by Stephen Deas
Siff nodded. Gold Cloak held out the purse.
‘Then this is yours.’ He frowned. ‘My riders tell me there was no dust.’
My riders? Siff tried to keep a straight face. He shrugged.
‘Maybe they moved it. Maybe they hid it. They usually do. I’m not surprised your riders didn’t find it. The slaves you took might know where to look.’
‘Yes. They did. We went back. Everything was gone.’
Siff shifted uncomfortably. Hadn’t expected that. That would be because I went round and took it all myself. He shrugged again. ‘Must have missed a few of them in the woods then. Easily done. I suppose they must have taken it after your riders left. Have you asked the woman?’
Gold Cloak frowned. He snapped his fingers and a door opened behind him. Two riders came out pushing Sashi in front of them. ‘You mean this one?’
‘Yes.’ Shit.
‘She was no use. Did she do as she was told?’
Siff nodded. Time to be a little rude, to be what they’d expect from an outsider. Push back, just enough to earn some disdain.
‘Yes, she did, and that’s my woman now, remember. Part of our deal. You tell your riders that, remind them that she’s mine. They seem to think they can help themselves to her whenever they want. Well they can, if they’re that desperate, but they pay now I’m here. They pay me.’ Gold Cloak seemed to struggle with this and Siff had to work to keep his face looking angry. He’d met dragon-knights like Gold Cloak before, the ones who thought that all the riders around them were as pure as mountain snow.
Gold Cloak sneered and took a step back and away. ‘We’re done. Take you money and your whore and get out of my eyrie.’
Right answer. Siff bowed, which was as good a way as any to hide his smile. Gold Cloak threw the purse at his feet and walked away; his riders let Sashi loose and left as well. Siff looked her over. Then he picked up the purse and counted the silver dragons inside to be sure they hadn’t cheated him.
‘Come on,’ he took Sashi’s hand. Take her with him or did he leave her somewhere? And if he left her, did he get rid of her at the bottom of a cliff so she couldn’t tell the riders all about who he really was and what he really did. She knew more than enough to get him stuffed into a slave cage.
‘Where we going?’
‘Leaving.’
‘It’s nearly dark.’
‘Get out of my eyrie. You heard the man.’
Siff kept his head bowed as they walked past a group of Scales. Their skin was hard and cracked, flaking and covered in weeping sores. That was something to do with the dragons, some sort of disease they carried. Most people averted their eyes from a Scales and so Siff did the same, pretending he was afraid. In furtive glances he saw a dozen other dragons, scattered around the mountainside. He saw the hollow filled with water for them to drink and, further up, little streams and a system of ponds and dams. Several low stone buildings sat above them, while alchemists moved to and fro. Strange soldiers he’d never seen before slouched in groups as though they owned the place, drawing angry glares from all who passed them. Something was happening. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said they were getting ready for a war.
He found a hut at the bottom of the eyrie. It looked as though it hadn’t been used for years. There were holes in the roof, gaps in the walls and the hearth hadn’t been lit for a long time. There wasn’t any wood to burn, no bed, no blankets, no furs, nothing. The floor was damp and the place stank but it would do. In the morning he’d be gone. Away down the path and vanished into the mountain valleys, north, following the water to the Fury at Gnashing Snapper Gorge and Hanzen’s Camp, and then a boat and Furymouth and a new life awash with the wealth and the dust he’d stashed over the years. Maybe Sashi could come with him some of the way. The company would be nice.
‘I used to live in a hut like this,’ he said. ‘A long time ago. Before riders came and burned it down.’
Sashi wrinkled her nose. ‘So did I. Before I knew better.’ She shivered and huddled close to him. ‘Why do we have to stay here? You said you’d take me away.’
He closed the remains of the door behind them. ‘I did. But like you said, it’s nearly dark and I don’t fancy that path at night.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘So how much dust did you get while I was gone?’ She showed him and he screwed up his face. ‘Hardly worth it. You’ll not buy much with that.’
‘It’s not for selling.’ She shivered. ‘I don’t like it here. Have you got more?’
