“And they’re here now?”

“Some. Left Sir Bismark back at the castle with a half dozen men to ward off looters. They’ll be scurrying all over the city, that sort, taking advantage. Pillaging, murdering, raping, all sorts. The old man’s not wrong, my lord. We need more soldiers here.”

“You’ll have them,” Elyon said. He could not be sure if his father would leave the coast just yet, but one way or another, he would see Varinar reinforced. “In the meantime, do what you can. And send word to Sir Hank that help is coming.”

“Aye. I’ll do that, my lord.”

Elyon nodded, turned, and began stepping away through the crowd. He needed to give himself room to take flight, and the people were pressed hard about him.

“Make way,” he said. “Please, I need space.”

Many eyes were on him, many lips opening and closing with questions about the dragons, and the Dread, and King’s Point, and the king. Merchants and wealthy artisans, lesser lords and ladies and old rich knights who dwelled here in their fine hillside homes and grand apartments near the harbour. Elyon recognised some of them, nobles he had rubbed shoulders with at balls and banquets. He saw Lord Meleforth, a shrunken old thing, who’d once been treasurer to King Horris Reynar, decades ago. And Lord Lancelyn, a rich shipwright, who had built half the boats in the harbour. Elyon had bedded both of their granddaughters once upon a time. Them, and more, he thought. A different time. A different life…

He kept on walking, giving what answers he could to the trail of desperation pursuing him. “The king will return,” he was saying. “My father…he will set things right. You don’t need to worry about the dragons anymore. They have done what they came for. They won’t be coming back.”

A hand grabbed his arm, clinging to his steel gauntlet. “Please, don’t go,” a girl’s voice begged. “We need you…we need you here.”

Others agreed, huddling about him. A hundred voices shouted for him to stay. “Sir Hank Rothwell remains in charge of the defences,” Elyon called, pulling himself away. “He is working to restore order, but more soldiers will come, I promise you. Now stand back…please, stand back. I have commands to follow from the king.”

He had to push at them now to make room. Gently, of course, though forcefully enough to make them see he was serious. “Stand back,” he said again, more firmly. “Stand back, for your own good. Or you may get hurt. Stand back!”

He stirred the winds, causing the ash to billow, skirts and robes to rise up. Suddenly the great chorus of shouts and voices was drowned by the blowing of the breeze. It was enough to get them stepping away from him, at least, all but the same girl as before, who reached out, weeping, clinging onto his leg. “Please, please, please,” she screamed. “Stay with us! What if they return!” Some others came to prise her off him. “You said you loved me, Elyon! You said that! Don’t you remember? If you love me, you’ll stay!”

He frowned, looking down at her. It only hit him then that he knew her, though for the life of him he couldn’t place her name. Nor what he might have said to get her into bed. A past life, he thought once more. A different time, a different man.

“Please, my lady, let go,” he said, as others wrestled her free. “I will come back, I promise. But in the meantime you must do what you can to help. You’re strong. I remember that. There are many here who need you. Help them. I will be back soon.”

If those words gave her any solace…if she would heed them…he didn’t know. As soon as she was dragged away, he thrust the Windblade skyward and took flight, leaving the grasping hands and pleading voices and desperate horde behind.

In the east, the sun was climbing, its glow dancing on the waters of the lake. The lands were scorched and blackened in patches, signalling the path of the Drulgar and his dreaded flock. A flock greatly reduced, Elyon thought, if the count of dead dragons had been anything to go by. Varinar might have been beaten, but it wasn’t broken, and Drulgar had paid for that in blood. His vendetta against Varin and his ancient city had not come without its cost. To his followers, and to him, Elyon knew, as he saw the heaps and blackened lumps of dried blood across the plains. It was the molten blood of Drulgar, he knew, searing the earth where it landed. And from what he could see, there was a great deal of it.

Elyon Daecar had caught a whiff of his prey. He flew after the trail, in pursuit.

4

The report was not as she’d hoped. “Nothing,” said the Butcher, shaking his large, bald, brown head, dappled with beads of sweat from the sweltering heat outside. “The snake has slithered away, I am sure of it. He escaped the city during the fighting.”

“Sure?” Saska repeated. “How sure?”

“Sure enough,” answered the Baker, seated behind a desk with his feet resting on the wood. The man had an apple pierced on the edge of a knife. He took a bite, chewed, and said, “There is a possibility - a small one - that the sunlord remains in the city, hidden in some den. There are hundreds of them here in Aram, these dens and little lairs, and new ones are made every day. Any house, any home, could conceivably be concealing him. Though that is looking less likely, the more we search. My brother is probably right. Most likely he is gone.”

“I am right.” The Butcher thumped his scarred chest. “My little big brother hates to admit this. But it’s true. I am always right.”

Little big brother. The Baker wasn’t exactly little, though compared to the Butcher he wasn’t large either. He was also the elder of the two, though imagining them as being born of the same mother or sired of the same father took some effort. She’d grown used to the gruesome sight of the Butcher, with the scores of scars that latticed his chest and arms and face and head, but his brother the Baker was newly introduced to her, and much different of appearance. A shorter man, he had unusually large, knuckly hands, thick forearms forested in tufts of hair, a broad, squashed nose, deeply furrowed forehead, dark, spirited eyes and missing right ear. The golden spectacles he wore rested unevenly upon those features, lending him an almost teacherly air, and he had bizarrely white teeth as well that shone unnaturally when catching the light.

