The House of Sacrifice. Anna Smith Spark

King, for my customers, who must have higher standards in drink than your court.’

      Ha! ‘They do. They do. Anyone in Irlast has higher standards than my court.’

      He settled himself further back on the rugs, stretching himself leaning against Thalia. Ate another stale cake. The tavern woman poured him another drink in a new cup. She was wearing a ring on every finger; they clinked musically against the glass of the bottle. She had silver earrings that jingled, her dress was green velvet. She was positively fat.

      Raised a toast to her. ‘I’ll buy a bottle for a hundred thalers. Make you a lady of my court.’

      ‘But I’ll make far more than a hundred thalers, My Lord King, telling my customers they’re drinking wine I refused to sell to the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane the joy of the world the King of All Irlast.’

      Gods, she was good. He got up and bowed to her. ‘Like the wine, you’re too fine for my court. I’ll give you a hundred thalers anyway.’

      ‘And I’ll give you another bottle of this wine for free, My Lord King.’ Her earrings rattled, she looked at Thalia sitting in her thick fur cloak. ‘And, if I may, if I may be so bold, My Lady Queen …’

      Oh ho. Marith tensed, Thalia tensed, relaxed both together, smiling at each other, squeezed hands. The whole army knows. The tavern woman went into the back of her shop, Marith ate a third stale cake in the time she was gone.

      Thalia whispered, ‘A horrible itchy baby’s dress? A blanket? A pair of absurdly tiny booties?’

      ‘A blanket. Hand-knitted. Shush. You’re being cruel.’

      ‘And you’re getting cake crumbs on my cloak. How can you eat them, anyway? They must have been baked last week.’

      ‘Amrath lived rough with his army …’ Wiped crumbs from the white fur, leaving a yellowy smudge. Whoops. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. He tried surreptitiously to pick at the mess. ‘Anyway, shush, she’s coming back.’

      ‘A blanket,’ Thalia whispered. ‘Dark red. With a sword pattern on it.’

      He almost choked crumbs over her. ‘Shush!’

      The woman returned smiling. Didn’t look like she was carrying a blanket … She held out a branch of white flowers to Thalia. ‘The tree behind the tavern here flowered this morning, My Lady Queen. All out of season – the dragon fire, we thought maybe, My Lady Queen, the heat. But here. Perhaps it flowered for you.’

      ‘Thank you.’ Thalia bent to sniff the flowers’ sweet perfume. ‘Thank you very much.’ They finished the wine, Thalia made a face of mock terror at Marith that they’d be offered another plate of cakes. When they had ridden away out of earshot they both burst out laughing. The sun rises, the sun sets, and not everyone in the world thinks only of tiny booties and baby blankets.

      ‘But the flowers are very beautiful,’ said Thalia. ‘How strange, that the tree flowered in the snow. Do you think it was really the dragon fire?’

      ‘It’s wintersweet blossom. It’s meant to be in flower now.’ He was beginning to feel rather sleepy after all the wine and cakes. ‘That’s what it does. Hence the name.’

      Thalia looked down at the branch, which she had woven into her horse’s reins. ‘It’s still beautiful. We should plant it in the gardens at Ethalden.’ Looking down at the flowers, she noticed where he’d got crumbs rubbed into her cloak. ‘What’s this? My new cloak … Oh, Marith. Cake crumbs.’

      He looked at her belly. ‘Get used to it. I had to have cake crumbs cut out of my hair once.’

       Chapter Six

      ‘I had to have cake crumbs cut out of my hair, once.’

      Ti’s hair. His mother – his stepmother, the bitch who killed his mother, remember, remember that – his stepmother had had to cut cake crumbs out of Ti’s hair, once. He had killed Ti and he had killed his mother. Hung their bodies from the walls of Malth Elelane. He remembered the way his mother’s hair had blown in the wind.

      Three miscarriages. But after three months, four months, the pregnancy is more established, the baby is more likely to be born and live.

      He felt sick. The stupid stale cakes.

      The next day Marith rode out alone. The land was very empty, the burned fields blanketed in snow. A few surviving villages clinging on in the ruins, ragged-faced farmers tending their cattle. His soldiers were out, rounding up the cattle, pillaging the villages for food and men for the army to consume. A ravening beast, an army. Never ceased its hunger. Indeed, its hunger grew and grew.

      Rode past a line of men and women in tattered clothing too thin for the weather, sick faces staring. Rounded up to march in his army. Men and women and children and old men and cripples and the maimed and the half-dead. It didn’t matter who they were. Whether they were strong or weak. If they had no other use, they would deflect an arrow or a sword. If they had no other use, they would die. The soldiers with them prostrated themselves in the snow when they saw him. The new conscripts stared, then did the same. Whispers. His name cried in blessing. The joy in their eyes, radiating off them, the fulfilment of their lives, to see him.

      King Marith! King Marith! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! I can die now, for my heart and my eyes have beheld him.

      Marith pulled up his horse before them. ‘We will fight,’ he called to them. ‘You will march in my army, and you will fight, and you will be victorious, and you will conquer the world! This gift, I give you. All of you, you will do this. Conquer the world!’

      ‘Death!’ the soldiers cried back to him. Shining in ecstasy. ‘Death! Death! Death!’

      He stopped around midday in a bare high place without any signs of human life. No – there, to the west where the land dropped down into a valley, a single plume of hearth smoke rose. A little village sheltering there, perhaps.

      No matter. He dismounted, stood against the white sky. Raised his arms. Called out.

       ‘Athelamyn Tiamenekyr. Ansikanderakesis teimre temeset kekilienet.’

      Come, dragons. Your king summons you.

      A long silence. And then the slow beating of vast wings.

      Weak things, dragons. Far weaker than he had first thought. Ynthe the magelord saw them as gods and wonders. Osen and Alleen thought of them as toys: ‘Ride it, Marith’, ‘Just use it to kill them all, Marith’, ‘Make it sit up and beg and roll over at your feet’. He himself had thought that the dragons were like him, once. The only things in all the world that might understand him. Things of love and desire and hunger and grief and need. He had been a fool, to think that.

      He thought: do dragons rear their children? Care for them? Feel love?

      He thought: no.

      The dragons came down in the snow before him. One black and red. One green and silver. Huge as dreams. He had summoned them out of the desert along the coast of the Sea of Grief, called into the dark and they had come together side by side, their wings almost touching. They could be mother and child, lovers, siblings; what they thought towards each other he did not know and could not know. What they did, when he did not need them, he did not know. Dark eyes looked at him. Like looking down into the depths of the sea. Never look into a dragon’s eyes. Look into a dragon’s eyes and you are lost. Eyes black with sorrow. Such hatred there, staring vast ancient unblinking down at him.

      He thought: I call them and they come to me.

      The dragons turned their heads away from him. Lowered their eyes. The red dragon spoke in a hiss of fire. Dry rasp of pain. Its breath stank of hot metal. Dead flesh rotting in its yellowed teeth.

      ‘Kel temen ysare genherhr kel Ansikanderakil?’

      What