Page 7 of Among the Burning Flowers (The Roots of Chaos #3)

KINGDOM OF YSCALIN

CE 1003

Ortégardes was one of the six regional capitals of Yscalin, collectively known as the holy cities.

Circled by orange and lemon groves, it lay along the Pilgrims’ Way on the banks of the River Salbon.

This was where Oderica the Smith, the first Vetalda queen, had been crowned.

No place in Yscalin was more devoted to the Knight of Courtesy.

Here, scribes could be hired to write eloquent letters; gifts for all occasions could be found; artists and their patrons flourished.

A famous olive soap was made; pomanders were shaped and filled with scent.

Entry to the public baths was cheap, for cleaning oneself was a kindness to all.

At its hundreds of shrines to Dame Medwin Combe, Yscals prayed for mercy, love, and inspiration.

Melaugo was just hoping for a cup of wine, a proper bed, and no lindworms within a hundred leagues.

It had been a hard ride, leaving her more irritable by the day.

When they had first reached the Salbon, she had used her last few coins from Aperio to buy a wide-brimmed hat, both to protect her scalp from the sun and conceal her face on the road.

Her parents had worn the same kind of hat while they laboured in the vineyard, though made of straw instead of cloth.

They rode past orchards of pomegranate trees in flower.

Melaugo wished the fruit were on the branch.

She had often indulged in pomegranate in Aperio, when she had the coin to afford it.

As they neared Ortégardes, Liyat said, ‘Harlowe never told me how you met.’

‘He’s a man of few words when he isn’t angry.’

‘Yes. In truth, he is a mystery to me, even though I have known him for some time.’

‘He sounds like someone else I know,’ Melaugo said. Liyat did not reply, and Melaugo tried to ignore the sting of guilt for her bluntness. ‘Harlowe found me in Oryzon when I was thirteen. He caught me picking his pocket. I thought he would take me to the magistrate – that I would be flogged – but instead, he paid a blacksmith to take me on as her apprentice.’

‘An apprentice fee is no small price to pay.’

‘He’s rich as a lord, as far as I can tell. Queen Rosarian liked him.’ Melaugo drank from her waterskin. ‘The blacksmith tried her best with me, but I was hard to teach. I hated the Oryzoni for their hypocrisy, their cruelty towards urchins. After several years of shirking, I lost my temper and insulted one of her best patrons, a knight. She cut me loose then, though I stayed with her until Harlowe returned. He came back every so often.’

‘Was he wroth with you?’

‘Of course. He rarely isn’t.’ She stowed the waterskin to guide her steed around a rut. ‘During my time with the blacksmith, Harlowe had discovered what happened to my parents. I told him I wanted to be a smuggler, like them. I’d met a few over my years in Oryzon – some had even paid me to act as a lookout. Harlowe could see that I wasn’t made for honest work.’

‘So he brought you to the Greenshanks.’

‘Yes.’

Liyat nodded. They had shared a bed many times, but they still knew too little about one another.

This far south, the spring wind blew hot as wyrmfire, making them both sweat. Liyat spurred her mare towards the city wall, and Melaugo followed.

They stabled their horses near the gate and slipped down to the moat, sinking up to their ankles in mud. Melaugo had tucked her plaited hair away, leaving no red strands to betray her. Once she was settled at the inn, she meant to use oak gall to darken it, so she could venture outside for short walks. They sidled through a storm drain, which smugglers used to trade in the city, and moved a grate aside, emerging in a cobbled alley.

Melaugo had visited Ortégardes before, but only at night, and not for long. By day, washed in sunlight, the City of Courtesy was a sight to behold. She had never absorbed the majesty of it – the limewashed houses, the cascades of flowers, the cypress and palm trees lining the streets. Some of its older buildings looked Southern, for they hailed from an era when there was a shared culture spanning the continent of Edin, which now survived only in the Ersyr. Liyat had told her that, one night while they lay abed, admiring one of her relics.

The crowning jewel was the Great Sanctuary of Ortégardes, the first to be raised in Yscalin. Its rainbow windows were hundreds of years old. Made of pale Vazuvan marble, with twisting white pillars flanking its doors, it was a monument to beauty, like everything in this city.

‘The Donmata is to be married there,’ Liyat said. ‘I hope she will be happy.’

‘I hear she could do worse than the Red Prince of Mentendon,’ Melaugo replied, ‘but I can’t feel too sorry for her, either way. She lives in obscene luxury without having to lift a finger.’