They made an odd pairing, to be sure.

“How long will it take to smoke out these dens?” Sir Ralston Whaleheart asked them, in his booming voice.

The Baker gave a shrug. “How long does a man live? How long does a battle last? Questions without answers.” He pushed his spectacles up his nose. They seemed to fall down regularly, owing to that missing ear. “As I say. These dens breed like the feral little creatures that live in them. One is smoked out, another is born. Lord Krator has many friends in the city.”

“We killed his friends,” the Wall said to that. “Antapar and Konollio and their men…”

“Were but a few. He has more. Some are known to us; we have gone to them first, and of course, most of them have gone missing as well. Others are not known. Friends of friends who can be bribed and intimidated into concealing Lord Krator from our sight. These men are without count.” He took another bite of his apple, crunching. “But the foreign allies are just as numerous. If my brother is right, and the sunny snake has slithered away, then most likely he will have gone west, into Pisek. But of course, we will continue to search to make sure. I very much want to see the sunlord swing as well. Alive, he remains dangerous…and he will not forget the men who betrayed him.”

The Butcher laughed and shook the scabbard of his godsteel longsword, rattling the blade within. “The snake has been defanged. I have no fear of him.”

“You have no fear of anyone, brother. And a fearless man is a fool.” The Baker turned his attention back upon his guests. “My brother tells me you wish to hire us, as part of your escort? You are to leave the city soon, is this so?”

The Wall nodded. “In the coming days.”

The Baker manifested a coin in his hand, moving it between his knuckles, cartwheeling from one to the next. “How much are you willing to pay?”

“Whatever you want,” Saska said.

“Truly? We decide our own fee?” The Baker gave a chuckle. “You may be able to outbid Denlatis after all.”

Saska frowned. “What do you mean, outbid?”

“Cliffario wants us to protect him,” the Butcher explained. “From the wrath of the snake. He fears that Krator will do everything in his power to kill him, if he is still alive. A fair fear, yes. He has offered much money for our swords.”

A fair fear indeed. Of those who had betrayed Elio Krator, Cliffario Denlatis was king.

“We’ll offer more.” Saska wanted the Butcher with her, him and Merinius and the Baker as well, and whatever other Bladeborn men they had left. “My grandmother will pay.”

“The fee will be high,” the Baker told her. “Many of our men have died for you already. Death does not come cheap.”

The Wall bristled, a snort pouring through his nose. “You are sellswords. That’s the risk you take. One we all take in war. Or would you prefer to die protecting a merchant rather than a princess?”

The Butcher smiled at that, scars drinking in the firelight. Sometimes they looked like lines of flame crisscrossing his face, like he was some infernal demon risen from the depths. “I am overwhelmed to hear that you want us to come with you, Coldheart. I had feared you would wish to see the back of me and my tattered red cloak.”

“Once,” the giant knight admitted, in a grunt. “But you proved yourself during the battle. You and Merinius both. I would have you in the company.” He looked to the Baker, less sure. Sir Ralston Whaleheart was not a man given to trusting others easily; one must work hard to enter his confidence, and even then, he kept them at a distance. “I have heard they call you the Baker for the manner in which you treat your enemies. You bake them alive.”

White teeth glinted. “I do,” the sellsword said, proudly. “I bake, my brother butchers. I took inspiration from the iron dragon of Eldurath, do you know of it? It is in the Golden Square, where they…”

“Roast criminals alive, I know. They are put inside the iron beast and have dragons blow their flame upon it. It is a vile torture.”

“Vile to one man, victory to another. Would that not depend on the criminal, and the crime?”

The Wall did not offer an answer.

The Baker went on. “You think yourself a great knight, your honour beyond reproach. Perhaps some others do too. But not all. To many you are a monster, a brutal beast from whom men run in fear, a tale to tell children at night… ‘beware the steel giant in his steel suit, if you’re naughty he’ll cut you in two’.” He laughed. “We say this here, in Aramatia. And all across the south. The monstrous steel man who cuts children in half and drinks the blood from each end like a cup. But is this true? No, I do not think so. You do not murder children and drink their blood, Sir Ralston, and…” he leaned in, crooking a finger, reducing his voice to a whisper, “….and this is just between you and me…but I do not bake men alive either. Not often, at least, and only the very worst of them. But it is good for a sellsword captain to have a name, and so here we are, the Baker and the Butcher, names to strike fear into our enemies. But do not let that concern you, my friend. If you can trust my brother, you can trust me. And I fought well during the battle too.”

The Wall looked at him flatly. He seemed stuck on this notion that they told tales of him killing and drinking the blood of children here. “Yes, so I’ve heard. I won’t deny you did your part.”

“Well now…” The Baker looked at his brother with brows upturned. “Praise, from the praise-less one. And so early in our acquaintance. I feel my heart may explode with pride.”