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

Jehal and his dragons reached Clifftop in the middle of the day. Even from a distance, he could see it wasn’t worth the bother of landing. Everything was in ruins. The tower was a pile of blackened rubble. The rest was wiped away. Gone. He circled the remains of his eyrie three times in case Zafir had left anyone alive, but no one came out. Perhaps they had the sense not to show themselves when dragon-riders were about, but Jehal suspected it had more to do with them all being dead. Alchemists, servants, Scales, the lot. Zafir was like that. Nothing if not thorough.

A pall of smoke hung over Furymouth, but the city was largely untouched. The Veid Palace was burning. Zafir had been thorough there too. A few of the towers survived as gutted shells. The racing circus in the field outside was still there, Vishmir’s Column and the giant bronze dragon of Gorgutinnin too, As for the rest… Well the city was still there. An unexpected kindness that. Palaces and eyries could be rebuilt. Cities were a little harder. The harbour was gone, the whole Taiytakei quarter with it. Some of the bigger buildings were still recognisable. The Paratheus, one or two others. Most of the docks were a burned husk, everything reduced to charred skeletons and rubble. There was no smoke down by the sea and the ash was cold and dead. Old work. Meteroa’s leaving present for the Taiytakei.

No sign of Zafir, but then he’d hardly expected to find her waiting for him. When he landed and sent his riders into the city, the news they brought back made little sense. Dragons had come, a handful, no more. They’d burned his palace and then gone out to sea towards the fleet of Taiytakei ships that had arrived only days before. A dragon had fallen out of the sky and sunk beneath the waves. Zafir’s? No one could say. And then later that day, as the tide turned, the ships had sailed away and the last three dragons had gone with them. Maybe Zafir had been on the back of one of them, maybe not. He supposed, if he flew far and fast enough, he might catch up with the ships and burn them, but really what was the point? Zafir was gone. Despite what Meteroa had done, the Taiytakei had got what they wanted. They had dragons now. As far as Jehal was concerned, they were welcome to the cursed creatures. Let them be the ones to burn when the monsters awoke. If she was still alive, they were welcome to Zafir too. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

The thought came, and with it, still, a pang of regret.

He left Wraithwing at the edge of the city and limped with some of his riders a little way into its streets. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. A dozen years ago and probably more, in a heavy disguise, trying to evade his father’s guards as much as any of his own people. After that they flew away. Out into the Raksheh, where no one would find them. One more night of freedom. Out to the little eyrie by the Moonlight Garden and the Yamuna Falls and the Aardish Caves, where Vishmir’s ashes had been hidden. Somewhere here, if you believed the stories, was the Silver King’s Black Mausoleum. If you believed the stories.

‘It’s finished,’ he told Lystra as night began to fall and they held on to each other, watching the stars gleam into existence overhead. ‘Zafir’s gone. Valmeyan is dead. Tichane is dead. They’re all gone. The war’s over.’ And I’m still alive. Rather to his surprise, what mattered more was that his queen and his son were still alive, that his city was still alive. Pity it had left him a cripple. From the look of things, he’d be in pain and chewing Dreamleaf for the rest of his life.

He shrugged to himself. Could have been worse.

Lystra glanced at little Calzarin, wrapped tight between them, snoring and snuffling softly. ‘Do you really want to name him after your brother,’ she said after a moment or two of silence.

‘No.’ Jehal wasn’t sure when he’d realised that, but he knew it to be true. ‘I don’t. I want to call him Vishmir.’

His wife held his hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s not really finished, is it?’

‘Oh, let Hyrkallan have the Adamantine Throne. Now that I know what it’s like, he’s welcome to it.’ I could let it go if I had to. Couldn’t I? It certainly hadn’t been what he’d hoped it would be, back when he’d set out to take it. Ancestors, but that seemed such a long time ago. He stretched and winced. There simply wasn’t a way to make his leg comfortable. ‘Let him deal with the rogue dragons. Him and the alchemists. I’m sure they’ll find a way. We can live here by the sea. Just the two of us.’

‘The two of us and about a thousand servants.’

‘Yes. In a palace that we haven’t built yet.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s not going to be easy, you know. Zafir and Valmeyan probably looted the treasury. We have a palace to build and an eyrie too, no money, and I can’t see the Taiytakei coming back in a hurry after what my uncle did to them.’ Not now they’ve got what they want. His voice trailed away. I’m going to miss you, old schemer. Who do I hatch my plans with now? He looked at Lystra and smiled. Certainly not you.

He almost didn’t leave in the morning. It would have been easy to go back to his city and start building, right there and then. Let Hyrkallan and Sirion and Jeiros and perhaps even the Night Watchman live in peace. Let them worry about dragons on the rampage in the north.

‘We’ve got no alchemists though,’ he whispered to Wraithwing as he climbed up onto the dragon’s back. ‘Don’t want you getting frisky on me. Don’t think that would be much fun.’ He wrenched his crippled leg into the saddle, gritting his teeth at the pain. The legbreaker had lived up to its name. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And for better or for worse, I’m still the speaker.’

Sand. This one is called Sand.

Another city of the north filled with little ones. An oasis surrounded by nothing. The same vast rivers flowed out of the World-spine and slowly died in the sun until they expired in the desert of salt, but the river here still ran strong. Not a city that could be starved and strangled. A city that met them with stones and scorpions. Brave but futile.

They flew in circles around the city walls, pouring fire inside it, building a whirling storm of flames, an inferno with a life of its own. Nothing was allowed to leave. It took a day, and then they stopped while the flames burned on and on, licking at the skeletons of stone that remained, searching for food. Some of the humans had sought shelter underground. Snow could feel their thoughts. She listened curiously as the few survivors slowly cooked to death in their cellars. The dragons didn’t feed here. They were already fat.

When the city was dead, they turned to the eyrie beside it. The little ones had long since disappeared deep under the ground. What would burn was burned. What could be crushed or smashed was ground to dust. When there was nothing left to do, they let Silence and the other hatchlings loose in the tunnels that remained. In Bloodsalt they had freed younglings and found eggs. Silence had carried them out, one by one, and the dragons had taken them and cradled them and stolen them away into whatever dark hidden places they could find. Here Snow already knew it would be different. There were no dragon thoughts. This was like Outwatch. Hatchlings all poisoned. Eggs smashed. Nothing left.

The dragons splashed around in the Last River, cooling themselves.

They don’t try to fight. They know we are here. Everything is poisoned.

No matter.

When one dies, another is born.

Eggs are easily made.

They hide in their holes.

They spawn like insects.

We will never be rid of them.

Where next?