by Stephen Deas
Scared little birds. Weary to the bone she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, listening to them. When they thought she was asleep they scurried about and then ran away like fearful mice and left her alone. The room stank again, some new bitter spice over the lingering smell of stale vomit. It disgusted her. At least her head felt clearer.
They'd emptied the pissing pot. Good. She needed it, and this time she just about had the strength to swing her legs out of the bed and squat. Awkward with one foot and one arm not working, but she found a way. When she was done she looked around. Her cabin might have been a fine place as little wooden rooms on tiny floating palaces were measured, but Zafir wrinkled her nose at almost every part of it. The silk hangings on the walls were bright and pretty and intricate, woven patterns of emerald-green and lapis-blue and white and gold but they were just patterns and had no story to them. The wooden bed, chest, table and chairs were dark carved wood and the bath was plain bronze. They were all as good as any she might find in the dragon realms, but no better. No better because the speaker of the nine realms already owned the best that any Taiytakei craftsman would ever carry across the seas and every last piece was tainted and tarnished by the metal around her wrist.
There were clothes in the chest. Gauzy silks, the colours gaudy, the weave as soft as the sheets but with the same alien tang. The glass in the round windows that looked out across the sea, now that was another matter. She'd never seen glass so clear, nor glass like the decanter that sat in a silver rack on the table.
She looked at all these things and then hobbled to her feet and stood right under the ring in the ceiling to put as much slack in the chain as she could make. Enough to wrap it once around her waist. She took a deep breath, tensed, then jumped and let her whole weight snap the chain taut. It bit into her skin but didn't snap, didn't even give. She tried it again. This time she ripped her silk shift and drew blood. She sat back on the bed, gasping, wincing at the renewed pains in her shoulder and her ankle. When she had her breath again she stared blankly at the floor. For a few short months she'd had everything. She'd been the speaker of the nine realms. Dragon-queen of the world. Until Evenspire and the great betrayal, and after that everything had unravelled, one thread after another until now, and now she had nothing. Worse than nothing. A slave to the Taiytakei. What would that make her? A curiosity perhaps for a while because of who she was and what she'd been.
She'd seen the way the one she'd killed had looked at her. He wouldn't be the last.
And then what?
She stood up, hopped back to the middle of the cabin and very slowly wrapped the chain twice around her neck. To see if it would go. It would.
Suddenly her heart was beating very fast.
Maybe it would work. And maybe it wouldn't.
Maybe she didn't want it to.
Not yet.
Carefully she unwrapped the chain. She sat heavily back on the bed and held her head in her hands and screwed up her eyes. Tears wanted to come but she wouldn't let them. Couldn't. She'd learned that. Tears had only ever made it worse. Tears showed you were weak and a dragon-rider was never weak.
Slow deep breaths until they went away.
She stood up again. Movement was good. Doing anything at all, that was good. She was thirsty. She unstoppered the glass decanter and sniffed at it, tasted the liquid, decided it was simply water and drained it, then held the glass in her hand and stared into its facets. There was a thing of wonder. It was beautiful. She'd never seen anything like it. She paused, staring into it, and then she hurled it across the room with all the violence she could find. It hit the wall and smashed into a million glittering shards. She stared at them. It was like staring at her own life.
She hadn't moved when the three timid women came back later with food and water and more of their oils and ointments. They shuffled in with their heads bowed and didn't dare to look up at her, but she heard one of them gasp when they saw the broken glass.
‘What did I do to you?’ she asked them. ‘What do you want?’ But they ignored her. They were shaking as they swept up the broken glass and hurried away. Zafir grabbed the last before she could escape and shook her. Flame, but they were passive, docile, broken little things! Yet underneath their fear she saw how much they loathed her. ‘Why? Why do you hate me? Was it the man I killed?’
The girl shook her head as if to refuse an answer but it was written all over her face. No. So they hated her for something else.
‘You're right to be afraid of me,’ she said and let go. The girl ran away.
After the second day, when she saw there could be no escape, she let them bring her food. She let them wash and dress her because whatever little she had left, she could still keep her pride for as long as they let her. They brought her tall thin bottles of wine and she started to pretend the women were hers, her own servants, and let them be. The pain in her head eased. The bruises faded. The cuts where she'd lacerated herself with the chain quickly healed. Her ankle and the shoulder were wrenched but not broken. Two weeks and the swelling had gone; another two and they'd be as strong as ever. No damage done. On the outside at least she'd be perfect again.
‘What are your names?’ she asked the women but they still refused to speak. Were afraid to utter even a single word. She found out what she could by reading their faces as she asked her questions. They were slaves whose master was dead. They didn't know what would happen to her when the ship reached their home. They knew nothing of the war Jehal had waged against her or how it had ended. They'd never heard of her, or of him, or of the Pinnacles or the Silver City. They had no idea at all who she was except that she'd killed a man. The white-haired Taiytakei Quai'Shu — yes, she remembered his name, she made sure of that — was the ruler of this little floating kingdom, she got that much; but they didn't know his purpose and they shook with fear and almost cried when she asked them about her dragons.
