The fingers gripping the knife relaxed. 'Money? How very tedious of you. Still, if you say you saved my life…'
'Not your money.' The mage seemed genuinely annoyed. 'The speaker's money. She offers her own weight in gold for each of the Red Riders. That is a tantalising prospect, is it not?'
'Oh, I don't know.' Jehal yawned. 'She's rather small and skinny.' He cocked his head. 'Anyway, if that's what you're after, you seem to have slipped into the wrong bedchamber, blood-mage. I do not appear to be the speaker.'
The mage uttered a soft laugh. 'Even if I abased myself before her throne, I could not be sure that Zafir wouldn't have me put to death simply for being what I am.'
'Zafir is nothing if not a pragmatist.' Now Jehal laughed as well. 'Ancestors! If Shezira was prepared to have a blood-mage around, well, the Edict of Vishmir might as well not exist.'
'Whatever else she is, Zafir is a daughter of the Silver City. Her blood and ours have a very old score to settle. As for Queen Shezira, she had no idea what I was.'
Which had to be true, and so it must have been Shezira's knight-marshal who'd found the blood-mage. A woman of true vision. Brave and bold and cunning and ruthless. Everything I have in Meteroa and more, and so fanatically, obstinately loyal. He sighed. Such a pity. Now, do I shout for the guards or not? Where are we going with this, blood-mage? There was still the knife, still quick and easy to hand.
'I want the Red Riders, Prince Jehal. They have served their purpose and now I want them gone. I can give them to you and you can give them to the speaker. You will get her gold and her favour. Half the gold you will give to me. The favour you can keep. By this we shall see that we can trust each other.'
Trust? Ha! 'Really. You can give them to me?' kithyr blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness. 'Really. Drotan's Top, Prince Jehal. When Valmeyan is safely back in his mountains. Sooner or later they will strike again at Drotan's Top. When they do they will be yours for the taking.' 'And if I don't?'
'Then the poison goes back in your blood, Prince, and you die.' 'I will be a king after this.'
Kithyr stood by the door. 'And at the speaker's right hand again, and neither will save you, Jehal. It's a simple enough thing that I ask. It costs you nothing and gains you a great deal.'
'That is true.' Jehal smiled and watched the mage go. Then he wiped his palm, lay back and stared at the ceiling. Very true. 'Sooner or later is somewhat vague, blood-mage. I might have deduced that for myself.'
'Yes, you might.' The voice wafted from across the room. 'Then how about this, Prince? In four weeks to the day they will strike again at Drotan's Top. Does that suit you better? I could have it be sooner, but I imagine you will need some time to prepare. I hope, when you see that I am right, you will understand with whom you are dealing and think long and hard about our other agreement.'
Jehal didn't answer. He heard the door whisper open and closed again. When he was sure he was alone, he breathed a deep sigh. His heart was racing.
'Yes,' he whispered to the night. 'Long and hard. I think I shall.'
He had to wait a long time before sleep came to him again. He felt alive, more alive than he had for weeks, more alive than he had since Hyram's fall. When he did finally sink into slumber, he was grinning.
31
Jaslyn left Evenspire as soon as politeness allowed. They barely said goodbye. She didn't tell Almiri where she was going; in fact, she didn't tell anyone. Jaslyn and Hyrkallan and the half a hundred dragons she'd brought with her to Evenspire. North towards home, for the sake of any prying eyes, high over the Blackwind Hills until they passed Fardale and Southwatch and the Last River. Up in the north there were no foothills, no grassy rolling slopes. Just ash and pale silver sand, rippling in giant waves until they crashed against the immense white and grey cliff faces at the edge of the Worldspine. No rivers, no trees, no grass, only ash and sand. Ash and sand. That's all there was to the north. Endless days of dead nothingness before the land slowly changed once more.
