on the burnt earth, battered and bedraggled. A third rider was with them. All four looked confused and alarmed, as though they hadn’t a clue what to do. The third rider was also holding a spear. The spear. Unmistakable. Unbelievable, but there it was, somehow showing up again where it was needed. Jeiros had to rub his eyes to be sure, but no, it was still there. The spear that apparently had decided to wake up and kill dragons. If he peered hard, he might even have recognised the woman from some quieter moment in the Palace of Alchemy.
‘Found her flapping about on the edge of the river on a fishing raft,’ said the first rider, one of Hyrkallan’s northerners. ‘Trying to steal it.’
The woman started forward. ‘Master alch-’ Which was as far as she got before one of her guards kicked her in the back. Jeiros snatched the spear and gave it to Vioros. Best to seize it before one of the riders thought of taking it back to the Pinnacles to give to Jehal. He cast a brief eye over the woman from the river. He had no idea who she was, but he was sure he’d seen her face once before. He could see the traces of Hatchling Disease on her, just the start of it. On her way to being a Scales, just as the sell-sword had said.
He gave her to Vioros as well. Jehal’s riders closed around them. He could see the riders from Sand eyeing them up, ready to keep this stupid war going for another round. Well good. Let them eye each other. It would serve as a distraction.
So now we have a weapon. One we thought wasn’t real, but one that can apparently turn a dragon into stone. If they would be kind enough to come at us one at a time, I might even find that useful. But there were a thousand dragons at the Pinnacles. If he started stabbing them one after the other, someone was bound to notice and make him stop. And then when they’d taken it from him, there would be arguing, fighting, bloodshed, over whether it would be Jehal or Hyrkallan who held it at the end of the day. No. There were betters plan than that.
He took Vioros aside. ‘This is our hope. This kills dragons. We have this one thing, and that is better than none. Go to the Adamantine Palace. Find the Night Watchman. Tell him this from me. Tell him I will do my part and he must now do his. Tell him it’s black. Pitch black. Tell him exactly that and nothing else. Is that clear? And then give him the spear.’
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