known anything about any red rider. Vale gently bit his tongue and watched the blood-mage carefully. I knew Nastria and she was no fool. She pointed you out to me once. There, she said. There goes my pet blood-mage. Do you know why I keep one? But she never said. What bargain did you make with her? What did you offer that she would deal with the likes of you? And Zafir? Does she even know what you want?
Suddenly he didn't care any more. He took the speaker by the arm. 'Since you ask me to have opinions, Your Holiness, then I have one for you. Enough of this. I will stand before the council of kings and queens and tell them what I have heard. I would have done that anyway. Had you given me a script, I would have repeated it aloud. We are yours, Your Holiness. We serve without question.' Vale laughed bitterly. 'Look at the man! He'll be a corpse before nightfall if he's not already and he's not lying to you. There is no ghost, only a ragtag band of dragon-riders that your lover has destroyed, and I will not stand here in this stink for another five minutes when I could be breathing fresh air. There is much to do. I hope you are as ready as we are for what your dragon-war will bring.'
Zafir shook him off. She gave him another strange look that he couldn't decipher. 'If you serve me, Night Watchman, do so by being silent. I begin to see why I preferred you as you were.'
She made him wait through all five of those minutes and another five besides before she gave up. The rider didn't know anything. No one wore red. Hyrkallan had purloined the name as something of a joke and then he'd left them. After that, the ringleader was a religion-obsessed rider who wasn't related to anyone important. Semian. Vale had met him, once, maybe twice, and the man had barely exhibited powers of conversation, let alone anything strange, mystical or apocalyptic.
Finally, finally, she gave up, although Kithyr promised she would hear the testimony of other 'survivors' if she wished. They hurried out of the tunnels under the Glass Cathedral, leaving the blood-mage and the torturers and whatever other forsaken breeds of men lived down there behind them.
'Tichane,' she snapped at Vale as they emerged into the night. 'Get me Prince Tichane.' In the lantern light she looked flushed and breathless. 'No.' She stopped. For a long time she stared at him, almost right through him. He a was full foot taller that her, twice as wide and probably three times her weight, yet that gaze made him feel small and insignificant.
'No,' she said, more quietly this time. 'As you were, Vale Tassan. Send for Prince Tichane. Walk with me.'
She crossed briskly to the Tower of Air and climbed the steps two at a time all the way to the top. At the entrance to her rooms, Vale hesitated. Zafir beckoned him on. She left doors open behind her as she walked in, stripping off her clothes, waving orders to the servants who tended her. Vale took a deep breath and followed. This wasn't right. This was no way for a speaker to behave. There had been speakers and Night Watchmen who were lovers before. No good ever came of it. And I do not desire you, woman. I would rather have one of the whores that make their homes around our barracks. At least I know they are clean.
By the time he caught up with her, she was naked. 'Your Holiness…'
She turned and smiled at him. 'I did not give you leave to speak, Night Watchman. But I do wonder why it is that whenever a man sees a woman undress, he always assumes so very much?' She stepped past him into a room where the air smelled of warm damp and spices. A bath was waiting for her. Her smile never faltered. 'When Tichane comes to me, I would rather smell of sweet perfume than have that grave-mould of the tunnels hanging from me. But I need you to linger a while. Dismiss my servants. Examine my rooms and make sure they are empty. Then come to me.'
Vale did as he was told. 'We are alone,' he growled. 'Now close the door.'
Vale did that too. He clenched his fists as Zafir stretched herself out in from of him. Her legs were long and athletic. There was strength there, he thought. Speed too.
'You look uncomfortable, Night Watchman.'
Vale bowed. Silently he took a deep breath and counted slowly to ten.
'King Jehal did very well to rid me of the Red Riders, don't you think?'
Vale nodded. 'Yes.' Suspiciously well. 'One wonders how he was able to succeed when others have failed for so long. Clearly he is possessed of unusual tactical acumen.' Yes. Clearly.
'As soon as he returns with his dragons, we go to war with Evenspire. That probably means we go to war with Queen Jaslyn as well. Are you ready?'
He nodded once more and started counting to ten again. Stop exposing yourself to me, woman!
'King Jehal kept nearly all the spoils of the fight. Even those dragons that used to be mine. I believe my riders accounted for a third of his force, yet they returned with three captured beasts and report that Jehal took twelve. That is hardly equitable.'
This was old news. Vale kept his face carefully expressionless and waited for whatever was coming.
'Why do you think he would do such a thing?'
Vale took a deep breath. 'I could not say, Your Holiness. I could not even guess.'
Zafir smiled and stretched her arms and yawned. 'Be sure you're very ready, Night Watchman. King Jehal has asked a favour of me concerning you. Did you know that?'
'It is expected.'
'He would like to do a lot worse than put you in a cage.'
The feeling is mutual. 'I exist only to serve Your Holiness. From within a cage or without.'
'I will not let him have you, Vale. I don't quite know if I can trust him. But still, should he come here and I am for some reason indisposed, I have orders for you. You are to accommodate him. You are to honour him as king and as an ally to the speaker's throne. You will let him in, Night Watchman. If I am missing or dead, you will let him in. You will treat him exactly as if he was my husband, Vale. Is that clear?'
Vale kept his face still, but inside he grinned. 'As your husband, Your Holiness.' And we all remember what happened to the last one, don't we?
'Good. Now go away. I need to be at my best for Prince Tichane. I gather he has been visiting the Syuss, of all people. Imagine! One wonders what in the realms they could have found to interest him.' She smiled blandly. 'Yes, indeed. One wonders.'
41
Morning Sun flew a lazy circle over the fields and towers of Out-watch and then slowly came in to land. When the earth stopped shaking, as Jaslyn slid down from his shoulders and jumped to the ground, she wondered for a moment whether it was her. Whether she was somehow cursed. Today should have been her wedding day. Not exactly the joyous celebration she might have wanted, but at least it could have been over and done with. Prince Dyalt of Bloodsalt would have been hers, and she his. The throne of sand and stone and the throne of salt, united. Tied by blood.
Unfortunately, someone had emptied most of Prince Dyalt's blood into the desert. And that had been the end of that.
No one was here to welcome her. No one was supposed to be. She walked across the baked and blasted earth towards the tower. When she'd left Morning Sun well behind, a pair of Scales scurried out from wherever they hid and ran to tend to the dragon. Jaslyn stopped to watch them. She felt deliciously exposed. Flat open ground all around her, open skies above, no guards, no soldiers, only dragons.
Dumb, drugged, stupid dragons. She knew it all. Strictly she was still a mere princess since she hadn't gone to the Adamantine Palace and had the speaker put a crown on her brow. But only the most desperate of her enemies denied her title now. The old Queen of Sand and Stone was dead and the north needed a new one. It wanted a king too, and a few heirs to match. What she wanted, it seemed, was neither here nor there. She'd wondered for a while whether she might merge her realm with Almiri's. They could rule together, two sisters side by side. As far as Jaslyn was concerned, Almiri could have had it all.
They were leading Morning Sun away as though he was some giant winged pony, Sometimes her heart seemed to weep for them, for what the alchemists had done to them. There had to be another way, didn't there? Or could men and dragons never live without one being enslaved to the other?
