'Did you see what they brought with them?'

Kemir didn't answer.

'They must have brought something.'

'Maybe they didn't. Maybe they're going to do our work for us and gut this pair of traitors for their gold. If they did, it's small. I didn't see anything.'

The whispering voice hadn't given any clues as to what the something was, either, only that trying to buy it should cost these dragon-knights their lives. Sollos was to wait until the riders met whoever was doing the selling, then discreetly kill the lot of them. The riders would be carrying gold. He could help himself to that, the whisper had said. As for the rest, he would leave the bodies alone and untouched. They'd be found in the morning, by

which time Sollos would be back in his barracks. He'd wake up as shocked as anyone else to find that two of the queen's riders had been found murdered.

Which was all very well, but there were three dragon-knights, not two.

'There's another one,' he whispered. 'A third rider came with them. He stayed with the dragon.'

There was a long pause. He could almost hear Kemir thinking. 'We have to let that one go, don't we?'

Sollos nodded. There were supposed to be two riders. From short range with the advantage of surprise, he and Kemir could be reasonably sure of taking down one apiece. A third, though, forewarned, with a dragon at his back, that was a different matter.

'What do you make of them? Not the riders, the others. The sellers.'

'Nervous. They're not swordsmen. They'll run, not fight. We'll have to take them down quickly.'

Sollos shuddered; Kemir's lips were still brushing his ear. He edged away. 'When the purse changes hands, that's when we act. I'll deal with the rider who gives over the money, you shoot the other. Whoever is holding the purse is mine too. Then we go after the rest. Closest first.' From the corner of his eye Sollos saw movement at the top of the hill. He shooed Kemir away and began to creep closer. As he did, he took a careful grip of his dragonbone longbow. It was an old weapon, taller than he was, honed from the wing of some monster of a war-dragon by the looks of it. Too long and clumsy for his liking at such close quarters, but guaranteed to punch through as much steel and dragonscale as a man could wear and still stand upright.

'Have you got what we want?' 'Have you got our money?'

'Show me you've got what we want.'

At the top of the hill three men had joined the dragon-knights. As if all the noise they'd already made hadn't been enough, now they were arguing. Sollos had a fleeting vision of simply walking into the middle of them and seeing how many he could stab before they even noticed he was there.

'Show us the gold, friend. Then you see what you get for it.'

'No. You first.'

'Oh, just show them the money. Here…'

One of them lit a torch. Slowly, Sollos rested an arrow against the string of his bow. One of the riders was holding what looked like a purse. Any moment now… And they were making it all so easy.

The purse changed hands. As Sollos let fly, he saw the other rider stagger. He didn't even look to see what his own arrow had done, but reached at once for a second.

Both riders were down. The man holding the purse was still exactly where he'd been a moment ago. Sollos could see his eyes, slowly tearing themselves away from the riches in his hands as the dragon-knights toppled over.

The dragon-knights' torch lay on the ground, still burning, lighting the faces of the three strangers still standing on the top of the hillock. Sollos fired again. This time his aim was a little low. The arrow hit the man with the purse in the jaw and ripped off half his face. Good enough. He could see the last two clearly. Still they didn't think to run. Sollos dropped his bow and charged at them, first one hand and then the other drawing a pair of long knives out of his belt.

The furthest pitched suddenly backwards with another of Kemir's arrows in his chest. Finally the last one turned to flee, but by then Sollos was barely yards away and coming at a sprint. A leap and a lunge and Sollos buried both knives into the man's back, one high and one low. That turned out not to be enough, so he slit the man's throat for good measure. Then got up and looked at himself. His shirt was damp and glistening.

'Shit. I'm covered in blood.'

'Better stay away from that dragon, then.' Kemir was standing by the torch, his longbow held loosely at the ready.

'Are you sure there aren't any more of them?' Sollos scurried

back to where he'd dropped his own bow. Without it, he felt naked.

Kemir shrugged. 'As sure as I can be. You never know.'

'We should leave. There's still a rider and a dragon waiting for those two to come back. The purse is there. Get it.'

He watched Kemir stoop and pick something up off the ground. Something that jingled with a very pleasant sound. Sollos smiled.

Kemir frowned. 'This is a lot, Sollos. Are you sure we're supposed to take it all?'

'That's the deal.'

That would normally have been enough for Kemir, but he was still standing there, frowning. As Sollos walked towards him, Kemir reached down and picked up something else. 'Have a look at this.'

'Put it back! Whatever it is, it's not ours.'

'Yes, yes, I will, but I want you to look at it first.'

Sollos shook his head. 'Leave it alone.' Do exactly what was asked, no more and no less. Wasn't that a simple enough rule to live by? For Kemir, apparently not, and it was this sort of thing that always got him into trouble. 'Just put it back,' he snapped as he reached him, so of course Kemir thrust it into his hands instead.

'What is it?'

'I don't know and I don't care.' What Sollos was holding was a spherical bottle made of glass, stoppered and sealed with wax at the top. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand, and from the way its weight shifted was filled with some sort of liquid. In the darkness he couldn't quite see.

Sollos frowned. If it was a liquid, it was a very heavy one. Then he reminded himself that he really didn't want to know. Quickly, he put the bottle back down where Kemir had found it and took Kemir's arm, dragging him away.

Much later, when Sollos and Kemir were both long gone, the shadow of a woman slipped out from among the trees and stepped

carefully around the corpses. The woman bent down where Kemir and Sollos had stood. She picked up the bottle and crept silently away.

2

Kailin

The dragon made one circle over the eyrie and then came in to land. Kailin stopped what he was doing to watch. He squinted, trying to make out the dragon's colour, or anything else that might distinguish it. Around the featureless top of the eyrie the other Scales would be doing the same. They'd all be thinking the same question too: Is it one of mine? Is that one I raised?

Its shape made it a war-dragon, he decided. Hunting dragons had long tails and long necks and enormous wings and were, to Kailin's eyes, much more graceful. War-dragons were stockier. End to end and wing-tip to wing-tip they were the smaller breed, but they weighed twice as much and ate enough for four. Their colours tended to be drab too. Hunting dragons were brighter. Their bloodlines were more carefully recorded, their breeding more strictly managed, their diet meticulously controlled by the alchemists.

When a mount was old enough, the trainers taught them to take the saddle and the rein, and to understand their riders' commands. The rest of the work of growing a dragon was down to people like Kailin. They were the ones, if they survived, who fed the dragons, watered them, nurtured them, cared for them – the Scales, whose ruined skin, hard and flaking, marked them for life. In the end Hatchling Disease got them all, petrifying them while they were still alive. A Scales did not get to grow old.