Part 16 (1/2)

Eventually they set off again. At some point in the afternoon, with the sun on his face, he must have nodded off; the next thing he knew, the sky was growing dark and Kat was sitting beside him again, facing back the way they'd come, watching the sun set behind the clear skies of the Worldspine.

'Who are you, Kemir?' she asked when he looked at her.

'I don't know.' He shook his head.

And he didn't, but he told her what he could. How for a decade he and his cousin Sollos had sold their swords. That they'd sold them to anyone who'd pay. How they'd begun as foresters, as scouts, sniffing out the territories of snapper packs on the fringes of King Valgar's realm and hunting wolves. How they'd ended up as soldiers in the pay of Queen Shezira's knight-marshal, her secret killers, hunting down any dragon-knights who incurred her wrath. How he'd been to most of the eyries in the northern realms, flown on the back of almost a dozen dragons all told. He told her how he'd watched a pack of them almost destroy the foundations that held the realms together. How he despised the lords and ladies who called the realms their own and why. How, in the end, he'd found that he wasn't one jot better. How the dragons were going to destroy them all. How he'd meant to sell her as a slave to the Taiytakei in Furymouth so that he could run away, far away, as far as he possibly could, from the dragons and from everything else. He saw how much that hurt her, but she didn't turn away.

'Is that what you meant when you said I should have left you?'

He nodded, unable for a moment to speak. Watching the water and filled with a crippling sadness.

'Everything I know is gone,' he said once he found his voice again. 'Even if I found a s.h.i.+p, even if the Taiytakei took the gold dragons in my pockets and sailed me somewhere far away, what then? More of the same? Another land ruled by men who care nothing for the people who serve them? I'm a sell-sword. A s.h.i.+t-eater. A nothing.' He spat into the water.

'You called dragons from the sky.'

'What?'

'You called dragons from the sky to burn the filth from the river.'

That made him laugh. 'They were probably bored. Or hungry. Or both. Believe me, next time it'll be us they eat. I've seen houses smashed to splinters by a careless flick of a tail. I've seen men crushed to death underfoot. I've seen them sent flying through the air, shattered and broken by an idle flap of a wing. And those were the dragons we call tame.' The dragons hadn't eaten the river men, though. They'd been left, broken and burned. Why?

'I never wanted to be a Scales. I was meant to be an alchemist.'

For some reason, despite everything, she was still there, still beside him, still listening. Why? Because I was nice to you once? You were a means to an end, that's all.

'You saved me,' she said so quietly he almost didn't hear.

'Saved you?' That was rich. 'No. But I will.' He took her hand and squeezed. 'I'm yours now. I will guard you to the end of the world.' And why, by all that burns, did you go and say a thing like that? No, best not to answer. In that moment, though, he meant it. Every word. 'If the only person I was trying to save was me, I'm not sure I'd find the will to bother.'

Either Kataros didn't hear him or she didn't have an answer. She sat, mute, and held his hand.

Sealed Away Where It Could Do No Harm.

Alone in its cave, the dragon called.

Old man . . .

Silence, they had called him, but that was a new name, not the one he remembered.

Old man . . .

He whispered, on and off. Usually when the little one who ruled this place came closest. But more and more at other times. Even up in the tower, as he slept, the dragon tried to reach him.

Old man . . .

The more the old man tried to ignore the dragon, the more the dragon reached out, straining to push further. Until, by chance, it found something wonderful.

Who are you?

Crisp Cold Shaft of Winter Sunlight. Who are you?

A pause. Then: I am Snow.

Watersgate.

For hours each day Kemir sat at the front of the boat and watched the river. Sometimes Kat sat with him, sometimes not. Her mood waxed and waned with the dust he still gave her. Gave her because she asked him for it. Gave her so she could sleep without waking screaming from the nightmares that came in the night. She'd come and sit beside him, not saying anything, s.h.i.+vering in the breeze even though it wasn't that cold. He always knew what she wanted when she s.h.i.+vered, and in the end he always gave in. He'd give her the pouch he'd stolen, she'd take a little and give it back, her mood would lighten, and then they'd talk. Always about him, never about her. Usually about the old days. The times he liked to remember. The dust was running out, would be gone before long she was taking more and more but it would last long enough to see them to Furymouth or the City of Dragons or wherever she chose to lead him. And then . . .

