'How long will it take for us to rise to the top of the mountain? she asked when he still didnt answer. Hed be right about the battle of wills, if hed got that far yet. If she couldnt coerce Sea Lord Shonda into line right now then she might as well turn around and go home.

'Not long.

Not long enough, he was telling her. Perhaps she could concede a little. 'I will need some time to prepare. She drifted to the window and looked outside. Theyd left the Dralamut early in the morning. The afternoon was already old, but the summer evenings in the mountains were long. 'I will arrive at dusk, she said. 'Ive heard the Kabulingnor is at its most impressive when the sun sets fire to the distant mountaintops. So yes, I will come at dusk.

'As you wish, lady. There was, perhaps, a very slight hint of grat.i.tude in the killers voice; although shed given him this little delay not to spare him but to spare the men he might have killed to make his point more swiftly. She watched him open his little window, about to vanish without reply, when a malicious demon piped up inside her.

'Dont kill anyone, she ordered, a moment before he was gone.

Alone, she closed the window behind him and all the little blinds around the gondola so no one would see inside. Modesty in part, but more to keep prying eyes at bay. She opened the chest that the slaves from the Dralamut had loaded aboard, the chest with the false bottom and a secret inside, and took out the gla.s.s shards of the Arbiter.

The sun sank. She had no idea when the right time would be to leave so she opened the little shutter door to where the pilot golem sat. It was a short squat clay thing, a creature a little like an inverted urn with stubby little arms and stubbier little legs. They could walk and even talk but they never did. She told it to be at the top of the Silver Mountain where the gla.s.ships landed, very shortly before dusk, and left it at that. The gla.s.ship began to rise at once, but slowly, very slowly, and long before they arrived she was ready. Dressed. Painted. Red Lin Feyn was no more and the Arbiter of the Dralamut stood in her place. She looked at herself in a mirror and adjusted the gla.s.s needles that ran through her hair. It wasnt often she dressed this way, mostly because it was a pain and took an age to get right, but shed practised it because it was part of the point of who she was.

Once she was finished, once she was safe from prying eyes, she opened the blinds again and looked down. Vespinarr lay beneath her now. Beside the landing fields the Visonda Palace rose up the lower slope of the mountain in layers, fortress-like, with its vast inward-sloping walls broken only in their upper parts by straight rows of many windows and sliced by layers of flat rooftops. The Visonda was built on an outcrop of rock jutting from the base of the mountain. The side facing the city was a large s.p.a.ce enclosed by walls from which great open gates led out to the Visonda Square, while more great gates on the inner side stood ajar and opened to a series of grand stairs, miniature palaces and castles and towers between a gently sloping path that led up to the peak of the outcrop. A quadrangular ma.s.s of gilt-canopied buildings packed the little summit so tightly that it seemed a marvel to Red Lin Feyn that none had ever toppled off.

Beneath the walls lay the vastness of the Visonda Square, a plaza of pale grey stone. Dark lines ran in from the corners and the edges, converging on an annulus at the centre pierced by a small spire, the mysterious Azahl Pillar. Further across the city, more gilt canopies loomed like monsters out of the packed narrow streets of the Harub. The Temples of Jokung and the Sun and Moon, where whispers murmured of forbidden G.o.ds who still took sacrifice.

She lost sight of individual streets and palaces as the gla.s.ship rose higher. Instead, she saw how the city sat at one end of a basin surrounded by snow-covered peaks with the silver-gleaming ribbon of the Yalun Zarang, the 'merry blue, running through the southern quarter and, a few miles to the east, the second river, the Jokun. The swamps to the north glittered in the twilight sun while the gullies of the southern Konsidar beyond fell into shadow and their snow-peppered peaks glowed pink in the sunset. There was a beauty here, an elegant soaring natural grace to the land that the cities on the coast somehow lacked; and she thought she understood for a moment the arrogance of the Vespinese. There was more wealth in Vespinarr than mere silver.

She went back to her chest and took out a gla.s.s globe roiling with black cloud. Put her hands on it to soothe the tiny snip of the storm-dark kept trapped within. Sometimes, all alone, she imagined that Feyn Charin himself was trapped there.

