by Stephen Deas
Kalaiya, when she returned, eased into the water beside him and wrapped her hands around his face and kissed his brow. People saw her with him and assumed so much. There he goes. Him and his slave. They had no idea.
She pushed up beside him, turned and put a finger to his nose. ‘I have a wager for you.’ She smirked. ‘One I think I'm going to win.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes.’
Oh, go on then. Every man had his vices, after all.
23
The Kwen
Slowly, through their thick accents, Zafir understood what her broken birds were. Bed-slaves, harem girls, except she'd gutted the master of their harem and now they had no one to serve. They should have been pleased then, she thought, but they weren't.
Three days after the dragons broke loose, the Taiytakei sighted land. They sent her down from the decks and bolted the chain still around her wrist to the roof beams and she was a prisoner again. The urge to fight them burned her but she let them do it, played out her act of compliance for now. She watched from her window as the ships of the fleet arrayed themselves in the shelter of a cluster of tiny islands, and when her own vessel turned on its anchor with the shifting of the wind, she saw the line of a distant shore. Caught between the turquoise ripples of the sea and the bright deep blue of the sky, a single cloud-shrouded mountain rose behind the glimmer of a city nestled in the gentle sweep of a bay. That night she saw fires burning across the shore and gleaming lines of light. The next day, up on the headlands at either end of the bay, towers glittered and shone when the sun caught them just so, towers as tall as her own Tower of Air, perhaps greater still. Her stomach fluttered with anticipation. When she was alone she looked long and hard at the chain on her wrist.
‘Where are we?’ Little boats rowed constantly back and forth across the still sea. The Taiytakei were confused. She could feel it in the air. Every sailor knew what to do, every ship, every captain, every soldier, every slave and yet they had no leader. They were a perfect but headless machine.
‘Khalishtor, mistress.’ She still had her three broken birds, though one of them truly was broken now from the sight of the dragon and often simply stood, mouth open, eyes blank and looking at nothing. Zafir called her Onyx for want of her real name. Onyx in memory of the dragon Jehal had stolen over Evenspire. There was Myst, who'd kept her wits and who clearly worshipped her but still didn't speak. And Brightstar. All names she'd given them after favoured dragons from her eyries. They were ignorant and knew almost nothing but they were all she had.
‘And what is Khalishtor?’
‘Their greatest city.’ Brightstar talked, although not much. Her skin was lighter than the others and she spoke with an accent that Zafir had never heard.
‘Their capital?’
‘Their Caladir,’ said Brightstar emphatically. Zafir had no idea what she meant. Their City of Dragons? Let that be good enough.
‘What will they do with me?’ It was hard not to be scared now. Alone at night she lay awake, wondering why they kept her alive at all. Yearning for home and a life she'd never really had, but even if she somehow got away and returned, surely all that waited for her now was to hang in one of her own cages outside the Adamantine Palace, food for the crows. The war had come and she'd lost. Sometimes, in the dead of night, she wept and then hated herself for being so weak. And looked at the chain again and remembered wrapping it around her neck; but to her that way seemed weaker still.
On the second morning at anchor a speck in the sky drew her eyes over the glitter and gleam of the city. A dragon, she thought at first, for what else could it be, but it glistened and shone like a star while dragons were always dark. As she stared, she saw another and then another, drifting over the sea towards the ships, slow like clouds and not like dragons at all. As they drew nearer she saw how they pulsed and flickered, catching the sun's light now and then. They were. . She had no idea. Shapes in the sky. Discs of gleaming glass tinged and rimmed with gold, great wheels within other wheels all slowly spinning, sky-ships floating with no means of support. The outermost wheel, the largest by far, lay flat, turning slowly around four more inner discs, smaller and smaller, nested one within the other around the innermost sphere and all at different angles, each spinning faster than the last. Lines of gold caught the sun and glittered like a spider's web within the glass and a single orb hung beneath each great disc, golden eggs suspended from delicate silver chains.
