Moth and Spark (11 page)

“I’ll do it. Who else knows about the poison?”

“No one,” Corin said automatically, before remembering the woman. He decided not to bother his father about it until there was a reason. Berk was generally reliable about people.

“Have you suspicions?”

“One always thinks of Arnet,” Corin said. “Especially since Cade was a hanger-on of his. But I’ve no grounds for it. I wonder now if Hadon was involved, but we can’t assume it wasn’t connected to the Sarians.” It was quite possible they were in the pincers of two empires. “Or the princes, if either one of them is leagued with Tyrekh.”

“Odd that it happened the day after you came back,” Aram said.

“The day after you set Joce to looking,” Corin reminded him. “He may have stirred something up without even knowing it.”

Aram swore softly. He turned his own head toward the windows. Corin went as quiet as he could, watching his father think. He thought there was more to it than ordinary worry. He wondered if Joce had reported the burns.

Then the king stood up. “I need to tell your mother.” A pause. “Corin, I would rather not say this, but I must. War is not a time to toy with men’s loyalties. Break it off with Seana.”

A week ago, a month ago, he would have resented it. He said, “I have. You needn’t worry.” Already she seemed a part of his distant past.

“Good,” Aram said. “I’m sending you out the rest of the day. Be in my receiving room in fifteen minutes in your riding leathers.”

Corin could not help looking regretfully at the water on the windows, but he knew an order when he heard one. He nodded.

He arrived punctually for a change. The guards outside the door came to attention, and one of them said, “He’s expecting you, sir.” He pushed
the door open and shut it behind him as quietly as he could, then halted. Once again his hand went to his knife hilt.

“No need, Corin,” Aram said, notwithstanding the dragonrider standing beside him.

Corin’s usual wariness at dragonriders was even stronger now, and he looked closely at the man. The rider returned an equally careful, inspecting look. Then he dropped formally to one knee and said, “My Lord Prince.”

Well, I will never be surprised by anything again, Corin thought, staring. Dragonriders did not kneel for anyone, not even the Emperor.

The man cupped his hands, the sign of a Basilisk.
I obey him unchangingly. Return to your master.
There had been a code in that, and he should have seen it. Mark that one up as a loss. He gestured the man to rise and said to Aram, “I think I will stop playing cards against you.”

“I’m sure you hold some cards to your chest equally well,” Aram said calmly. Which was another one of his damnably effective tricks, to make you think he knew your secrets already. But Corin had experienced that enough times not to rise to it.

“Did the Emperor send you,” he asked the rider, “or did you steal a dragon?”

“I volunteered,” the rider said. “No one else wanted to bring that news. I’m a real dragonrider, my lord, that’s not something one can pretend.” He sounded Mycenean. Aram had to have placed him there years ago, when the man was fifteen or sixteen, all to have this opportunity now. It was a brilliant move, and one that would cost Aram his throne if Hadon ever found out. He could not have risked it with any man other than a Basilisk.

The king said, “I can tell you more later. Your sister is unhurt and well treated. We haven’t much time. How would you like to ride a dragon?”

The leather clothes, which had been uncomfortably hot in the palace, were barely warm enough at this height, and even in gloves his fingertips were numb. He understood with his body now why it was that the highest peaks were snow-capped all year. But the chill was an inconvenience, nothing more, not when he was here, looking down at the tiny
roads and houses, the curving rivers, the distant roundness of the horizon. He could see the wrinkles and folds of the land and the growing things in a hundred shades of green. The rainclouds lay behind them, slowly moving dark piles of wool. Ice crystals sparkled where rain on his jacket had frozen. The pleasure of this flying was more intense and stimulating than anything he had ever experienced. No wonder dragonriders were arrogant. How could they not pity and scorn the earthbound?

He could not speak to the rider; their helmets muffled their ears from the cold, and the noise of the wind would have torn away their words. It had all been planned before they set out, and he had nothing to do but trust in the dragon and the rider and look. Everything was a marvel: the amazing silky hardness of the dragon’s scales, the iridescence of its wing membranes, the swift steady flaps with which it flew. Its back was smooth and curved, no impediment to moving air. Strapped into a complicated harness behind the rider, Corin could not move much, but he was able to look down on either side. He had a spyglass, but it was queasy-making to look through when they were flying this fast, and what he saw with his naked eye was quite wondrous enough.

The only other time he had been close to a dragon had been at least ten years before, so he had been nervous while waiting to mount. The creature was so very big, and so very inhuman. Its sulfurous odor was not as terrible as he had expected. There was another acrid, musky scent with it. He could not see its muscles through its hide, but he felt them, flexing and contracting in a steady rhythm as it flew. Its body was hot, not unbearably so but evident. His legs were warm where they lay against it.

Kelvan, the rider, had warned Corin that four hours was long for a first flight, no matter how accustomed he was to days on horse. He did not believe it, but when Kelvan landed on a forested bluff overlooking a river after only two hours, he slipped off and discovered he could barely move. His entire back ached, his shoulders were stiff, and his thighs felt as though someone were pushing them apart with a ten-foot-long board. Looking at the dragon’s back, he thought that was a good comparison. And now that they were on the ground, it was hot again. He loosened the laces of his vest, wincing.

