how much that hurt. The last he saw was the harness, coming back down for Vish. The whole floor was shaking now. He could taste dust in the air.
Sounds of something smashing, of stones shattered and falling. Where the covered canal had fed into the wall, where Jex and Relk and the others had been only a moment ago, Skjorl saw a patch of darkness that wasn’t quite black. Stars. He was seeing stars. He was seeing the sky.
Then something blotted them out. Filled the hole. And as he looked away, the fire started.
5
Twenty-three days before the Black Mausoleum
‘He can’t walk.’ The Adamantine Man was looking down at Rat, his face saying loudly that he couldn’t care less.
‘Then you have to carry him.’
‘What’s the point? He’ll be dead in a few days.’ He did what he was told, though: he picked the outsider up and slung him over his shoulder. Rat groaned.
‘No. You’re going to keep him alive just like you’re going to keep me alive. We need him.’
‘To do what?’
Kataros ignored him. He was obedient — that was all that mattered — and she’d never said anything about not asking questions. ‘How do we get out of here without being caught?’ The Adamantine Man shrugged. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No.’
She thought about that for a few seconds. While she thought, the Adamantine Man stood in the middle of the cell with Rat over his back. He didn’t do anything; he just stood there, waiting. ‘We’ll have to find someone who does, then,’ she snapped at him. Think. Think! The Pinnacles were surrounded by dragons. Back in the days of the speakers, when Queen Zafir had lived here, people had landed them on the tops of the peaks, but there were other ways in. There were passages and tunnels down to the ruin of the Silver City — Kataros knew that because that was how they’d brought her here in the first place.
She’d have to find someone else, someone who knew the ways. She’d have to make another blood-bond. Some of the alchemists under the Purple Spur had quietly been getting a lot of practice at that. There, like here, you survived as best you could. Every day you ate, someone else didn’t. But not her. If she bound someone else, she might have to let this one go. There’d be consequences to that.
The Adamantine Man sniffed. ‘Actually, I do know a way,’ he said. ‘As long as it’s dark. Up and out the side.’
‘Up?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want me to climb down the side of the mountain? They’re sheer cliffs out there! And how are you going to carry him?’
He was shaking his head. ‘No climbing. It’s easier than that.’ He frowned. ‘It’s like flying, I suppose. But not on the back of a dragon.’
She reached through the blood-bond, looking for the trick, for the deception, for the twisting of her demand, but there was nothing. He believed what he was saying.
‘It’s supposed to be a way down to the Silver City.’
‘ Supposed to be? You mean you don’t know?’
He shrugged. ‘I know what I’ve heard, and what I’ve heard is there’s a way. You fly like a bird. I’ve not done it, but I’ve heard how.’
She looked a second time. He still meant every word.
‘Once you leave, you can’t come back. So they don’t guard it,’ he said.
‘Show me.’ Like a bird? Was that possible? How did a man grow wings?
‘Do you know what it’s like in the Silver City?’
‘No.’ She shook her head and she didn’t care. They’d go where they had to, and that was that.
‘You’re an alchemist. Do you know how to make a potion so a dragon doesn’t know where you are?’
‘Yes. What of it?’
‘Got any on you?’
She looked down at herself. A robe, torn and dirty, and that was it. ‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘Well, since there’s dragons down there, we’ll most likely die then.’
6
Eight months before the Black Mausoleum
After the darkness, the brilliance of the flames pouring from the mouth of the canal was blinding. Skjorl couldn’t look. Couldn’t think. Was just thankful he could see again, could see where his feet were landing. Could run. That was all that mattered. Getting away. Everything else came later, if it came at all, with the dazed knowing that you were still alive.
The mouth of the canal was about the size of a dragon’s head. The rest wouldn’t fit. It would have to smash its way in. He had time. Time to get away.
Jex had been up there. Relk, Marran, Kasern. All dead. A snap of fate’s fingers and gone, just like that.
A storm of warm air tore at his clothes. The dragon was too far away to hurt him. Yet. He tried to think about where each foot was going, in between the chaos of broken stones and dragon eggs. Just that. Nothing else.
Then he saw the second one. Down in the cisterns. A huge wriggling shape, a shadow in the distant haze, weaving between the columns. Saw a flicker of it, hundreds of yards away, coming towards him before the fire from the first dragon stopped, plunging them all back into darkness. Jasaan and Vish? He had no idea where they were, whether they were alive.
He kept moving. The alchemists said that dragons talked in your head sometimes, but he’d never had that. Kill, eat, burn, that’s all a dragon was.
The ground shook again, now with the crash of tumbling stone. That was the dragon worming its way towards him, given up on not smashing down the columns that held the cisterns together. A mad grin swept across his face. Maybe they’d all end up buried alive. Entombed together. A fitting end for an Adamantine Man.
His foot caught on something. Hurled forward, he curled up before he even hit the ground, rolled and let his armour take the impact. First thing he did when he was back on his feet was check the pouches of dragon poison wrapped around him. Instinct, that was. There wasn’t much else you could do about a dragon except be eaten, and there wasn’t much point in that unless you were going to take the monster with you. All burn together, him from the outside, the dragon from within. What else was the point?
Thing was to get to an edge, a wall, somewhere that would give shelter when the roof came down. Then hunker down and pray.
Shudders rippled through the ground. More tumbling stones and the cisterns lit up with fire again. He didn’t look back, took what he could get and sprinted. There was no running from dragons, but that didn’t stop a man wanting to try, not when there was one right behind you.
A deeper rumble shook the earth. The dragon behind him roared. The stones answered. A huge hand of air plucked Skjorl off his feet and threw him across the floor, bouncing between dragon eggs. He thumped into a step and cracked his head hard enough to make the world waver, even through his helmet. He blinked hard. Everything went dark again. The fire had stopped. The air was ripe with dust, rich with the smell of falling masonry and the
