Lord Meteroa, younger brother of the late King Tyan, once but no longer a prince, sat slumped in a chair in Queen Lystra's bedroom. Draped in sheets and in the darkness of the night he was almost invisible. He sat still and, not wanting to wake her, whispered. It didn't seem fair that she didn't know what was happening. On the other hand, if he simply told her, she probably wouldn't let him watch over her like this any more. My previous instructions regarding Princess Lystra are reversed. No, you wouldn't want to be hearing that. Not if you understood what it meant. 'Jehal suddenly wanting his queen dead? Should I believe it, what with him being half dead himself and locked up in the speaker's palace. But the words were his, the writing was his, no secret messages, no hidden meanings. Such a pity. Do you think he regrets what he wrote? Did Zafir twist his arm, do you think? Or did she twist something else?' Telling her about it in her sleep seemed a reasonable compromise. I did tell you. It's not my fault you're not listening.
'I said that once before,' he whispered a little later. 'When Jehal's little brother Calzarin was spreadeagled in King Tyan's dungeons for murdering his mother and his sister and his little brother. Everyone knew he'd done it. It's not as though there was any doubt. Almost no one knew why though. He was the golden one, the most beautiful of King Tyan's sons. It's a pity you never met him. You think of Jehal and his elfish face and his wolfish smile and his perfect mouth and his gleaming eyes, I know you do. Who doesn't? But Calzarin made him look plain. He should have killed Jehal as well. It would have made it much harder for Tyan. Put his only surviving son and heir to death? He couldn't have done that. But Jehal was always the clever one. He probably saw his brother's madness long before anyone else. Anyone else except me, that is. I tried to tell Tyan, but he never listened. Not until it was too late. We stood there, the two of us, looking at Calzarin being slowly killed, and I honestly couldn't say which of the three of us suffered the most. Why didn't anyone tell me? That's what Tyan asked me, and I answered him. I did tell you, I said. It's not my fault you didn't listen. That wasn't the cleverest thing to say to a king putting his own son to death and weeping while he did it. He listened afterwards, of course. He listened to everyone once it was too late. Listened when people told him that Calzarin was my son, not his. Or that Calzarin and I were lovers. People told him all sorts of things. Quite a lot of them were true, but I don't think Tyan really believed them. I'm surprised, even so, that he only did to me what he did. In his place I would have killed us all and started again.' He sighed. 'Then he went mad, and everyone thought it was Jehal poisoning him, but it wasn't. It was me.'
A light wind blew in through the open window, rustling the silk curtains. Meteroa fell silent. A moment later a man was standing in the room by the queen's bed.
In his hand, beneath the sheets, Meteroa held a crossbow. It was pointed at the man's head. He waited. The man crept close and very carefully lifted up the covers to look at Queen Lystra's face.
The man raised a knife. Meteroa shot him.
The bolt hit the assassin in the chest. If he'd been an ordinary man that would have been the end of him. As it was, the newcomer staggered around and then gasped and sat down. Meteroa rose carefully to his feet. Sitting like this for half the night was playing havoc with his joints and his knees were so stiff he could barely walk. I'm getting old. Which is more than I can say for most of the people around me.
Meteroa walked around to where the assassin sat, twitching.
'About time you came,' he hissed. 'I've been waiting for weeks for one of you. It's been doing my sleep patterns no favours at all, I can tell you, and I get tetchy when I don't get enough sleep. I've had two other assassins to deal with as well, but they were some rubbish Zafir sent. She didn't send you, did she? You're something else.'
The assassin was shaking the way Tyan used to shake. He didn't look up. He might have tried to say something, but all that came out were a few garbled noises.
'Don't bother.' Meteroa reached under the bed and pulled out a lamp. 'You're full of Frogsback. Enough to kill a horse. No turning into a gust of wind or whatever else it is your sort do. In a few minutes you'll lose consciousness. A few minutes after that and your heart will stop. If you were from around here then you'd know that Prince Jehal has something of a reputation when it comes to poison. Well he deserves it too, but does anyone ever stop to wonder who taught him?' Meteroa grinned. He walked across the room and lit the lamp from a candle. 'Probably quite a surprise for you, finding me here, eh?' He came back. 'I wondered, if I did nothing, if I simply ignored my prince's letter, what would happen? Who would come for her first? Who would it be? Would it be Zafir? I thought not, and then it was. I hate to be wrong so I dealt with that one and waited for the next, and that was Zafir too. Can you imagine my frustration? I was about to give up. Then Zafir let Jehal go. After that, well, you had to come, didn't you? Before he gets here.' Meteroa smiled and brought the lamp closer. 'Right, let's take a look at you. See whether I'm finally going to be proved right.'
