evil. Not your fight now, not any more.
With an effort, Kemir turned his back on the mage. He was wasting his time. Should have stayed on the boat. As he walked back, he thought he saw the Picker too, watching him. Another man I’d like to kill. Pay you back for the scar you put on me. Well you can both stay and fight dragons. Good luck to you.
He stopped for a moment where a small cluster of sad-looking men and women sat around in clothes stained with ash and smoke. Survivors. Six of them. Two old men, a boy who was close to being a man but hadn’t quite made it yet and a women with two small children, a little family miracle. They didn’t have anything, so the looters from the river had ignored them.
The old Kemir would have raised an eyebrow, shrugged a shoulder and walked on by. But that old Kemir was dead, drifting in the water somewhere back up the Fury like the old shed skin of a snake. The new Kemir took a deep breath and stepped closer.
‘Dragons?’ Why am I asking? What else would burn a whole town flat?
No one answered. No one bothered to even look at him. He could see their point. Whatever they’d had had long been taken from them.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can get you down the river to the next town.’ What was that? Arys Crossing? If it was still there. ‘You’ll have food until we get there.’
One of the old men slowly looked up at him. ‘And then?’
‘And then you get to thank me for my kindness. You have to work the rest out for yourselves. I have my own troubles. Stay if you want.’ He shrugged and turned away.
‘Wait!’ The woman with the children. No surprise there. He waited.
‘Any more?’
Both the old men shook their heads. The boy thought about it, then nodded. Too young to be a man, really, but that’s what you’ll have to be. That’s what war does. Turns boys into men because it’s kinder than calling them orphans.
‘Dragons,’ he said again, as he led them back to the barge. ‘Did they have riders on them, the dragons that did this?’
The woman spat. ‘Don’t get dragons with no riders.’
She hurried her children past Kemir, but he saw one of them turn and look at him with big wide fearful eyes. The boy shook his head.
No. No riders.
29
Snow
Home.
Snow shuffled into the cave. It was small and cramped, pressing down on her. There was no space to spread her wings. Caves were no places for dragons. She could see the one she was looking for, though, tucked away into the body of a hatchling.
She brushed past the charcoal statue that had once been the master of Outwatch. It fell and smashed on the flat stone floor.
I am chained, Beloved Memory of a Lover Distant and Lost.
I do not bear that name now. Snow squeezed further in. She stretched out her neck and peered at the little hatchling. Black. How dull.
The hatchling hissed at her. White. How gaudy.
Lazily, Snow took the chain around the hatchling’s neck and tore it from the cave wall. Then she nuzzled gently with her teeth at the links around the hatchling’s throat and bit the metal delicately in two. There. You are free. Outside, the air filled with the roars and shrieks of the other dragons. Her dragons, the others she had freed. They would not forget that. A debt was a debt.
The stone of the cave trembled and shook, distant impacts striking the ground above. Snow felt them tug at her, pulling her away to join in the destruction. There was the tower to be toppled. Farms filled with little ones to be burned. Food, lots and lots of joyous food, roaming in the fields. They would gorge themselves when they were done here. As long as they didn’t touch the little ones. The Embers at the alchemist caves with their poisoned blood had taught her that lesson.
You called. We came. Another tremor shook the cave, louder and closer this time. On the top of the cliff they were bringing down the tower. Snow backed away towards the entrance, eager to be gone. Are your wings strong? Will you fly with us?
The hatchling called Silence darted to the heavy door that led into the warren of tunnels, all much too small for a dragon to cleanse, but not for a newborn so fresh from the egg. Snow bared her teeth in approval. Burn them then, but do not eat them. Slowly and carefully she turned around and readied herself to launch into the air. The silver ones have returned. I have felt them.
Then when we are done with the little ones, let us find them.
And then?
They were our kindred. They abandoned us. They are no longer welcome in this world.
They made us. We served them. Snow felt strangely uncertain when it came to the silver ones. I remember them fondly.
I do not.
Abruptly, Silence smashed down the little door and snaked away through it, clutching in his fore-claws the length of chain that had once been fastened around his neck. Snow paused for a moment to savour the thought of him, little black hatchling that he was, black shadow of death that he had been and would be again, scuttling like silent lightning through the little ones’ tunnels, ripping them apart in the dark.
She pushed herself out into the air and spread her wings. Above her, at the top of the slope, the great tower of Outwatch had been decapitated, its top smashed to the ground. Several dragons were still there, circling around it, tearing at it, lashing it with their tails or simply flying into it. As she watched, another great slab of stone-work cracked and sloughed away, ripping open the middle third of the tower. Three dragons immediately poured fire into the breach, even though any little ones were surely long gone by now.
She went eagerly to join them. Yes, it felt so very good to be home.
30
Drowning
Kemir watched the river, and the river, it seemed, watched Kemir. In a perverse sort of way, Valleyford had made him feel better about leaving the realms. Kithyr, the Picker, all the dead burned bodies, the reek and stench of smoke and ash. Yes, he could be happy enough with those all behind him. The other boats from Valleyford were around them, some a little way ahead, letting the current take them. Larger ones out in the full strength of the river, and by the banks flotillas of tiny rafts, little more than a few planks of wood lashed together, poled along in the shallows by wrinkled old cormorant fishermen. Sometimes he thought he saw the blood-mage or the Picker on one of the boats. When that happened, his hand always reached for his bow with a will of its own. But when he looked again he was always wrong. He began to wonder if he’d imagined it all.
‘If we put ashore,’ he said to Kataros, ‘I want you to keep close to me. There were people at Valleyford.’ He put her hand on his chest. ‘The man who gave me that scar, he was there.’ He saw the fright on her face and tried to smile. ‘It was a long time ago. I’ve no reason to make our paths cross again.’ Although whenever he said that, whenever he even thought it, he always felt a little spike of fire. A last smouldering ember for… not for revenge. All the Picker had really done was defend himself, but the yearning was still there. Unfinished business.