‘Lots.’
‘Where? Where is it?’
‘Safe.’ Like I’m going to tell you.
‘Is it far?’
‘A bit.’
‘How far?’ She pushed him, hard.
‘Ancestors! As far as it is!’ He pushed her back, enough that she stumbled. It was getting cold and so he went back out into the eyrie to look for something to burn. Past the lake where the dragons drank a dry channel snaked away down the mountainside. It was steep here, a good place to lose a body.
He gathered an armful of firewood. There were more soldiers around the landing grounds, but not many. The stone bastions with their scorpions seemed largely unattended. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they weren’t going to war. Back in the hut he made a fire. Before he could stop her, Sashi threw a handful of dust into the flames.
‘What did you do that for?’
She shivered. ‘I won’t sleep without it. Not here.’ Then she grinned and looked at him sideways and stroked a finger across her lips. ‘Besides, it would be a shame to waste it.’
‘The last thing I need is to be muddy-headed in the morning. I might have had a better use for it.’ He could smell it in the air already, worming its way into his system. Another few minutes and he wouldn’t care any more. ‘Don’t expect any sympathy when you run out, when you’re shivering and crying and desperate for more.’
Sashi huddled up against him. ‘It’s cold.’
‘Mountains usually are.’ Maybe he should go in the night after all. Leave without her. He supposed he still could.
Sashi’s huddling was starting to change into something else. That was the dust taking hold, one of the reasons it was so desired. He’d never been into a dust house, but he’d heard stories of people going inside and not coming out again for months. Some houses simply took their patrons’ clothes from them at the door and gave them back when they left. Stories had it that people literally fucked themselves to death in dust houses. Siff had done his fair share of that sort of thing and he wasn’t at all sure it was possible, but the stories persisted nonetheless.
The dust sank deeper into his blood. A haze drifted over his thinking. Yes, he might as well stay. And he only had one blanket and it was as good a way as any to keep warm, wasn’t it? In the morning there would be no turning back.
When he awoke he was stiff and half frozen. He stoked the fire and brought it to life. Sashi was still snoring. She was cold, cold as ice, and yet she still slept – now there was a way that dust would kill you. He doubled the blanket over her and left her to sleep. The cloud in his head made up his mind. A pity, but she couldn’t be a part of his life now, really couldn’t, not like this. Best if he was gone.
He was almost at the bottom of the mountain when the dragon flew past, skimming low down the slope. It landed a few hundred yards further down the path and turned to face him. When it started to walk back towards him, he almost pissed himself. There were two riders on its back, not one.
‘Stay where you are.’ There wasn’t any threat in the command and there didn’t need to be. The dragon was enough.
And then he saw. It was Sashi on the dragon’s back with the rider.
Shit.
His knife started to come out of its sheath. And then what? What was he going to do with it? Take on an armoured dragon-knight and a dragon?
Damned if he was going down without a fight, though.
No no no. They can’t know. They can’t. This is something else. A mistake.
Something about
the rider spoke of dust. Maybe his eyes weren’t quite right, or maybe there was a whiff of it in the air. Sashi was smiling at him. She’d sold him. What else would put her on the back of a dragon? And so they did know, and he should have killed her, and life was so terribly, desperately unfair.
He threw the knife at her and ran. Behind him the ground shook as the dragon chased him. He managed about a dozen steps before its enormous claws scooped him up. He screamed, beyond terror, shat himself, pissed himself, and by the time they reached the eyrie and it threw him onto the ground he was broken. He crawled in the dirt, whimpering. When he tried to get up, someone kicked him back down. And the dragon, it was always there, looming over him. Sashi was forgotten. He never knew whether his knife had hit her or not.
Gold Cloak came out. Siff clawed at his boots, begging and pleading. Gold Cloak kicked him in the face. They picked him up, dragged him away and shackled him to a wall somewhere dark that smelled of rot and death. And left.
Later, someone else came, not a rider but an outsider like him. The outsider beat him to within an inch of his life and didn’t say a word. He left too.
