“How did you know that?”
“An attraction to warrens is a common indicator of your condition.”
“What’s going to happen to me? Am I … going to turn into a dragon?”
Osyrus smiled. “Maybe. There is a potency in your blood that’s tied to the earth. And to dragons. It is the reason that you heal so rapidly. I suppose that sounds a bit mystical, but that is only because I don’t fully understand it. Yet. But I do know that you are an extremely dangerous creature. The condition that has saved your life so many times will eventually kill you in an involuntary and destructive process. You may take another form afterward, but the man will be gone.”
“You’re sure?”
“You cannot stop the inevitable, Lord Bershad.”
Bershad took a few breaths. His mouth had gone bone dry. “How long do I have before that happens?”
“To be honest, I’m amazed that you’ve managed to last this long, given the way you’ve occupied yourself for the last fourteen years. Each time you use the moss to heal a wound, you inch closer to the bloom. I expect you’ve begun to feel changes in your body beyond the healing that comes with exposure to moss. I already know you’ve discovered the strength Gods Moss can bring—that’s how you got out of those irons upstairs and killed eight soldiers by yourself. But there is more, yes? You feel a deeper connection to the natural world. An intimacy with wild creatures.”
Bershad thought about the bone tremors that the presence of dragons caused. The burst of sound and smells when he was inside the warren in the Razorback mountains. The sizzle of fish heartbeats when he was healing in the boat on the Lorong River.
“Yes.”
“That means you’re very close, Lord Bershad. But your capacity to delay transformation is unique among your kind—perhaps you could carry on for another fourteen years like this. Or perhaps I will cause too much trauma and you’ll bloom in this dungeon, which would not be desirable at all. You would kill me. And half of Burz-al-dun, probably.”
“You keep saying bloom. What does that mean?”
Osyrus smiled. “I believe it is once again my turn to ask the questions.” He returned to his desk and took more notes. Bershad tried to process what he’d learned. “You haven’t begged for your life yet,” Osyrus said. “I find that strange.”
“Would you let me go if I did?”
“An interesting question.” Osyrus stopped writing. “Tell me, Lord Bershad, if I did release you right now, what would you do?”
“Murder you.”
“After that.”
Bershad hesitated. He’d been so focused on getting his job done, he hadn’t thought about what he’d do if he was still alive when it was finished.
“I’d go back to Ashlyn.” He thought of her face. Her hands. And then the armies of soldiers outside her walls. His throat clenched. “I never should have left her.”
“Back to your lover, and back to Almira. That could be very interesting.”
“Well, seeing as I’m bolted to a table in a fucking Balarian dungeon, it doesn’t really matter if it’s interesting, does it?”
Osyrus seemed to consider that. “Perhaps not. And I’m afraid we must proceed a little further.” Osyrus moved to the shelf and picked up the machete. “Let’s remove an entire leg this time, shall we? Try not to bite your tongue off. They’re a tricky organ—it will be very uncomfortable to grow another one.”
It took dozens of chops for Osyrus to cut off Bershad’s leg. Each messy hack sent a shot of pain through Bershad’s leg that spread throughout his body. He screamed until his throat turned raw, then he pissed himself. When it was done, Osyrus picked up the amputated limb and put it in a rough-spun sack. Blood was everywhere. Osyrus crammed four fistfuls of the Gods Moss into the gory wound before it stopped bleeding. The awful pain in Bershad’s leg changed to soft comfort, like it had been dipped into a warm pond.
Bershad thrashed and moaned curses, unable to form a full sen tence. Osyrus wrote more notes in his book. Then he felt Bershad’s wrists and neck, counting his heartbeats.
“This is very exciting, Lord Bershad! You’re quite stable. Yes. Yes, let’s take things a little further. A little further and I’ll have the answers that I need.”
Bershad tried to protest, but before he got the words out Osyrus picked up a scalpel and slit Bershad’s throat. He passed out while his mouth was filling with blood, and Osyrus was filling his neck wound with more moss.