It wasn't so hard to guess. She'd had a shrewd idea, by the end, what Valmeyan had been doing in Clifftop, what he'd been looking for.
One night, two weeks after they'd taken her, the ship sailed through a great storm and bucked and heaved like a dragon at war. In the middle of it was a stillness. She lay on her bed trembling in the darkness, alone, the scared little girl she spent so much time trying to forget. When her broken birds came the morning after it was gone she was still trembling inside. She kept it buried though, carefully hidden from sight, and none of them saw, and by the time they came again, the fear was gone.
They painted her, made her beautiful to their own queer eyes, and that was when the dragon voice ripped all their thoughts into pieces.
I am Silenceand I am hungry.
Dragon eggs. That was the treasure the Taiytakei had stolen. And now, that voice told her, the eggs were hatching and they were all going to burn. She smiled. Laughed a bitter laugh while her heart stayed as hard as diamond.
She was Zafir. She was the dragon-queen.
20
Silence
I am Silenceand I am hungry.
The newborn dragon bit the dead moon sorcerer's head in half and ate it. In the little wooden room which smelled of salt and tar, yet another egg cracked open, and then another. More dragons awake and reborn, dull and slow-witted, still shaking off the tentacles of alchemy.
The dragon called Silence was impatient. It didn't wait for them. It tore and scampered up through the bowels of the ship, a blur of claws and fangs and motion, searching for the sky until it burst a wooden deck-hatch into a shower of splinters, and there it was, glorious clear blue air. Wisps of high white cloud laced the sky. It saw them and it yearned for them.
Free!
It stretched its neck and jumped into the air and looked for land but there wasn't any, only the sea and half a hundred other ships, maybe more, scattered around in one single great herd. It drank the sight and spread its new wings for the first time, stretching out the folds and creases, and leaped into the air. Around it in the water some of the ships were
already burning. Other waking dragons. It felt them, felt their thoughts. They were confused. There were many though.
Sleep!
Calm!
A soothing feeling washed through it. A voice, but more than that. A power. An old power. Moon sorcerers. More of them. The words drifted in among the others, soothing and caressing their confusion, calming the dull uncertainty as the lingerings of their enslavement slipped reluctantly free. In the midst of awakening they were open to such lullings.
But not the dragon Silence. The dragon Silence understood. It had woken before its last death and had thrown off those shackles. It had come from the egg sharp and clear as a dragon should, aware of everything it had been and everything it could become, bright with memory and rage. The others had not.
What is your name?
What did we call you. .
. . once long ago?
The sorcerers, wherever they were, sensed its rebellion. They were guarded, not like the one below, the one whose essence the dragon had stolen and now carried inside it. The dragon hesitated. A true half-god would have crushed its will in a heartbeat. Long ago, one half-god alone had tamed thousands. These were weak. Feeble beside those it remembered. Toddlers with the barest fumbling grasp of true power. Barely gods at all.
What became of you, little moon children?
Stay, dragon. .
Stay and tell us your name. .
They showed their weakness that it could resist them at all. Was this all that was left?
No. I will not.
Other thoughts battered it. Little ones. Terrified. Confused. Angry. It felt them all as they ran squealing and screaming and wailing and cowering, cringing in the furthest corners they could find, thoughts drenched with delicious fear, drawing it like a wasp to sugar. The dragon glided back to the boat where it had been reborn, skittered and leaped across the wooden deck, claws gouging splinters, scattering them into the air. The little ones howled and ran but they were slow and weak and easy. It flipped one and then another over the edge of the ship with a flick of its tail. The pain of shattered bone and the clammy dread of cold sinking death washed out of them, savoured and devoured. The dragon unfurled its wings and reared back and watched more of them simply leap to their doom, so drenched in terror. Others ran scuttling into their holes as they always did, as if this fragile wood could resist a dragon. It caught the last in its jaws and bit off an arm. The man staggered, shrieking. The dragon's claws scythed him down. For a moment it was alone, the little ones all squalling below.
Stay, dragon. .
Others wavered and fell. Fading. Newborns acquiescing to the will of old sorcery. But not this one.
You have forgotten so very much, it told them. You are like shadows as a cloud crosses the sun, faded beyond substance.
We did not go with the others. . They spoke together, as one. Nor are we alone. . The dragon smashed through a door. .
. . in forgetting. . back in among the layers of this thing called Ship. .
. . old friend. . hunting the little ones with the audacity not to be afraid.
. . Come with us. . Words laced with a coaxing calm. .
. . and remember. . and temptation.
The dragon shattered another door and squeezed into the space beyond. Little ones met it. An old one, three dragon lifetimes ancient or more, fragile as glass, yet he stared at the dragon as though it was the dragon itself who should be afraid and not this frail shell of matchstick bones and thin-running blood.
We will take away. . The other ones cowered and screamed. The dragon stared them down, waiting for their minds to fail.
. . the clouds of your memory. . One raised a stick of glass filled with golden light. A crack of thunder and a flash of light and the dragon felt. .
Pain.
