Stephen Deas - The adamantine palace

'Very well. We continue. The caves all come together. We'll find the alchemists and the soldiers they keep here.' Prince Jehal has done this. He must know why I'm here. He knows I've found out about his poisons. Well, I'll let the whole world know what he's been doing, and then no one will stand with him. Mother will be made speaker. She'll destroy him, and then Lystra will come home again.

Walking through the caves was slow and tedious. The lamps gave off barely enough light for them to see their own feet, and though the floor and the walls were smooth, the tunnels sloped steeply up in places. At times the cave became almost a chimney, rising vertically. Metal rungs had been hammered into the rock, but in dragonscale climbing them was almost impossible. Jostan dropped his lamp, which smashed to pieces on the floor. Then they reached a place so narrow that they had to abandon most of their armour. Jaslyn tried not to think how she must look, still in her gauntlets and helm and boots, the rest of her in plain doeskin, a bright red stripe across her face where the flamestrike had penetrated her visor.

It seemed like they spent half a day wandering through the cave, but at last, stopping to listen, they heard the rush of water somewhere ahead and she knew they were close. A few bends

later they saw light, the sound of the water grew louder, and the next thing she knew she almost pitched over the edge of a chasm. Semian's hand on her shoulder caught her just in time.

The alchemists had built their tunnels along the underground river, she knew that much. She got down onto her hands and knees and felt over the lip of the chasm until her fingers found what she was looking for: a ladder secured into the stone. The water was more than a hundred feet below, and the cleft in the rock so narrow that her back sometimes touched the other side as she climbed down the ladder.

At the bottom a walkway of wooden boards hung over the swirling river. Little niches were cut into the walls, and after ten minutes of walking, the niches had lamps in them, filling the chasm with their ghostly white light. Rider Jostan stopped at the first lit niche and took the lamp.

'Someone must have come this way to light these,' he said. 'We must be close.' Then he wrinkled his nose. 'Does anyone else smell something?'

|aslyn and Semian paused and sniffed the air. 'Smoke,' they both said. Jaslyn wasn't sure what to make of that. Smoke meant lire, and her first thought was dragons, but after all this walking they couldn't be so close to the entrances to the caves, could they?

The second thing she thought of was a kitchen firepit. She was hungry.

At a narrow point in the chasm, a little further on, they found the alchemists. The lamps stopped, the wooden walkway ended abruptly, and a voice from the darkness above challenged them.

'Who are you?'

'Rider Semian, Rider Jostan and Her Highness Princess Jaslyn, in the service of Queen Shezira,' shouted Semian. His voice echoed around the caves.

'Hold the lamps up so we can see your faces.'

Jaslyn hoisted her lamp. Her tongue twitched, prepared to lash out at these idiots who were getting in her way, but she stilled it. She was tired, hungry, covered in bruises and scrapes from countless stumbles and falls, and the burn across her face was hurting.

The smell of smoke was stronger.

After a second, lights appeared above them and she could see a cluster of armoured soldiers on a wooden platform. They threw down a rope ladder. When Jaslyn reached the top, she saw that they weren't just any soldiers; they were Adamantine Guardsmen.

'Your Highness.' Their captain bowed. Til send a man ahead of you so there are no more mistakes.' So that everyone knew she was coming, he meant.

'How many of the Guard are here?' she asked.

The captain bowed again. 'Before the attack there were close on a hundred of us, Your Highness. Now I'm not so sure.'

'A hundred? Then why are you here and not outside seeing off these dragons? There were only two of them!'

'Your Highness, we did fight, but the rider of the white dragon was too clever, and the black dragon…' He took a deep breath. 'Your Highness, there was no rider on the war-dragon. We formed shield walls against their fire, but they didn't stay in the air. The black one came down and smashed our walls. It was killing with tooth and claw and that murderous tail. We lost between a third and a half our number.'

'I had three dragons out there.'

The captain shook his head. He didn't say anything, but his eyes said that the dragons were lost to her now.

'What is it, Captain?'

The soldier sighed. 'Your Highness, your dragons are with the others now. They're trying to smoke us out.'

Turning the Knife

Sometimes Jehal felt he would burst. Sometimes his own cleverness seemed overwhelming. Hyram, Shezira, he'd played them both, and they still didn't even know how.

He dressed himself carefully. Two layers. On the outside he looked like an Adamantine Guardsman, with his heavy quilted coat and his colours and his helmet. If he took all that off, he might pass, in the dark, as a pot-boy. Pot-boys often ran errands at night. He knew; he'd sent Kazah off on enough of them, after all.

The moon was setting. He didn't know how late it was, except that he'd waited for more than half the night, and if he waited much longer he wouldn't have time to do what he wanted to do and be back before dawn.

He wrapped the white silk across his eyes for one last time and looked at Zafir, sleeping, through the tiny ruby eyes of his Taiytakei dragon. She was alone. Good enough.

No. He stared at her and then slowly undressed again. Too dangerous. Not until after tomorrow. Not until all the other kings and queens have gone. He didn't take the silk off, even once he was naked. Instead, he made the little metal dragon flutter across Zafir's room and settle beside her head. It pecked gently at her lace until she stirred. When she saw the dragon, she smiled.

'It's the middle of the night.'

The dragon nodded. As Zafir reached under her pillow for her own strip of silk, Jehal looked over his shoulder. Two ruby eyes glowed at him in the dark.

'You're naked,' she whispered.

'I wish you were.'

'I wish I could touch you.'

Jehal sighed. 'Soon, lover. When Hyram's out of the way.'

The smile faded from her face. 'The potions are already losing their effect.'

'That's not right. There should have been enough to keep him going for another month.'

'Yes. You gave him too much, so I've been stealing them and watering them down.'

'What?

Zafir rolled her eyes. 'I want it done and over, Jehal.'

Jehal growled. He started to pace the room. 'Why did you do that? He wasn't supposed to get sick again until this was all long done.'

'You ask me why?' Zafir sounded scornful. 'Do you have any idea how dirty all of this make me feel? Sometimes, after he's finished with me and goes back to his own bed, I make myself sick to force the nausea away.'

'But now you're speaker – unless you fuck it up in the next couple of days. Isn't that what you wanted?'

'No, Jehal, it's what you wanted. What I wanted was you. Hyram disgusts me. I have to writhe and groan and call him the king of my bed when all I want to do is break his neck. And he knows something now. I don't know how, but he knows something.' She frowned. 'Something he didn't know this morning. He was asking questions.'

'Questions?'

'About you. Someone's put it into his head that we might be lovers, Jehal. Of course he doesn't believe it, but he won't quite let go of it either. He's put men on my door. He was enough of a bore before; now he's intolerable. Get rid of him, my prince. I've had enough. You've got what you wanted, so now give me what I want.'