'I am ready, she told it, and looked at herself once more in the mirror. The Arbiters robe was of firebird feathers stolen from the deep jungles and lava runs of Qeled, feathers that seemed to burn like flames, the deeper darker ones around her feet where the robe flared, then growing lighter in strands that wrapped her body in spirals like the weave of a rope and made her appear a tornado of swirling naked flame. Gold-gla.s.s shards hung from her arms and across her chest and tiny sparks of lightning flashed between them. Her hair was piled high and shot through with threads of gold and silver fire. She lifted the headdress off the bed and fitted it carefully in place. Pure white feathers rose behind her now, almost as tall and as broad as her outstretched arms. In the midst of all this fire and light, her face was painted white and black, split straight down the middle, black on the right, white on the left. Her lips were as red as ripe cherries and a second line of red crossed her face from side to side, ear to eyes to ear.

'I am ready, she said again.

They were reaching the top of the Silver Mountain, crossing the outer wall of the Kabulingnor, twenty paces thick of bland dark stone, and then the inner, painted yellow, wide enough that the lords of the mountains sometimes had chariot races on it when they were bored. Inside these walls rose the twin gold-gla.s.s towers of the Ziltak, the place for receiving honoured guests. Deeper in the mountaintop gardens were the marvels of the Chensdong and Polsang Palaces, almost hidden among giant trees. She couldnt see the fabled Golden Quintarch at all. It was said to be the most magnificent of the five palaces of the Kabulingnor but it was also Lord Shondas innermost court and hardly anyone born outside the walls ever penetrated so far.

Around the Ziltak, Shondas court had a.s.sembled to receive her in the open. Lin Feyn closed the blinds with a thought as the gondola touched the ground. She counted to a hundred and to a hundred again and Red Lin Feyn dropped away. As she stepped outside and let the crowds see her majesty, she became the Arbiter, heart and soul. She lifted her right arm high and to one side, a finger pointing firmly and strongly to the sun. Her left hand rose more slowly to the Vespinese until she saw Shonda in all his finery, here to receive her as he should. She lifted her arm a little higher and then let her finger droop to point at him, and when she spoke, her voice boomed like thunder, strong enough that everyone would hear, so loud that the front ranks of waiting tvarrs and kwens quivered and tried their hardest not to tremble. It was a voice that could be heard across mountains and down the slopes in the city itself. Everywhere throughout the seven worlds in tiny echoes.

'I have followed the path of Feyn Charin. I have crossed worlds. I have bent the storm-dark to my will. I am Red Lin Feyn. I am the Arbiter of the Dralamut and I will be your judge. Shonda of Vespinarr, you are called to my court among those who have cavorted with dragons.

She held the moment, let the words sink in and the echoes of them ring around the mountains. Then she turned her head and looked away and slowly walked back inside the gondola slowly because beneath the weight and bulk of the headdress anything else was impossible.

The killer was with her in the air, but no matter. As the ramp closed behind her, she sat and carefully lifted the headdress, put it on the floor and became Red Lin Feyn again. The temptation to throw the blasted thing across the room and kick it was strong. Loathsome burden.

'All for that? the killer asked.

Lin Feyn nodded. 'All for that. The Arbiter had said what the Arbiter had come to say. There was no need for more. Something had started. Lin Feyn couldnt yet begin to see where it might end, but the Arbiter of the Dralamut wasnt meant to care.

Dragons. The symbol of Vespinarr was a snow lion and three dragons entwined. Some said dragons had lived here once but they were only repeating stories.

23.

A Matter of Blood Liang had a dream. In her dream Belli raced through tunnels of soft light to find her. She saw him stumble and slide and almost fall as he reached her. She was on the floor and she had no idea why, but something was terribly wrong. Everything was sideways. She was in his study and there was something under his desk, a vial lying on its side that must have dropped and rolled there and been lost. She tried to reach it but it was so difficult to make her arm move. She watched it instead, quite certain it would roll away and hide the moment she took her eyes off it. And Belli would want to know. Hed want it back. So she lay still. Watching.

'Li! Flame! No!

She felt his hands on her, moving her, turning her onto her back. She felt the movement inside her but her skin was numb and she didnt feel his fingers at all. The world shifted suddenly and she wasnt looking at the vial any more but up at blank white stone. She whimpered. The floor, was it? Was she floating and about to fall? Then he was looking over her.

The vial. 'Belli?

