The Copper Promise (58 page)

‘What’s going on now?’

Y’Ruen roared, and fire was everywhere. Wydrin, Frith, the griffin, all screamed as one, and for a moment Wydrin thought they were all going to fall. Frith dragged them onwards but the griffin’s wing was on fire now. Wydrin tried to beat it out with her hands, only succeeding in burning her fingers.

‘Shit! We’ll have to land, Frith, and do the rest on foot.’

Frith glanced behind them.

‘Then we definitely won’t make it. Hold on, I have an idea.’

He shuddered in her grasp and a soft pink light spread out along the griffin’s wing. The fire went out with a puff of smoke and the griffin gave a grateful squawk.

‘You can’t do that.’ Wydrin shook him, remembering the scar that had reappeared after he’d healed Jarath. ‘You know what that’ll do.’

‘Shut. Up. Concentrating.’

After a few more seconds the pink light vanished, and the griffin picked up speed once more. Now there were buildings below them, and here and there the startled faces of people looking up. Frith was leaning forward over the griffin’s neck, breathing heavily.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ he gasped, although his voice was faint. ‘We’re here.’

Wydrin just had time to make out a great stone circle like the arenas in the Marrow Markets and then they were crashing into it. She was flung from the griffin’s back and landed in a heap on the stones, the wind forced from her lungs.

She opened her eyes to see Frith face down on the ground. Y’Ruen hovered above them, enormous wings beating the air into a hurricane. The dragon finally had them trapped. There was nowhere else to go, nothing left to do.

But the final spell.

‘Frith!’

Gathering what strength she had left Wydrin scrambled to her feet and sprinted to the prone shape, horribly aware of the fiery death waiting above. Turning him over she saw that Frith’s scar was even more vivid now, and part of his ear was gone. His eyes were shut.

‘Wake up! Princeling, we need the final word!’

He murmured something, so she shook him again.

‘The word, Frith. Don’t leave me now!’

The dragon still wasn’t attacking. If anything, the huge scaly head was turned away from them now, back towards the battlefield. Whatever Sebastian was doing, it was getting her attention.

‘You have to, we’re so close.’ She slapped him across the cheek, but it didn’t rouse him as it had before. She glanced up and saw Y’Ruen’s brilliant yellow eyes settle on them once more. The dragon opened its mouth, and Wydrin could see the beginnings of their doom glowing in the back of its throat. ‘Oh shit.’

She pulled him up and hugged him to her, burying her face in his neck. At least it would be quick …

‘Open.’

She felt him speak the word more than heard it; a tremor that moved through his chest into hers, the quickening of the Edenier. The ground beneath buckled and shook. His arms tightened around her and everything was light, light …

Sebastian saw it. The sky over the distant ocean tore itself open, and there was a howling darkness beyond. The dragon, now so tiny in comparison to that terrible hole, screamed and twisted in the air, belching fire and smoke in all directions, but the tear in the sky seemed to exert a relentless pull on the creature, and she was dragged, roaring, into the blackness behind the universe. He saw her beautiful blue scales, so bright and shining, turn black and dull as she entered that place with no light and no hope. For the briefest second he almost felt sorry for her, and then the tear vanished, healing over in an instant as though it were never there in the first place.

Y’Ruen was gone.

And now her daughters turned to him, weapons limp in their hands.

‘So where have they gone?’

Sebastian stretched his legs out under the table, wincing as every muscle there twinged painfully. The sounds of Baneswatch putting itself back together drifted in from outside.

‘They’ve gone into the mountains.’ He paused to sip at his ale. ‘I’ve told them where they need to go, and I will meet them there later. I didn’t think it was wise to keep them near the city.’

After all, not all of the brood army had wanted to listen to him. Once Y’Ruen was gone, sucked into the abyss created by O’rin’s spell, there had been a brief fight between those daughters of the dragon who recognised Sebastian as their father, and those who did not. It had been bloody. There were around two hundred of them left now; two hundred people who had not existed a year ago, two hundred people with no experience save for murder and war. It would take some sorting out.

Frith nodded. ‘I am not at all certain
we
are welcome here, let alone the dragon’s daughters. I doubt the people of this city understand what we did at all.’

‘Welcome to the life of a sell-sword, princeling.’ Wydrin tipped her tankard to him. ‘You do all the bloody work and not a word of genuine thanks from anyone.’

‘I am not a sell-sword,’ said Frith, smudging a bit of dirt from his wine glass with his thumb. ‘I am a lord.’ In Sebastian’s opinion the lord of the Blackwood looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes and his limp was back in a big way, but Sebastian also thought he looked as happy as he’d ever seen him. Some of the anger had faded from his face, making him look younger, and now there was a shrewd thoughtfulness there instead. Sebastian noticed that his gaze went to Wydrin often, and when it did the faintest hint of a smile blossomed at the corner of his mouth.

