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

Vale wrenched Jehal’s head around to the glowing embers that had once been the City of Dragons. ‘Are you impressed by that?’ he hissed.

Jehal pulled himself away. His leg gave way again and he stumbled towards the battlements. Vale caught him.

‘You don’t get away that easily, Jehal.’

For a few moments he didn’t know what to say. The city was gone. Totally gone. Torn to pieces and then set on fire. What hadn’t been smashed, burned. ‘Zafir,’ he whispered. ‘Zafir did this.’

‘No. You did.’

‘No.’ Get a hold of yourself. ‘No, I didn’t do this, and now I think of it, neither did Zafir. You can blame us for a lot of things, Night Watchman, but we never woke any dragons. It’s gone. So what? We’ll build another.’

Vale’s fingers tightened on his arm, gripping painfully. ‘Build another?’

‘Yes.’ Jehal shook himself free a second time, careful not to fall over. ‘That’s what we do. Build another. You won, Night Watchman. You have fulfilled your purpose. Your name will go down in history. You have averted catastrophe. Well done. Now piss off because I have a lot of work to do.’

For a moment the Night Watchman seemed lost in thought. He was staring at the Adamantine Spear. ‘I slew six dragons in the night. There.’ He pointed at something that looked like a dragon turned to stone and broken into pieces. ‘There.’ Another, much the same. ‘There.’ The third was largely intact. The look in Vale’s eye was of a man in deep thought. Which wasn’t what Jehal wanted at all.

‘Go find some builders who can clear up this mess.’

Vale didn’t move. His face didn’t flicker, but there was a tear in the corner of his eye. ‘The sun is coming up,’ he murmured.

‘Yes. Valuable working time is about to go to waste, eh?’ And there I was, thinking for a moment of keeping you alive. Letting you see me have my victory, day after day after day. Letting that be my revenge. But no. You’re too dangerous for that. He turned away.

‘Jehal.’

‘I am your speaker, Night Watchman. Address me properly or I’ll have your tongue cut out.’

‘Your Holiness.’ Vale sneered. ‘How many dragons went missing, Your Holiness?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I was too busy putting down Zafir. Ask the alchemists.’

‘The alchemists are largely dead, Your Holiness. The Adamantine Eyrie is gone. Look.’

Jehal squinted. All he could see was a thin haze of smoke that smothered everything. ‘I see nothing.’

‘I know. You were ever thus. The eyrie is gone. Your dragons are gone. Your palace is gone. Legions of my men are gone. Six hundred scorpions lined these walls last night. Perhaps a dozen have survived. We have more, of course. But we won’t get them ready in time to make a difference. Go back to your tunnels, Jehal. Live in the filth and the darkness where you belong. For what little time you can.’ He sighed. ‘No, Jehal, I did not win.’ He was staring at something behind Jehal’s shoulder.

Jehal spun to face him, furious. ‘That is the last…’ The words died in his mouth. Instinct made him follow the Night Watchman’s gaze. On the furthest corner of the palace, away towards the Mirror Lakes, a white dragon sat staring back at them, barely visible in the haze of smoke but clear nonetheless. Another smaller shape sat beside it. Dark. A young one. And then he saw another adult, and then another, squatting on the walls. As he watched, a fifth and then a sixth dragon glided silently out of the gloom and settled to watch. Then a seventh and an eighth. Three were hatchlings, barely out of the egg.

‘What are you waiting for?’ roared Vale, shattering the stillness and almost making Jehal jump out of his own skin.

I ought to run, Jehal thought. Right now. He glanced down towards the doors to the cathedral. A fit man, strong and agile, could get there in time. Pity that’s not me.

The young dragon moved. Sprang down from the wall and streaked like lightning through the rubble. Jehal had never seen anything move so fast. Hunting cats, maybe. And maybe a fit man couldn’t have reached the doors in time after all.

He was shaking. The dragon was a lot bigger than it had seemed over on the wall next to a full-grown adult. It ran up the side of a small half-toppled tower at the end of the wall in front of Vale, spread its wings and hissed.

Your fear is delicious, little one. The voice erupted out of nowhere inside Jehal’s head. His heart tripped and then hammered in his chest, and a cold settled over him like a blanket of snow, suffocating, silent and deathly. He stared at the dragons and the dragons stared back. He could see something different in their eyes, in the way they held themselves, even across the distance between them. The hunger and the desire, the impatience and the sheer raw force, they were all there just like any other dragon. But these had something else. They fixed him with their eyes and held him fast. There was a coldness to them. An intelligence. A relentless determination. He could feel them, feel them in his head, reckoning him.

The dragons stared, and in their gazes they showed him exactly what he was. Small and shallow and worthless. Crippled and useless. With two working legs, he might have tried to run anyway. As it was, all he could do was… nothing.

Where are your words now? How will people remember you, Jehal? Jehal the great? Jehal the brave? Jehal the strong?

The young dragon jumped from the tower and swooped. The Night Watchman held up the Adamantine Spear, let out a howl and charged to meet it.

Jehal the wise? Jehal the good?

The dragon and the Night Watchman came together. At the last instant Vale shifted impossibly sideways and kicked off the battlements. He was flying almost sideways through the air as he reached the dragon.

How will people remember you, Jehal?

‘Get out of my head!’ he screamed, yet the voice wasn’t anyone but himself.

The dragon’s jaws snapped. The Night Watchman’s spear flashed. And then they passed one another and both crashed to the ground. A shock of air and light knocked Jehal stumbling back. His good leg caught on a piece of tortured metal that had once been a scorpion. His bad leg buckled and he went down.

Jehal the cripple? No, you can’t hide behind that.

The Night Watchman’s spear was buried in the dragon’s skull. Just like the statue that had once stood in the centre of the City of Dragons. And, like the statue, the dragon was now stone. The Night Watchman was still moving. Just. He laboured ever so slowly to his feet. Jehal struggled to do the same.

If there’s anyone left, they’ll make jokes about you. Look at you, Jehal! Can’t even get up.

Vale rose shakily. For a moment Jehal couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong with him. Only for a moment, though, until he turned. The dragon had torn half of Vale’s face off. Vale staggered and made a loud wet hooting sort of noise. He reached the spear and pulled it out of the now-stone dragon, then turned to face the others. They didn’t move. Vale was swaying like a drunkard.

‘Kill them!’ Jehal screamed. ‘Use it! Kill them!’

Vale turned back to Jehal again. You couldn’t read much into his expression because his lower jaw wasn’t there. His eyes were wild. For a moment Jehal thought Vale was going to kill him. Then the Night Watchman threw the spear as hard as he could, a mighty throw, right across Speaker’s Yard and through the open gates of the Glass Cathedral. He staggered, lurched sideways, stepped off the edge of the wall and crashed into the rubble below.

Somewhere off to one side came the loose rattle of a ragged volley of scorpion bolts. In the haze the dragons launched themselves silently into the air – all except the white one, which stayed there, watching him. Jehal couldn’t move. Couldn’t even stand. He was on his knees, shaking like a kitten.