'Hush. He drew away. He was holding a gla.s.s with a pale amber liquid in it. She wanted to warn him, tell him something was wrong, tell him about the vial under the desk before it rolled away and was lost, but her lips wouldnt move. He ran his tongue around the rim of the gla.s.s, tasting the amber liquid. Then he screwed up his face and smashed it. Shards rained over the floor and there was a blaze of fury in his eye. He picked one up and came close to her again. 'Live, Li.

She could barely hear him. Her eyes wouldnt stay focused. He brought the gla.s.s shard close to her face. She watched in horror as he cut himself and dipped a finger in his own blood and ran it over her lips. She closed her eyes. The pain was going away and a delicious numb warmth swept through in its place.

'Live, Li, he said again.

And for a while after that she remembered nothing.

24.

The Collar of the Moon The gondola from Tayuna was every bit as pleasant as the one from Vespinarr, although made of gold instead of the more expensive and ostentatious silver of the mountain lord. Red Lin Feyn watched from her windows as they drifted away from Vespinarr, over the silver cascades and cataracts of the Jokun river on its way to the rebellious desert princes of Hanjaadi and the sea. She watched as the gla.s.ship crossed the southern fringes of the Konsidar out into the desert beyond. The desert was dull but she watched that too. She let her mind wander, contemplating the intricacies of power that laced TakeiTarr like an invisible web. On and on out into the sands and the gravel flats and the bare sculpted stone, and each day the killer came back with hastily written reports and words of his own, telling her everything she should know before she arrived. No, everything she could know, except not even that. Everything the killers had found and cared to share. Chose to share.

The last was important, she felt sure, and when he came back from his first visit to the eyrie, she knew she was right not wholly to trust his reports. He told her in a carefully calm and measured voice how things were and what to expect, but something had shaken him, and by the time he bowed and begged her leave, she knew it was the dragon though he never told her nor gave her any clue as to why. She couldnt have said what betrayed him. A flicker at the corner of his mouth one time. A slight tone out of place in his voice. The instant of hesitation when she asked him if there was anything else she should know before hed shaken his head and told her that no, there wasnt. He was hiding something. But the killers were good at hiding things and clever, and she couldnt be sure whether hed meant to let her know there was a secret he couldnt share or whether it had slipped out to kiss her all on its own. She didnt trust them though, not quite. It wasnt in her nature, and her nature was why she was what she was.

Why would a killer keep a secret from the Arbiter of the Dralamut? Why would he let her see that he had one but not share it? Were there other killers watching them both? They had a hand in this somewhere, far deeper than they cared to show, that much was clear.

No matter.

In time she saw the stain of the storm-dark on the far horizon ahead. She dressed and opened the gondola window. The Elemental Man was waiting for her, a whisper of wind that curled around her robes and then was gone as he appeared three steps behind her, head bowed.

'Without the gla.s.ships that tow it, Tsens eyrie will sink, will it not? she asked.

'The enchantress Chay-Liang who served Baros Tsen TVarr claims so. Gla.s.ships may lift it higher or drag it down, but without them it slowly returns to float a hundred feet above the ground.

So yes, without the gla.s.ships the eyrie would sink, and so if the worst came to the worst they could simply drop it into the storm-dark and be rid of it. She wondered if Baros Tsen had had the same thought on his mind when he brought the eyrie here in the first place. She wondered too if the dragon would be so easy.

As she reached the edge of the maelstrom, she watched the storm-dark spread out beneath her. Sea Lord Weir had had the windows in his gondola set at the perfect height for his own comfort and he was a tall man. Lin Feyn found herself pressed to them, on tiptoe, craning her neck like a curious child. After a while she made a pile of books and stood on it. Better. Hardly how an Arbiter should behave, but she was alone, and alone she was merely Red Lin Feyn, enchantress and navigator, initiate of Hingwal Taktse and the Dralamut. For an hour she stared out at the swirling black cloud and the sullen purple lightning deep within while the gla.s.ship drifted into the storms heart and to the G.o.dspike that pinned the maelstrom to the desert of TakeiTarr.

