he'll be much help.'
'That was pretty good, though.' The short one grinned again. Kemir. 'The white one forgot she had a rider for a moment there. If he'd been any slower jumping clear when she rolled…' He drew his finger across his throat. 'Pity, really. I would have pissed myself. Still, we don't want all our luggage crushed, do we.'
Huros shook himself. Words, he reminded himself. He was going to have words with someone. And these two were very rude. And he was Master Huros, thank you very much. They looked a bit big, though. And armed. He bit his tongue. 'Um. Of course. Although… Excuse me, but where have the rest of the dragons gone, exactly?'
'Their riders have taken them hunting,' said the tall one. Sollos. He gave Huros a pitying look and shook his head.
'For food,' added Kemir. Yes. When the knights came back, Huros would have words about these two as well. What are they even doing here?
'Can't have them getting hungry. Never know, they might set their minds to snacking on alchemists.' The two sell-swords were leering and shaking their heads. Every day Huros spent at least some of his time with ravenous monsters who could swallow him in a blink, kept only in check by their training and by the subtle potions that he dripped into their drinking troughs. These two, though, made him far more nervous that any dragon ever had.
'Um. Clearly. I meant the other ones. The rest of them. Where's the queen?'
The sell-swords looked at each other and shrugged. 'Keep an eye on the Scales,' said Sollos. 'That's what we were told. We keep an eye on the riders too. In case any of them get any bad ideas about stealing the queen's dragons.' He grinned and stuck out his bottom lip. 'Where the rest of them went…' He shrugged. 'Don't know, don't care. A clever man might hazard a guess that they flew off to the Adamantine Palace, just like they were supposed to. But you're an alchemist, so I suppose that must mean you're a clever man, and you'd already thought of that.'
'Well… But why… why didn't we?'
The tall one sniggered. 'I don't know. Maybe some unsettling news came of late. Maybe your queen doesn't trust your speaker further than she could throw him. I hear he's grown quite large of late. Or maybe we don't know shit.' The sell-swords looked at each other again.
'Did anyone say anything about keeping an eye on alchemists?' asked the short one. The tall one shook his head. Sollos, Huros reminded himself again. His name was Sollos. He seemed to be the one in charge.
'I don't think so.'
'No, I didn't think so either.'
Sollos smiled what was possibly the most menacing smile Huros had ever seen. 'We're just sell-swords. We do as we're told and go where we're sent. No one gives us reasons, and we don't ask for them. Why don't you bother that rider over there, once he's finished laying into your Scales. I'm sure he'll know more than us. As long as you don't expect him to help with the luggage. In the meantime do you think you might help us? I believe some of it could be yours.'
The short one nodded sagely. 'It's the stuff at the bottom, I think. It might have been a bit squashed. Crushed even.' He looked at the other sell-sword. 'Come to think of it, did you see something leaking out of one of those boxes?'
His potions!
Huros ran towards the river as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn't need to look back to know that the sell-swords were laughing at him.
A shadow crossed the sun. Huros stopped and looked up. There were dragons in the sky, diving towards the river. Four of them, which was at least one dragon more than there should have been. And they were hunting dragons, not war-dragons, which meant…
The lead dragon opened its mouth, and the river exploded in fire.
7
The Glass Cathedral
Being alone on Mistral's back was one of the nice things about being queen. All the dragon-knights had to share their mounts with the gaggle of courtiers from her palace, the mob of extra hedge-knights that Lady Nastria insisted on bringing and of course the alchemists and the Scales from the eyrie. Not to mention all the luggage.
Shezira sighed. Everything seemed so small from up in the sky. Over her shoulder, to the west of the realms, the volcanic Worldspine mountains ran from the sea to the desert and, as far as Shezira knew, on to the ends of the world. North of Shezira's eyrie, the dragon lands faded into the trackless Deserts of Sand, Stone and Salt. At the opposite end of the realms, King Tyan's capital was built on the shore of the endless Sea of Storms. When she stood among the mountains or in the emptiness of the desert, everything seemed so unimaginably vast. Yet from up here it was all nothing.
'I hear whispers of lands across the seas,' she whispered to Mistral. 'So do you suppose those are King Tyan's secrets, just like the mystery of what lies beyond the Desert of Stone is ours, eh?'
She sighed again and tried to peer around Mistral's enormous head. Somewhere down there…
South of King Valgar's eyrie the peaks of the Purple Spur reached out into the heart of the dragon realms. Nestled in their far foothills, surrounded by the waters of the Mirror Lakes, lay the Adamantine Palace. Shezira had landed among its ramparts often enough; still, even now, the first sight of it, gleaming and sparkling like distant treasure in the summer sun, was enough to make her heart skip a beat whenever she saw it.
There! A twinkle, right at the foot of the last mountain. And sure enough a thrill ran through her, as though she was twenty years younger.
Sparkle it might, she thought to herself. For it was a treasure. It was a prize, a symbol of power. It was a place where marriages were brokered and alliances sealed, where kings and queens plotted their paths to greatness. It was the centre, the beating heart of the realms.
Above all, it would be hers. Soon.
She led her flight to circle around the palace eyrie, waiting for the signal to land. She'd forgotten how immense it all was.
'Do you like it?' She patted Mistral on the neck.
A gout of fire from below told her they were ready. She let Mistral plunge through the air. Like most dragons, he seemed to like that, dropping like a stone from among the clouds. Every time, she was sure he'd misjudge and they'd smash into the stone, but always, just as she screwed up her face and closed her eyes, there would be a clap of thunder as he spread his wings. The force crushed the air out of her lungs and made the ground quiver. She loved it.
As she slid from Mistral's shoulder, Hyram was there to greet her. His shaking, she noticed, had become much worse over the months since she'd last seen him.
'Y-You're going to h-have an accident one d-day.'
It was hard not to grin, but the business of being queen was a serious one, and moments of levity were strictly out of the question. In public at least. She bowed. Hyram held out a trembling hand and Shezira kissed the ring on his middle finger. Her ring, soon.
'Speaker Hyram. It is a delight to be in your presence again.'
He nodded brusquely and waved over some of his attendants. He and Shezira walked in silence away from the eyrie, the attendants following. Mouth-watering words gushed from their lips, describing the pleasures of the mind and of the flesh that awaited her, but Shezira barely heard them. It should be Hyram telling me these things, not his courtiers. Has the sickness become so bad that it s robbing him of his speech? How long before he can t even walk any more?
Carriages were waiting to take them to the palace. Then they had to wait for Jaslyn and Lystra and Lady Nastria and the other riders Shezira had brought with her, and after that there were endless rituals and formalities to observe, and then the obligatory feast to honour guests, none of which interested Shezira at all. At least Hyram had put some effort into it. Tiny alchemical lamps festooned the vast spaces of the Chamber of Audience. There
