Dragon Queen sk-2

by Stephen Deas

  ‘He must eat,’ she hissed, ‘and they are all my enemy, every walking man in this world save you.’

  ‘And the slaves who are not Taiytakei? You see them here and there. Not many on the eyrie, perhaps, but in Khalishtor you saw them. Slaves taken from other lands. Slaves taken from our own, Holiness. Outsiders perhaps, taken by the King of the Crags and carried to Furymouth in his slave cages. What of them?’

  ‘I will free them and they'll be mine.’

  Bellepheros laughed bitterly. ‘I've heard this Bom Tark is a town full of nothing else yet that's what they will have you burn!’

  She smiled at that and shook her head. She'd heard the same, but all her instincts told her otherwise. ‘Perhaps I'll bring their glasships down instead and lead the slaves in this eyrie to revolt.’ They both knew she wouldn't.

  ‘And the Taiytakei slaves, Holiness? Will you free them and make them yours too?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘But they are the same as the men from the desert! The ones you burned.’

  So he knew about that. And she'd gone out of her way since then not to strike down the desert men she found but to fly on and look for lesser prey, even though Diamond Eye begged her to dive and burn and chase these little ones whose fear was so deliciously sharp. ‘The ones I burned that one day were not slaves, alchemist. And, slaves or not, a dragon must still eat.’ She turned away. My Vioros would have held his tongue better than you. ‘I remind you of your own words, Bellepheros. After the dragons your duty is to me, not to them. Certainly not to your enchantress.’ He bristled at that. Good.

  ‘Yes, Holiness.’

  She turned away and out of the corner of her eye she saw him bow deeply and as he should to a speaker of the nine realms, but there was rebellion in his voice nowadays. So be it. If anything it hardened her resolve. She turned back to him and stepped in closer, close enough to feel his warmth, put two fingertips on his lips while the other hand snaked around his throat. When she spoke they were so close that her lips almost touched him. Nevertheless her words were so quiet that he had to strain to hear them.

  ‘If you die then the dragons will wake and we will all burn and anything I would do is as nothing. Is that not so, Master Alchemist?’

  ‘Yes, Holiness.’ But he didn't move and his head was still bowed and that simply wasn't good enough. She lifted his chin so he had nowhere to look but right at her.

  ‘I do not want to lose you, alchemist, but that is what will happen if you leave me no choice. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Holiness!’ There. Some shock on his face at last. About time he understood this was no silly game she was playing, nor him either, him and his eyrie which he'd so obligingly built for the men who'd made him into a slave. She let him go and bared her teeth at him.

  ‘I will if I have to, Bellepheros. I will be a slave for a time if that's what I must do to survive but I will not stay one. Not for any of you. I'll die a statue if I must but I will die free. The disease will not kill me so quickly that I won't see the land of ash this world will become.’ She meant it. She always had, had never pretended anything else, but the alchemist had never quite believed. His eyes said that now he did. She had him then. She saw it inside him. He was still hers, even though he knew what that must mean, even if he hated it. The kwen is my Tyan, withered and dying, and Tsen will be my Hyram, who will see what is to come and will do anything, anything at all, to find another way. And then once again we'll see who is slave to whom. ‘Jehal did murder my mother, you know. It was him, with his own hand, and you alchemists with your truth-smoke never found him out. And in time we went to war, he and I, but not over that.’ She left him there, among his hatchlings.

  The Taiytakei came for her that night. Black-cloaks. You'll be ready at dawn. You will fly your dragon and you will burn Bom Tark. Orders given to her as though she was some lowly rider to be sent on errands by her eyrie master. As though she was a slave.

  Bom Tark. The name had come now and then, always with a roll of the eyes or a hiss of disdain. A place full of slaves that no one would mourn when she and Diamond Eye burned it to ash. Shrin Chrias Kwen was on his way there, taking the bulk of Tsen's fleet, or so the Taiytakei would have her believe. She didn't know why. To watch? To take away those who were worth saving? To see if she'd be tempted into burning him to ash too? But she wouldn't. Not that she hadn't thought about it but she wouldn't, not yet. Perhaps Tsen would be pleased and surprised at that, or perhaps disappointed. She couldn't tell.