Siff set to shouting. ‘What do you want? I’ve done nothing!’ Wasn’t that what all condemned men said?
No one answered. Long after he’d shouted himself hoarse, two men brought a brazier and a brand. They took their time heating it up and made sure he saw what was coming. One of them ripped his shirt. The other one burned him with the mark of a slave. The pain was as though he’d been ripped apart and the pieces doused in salt.
They threw water over the wound and left. A few hours later, when the pain had become almost bearable, yet another man came. This one pulled out his fingernails, one by one. Like the others, he didn’t say a word. He left Siff with his own screams for company.
A day passed. Maybe another. Time lost its beat. The next men were riders, three of them. They stank of dust and they had questions in their eyes.
‘We know everything,’ they said, but people who knew everything didn’t come with questions in their eyes.
‘King Valmeyan is moving his throne to the City of Dragons,’ said one. ‘So, shit-eater, you can stay here, hanging on that wall until we go, and then we’ll take you in a slave cage to the markets in Furymouth along with all the other shit-eaters you betrayed. Or else you tell us where your dust is. Then when we’re in Furymouth, you can sell it for us.’
He looked them over. That was something he’d always been good at, judging other men. Even chained to a wall, he could look them in the eye and see into their hearts. They were dragon-riders, bastards, heartless, born and taught to believe they were above all other men. He could see their thoughts as clearly as if they were written across their faces. They’d take his dust and then they’d kill him.
‘No,’ he said.
This didn’t seem to bother them, which seemed strange until the other men came back, the ones who’d beaten him and branded him and torn out his fingernails. They set to work and eventually, between his screams, Siff told them everything.
Afterwards he supposed they’d kill him. When they didn’t, he sat alone in the dark, fed and watered now and then but never enough, never hearing another voice, day after day after day. Eventually the pain started to fade. By then he was used to it, like an old friend. As it left him, he found he missed it.
The riders never came back. Other men came instead. They took him down and dragged him out to the landing field and dumped him in a slave cage. After a while they brought others. Dregs. The bottom of the barrel. Some of them came shouting and screaming, as if that might make a difference.
The eyrie was almost empty and the air was strange. Something terrible was coming, you could feel it, but right there and then no one cared about that, least of all Siff. They packed the cage full until it creaked at its seams and then a dragon swooped down and tore them into the air.
28
Kataros
Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
She watched the Adamantine Man lean forward.
‘How?’ He didn’t bother trying to hide his disdain. ‘You followed the Silver King? How?’ The outsider coughed. Then sneered.
‘You doggies always have a master to serve, don’t you? Maybe that’s why you think we all ought to be that way.’ He waved a weak hand in Skjorl’s face. ‘I happened by the Aardish Caves. You’ve heard of them haven’t you, doggy? Vishmir’s tomb, and they say the Silver King’s body was taken there too. I found a door to where he went.’
‘How, shit-eater?’
The outsider held up one finger. ‘Sit on this, doggy.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’m tired. I’m hungry. Get me food, doggy, or enjoy my silence.’
‘Your silence will be the sweeter,’ growled Skjorl, and the two of them settled back each onto their own end of the raft with Kataros between them. They lapsed into silence. The outsider fell asleep again. The Adamantine Man dozed. She kept herself awake – easy magic that – and watched them both from a half-trance. The lapping water lulled her, drew her mind away. Hours passed, many of them, turning into a day and then another while the three of them sat on their raft, drifting down the tunnel, doing their best to ignore one another, relieving themselves when they thought none of the others was looking and slowly getting even more hungry than they’d been before they left. Siff slipped further away, already weak from weeks of starving in his cell. There wasn’t anything she could do for him, not any more. When she asked the Adamantine Man how much longer the journey would be, he simply shrugged.
She wasn’t sure whether they were on the third day or the fourth since she’d escaped when the Adamantine Man suddenly moved. She watched him through lidded eyes. He was staring at her.
‘I know you’re not asleep, alchemist,’ he said after a moment. ‘Listen!’
