She flew in a slow circle above the city, not caring that it made her an obvious target. She doubted General Sajan could get archers in position quickly enough to take advantage of her low flight, and it wasn’t as if they could hurt her. The general had said he hadn’t seen anyone leaving the coliseum, which might mean Harshod had left out the other side. For a moment, fear shot through her at the idea that he might have magic to make himself invisible, but then she remembered Sabarna’s words and felt calmer.
The other side—that meant the west, heading away from the palace and toward the river. Another jolt ran through her. If Harshod reached the river, he could go anywhere. But she was faster than any boat, so Harshod must have counted on the soldiers slowing her down enough to give him a head start—and on the sheer number of people in Tanajital to conceal him from her eyes. He was right, Stones take him. There was nothing distinctive about him—
—or was there? Humans all smelled the same unless they used Khadar’s noxious scent, but stone…stone was different, varied, and easily distinguishable by any dragon. True, in a city this size there might be thousands of a particular kind of stone, magical or not, but Harshod’s collection of artifacts had been a unique blend of scents and was strong enough to leave a trail.
Lamprophyre examined the coliseum. It was empty. Sparing a thought for Rokshan, wherever he was, she swooped down on the west side and inhaled deeply. The smell of stones, particularly the granite and sandstone of the coliseum, cut sharply across the warm, damp scent of human flesh. She sniffed again, teasing out individual scents that normally faded into the background. Her stomachs rumbled, but she ignored them. Bitter chalcedony, the orange tang of pyrite—there. Six scents twined together, making a trail that led west.
She sprang into the sky and followed the trail, slowly. Though the smells were distinctive, it had been several hundred beats since Harshod had passed this way, and the trail was beginning to dissipate. This didn’t make the scent weaker, but it did widen its path, and more than once Lamprophyre followed a strand of scent that came to an abrupt end. She was vaguely aware of humans beneath her pointing and exclaiming, but she needed all her concentration to follow the trail and couldn’t spare any for listening to their terrified thoughts. So long as no one attacked her, or pointed her out to the soldiers, she didn’t care if they were frightened.
The buildings beneath her shrank the nearer she came to the river until they were all short and too small for Lamprophyre to fit into even if their doors had been big enough. The streets between them were similarly narrow, leaving Lamprophyre hoping Harshod hadn’t gone to ground there. She was willing to smash an open space for herself, but that seemed hard on the people who owned those tiny, weary-looking houses. Their roofs were dirty and stained with old water marks, and the sour smell of unwashed flesh clung to everything. Here, the humans who saw her ran to hide inside their houses, as if that would protect them. Terrible sadness came over her that she could even think that way. Those humans didn’t deserve her anger; that was all for Harshod, and she would make him pay.
Boats lined the riverbank, tied to poles that jutted from the water like branchless, leafless trees. Lamprophyre landed on the bank downstream a bit and surveyed them. They weren’t all alike, she realized: some of them had rounded sides that rose high above the water, while others were flat, barely platforms floating on the river’s surface. She couldn’t understand how the tall ones managed not to tip over, but the flat ones made sense, reminding her of flat, palm-sized leaves that floated in the pool the dragons had created far north of here.
She sniffed again. The trail led to the river and stopped. That couldn’t be right. She walked slowly upstream, ignoring the shouts and cries from the humans on the boats and outside the buildings sticking out over the riverbank. Harshod could be here, on this side of the river, but that made no sense. Surely he knew he had to get away as fast as possible, in case his ploy didn’t work and Lamprophyre tracked him as she was doing now?
There. A breeze brought the bitter smell of chalcedony to her nose, mingled with the sweetness of aquamarine. It came from mid-stream, just ahead.
A shout nearly underfoot startled her. She’d just passed one of the flat boats tied up at the bank, and as she turned to see who’d shouted at her, her tail brushed the boat and set it rocking. The female at the far end of the boat shouted again and clung to the pole to keep from falling off. “Stay back!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you dare smash my ferry!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” Lamprophyre began, then sniffed deeply. Harshod’s scent tangled around the woman and flowed away into the center of the river. “Did you see a man come this way?” she demanded. “Someone who was on your boat?”
“I see lots of men,” the woman said, releasing her grip on the pole.
Lamprophyre racked her brain for a description and settled on the thing she remembered best. “This one had a spot on his lip like a round black insect. Hurry, this is important.”
“Why should I tell you?”
Fear for Rokshan and anger at Harshod filled Lamprophyre to bursting. She put a foot on the boat and pressed, tipping the far end up and forcing the woman to grab the pole again. “I’ll sink your boat if you don’t talk,” she said. “I might sink you, too. Just tell me where he went and I’ll leave you alone.”
The woman gasped and hugged the pole like it was her only salvation. “I took him across!” she said. “Please, go, just leave me alone.”
“Took him across. Where?”
The woman stretched out one arm, pointing, then quickly grasped the pole again. “Straight across to the landing. I don’t know where he went, I swear.”
“Thank you,” Lamprophyre said. “You should be more polite.” She released the boat roughly, making it rock harder, and flew off in the indicated direction.
Once past the river, trailing Harshod became easy again, as if the breezes coming off the water had dissipated his trail more quickly. She’d never been on the west side of Tanajital, and it astonished her how little it resembled the city she knew. There weren’t any tall buildings, and from her aerial perspective, what buildings there were looked like oddly geometric bumps arranged along streets that curved and meandered rather than running in straight radial lines emerging from circular plazas the way Tanajital proper had. Even the city wall seemed lower and dingier. She saw no archers, no soldiers of any kind atop it.
She followed the scent all the way to that wall, to an arched entrance not big enough to admit a dragon, though of course with her wings, that didn’t matter. Beyond the wall, the city continued, as if it were a water barrel filled to the brim with rainfall that then spilled over the edge. There were no streets, just small, dirty houses of wood and thatching that would burn readily.
Harshod’s trail ended at one of these houses. Lamprophyre flapped slowly to hover over it. There was nothing to set it apart from the others; it had the same roof made of dry water reeds from the riverbank, the same wooden walls covered with that strangely scented white material that made a hard crust when it dried. But he had definitely gone inside, and he hadn’t left. Lamprophyre considered the roof again. It didn’t have a ridge beam, but came to a point at the center with four sides slanting down from that peak. It smelled dusty, and there were a couple of holes in it. Lamprophyre wondered if the reeds were watertight. If not, it would be miserable come the rainy season.
She flew down and landed neatly on the peak. It was sharp enough Lamprophyre shifted her weight to stand on two of the four sides, balancing neatly. The reed surface gave under her weight, but didn’t tear. She sat, tense at the possibility her landing might have drawn their attention, and listened to the murmur of indistinct speech coming from within. There were three humans inside, none of them aware of her presence by the lack of fear in their thoughts. One of them had that singleness of thought she associated with Harshod. He was instructing the others, telling them send word back and almost time now. The other two were listening to him intently, judging by how they weren’t thinking about unrelated things. It was the perfect time to attack.
Lamprophyre flapped once, twice, half a dozen times until she was positioned above the building’s door. She sucked in a deep breath, let the air mingle with the contents of her second stomach, and blew out a great blast of fire that struck the roof.