The Elemental Man flitted ahead of her on a sled, a tiny bright speck over the dark vastness of the storm. She wasnt sure why when he could simply become the wind, but she envied him. Gla.s.ships suited her, but here and now she would have joined him, unsheltered from the enormity of everything, the timeless colossal sky overhead, the unfathomable endless depth of the storm-dark, the ancient immensity of the G.o.dspike towering over everything, the constant rush of the wind, the sheer size of s.p.a.ce and time all around her making her as small as a speck in the desert. That was how the world truly was and it was good to be reminded now and then. We are all so insignificant.

Yes, she envied him but she stayed where she was. The Arbiter of the Dralamut did not cavort through the sky, even if she wanted to. Instead, she closed the blinds and dressed herself as shed dressed for the lords of Vespinarr, all except for that blasted headdress; and when she was done, she stood half in her majesty and half not, perched on her pile of books, and peered through the window again. When she looked hard, she saw the dark mote of the eyrie beneath six pinp.r.i.c.ks of light glittering in the late-afternoon sun. She watched the walls as the gla.s.ship drifted closer until she saw the dragon. The killer had warned her above all else about the dragon. Hed told her how big it was but theyd both understood that he could do as much telling as he liked; it was a monster she would have to see with her own eyes. She let the sight of it settle inside her as she floated closer, but it was hard out here in the shadow of the G.o.dspike to be impressed by size. In a place like this everything else amounted to nothing. Perhaps the dragon felt the same? The killer claimed the creatures had been restless things until Tsen had brought his eyrie here, and now they seemed quiet, almost as though entranced by the unfathomable monolith of the desert.

A shadow broke her thoughts. Three other gla.s.ships pa.s.sed above, keeping station with the eyrie. Shed seen more on her approach to the storm-dark, a dozen Vespinese ships keeping pace with the storms edge. The Vespinese had made quite a little camp down in the dunes, and she thought she might have a use for that. The killers, meanwhile, had counted more than a hundred gla.s.ships loitering out in the desert now, many of them Vespinese but many of them not, some from Xican still loyal to Sea Lord QuaiShu and waiting to see what would happen, a growing few from other cities, come as voyeurs. There would be more of those before long, a gathering of vultures, but she dismissed such things as beneath her concern.

She closed the last blind and painted on her Arbiters mask. She would make her judgement and return to the Dralamut. What happened after was for the killers, not for her. She lifted the headdress, put it on and roundly cursed it and then sat and waited until she felt the gondola arrive and cease its drifting. Every slave and every soldier of the eyrie would be outside, a.s.sembled in the dragon yard to greet her, Vespinese and Xicanese alike, chased from beds and duties and ch.o.r.es to abase themselves. The Arbiter of the Dralamut had come.

As before, she counted to a hundred and then again. When she was quite certain that she was ready, the gondola opened. She stepped delicately down its ramp and let the world see her.

The wind caught her at once. It whipped across the ramp and caught the headdress like a sail, and it took all her strength not to sway and take a step to the side. And at the same time the first thing she saw was the dragon, straight across the yard and perched on its wall directly in front of her. The ramp led straight towards it, so perfectly aligned that she knew someone cleverer than the killers was waiting for her. The dragon gazed at her, eyeball to eyeball across the s.p.a.ce between them, at her and through her, its ma.s.sive armoured head craned forward, the vast sails of its wings spread wide and the rider on its back; and all the men and soldiers, the slaves and kwens and tvarrs and even the killers kneeling between them immediately lost all purpose. A part of her screamed. She let it. Let it scream and scream and keep on screaming as she locked it in a quiet place in her head where it wouldnt be heard.

She looked to her left and right and then tossed two small gold-gla.s.s spheres, one to either side. They grew into shimmering golden screens, shielding her from the wind. Her voice was like thunder. 'I have followed the path of Feyn Charin. I have crossed worlds. I have bent the storm-dark to my will. I am Red Lin Feyn. I am the Arbiter of the Dralamut and I will be your judge.

The force of her voice caught them all. Even the dragon seemed somehow diminished. She felt it looking at her, suddenly curious.

'MaiChoiro Kwen is relieved of all duties and responsibilities. He will remain as an honoured guest of my court.

An Elemental Man shifted to stand beside MaiChoiro before shed even finished. The killers had known what shed say for days and shed told them exactly what they must do. The Elemental Men had said they were her eyes and her armour and her lightning. Well, if thats what they thought then they could work for it. The killer took MaiChoiros lightning wand and the black wand that gave him access to almost every gold-gla.s.s structure in Vespinarr. She was humiliating him out in the open and in front of everyone. He wouldnt ever forget that. Nor did she care.

