Free The Silver Kings by Stephen Deas Page B

exactly, but her old world hadn’t lasted long after the Taiytakei had taken her from it.
    They don’t hear you , murmured Diamond-Eye.
    Zafir called again, louder. The Grand Aisle past the Queen’s Gate was the gate for kings and queens, wide and bright and airy, full of open arches to the world outside. Not so the Servants’ Passage. My mother kept a menagerie of birds up here, and a butterfly garden. Sometimes she let them loose to flutter about the crowns of visiting kings, and the walls were buttered with gold and white marble behind drapes from the silk farms of Tyan’s Peninsula. She shivered, lost in memories, though Diamond Eye likely didn’t care a whit to hear them. She used to let me play with the butterflies when I was small. I squashed one once. I wasn’t looking and I trod on it. She was angry. I learned after that to be so very careful …
    But those days were long gone even when she’d ridden her first dragon. They seemed so distant now that they must surely have belonged to someone else.
    She took a deep breath. The Grand Aisle and the High Hall and the Great Stair were all wide enough for a hatchling, but the Humble Gate had been made with other thoughts. It was the entrance for those who merely served, barely wide enough for an armoured man to squeeze along sideways, carefully and deliberately too small for any dragon to enter. The darkness looked back at her, deep and hostile. The cramped space of it clawed its way inside her until it became almost physical, a barrier against her. And she couldn’t be having that. She closed her eyes for a moment and stood amid the leering demons that haunted her, the fanged glinting creatures of small dark places, and thought of Tuuran, not far behind her now, and shooed the demons away and picked her way down the steps. These fortress parts had been carved by men long after the Silver King had come and gone. They were crude and tight and narrow, their walls plain rough stone. She ran her hand over the stone, remembering the times she’d come this way before.
    ‘Is anyone there? Do you hear me?’
    The stair took her into a long straight hall, wider but oppressive in its gloom. Shadows jumped to swallow her light the moment she swung it around. There were sconces in the walls where torches had once burned, but not any more. This was where a visiting queen’s servants mustered with their bags and boxes, but it was also a killing place where defenders could hold off an assault after their dragons had lost the air above. There were murder holes over her head and slits for crossbowmen in the walls. When Jehal’s uncle Meteroa had seized this place, he’d shown how deadly it was. Sadly for him, he hadn’t known about the other entrances, the ones below. Likely as not it would come to those again, but she’d promised herself to give whoever held her old throne a chance, first, to talk.
    ‘Hello?’
    Her voice echoed from silent stone. No answer. She could see the iron-bound doors at the far end of the hall. They were closed. They have to be listening, surely! They have to be here.
    They see you , warned Diamond-Eye. They watch.
    ‘How many are you?’ she called. Her words rang out in the emptiness. The silence that came after swallowed her. ‘Are you few? Or are you many? I know the secrets of this place. I can help you.’ She took another step. ‘Princess Zara-Kiam? Is she here? She will know me. Does the name matter to you? Is she alive?’ It mattered to her. Her own sister. Of course it mattered.
    The quiet oppression of the walls squeezed tight, squashing the air out of her. The darkness. Her breaths came fast and shallow. She was panting like an animal. She raised her voice and made herself stronger.
    ‘I am Zafir of the Silver City, speaker of the nine realms, and this fortress is my home. I bring hope. I bring a half-god. I bring the Silver King’s brother. Is my sister here? Princess Zara-Kiam? Will you not parley with me?’
    Silence.
    ‘My