‘I would not trade places with her. Not for all the world. Imagine it,’ she said. ‘You and I could not be together. Not until one of us bore a child, and even then, it might be forbidden.’

Melaugo had been ready to argue her case, but that reply stopped her.

Liyat led her along an elegant colonnade, where daylight gleamed through archways, reflecting off the Salbon. Pleasure boats lazed through the clear water, surrounded by darting orange fish. Many people wore bright yellow, apricot, or pomegranate red – a sunset of fine silk and linen. Melaugo took the splendour in with mingled wonder and dislike, thirsting for her own hoard of gold, which Lord Gastaldo must have confiscated from her lodgings in Aperio.

They crossed a bridge into the Cloth Quarter and entered an inn called the Golden Pear, where Liyat spoke to a woman in Lasian. Next Melaugo knew, she was in a modest bedchamber with a tiled floor and a door leading to a courtyard, where she could soak up the sun.

‘Thank you,’ Melaugo said. ‘Truly, Liyat.’

‘We will speak about where you go next,’ Liyat said, ‘but for now, you should regain your strength.’

Melaugo nodded. She sat on the bed and breathed in the clean scent of the rushes on the floor.

Liyat came to lie beside her and slid an arm across her waist. The sun fell on to her cheek through the window. Melaugo stroked her windswept curls back with one hand. They both needed to eat, but the ride had been long and hot, and before she could move again, she was sleeping.

****

For days, Melaugo tried to rest. There was a small bathing chamber and a chest for her to store her weapons. She ate in the kitchen at noon every day and stayed out of the other guests’ sight. It hurt to eat too much, even though she was hungry.

On their sixth morning in Ortégardes, she worked her way through a casserole of white cheese, hard-boiled egg and greens, trying not to overstuff her belly, and sipped a black Ersyri drink that made her feel awake. The shutters were ajar, so she could glimpse people going about their business, hear their laughter and the clang of sanctuary bells.

Melaugo took it all in. Even if she could not go outside with the fear of death hanging over her, she could listen to others’ lives unfolding. Surely that was better than Triyenas.

You were meant for more than that.

Get out of my head, she told Harlowe. Out with you, saltworn bastard.

Liyat returned from her walk to the bakery. By then, Melaugo was lying in her room with the windows screened against the burning sun, as most Yscals did at midday in the hot months.

‘Here.’ Liyat presented her with a small package. ‘Your favourite.’

Melaugo sat up and opened it. Inside was a pastry shaped like a cowry shell, the one she had loved to eat in Perunta.

‘Thank you,’ she said, with a tired smile. ‘I missed these.’

‘I’ll get you my favourite tomorrow. Orange cake,’ Liyat said. ‘A speciality of Ortégardes.’ She set down two loaves of fresh white bread. ‘It will ruin all other sweet things for you.’

‘I look forward to it.’ Melaugo tore the pastry in half and tasted the almond filling. ‘Any news?’

‘The heralds are still calling your description, even here.’ Liyat walked past her to crack the doors open, letting in a breeze. ‘I see no choice. You must go to Lasia.’

‘I’d sooner risk staying in Ortégardes.’

‘How can you?’

‘I’ll dye my hair and keep my hat on.’

‘That will not be enough.’

‘It has to be.’ Melaugo shifted on the bed. ‘Liyat, think about this. I don’t speak Lasian.’

‘You could learn.’ Liyat hung up her cloak, then started to remove her bandolier. ‘In a few days, you can join a caravan across the marchlands. In the meantime, I will send a dove to my friends and get you a new apprenticeship. Nzene rewards promising smiths.’

‘I don’t want to smith.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘I want to be with you,’ Melaugo said, ‘yet I feel as if you are trying to be rid of me.’ Liyat looked towards her sharply. ‘Saint above, will you not even come with me across the marchlands, Liyat?’

Liyat looked as if Melaugo had struck her.

‘I came for you,’ she said. ‘I came to Triyenas.’

‘You might never have done that if not for Harlowe. Three months and you didn’t even notice I had left Aperio.’ Melaugo was suddenly boiling over. ‘Did you even care that I was gone, or did my shot in Perunta give you convenient grounds to cast me aside, like Suylos did?’

‘Estina, you are not being fair. You know I can’t just abandon my work,’ Liyat said, a flush on her cheeks, ‘but I had every intention of returning to Aperio to see you.’

‘This sounds like an excuse, Liyat.’

‘Do you think me so cold?’

‘No. I believe you are proud and guarded – impressively, even more so than I am – and that you are terrified to have a weakness, because you have been wounded so many times before.’