* * *
Bershad woke up to an empty room. The fire had burned down to embers. His leg was regrown. The new limb felt strange, like a living thing that was attached to him, but not a part of him.
He stared at the ceiling, which was wreathed in copper pipes, wondering what stupidity had caused him to be so curious about the truth of his body. He hadn’t even learned much about his healing, except for the fact that it would kill him one day and was tied, somehow, to dragons.
Bershad was so occupied with berating himself that didn’t notice the scraping sound at first. It was soft but steady—metal rubbing against stone. Back and forth. Back and forth. It was coming from the corner to his right, where a small, rusty-orange grate was set into the wall.
Bershad looked over, frowning, just as the grate started to shake up and down. After a few moments, the entire thing pushed forward and then to the side, revealing a square black hole.
And Felgor’s face, smiling at him.
“You’re in a bad fix, dragonslayer.”
“Osyrus,” Bershad whispered. “Where is he?”
“Relax,” Felgor said, pulling himself out of the hole and into the chamber. He’d cut his hair short and was dressed as a Balarian palace servant. “The crazy man left the palace half an hour ago. I shadowed him over to the docks. He told an assistant he’d be gone for the rest of the day and muttered something about a broken ship. That being said, lingering around here isn’t a good idea.”
Felgor inspected each of the manacles, then he produced a lockpick from his belt.
“I can get you out of here,” Felgor said. “If that’s what you want.”
“What else would I want?”
Felgor drew a long, curved dagger from his hip.
“The trick with the moss was one thing.” Felgor grimaced. “Growing feet and legs is something else. Might be you just want to end things. Only fair I give you the choice.”
Bershad looked at the knife’s edge. Even a skinny man like Felgor could get his head off with one good chop of that blade. A clean death was tempting now that he knew a terrible one waited for him down the line. But something Vera had said to him up in the mountains stopped him from accepting Felgor’s offer. She’d told him that he should use his strength to protect the people he cared about. Rowan and Alfonso were dead, but Ashlyn was still alive. Bershad might be cursed. Might be a demon, even. But he wasn’t done yet.
“Get me off this fucking table,” he said.
“Aye,” Felgor said. “Good choice.”
Felgor started fiddling with the manacles. Two minutes later, Bershad was free.
“Can you walk?” Felgor asked.
Bershad put his feet on the ground and took a few tentative steps. There were no calluses on his new feet, so moving felt strange after so many years of walking on hardened skin, but otherwise he was fine.
“Good enough,” Felgor said. The thief dug around in a trunk near the shelves, and managed to produce a set of black linen pants, a leather shirt, and good boots. Felgor threw them to Bershad, then rummaged around the room while he got dressed, pocketing anything that looked valuable.
“You ready?”
“Not yet,” Bershad said, looking around the room until he spotted a large barrel of dragon oil that Osyrus must have used to refuel his torches. Bershad picked it up and headed back toward the large chamber with the ballistas.
“What’re you gonna do with that thing?” Felgor asked, following him.
“Finish what I started.”
Emperor Mercer wa
sn’t alive to order the dragon cull anymore, but there was only one way to be positive it didn’t happen.
Bershad cracked the barrel open and poured oil up one row and down the other. Then he took a lantern off the wall and dropped it. The flame snaked across the floor, illuminating the room so Bershad could see how many machines were in there. Hundreds. Rows upon rows. Bershad watched the fire spread.
“Uh, not sure that was a great idea,” Felgor muttered, pointing up. With all the fire, it was now easy to see that the ceiling was covered with thousands of copper pipes—some were no wider than a man’s arm, others were the width of a city street. All of them thrummed and vibrated. Bershad realized the massive gear running through the middle of the palace must be right above them.
“Huh.”
“We need to get out of here,” Felgor said. “Quick.”
“Agreed.”
“It’s just a question of whether you’ll squeeze through that hole in the wall.”
It was close, but Bershad managed to shove through the opening by going in headfirst, blowing all the air out of his lungs, and pushing himself through with his legs propped up against the stone torture slab. Felgor replaced the grate after he slipped through behind Bershad.
