Some two years before the Black Mausoleum
The sensible thing, he knew, was to disappear. The Worldspine was big enough and they’d hardly come looking for him. Running after him with their bag of silver to pay him what he was due. Not likely. Yes, walking away was the sensible thing. Trouble was, everything he had was hidden around that eyrie, the place where dragons were groomed and grown and fed and trained. And they really owed him a lot of silver for today’s work. If they were going to kill him, he decided, they would have done it already; if they weren’t, then yes, he’d like to be paid. He’d take his blood money and be gone, and after that he’d be happy if he never saw these mountains again.
The valleys around the edge of the Worldspine all looked the same to Siff. He’d lived his whole life in them, but unless you were a dragon-rider, all you got to see were the trees around you, the branches overhead and whatever annoying pile of rocks, cave, fissure, gulley, stream, waterfall or pack of hungry snappers was getting in your way to to slow you down this time. There were paths sometimes, if you knew where to look for them, old ways made of heavy stones laid down by people long forgotten. Sometimes there were even rope bridges. The trouble with paths was the chance of running into someone else, and the fact that the average someone else almost always turned out to be a murderous footpad to anyone travelling alone. Bridges, as far as he could tell, were official meeting places for murderous footpads. Siff avoided the lot. He made his own way through the forest and the valleys to the dragon-riders’ eyrie. It took him a week and a half. He dragged it out. The longer the better, the more chance all the slaves would be gone by the time he got there.
He knew he was getting close when there started being more to the world than trees and rocks and streams and then more trees and rocks. The forest around the eyrie peak had been stripped away, its rugged slopes covered in grass and dotted with huts and herds of alpaca. Further up the valley, the huts grew closer together. There were people here, not the outsiders who lived in the forests, but the tame dragon folk who lived in the shadows of the eyries. The sort who would tell you that the dragons protected them, even as the monsters and their riders took everything they had and left them no better off than the forest folk. He passed pens filled with animals. The huts gradually gathered together into what passed for a town, but he skirted around all that and headed for the path that went up the mountain, another old stone thing, uneven, weathered, steps worn by all the feet that had gone up and down. Odd that, since almost no one used it now, barely even remembered it was there. If you wanted something up the mountain, you simply carried it in the talons of a dragon. Even Siff had to agree that was much more straightforward and far less effort than climbing the path on foot. It was there, though, like the paths through the valleys, old and forgotten by all but the outsiders. Made in a fairy-tale time that had never really happened when there had been no dragons, and the people of the mountains had lived and prospered and raised towns and cities and these paths had been their roads. Rubbish, all of it, but pretty stories nonetheless. Maybe if you could believe there had once been a time before dragons then you could believe in a faraway day when they’d finally be gone.
As he approached the top of the path, three of the monsters soared through the valley below him. They arced upwards and landed somewhere among the crags and bluffs above. They were carrying cages. He saw one cage clip the ground and shatter, spilling slaves all over the mountainside. He could smell the eyrie now. A smell you always took with you. Dragons.
He stopped and had his lunch while the riders above rounded up all the slaves that hadn’t been maimed or killed in the crash. It happened all the time. Sickening really, if you stopped to think about it, and so on the whole he didn’t. He waited and ate and drank and dozed and smoked his pipe. When he was sure the riders were finished, he packed his bag and wound the rest of his way up to the eyrie.
Since he wasn’t a rider, no one was remotely interested in him or anything he had to say once he got there. The first time he’d been left to wander an eyrie, he couldn’t believe that people just let him by, minding their own business when he could have been anyone. He could have been a spy, an assassin, a madman, anyone, but he’d grown used to it, and he understood now. Their arrogance made them stupid — they simply couldn’t believe that anyone worth bothering with came to a mountain eyrie on foot.
It took him an afternoon and then an evening of waiting around, while everyone else had their supper, before he finally got to talking to someone who mattered. This one was wearing a fancy gold cloak, which Siff had never seen before. Gold cloaks probably meant something so he bowed a lot. Outsiders were supposed to do that anyway, and this one had a nice fat purse.
‘You’re the scout,’ said Gold Cloak.
Siff nodded. Gold Cloak held out the purse.
‘Then this is yours.’ He frowned. ‘My riders tell me there was no dust.’
My riders? Siff tried to keep a straight face. He shrugged.
‘Maybe they moved it. Maybe they hid it. They usually do. I’m not surprised your riders didn’t find it. The slaves you took might know where to look.’
‘Yes. They did. We went back. Everything was gone.’
Siff shifted uncomfortably. Hadn’t expected that. That would be because I went round and took it all myself. He shrugged again. ‘Must have missed a few of them in the woods then. Easily done. I suppose they must have taken it after your riders left. Have you asked the woman?’
Gold Cloak frowned. He snapped his fingers and a door opened behind him. Two riders came out pushing Sashi in front of them. ‘You mean this one?’
