by Stephen Deas
Probably dead. Siff waited for a few seconds. He’d shot the man in the chest, but instead of pitching over the edge of the watch-tower like he was supposed to, the lookout had fallen back, out of sight from the ground.
There were no shouts or screams or groans. Nothing moved. Satisfied, Siff scampered up the ladder. The tower wasn’t much, nothing more than a wooden platform with a beacon fire on top of it and a thatched roof to keep the rain off. The lookout had fallen onto the pile of wood. He was definitely dead.
Sashi had followed Siff up the ladder. She looked at the body and spat. ‘Bastard!’
‘You knew him?’ Siff raised an eyebrow.
She snorted. ‘In a manner of speaking.’ Sashi stamped on the dead man’s face. Hard.
‘Ouch.’ Siff crouched and put a finger to his lips. The second lookout was on his way back.
‘This one’s mine.’ Sashi dropped to her haunches and sat perfectly silent and still. They heard the second man’s footsteps scuffing the dry dirt below. Then the tower started to shake as he made his way up the ladder. His face appeared over the edge and he stopped. Sashi shot to her feet. She pointed an accusing finger and shrieked, ‘Son of a whore’s puke!’ There would have been more and probably a lot worse, but Siff put an end to it: he pushed past and kicked the man in the face. Then he lost his balance. Both of them toppled backwards but the man on the ladder had a lot further to fall. He lay groaning on the ground some twenty feet below. When he looked like he might be about to get back to his feet, Siff put an arrow through his hip. Then he held up his hands and put down his bow.
‘All yours, Sashi.’
If she heard the exasperation in his voice, it didn’t show. ‘Come with me.’
‘Do I have to?’
‘What if he’s got a knife? Anyway I want you to watch.’
Siff wrinkled his nose. ‘You want me to watch? Why?’
‘I want you to see what I’m like when people treat me wrong.’ He sighed and rolled his eyes and climbed down the ladder, kicked the man a few times to keep him quiet and turned him over. Sure enough, he had a hunting knife strapped to the back of his belt. Siff took it and handed it to Sashi. ‘If he’s got a knife, make it your knife.’ He turned the man over again so that he was looking up at them.
Sashi hesitated for a second or two. She stared at the man at her feet and he stared back, his eyes blank and 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 mountains for ever. He whispered the mantra to the faces from his childhood. He hadn’t been there when the dragons had come to his home so he hadn’t actually seen his people burn. He remembered the afterwards, though. The swathe of burned and blackened land, the stink of smoke, of burned wood and flesh. More than anything, he remembered the smell.
He took a deep pull from the pipe and then another, dissolving the screams and the faces and the smell into a pleasant numbness. He supposed he ought to move but his legs didn’t agree, so he had some strong words with them until grudgingly they lifted him to his feet. His feet, it seemed, were none too pleased to be disturbed either. They grumbled all the way to the ladder, all the way down, and kept it up while he wandered aimlessly in circles. He’d forgotten something, but it took an age to realise what it was.
Sashi. Oh yes. Her. He was still holding her pipe, long extinct. She’ll want it back.
‘Get down here!’ he shouted. His head felt like it was about to sever itself from the rest of him and go flying off into the air. He looked at the pipe. Ancestors! What did you put in it? ‘Oi, woman! Get your spindly legs down here! We’ve got dragon-riders to taunt. I know it’s fun to make them wait, but I’ll be righteously pissed off if they leave us here.’ He staggered into one of the legs of the tower. When he looked up, a face was leering down at him.
‘Did you like my pipe? This time?’
‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘No. I mean . . .’ He wasn’t sure what he meant. Yes he liked it, but he didn’t like not being able to think in a straight line. ‘What is it?’
She grinned. ‘I put a pinch of dust in it.’
He jumped up, trying to grab her, which didn’t work since she was twenty feet up in the air. When he came down again, his legs buckled and he ended up on his backside. For some reason this was immensely funny. Somewhere a part of him knew he ought to be furious, but for now that was a lone voice in a very loud and happy crowd.
‘Where did you get it?’ Tears of laughter streamed down his cheeks. She was coming down the ladder now, very, very slowly. Sometimes it looked like she was going back up again. She still hadn’t bothered to dress herself. Her breasts hung invitingly out of her shift. Siff couldn’t take his eyes off them.
‘One of the riders.’