'The tvarr Perth Oran. The enchantress Chay-Liang. The slaves Bellepheros and Zafir. Attend me! She tossed a third gold-gla.s.s sphere into the air, paused for a moment to see it zip away towards the dragon, then turned and walked into the gondola and sat with her back to the open ramp, forcing herself not to look at the consequences of what shed done. With elaborate care she took the white feather headdress off and laid it on the floor beside her. A miscalculation was always a possibility, but there were no screams yet, no roar of fire . . .

She glanced at the headdress. It was too hot and heavy to wear for long and quite impossible out in so much wind.

Still no screams, still no fire. Perth Oran TVarr came nervously up the ramp and pressed his head to the floor beside her. She waved him away, haughty and dismissive, but in truth because she was too distracted.

Still no fire. Her killer appeared next. He bowed. 'Lady, the enchantress Chay-Liang is too weak to come to you. It remains unclear whether she will survive.

Lin Feyn nodded absently. Yes, yes, poisoned some days ago. But if the enchantress wasnt dead by now then shed probably live, wouldnt she? 'Did it work, killer? She had to ask.

'The dragon-rider is coming, lady.

Red Lin Feyn closed her eyes for a moment and let out a tiny breath. The old slave arrived next, the alchemist, grumbling and complaining at the killer who brought him. The dragon-rider followed last of all, silent and haughty and with a furious scowl dancing over her face. There was no ceremony, no respect she simply threw herself into a chair and sprawled. As far as Red Lin Feyn could see, she wore nothing more than a long heavy tunic belted around her waist, the clothes of an ordinary slave, but now with a collar of gold-gla.s.s around her neck, the last sphere that Red Lin Feyn had tossed into the air after shed spoken. That was what had brought her down from her dragons back.

'Waiting on the witch? drawled the rider-slave. 'Oh, sh.e.l.l live. Grand Master Bellepheros of my Order of the Scales was the best alchemist in the realms before your people took him to be a slave. The rider looked at the killers at first, not at Lin Feyn, but then her eyes shifted and a boundless fury flared within them. She c.o.c.ked her head at Red Lin Feyn and tapped the collar. 'Take this off. Now.

Lin Feyn drew a hand across her face, palm out, fingers splayed, and cast a wall of silence across the table between them. The rest could all talk as much as they liked now and not a sound would come out of them.

'You know my purpose here is the devastation of Dhar Thosis. We will speak of that later, and also of the death of Baros Tsen TVarr, but first we will speak of dragons. You will do what needs to be done and you will do it without being noticed. If one of you fails then I will cast all three of you, your Scales, your dragons and your eggs into the storm-dark below. I do not need dragons. I do not want dragons. She gave them a moment to digest that and then went on. 'Perth Oran TVarr, you will make arrangements for animals to be brought to the eyrie for the smaller dragons to eat. Purchase them from the desert men who trade in the shadow of the G.o.dspike or ship them from Vespinarr or conjure them from your chamber pot, I do not care nor do I wish to know.

The alchemist slave started forward from his chair. He opened his mouth and got out a good few words before he realised there was no sound coming from between his lips. The Arbiter turned to him. 'You, alchemist, will do whatever Perth Oran TVarr requires. You will be his slave. You will keep your enchantress mistress alive and ensure she has whatever she needs to do what I require of her, which is to keep the adult dragon compliant, docile and available to me for any purpose I see fit, as and when I desire it.

The killer next, a little deviation from what shed told him she had to say. 'The Elemental Men will find the missing dragon and destroy it.

The killer twitched and then bowed. Lin Feyn turned to Zafir, the one who was always going to be the most difficult. 'You will fly the adult dragon. You will hunt food and water and whatever it requires to sustain it. When you fly, my killers shall fly with you. If you are disobedient to my will then I will end you, summarily and without thought or hesitation. She leaned forward and tapped her own neck with a finger. The dragon-rider had been clever enough to station herself on the walls for this stupid ceremony so presumably she was clever enough to understand that the collar would kill her whenever Lin Feyn felt the urge. 'That is all. I will summon you again when I require you. You may leave.

