spear died, plunging him into darkness absolute. He hardly noticed. There was no mistake. The spear had a power to it all right. Something hard and bright and unbelievably immense, buried deep within it, so deep that Kithyr wasn’t sure that anyone would ever get it out. Something that would surely consume whoever woke it. He was like a moth, drawn to the light of a lantern and suddenly gifted with a full understanding of the fire that lay at its heart. Fire and moths. He shivered and sucked his finger until it stopped bleeding. Cursed. That’s what it was. That or it was the most powerful thing in the world.
Fire and moths. He could feel his hunger for it even so. Raw unthinking craving.
Quickly, before he could change his mind, he wrapped the spear in a blanket of black silk, smothering his hunger as he smothered the silver. He climbed softly back up the stairs and reached out his senses into the Speaker’s Tower. The Chamber of Audience was still empty. The guards standing outside were still asleep. He slipped between them and pulled the darkness of the night around him like a cloak, hugging it to his chest. A faint light seemed to creep out of the spear again, out of its silk wrapping as if it knew his purpose and was trying to betray him. He felt his heart beating as he ran. He was exposed. A hundred guards walked the walls around him, above him, looking down on him. They must see me. They must…
They didn’t. He slipped from the Speaker’s Yard into the Fountain Court and then into the Gateyard. He stopped by the stables there to catch his breath, to tell himself his fear was foolish. The guards on the walls wouldn’t see him. Their eyes were cast towards the City of Dragons and the black mass of the Purple Spur beyond, looking for dragons. On a night like this they’d be pressed to see even one of those. I’m afraid of my own fear, jumping at shadows… That wasn’t right. He was a blood-mage. He had the power to literally rip men apart, to turn them inside out. He could barely even remember the last time he’d been afraid.
Was it the spear?
No. Whatever was inside it had been asleep for a long time and slumbered still. Awake, an edge of fear was the least it would bring.
He waited until his breathing eased. His heart still pounded, but that was good. That meant blood flowing fast, that his power was at its strongest.
In the stables he had a horse already saddled. He mounted and crossed the Gateyard. People would see him now, or if they didn’t, they would hear him. That was to be expected. Under his skin, blood shifted, sculpted, arranged his features in subtle new ways. When he reached the gates, the Adamantine Men were already coming out of their guardhouse. They shone lanterns in his face and peered at him.
‘Who’s there?’
Kithyr threw back his hood. The face they saw now was that of alchemist Grand Master Jeiros. A fitting disguise, Kithyr thought. One that amused him, alchemists and blood-mages viewing each other as they did.
‘Grand Master.’ The soldiers bowed. They looked a little confused.
‘The gate, if you please,’ mumbled Kithyr. His face was that of the alchemist, but his voice was his own. He was counting on the soldiers not knowing the difference.
‘We are at war. The gates are closed at night,’ said one of the soldiers. Presumably he was the one in charge. Kithyr pulled a flask out of his cloak and held it out to the man.
‘Cold night eh?’ he muttered.
The man looked askance at the flask. Then he shrugged, accepted it and took a swig. ‘Still can’t open the gates at night. Night Watchman’s orders for as long as the speaker’s away.’ The soldier wiped his lips on his sleeve and handed back the flask. Kithyr waited a few seconds. The liquid in the flask was mostly brandy, as strong and as vicious a spirit as he could find. What wasn’t spirit was blood. His blood. He waited and then he felt the connection form, felt himself reaching inside the soldier.
‘I am Jeiros,’ he said softly. Who he sounded like didn’t matter any more. ‘Even now, I may pass. That is my authority.’
The soldier nodded. ‘Very well. Open the gate.’
His men looked confused and didn’t move. ‘Sir?’
‘Come on, lads! This isn’t just anyone. This is the grand master himself, and that makes him the man who gives the orders around here until the speaker returns. So if he wants to go out moonlighting into the city in the middle of the night, who are we to stop him?’ The soldier leered. Annoying.
‘I have business of the realms, man. If I wanted whores I’d have them sent.’ There’s no love lost between the Adamantine Men and the alchemists either, he reminded himself. Tolerate it. We’ll soon be gone.
The gates started to open. Kithyr feigned patience. One of the guards was missing. The soldier hadn’t gone back into the gate-house either. A silver to a copper he’d gone to wake up the Night Watchman. Kithyr offered his flask around to the other soldiers while he waited. A few of them took it, which would help if it came to a fight. Others looked at him with a deep suspicion and shook their heads. As soon as the gate was open enough, Kithyr kicked his horse into a canter. He was out of the palace in a flash, on his way down the hill to the City of Dragons. He didn’t linger. The Night Watchman had a suspicious, devious and thorough sort of mind and wasn’t the sort to let little things slide. He’d come down to the gate. It was entirely possible that he’d go and bang on the grand master alchemist’s door even in the middle of the night just to make sure he was really gone. Kithyr might have hours or days or he might have a mere handful of minutes before his deception was unmasked. Once that happened, they’d know him for what he was. There was only one way for even a grand master alchemist to be in two places at once. The cry would rise up. Blood-mage! And the hunt would begin.
He had long enough, though. Long enough to get from the palace to the City of Dragons. Long enough to leave his horse in the stables of an inn. Long enough to hide the spear under the straw, change into some clothes that were hidden in the saddlebags of the next horse along and walk a street or two to the house of a wealthy grain merchant. Long enough to knock on the servants’ entrance and be let inside by a man he’d enslaved months ago. Half the merchant’s house was under his power now. The other half had no idea who or what he was. He was just another assayer, a man who occasionally weighed out their grain and checked their measures.
‘Master weigher.’ A man stirred from where he’d been dozing by the kitchen fire. This one didn’t move and bow like the servant, and his eyes cut the gloom like knives.
‘Master Picker,’ murmured Kithyr. ‘It’s done. Go, if you want to see it.’
The Picker grumbled something and unfolded himself from his chair. He went outside without another word. In the morning Kithyr would find the spear again. He would take it, wrapped in its silk, and in King Jehal’s city he would hand it over for what the Picker and the Taiytakei had promised him they would bring. The power of the Silver King himself. For the spear, they said, that power could be his. Years of planning. Years of learning. Years of preparation, and only one last chasm to cross.
Between here and Furymouth, there was the small matter of a dragon-war in the way.
The Eyrie-Master
We are the masters of the dragons, no matter what the kings and queens of the realms might think. They sit in their palaces and wallow in their decadence and toss out their decrees and edicts, but without us they are nothing.
We hold the keys to their power and they know it. We are their slaves and their puppets and their eyes are ever watching us, for they all, deep down, wonder the same thing: Who does my eyrie-master truly serve? Is he bound to the alchemists as his position demands? Has he been bought by my enemies? Or is he mine, owned heart and soul? Have my bribes and threats been enough?
Thus are our lives both rich and glorious, yet prone to unexpected interruptions and abrupt ends.
2
A Bad Day at the Rocks
Meteroa almost made it. He could actually see the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the doors that led out onto the eyrie rocks when the first flame strikes came in and a plume of fire erupted down the passage towards him. He had just enough time to slam shut the visor on his helm and spread out his arms, as if he could somehow catch the flames and stop them from reaching Queen Lystra behind him. Whatever happens to her happens to you. Jehal’s words. Meteroa was quite sure that Jehal meant every one of them.
