Riding a dragon. That would be best of all. Nothing was equal to the feeling that brought. But the dragons were down by the Mirror Lakes at the eyrie and she wanted something now.
She sighed again and jumped off the bed and prowled to the balconies. The Tower of Air had a ring of them, up high, overlooking the palace. Maybe the swirl of the air would calm her, and she liked to be high above the ground like this. Speakers before her had liked it up here too and for the same reason: it reminded them of sitting on a dragon's back. Perhaps that would do. She went and stood outside, high over the walls of the palace, drenched in sunlight. The day had a dreamy quality. A breeze wafted from the south, warm and dusty, drawing a little perfume from the scented silken drapes. She'd grown used to these rooms, the chambers at the top of the Tower of Air where she and Jehal had first schemed together as they'd stroked each other's skin. The drapes were a gift from Jehal too.
It wasn't helping.
‘Holiness?’
She jumped, so startled she almost stumbled and fell off the edge of the balcony. On any other day that might have made her furious, but today all she could do was laugh because that was how Shezira had murdered Hyram too, and how Jehal had murdered her mother, and how ridiculous would it be for yet another royal-blooded rider to fall out of the sky and dash themselves over the ground?
She caught her breath. The sharp rush of adrenaline wasn't helping either. Damn Jehal for his caution.
‘Holiness?’
Zafir brushed the drapes aside. In the balcony room a servant knelt with her head pressed to the floor. A wild rush spiralled through her. Drag the woman to her feet and throw her out of the window. Or drag her to the bed and. .
‘Damn you, Jehal!’ She had to laugh again, because it was that or scream or smash something. Speaker of the nine realms! Speaker of the nine realms!
For a moment she forgot the woman on the floor. Speaker! It filled her and made her gasp.
‘Holiness, the alchemist is waiting to see you.’ The woman cringed every time Zafir moved, as if she expected to be kicked. And that would have been a way to release the energy coursing through her but the Adamantine Palace had seen enough speakers like that over the decades. She took a deep breath, let it out, bent very low and touched the woman lightly on the head.
‘Then go and send him in.’
She'd been ready for it to be the irritating one, Jeiros, but it wasn't, it was Vioros. When he came he shuffled slowly through the door, head bowed. He was in his finest cream quilted robes embroidered with flames at the edges, doubtless kept carefully clean in a closet in the Palace of Alchemy for such days as these. He bowed low and stayed with his head tipped towards the floor. He was out of breath. The steps got almost everyone.
‘Holiness.’ He spoke quietly. There was a subtle change in his tone that recognised what she'd become. Today she was the speaker. Zafir smiled, still full of that tension.
‘Vioros! Look at me and get on with it. I have things to do.’ Not that she knew what, exactly, but not sitting around here doing nothing, that was for sure. If Jehal was hiding then it would have to be a tear across the Purple Spur and straight down the Great Cliff on Onyx's back to see whether she could get the wind to rip her right out of the saddle this time. . Or something like that. Something to make her heart truly pound.
When he looked up, he smiled, and Zafir felt another surge of delicious warmth. Vioros had been kind enough to her, but mostly the smile told her that her mother's death remained a mystery to him. Queen Aliphera, fallen from the back of her dragon? No one knew what to believe but after last night, with a dragon-king and a dragon-queen in prison under the Glass Cathedral, no one would ask any more. It was gone. There were bigger things.
She twisted at the ring on her finger impatiently, conscious of its unfamiliar presence.
‘Holiness, to every speaker of the nine realms, we come. There is knowledge that we of the order wish to share with you. Knowledge for your ears and yours alone. It is usually done immediately after the naming.’
Zafir rose and paced restlessly to the gaudy throne that Hyram had brought here for her and sat down again. ‘Sit, Vioros. What knowledge?’
The alchemist carefully sat and crossed his legs on the floor in front of her, ignoring the chairs either side. ‘Holiness, when you touched the spear you became the guardian of us all. There are truths known among our order that are for the speaker and no other.’
Zafir made a show of looking about. ‘We do appear to be alone, Vioros.’
Vioros didn't follow her eyes so perhaps he didn't doubt her, but he shook his head. ‘I cannot, Holiness, for they cannot be spoken. It is a thing that you must see. Please, Holiness, will you come?’
Zafir let out an exasperated sign and slapped her thighs. All that delicious tension was turning slowly to frustration and that in its turn was making her irritable. ‘Now, Vioros? Does it have to be now?’
‘If it pleases you, Holiness.’
‘No, it doesn't.’ She let out another sharp breath and snapped to her feet. Certainly this wasn't what she wanted — what she wanted was Jehal or her dragon but neither were here and her mood was rapidly shifting. Jehal would never know what he'd missed. Even he had his limits and today, if he'd been here, they might just have found them, and Jeiros and Vioros could have waited, fuming, for as long as it took. But he wasn't, so boring alchemists it was.
Vioros wouldn't say any more. She quickly left him behind, bounding down the tower steps while he toiled after. Outside, when she'd waited for him to catch up, he led her across the Speaker's Yard and straight back into the tumorous lump of stone that was the Glass Cathedral. Jeiros was there and a few dozen riders still milling in clumps and clusters from the ceremony, talking and muttering to each other. Zafir wondered why they chose to stay in the dark of the cathedral instead of the bright sun of the yard. Conspiring probably, but they all bowed and fell silent as she passed. Jeiros bowed too. This one had begun to annoy her. He was floundering his way into Bellepheros's shoes, still thinking that the old man might come back. Probably better for all of them if he did but the world was rarely that kind. Although if I didn't have Bellepheros killed and neither did Jehal then who did? And why? What did that old man know? What did he find? The timing of his vanishing was the most troubling of all, right after he'd scoured Jehal's eyrie for her mother's killer.
No matter. She shook the thought away. A curiosity for another day, and here and now she couldn't be bothered with it. She had no time for the faraway vanishing of alchemists, not now, nor much for the ones in front of her. ‘My time is precious, Grand Master Jeiros.’ And yes, she meant it, filled as it was with dead kings and murdered queens and the Gateyard still littered with bodies and reeling in the ones that got away and what to do with the blood-mage under her feet, but most of all with the desperate urge to fly a while, alone with Onyx and a wind like a hurricane.