“Good news is that if we don’t get blown up, our tracks should be pretty much covered,” Felgor said. “Should give that crazy fucker something to wonder about. Maybe he can write the mystery down in that notebook of his.”
“How long were you watching?”
“Long enough to see some shit I’ll never forget.” Felgor shifted the grate until it fell into place. “We best keep moving.”
The cramped tunnel connected to a larger drainage pipe that was almost tall enough for Bershad to stand up inside. There was a shallow trickle of water flowing down the middle of the pipe. They followed the water for a long time, and eventually they reached a locked grate that emptied into a small river. The lock was the size of a man’s head and unreachable from the outside.
“We lucked out,” Felgor said as he started picking the lock. “This is one of the older locks, which can be opened without a seal. If they’d slapped a new one on here, we’d be fucked.”
Felgor still had to fiddle with the lock for almost fifteen minutes before he got it open and they tumbled into the cool evening air. They were almost a league away from the palace.
“Good. We’re near the harbor,” Felgor said, squinting and looking around. “The whole city was looking for you at first—hundreds of soldiers roaming the streets with torches and blades, hunting for anyone with blue bars on their face. But things cooled down after the wedding. Funny how quickly commoners forget royalty after they’re gone, isn’t it?”
Bershad rinsed his face and hair. Fought the temptation to poke and prod his regrown limbs.
“Do you know what happened to Vera?” Felgor asked. “I tried to get back to her, but that part of the castle is locked up tight now. Impossible to get in.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good if you did,” Bershad said. “Kira wanted to stay in Balaria, and Vera stayed with her.”
“Well, the little spider always could take care of herself.”
Bershad nodded agreement. “Why’d you come back for me?”
Felgor blew a large lump of black snot from his nose.
“I don’t always have a good reason for doing dangerous things. When I broke into that palace as a kid, I didn’t want to steal anything in particular. I just wanted to stir shit up for the nobles. Relieving Balaria of their emperor’s assassin will most definitely stir shit up, too.”
“That can’t be the only reason,” Bershad said. “You could have died.”
Felgor hesitated.
“That man was cutting off pieces of your body, Silas.” Felgor looked at his feet. “I couldn’t just let you die down there. Not after everything we’ve been through.”
Bershad didn’t know what to say. Felgor saw his face and smiled.
“Don’t get all emotional on me, dragonslayer. Doesn’t suit you. Now, we can’t stay in this city very much longer. So where do you want to go?”
“Almira,” Bershad said. “I need to get back to Almira.”
Felgor scratched at his chin. “Um, last I checked, you don’t have an army. Isn’t that what it usually takes to break a siege?”
“Other than you and Vera, Ashlyn Malgrave is the only person in Terra that I care about. And she’s in danger. If there’s even the smallest chance I can help her, I have to take it. Otherwise, I might as well just have you slit my throat right here.”
“Almira.” Felgor nodded. “Fuck it, why not?”
“You don’t have to come. You’ve paid your debt, Felgor.”
“I got a death sentence in Balaria, remember? But Almira owes me a big juicy pardon.” His face got serious. “And with Rowan gone, you could use a second pair of eyes looking over your shoulder. Trouble seems to follow your footsteps pretty close.”
“Thank you, Felgor. For everything.”
Felgor waved the gratitude away and glanced out over the harbor. “Stealing a ship from the Bay of Broken Clocks can be difficult, but—”
Felgor was interrupted by a low boom echoing out from the direction of the palace. They both turned to see the Kor Cog come to a grinding stop. A pillar of black smoke started drifting up from the palace dome.
“Huh,” Felgor said. “That’ll make things quite a bit easier.”
“Why?”
“The gear stopped a few times when I was a kid. It powers the whole of Burz-al-dun. All the checkpoints. All the pulleys and faucets. Whole city’ll be on lockdown till they fix it.” He pointed away from the palace. “But the harbor’s just over there—no checkpoints to cross. Compared to sneaking into the Imperial Palace through a shit-pipe, I figure stealing a boat amid the confusion and riding out of the harbor will be fairly straightforward.”
