he must now do his. Tell him it’s black. Pitch black. Tell him exactly that and nothing else. Is that clear? And then give him the spear.’
‘Pitch black.’ Vioros looked shaken. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Vale knows what it means. When you’re done with that, collect as many alchemists as you can. Seize the palace eyries and put an end to any dragons you do not need. Keep a few, though. A small number. There’s enough potion for that. If I’m not with you in two days, assume I am dead. You will go to every eyrie in the realms. The Night Watchman has already sent men with hammers ahead. Do what needs to be done. Poison every dragon, smash every egg. It won’t be perfect, but it might be enough to save us. Keep a handful, though. Use the stockpile of potion at the Redoubt. There will always be dragons. Vale will need them to hunt the ones that have awoken.’ He nodded to the woman. ‘When you have a moment after all that, find out what she knows.’
That probably wasn’t what Vioros had wanted to hear, but it was all he was going to get, and he was a good enough alchemist to do what he was told.
‘Now.’ Jeiros rubbed his hands and made sure he spoke loudly enough for all the riders around him to hear. ‘Let us see this hidden den of alchemists our dead sell-sword friend told us about. Perhaps there will be some potion there.’
It took Vioros a moment to remember, but he’d done his job well before they’d left. A gang of townsfolk appeared almost out of nowhere as Jeiros walked back into the ruined town. He quietly paid them in gold and they hurriedly led him to a cellar half filled with a mish-mash of barrels, kegs, anything that would hold water. By the time Jeiros opened the door, they’d all melted away. For the riders who came with him, Jeiros went through the pretence of discovering a secret stockpile of dragon-taming potions. Hard to feign the enthusiasm, the glee, the surprise, the joy even, that he ought to feel. Hard to believe anyone would even fall for such a ruse. Certainly any alchemist would have seen through it at once. But none of the riders seemed particularly surprised. Because we are alchemists, and people believe what we say? Or because you simply don’t care and pay such little attention to us? I would like to think the first, but we all know better.
Did it matter? Jeiros didn’t care. What mattered was that he had dozens of barrels filled with river water that everyone believed contained potions and that they were loaded onto the backs of his dragons. Jeiros watched Vioros leave for the Adamantine Palace. To Vale with the spear, where it might be some use. He had a sinking feeling they wouldn’t meet again and he could see that Vioros was thinking that too. Ha! Now you know how I felt when Bellepheros chose to simply vanish. May your ancestors watch over you. And if you choose to fly to Furymouth and the sea, at least deliver my message first.
As soon as he’d seen Vioros safely gone, Jeiros flew straight back to the Pinnacles and the chaos that had once been Queen Zafir’s eyrie. Dragons, everywhere he looked. And he had nothing to feed them or keep them tame.
‘Right.’ He rounded up the first riders he found. ‘These barrels over there. Those barrels over here.’
It was as easy as that. Switching the barrels full of water for the barrels he’d brought with him from the Adamantine Palace. Barrels full of poison. Then he called all the alchemists at the eyrie to him. He showed them the barrels and told them that Vioros had brought more potion from the north. By the end of the day, his work was done. He didn’t rest until it was too dark to see, though, moving around the eyrie and the surrounding plains, going from one clump of dragons to the next, making sure that every Scales knew their duty. Making sure that every dragon was fed. He endured Hyrkallan’s icy greetings and King Sirion’s hearty slap on the back, and when he discovered that Jehal and nearly a hundred dragons were missing, he shrugged his weary shoulders, wished them all the best and hoped that perhaps Jehal might become the speaker he had it in him to be. And after that, when there really wasn’t anything left to do, he lay back in his tent and stared at the darkness above him and waited for someone to realise what he’d done. They’d hang him. Or they’d burn him. Maybe Jehal would be like Zafir and put him in a cage. They wouldn’t feed him to any of the dragons that happened to survive the night. He was pretty sure of that.