‘Yes.’ Shit.
‘She was no use. Did she do as she was told?’
Siff nodded. Time to be a little rude, to be what they’d expect from an outsider. Push back, just enough to earn some disdain.
‘Yes, she did, and that’s my woman now, remember. Part of our deal. You tell your riders that, remind them that she’s mine. They seem to think they can help themselves to her whenever they want. Well they can, if they’re that desperate, but they pay now I’m here. They pay me.’ Gold Cloak seemed to struggle with this and Siff had to work to keep his face looking angry. He’d met dragon-knights like Gold Cloak before, the ones who thought that all the riders around them were as pure as mountain snow.
Gold Cloak sneered and took a step back and away. ‘We’re done. Take you money and your whore and get out of my eyrie.’
Right answer. Siff bowed, which was as good a way as any to hide his smile. Gold Cloak threw the purse at his feet and walked away; his riders let Sashi loose and left as well. Siff looked her over. Then he picked up the purse and counted the silver dragons inside to be sure they hadn’t cheated him.
‘Come on,’ he took Sashi’s hand. Take her with him or did he leave her somewhere? And if he left her, did he get rid of her at the bottom of a cliff so she couldn’t tell the riders all about who he really was and what he really did. She knew more than enough to get him stuffed into a slave cage.
‘Where we going?’
‘Leaving.’
‘It’s nearly dark.’
‘ Get out of my eyrie. You heard the man.’
Siff kept his head bowed as they walked past a group of Scales. Their skin was hard and cracked, flaking and covered in weeping sores. That was something to do with the dragons, some sort of disease they carried. Most people averted their eyes from a Scales and so Siff did the same, pretending he was afraid. In furtive glances he saw a dozen other dragons, scattered around the mountainside. He saw the hollow filled with water for them to drink and, further up, little streams and a system of ponds and dams. Several low stone buildings sat above them, while alchemists moved to and fro. Strange soldiers he’d never seen before slouched in groups as though they owned the place, drawing angry glares from all who passed them. Something was happening. If he didn’t know better, he’d have said they were getting ready for a war.
He found a hut at the bottom of the eyrie. It looked as though it hadn’t been used for years. There were holes in the roof, gaps in the walls and the hearth hadn’t been lit for a long time. There wasn’t any wood to burn, no bed, no blankets, no furs, nothing. The floor was damp and the place stank but it would do. In the morning he’d be gone. Away down the path and vanished into the mountain valleys, north, following the water to the Fury at Gnashing Snapper Gorge and Hanzen’s Camp, and then a boat and Furymouth and a new life awash with the wealth and the dust he’d stashed over the years. Maybe Sashi could come with him some of the way. The company would be nice.
‘I used to live in a hut like this,’ he said. ‘A long time ago. Before riders came and burned it down.’
Sashi wrinkled her nose. ‘So did I. Before I knew better.’ She shivered and huddled close to him. ‘Why do we have to stay here? You said you’d take me away.’
He closed the remains of the door behind them. ‘I did. But like you said, it’s nearly dark and I don’t fancy that path at night.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘So how much dust did you get while I was gone?’ She showed him and he screwed up his face. ‘Hardly worth it. You’ll not buy much with that.’
‘It’s not for selling.’ She shivered. ‘I don’t like it here. Have you got more?’
‘Lots.’
‘Where? Where is it?’
‘Safe.’ Like I’m going to tell you.
‘Is it far?’
‘A bit.’
‘ How far?’ She pushed him, hard.
‘Ancestors! As far as it is!’ He pushed her back, enough that she stumbled. It was getting cold and so he went back out into the eyrie to look for something to burn. Past the lake where the dragons drank a dry channel snaked away down the mountainside. It was steep here, a good place to lose a body.
He gathered an armful of firewood. There were more soldiers around the landing grounds, but not many. The stone bastions with their scorpions seemed largely unattended. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they weren’t going to war. Back in the hut he made a fire. Before he could stop her, Sashi threw a handful of dust into the flames.
‘What did you do that for?’
She shivered. ‘I won’t sleep without it. Not here.’ Then she grinned and looked at him sideways and stroked a finger across her lips. ‘Besides, it would be a shame to waste it.’
‘The last thing I need is to be muddy-headed in the morning. I might have had a better use for it.’ He could smell it in the air already, worming its way into his system. Another few minutes and he wouldn’t care any more. ‘Don’t expect any sympathy when you run out, when you’re shivering and crying and desperate for more.’
Sashi huddled up against him. ‘It’s cold.’
‘Mountains usually are.’ Maybe he should go in the night after all. Leave without her. He supposed he still could.
