'Mother!' Almiri almost screamed. It was a mistake to shout at a queen, but she couldn't help herself any more.

Shezira rounded on her. 'Queen Almiri is our guest,' she said very clearly. 'See to it that the Adamantine Guardsmen understand that. And we are not King Valgar, but the Queen of the North, the Queen of Sand and Stone, with twelve score dragons at our beck and call. See they understand that too.' She swept her cloak around her and marched towards the door. 'Why is this door still closed? Must I open it myself?'

She would have lilted the bar with her own hands if some of her riders hadn't hastily removed it. The doors swung open. Outside, dozens of Adamantine men stood waiting, fully armoured and with bared steel in their hands. They paused and then parted as Shezira strode towards them, and after all the shouting an eerie silence fell. Almiri watched her go into the gloom of the night. Tears stung her eyes.

You're wrong. Mother, this time you're wrong.

She kept her thoughts to herself, though, and as Shezira vanished into the darkness, she quietly slipped away.

66

Jostan

For a time that felt like forever, the smoke was unbearable. In the caverns Jaslyn sat by the river, a wet cloth wrapped across her mouth, and tried not to cough herself to death. Not coughing was almost impossible, and whenever she succumbed, she inevitably took in lungfuls of hot smoke and that made it a hundred times worse. Jostan sat beside her. The first time she fell to coughing, he had wrapped his arms around her ribs and then pressed his lips to hers. She tried to fight, pushing him away, thinking he'd lost his mind, but he wasn't trying to kiss her. He blew air out of his lungs and into hers and then drew away. His air still reeked with smoke, but at least it was cool and moist, not bitter and dry. When she'd regained her composure, he had knelt at her feet.

'Forgive me,' he whispered.

'I should have your head,' she rasped. But the coughing fit had gone, and anyway the only person who could have defended her honour was Semian, and he was gone too.

The second time she began to cough, he did it again, and she realised that a part of her liked the closeness of it. Instead of fighting him off, she found herself wanting to pull him to her, to have someone to hold on to at last, if only for the last hours of her life. Eventually she pushed him away, firmly but gently this time. After that she made sure that she didn't cough any more. In the end she lay beside the river, eyes closed, listlessly splashing her face whenever they started to sting again. The water tasted delicious. She tried to pretend that Jostan wasn't there and think only about that.

'Princess! There is a breeze,' he said at last. 'Do you feel it?'

She lifted her head. He was right. A gentle wind whispered along the river from the depths of the caves.

'What does it mean?' she asked.

'It means that the fires are drawing air out of the caves. It means the dragons are no longer tending them, Your Highness.' He could barely contain himself. 'The Embers have won!'

Jaslyn wanted to cry. Coming down here had been stupidity. Her stupidity. 'I'm sorry, Jostan. I know we should have stayed with the alchemists.' The Embers were dead. She hadn't seen it with her own eyes, but the shouts and the screams and the roars of the dragons had echoed far into the tunnels.

'No, Princess. This means the dragons are gone. The Embers have won.'

'The Embers are dead, Jostan.' Speaking was a trial. Her throat was raw and burning, and every word was a battle against the smoke.

'Yes.' He was smiling, she realised. 'And the dragons ate them.'

She was missing something. She struggled upright. 'Why is that a cause for happiness, Rider Jostan?'

He frowned and peered at her. Twice he opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. At the third attempt words finally came out. 'I'm sorry, Your Highness. I thought you knew.'

'Knew what, Rider?'

'That the Embers…' He wouldn't look at her. 'Highness, the Embers took poison. The bottle that Rider Semian had around his neck, that was poison too. Dragon poison.'

'What are you talking about?' Dragon poison? No such thing. I would have known.

'The Embers, Your Highness, they went out there to die. They knew what awaited them.'

'Poison?' Would she have known?

He bowed his head.

And then it hit her – far, far later than it should have. 'Silence!'

Jostan stared at the ground. 'And Matanizkan and Levanter. I am sorry, Your Highness.'

'Sorry?' For a moment even the smoke didn't matter. Sorry? What use is sorry? My Silence! You've poisoned my Silence. Graceful, elegant, beautiful, perfect-

And trying to kill us, she reminded herself. Or was. No, best not to think about it. Would she ever have sacrificed Silence to save her own life? No. To save Jostan? Semian? No. To save anyone at all? She didn't know.

'I have to see!' She was already getting to her feet.

'No, Your Highness. Wait. It's not safe.'

She screamed at him. 'You've poisoned my Silence! I want to see him.'

'We have to wait.'

'Wait for what?'

'Wait for Rider Semian, Your Highness. He went out to watch. When they're all dead, he will come back and tell us.'

'When they're dead?!' She was rigid with fury. If she'd had claws, she would have torn Jostan to pieces. 'So they're still alive?' She pressed her face up close to his. 'There must be something to take this poison out of them. Poison the white if that's the only way, but not Silence. Not my Silence!' But there wasn't something. The alchemists wouldn't have an antidote. Why would they? And even if they did, it would take hours to walk back to where they were hiding, and hours more to get back to the mouth of the caves.

She turned and ran towards the entrance, heedless of the smoke, but Jostan pulled her down. 'Your Highness!'

'Silence!' She screamed and fought and tore at him. 'My Silence! Don't eat them! Don't!' But Jostan was strong, much too strong, and he wouldn't let her go. She ordered him, cursed him, berated him as best she could before the next coughing fit seized her, but his arms stayed wrapped around her and all her struggles were useless. 'Silence,' she whispered. Tears streamed down her face. Jostan still held her, but his arms were gentle now, and suddenly welcome. She rested her head on his chest and wept. Here in the murderous choking dark she didn't want to be a princess any more.

They crept down the river until they could see the massive pyre at the cave mouth, and there they waited for an hour, maybe longer, before she decided she couldn't bear any more. She was careful this time, waiting until Jostan was distracted before she ran, sprinting along the river bank and then diving into the water when the heat from the fire was too much. She heard Jostan shouting after her, but she didn't look back. By the time he finally caught her, they were already outside, thrashing in the river alongside the fires.

'Keep your head down!' shouted Jostan, and then they were past, and the air was suddenly cold and crisp and deliriously fresh. It felt so gloriously clean that she wanted to gulp it down as fast as she could. For a second she almost forgot about Silence.

And then she saw him. A hundred yards from the river, flat on his belly, eyes closed. Still.

'Your Highness! Wait!' But she didn't, and this time Jostan didn't try to stop her. She hauled herself out of the freezing river and ran as fast as she could, collapsing to the ground by the dragon's head. Silence was gone. She could already feel the heat burning him from the inside.

Jostan came towards her, then saw the look on her face and stopped dead in his tracks.

'Is he…'

Jaslyn shook her head. She couldn't speak.