Stabbing dragons with the spear would have been a spectacle. Quietly poisoning them was much more the alchemists’ way.
40
Legbreaker
Zafir flew south. Away from the chaos above the Pinnacles. She’d lost. Somehow, despite everything he’d done to them, Jehal had managed to empty every eyrie in the north to join his cause. She’d stayed long enough to see that Jehal himself led the charge, to see his Wraithwing plunge into Valmeyan’s cloud of dragons. For a while she’d gone looking for him. Let tooth and claw and fire settle what was between them, but the battle was too big, too wild. She hadn’t found him.
Jehal was probably dragon-food by now anyway. As soon as the outcome seemed hopeless, she’d left Valmeyan and Tichane to fight on as best they could. She’d fallen out of the air as though she was dead. Three other dragons had fallen with her, her most trusted riders, plunging towards the ground and then at the last minute levelling out and heading south. Jehal might be gone or he might not, but Lystra wasn’t. Valmeyan hadn’t had the spine to let her see to that. Probably Lystra or her son would end up being speaker one day because of all this. Well she couldn’t take Lystra’s memories of Jehal away from her and she couldn’t take her son, but she could take everything else. Do unto others as others have done unto you. So she flew until she found the Fury and then veered to the west, over the sea of mud and huts that called itself Farakkan, past the Yamuna River and on towards the sea. Clifftop was already in ashes. When she reached Furymouth, there were no dragons to meet her, no defenders to ward her off.
In the space of a few minutes the four dragons burned Jehal’s glorious Veid Palace to the ground. That was a start. Jehal’s home city lay waiting for her, naked and helpless. That next.
And then? She circled out over Furymouth Bay, out over the fleet of Taiytakei ships anchored there. When I’ve done everything I can to hurt him, what then? They’ve burned my home. She’d seen the flames behind her as she’d fled. Whoever was left to claim victory at the Pinnacles would doubtless blame her for the burning of the Silver City, but it hadn’t been her, not her dragons, not her orders. The Silver City, almost as much as the Pinnacles themselves, had been the beating heart of the realms. Hers.
They burned my home. Where do I go?
The ships offered the obvious answer. Come with us. Across the sea where no one will look for you. Across the sea to what, though? To become a kept woman? To become a curiosity? A courtesan to some rich ship’s captain?
Better than being dead, wasn’t it?
She circled the ships one more time. One of these ships carried dragon eggs, sold to the Taiytakei from Jehal’s eyrie by Valmeyan. In exchange for what, Zafir didn’t know, but she had no doubt the eggs were there. Sold in exchange for helping him to the Adamantine Throne. Fat lot of good you were. They were the ones who’d done this. The Taiytakei. She didn’t know how or why, but somehow they’d made this happen. They’d used her. Ayzalmir had had the right of it when he’d burned their ships, banished them, fed the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t run to the snappers in his menagerie.
No. Being a slave wasn’t better than being dead. She skimmed across the sea towards one of the Taiytakei ships, the biggest one with the most flags flying from it, and told her dragon to burn it. Dragons liked burning ships. One thing she’d learned from those few of Meteroa’s riders she’d taken alive in the Pinnacles.
The dragon gleefully veered to obey. It opened its mouth. She felt a sense of exultation…
And then nothing. The dragon spasmed once, twisted and fell out of the sky. Its head hit the waves and it somersaulted, spinning the world around Zafir. A wall of salt water crashed into her, thumped into her back, crushing her against her dragon’s neck, and then she was flying again. For a moment it seemed as though she wasn’t strapped to the dragon at all; then they crashed together back into the sea. For a second time she was flung forward, all the breath smashed out of her lungs. She fell limp, almost snapped in two. The dragon ploughed through the waves and slid to a stop. The Taiytakei ship loomed before them. The dragon’s head hung under the waves while its wings spread out over the surface. It wasn’t moving. Somehow, it was dead.
