For a moment, they were all silent, and the forest too. Somewhere to Marcus’s right, a particularly stupid bird sang out, as if its small, bright trill could answer the dragon. Stupid or brave. Or both.
“I will do as you ask, Stormcrow,” Inys said. “Bring me my brother’s work, and I will end it, scatter its ashes, and bury the grievance between us forever. When the time is right, light a torch of sage and pitch like the funeral pyres of emperors, and I will come. There will be a kind of honor in that.”
“All right,” Marcus said. “It is going to be important that no one notices there’s a dragon in the vicinity, though. You can’t be near the city. Will a torch be enough to—”
“Do not question my ability again. I am not a child fresh from his first kill.”
“Pitch and sage then,” Marcus said.
“And once we have finished, then the work will begin. I have smelled remnants of a workroom far in the south. Little more than a hint of old herb and vivarium, but it will be a start. Yes.”
Inys turned, his head snaking up and to the north. There wasn’t anyplace on his back a swordsman could be that head couldn’t reach. But maybe if there was a way to grab on to the back of the neck itself… Inys launched himself into the sky with no word of farewell. The scarred wings commanded the air, graceful and strong and the image of power. The last dragon rose toward the sun until he was smaller than a sparrow. Marcus lost him in the light.
“Could have gone worse,” Marcus said.
“Could.”
“That workroom bit at the end was a little disturbing, though.”
“Was.”
Marcus walked to their little camp and started to pack it away. “I believe our great scaly friend up there is still thinking about repopulating the world in his image and keeping us as pack animals and pets.”
“Problem for another day, sir.”
“Maybe,” Marcus said. He tied the leather thongs of his pack and swung it over the shoulder that didn’t have the sword on it. The meadow looked like a badly tilled field: ripped grass and churned earth. Long, dark wounds marked where Inys’s claws had torn the forest, and the smell of sap from the ruined trees competed with the lingering stink of dragon’s breath. He’d come and had a short conversation, and the place would bear the scars of it for a century. Maybe more.
“Those big toys we had to leave in Birancour?” Marcus said. “The ones Jorey used to knock our scaly friend there down in Porte Oliva?”
“Yes, sir?”
“We should see if Palliako’s got any more of them.”
Entr’acte: The World
The summer sun punished the Keshet, but the messenger ran on. The green of Antea and Sarakal were behind him, the trailing mountains on the north of Elassae as well. He’d moved fast, traveling by night as well as day, avoiding the well-trodden paths and dragon’s roads. Where he could buy or steal horses, he did, riding them until their exhaustion left them of no use, then setting them free. It was not a journey but a sprint that stretched out behind and before. The Lord Regent and the high priest had chosen him for the task because he was the best tracker in the kingdom, and of all the journeys in this nightmare summer, this would be hardest.
In the sand-colored hills of the Sinir Kushku, he had to slow. Consult maps and diagrams that he carried in his pack. Here were the fallen pillars, here the hidden spring that only the men who’d lived here knew. He found the mountain where men who looked to be the Basrahip’s cousins led sheep across barren-looking ridges. He found the chieftain and said the words he’d been told to say.
The gate to the temple towered as high as the western gate in Camnipol. A machinery of gigantic gears rumbled and clanked as it opened. Banners like the one hanging from the Kingspire adorned the walls, though in all the wrong colors. Ruined statues stood in audience or else as guard, worn to nothing by wind and time. Words stood in iron, each letter as tall as the messenger. KHINIR KICGNAM BAT. He didn’t know what they meant. The priests who came out wore darker robes than the ones in Camnipol, belted with chains. The messenger rubbed his chin and nodded to them as they came close. The lead one was a tall, thin man with dark eyes and a scar on one cheek like someone had laid him open with a rock at some point and it hadn’t healed quite right.
It was to him the messenger addressed himself. “I have a message from the Basrahip. He said I should invoke the third oath.”
The scarred priest’s thick black eyebrows rose and his eyes narrowed.
“What do you know of the third oath, traveler?”
“Nothing except that I was supposed to invoke it. And he said you’d hear it in my voice if I told you true. Figure as I have, so you know I’m not farting out my mouth here.”
“What is his command?”
“You’re all to come to Camnipol now. Like pack-some-water-and-let’s-be-off now. The goddess is making her voice known direct in the temple there, and you’re all meant to be present when it happens. I’m to guide you back.”
The scarred priest flushed, his eyes brightening like a babe seeing a sweet gum. “I will gather our elders to join you—”
“Everyone. Lord Regent was very particular on that. All those touched with the power of the goddess’ve got to be there. It’s what he said.” The scarred priest nodded, though some struggle was clear in his eyes. The messenger leaned forward and tapped him once on the shoulder. “Everyone.”
“I will bring all of the faithful together. In the morning, we will take leave with you.”
What’s wrong with right now? the messenger thought, but didn’t say. “Good enough, if it’s all you’ve got.”
“Will you take rest with us?” the priest asked, gesturing to the vast iron gate that stood open behind him.
“I’ll camp here,” the messenger said. “Not much one for being cooped up.”
“As you prefer.”
That night, the messenger slept in the lee of one of the statues, looking up at the vast carved dragon that covered them all. The best part of the journey was over. Now it was all going to be sheepdogging the priests back the way he’d already come. He’d do it, but he wouldn’t like it. You didn’t become the fastest tracker in the empire by enjoying the company of people.
Porte Oliva in the summer fell on Kurrik’s shoulders like a smothering blanket. It wasn’t the heat. He’d grown up in the Sinir Kushku. It was the steam-thick air and the stink of the sea and the unbearable smugness of his alleged brother Vicarian Kalliam. Of the three, the last was worst.
“The tide goes out before nightfall,” Vicarian said. “If we aren’t at the docks, we’ll miss the launch.”
“Thank you, brother,” Kurrik said. “I intend to return in time, and I will be vigilant.”
He ducked out the door and down the hall of the cathedral toward the square and the sun before Vicarian could find another way to say If you’re not right, you’ll be wrong.
The streets of the city were thick with people. Claiming the city had cut the number of streets and houses almost in half, but it hadn’t killed nearly half the people. Now they lived stacked one atop the other, two and three families in rooms that had before housed only one. Buildings were rising up over the ashes of the battle, but small ones. Shanties that might one day grow to dignity but had none now.
Vicarian, who claimed to have great knowledge of the world because he’d lived so many years in decadence and lie, didn’t see how the locals scattered before them. They were frightened even now of the power of the goddess, and Kurrik knew it. And he sensed the same fear—the same taint—in Vicarian’s yammers of Cleymant and Addadus. He was careful to couch all his words such that there was no essential lie, but Kurrik sensed it lurking at the back of all their conversations. It had been an error to believe that men new to the priesthood would comprehend what they had been given. Without the lessons learned from boyhood, the habit of deception and lie ran too deep. Vicarian and all the new priests like him were flawed at the base.