“You’ll take my word for it next time, won’t you,” said Kelvan with a
grin. He was stocky, with short dark hair. Corin put him at thirty-five or so. “Stretch them out, or it will get worse. And have a hot bath and some wine tonight.”

Worse? With a hand against the smooth bole of a silvery-grey tree while stretching his hamstrings, he realized he was about as isolated as he had ever been. They were in a clearing but with no roads for miles. The river below was white from water rushing over rocks, too distant to hear. The air smelled of forest and was tremendously, wonderfully quiet, disturbed only by the rustlings of small animals and the calls of a few birds. He could say or do anything here and no one would know.

Was that what Aram had wanted? There was a reason beyond pure pleasure that he had been taken away dragonback. For a quick, horrible instant he thought this was the beginning of exile; then he rejected that idea. His father would not send him off with no farewells and no preparations unless enemies were burning down the doors.

He had wanted to go west to Tai’s home, to see her husband, but Aram had been firm against it.
If all else is well, there is nothing you need to do. If it is not we cannot risk Hadon knowing you were dragonback. If he finds out about Kelvan, we will never get her out.
Corin admitted the truth of that. Even so, he felt he was abandoning her.

The quiet was almost as blissful as the flight, and he did not want to break it. He would have been happy sitting a safe distance away and watching the play of light on the dragon’s scales. But he thought he had to, and when he looked at Kelvan he was sure. The man’s face had gone hard, determined about something, and he was watching Corin with an almost fierce intensity that had nothing of either humor or subservience about it.

He said, “My sister, have you spoken with her?”

Kelvan nodded. “I’ve seen her. I haven’t spoken with her. She’s treated as a guest, and she acts it. I think she’s charming people more than Hadon wants.”

“Good,” Corin said savagely. “What’s he up to? Why did he take her?”

Kelvan did not answer at once. A jay chattered at them. “I don’t see Hadon often,” he said slowly. “But when I did yesterday he did not look good. Healthy enough in the body, but I think there is something weighing down his self, eating it. I don’t think he’s desperate yet, but I would say for sure that he’s afraid of something.”

“Is he sane?”

“He’s rational.” Kelvan shrugged. “If he’s mad, there’s no sign yet.”

“Is he weak?”

The rider did not answer. Corin did not push; the man knew Hadon much better than he did, and the question was unlikely to have a simple answer.

Finally Kelvan said, “I believe so, aye. If I may be frank, my lord?”

“Please.”

“A bully on a throne is still a bully.”

Four years ago Corin had gone to the Mycenean court to do homage for Caithen with his father. It was not his first time at the Emperor’s court; he had been there almost every year since he could talk until he went to university. But this had been the first time that he too was required to do the rite rather than to watch it. He had walked the long path between assembled nobles and courtiers from the entrance of the ornate throne room to the throne itself, where he had knelt to swear the ritual oath, his hands between Hadon’s. Afterward he had kissed the Imperial ring. Had it been only ceremony and tradition he would have thought nothing of it; but Hadon had given him a look that made him feel slavish and abased, and pointedly kept him on his knees longer than was necessary. The dragons carved on the arms of the throne looked down at him, mocking. The subsequent times had been no different.
Bully
was an apt word.

“What about Tyrekh?” he asked. “Is the Emperor going to leave us on our own?”

“I don’t know. It’s an ugly thing to do. If he does he’ll lose the trust of many of his troops. And his vassals. And he can’t afford that. But his sons are a real threat.”

Corin did not bother to ask why Hadon had not executed or imprisoned them. That would only make the fractures greater.

He said, “Has he communicated with Tyrekh at all? Sent any dragons?”

“None. He’s not selling you out, he’s just pretending Tyrekh doesn’t exist.”

“Why is he watching the north?” he asked. “It is him, isn’t it?”

“Aye. No one else controls the riders, I can assure you of that. I don’t know why he’s sent them there. It’s not a desirable assignment, more a punishment duty, but with no reasons given and no man knowing what will put him in the next rotation. It’s been months now that he’s done it.”

“When did they first go?”

“Nine weeks past.”

Ten weeks ago Aram had decided to send Corin north. It had been another month before he left, but the plan had been well-known. “Are they still there?” If they had departed when he did, he would know they had been watching him.

But Kelvan said, “Aye, my lord, with no end in sight.”

It meant something important, he was certain of that. But if Kelvan did not know, the answer was locked in Hadon’s mind and might never come out. “Will the riders obey him even if he loses power?”

Kelvan spread his hands wide. “They’re loyal the way most people are loyal. It’s an easy thing to do. Show them something better and some of them will drift. But the dragons won’t leave, and no rider will leave his dragon.”

He wondered why the dragons would stay, but when he tried to frame a question the words evaporated in his mind and his tongue was stiff. Something did not want him to speak of the dragons, not even now with a dragonrider. He thought of the Dragon Valleys, which he had seen once from a distance, and cold crept through him. He had forgotten what mattered. It almost thrust him into panic.

He took a deep breath and shook it off. “And the soldiers, whom do they support? Does he have their loyalty in the same fashion?”

“I can’t speak of the men, but most of the generals are jackasses with an overweening sense of pride.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that they don’t want to be embarrassed,” said Kelvan. “And Hadon is on the verge of doing that. Shall I tell you what I told the king?”