Sashi’s huddling was starting to change into something else. That was the dust taking hold, one of the reasons it was so desired. He’d never been into a dust house, but he’d heard stories of people going inside and not coming out again for months. Some houses simply took their patrons’ clothes from them at the door and gave them back when they left. Stories had it that people literally fucked themselves to death in dust houses. Siff had done his fair share of that sort of thing and he wasn’t at all sure it was possible, but the stories persisted nonetheless.
The dust sank deeper into his blood. A haze drifted over his thinking. Yes, he might as well stay. And he only had one blanket and it was as good a way as any to keep warm, wasn’t it? In the morning there would be no turning back.
When he awoke he was stiff and half frozen. He stoked the fire and brought it to life. Sashi was still snoring. She was cold, cold as ice, and yet she still slept — now there was a way that dust would kill you. He doubled the blanket over her and left her to sleep. The cloud in his head made up his mind. A pity, but she couldn’t be a part of his life now, really couldn’t, not like this. Best if he was gone.
He was almost at the bottom of the mountain when the dragon flew past, skimming low down the slope. It landed a few hundred yards further down the path and turned to face him. When it started to walk back towards him, he almost pissed himself. There were two riders on its back, not one.
‘Stay where you are.’ There wasn’t any threat in the command and there didn’t need to be. The dragon was enough.
And then he saw. It was Sashi on the dragon’s back with the rider.
Shit.
His knife started to come out of its sheath. And then what? What was he going to do with it? Take on an armoured dragon-knight and a dragon?
Damned if he was going down without a fight, though.
No no no. They can’t know. They can’t. This is something else. A mistake.
Something about the rider spoke of dust. Maybe his eyes weren’t quite right, or maybe there was a whiff of it in the air. Sashi was smiling at him. She’d sold him. What else would put her on the back of a dragon? And so they did know, and he should have killed her, and life was so terribly, desperately unfair.
He threw the knife at her and ran. Behind him the ground shook as the dragon chased him. He managed about a dozen steps before its enormous claws scooped him up. He screamed, beyond terror, shat himself, pissed himself, and by the time they reached the eyrie and it threw him onto the ground he was broken. He crawled in the dirt, whimpering. When he tried to get up, someone kicked him back down. And the dragon, it was always there, looming over him. Sashi was forgotten. He never knew whether his knife had hit her or not.
Gold Cloak came out. Siff clawed at his boots, begging and pleading. Gold Cloak kicked him in the face. They picked him up, dragged him away and shackled him to a wall somewhere dark that smelled of rot and death. And left.
Later, someone else came, not a rider but an outsider like him. The outsider beat him to within an inch of his life and didn’t say a word. He left too.
Siff set to shouting. ‘What do you want? I’ve done nothing!’ Wasn’t that what all condemned men said?
No one answered. Long after he’d shouted himself hoarse, two men brought a brazier and a brand. They took their time heating it up and made sure he saw what was coming. One of them ripped his shirt. The other one burned him with the mark of a slave. The pain was as though he’d been ripped apart and the pieces doused in salt.
They threw water over the wound and left. A few hours later, when the pain had become almost bearable, yet another man came. This one pulled out his fingernails, one by one. Like the others, he didn’t say a word. He left Siff with his own screams for company.
A day passed. Maybe another. Time lost its beat. The next men were riders, three of them. They stank of dust and they had questions in their eyes.
‘We know everything,’ they said, but people who knew everything didn’t come with questions in their eyes.
‘King Valmeyan is moving his throne to the City of Dragons,’ said one. ‘So, shit-eater, you can stay here, hanging on that wall until we go, and then we’ll take you in a slave cage to the markets in Furymouth along with all the other shit-eaters you betrayed. Or else you tell us where your dust is. Then when we’re in Furymouth, you can sell it for us.’
He looked them over. That was something he’d always been good at, judging other men. Even chained to a wall, he could look them in the eye and see into their hearts. They were dragon-riders, bastards, heartless, born and taught to believe they were above all other men. He could see their thoughts as clearly as if they were written across their faces. They’d take his dust and then they’d kill him.
‘No,’ he said.
This didn’t seem to bother them, which seemed strange until the other men came back, the ones who’d beaten him and branded him and torn out his fingernails. They set to work and eventually, between his screams, Siff told them everything.
Afterwards he supposed they’d kill him. When they didn’t, he sat alone in the dark, fed and watered now and then but never enough, never hearing another voice, day after day after day. Eventually the pain started to fade. By then he was used to it, like an old friend. As it left him, he found he missed it.
The riders never came back. Other men came instead. They took him down and dragged him out to the landing field and dumped him in a slave cage. After a while they brought others. Dregs. The bottom of the barrel. Some of them came shouting and screaming, as if that might make a difference.
The eyrie was almost empty and the air was strange. Something terrible was coming, you could feel it, but right there and then no one cared about that, least of all Siff. They packed the cage full until it creaked at its seams and then a dragon swooped down and tore them into the air.