Liyat looked as tense as a hunted deer. Melaugo could see her fighting her instinct to run for the hills, to escape this confrontation.

‘Don’t leave,’ Melaugo said, softer. ‘Hear me out.’ After a pause, Liyat nodded. ‘In Oryzon, I never let a girl too close, in case they spurned my affections. Sooner or later, I would start avoiding them, even if it caused them pain. Even if it caused the very thing I feared.’

She dared not look Liyat in the eye as she spoke. It would make her feel as if she was dying.

‘I had long thought of myself as a burden, a millstone,’ she said to the floor. ‘In the eyes of the law, that had been true. An urchin forever asking for a coin. A mouth nobody cared to feed. The very sight of me unsettled the Oryzoni, because it showed them the Saint could forsake a child, but none of them wanted to bring me into their own perfect households. I was too low. I knew that, in their hearts, they wished I would just … disappear.’

At this, Liyat stepped towards her. ‘Estina.’

‘Wait. Let me confess this, or I never will,’ Melaugo said, stopping her. ‘I have borne witness to how deeply you care about the world, about people. I have also seen your humour and warmth, and how quickly you hide all of this – all of you – when you feel that you have shown too much. I understand, because I was the same. I have spent years defending my dignity as if my life depended on it, afraid to let anyone crush it any more than it has already been crushed. But you made me want to let my guard down. To be vulnerable. I let myself dream of trust and affection. But I fear you cannot do the same.’

Liyat kept her distance, her face wary.

‘I thought you were content with what we had in Perunta,’ she said. ‘That we could be a comfort to each other.’

‘Yes, you wanted someone to warm your bed. I wanted the same,’ Melaugo said, ‘but every time I slept at your shop, I wished you would ask me to stay.’

Liyat remained as stiff as a manikin, but her gaze was the opposite, tender and molten.

‘I know you must carry great pain. You speak to the dead in your sleep,’ Melaugo said. ‘I hoped that we could help each other heal from our pasts. I formed this notion without consulting you, and that was a selfish mistake. I’m sorry.’ Her voice strained. ‘But I must know, once and for all, for the sake of my own sanity: is there any chance that you could want to build a life with me, or am I chasing a pipe dream, as Harlowe believes?’

‘Harlowe said this?’ Liyat whispered.

‘He claims you’re married to your work. But I would never seek to take that from you.’ Melaugo went to her, so they stood a few inches apart. ‘I see how much discomfort I am causing you, merely by forcing you to confront this. It pains me to do it. But I need to understand, so I can judge how much to give to this affair. I am a winemakers’ child – I will not waste the fruits of my labour by tipping them on to the ground. So tell me, can you offer me a cup?’

Liyat blinked in clear surprise, for which Melaugo could not blame her. She had taken even herself by surprise with that burst of poesy.

Before Liyat could answer, a knock drew their gazes towards the door. Melaugo slipped behind it, while Liyat cracked it open.

‘Yes?’

‘The Knights Defendant summon the people of Ortégardes,’ an unfamiliar voice said. ‘No exceptions.’

‘Very well.’ Liyat kept her composure. ‘Where do we go?’

‘Everyone in this quarter is to proceed to the Plaza Oderica.’

He went to knock on other doors. Liyat shut theirs and looked at Melaugo, who reached for her new hat, her mouth thin.

****

They joined hundreds of people leaving their shops and homes. Liyat led, knowing the city well. Melaugo tried to ignore the foreboding. She pulled the brim of her hat down as the crowd washed them towards the Plaza Oderica, where the Great Sanctuary of Ortégardes stood.

She could have killed the city guard for interrupting their conversation, but even though it was long overdue, perhaps Liyat needed a little more time.

Her cheeks were still burning from her final outburst. Perhaps she really ought to leave Yscalin and become some kind of wandering bard. Most likely, Liyat would close herself off and withdraw, and she would have destroyed one of the few joys she had ever known.

The people of Ortégardes were filing out of their lodgings and villas, some of them none too pleased to be summoned. Melaugo had never seen so many unlaced shirts or bare shoulders. In the warm half of the year, the city guards in the south of Yscalin tended to overlook any contravention of the sartorial laws, even in the city devoted to the Knight of Courtesy.

The Knights Defendant waited in a crescent formation at the top of the steps to the Great Sanctuary. There were forty of them, all on white stallions, wearing armour and masks that evoked a crueller period of Yscali history.