And then nothing. She'd vanish into some eyrie and he'd never see her again. He tried to steel himself for that, but it wasn't really working so he settled for not thinking about it. In the warm sun his head started to loll, and then suddenly they were there. Plag's Bay. Exactly how he remembered it. Wagons and horses and cattle and boats, filled with shouting and swearing and sweat. The town sat at the bottom of a notch in Gliding Dragon Gorge, standing guard over the only road up for a hundred miles. At the top was Watersgate and the start of the Evenspire Road which wound out across the Hungry Mountain Plains, past the City of Dragons and the Adamantine Palace to the Sapphire River, Samir's Crossing and Narammed's Bridge, then on through hundreds of miles of desert and nothing until it reached Evenspire and the Blackwind Dales and eventually Sand. Everything that flowed from the south to the north or back the other way came through Watersgate and Plag's Bay. They were the crossroads between the north and the south, the east and the west, and they didn't let you forget it.

His head ached, a dull thump inside his skull. Too much sleeping in the sun.

He jumped off the boat and pulled Kat down after him, then paid the boatmen with a gold dragon each and hurried away before they thought to demand any more. He looked along the water at the boats, dozens and dozens of them. Plenty that would take him on down the river. And then he looked up at the cliffs, at the gash in their side and the winding road to Watersgate and the City of Dragons.

She's going away now. She's going to leave you.

His headache was getting worse.

'What do we do now?' She had his arm, hugging it close in the press of people. He couldn't think. Too much noise, too much light, the pounding in his skull. They were being watched. He could feel the tension. People were looking at Kat, looking at him.

He s.h.i.+vered. There were taphouses along the dockside, cheap beer for thirsty boatmen. He dragged her to the nearest of them. Sat her down and threw a silver dragon at someone for some beer and to be left alone. At least it was quieter in here. Darker. Cooler. He took the pouch of dust from his s.h.i.+rt. Dust made you brave and filled you with l.u.s.t. He had no idea how it was for headaches, but it couldn't possibly make things worse and it was good for the other pains, the ones that were made of memories. He took a generous pinch himself then offered it to Kat. For the first time she shook her head.

If dust wouldn't make his headache go away, enough beer would do the trick. Maybe if he pa.s.sed out in a drunken stupor, she'd quietly slip out without him. Maybe.

She leaned towards him. Her eyes seemed wide and full of hope, so far from how Kemir felt inside. Here it came. The moment when she left him.

'I always wanted to have a shop,' she whispered. 'Could we have a shop?'

'What?' He had to take a moment to understand what she'd said. 'A shop?'

'I didn't want to be a Scales. Didn't want to be an alchemist either, but whoever my mother and father were, they sold me to the Order before I could even walk. I don't remember them. I was good at potions, and at . . . at the other things. I don't want to be a Scales though. I don't want Statue Plague. I used to think about having a shop. I could have been a proper alchemist if I hadn't . . .' She looked away. 'I thought I could have a shop. Making my potions and selling them. And herbs and things. I was good at potions.'

Wearily, Kemir turned to face her. His head pounded. 'Kat, I was there when the dragons who destroyed your eyrie nearly burned the alchemists into the earth. And you want me to be a shopkeeper?' Out of the sun, it was impossible to tell whether her eyes were still dilated with dust from the boat or whether it was simply the gloom.

'I had a dragon-rider who was sweet on me for a while,' she said without any real trace of regret. 'When I was still in the Palace of Alchemy. I used to slip out to meet him. He took me into a shop in the city once. There was a man there who was quite young selling herbs and roots and bark and things like that, but he sold sweet-meats too, and little cakes. My rider asked him for a potion. The man had to make it and we waited. There were children coming in all the time, and he was selling them his little cakes for a penny apiece. They were all so happy. That's what I'd like to do.'

'You want me to sell cakes to children?' He couldn't think of anything less likely.

She pressed into him as she spoke. 'It took him an hour to make the potion my rider wanted, and he made me drink it there and then. It tasted sour, like vinegar, and it burned my mouth even though it was cold. And then he took me back to the eyrie and I bled for three days, so bad I could barely stand. I thought I was going to die. I thought he'd poisoned me. I didn't see him again.'

'Dawn Torpor,' muttered Kemir. 'I suppose you had his child in your belly. I suppose he didn't like that.'