Inside, several other of Queen Shezira's riders were waiting. As soon as the doors closed behind him, Nastria threw off her disguise again. She pointed at the body. 'Get that down to the cellars. Where's the queen?'
'The queen is with the speaker.'
The riders parted as Lady Nastria pushed between them. Two reluctantly picked up the body by its arms and legs. 'Your Ladyship, this man isn't dead.'
Lady Nastria paused and frowned. 'Just get him down there. Let Master Kithyr know that he's needed.'
The knights exchanged nervous glances. Nastria shooed them down the stairs. In the wine and food cellars they cleared a heavy wooden table and laid out the body. Nastria looked him over. They were right. The man wasn't quite dead after all.
She slapped his face. 'Can you hear me, traitor?'
The man didn't move, so Nastria moved around him and jabbed a finger into the wound in his side. This time he moaned and opened his eyes.
'Hurts, does it?' She pushed her finger further in. The man wailed and screwed up his face. 'Rider Tiachas. A few months ago, you flew your dragon out of Outwatch with your two other brothers in treachery to the edge of the Barnan Woods. You took them to meet some outlaws. They went to buy something. You took them to the edge of the woods and they never came back. Do you know what happened to them? They were killed. I paid a pair of sell-swords to do it. I often wondered what went through your mind when they didn't come back. Were you afraid? And then, slowly, as the weeks turned into months and no one came for you, there must have been hope. Pointless, useless hope, Tiachas, because there's always been someone watching you. Can you hear me?' She wiggled her finger and Tiachas squealed. 'All I want to know, Tiachas, is who poisoned your soul. I was there, just now, when you bought the poison from that Taiytakei clown. I saw you with Prince Jehal's man. Was it Jehal, then?' She forced open his eyes and held out the satchel. 'What is this, Tiachas? Some sort of poison? Did Jehal pay you to murder our queen?'
Tiachas rolled his head from side to side. His tongue lolled out of his mouth. Blood was pouring freely from the wound in his side again, pooling on the floor under the table. Noises bubbled in his throat, but if he was trying to speak, the sounds made no sense.
No? Are you trying to tell me that I'm wrong?' Nastria pulled a knife out of her belt and started to toy with it. 'I don't think I believe you, Tiachas, but I don't mind. You're trying to pretend you still have some courage and honour, and that's a good thing.
So I'll humour you. All I want to know is who, Tiachas. Who bought you?'
The head-shaking intensified.
'I will torture you, Tiachas, and you will tell me. And when you have, I will parade what's left of you in front of every court in the realms before I hang you. I will destroy your family, root and branch. They will lose everything, and they will hate you because you were the traitor who brought this down on them. Do you understand?'
Tiachas lunged at her, but he was feeble and slow, and Lady Nastria moved easily out of the way. The pair of riders caught him and held him down before he could roll off the table.
Nastria turned away. 'Let him go, and leave us. Please encourage Master Kithyr to hasten himself.'
The riders released Tiachas. They seemed uneasy and left slowly. Nastria watched them go.
'You know what disturbs them so, don't you? No, perhaps you don't. Master Kithyr is not a torturer but a blood-mage. So you will tell me what I want to know. And if you were hoping to die before I found out what I wanted, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed there too.'
Nastria walked slowly around the cellar. Everything here had been laid in by Speaker Hyram's stewards for Queen Shezira and her knights. Hyram must have done the same for all the dragon-kings and -queens. How easy it would it be to poison an entire clan.
She put that thought aside. No speaker in two hundred years had murdered a guesting king or queen, and she doubted Hyram was about to start. She selected a bottle of wine, opened it and poured some for herself. Eventually she heard Kithyr padding across the stones towards her, but she didn't look round.
'Tiachas is a tool,' she said softly. 'I want to know who the craftsman was.'
It took the sorcerer an hour. There weren't even any screams, but then that was always the way with Master Kithyr. Always quiet. Throughout it all Nastria didn't look round. She stood statue-still, sipping at her wine, and by the end the bottle was empty. She didn't feel even slightly drunk. Instead she felt cold. Blood-magic. Another necessary evil. Like sell-swords.
When the blood-mage was done, she heard him padding softly back towards her.
'Well? Am I right? Was it Jehal?'
'No,' whispered the sorcerer. 'The Taiytakei.'
She thought about that for a while. The mage didn't move.
'He met one of them, who gave him something,' said Lady Nastria after a while. 'A flask. Filled with liquid silver. Like the last one. I still want to know what it is and what it's for.'
'Ask your alchemists. There are plenty of them. You know there's only one liquid that is of interest to me, and it is not silver in colour.' She could hear the sorcerer's disdain.
Nastria spat. 'Every time I do that I lose another alchemist. Huros, Bellepheros…' A second of silence passed between them.
'What should I do with the body?' asked the sorcerer. 'Shall I leave it here?'
'No, Master Kithyr. Make it go away. Where no one will ever find it.'
She sighed as the sorcerer went about his work. So much for parading her traitor in public. It simply wasn't the same when all you had was a collection of bits.
43
A Crack in the Stone
High above the city, perched on a tiny plateau of rock overlooking the top of the Diamond Cascade valley, Hyram and Queen Shezira stood side by side, watching the water rush by hundreds of yards beneath their feet.
'Queen Zafir. How is she?' Shezira stood inches from the edge. Hyram was even closer. The tips of his boots were actually sticking out into the void. One good push and both of them would be dead.
'Recovering well.'
'That's good to hear. So was she poisoned or wasn't she?'
'She's been a little unwell of late.'
Shezira cocked her head. 'A little? Hyram, when she collapsed everyone thought she was dead.'
'She choked. That's all.'
'Well then I'm sorry for you that she ruined what was left of your feast.'
Hyram laughed. 'We both know it was ruined already. When Queen Zafir collapsed, most of you couldn't get out of my hall fast enough. She was doing you all a favour. Giving you a polite excuse to leave.'
'Very kind of her, I'm sure.' Shezira swayed slightly as a gust of wind whistled along the valley. 'I would prefer to return to the pavilion now.'
Hyram didn't move. 'This always used to be one of my favourite places when I was younger. You can see right across the realms from up here.'
'I prefer to be on dragonback.'
'I know. But standing here is a reminder of how far the likes of you and I can fall. One missed step and we plunge to our dooms. It's been more than two years since I came here, you know. I couldn't stand like this when I was sick; I would have fallen.'
'Hyram, when we ride we wear harnesses to secure us to the backs of our dragons so we cannot fall, no matter what we do. That is what the dragons do for us. We can be as foolish as we like and our dragons will save us.'
'They didn't save Aliphera. Or Antros.'
'They won't save anyone who refuses to wear a harness.' Shezira turned away. 'If you stand there on the edge for long enough, Hyram, you will fall. Learn from your brother's mistake.'