Liyat looked at them with quiet contempt. They were the last remnant of the Order of Ederico, which had spurred the Yscali conversion to the Six Virtues after the death of Isalarico the Benevolent. They had killed or banished anyone who refused to accept the new faith entirely. Now they visited the settlements of Yscalin at random, punishing vice and heresy, destroying the exact sorts of objects that Liyat fought so hard to protect.

Melaugo squinted at them from beneath the brim of her hat. They were flying a banner showing the red pear of Yscalin, but without the True Sword, which appeared in the heraldry of all four countries in Virtudom.

‘The banner,’ she said to Liyat. ‘Do you see?’

‘Yes, but … why?’

‘I have no idea.’

Ortégardes was such a large city – far larger than the capital – that it took some time even for one district to be gathered. In the end, silence descended as one of the knights kicked her steed forward. Beneath her engraved steel helm, she looked gaunt, with a hollow gaze.

‘People of Ortégardes,’ she bellowed, ‘l am Donma Lusua Vuleydres, a sworn member of the Knights Defendant.’

As was the custom, the knight paused so that people could pass her words from the front of the crowd to the back. Fortunately, her voice carried, and Melaugo had the ears of a barn owl.

‘Long have you been loyal to Galian Berethnet, he who called himself the Saint,’ Donma Lusua continued. ‘Long have my fellow knights made sure to keep his law throughout this land. But I have come to tell you, here and now, that his time is over in Yscalin.’

Melaugo arched an eyebrow. All around the vast square, there were mutters of confusion and anger as the words reached each part of the crowd. Liyat lifted a hand to her neckline.

‘I can’t hear a word,’ the man beside her grumbled, straining to see. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘Five centuries after the conversion, His Majesty, King Sigoso of the House of Vetalda, has seen the light of the Dreadmount,’ Donma Lusua shouted over the clamour. ‘He has sworn allegiance to the Nameless One, and to Fyredel, the Iron King, Lord of the Mountain!’

Now the mutters turned into sharp cries, full of outrage. Melaugo could not believe what she was hearing. The woman was not only condemning the Saint, but praising the wyrm that had almost destroyed the world. She might as well have chopped some wood and built her own pyre.

‘What sort of jape is this?’

‘A test from King Sigoso, surely,’ someone murmured. ‘A test of our loyalty to the Saint.’

‘Are you absolutely sure that’s what she said?’

‘Hear me,’ Donma Lusua called. ‘The Nameless One seeks only to cleanse the world of corruption.’ Her voice cracked. ‘We fought the mighty Fyredel during the Grief of Ages, but this time, we must not resist his coming. Until this kingdom has been scoured of the unholy Saint—’

‘Blasphemer,’ a man bellowed, and his accusation set everyone off, like a flame put to a keg of gunpowder.

‘Heretic!’

‘What do you mean by this?’

‘Do not resist,’ Donma Lusua ordered again, but Melaugo could have sworn there was fear on her face. ‘Please, do not resist—’

Liyat reached for Melaugo, her breath coming short.

‘Whatever this is,’ she said, ‘I want no part in it.’ She started to shoulder through the crowd, which was now surging forward, towards the Knights Defendant. ‘That man over there was right. This must be some perverse test of faith. We should leave.’

Melaugo nodded. ‘We can wait in the storm drain,’ she said. ‘Just until—’

A chilling scream cut her off.

The entire crowd stopped moving and fell silent. All eyes were on the sky, from whence the scream had come. No human could make such a sound, but Melaugo had heard something like it before. In the dank caves and abandoned mines where only sleepers dwelled.

So when it landed on the dome of the Great Sanctuary of Ortégardes, she was among the first to accept it.

She had seen Draconic creatures, but nothing of this cruelty or magnitude. Even longer than the lindworm in Triyenas, the horned monster was covered with scales, and its wings, torn and brindle, were like those of some immense bat. A bullwhip of a tail lashed behind it.

A fucking wyvern, in broad daylight.

For five centuries, the people of Virtudom had been weaned on tales of the Grief of Ages. They knew what they were looking at – the foes that stalked their prayer books and their bedtime tales. Melaugo looked speechlessly at Liyat, whose terrified gaze was fixed on the wyvern.

And then the wyvern let out a roar, and it was as if a cannon had gone off.

Melaugo kept hold of Liyat. The icy calm of a culler kicked in, even as fear sparked in her breast and the streets erupted into chaos.

That roar had made the wyvern real.

They were standing at the edge of the crowd, else they would have been lost in the fray at once, unable to get clear. By instinct, they rushed the same way they had come. Just as they pulled free of the horde, a man slammed into Melaugo, and she hit the cobbles, tasting blood as she bit her own tongue.