  But really? A city full of helpless slaves? She couldn't quite believe in it. There was something else to this. There had to be. A demonstration of power, that's what they wanted although they never came out and said so. Of what a dragon could truly do and with as little consequence as could be managed. A city of helpless slaves? What did that prove beyond what they'd already seen? It was, after all, a dragon.

  She rose long before dawn, as eager as a girl in her first flushes. She let Myst and Onyx wash her and oil her and then sent them away and dressed herself in her dragon armour alone. It was, she would quietly admit to no one but herself, the finest armour that any rider had ever worn and she was grateful for that. Still a slave; but on Diamond Eye's back and dressed as the dragon-queen she would forget for a while. And maybe she would turn on them after all and smash their glasships out of the skies, and burn their ships and crush them and grind their embers until the Elemental Man found a way to get close enough to kill her. Which he quickly would, but it would be worth it.

  The black-cloaks walked her across the dragon yard, but not to Diamond Eye. Instead they guided her to the golden egg of one of the glasships towing the eyrie. They led her inside and then they left and the ramp closed behind her and she was alone with Baros Tsen and another man, another kwen by the look of him but not one of Tsen's. He stood behind Tsen, strangely close.

  ‘I've seen you before,’ she said.

  The kwen ignored her, but she had and now she remembered who he was. The kwen from the city in the mountains. And something about Tsen was different today. He had a gleam in his eye, a nastiness to his smile that she hadn't seen before.

  ‘What have you done to Shrin Chrias Kwen?’ he asked her.

  66

  Fireships, Golems and Dragons

  A Taiytakei in glass and gold ran through the sword-slaves’ dormitory on the deck below. ‘Up up up!’ he screamed. ‘Everyone up on deck!’ The first glimmers of dawn lit the sky. Tuuran had his armour on in a flash, the best of what they'd been able to salvage from the slave galley after the Fire Witch had burned their masters: decent brightly coloured brigandine coat, steel greaves, vambraces and pouldrons. Not a perfect set by any means, not like the dragon-scale he'd once worn as an Adamantine Man and certainly not like the layers of sunsteel mail that Crazy Mad spoke of with wistful sighs. Plenty of gaps and joints for a canny blade or a lucky arrow, but it was what he had and it would have to do. He pulled a Taiytakei helm over his head. Now that was a fine piece, a plain open-faced steel helm but with a visor made of gold-tinged glass. Crazy had laughed when he'd brought it out of one of the slave galley cabins, right up until Tuuran had taken the helm and slammed it with a spiked club — one of the ashgars that the Taiytakei soldiers were so fond of. Instead of shattering into a thousand shards, the glass hadn't even cracked. That had shut him up.

  ‘Better than steel,’ Tuuran had said. They'd found three and kept them quietly to themselves. One each and one sold in Deephaven, that and a lightning wand, the last treasures from the men who'd made slaves of them for all those years. Crazy Mad had found some wizard — that was what he said he was, at least — and come away with a pocket full of gold. Lately Tuuran had come to wondering whether Crazy Mad could have come away with a great deal more, but that was wasted now. The helm was gone. A world away.

  He lowered the gold-glass over his eyes, marvelling as he did every time at the clarity of it, how much he could still see with a visor over his face. Far away the rising sun lurked below t
he horizon, lighting up the distant burning clouds. It took Tuuran a moment to realise that the flames across the sea were no illusion of the dawn. Among the armada of ships headed to the shore, many were on fire. The ones at the front. He sniffed the air. He could smell the smoke. Why? There were more ships than he remembered from the day before. A lot more.

  The wind. In a flash he understood. The wind was taking the burning ships straight at the land. They were fireships. That war he'd been longing for? Here it was at long last. A thing to make him smile like a man's first sight of the sun after years below decks.

  Inside Baros Tsen's golden gondola Zafir's face froze. She squirmed. The other kwen was watching her fiercely, an odd look on him. ‘Made him look a fool,’ she said.

  ‘He hates you with a passion.’ Tsen smiled. He'd smiled a lot when she'd first come here, she remembered that, but it had become a rare thing these days. ‘One day I would like to know why, but it's no matter for now. You need to know that where we were once rivals, our interests have aligned one more. Perhaps only for a while, but you are my slave, and Shrin Chrias Kwen is my ally, and you will respect him for that.’