He held the lamp close to the assassin's face and took a good long look. Then he shook his head and whistled. 'My, my. Well I can't say I'm entirely surprised, but you're certainly not from around here, are you?'
On the bed, the queen stretched and yawned and slowly woke up. She screwed up her eyes against the lantern light.
'Prince Meteroa?'
'Lord Meteroa.' Meteroa smiled softly. 'My title was taken from me, remember?' Now that Tyan was gone, he supposed he might have it back if he wanted it. He wasn't sure that he did.
'What are you doing?'
He knelt down beside the bed, carefully blocking her view of the assassin dying behind him. 'I have good news for you, My Queen, news that I could not wait until the morning to bring. Jehal will be home soon.' He watched her brighten, and then she leapt out of bed and wrapped her arms around him. For a second or two she almost killed him with hugs, and then she abruptly stopped.
'Meteroa!'
'My Queen?'
'There is a man on the floor. He's bleeding.'
'You mean he's still not dead?' Meteroa sighed and extricated himself. 'I'm afraid that's because I shot him.' 'You shot him? Why?'
Goodness – are you really that naive? 'I'm afraid he meant you harm.' He carefully cocked his crossbow. She sighed and trembled. 'Zafir again.'
'Yes,' he lied. 'Zafir again. 'I'll call some servants. They'll take you to another room. I'm sure you couldn't sleep in here now.' He shot the assassin for a second time, this time through his skull. Even that didn't quite seem to do the job, but by the time he'd moved Lystra out, the assassin was finally acting like a proper corpse. Meteroa had the body moved down into the cells anyway, just in case. Then he nailed the body to a table. Which should just about do the tricky We're starting to have quite an interesting collection down here. Now I can finally get some sleep.
The dead assassin was still there in the morning and was still dead, which was something. Meteroa scratched his head and then left the body be. He rode out from the eyrie to the little town of Wateredge, perched on the cliffs a few miles towards Furymouth. Wateredge was home to the eyrie's brothels and drinking houses and, if you looked hard enough, dust dens. Meteroa knew them all. There were whores here that he'd been keeping an eye on for quite some time. Ones that had a passing resemblance to the queen. He'd started picking them out as soon as she'd arrived. He'd even gone to the trouble of sending a few riders out with the pleasant task of making sure they got pregnant at the same time. Then he'd quietly looked after them, made sure they were kept clean and out of harm's way, just for a day like today.
He picked the most likely two of them, hid their faces and took them back to the eyrie. He dressed the one that he thought looked best like the queen, which took him most of the rest of the day. He led her to Lystra's rooms and while she set about amusing him, he poisoned her drink. As soon as she was asleep, before the poison finished her, he slit her throat.
There. The queen is dead. A day's work but worth it.
The rest was strangely easy. All he had to do was walk around the eyrie telling anyone who'd listen that the queen was dead and to do what they had to do. By the end of the following day, the eyrie was decked out in the grey colours of death. The body was moved down to the dragon mausoleum, which was the coldest place they had. He let a few people see her and watched them carefully. He made sure no one washed the blood off her face first. No one seemed to doubt that they were looking at the real queen. Because when you're a queen no one really looks at you. They see you but they never really look. While he was at it, he dressed up the second whore as a smith's daughter and sent her to be cared for by the palace midwives in Furymouth and to be secretly guarded by half a dozen of his most trusted riders. He moved the real Lystra to live out with the Scales, to be guarded by no one at all. Tempting as it is to put you on a dragon and send you back to your sister. But jehal would never forgive me.
And after that, all he had to do was wait.
Jehal returned a week later. Meteroa met him with a hundred and one riders, all dressed in grey. I'm sorry to do this to you, my king, but the facade must be perfect. Still, he wasn't quite ready for the ice in Jehal's eyes.
'Did you do it,' he asked, 'or did Zafir?' His face was as still as death. Meteroa bowed and then leaned forward and embraced his king. One of the privileges of family. As he did, he whispered in Jehal's ear.
'Neither, my king.'
Jehal let out a roar of rage and pushed him to the ground. 'Don't play riddles with me, Eyrie-Master. Who killed my wife?'
Meteroa picked himself up. 'I have the assassin's body,' he said carefully.
'I want to see Lystra. And then… remember what I said, uncle. What happens to her happens to you.'
Meteroa bowed again. A week with the Scales? Perhaps I should have kill her after all.
