In particular, one handsome dragon-rider. She lost her purpose and made foolish mistakes. Secrets that should have been kept were spoken to unworthy ears. They scolded her and they chastised her, and when that wasn’t enough they whipped her, and when that still didn’t tame her, they threw their hands in the air and took her titles and her lessons and her teachers all away and called her a Scales. They would have taken her mind too, dulling it with the same potions she had once brewed herself, and that would have been that, but instead the white dragon had come and burned her world to the ground, and then, in the aftermath, Kemir.
He was going to take her to the sea. She remembered that much. They got as far as Arys Crossing. It wasn’t far from the Silver City at all, not on the back of a dragon. But there he’d died. And there Jeiros, the grand master of her order, had found her, clinging on to the Adamantine Spear, the one thing in the world that could kill dragons. He’d taken her back to the Adamantine Palace, but only in time to watch it all burn. After that the caves under the Purple Spur became her home, hers and everyone else’s who hadn’t died in flames. And after that…
‘Here.’ The Adamantine Man stopped and took in a deep breath and slowly let it out again. She blinked. They were back where she’d started, at the esplanade around the Golden Temple.
‘Why are we here.’
‘The ferals don’t come here. They think it’s haunted. Evil spirits or some such.’
‘Is it?’
He let out a scornful snort. ‘No. Our ancestors watch over us, but there’s no such thing as ghosts.’
‘I have seen many things that I couldn’t explain.’ More than most.
‘While I’ve seen very few.’ He moved quickly across the esplanade, pausing again only when he was back in the deep shadows of the temple walls. She followed as best she could.
‘There’s no ghosts,’ he said again. ‘But there’s plenty more ferals. Some aren’t so easily scared.’
Ferals. She hated the word. He meant the survivors, the ones who’d lived through the firestorms. The ones who’d chosen to stay in the ruins of their homes in the aftermath rather than hide in the caves under the Spur or in the mountains or in the three great fortresses of the Pinnacles. A foolish choice perhaps, but they were still people. They’d been farmers once, and craftsmen and traders and maybe even a few priests and almost-alchemists. ‘We took an oath to protect them,’ she said.
The Adamantine Man slid along the wall, keeping his back pressed to the stone and the rest of him in the deep shadows. When he reached the temple gates, hanging limp and bent, he stopped and spat. ‘I took an oath to protect the speaker. No one else.’
‘You failed then.’
‘Yes.’ The admission didn’t seem to trouble him. ‘I was in Outwatch when the dragons came. The white one was there. The first.’ He peered around the corner into the black depths of the temple and made a show of sniffing the air. ‘Sometimes they come in here anyway, ghosts or no ghosts. They burn things. Offerings to the dragons or something.’
‘To the Great Flame.’
‘Pah!’ He tossed Siff over his shoulders again and jogged on. The inside of the temple wasn’t as dark as Kataros had expected. The shattered edges of the dome hung over their heads, the stars glimmering beyond. The walls were tall, like towers in the dark of the night, but the space was vast and great chunks of what had once been the roof were gone. The Adamantine Man walked to the centre, to where the altar to the sun still stood. ‘Many say the words. Few understand the meaning.’
‘Explain yourself!’
‘The Flame burned strong in the Guard. Your kind prefer to snuff it out. Do you have a god, alchemist? Do any of you?’
‘Kataros. My name is Kataros.’ She said it without thinking, then wondered why she’d bothered. She needed to be rid of him and the sooner the better. Finding him crouched over her with a knife in his hand had shown her that. She wouldn’t dare to sleep now, wouldn’t dare even close her eyes until he was gone.
He stopped. ‘The spear-carrier?’
‘What?’
‘You. You brought back the Speaker’s Spear? The Dragonslayer. Or am I wrong?’
‘I…’ Yes. They called her that, sometimes. The spear-carrier. ‘I had it for a time. For a few hours, that’s all. It was the grand master who carried it back to the palace.’
‘You were there, then. At the end. For the final battle.’ He sounded in raptures at the thought of it.
‘I was deep underground. I only heard.’
‘I wish I could have seen it. Outwatch was a slaughter. Sand the same. There weren’t enough of us to make any difference. We smashed their eggs and took our axes to the unborn hatchlings inside. Killed a few of the very young, the ones still placid or in their chains. The bigger ones your sort did for. Poisoned.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d have given a lot to see the legions in their glory with their scorpions, pitched into the battle we were all told we would fight.’
‘They were slaughtered. Hardly a man left standing.’
‘I know.’
‘Almost every last one of them fought on until the end. Long past when all hope was lost. It seemed foolish to me.’
He growled. ‘It’s what we do, alchemist Kataros.’
A litter of old offerings lay spread across the altar, but the Adamantine Man swept them away before Kataros could see what they were. He crouched down and brushed at the dust and dirt on the floor with his hands.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘To the likes of you I’m just soldier or guard. Among those who stand beside me, I am Skjorl.’
She reached through the blood-bond. ‘My blood is bound to yours, Skjorl. You are tied to my will. You will never harm me. You will do whatever you must to keep me from hurt.’
He didn’t move, just kept scraping at the floor. ‘Do you know, alchemist, how much it hurts when you do that?’
‘Less than anything you would have done to me, I think.’
‘I would have given you a quick and painless death, more painless than the one that was waiting for you, and an hour or two of pleasure to remember me by when you reached your ancestors, if you’d have let me. Both still yours for the taking if you want them.’ He looked up, leered at her and patted his crotch.
‘You…’ She shuddered.
‘If you ever let me go, alchemist, I will do everything to you that I would have done before, only this time I will make sure it hurts.’
There was no anger in his voice, no hate, no venom, but he meant every word. He looked up at her a second time, heard her silence and laughed at it. ‘Alchemist, you’ve taken my freedom. What I will do to you is kinder.’ He took a step sideways and clawed at the floor for a moment. ‘You did the same to the dragons. It’s your way, is it? Whatever stands before you, you enslave it?’
He might have touched a nerve, if it hadn’t been for what he’d been about to do when she’d put her blood into him. ‘You were set on raping and then killing me. You see that as a better fate?’
‘I do.’
‘You’re so wrong.’ How did men come to even think such things? There were no words for the depth of it.
He laughed at her as his fingers wrapped around a metal ring set into the stone in front of him and he started to pull. ‘Ask one of these ferals which they’d prefer, death or slavery. Ask them why they’re here and not in your nice comfy little fortress.’
‘They are men! They are not animals!’
‘They were men, alchemist. Now they’re ferals.’ The stone began to move, grinding across the floor. ‘Can you make some light?’
She showed him her empty hands. ‘With what?’
‘If you can’t, then we descend in the dark. Do you see a shaft?’
Kataros peered into the hole. It was black as pitch. ‘I can’t see anything.’
He sighed and pulled the stone further out, inching it across the floor. Another ring was fastened into the back of it. A rope was tied to the ring and vanished into the hole. Skjorl crawled across and gave the rope a tug.