  Zafir snorted. ‘I will consider it.’

  Tsen got up from his throne and stood in front of her. When she was barefoot they were eye to eye. In her armoured boots she looked down on him but it didn't seem to trouble him. He ran a hand over the gold-glass scales, nodding his head, muttering approval, then stepped back and looked at her and cocked his head. ‘Think of this task as repayment for the gift I have given you.’ Suddenly, unexpectedly, he beamed at her and clapped his hands. ‘So, slave! What do you know of Bom Tark? Have my lesser kwens told you what you will see? How you should reach it?’

  Under her armour, beneath the glorious glass and gold scales that made her feel more a queen than anything the dragon realms had ever given her, Zafir shrugged and shook her head. ‘A city of runaway slaves, that's all I've heard. Whispers say you wish it burned. It's by the sea. I suppose someone will point me in a direction and I will fly as I'm told, and when I reach the ocean I'll look for this city and I'll burn it down. That's all I know and all I wish to.’ She frowned. ‘Baros Tsen T'Varr, is this truly a city of helpless slaves? If it is, I wonder what exactly you hope to prove. It sounds absurdly easy. Dispiriting, I might even say. I'm almost insulted.’

  Tsen's smile grew even wider, like a cat grinning at a cornered mouse, and it felt odd for a moment until she realised that it wasn't for her, it was for the man behind him who couldn't see what was on his face. ‘Mai'Choiro Kwen, perhaps you would be good enough to point the way out to my slave. Tell her exactly what it is you want burned. For my part I have nothing more to say.’ And, very deliberately, Baros Tsen T'Varr walked to the window of his golden gondola and stared outside at the dragon and put his hands over his ears.

  The kwen from the mountain city glared at Tsen's back. Then he glared at Zafir, which only made her smirk, and that made him growl and grind his teeth and Zafir had to wonder if all kwens were the same and all so easy to goad. But she held her tongue and forced the smirk away and cocked her head. ‘Well?’

  Mai'Choro Kwen, if that was really who he was, raised one hand and pointed through the gondola window that faced across the desert towards the rising sun. ‘That way. And you are not to fly to Bom Tark. You will be told otherwise when you leave, but this is the way for you to fly. I command it.’ He waved his hand and kept pointing as though she was some sort of idiot. ‘That way. Do you understand? No matter what anyone else says. Towards the sun. You should begin as you are told outside, but when you are no longer in sight of us, turn toward the sun. When you reach the sea you will find a city there. It has three islands. One of them is very tall. From the sky, if you are high, you will see it from many miles away. The attack will begin tomorrow at dawn.’ He lowered his hand. ‘Where I say you are to go, you will find far more than slaves ranged against you.’ And he told her of a city by the sea and of its defences, of black-powder cannon and the Enchanters’ Needles where the glasships would be, the island fortress with its lightning cannon and its rockets and its stone throwers. He told her there would be ships filled with sword-slaves to take the city streets led by the kwen who hated her. He told her where those soldiers would falter in their advance and why and how he wished her to help them and he told her of the sea titans and how nothing could be done about them. ‘Leave them alone. They cannot be harmed and so the fleet and the sword-slaves will simply have to do the best they can around them. Otherwise you are to clear the way for them to the palace. Do you understand.’

  Understanding and obeying, she thought, were two very different things. But she nodded because the kwen had been clear enough.

  ‘Repeat your instructions, slave, so we are clear.’

  She did. When she was done, Tsen turned to her from his window and nodded. ‘Now you may go, slave. Take your dragon and do as you have been told.’

  Zafir blinked and then stared. Tsen was lying to her. He'd hardly said a word but the gleam on his face was one she saw in the mirror often enough. She wouldn't question it, not now, not here, but he was deceiving her. Somewhere lay a deadly trap.

  She cocked her head. Narrowed her eyes, searching for any clue and finding nothing. ‘As you wish,’ she said. A trap for whom?

  ‘The Watcher will be with you, always.’ Maybe he was still lying, but this time she thought not.

  She bowed, the first one she'd ever given him. ‘Then I will be wary.’ She touched her armour. ‘I thank you for this gift, Baros Tsen T'Varr.’