36
ASHLYN
Almira, Castle Malgrave
Ashlyn watched from a porch on the King’s Tower as Wallace’s catapult team hauled a diseased cow onto the machine. Using a Papyrian lens, she could see that the crew were all wearing wolf masks. When the cow was in place, all of them moved away but one, who then released the trigger. The cow sailed high over the city wall and landed in an abandoned square. Blood and gore splattered across the cobblestones, leaving a dirty red streak on the ground. Wallace had just recently switched from massive stones to dead animals during the day. An attempt to spread pestilence and disease, along with destruction. The roof of a nearby building was burned to cinders from one of Cedar Wallace’s explosive charges, which he liked to use at night when they could be seen from everywhere in Floodhaven.
The barrage had been continuous and consistent since Cedar Wallace’s army arrived. The catapults had pushed soldiers and citizens away from the outer walls, which had allowed Cedar Wallace to move his engines closer and begin hurtling missiles into the civilian districts. Yesterday, twenty-three wardens and eighty-seven commoners had been killed. Fourteen buildings were destroyed. The Malgrave high-wardens rotted in the trees—their eyes pecked by crows, their bellies bloated and full of gas.
In addition to the siege, the summer solstice was rapidly approaching. If the fleet didn’t launch soon, it would be too late.
Ashlyn had known being queen would be difficult, but she’d always expected the larger problems of Terra to be her main concern. The global economy and food supply. Politics with foreign nations. Preserving the populations of dragons and the health of humans. But on her way toward solving those issues, she’d become stuck in the mire of Cedar Wallace’s small-minded thirst for power. It made her furious. And yet, she couldn’t think of a way to convince Wallace to give up the siege without giving up her throne, and with it her last chance to stop the cull. She could not force his eyes to see the wider circles of the world. Instead, Ashlyn had to deal with Wallace’s hobgoblin greed on his terms before moving forward to what really mattered. Perhaps that’s what frustrated her
the most—even as queen she was servant to the patterns of history. The avarice of men.
Still, she had to try something. Allowing herself to sit besieged in Floodhaven while every dragon in Terra was murdered was not acceptable.
Ashlyn went back inside, where the remaining members of the High Council waited for her around a circular table. Hayden, Shoshone, and High-Warden Carlyle Llayawin were also in the room, standing behind the table.
A map of the city and the locations of Cedar Wallace’s siege engines was laid out in the middle of the table. Ashlyn had calculated the catapults’ ranges in the margins of the map and circled the most vulnerable areas of the city so that Carlyle could position his men accordingly. There was a part of Ashlyn that had found the mathematics of siege work fascinating, but the process of reducing dead men and destroyed buildings to a set of numbers on paper had made her skin crawl.
It hadn’t been easy to keep the city under control during the siege. Food was scarce. Wardens were just as likely to join a riot as they were to stop one. And most of the lords who’d been in the city during her coronation had bunkered themselves into their villas. Shoshone and her widows had the castle and docks under control for now, but that wouldn’t last forever.
Something needed to change, and soon.
Linkon Pommol wore a white tunic and pants. Doro Korbon was sweaty with nervousness. One of Yulnar Brock’s servants had brought him a ceramic bowl of ribs drizzled with some kind of brown sauce. The commoners were eating rats and cakes made from sawdust, but Yulnar still didn’t go an hour without a snack.
“I need an update on our forces inside the city,” she said to the group. “Number of fighting men, casualties, and morale. High-Warden Llayawin?”
He stepped forward, arms folded in front of him. His eagle’s mask, which had a bright orange slash down the middle, was hanging from his hip. “I had four hundred and fifty men under my command at the start of the siege. We’re down to four hundred and seven, but most of our losses came in the first two nights, before you worked out the range of Wallace’s catapults.” Carlyle motioned to the map in the center of the room. “As long as we monitor any repositioning of their siege engines, I believe that I can hold the walls with the men I have.”
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