She opened the gondola ramp with a wave of her hand. Perth Oran TVarr stumbled out as fast as his legs would carry him. The alchemist wasnt much slower and only because his knees clearly troubled him. He looked much more content than the tvarr. Pleased even.

The rider-slave didnt move, which was more or less as expected. Lin Feyn waved the ramp closed, feeling the gla.s.ship lift back up off the ground. She met the slaves eye, kept the wall of silence between them for a minute longer as they stared one another down, then finally let it go. 'Speak.

The rider-slave gave the very slightest tilt of her head. 'Take. This. Off.

'No.

'No? The rider-slave smiled and lightly shook her head. 'Then I will do nothing for you, nor for any other.

Red Lin Feyn nodded. 'That is your choice to make. You know there is no good end for you here. We can finish this between us here and now if you wish.

'I am a dragon-queen.

'I know what you were before you were taken. You have your pride. I acknowledge that matters to you. Hence we do this here, in private.

The killer vanished and appeared behind Zafirs chair. Lin Feyn placed two fingers in front of her mouth and gently blew over them. The rider-slaves eyes went suddenly wide and her jaw dropped. She gasped and both hands flew to the collar as she choked.

'My killers tell me that when MaiChoiro Kwen tried to hang you, your dragon plucked you from the gallows. Lin Feyn lowered her fingers. The rider-slave shuddered and gulped a lungful of air. Her eyes were murderous. Red Lin Feyn clasped her hands together and bowed in apology. 'I do not yet mean you harm, dragon-queen. I will send men with you when you fly, but you have already killed one Elemental Man, havent you? So if you do not return, my collar will kill you as the whim takes me. You will both be far away and your dragon will not save you from me. I hope you understand.

The rider-slave spat. 'Take this off me or kill me here and now.

Lin Feyn opened the gla.s.ships ramp. They were up in the air again now, only a few hundreds of yards from the eyrie but they might as well have been miles. A howling wind blew in between them, whipping at Lin Feyns dress and at the rider-slaves tunic. Lin Feyn went to stand at the ramp and looked down to where the vortex of the storm-dark twisted its slow spiral about the G.o.dspike a mile beneath her. The slave Zafir could get up and push her out. If the killer wasnt quick enough to stop her shed fall and the storm-dark would eat her. Or shed ride it as her Father of Fathers had done.

'I am daughter of daughters to Feyn Charin himself, first navigator! she cried over the wind. 'Feyn Charin, who entered the storm-dark of the desert and returned, the only man who ever did. He taught a handful of apprentices how to cross the lesser curtains out to sea, and from that one piece of knowledge everything that we are was built. He never returned to this, dragon-queen. The Elemental Men forced him back to the desert in the end but he would not go into the storm-dark. He refused them. By then he was a good part mad, closeted away in the Dralamut, filled with obsessions the forbidden Rava and the half-G.o.ds and sorcerers who once strode the world before they shattered it. But Ive read his words, dragon-queen, and it all came from what he saw in there; and now here it is, laid before us! I have his blood. Ive crossed every curtain line of the storm-dark to every realm the sea lords know. I am but halfway through my life but one day I will come here and follow him. I know this as surely as I know the sun will rise each morning. She reached out her hand towards Zafir. 'So jump, dragon-queen, if thats what you want, she cried. 'Push me, if you think you can. Let us go together if death is what you so greedily desire, and see how true my Father of Fathers blood runs! Shall we?

She waited. Counted out a minute then counted out another, then turned and looked back. The dragon-queen was now sitting straight in her chair, staring right through her. All full of a great deal of murder and wondering what Lin Feyn truly was. Lin Feyn closed the ramp, stepped calmly back to her seat and sat down.

I thought not. But she kept that to herself.

'Take. This. Off.

'I will not. Lin Feyn shook her head. 'But if it is because a collar is the sign of a slave, I will change it. She rose again and came behind Zafir, placing delicate fingers on her neck. As she touched it, the gold-gla.s.s began to flow. 'There is a story, she whispered as she worked, 'that in the times before the Splintering, each of the old G.o.ds put a piece of their essence into an object and gave it to their most holy priests. Over time the objects changed hands but they never changed what they were. The sun put his fire and strength and power into a coat of burning mail. The earth put her immutable will into an Adamantine Spear. The moon filled a circlet with thought and transformation and seduction, but, fickle lord of night as he was, he couldnt bring himself to bestow his favour on just one and so split it in two and set them loose on the world together. The lady of the stars, not to be outdone, placed power over spirits in a pair of knives whose golden hafts were carved with a thousand eyes. The gla.s.s oozed up over the rider-slaves neck and around her chin, across her face. 'We Taiytakei are forbidden these stories. To us they are fables. Yet an Adamantine Spear? You held one once. A suit of burning mail? The immortal Sun King of the Dominion wears such a coat. Golden circlets of moonlight? The Ice Witch of Aria claims them as her own.

