“That’s true,” she said, because she believed that it was. “I’m so terribly sorry. About all of this. But I need you to come with me. With us. I need you to take Geder’s place.”
Aster shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was thin and lost. “I can’t.”
“You have to. This isn’t over,” she said. “And you may not be crowned yet, but you’re king.”
Entr’acte: The Dragon
Inys flew. The fallen, empty world passed beneath him like a bad dream from which he could never wake. His mind drifted as effortlessly as his body. He ached in both. Steel barbs still dug in his flesh, his blood sowing the fields he passed over. His wings were more torn and ragged. Even now, he carried the funereal scent of pitch and sage in his nostrils like a memory. There had been a poem he’d heard once about flames being the beginning and end of all things. He tried to remember it now, but it slipped away from him. And if he forgot it, it was gone forever.
The sun slid to the west and vanished. The forests below him turned to waves. Far beneath the sea he could follow the ghost lights of a great pod of the Drowned as they met for their slow council, even as they had done when they were a race new-made. He felt something at that. Not pleasure, but a nostalgia so steeped in longing as to grow poisonous. Near a great rocky island, he found an updraft and spiraled in it, rising up until the moon seemed as near as the ocean below him. The air grew thinner and colder until the draft could carry him no higher, and he only turned in a wide circle watching the moonlight play across his own outstretched wings. Silver against the black.
Marcus Stormcrow had betrayed him, but Inys bore no anger. Later, he might. Or he might not. There was no wisdom in blaming a flawed tool for shattering. His Stormcrow here was too feral. Untrained. If anything, the blame for the attack lay on Inys himself. He should have spent the time to better manage his slaves. So long as they valued their small, petty wills over his own, they would be dull knives for him, and he had a world to unmake and stitch back together.
He would be more careful next time. Whatever else, he had learned to respect the low cunning of this new generation of slaves and their untamed violence. The long ages through which he’d slept had changed them. The races were as they had been before, or at least nearly so, and he’d let that lull him into thinking that the men and women within the races were likewise unchanged. And perhaps some were. Perhaps it was only a few like Marcus Stormcrow and the half-breed girl whose willful natures had gone unchecked.
It didn’t matter. He knew now. He would do better next time.
He made one last lazy turn, and sloped down to the south. The bones in his back where his wings locked fast creaked and ached. The promise of rest plucked at him like a dragonet begging for food, insistent and endearing and annoying all at the same time. But there was no land wide enough for him yet. There would be. By morning, if not before. The wind of his own passage whispered in his ears until he could almost imagine voices in it.
And still, despite everything, the Stormcrow had helped him. Clinging to the side of the great tower, he had smelled again the coppery tang of his brother’s flesh as the last of Morade died. Each of the tiny creatures and the corruption they’d carried had burned and the fumes from them had felt like a promise. Morade had meant to steal away the use of the slaves, and he had done, once. Nearly did again. But Inys had won the battle against his dead brother. Yes, through unstable alliance. Yes, through subterfuge and lies. Yes, despite his own grief and despair. What mattered was only that it was done. Had the spiders spread, the slaves of the world would have been tainted forever. Untamable. Now Morade’s influence was gone, they could be made use of in a more systematic way. That credit belonged to the Stormcrow. For that, Inys resolved not to kill the treacherous servant. But he wouldn’t breed him. Mercy had limits.
The ache in his body grew worse slowly. That was fine. Pain was nothing. It was a message he could choose to ignore. He watched the jungle canopy below him until he scented the animals that made their homes beneath the nighttime green, and found a place where he might not be disturbed. With a shrug, he unlocked the bones of his back and canted his wings to cut the air. His descent felt like the long slow fall into sleep made physical. He was not only tired, but weary.
He landed harder than he’d intended, belly thumping against the ground, claws digging into the soil as he tried to slow himself. He came to rest against the trees and lay still, his eyes closed and the wounds in his flesh shouting in new pain. The emptiness of the world overwhelmed him. No air carried the scent of another of his kind. No water carried their taste. And he, like a fool, had allied himself with slaves. He could as well have expected loyalty from fish and pigs. An animal that could speak and write was still an animal. He had lowered himself to treat them with dignity. It was only that there was no one else.
He lifted his head in the air, opened his mouth to breathe more fully. For an hour, he stayed still, waiting, tasting, longing with a fervor worse than physical pain. And then—for a moment—he caught the scent. Cloying and musky and gone again even before he was certain it was there. It opened a vault of memories. His mother’s workshop in the South Tower, the air hot and rich with the smell of blood and iron, salt and sand. He remembered being so young he could do little more than perch and watch as she took her turn fashioning wonders for the court. He had thought little enough of it all then. He could wish now he’d been a better student. Now that all had been lost, and everything depended on how he could remake it.
Another workshop. Stale and empty, perhaps. Unused for ages come and passed, without doubt. Or a figment born from desire and the ability to lie to himself. It didn’t matter. It was all he had left, and so he would reach for it. At worst, he would die in the attempt. No one would mourn him. No one remained.
The steel barbs of the Stormcrow’s betrayal still clung to him like well-forged thorns. He plucked them out. The blood that came from them drew flies and scavengers, but Inys had more than enough flame now to keep them away. The trees here were so lush and heavy with water that no fire they took would spread for long. There were maggots hearty enough to live under scales, though, so he burned his wounds closed before he slept. The blood on his scales charred and flaked away, leaving him bright again. Scarred, but bright. It was the nearest he had to honor in a world where no other voice could ratify him. He was the highest of his kind and the lowest. Purest and most debased. It was the lack of community in which he might place himself that would eat his mind. If he wasn’t more careful. He had to be more careful.
When he closed his eyes, he dreamed of battle. His wounds and exhaustion must have taken more from him than he’d known, because he didn’t sense the hunter’s approach until he was already upon him.
He was young and alone with the pale skin and huge dark eyes of the Nightswarm. The race the others called Southlings now. He held a sling in his hand, but did not threaten Inys with it. His stillness was abject, and his scent all but covered by the paste of leaves and talc that decorated his skin. The animals he hunted would not know he was there until the blow came, but he had nothing that could harm Inys.
The hunter, aware that he’d been seen, did not flee. He took a single, tentative step nearer, and then, when Inys did nothing, another. The wide black eyes glimmered slightly with trapped moonlight. Inys caught the smell of fear now, and it reassured him. Good that the young one should fear. A dragon, even one as worn and broken as he was, deserved fear. When Inys shifted his head, the boy froze but did not retreat. For a time they considered each other. The only sounds were the ticking of leaves, the calls of night animals, the distant drum of thunder from a storm too far away to see. The hunter sank slowly to his knees and made a sign in the air with his two hands. It looked like the pantomime of a bird in flight, but Inys took it as a mark of respect. A self-abasement before something deserving of the Nightswarm’s awe.