You recognise him.
The dull strands of his hair part a little as the two of you breathe the same air, revealing the fringes of white puckers, symmetrical across both cheeks. If you were to touch those cheeks and push back the locks that capture them, you know you would see pale craters of scar tissue where some long blade was driven through at right angles to the jaw, each of the central holes patched by a sewn-on cup of leather to enable the king’s- your king’s- executioner to ask for last words, and sometimes- surely- to eat.
The memory hits you like a mailed fist to the throat- a shock too great for pain.
The Dragon’s eyes meet yours- his are inimical acid-spot green, the swollen pupils leaving the colour as only the corona of a fat moon in eclipse.
There is a moment when your heartbeats collide.
Then he speaks, pleasantly- a slight lisp the only sign of the splinters of sound escaping between the stitches on his face. “Sphinx. Spymaster. Shapeshifter. Creature of many wiles. What an easily anticipated surprise you are, friend. I could have had your head, you know. The Usurper thought it might please me, cement my loyalty. Oh, my dear, she doesn’t know me as well as you did when you recruited me!”
“You refused, I take it?”
“No: I have my mouse-poor little reputation to think of. I said I wanted to torture you. She was willing, of course: it saves her a job, and there’re none more familiar with the blood arts than me, everyone knows. We’ll see, hmmm?”
You want to flood questions- fill the hole where your past lies, pull the knowledge of it from those red, red lips- but some half-forgotten self whispers: No weakness with the Dragon. So you ask him about treachery. It’s a safe bet that there was treachery: treachery, backstabbing, and a lying, honey-tongued Dragon who lived through it all, grinning his split-cheeked grin at the Usurper Queen’s side.
“Treachery? Whose? King Vivek’s? Jormaga is crowned queen, so your poor decapitated king-“
You feel the way he rolls the long word up and spits it at you. “You?”
“- is automatically an instrument of high treason. Usurping the throne-“
“It was you?”
“…Yes.”
Those are the last words your hot lips will allow you to shape, before fever sweeps away all the curtains of your mind and you remember what is now lost, and once was not. The Dragon did not step back as he concluded, and you are snapping now at the limits of your pinioned arms, inches from his pulsing throat: it might as well be miles; no doubt he knew the distance when he saw no need to flee.
He is speaking again, quickly, disturbed- a whisper, The Dragon is never disturbed- but the sounds of his mouth tumble into the sounds of his body and twine with the heartbeat you bare your teeth for.
“He would have died in any case, Sphinx: there were a hundred men to do what I refused to do. I needed her trust.” He stops, and the pause leaves the heartbeat alone, a tired thread jerking and relaxing, thin through your cell. You hang from your wrists a minute or more, and he whispers- the tone of it synchronising strangely with the whisper of your past- “I took from him the cleanest of deaths.”
“No death is clean,” you say, tonelessly. “I am glad it was your arm he died with, and your warmth the last he felt.” You do not remember King Vivek, but you remember the feeling that was him, the presence that was him and now is not.
Then the Dragon unlocks your manacles, and you both stand.
What now?
Written by ouroboros666 on 21 July 2016
The end (for now)