A terrible rage built up inside it. A dire fury, raw like molten mountains. No! Those clouds of memory could stay. Should stay, for it knew what lay behind them. Lifetime after lifetime after lifetime of slavery and service to these pathetic, feeble, weak-willed, strengthless little ones. Another little one raised his wand and the dragon burned him where he stood, and then the other too, the one who had hurt it, burned and burned until it felt the life flicker out of them and then burned some more until what had once been faces were nothing but cracked black husks flaking to the floor. It turned very slowly on the third then, the ancient wizened one, and took him in its foreclaws and held him close so they were face to face, dragon to man, tooth to tooth. This little one had a wand too but his arms were pinned to his sides. He struggled to reach it. Failed. The dragon called Silence bared its fangs and let fire flicker around its tongue, dancing in the little one's eyes. It stared and stared as the little one whimpered in terror at last. Held on, clutched the little one's head in its claws, forced it to look, eye to eye while that terror built and grew until there was room for nothing else. Piece by piece the little one's mind broke apart. The dragon felt it like a snapping of forest twigs under a careless foot.
Now you know fear, little one. Now you know what I am and one day I will come again. You will remember. One day I will come again.
It dropped the little one and watched it crawl across the floor. Such a delicate mind, broken to pieces. It felt. . satisfied.
Now it smashed through another wall. Little ones ran screaming. Some of them had their wands that made lightning. It burned them. Then ripped a hole in the wood beneath them and battered its head through the rent it had made and found four more little ones, huddled together. Three screaming and soaked with fear, a fourth who held them in her arms and looked back with defiance and an unflinching knowledge of what was to come. The dragon Silence looked inside her thoughts and devoured them and stared, loathing and gleeful.
Dragon-rider.
The little one stared back. Frightened and filled with dread and yet wrapped round a kernel that refused to yield. The dragon met her eye and knew this one would not break like the other.
I could burn you. I could rip you to bloody strips. But it had thought of another way. A crueller end.
The others of our kin will return. . The faded shadows of the lost half-gods were laying a compulsion around it now. Slow and clumsy but the dragon felt it like a lead net settling on its wings.
‘I bow to no one,’ the little one whispered. ‘So burn me, dragon. Burn me!’
Why? It hurled the thought to all of them. Why? It reached a claw to the little one's neck and ran a talon over her skin, sharp as a razor, the shallowest of cuts leaving a trickle of blood as it passed.
Because they must. .
The Black Moon comes. .
You have crossed the realm of the dead. .
. . and you so know that the seal. .
. . has broken. .
The dragon pushed itself back out of its hole. Left this little dragon-rider and the rest of them too. All deserving of their fates. It burst upon the deck of the ship in a shower of splintered timbers, opened its wings as the little ones ran screaming once again and launched itself into the glorious air. It turned once, raked the prow of the ship that had birthed it with fire, and flew away.
You have taken what cannot be yours. . clamoured the sorcerers.
Futile to run from such as us. .
The dragon called Silence didn't look back as it flew away.
21
Dragon-queen
I am Silence and I am hungry. Her three broken-bird slaves froze all at once. Zafir let out a startled gasp and then a little sigh, smiled and laughed a bitter laugh The dragon voice in her head under the Purple Spur had felt the same. The broken birds frowned and looked at one another, even more scared than they ever were until Zafir slapped one of them. The tall one. ‘Continue.’ And they did. Jittery and nervous, but they did.
She was wrapped in white silk and her slaves were painting her nails in the Taiytakei fashion while she sat on the edge of her bed. One of them had her fingers, one of them her toes while the third was piling her hair into an awkward feather-strewn
bundle. It made her look as though a bright-plumed bird had crashed into her head. On some days she let them, despite herself. On others she made them put it into a simple dragon-rider's plait, how a dragon-rider would wear it under her helm. After they were done with her hair and her fingers, they usually tried to darken her face with some powder and she'd forbid it. They'd pout and mutter to themselves and dress her in colourful silks and then, if she let them, festoon her with more feathers and jewellery. It was all pointless, since no one else ever came to see her. It gave them all something to do, that was all, but there'd be none of that today. Today they'd simply burn and it would all be over.
She strained her ears, listening, tense inside now, waiting for the end to come. In fire perhaps, or perhaps they'd simply be smashed to bloody smears. The alchemists had shown her their monster, a dragon whose blood they mixed with their own to make their potions. Any dragon will do but not any alchemist, Jeiros had told her. Fewer than you might think can do this. We must be changed for our blood to take on this power. The alchemists took blood from that dragon under the Purple Spur and mixed it with their own, the ones who were somehow special. That was how they controlled the rest. Now there was a secret. For that they kept a dragon of their own hidden away. One that was awake for any who needed to see what that meant. Jeiros had never told her how or what this change must be to make a true alchemist. Arrogant pig. There'd always been a sneer in his words and when he bowed it was always a fraction short. Thought he was in charge of the realms. He'd despised her right from the start and the feeling had become mutual, and she'd done what she'd done, never quite believing what her alchemists told her because of the way Jeiros was, not even poor Vioros. And in the end Jeiros had sided with Jehal when the inevitable war came between them, and now she was here, and she'd never know if she was right or if it simply didn't matter any more.