‘Bastard,’ she spat. He was already gone.

‘Estina.’ Liyat was shouting with all her might, yet Melaugo could barely hear: ‘Everyone will be heading for the gates. The stables will be plundered. We have to use the drain to get there first!’

Melaugo allowed herself to be hauled to her feet. On the dome, the wyvern roared again. She looked up to see five more winging over the square, monstrous in size and aspect. Some of the city guards were loading their crossbows, while others had drawn their swords.

‘Where are the springalds, the cannons?’ Melaugo snarled. ‘What was the point of building them?’

Liyat did not reply. Her gaze was darting around them, assessing their surroundings, coming up with a rational plan. In silent agreement, they started to run, buffeting past other Yscals.

Ortégardes was surrounded by a crenelated wall, built when the Yscali monarchs had been courting war with Lasia. It was lined with springalds, mangonels and cannons – weapons proven to kill wyrms – but none of them were being used. Though the wall had sixty round towers, it was far lower on gates, with only two wide enough for large crowds. A crush was forming on Cypress Street as thousands of people made for the nearest.

Melaugo stopped as another wyvern shot overhead. Next she knew, the crowd was covered in red fire.

The screams were deafening. She pushed Liyat into a doorway before a second eruption of fire, impossibly hot, rained down on another part of the crowd. Melaugo could hardly breathe, and not just because the air scorched in her throat. The implications of this were appalling. If the wyverns had their flames, then a High Western was either awake, or close to it.

A second Grief of Ages might be about to begin.

‘Open the gates,’ came the agonised shouts from the crowd. ‘For the love of the Saint, open the gates!’

‘They’re closed?’ Melaugo croaked. ‘Why the fuck would they be closed?’

‘You heard that disgrace of a knight,’ Liyat bit out. ‘King Sigoso is complicit in this madness.’

‘That is not possible. No wyrm has ever treated with—’

‘Estina, we’ll question it later. We have to get out of here now.’ Liyat leaned past her to look at the street, hair clinging to the sweat on her face. ‘The other gates will be locked, too. The storm drain isn’t far. This time, we do not stop until we reach the stables. Are we agreed?’

Melaugo nodded. Together, they left the shelter of the doorway and took a narrow backstreet towards the city wall.

Liyat ducked into the drain first. Melaugo left its cover open, so a few lucky others could find their way out before the Knights Defendant sealed it. They barrelled down the smugglers’ tunnel, and soon they were back above ground, wading through the moat, almost falling.

On the other side of the city wall, they could see more wyverns approaching from the north. As Melaugo smelled burnt hair and flesh, she saw that the gates had not only been shut, but chained together. If she had been harbouring any doubts about human complicity, that sight banished them. There were no guards to be seen; no one from whom a key might be wrung.

On one of the towers that flanked the gate, a mangonel was mounted, with no obvious way to reach it from this side. Before Melaugo could improvise, a wyvern shattered the war engine with one blow of its tail, showering the moat with shards of wood and metal.

They kept running towards the stables. Inside, more panic-stricken people were claiming horses at random. Liyat went for her own mare, but a desperate man already had it by the reins. Seeing Liyat, he reached for his sword.

Before he could use it, Liyat shot him in the shoulder. The mare reared up. While the man writhed in pain and cursed Liyat, she stowed the gun and calmed the horse as best she could.

‘Where should we go?’ Melaugo asked her, heaving for breath. ‘The Lasian border?’

‘No. There is no cover in the marchlands,’ Liyat said. ‘But Harlowe and his ship will still be in Oryzon.’

‘What use is a fucking ship?’ Melaugo almost screamed. ‘It’s wood!’

‘It’s a way out,’ Liyat shot back. ‘We need to leave Yscalin, and the Rose Eternal is heavily armed. It’s our best chance.’ She reached for her saddle. ‘Unless you have another plan?’

Melaugo did not have another plan. Her mind was a white roar of dread, barely contained by her skull. Her mare had already been taken, so she wrestled a sleek black palfrey from its stall. It resisted her with some force, whinnying in alarm.

‘Trust me,’ Melaugo growled, ‘you don’t want to be near a wyvern. I don’t know how they turn you into war beasts, but I doubt you’ll like it.’

The palfrey snorted.

While Liyat held off the other thieves from the back of her mare, Melaugo buckled on a saddle and swung her leg across it.

Together, they joined the rest of the Yscals who had been outside when the gates closed.

