brow furrowed. 'Maybe she fell, or maybe she was pushed. Who knows? He did it, though. Either way, Prince Jehal has her blood on his hands. If he pushed her, I have to wonder why. Why would he do such a thing? If Aliphera had been here instead of me, what might have happened? Would Lord Hyram still have honoured his brother's pact? Of course he would. So I can't help but wonder what madness is going through the minds of those who suggest that Prince Jehal would have killed her to remove a possible alternative successor.' She was looking straight at Queen Shezira now. 'Or to guarantee his bride. Or to ensure that he would be speaker one day.'
The air chilled. It took Hyram a second or two to unravel what Zafir had said. By the time he'd worked it out, Shezira was already bright red.
'Who suggests?' she hissed.
Zafir shook her head. 'Utter madness. So perhaps Aliphera wasn't pushed; perhaps she simply fell, but I'll call him-' She coughed and gagged. 'I'll call him-'
She started to rise, slipped and fell to the floor, clutching at her throat. Whatever she was going to call Jehal, the dragon-kings and -queens never found out.
42
Poison and Lies
The Adamantine Eyrie was full. It was more than full. Makeshift pens had been set up out on the Hungry Mountain Plains, more for the herds of cattle to feed the dragons than for the dragons themselves. The speaker had laid out a tented village to shelter all the extra workers that had been drafted in. Some dragon-lords had also brought a few men of their own. And with the eyrie workers and the drivers and carters came the hangers-on, the traders, the fortune-tellers, the fortune-seekers, the thieves, the pickpockets and the desperate, all of them sucked out of the countryside, drawn in by the knowledge that wherever there were dragons, there was wealth. The tented village had grown into a a tented town long before the last dragon arrived. It was a crowded chaos where every other face was a stranger.
For two riders set upon a very private piece of business, it was perfect. They didn't look like riders; they looked like simple soldiers, sell-swords perhaps, or a pair of off-duty swordsmen of the Adamantine Guard. They moved with purpose through the stalls and traders, right to the heart of the makeshift town, certain that no one would recognise or remember them.
They were wrong. A boy, not quite a man, in a dull brown cloak and with a dirty face had been following them for quite some time, ducking and weaving through the throng. But the riders didn't know anything about that, not yet.
Near the centre of the market they stopped at a little table set up in front of a tiny tent barely large enough for a man to stand inside. There was a man there too, a strange fellow with uncommonly dark skin. The clothes he wore were tattered and faded, but they'd been rich and ornate once. Any gold and jewels were long gone; only a dazzling rainbow of feathers remained. The riders seemed unimpressed by his strangeness. The boy hung back and watched them all with an expression of puzzled interest.
A purse changed hands. A heavy one by the looks of it. The dark-skinned man vanished into his tent and appeared again a moment later. He held out a leather satchel. The taller of the two knights took it and they moved quickly away. Too quickly. Too quickly to be innocent at any rate. The boy followed them to the edge of the market and into a large beer tent. In the middle of the day there weren't many people inside. The boy glanced at the riders and then padded across the sticky straw floor and sat down at a table.
'Oi! You! Clear off!'
It took a while before the boy understood that the shout was meant for him. He didn't look up but fished in his pocket and put a silver quarter down on the table in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the two men he'd been following. The taller one reached into the satchel, took something out and stuffed it inside his coat.
'Where'd you get your grubby hands on a bit of silver then?'
The boy still didn't look up. Off to one side, the satchel had passed to the shorter of the two.
'Thieving, is it? Picked some rich pillock's pocket, did you?'
The tall one was getting up now. Leaving. The boy didn't move.
'Ah, what do I care.' A mug of something bitter-smelling landed in front of the boy, splashing across the table. The boy reached out and sipped at it. Eventually, the other rider got up and left. The boy followed. He eased closer this time, inching into the man's shadow until they were side by side. The boy waited for exactly the right moment.
He snatched the satchel from the rider's shoulder and dived down a narrow gap between the tents, skipping over the ropes that held them up. The man roared and gave chase, hurling himself after the boy, shouting and screaming for someone to stop him. The boy was the more agile of the two, but the rider was fast and strong and made a good show of keeping up. The boy led him away from the centre of the tented town and in among the cattle pens that surrounded it.
Away from the crowds, the boy turned a corner. Instead of running, he hunched down into a corner among the shadows. When the rider barrelled round a moment later, the boy let him pass and then stood up behind him.
It was done in an instant. The man's steps faltered as he wondered which way to go. A blade, blackened so it wouldn't catch the sun, flicked out of the boy's sleeve and into the rider's side in one fluid stroke. The boy was already running again before the man even knew he'd been stabbed.
The rider launched himself after the boy again. He took a few steps. His hand went to his side, and then he stopped. He looked at his hand and at the blood streaming out of him. Inside he was suddenly burning. He couldn't speak. The pain grew and grew, filling him up from his core to the tips of his fingers and toes, and yet he couldn't speak, couldn't move, couldn't even scream. Mercifully, when the pain reached his head, everything went white and then dark.
The boy dropped the knife and kicked it aside. He zigged through the maze of wooden pens out of caution, but no cry went up behind him. He sprinted. He'd chosen the place to murder the knight quite carefully, but now time was against him. He ran to the edge of the pens, to where another rider, this one in full dragonscale, was waiting with two horses. When Rider Semian saw the boy, he nodded and climbed into his saddle.
'Is it done?'
The boy gave a curt nod and mounted the second horse.
'What about the other one?'
'I recognised him. He's another one of Jehal's.' The boy threw off his cloak. When he took off his hat, long dark hair streamed out. He wiped the dirt off his face and suddenly wasn't a boy any more, but Lady Nastria, Knight-Marshal to the Queen of the North. 'Go! We need to be quick.'
Nastria wheeled her horse and pushed along the muddy paths between the pens, retracing her steps. As they got close to the dead dragon-knight, a couple of old women got up and ran away. They hadn't had time to steal much more than the dead man's purse, and Nastria didn't begrudge them that. The two dismounted and tied the body across the back of Nastria's horse. Together, they galloped towards the Adamantine Palace and the City of Dragons. As they drew close, Nastria dismounted again, put her peasant cloak and hat back on and led both horses up to the palace gates.
'Rider Semian, pledged to Queen Shezira,' declared the knight. The gate guards looked him up and down, took a good look at the body on the other horse, then nodded and let him pass. Nastria carefully stared at her boots. The guards barely noticed she was there at all.
They made their way to the Tower of Dusk in the western wall of the palace. There were many towers scattered through the palace, and each one had been given over to a different dragon-king or dragon-queen while the next speaker was being chosen. Queen Zafir resided in the Tower of Air. King Valgar had been given the Tower of Dawn on the eastern wall. King Tyan had the smallest of them, the Humble Tower. Kings Narghon and Silvallan had the Tower of Water and the City Tower over in the northern section of the palace. The Tower of Dusk had been given over to Queen Shezira. Nastria led the horses right up to the tower doors. Rider Semian opened them and they went in, dragging the body of the dead knight with them.
