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

Yes, you are, and actually I did, but don’t suppose you will. What am I supposed to do about it? They know their duty. I tried to spare them any complicity, but I don’t imagine you care about that one way or the other. They did nothing wrong, but then neither did I. I did what was needed.

‘You have ruined us all! Do you imagine Jehal will spare any of us?’

Do you imagine I care?

‘How much did he pay you, alchemist? What did he promise you?’

Jeiros’ patience broke. ‘Don’t you think that if he’d paid me I might have run away?’ he shouted back in fury. Think, dragon-lord. Use your head. Oh, but you already are, and you still can’t see beyond who gets to sit on the Speaker’s Throne. You don’t see what’s coming. You can thank my ghost later, Vioros, that I sent you back when I did.

Hyrkallan came as close to the edge as he could. ‘Names, alchemist. Tell me who else or I swear I will take your order apart limb by limb.’

And you probably would too, if you have the chance. Jeiros sighed and reeled off a few names, alchemists that the order might survive without. Names given so that others might be spared. Not men and women against whom he bore any particular grudge, just the ones that maybe mattered a little less. There. And that’s me damned. Are we done now? ‘You want to know why I gave Jehal the Adamantine Throne? Because he’s cleverer than you, Hyrkallan. Whatever his faults, he’s sharper than the rest of you.’ Which might have been true or might not. But then Hyrkallan and even Sirion weren’t about to understand that this had nothing to do with them, nothing to do with Jehal, nothing to do with who wore what title and sat in which throne.

Hyrkallan shouted some more. Jeiros didn’t listen and eventually the dragon-lord went away. King Sirion never even came out to look. Jeiros was left there, hanging thousands of feet up in the air over a sea of dead dragons.

He probably lost consciousness at some point. It became hard to tell. His mind wandered over all the things he hadn’t managed to do, all the things left incomplete, the tasks undone. Thinking distracted him from the pain of his mangled hands and feet. Was there anything more he could have given of himself? Could he somehow have stopped the rogue dragons from waking? He couldn’t think how, but the nagging voice was there anyway. Bellepheros would have done better. But Bellepheros was dead. Best to face that. Dead as in not coming back. Not riding out of the sunset with barges loaded with potions and some clever way of drawing all the rogue dragons towards him and turning them into stone.

Turning them into stone with the Adamantine Spear. Absurd story, and not one that he or any other alchemist for a hundred years had believed. And yet there it was. Evidence. It had been right in front of him. Seen with his own eyes, heard with his own ears. What else could it do? Why didn’t I know? The Silver King was said to be able to summon dragons from the skies, but was that him or the spear? Not much point in that if we can’t kill more than one at a time. Maybe someone could call them and then run away to some other place and call them again. Maybe we could keep them penned up in one corner of the realms. Or maybe we could take the spear deep underground and keep calling them to a place they could never reach. Or out to sea, perhaps. Take it away on one of the Taiytakei ships and then summon them away?

Children’s stories. Which ones were real? Too late now, though. He’d never know. Not his problem. Vioros would have to find out for himself. Quickly too.

At some point it was dark. Not long after that it was light again. There weren’t any dragons moving about down on the plains any more. He saw a couple flying away from the Palace of Pleasure, and that was all.

The sun moved across the sky. No sign of any live dragons at all. There were fires though. The eyrie was on fire. And distant sounds, whispering up from the ground below. Shouting, fighting sounds. All too far away to see.

‘Master.’ Evening now. He heard the voice clearly enough, but he had no idea who it was and was in no position to turn and look. ‘Master,’ it called again.

‘I’m here,’ he croaked. His throat, he realised, was very dry. He wasn’t hungry yet, but then he’d been here not much more than a day. Thirsty, though. Yes, definitely thirsty. The realisation hit home, right then. Yes. You really are going to die up here.

‘Master, the last dragons here are all gone. We followed your orders.’

Orders? What orders? I didn’t give any orders. I just got potion and poison mixed up. Easy enough thing to do. Just muddle a letter or two. Jeiros chuckled. The movement jarred his wrists and ankles and turned his laugh into a cry of pain.

‘They took some of the others and hung them. They wouldn’t let the rest of us near the dragons, but we found a way. And now the people who stayed on in the ruins of the Silver City have turned on the riders. I heard most of them are dead. Some of them got into the fortress. There was fighting. There’s no food out there. I have to go. The riders will hang us all now if they find us. But it’s done, master. I thought you should know. It’s finished.’

‘Finished?’ He wanted to laugh. ‘It’s never finished with dragons.’

The voice didn’t say anything else. Jeiros assumed the alchemist had gone, vanished to hide from the wrath of the dragon-lords. They’ll have to call themselves something else now. Or maybe the alchemist was still there, watching. Jeiros had no way of telling.

‘Good luck,’ he rasped. Too late for me, but the rest of you will be needing it. The spear, Vioros. Take it under the ground. Or take it out to sea. He had to laugh at his own optimism. As though if he thought hard enough of the spear and all the things he want to try with it, Vioros would somehow hear him.

Dragons. They hear our thoughts. That’s how they know what their riders want them to do.

He wondered if Vioros had thought of that.

Zafir had a knife in her boot. The pain split her in two but she bent double, reached the sheath, pulled out the knife, took hold of the rope and started to cut. Her lungs burned. Her ears thrummed as the corpse of the dragon took her ever deeper into water ever darker. Her mind started to slip, to wander. She thought she heard musical laughter for a moment, but her hand never stopped sawing, never gave up the urge to live, no matter what. And then suddenly she felt the weight go away and she was floating again and the music was getting louder and she could see light again.

And then she was lying on her back, lying on something solid and hard. The air smelled of the sea. Strange shapes towered over her, vast pillars reaching for the bright and blinding sky. Masts.

The silver man with the white face and the bloody eyes was looking down at her again. There were other faces too, this time. Dark faces marked with tattoos. Taiytakei. They didn’t say anything, only stroked their chins and looked at her. One by one, a forest of little sounds touched her. Creaking wood. Straining ropes. The wind whistling in and out of the rigging. The shuffle of feet on the deck. Distant voices, orders barked far away. The calls of seagulls wheeling overhead.

‘Is she alive?’ asked one. His accent was so thick that she could barely understand him. Not like the Taiytakei she knew from Jehal’s court.

The man with the white face and the eyes of blood nodded solemnly. One of the others prodded her.

We have preserved her. Three voices in her head speaking together, the same words at the same time, discordant and cacophonous. One was the voice she’d heard before, she was certain of that. The silver man. The others… she had no idea. Couldn’t even guess. She is the speaker-queen.