Sky-ships the size of dragons. No sails, no masts, no oars, no wings. They came to the fleet and hung above it and Zafir stared at them like a child, as she might once have stared at her first dragon if dragons hadn't been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. The orbs descended on their chains until she couldn't see them any more. She thought, as they came lower, that she saw little round windows in their golden shells.
‘What are those?’
‘Glasships, mistress.’ Brightstar and Myst were staring too, as awed as she was. ‘Beautiful, mistress.’
Beautiful. The word broke their spell. Zafir looked away. ‘Perhaps. But they are not dragons.’
The sun crept overhead and the glasships floated away. Another frenzy of boats flitted among the fleet and Zafir passed the long hours counting them, seeing where they went. As the sun set fire to the far horizon, Myst brought her a silver bowl of steaming stew and a tall glass of clear liquid with bright crimson leaves floating in it. Brightstar brought fresh clothes. Onyx had a small chest.
‘Tomorrow, mistress. The sea lord wishes to see you tomorrow.’ They bowed to her and put everything down and backed away. ‘Do you wish us to dress you, mistress?’
‘In the morning. Now go away.’
They left and she glimpsed Taiytakei soldiers outside her door as they did, frightening forms armoured in great clattering plated layers of glass and gold that made them look a little like giant insects, but tall and broad-shouldered like her Adamantine Men. Their faces were like coal and their eyes like lamps beneath their helms and their gold-glass visors. They carried swords, short narrow stabbing things, and great spiked clubs, and golden-glowing wands at their belts where their hands rested. Over each glittering carapace of armour were draped streamers of colourful cloth and great black cloaks made of feathers. But she saw their faces too, looking back in at her, saw how nervous and uneasy they were. She smiled to herself and took strength from that. So they should be, for they had a dragon-queen in their cage.
She ignored the tray and the clothes and the chest, staying at the window as the sun set, looking out at the distant city far across the waves. Lights filled one part of it, the highest part, raised on a little hill and overlooking the sea at one end of the bay. Not a castle. Something else. It was the place where the flying ships of glass had gone.
The food had turned cold by the time she looked away but she ate it anyway. The meats and vegetables were things she didn't recognise but they were spiced with flavours she knew from the Taiytakei traders who'd once come to her mother's kitchens in the Pinnacles. She pulled the leaves out of the glass of water and threw them away. They had a flavour to them that she remembered from long ago but couldn't quite place. A visit to King Tyan in Furymouth, perhaps. Perhaps the first time she'd met the young Prince Jehal.
She paused for a moment, caught in that memory. The first day they'd seen each other they'd both known what would happen. She'd had a fire in her for him from the moment she'd seen him, and she'd lit one in him as well. He wasn't her first conquest but he was certainly her quickest. There hadn't been anything in the world more important than finding a way to get away from her family, to drag him to a place where they could be alone. They'd understood each other in the merging of sweat in a way that no one else ever had. They were perfect.
The glass shattered in her hand.
One day, be it tomorrow or ten years from now, she'd find a way home to watch him burn. To flay him and scatter his body with salt and listen to him scream. She'd do it herself.
S
he was bleeding. The glass had cut her. Not deeply. She ripped a piece from the silk sheets — another reminder of Jehal, since all the sheets they'd stained between them had come from the silk farms that Jehal and King Tyan guarded as though they were dragon eggs. There'd been trouble with the Taiytakei about the silk farms once. Long before she was born and she didn't know much about it and didn't care either, but someone had tried to teach her some history once and Tyan's silk farms and the Taiytakei had been a part of it. Tyan's dragons had burned their ships. She didn't remember why.