'I want to see her right now, Meteroa. Where is she? If you've burned her already, I swear I'll…'
'She's in the mausoleum, Your Holiness.'
No standing on ceremony. Meteroa watched his king barge past and head straight for the caves. So now we know which of your two women matters to you the most, eh? Meteroa kept his distance, smiling quietly to himself. Jehal wasn't usually the sort for sudden explosions of temper, but you never knew. Squeeze a man hard enough and anything can happen. I taught that to you all and how many of you bothered to listen? He followed Jehal all the way down to the black stone tunnels of the mausoleum, waving away the token guards standing watch over the body. 'That's not her.' Jehal spun around.
Meteroa glanced at the retreating guards. 'She's been here a while, Your Holiness.'
'That's not her!' Jehal lunged, reaching for Meteroa's throat. Meteroa dodged away. I could break your arm, boy, if I wanted to.
'No, it's not.' He spoke softly, even though the guards were gone. Words had ways of resonating in caves.
'Eyrie-Master!'
Meteroa jumped at Jehal and grabbed his shirt, pinning him against the rough stone. 'She is safe, Your Holiness,' he hissed as softly as he could. 'She is safe because the people who want to kill her think she is dead. Frankly, I had no idea what to make of your stupid letter. What did you think I was going to do? Kill her myself? Your father's dead, your brother's dead and from the sounds of things you're as useless at making heirs as I am now. Did you think I was going to take a blind bit of notice? She's carrying your heir, Jehal. Our heir.' There. It's been a very long time since you've seen me as I used to be. I imagine you'd very nearly forgotten.
'I didn't want her dead.'
'Someone does.'
'Zafir.'
'No. Not Zafir.' Meteroa let go of Jehal and held up his hands. 'Well yes, Zafir, but not just her. There was another killer. You need to see him. In the dungeons.'
'I'm not telling the world that Lystra's dead.'
'She's safe for now. In a couple of weeks she'll give birth. We can put them both somewhere safe. Apart. Or you can get rid of her, which is probably what you ought to do but… what?'
'I'm not telling the world that Lystra's dead.'
Meteroa pursed his lips. 'Listen. This wasn't Zafir, this was the Taiytakei. They waited until Zafir had failed a few times and then they finally sent one of their own. This is not some killer off the streets of the Silver City. This is an assassin who can meld with the earth, who can turn into water, who can become a gust of wind and blow through a window. I've met them before. They may be the most dangerous men in the world and they are certainly the most expensive. The Taiytakei. We've always known what they want, haven't we? They want dragons. They want hatchlings and they want potions and they want alchemists. Did you ever stop to wonder what happened to our grand-master alchemist Bellepheros after your wedding? And ever since, I've been asking myself: why did they give you such a priceless gift? Have you not stopped to wonder about that?' Probably not. Too much vanity to question gifts, eh boy? 'So they give you a priceless treasure and then they try to kill your wife. Why?' His eyes narrowed. 'They want you with Zafir, but why? Why why why?'
'The Taiytakei?' Jehal for once looked like he barely knew where he was.
Poor boy. It's all getting too much, is it? 'If I were to guess, I would say that Zafir – or someone – has promised them what they want.' Meteroa patted him on the shoulder. You killed my brother. Not that he didn't deserve it, but he was mine. 'You wanted to be king, remember? So now you have another reason to stop her.'
'Fine.' Jehal shrugged him off. 'Then get my dragons ready, Eyrie-Master. All of them. We're going to war. How soon can it be done?'
'We're only waiting for you, Your Holiness, nothing else. Just one itsy question: who are we fighting?'
For the first time since he'd landed, Jehal smiled. It was the twisted, lopsided smile of someone who had something broken on the inside. Our family smile. 'Why, I'm going to the Adamantine Palace, Uncle, to fight the speaker's war. You, though… I have something else in mind for you. You can take a few of my dragons and follow along later. Go via the Pinnacles and clear the air for me there.' His smile slipped into a sneer. 'And if you really believe what you say of the Taiytakei, you can burn every one of their ships in the harbour before you leave.'
Meteroa felt himself nodding. 'To war then, my king?'
'To war.' Jehal threw back his head and laughed. 'Our war.' He nodded at the swollen body laid out in the mausoleum. 'Now get rid of that and bring me back my queen. Oh, and send a letter to Jaslyn. Tell her that from now on wherever I go, her sister goes with me. Perhaps that will keep her dragons in their eyries.'
'I wouldn't count on it.'
I won t.