Red Lin Feyn stepped away. The gold-gla.s.s was a circle around the rider-slaves brow now.

'Fables. Stories. To me they are simply that, but perhaps you might think otherwise. I cannot and would not give you your spear, but you may have a crown, queen of dragons, if that suits you better. If you try to take it off, or if you displease me, it will still burst your skull. She glanced at the ramp, closed now. 'If you ever prefer the other way, no one will stop you.

25.

A Holy Trust In a perfect world, Bellepheros thought, he might have moved some of his laboratory outside to the hatchery and done his alchemy while watching over the eggs, but the wind put paid to any notion of that five minutes in that and only the Great Flame could know what potions hed end up with! But still it was sometimes an irritation having to go all the way back to his laboratory when he needed a potion in the hatchery, and so hed taken to keeping a few things closer to hand at the top of the tunnels where the Scales lived. He slipped away there now. The eyrie was crowded with the Vespinese and now the Elemental Men, but the spiral where the Scales lived remained almost empty. The consequences of the Hatchling Disease were there for everyone to see and, for those whod been here and remembered, Tsen had been ruthless in keeping the plague suppressed. No one wanted to be anywhere near Bellepheross dragon-slaves, and that was fine: the eyrie had five separate spirals of tunnels and rooms and the Scales had one entirely to themselves. It gave them far more s.p.a.ce than they needed, and what was an alchemist to make in dozens of empty rooms where he might work in the sure knowledge hed not be disturbed? Mischief, clearly!

He had a sled hidden in one of them, stolen from the Vespinese on the night of their attack. The Scales had found several when theyd been clearing the rubble from the ruined hatchery, and one of them hadnt ever quite made it back in the chaos of the Elemental Men. In fact he had two sleds, but Perth Oran TVarr knew about the second one and Bellepheros made sure to keep it out in the open where everyone could see it.

The Scales werent the only the reason the Taiytakei avoided this part of the eyrie. It stank of death. There were bodies here. Tsen had started it, feeding the slaves who caught the Hatchling Disease to Diamond Eye, and somehow it had never quite stopped. Bellepheros hated seeing dragons eating the bodies of the dead even though in most eyries in the dragon-realms men had considered it an honour to feed their dead to the dragons. The Taiytakei saw things differently, but Perth Oran TVarr was of a practical disposition he was a tvarr after all and considered any slaves who had died in the crossfire of the fighting nothing more than useful meat. So, what with one thing and another, Bellepheros had ended up with a larder of dead men. Hed had the Scales gut them so they didnt rot and explode, and Li had months ago placed some sort of enchantment on a couple of the rooms to keep them cold, but the smell had gradually come anyway. It lingered.

Bellepheros went to them now, his larder of the dead, because it was the one place he was sure to be left alone. He shivered and blew on his fingers. The corpses hung from hooks through their wrists, a gaping flap of skin and pasty flesh across their abdomens where their stomachs and intestines had been removed and emptied and replaced again as knotted sacs full of the potions he made to dull the hatchlings. It was a grisly gruesome little room and he hated that it even existed, but after the escaped hatchling had burned his laboratory and destroyed almost all his potions, hed been glad of his little larder. If nothing else, the rogue dragon had taught him to keep his most precious things scattered in different places.

He pushed through the hanging bodies. Another corpse lay across the floor behind them, one that hadnt been gutted yet, the slave whod poisoned Li and had tried to kill her Holiness. He stared at the man a while, as he did every time he came here, then turned away. Everyone knew the corpses hanging here had potions for the dragons inside them, but nowadays he kept other things here too. He took what hed come for out of the open belly of a slave whod once been one of Tsens cooks. Hed been a good cook and had liked his food so there was plenty of s.p.a.ce inside him. Hed become Bellepheross favourite place to hide things.