She wrapped her hand and squeezed it tight, watching the blood ooze, savouring the pain. Sometimes any feeling at all was better than nothing, and when she let her head sink into the soft Taiytakei pillow and closed her eyes, she dreamed of Jehal. Not of the revenge she yearned for but of more pleasant things. Of the times before Evenspire when they'd been lovers. Of what they used to do and how it had felt and how she knew it had felt to him, how it should still have been. She yearned for the comfort he used to bring and how he'd made her be not alone any more. When she woke in the small hours of the morning her pillows were damp with tears, and she clenched her fists and raged at herself and flapped the silk until it was dry so that no one would see and then lay there in the dark, staring up at the faceless wood over her head.
Her broken birds came back at sunrise. Hers? Yes, she was beginning to think of them that way. They looked at the blood on the sheets and on her hand and gasped when they saw the broken glass. Perhaps they thought she'd opened a vein rather than be taken by whoever this sea lord was. Zafir, as she rubbed her eyes, laughed at their horror.
‘I am not some pampered harem lady,’ she spat. ‘I am a dragon-queen. I've burned cities and I've killed men, and women too. I've gone into battle armoured in a dragon's skin. I've stood and fought with sword and axe. Look at you, staring at blood as if it's some terror.’ She tore the silk bandage off her hand, opening the wound again so that a line of crimson ran down her arm and dripped onto the bed. She clenched her fist. ‘Blood is life. What are you, if you don't understand this?’
They paled and Zafir laughed again. She thought of taking a shard of the broken glass, of hiding it somewhere in her clothes as a weapon, but whom would she cut with it? One of these poor pathetic slaves? To what end? Out of spite? No. A fearsome slave she would be, proud and unbroken until some man came with the desire and the strength to tame her, and she would let him, at least until the moment came to cut out his heart and be free.
‘Dress me.’ She let them have their way with her this time. They cleaned her wound, took precious jewels and silver and draped them around her neck and her wrists. They painted her face, darkened her skin, drew delicate designs onto the backs of her hands and wrapped her in violet silks that would have been the envy of any princess. When they were done with her they sat silent and still, waiting.
‘Why are so you afraid?’ she asked, for they were shaking, but they wouldn't talk, wouldn't even look at her today. She stared at them. Looked them over one more time, trying to read their stories from the way they held themselves and finding almost nothing.
‘Do you come from the desert?’ she asked them.
She got a look from Onyx, of all of them, a pleading look with a hint of wondering whether she was mad to ask. The other two didn't flinch.
‘What became of my dragons? Do you know? Did they simply fly away?’ Nothing, and she was left to wait in silence.
The sun outside her little window reached its zenith and moved on. Gleaming specks rose from the city once more and drifted towards the ship. The waiting gnawed at her.
‘Some bread.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘And a little honey. You do have honey?’ Her stomach rumbled. Half a day with nothing to eat, nothing to do. She was hungry and bored and tense as a tripwire but her broken birds didn't move. Out in the sky the glasships drifted closer. Zafir refused to look at them today, to even acknowledge they were there. Alone she might have gawped but not here and now, not with these women. With her slaves’ eyes watching her, these miracles were nothing. Nothing to a dragon-queen. She wouldn't allow it. You must have a heart as hard as diamond now. Her mother's words after she'd woken for the first time to find blood between her legs.
‘If I don't have something to eat soon, I'll have to eat one of you.’
Brightstar twitched. They were still afraid of her. It had been that way from the moment the hatchling dragon had come smashing through the wood and she'd faced it down but today it was crawling all over them. Afraid of what? That she'd call back the dragons to her? But if she had power to do that then she'd have used it long ago.
‘I won't hurt you,’ she said a few minutes later. ‘Why would I?’
The door crashed open, thrown wide without any warning. A Taiytakei stood before her, dressed as she'd come to know them in the City of Dragons. Coal-skinned as they all were but his clothes were rainbow-bright, a dazzle of swirling colour embroidered in exquisite silver and gold and laced with more jewels than she could count. Gaudy to her eyes, but she knew this was the Taiytakei way. Over his shoulders hung a cloak of silver feathers. Two soldiers stood behind him in their plated armour of glass and gold. Their feathered cloaks were black like the ones she'd seen before but the streamers of silk they wore beneath were lurid and filled with shapes and colour. Two brilliant lightning bolts crossed over their chests.