‘You’re a lord?’ Wydrin widened her eyes in mock wonder. ‘Well, I wish you’d mentioned it before.’

They all laughed at that.

‘So what now?’ she said eventually. ‘Are you really going to train Y’Ruen’s daughters, Sebastian?’

Sebastian shrugged and reached into his pocket for the glass globe Crowleo had given him. He set it down on the tavern table and spun it lazily between his fingers.

‘The Order is all but decimated, and there are training grounds up in the god-peaks that will rot away to nothing if no one uses them. The daughters of the brood need guidance, help, and time to come to terms with everything.’ There was a sadness in his chest, and he smiled on through it. ‘Maybe I do too.’

Wydrin frowned at that, but didn’t question him.

‘What about you, Lord Frith?’

‘I will go back to the Blackwood, I expect,’ he said, looking down into his wine. ‘There is still much to repair, to rebuild.’

‘The Blackwood, princeling?’ Wydrin rolled her eyes at the both of them. ‘Why, by all the ugly fire-breathing gods, would you want to go back there?’

‘Come back with me and perhaps I’ll make you a princess.’

Wydrin laughed until mead came out of her nose and the innkeeper started to give them strange looks.

‘Oh, honestly,’ she spluttered, swallowing down the last of her giggles and trying to soak up some of what she’d spilled with the back of her arm. ‘Is this really it? The end of our agreement?’

Frith cleared his throat.

‘I’m pretty sure I’ve paid you both. More than once, in fact.’

‘No, I mean … is this really the end of it?’ Wydrin leaned on the table, looking up at them through the unruly mop of her hair. Her green eyes glittered with mischief. ‘We have the world’s only mage, the world’s only brood army, and the world’s only Copper Cat. Think of all the trouble we can cause now.’

Sebastian laughed, noting the contemplative look on Frith’s face. There was a lord who wasn’t going home any time soon.

‘Oh no, I think this was just the start of the trouble we can cause,’ he said, spinning the glass between his fingers so that shards of blue light scattered across the tabletop. ‘Another round?’

Getting this book out into the world has been a long and strange journey, with many unexpected diversions and the occasional wrong turn. A number of people kindly lent their time to stop me wandering off cliff edges or into haunted forests, and I’d like to do my best to say thank you to some of them here.

Thank you, first of all, to the readers who took a chance on
The Copper Promise
in its original form – a sword and sorcery novella with a bitch of a cliff-hanger. Because you read it, and because you said lovely things, I had the confidence to write the rest of that story. Keep taking those chances, because you rock.

Enormous thanks to the beta readers who took on
The Copper Promise
in its Ultimate-Mega-Form, and gave general story advice at all stages of writing: Roy Butlin, Andrew Reid, Kate Sherrod and Stuart Turner. I greatly valued your fresh eyeballs and endless enthusiasm.

Gigantic thanks to the Non-Aligned League of Super Awesome Writers, who have been on hand at all times to offer advice, sarcastic emails and the occasional alcoholic beverage. Particular gratitude to Adam Christopher, who was there at the beginning of this craziness and has been ridiculously supportive, from giving me a kick up the arse when I needed it to making sure I actually turn up to these convention things – I still owe you a ginger beer, mister.

Thanks also to Den Patrick, who once bought me a hot chocolate as big as my head, and the unflappable Liz de Jager, who taught me to strut and had burritos with me when I was feeling rubbish.

I have been enormously fortunate with this publishing lark, I really have, and a large part of that is down to my agent, the tremendous Juliet Mushens. Not only did she make a dream of mine come true, she made the book better, gave me a huge shot of confidence when I needed it most, and did it all with endless style and humour. Bravo, lady!

If you need more evidence that I was born under a lucky publishing-star, John Wordsworth is my editor. Enormous thanks to John for turning a potentially scary thing into a fantastically fun experience, and for being infinitely wiser than me. Thanks also to Christina Demosthenous and the rest of the team at Headline, who have been marvellous.

I have much to thank my mum for, who always encouraged my book obsession and (most of the time) let me read at the dinner table, and my dear friend Jenni, who has been a voice of reason since we were knee high to grasshoppers.

Finally, the biggest, sauciest thanks of all must go to my partner Marty Perrett. Thank you for making me laugh when I needed it, for putting up with my nonsense and my kick-the-oven tantrums, and for believing, with no room for doubt, that I could do it.