When they were well and truly out of sight, they parted ways. Most flew on, back to Outwatch, Southwatch and Sand. The places they belonged. Jaslyn, though, turned west, towards the Worldspine, with Hyrkallan and two others that he'd chosen beside them. Hyrkallan didn't like it, had sternly advised against it. Hyrkallan could go screw himself. In the safety of the deep dead peaks, they turned back south and began their long journey towards the sea. Little streaks of green began to appear in the valleys below, desperate little strips of life clinging to the shady spaces where a few tiny streams would flow on those rare days when the rain came. Out here even the mountain stones seemed bleached white by the heat. Then they crossed the deep gash that seemed to run like an open wound all the way as far as she could see, even into the immeasurable heart of the Spine. The valley of the Last River. The last water in the north, the blood of her realm that ran past the edge of the Blackwind Hills and Southwatch and Sand and all the little hot and dusty towns of Ishmar's Valley until it staggered away into the desert again and finally expired, if it was lucky, in the Lake of Ghosts.
She thought of turning west again, of launching herself even deeper into the Worldspine if only to see what she might find. She always thought of that when she came out here. The Worldspine was rumoured to be filled with hidden valleys, or else to rise up ever higher, until it touched the sky, so high even dragons couldn't pass over. Or else, some said that beyond the Spine lay other realms, another speaker, another palace, yet more dragons, a world a mirror of this one. Up here, this far north, no one would ever find her. The Worldspine belonged to the King of the Crags, or so they told her, but here, she was quite sure, it belonged to no one but itself.
Yes, a part of Jaslyn was minded to explore but that part would have to wait. For now, she had a duty to her sisters. To Almiri, who sat on her dead husband's throne, who was so still that she might have been a statue, whose face looked as brittle as fine glass. Almiri had not taken the news well, though it had hardly come as a surprise. Her husband and their mother, beheaded by a dozen soldiers. No one there to bear witness. No one to hear their last words. Their bodies hung in cages outside the palace instead of being fed to their dragons. And all Jaslyn could do was wonder: What if they were guilty? What if mother did kill Hyram? What if she did try to have Zafir murdered? Is it so unlikely? I wasn't there, I didn't see it all unfold, so how do I know it's not true?
And to Lystra, most of all to little sister Lystra. The last news was that the Viper was going to live after all. Which was a pity, and was what had finally convinced her to fly south and not north. She needed her sister. She needed Lystra to tell her who to fight. To tell her that Jehal was a monster to be slain. Or to tell her that she was wrong. Or, more simply, she needed Lystra to be there. Next to her. In the flesh, alive and breathing. To hug and hold and laugh and tell her that life was not quite so bleak as these mountains. So she stayed her course and watched the valleys below spring into timid uncertain life, still clinging to the great rivers and the few little streams that fed them. They stopped for a night in a valley looking down over the Blackwind River, four riders and four dragons, surrounded by emptiness. In the morning they flew on, steadily south, and as they came closer to the Purple Spur, it seemed as though a line of shadow speckled with stars crossed the spines and ridges of the mountains. Snowfields sprang up, the greens of the valleys thickened and filled with trees and rushing water. Valmeyan's realm. Hyrkallan guided them uneasily now, took them low into the valleys where there was little to see but the rush of trees below and snow-spattered cliffs to either side. But the mountains were empty; King Valmeyan's dragons were ensconced around the Mirror Lakes, slowly eating their way through the speaker's cattle.
They reached the abyss of the Gnashing Snapper Gorge, where the immense mass of the Fury roared through the depths of the Worldspine. Hyrkallan tipped B'thannan's wings and they dived into it, down deep between black slabs of rock only a few dragon-spans apart. Jaslyn's ears popped and throbbed. The world became as dark as night as they fell and the air filled with spray and the thunder of rushing water. As Hyrkallan slowly levelled his descent and skimmed across the black waters, Jaslyn looked up. Far above her, the sky had gone so dark that she could see stars.
Slowly the gorge widened out. The river slowed and they passed the startled eyes of Hanzen's Camp, the last stop for even the most adventurous boats plying the Fury River. They stopped for a second night not far away on the edge of the Worldspine, a hundred miles east of Drotan's Top and then drifted up again with the dawn, veering a little eastwards but still flying south, out over the swathes of rolling green that were the Raksheh, the