She didn’t get to say much more. As she reached the bottom of the ladder, Siff staggered over and grabbed hold of her, pulling her down onto the ground. He took her there in the dirt without much idea of what he was doing, only that he had no choice, that he absolutely had to have her no matter what. And that she didn’t much seem to mind.
When he was done, he rolled away and lay beside her. His head felt clearer now. ‘These riders take dust?’ Not that that was much of a revelation, although he’d thought that the ones coming here were the righteous-scourge-descending-from-the-sky-to-burn-out-the-wickedness sort. Apparently not.
‘Of course they do, they all do. I could see it in his eyes that he had some. Those big, wide faraway eyes. Just like yours.’ She was suddenly sitting up, looming over him, peering into his face. Siff lurched to his feet. Something about this was very very bad, but his head was too fuzzy to think properly.
‘Wait! You took dust from a rider?’ She leered at him.
‘And how did you pay him?’ Stupid question. There was only one possible answer.
She purred and ran a hand over herself. ‘How do you think?’
‘You’re not that good.’ He stood up and took Sashi’s hand in his. ‘Come on. Dress yourself. We need to find those riders or all of this is a waste of time. They won’t wait for us.’ The haze in his head was getting in the way. Stopping him from understanding something that was shouting out to be heard. Sashi could bed riders for their pennies all she liked, but when she wanted dust, she came to him. That was the way it was supposed to be . . . He cursed the muddle in his head and then lost hold of what it was he was supposed to be thinking. Riders. Dust. Yes, that. Something.
‘Do we?’ She wrapped himself around him. ‘We could wait a little longer, if you like. I’m not sure I’m done with you.’ Go on, wheedled the dust. You can wait. Look at her. Stay. You’ll want her again soon enough
He pushed her away, then pulled her back again, twirled her as though they were about to dance and then tossed her over his shoulder. ‘Time for that later.’
If his little voices had anything important to say, he was sure they would keep on at him. He’d said the same to his conscience once, but that had walked out on him years ago.
24
Skjorl
Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
Superstition came easy to men who fought monsters and stared at death every day. Outside his own company no Adamantine Man would admit it, but there it was. Every axe had its name. There might not be any such things as ghosts, but there were spirits right enough. Other people had their ancestors to watch over them, but the Adamantine Men were severed from their families, and so they had the memories of all those who’d gone before, right back to the nameless Night Watchman who’d stood beside Narammed and made him the first speaker. Every soldier who’d ever walked the walls of the Adamantine Palace secretly thought he’d know the dragon that would kill him as soon as he saw it. Some were certain they would die by the flames of a green or a red or a gold. For Skjorl, it had been having someone called Vishmir in his company. A Vish made him invin
cible. The dragon that killed the last Vishmir would be the one to burn him. He’d quietly believed that for as long as he could remember.
And then the last Vish he knew had been crushed by a rock in Bloodsalt, and here he was, still alive. Somewhere up on Yinazhin’s Way, weeks after Jasaan had gone, he’d realised. He’d watched, then, as his superstition crumbled to dust, taking half the things he believed in with it. He thought of the names he’d given to his axe and his shield and would have thrown them away if he could have found new ones to replace them. Ancestors, spirits, ghosts, they were all nonsense. There were dragons. There were alchemists and their potions. There were blood-mages. That was all.
So there he was, all his superstitions broken in pieces and stuffed in sacks to be slowly thrown away, and now he stared at the outsider with the silver eyes, paralysed because here, in front of him, was surely a ghost made flesh. The outsider reached out his hand and Skjorl was transfixed. Tendrils of silver light like moonlight curled from the man’s fingertips. They grew as long as his thumb, writhing and coiling like little snakes, as though feeling for something that wasn’t there.
And then they abruptly vanished as the outsider’s eyes went back to normal. He slumped, and if Skjorl had had a knife on him, he might just have used it. His sword was too long to draw while he was sitting down and he was too paralysed to get up.
‘What in Vishmir’s name was that?’
‘Something the Silver King left behind,’ whispered the alchemist.
Skjorl shivered. Something?
The outsider opened his eyes again and looked at Skjorl. Hard to tell what colour they were in the gloom, but not silver and not glowing any more. Human then. Probably. ‘It’s a key,’ he said.
‘A key to what?’
‘Why to a door – what else? The door to where the Silver King went.’
