confused, still dazed from his fall and the arrow in his hip. Then some sort of recognition flickered in his face. He frowned. He might have been about to say something, but before he could, Sashi fell on him. She shrieked and screamed and cursed, lifted the knife up high and plunged it into him again and again and again. When she was finished, his face and neck had been cut to ribbons. He was definitely dead.
‘Was that really necessary?’
Sashi was covered in his blood, shaking. She didn’t answer at first, only stood there holding the knife, looking at what she’d done. ‘Yes,’ she said at last.
Siff nodded. He climbed back up the tower and settled down to wait for the dragons. He closed his eyes and shook his head. What am I doing?
There were some easy answers to that, and some less easy ones. The first easy answer was that he was lying back, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. A man could settle for an easy answer like that. But just this once he thought he might try a little harder.
The next answer wasn’t quite so easy. What he was doing, in a cold sort of way, was leading a dozen dragons and their riders to a little outsider village where they happened to make Souldust so that the dragons could burn it to ash. A village he’d been merrily dealing with for the last year, selling the same dust to other riders from the same eyrie for what was rapidly becoming an obscene pile of silver. After the dragons had done their work, he would be paid for his part in leading them here. And there would be dust in secret stashes. He’d come back later for those. There would be dead outsiders, and that would make the riders happy, which meant they would leave him alone for long enough to make his way to somewhere else. And last but definitely not least, he was getting rid of the people who might incriminate him, using the very hunters who were looking for him to do it, getting paid for his trouble, and coming away with a big stash of dust to boot. It was all very clever and all very good. Still not the whole of the answer though.
He felt Sashi climb up after him and breathed a sigh of relief at the distraction. She sat down beside him. As whores went, she was a good find. Energetic, enthusiastic and dexterous. Crude, a bit stupid, but the same could have been said of most that Siff had known. She was damaged too. Something inside Sashi was very broken, which was why she was perfect and why he’d found her.
He sniffed. ‘You reek of blood.’
‘He deserved it.’ She smiled brightly.
‘Mmm.’ Siff sat up again and squinted down into the valley. He couldn’t see the village but it was down there somewhere, hidden from the eyes of passing dragons. Hidden, but not well enough. Now that the dragons of the Mountain King knew where to look, there was no question they’d find it. Sashi had brought them here and she was going to laugh as the outsiders burned.
He closed his eyes again. He’d know where it was quickly enough when the dragons arrived.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked.
‘Do I like what?’
‘The smell of blood.’
Siff shrugged. ‘If it’s the blood of my enemies, I suppose.’ He had plenty of those and sadly nearly all of them were still alive and not bleeding even a little bit.
‘This is the blood of my enemies.’
‘Do you like the smell of fire?’ he asked.
‘Fire doesn’t smell.’
‘Smoke, then. Do you like that smell?’
Her turn to shrug. ‘It makes me choke.’
‘You’re going to smell a lot more of it soon. Burning homes. Blackened bodies, limbs twisted and charred. You remember that smell, don’t you?’
She didn’t answer and she didn’t need to. They’d both had their homes and their lives burned to ash by dragons. It was a smell no one could forget.
‘I don’t like doing this,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s just that I have to.’ Liar!
Sashi leaned over him, lowering her face closer to his. When he opened his eyes, she was only inches away, looking at him intently. She still had blood on her face and her eyes burned.
‘All brothers and sisters, we outsiders. Don’t tell me again. They sold me when they should have sheltered me. They tied me up and they beat me for most of a month. Men and boys. Not one of them lifted a finger to help me. Not one. Why? Because I had no man to protect me.’
‘I think it was because you were a thief.’ Siff could feel himself slowly getting aroused. Sashi hated men. Most men, at least. All of them except him, it seemed. Siff’s hate was more even-handed. He hated pretty much everyone, himself included. Maybe Sashi was that simple too. Maybe he was just a tool, and one day soon he’d go to sleep with her arms and legs wrapped around him and wake up in the morning cold and dead with a knife stuck through his face.
‘Food! I stole bread because I was starving. They gave me nothing!’
Siff reached up and ran a hand through her hair. ‘You stole dust too.’ That was what made Sashi what she was. Dust. Whoever she’d once been was long gone. Enough Souldust and that was the way you ended, no matter who you were in the beginning.
Sashi bared her teeth at him. ‘I know that look.’
‘Maybe I do like the smell of blood after all.’
A crooked smile split her face. She pushed him down and sat astride him. ‘You’re all like that, aren’t you? Men. Whenever my brothers went hunting and made a good kill, whenever they won a fight, I always knew. The others were the same when they came to me. Even dragon-knights.’ She was grinding herself against him now. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks, under the bloodstains, were flushed. ‘I used to wonder if it was something that only worked for men. Now I know how you feel.’
‘So I see.’ He pulled her to him. The dead man with the arrow in his chest was still lying on top of the pile of wood. Siff could have reached out and touched him without even trying.
‘I don’t know about all men,’ he murmured in her ear when they came up for air, ‘but I’m like that.’
‘Oh no, you’re all the same. Every one of you.’ She was smiling as she said it, but her eyes were dead.
Later, Siff watched the dragons glide into the valley. There were twelve. Four of them stayed up high, kept circling and watching by their riders. The others disappeared among the folds and contours of the mountainsides. It wasn’t long before a pall of smoke started to rise over the trees. That would be the village. A hundred outsiders lived there, give or take a dozen.
Lived there? Had lived there. The riders would do what riders always did: they’d take the ones worth selling as slaves and burn the rest.
Sashi was sitting on the floor. Her clothes still hung open. She lit a pipe and gave it to him, something she’d taken to doing after they’d lain together. He slumped, leaning against one of the poles that held the watchtower roof in place. When he’d taken a few puffs he offered it back again.
‘Feel better now?’ he asked.
She took the pipe. Her eyes glazed for a moment as she took a deep breath. She nodded.
‘I don’t like doing this.’ Maybe saying it enough times would make him believe it.
‘They deserved it.’
He tried not to look out at the smoke rising over the valley, but his eyes kept returning to it all on their own. ‘Really?’ No, he shouldn’t have asked that. They were outsiders dying down there, but they’d done whatever they’d done to Sashi and then they’d sold her, and that alone made them no better than animals. The number didn’t really matter, did it?
A bone to throw to what was left of his conscience, that’s all that was. They were a means to an end and so was she.
‘Yes, really.’ Sashi gave him a scornful look and passed back the pipe. She thought he was doing this for her, but likely as not she’d deserved everything they’d done. Life in the mountain valleys was hard. Food was scarce. Winters were brutal. People died. The weak, the young, the old, the sick. Out here stealing was as bad as killing and always had been. They all knew it, him, Sashi, all of them. It was the code of those who served no dragon-king, and the worst crime of all was what he’d done right here.
A few weeks should see me to Hanzen’s Camp, and then I’m down the river to Furymouth, where everything is possible. Silver and dust. I’ll be rich. I’ll be whatever I want to be and I’ll finally be away from these miserable
