The three men stood silent for a long moment, then Marcus sighed. “Stop saying things that sound wise, Sandr. It upsets my sense of the world.”
True to the innkeep’s word, the yard was full that night. Men and women from all the surrounding hamlets had come. Kit, Sandr, Cary, and Hornet had taken to the little stage and done a fair performance of The Kingdom of Clouds, and afterward Charlit Soon had made an encore of the queen maiden’s speech from Leterpan’s Hill that lifted the crowd’s spirits and ended the evening with a little laughter for the audience at least. Through it all, Marcus and Smit had been in the crowd, leading the booing when the villainous Lord Stoop appeared and cheering for Prince Helsin. When a half-drunk young man tried to interrupt the performance with his heckling, Marcus had escorted him to the stables and explained why he might not want to be rude. The boy’s frightened expression had made him feel good at the time and guilty later. Pretty soon, he’d be proving his manhood by kicking puppies that chewed the wrong sticks.
When the night was done, Marcus helped the players gather the coins that had been thrown on the stage and bounced down to the dirt of the yard. He cleaned out the candleholders with a work knife and fastened the stage when they hauled it up into place. Tomorrow, they’d be off again. It was a long road, and he didn’t like to think what would be at the end of it. Nothing good.
Their agreement with the innkeep had been that the players would sleep in the stables, but as the last of the crowd left, he mentioned to Kit that three of the rooms hadn’t been taken. Enough for the women to take a room to themselves, and the men to split the other two. So, once Kit had assured himself that the innkeep wasn’t looking for more coin or one of the players to bed down with, the company accepted the extra hospitality. Sandr couldn’t bring himself to thank the man. Marcus couldn’t blame him.
The walls of the inn were flimsy. From his cot, Marcus could hear the snores of Hornet in the next room and the hushed voices of Cary and Charlit Soon in the one past that. A soft wind set the rafters ticking and the lingering smell of onions reminded him how small the meal had been.
“I don’t suppose you’re sleeping,” Marcus said.
“No,” Kit answered.
“How long do you think it will take us to reach Camnipol?”
“At a guess? If the new axle holds, we could be there in a week.”
“Court will be back by now. And Cithrin’s mysterious correspondent.”
Kit shifted on his cot, the legs creaking under his weight. The window was stretched hide, a light square in the darkness of the wall that illuminated nothing. Still, Marcus had been traveling with Kit long enough, he could imagine the man’s quizzical expression.
“Are you wanting to resume that hunt?”
“I want to find some way to—”
The sound was sudden and profound, and Marcus didn’t know what it was. The closest he could think was a massive stone thrown by siegecraft striking bare ground. He didn’t recall rising to his feet. He was simply there, the poisoned sword in his hand, ready to be drawn. His heart was thudding in his chest.
“Marcus?” Kit whispered. “What was that?”
Marcus raised his hand for silence, the gesture useless in the black. Outside the inn, something heavy slid across the yard. Marcus stepped to the door and lifted its latch as quietly as he could.
“Get the others,” he murmured. “Do it quickly. I’ll go see—”
Once, years before when Marcus had been working contracts as a mercenary, he had been present at the siege of a great garrison keep at the rough, informal border between Borja and the Keshet. The pale stone walls had stood thirty feet high, and the commander had hired a team of cunning men to undermine them. The sound when those walls came down—the thunder-deep rumble, the shriek of splintering wood, the screaming voices—was the same one that assaulted him now.
A chunk of wood struck his shoulder like a blow. He felt Kit behind him, backing him, and Marcus drew the venomed blade. The ceiling of the inn rose, a strip of stars and moonlight cracking where it was lifting from the wall. The roof of the inn creaked into the darkness like the lid of a chest swinging up. The vast head of the dragon stared down at him, its vast eyes silvered by the moonlight.
The roof tipped over, falling to the ground with a crash. People were screaming. Someone threw a lit lantern at the vast, dark bulk of the dragon that filled the yard, but missed badly. The smear of burning oil on the earth lit the beast from below as the cool moonlight did from above. Marcus held the blade before him. It felt like wielding a spoon against a forest fire.
“You,” the dragon breathed. “I have followed your scent halfway across the land.”
“Flattered,” Marcus said, but Inys took no notice.
“I have seen it, and it was as you said. You did not lie. They are gone. They are all gone, but I will redeem my error. My workshop will be rebuilt. Those parts of ourselves we put into your kinds. I can retrieve them. I will retrieve them.”
The dragon’s tail whipped in agitation, crushing the wall of the stables. Horses were screaming in terror. People were weeping and calling out to God. The dragon’s gaze slid off Marcus, then found him again. A claw larger than Marcus’s body peeled back the wall of the room effortlessly. The door opened behind them, and Cary and Charlit Soon stepped in, blades in their hands. Marcus waved them back.
“This… all of this,” the dragon hissed, the sharp stink of his breath filling the air, “is mine. All of it is my doing, and so I will undo it. The sky will be filled, filled, with dragons, and great perches will be raised again from the earth and the sea.”
“All right,” Marcus said. “If you say so.”
The massive head rose, searching the sky as if all it said were already true. A bloom of flame rose from the black-fleshed mouth, and the dragon’s wings spread until it seemed they would touch the horizons.
“This is the darkest hour of the noblest race. And rising from it shall be our greatest triumph. A glory that will echo through time itself, and change the nature of the stars.”
“No reason to aim low,” Cary said, and Kit shushed her. A great foreclaw folded, tightened, pressed the air before Marcus. The black talons looked sharper than spears, but Marcus made no move to parry them.
“And you,” the dragon said. “Drakkis Stormcrow was to wake me, but it was you who did. So you shall be my Stormcrow. Murmus Stormcrow.”
“Marcus.”
“Marcus Stormcrow. You shall be my voice and my servant, my creature in this new, most glorious conquest. You shall be my general in the field of battle greater than any the worlds have ever known. We shall face down the armies of death, of nothingness, and we shall pull life from their corpses. Life!”
The last word echoed through the darkness like a great storm wind. The last dragon reared up on his back legs, screamed defiance at the sky, and toppled. The huge body crushed the wall of the stable, freeing two of the horses, which sped off shrieking into the night. The dragon’s head lay against the ground, and its single raised wing folded down slowly, bending into itself like a moonflower folding at dawn.
Somewhere very close by, a man wailed in fear. A lick of flame rose from the ruined common room where the embers of the fire grate had been scattered in the splintered wood of the walls. The moon sailed uncaring above them through a vast and star-sown sky.
Cary spoke first. “Did we do something? Did we… defeat it?”
“No, we didn’t. I’m not sure quite how he managed it,” Marcus said, carefully sheathing the sword, “but I do believe our great scaled friend here is drunk.”