Three more dragons arrived with him, and on the back of each dragon were three knights. Semian himself brought the alchemist. They landed on the same gravel flats in a flurry of wings and spray. Sollos watched while the alchemist and the riders dismounted and rearranged themselves. Most of the kn...
Master Sy stopped near the temple gates where a man was selling sweet pancakes laced with honeyberries, yellow and round like the midday sun. Suncakes. The thief-taker bought a couple for each of them, took a mouthful and gave a satisfied belch. ‘Don’t suppose you ever get out from your lessons d...
It had come this way many times but on the previous occasions it had moved swiftly, eager for the call of a new skin, dulled dreamlike by the alchemical potions of the little ones. This time it was awake. This time it remembered. How? How did you make a poison that lingered even with the dead?The...
‘You’d have thought they might get along.’ ‘Then you obviously didn’t have any!’ snorted Snacksize. Tuuran paused from picking his nose and held up a hand, signalling them to stop. The Silver King’s Ways ran like a labyrinth under the Silver City, around white stone that g...
Sivan shot the sled inside and slammed the ramp shut behind them. ‘Down! Now! As quick as you can.’ Tsen drove the glasship down as fast as it would go. Dozens of men on linxia were riding across the desert, closing on them. As soon as the gondola touched the sand, Sivan opened the ramp. ‘Out! Ou...
Discarded silks littered the floor. Bright yellows and greens and blues. The best colours, the best dyes, the finest silk. It all came from the silk farms on Tyan’s Peninsula, close to his home in Furymouth. ‘Does it hurt?’ The voice came from somewhere under the tangle of soft furs piled up on t...
Pain and hardship. You learned to live with them. Sometimes they were friends, telling you things you needed to know. More often they were adversaries, but they were old foes and known ones. They were comfortable companions if not welcome ones. Took him a while when he wok...
A gentle wind blew across his arms and his face. The midday heat was like a warm blanket wrapped over him. He dozed, on and off, lulled by the sounds of lapping water and creaking wood. Deephaven was an hour down the river behind them, and the quiet was staggering. Sometimes one of the lightermen...
He hadn’t expected to find them. He was high up on the edge of the Purple Spur, cruising along the edge of the Great Cliff with the jagged peaks of the Spur to one side and the great grey emptiness of the Plains of Ancestors far, far below on the other. He hadn’t expected any trouble at all. And ...