  A Taiytakei in glass and gold tugged his shoulder. ‘Go! Make fire shields!’ He shoved Tuuran towards the starboard side of the ship where a dozen sword-slaves were already building a screen of wooden boards covered in sea-soaked hide. Sail-slaves lowered buckets into the sea and hauled them up again, throwing water over the decks as fast as they could. Handcarts lined with bamboo tubes sat behind the screens, draped in sodden sailcloth. Tuuran cracked his knuckles and let out a deep sigh and smiled. Rockets.

  ‘Someone's happy.’ Crazy Mad sniffed and wrinkled his nose. ‘So this is it, is it? Bom Tark? Wake me up when we're done.’

  ‘Fire.’ Tuuran dragged Crazy Mad towards the shields. ‘I saw it once when two Dominion ships tried to run down a sloop I was on. The Taiytakei set about them with rockets. A hundred all at once, and even if only a handful of them hit their mark those two ships were ablaze from stem to stern before they knew what had hit them.’ He shivered and revelled in the memory as he picked up the next piece of wood and began hammering it into place.

  ‘You have a thing for fire, don't you?’ Crazy Mad shook his head but he was smiling. Tuuran grinned at him.

  ‘You know, mostly I'm happy because I got a decent night's sleep for once.’ He glared, then moved along around a pair of sword-slaves already working on the next section of the shield wall and stopped again, hands on hips, grinning at the sea. ‘This is what an Adamantine Man is made for!’ He looked around. Two massive pinnacles of stone rose out of the waters ahead of them. A thread seemed to join them, glittering in the rising sun. He frowned. ‘I thought Bom Tark was just a bunch of slaves in huts.’ In the grey pre-dawn gloom he couldn't see too much, just a few lights high up in the sky, some more ahead of them and on the port side distant across the water, and the fireships. Through the haze and the drifting smoke maybe he could see the silhouettes of other ships too, anchored not much further ahead. Maybe the shore and maybe an island to the other side.

  The ship turned. He felt a shudder. The oar-slaves getting to work below decks adding their own strength to the wind. Shouts urged them onward. The ship turned again. They were going fast now in the wake of the fireships. Sparks and flames flared through the haze ahead. More ships were waiting for them, these new ones helpless at anchor, looming out of the smoke. Tuuran saw a fireship drift into the side of a towering galley. The flames leaped from one ship to the other as though driven by sorcery; a moment later the galley was ablaze and ad
rift. Their own ship lurched and turned again. A Taiytakei soldier covered in golden armour ran down from the sterncastle. ‘Ready rockets!’ They powered through the spreading smoke, the wind filling their sails and the oar-slaves driving as hard as they could. This one time they would be unchained and they knew it, free to race ashore after the sword-slaves and the sail-slaves before them to plunder as they pleased, and Tuuran felt their urgency. Turn the slaves on one another, yes, he'd seen the Taiytakei do that enough times before.

  He spat on the deck. Fireships and rockets. A lot of trouble for a bunch of runaway slaves.

  *

  Zafir left the gondola as she was asked and walked round the walls of the eyrie to Diamond Eye. She took her time, pacing out the steps, pondering what Tsen could be thinking. A dozen soldiers fell in around her as she came close to the dragon. One of them, a kwen for one of Tsen's seconds, pointed across the desert. ‘That's the way to Bom Tark,’ he said. ‘Keep on until you reach the sea.’

  It wasn't the way the kwen from the mountains had shown her at all, but she took note of it anyway. A whole city full of runaway slaves? She could hardly ignore a thing like that.

  Other fireships struck home. The water filled with men from the burning ships and galleys splashing and struggling. Those who could swim were making for the shore. The rest waved and shouted and screamed and disappeared under the water, appeared and waved and screamed again and then vanished once and for all. Patches of smoke blotted them out then wafted away again to reveal just waves. They'd drown, all of them, and Tuuran cursed himself for never learning to swim. Not that swimming would do any good in so much armour.

  The ship turned again, steering so close through the burning wreckage wrought by the fireships that they grazed the side of one burning galley, then hard the other way. For a moment they lost their wind and the sails fell slack. Someone bellowed frantic orders while the heat of the flames from the galley washed over them. The ship turned again. Without thinking, Tuuran ran across the decks and started pulling on ropes that some sail-slave should have worked. His head was full of songs, of dragons and of fire. This was what an Adamantine Man was for!