She listened, but all she could hear was the sound of the water in the tunnel. ‘What?’
‘There’s a change. The water sounds different. We’re moving more slowly and the tunnel is growing wider. And look ahead.’
It took a moment for her to grasp what was different. Ahead, in the distance, the tunnel was dark, pitch dark. There was no more glow from the walls. She sat straighter.
‘What does it mean, alchemist?’
‘I don’t know. Do you?’
‘No.’
The darkness drew closer. As they entered it, Skjorl got up and climbed out of the raft. He struggled with it to the edge of the water and pulled it to a halt.
‘We walk,’ he said. He looked at Siff. ‘Him too.’
‘You’ll have to carry him again.’
Skjorl gave her a scornful look. Then he turned the raft over, tipping Siff into the water, and watched as he thrashed and spluttered. ‘Can’t touch him, remember,’ he said. ‘And look. He can stand on his own. Not as dead as he’d like you to think, alchemist.’
‘Toothworms to your arse, doggy.’ Siff shook himself and started squeezing the water out of his clothes. ‘Now I’m going to catch a cold.’
‘Best walk briskly then. Keep yourself warm.’ Skjorl spat in the water. He turned the raft back the right way and let it drift ahead of him on the end of its rope. Siff was already shaking; whatever the Adamantine Man thought, he wasn’t going to last for long if they had to walk. Then Skjorl would carry him, like it or not.
Skjorl let the raft lead the way, nosing and poking through the dark. For a while Siff struggled along behind them. Kataros could hear his footsteps splashing in the edge of the water, ragged and uneven like his breaths. He was getting worse, and quickly. They couldn’t have been going for more than ten minutes before he fell.
‘Stop!’
The Adamantine Man stopped. She could tell that because his feet ceased splashing. In the dark Kataros couldn’t tell whether he turned around. She thought probably not.
‘Listen to him. He can’t go on. You have to carry him.’
‘Then you must let me touch him.’
‘No. Put him on the raft the
n.’
The Adamantine Man laughed. ‘What, and have the temptation to let go of the rope?’
‘But you won’t.’ It wasn’t an order, not a command sunk into his blood. Simply knowledge that, however much the Adamantine Man despised and loathed them both, he was trapped by who he was just as much as the rest of them. Siff had shown them a ray of hope. Skjorl didn’t believe it, even she didn’t really believe it, but neither of them could let it go because it was all they had.
‘Just pull in the raft.’
Siff staggered with her help towards it. They both fumbled in the dark while the Adamantine Man was no help at all, but eventually Siff was sitting on it.
‘I’m cold,’ he said, but there was only so much Kataros could do with blood alone, and only so much of it going spare.
‘And I’m hungry,’ he said later, and there wasn’t much she could do about that either.
She had no idea how far they went in the dark. It seemed that most of a day must have passed, but darkness was deceptive and she knew that it had more likely been no more than an hour. The floor of the tunnel began to change under her feet. The walls changed too, from smooth to rough like a cave. They had to feel their way around obstacles in their path – boulders, columns and spires of stone, invisible in the dark. The water changed its sound as it wove between them, and then ahead came a first glimmer of light. The walls pressed in, the roof too, the water rushed faster, and then they were at an end and daylight was ahead, slitting through vines and creepers that masked the mouth of the tunnel like bars on a cage. The sound of rushing water grew louder.
Skjorl stopped. He tied the raft to a boulder and waded on towards the way out. When he came back he was smiling.
‘I know this place,’ he said. ‘The Ghostwater. There’s a waterfall. Pool at the bottom. Lots of rubble and stone. Valley’s steep and narrow here and the path’s hard, but it doesn’t go far and then you’re on the plains.’ He shrugged. ‘If the Fury isn’t flooding we could be in Farakkan in a few hours from here. Not that there’s much point. There won’t be anything left except black mud and a few bits of charred wood.’ He looked from side to side and then spoke with forced scorn. ‘Ghostwater was supposed to be haunted. Bad spirits.’ He shrugged. ‘So now what, alchemist? What do we do now?’