Some were trying to get in, hollering the names of their loved ones, but most were fleeing in droves, either on horseback or foot.

Not daring to look back, Melaugo sent her palfrey galloping after Liyat, on to the wine road that led to the coast. In their wake, the people of Ortégardes cried for mercy, trapped by their own defensive wall.

****

The screams from Ortégardes took hours to fade. When they did, the silence was thunderous. Melaugo hoped it was because she and Liyat were too far away to hear them, and not because there had been no survivors. The wyrms had been known to raze entire cities, leaving the streets littered with bones.

For almost a day, Melaugo rode after Liyat, who barely uttered a word. The other absconders stayed away from them, and from each other. Perhaps they were all convinced they had shamed the Knight of Courage with their flight, but Melaugo was a realist. Other than leaving the storm drain open, there was nothing she could have done without her weapons. Perhaps some fortunate soul would come upon them in the Golden Pear. Now she had only a single blade.

If Harlowe had already left Oryzon, that blade was another way out.

They soon ran into others on the wine road – a river of Yscals, all bearing what they could, making for the western ports of Córvugar and Oryzon. Some rode on carts and horses, while others were on foot. Melaugo glimpsed appalling burns on some of them; others were covered in ash and soot, coughing.

This assault had been going on for hours or days. Hard to tell the precise amount of time. At every turn, the wyverns had overtaken the messengers, making it hard for word to spread.

It seemed they had come from the Spindles, perhaps even from Cárscaro. Now they were making their way between the largest settlements of Yscalin, often announced by the Knights Defendant, and it seemed the artillery had been sabotaged. King Sigoso had sent letters to all of the city officials and castellans, commanding them to ensure his subjects’ compliance.

‘I swear to the Saint, it was in his own hand,’ one man was saying, his face red and sweating. ‘His Majesty told us to destroy the war engines! He ordered us not to resist the wyverns!’

‘That’s the Grand Chancellor of Abraba. He used to punish any word against the king with public floggings.’ Liyat watched him. ‘If even he is condemning Sigoso, this story can only be true.’

Abraba was the City of Temperance. Small wonder that they had crumbled, with instincts like theirs. They had probably been afraid to use too many arrows. But farther down the road, Melaugo overheard some hopeful news about Samana, the City of Courage, where many guards and soldiers had defied their sovereign. Refusing to dismantle the artillery, they were using it to drive off the wyverns. Their grand chancellor had apparently joined the rebellion.

Samana was one thing. It was a garrison city, the stronghold of Yscali military power, where most Western artillery and firearms were made – but Melaugo had little hope for the rest of Yscalin. Even though it had the largest standing army in the West, expanded by King Sigoso after the sudden death of Queen Sahar, none of its soldiers had ever faced wyverns.

During the Grief, everyone had either hid or fought. As far as Melaugo knew, there had never been a formal surrender to the wyrms. It was a unique tactic; she would grant Sigoso that.

At last, they reached the crossway between the wine and salt roads, where some people had collapsed in exhaustion. Not all of them had steeds, and many were carrying packs or children. Melaugo looked back, sweat on her brow. In the distance, the sky was dark with smoke.

‘We can’t rest for long.’ Liyat led her tired horse towards the river. ‘King Sigoso must be held to ransom. There can be no other reason he would try to stop us mounting a defence.’

‘A good king would still urge his people to fight to save themselves,’ Melaugo said bitterly. ‘Yscalin has artillery and—’

‘Not enough. Half of the war engines are in a state of disrepair,’ Liyat said. ‘Nobody wanted to spend the coin to maintain them. Every generation has believed that it would not be their burden.’

‘Who told you this?’

‘You know I have friends all over Yscalin.’

Melaugo glanced over her shoulder again, swallowing the metallic tang of her own fear. ‘If all of the sleepers on this continent have woken,’ she said, ‘it will be overrun in a matter of days.’

‘And the Draconic plague will return.’ Liyat climbed back into her saddle. ‘We have no choice but to leave. It will spread like wildfire.’

‘What about your work?’

‘I will see to it later. Harlowe once offered me a place on the Rose. For now, I will accept.’

‘A ship is nothing to a wyrm.’

‘Our ships are not like any they have ever faced. If Harlowe can keep the plague off the Rose, there will be no safer place.’

‘And what if he’s already gone?’

‘He won’t go without you, Estina. In all these years, has he ever given up?’

Melaugo drew a deep breath without answering. Liyat gave her a last unreadable look before she turned her mare towards the salt road.