This is the sea lord? Zafir met his eyes. Myst and Brightstar and Onyx fell to their knees beside the bed and pressed their faces into the wooden floor but Zafir didn't move. He was a handsome enough fellow if you looked past the garish clothes and the colour of his skin. Tall. Strong. Well muscled. She looked him up and down, appraising him as she might a horse or a hatchling dragon. A little flicker of heat stirred inside her. She licked her lips. That would be what he wanted, after all. Men always did.
‘Shrin Chrias Kwen,’ barked one of the black-cloaks. ‘Heart of the Sea Lord.’
‘Bend your knee, slave!’ snapped the other. His accent was so thick that it took a moment for Zafir to understand what he'd said. They pushed into the room but she ignored them and kept her eyes on the one with the silver cloak. The one who thought he was the master here.
A black-cloak drew back a hand to strike her. She would let him, she decided, but silver-cloak stopped him. ‘Don't! Don't mark her. The sea lord will see her as she is.’
So that's not you?Then you're no longer important to me. She felt a small pang of disappointment even as she lost all interest in him. Pity. She held out a languorous hand, still with the silver chain sealed around her wrist, every gesture made with exquisite care to show how little he mattered to her. He would have to release her now. ‘Shall we go?’
Her broken birds still quivered on the floor and their terror filled the room. Zafir drank it, savoured it like a fine wine. Silver-cloak bared his teeth at her. Perhaps it was supposed to frighten her but dragons had done the same many times over the years. She raised an eyebrow very slightly, contempt hurled in his face. The muscles in his arms tightened. ‘You are a slave,’ he said to her. ‘A nothing. When you meet the sea lord, you will bow. You will press your face to the floor as these women are doing, and you will keep it there unless you are told otherwise. And you will show me, now, that you understand.’ He spoke with deliberate care. The words sounded awkward coming out of his mouth as though he was in the middle of eating something. But she understood them. She smiled and spoke slowly back.
‘You wish me to be like them. I understand. And I will not.’ Once more she held out her hand. ‘Shall we go?’
Silver-cloak snapped out some more words, too harsh and sharp and fast for Zafir to follow. Without hesitation one of the black-cloaks unsheathed his sword, narrow and pointed. A thing for finding gaps. Zafir barely managed not to flinch but the black-cloak's eyes weren't on her. He lifted his sword high and drove it down into Brightstar as she kowtowed, trembling and almost weeping with her fear. He drove it straight through her heart and she died without a sound
. A stain of bright blood spread across her white silk shift and pooled on the floor. Silver-cloak never took his eyes from Zafir. ‘Show me you understand,’ he said again.
Zafir laughed in his face. Killing people she barely even knew? What was that supposed to show? That he hadn't the first idea what it was to be a dragon-queen, what it was to live around such monsters in a world where people died every day, not out of malice but out of carelessness, out of simply being in the wrong place as a dragon swished its tail or stretched its wings. Yet he'd lit something in her with what he'd done. A cold fury. ‘Do you think,’ she asked him, ‘that any part of me does more than pity you?’ Her smile was wide now. Couldn't help it. Not long ago it had been a hatchling staring down at her from the hole ripped in the roof of her cabin, a hatchling awake and with every reason to burn her and crush her and eat her. And here was a man, a nothing more, who thought to frighten her? She shrugged. ‘Kill another if you must. Lessen yourself even further.’
‘Show me you understand!’ he ordered again but his face already told her that she'd won, and oh how he hated her for that!
Zafir closed her eyes and shook her head, soft and sad. ‘I understand,’ she said, ‘that people will die. People around me. People who stand too close. So it has always been.’ She opened her eyes again and fixed him with them. ‘I understand that I am a dragon-queen, Shrin Chrias Kwen, Heart of the Sea Lord. And you are standing too close.’