The Silver Kings

by Stephen Deas

  The walls came down between them again. Zafir offered her awkward thanks and rode the sled unsteadily from the village to the shore, and tried to get it to climb to the eyrie. Myst and Onyx already had Tsen’s old bath waiting for her when she reached it, the room filled with steam and rich with Xizic scents.

  Take the last eggs away, she told Diamond Eye. Take them to the island where the other hatchlings roost. Make them understand that whenever dragons hatch, they must stay away.

  The Black Moon and his knife. Diamond Eye understood at once.

  No more slaves, old friend.

  Friend? Diamond Eye growled. I am not that, little one. Never that to any of your kind.

  Then what shall I call you? He thought himself so aloof, but Zafir knew better. He didn’t hide his thoughts well enough. They were not mistress and slave any more, not since they’d fought together as the eyrie fell into the storm-dark of the Godspike.

  Of course he could see her thinking all those things. Dragon, ­little one. Call me what I am. For one lifetime I am your ally. That is all.

  Diamond Eye would move the eggs. Zafir left Myst and Onyx to clean her armour and wash and mend her clothes. She slipped into the bath, aching and exhausted, and thought, as she often did, of the moment on the eyrie wall beside the Godspike of Takei’Tarr when she’d flicked her bladeless knife across the Crowntaker’s neck and his head hadn’t fallen off his shoulders. The warmth of the water enveloped her. She fell asleep and woke up cold, her skin as wrinkled as a prune; she dragged herself out and went looking for Myst and Onyx and her armour because there was no time to sleep, not today. Done with that, she fixed Chay-Liang’s sled to Diamond Eye’s back, loaded his makeshift saddlebags and flew.

  It took her two days to find the Taiytakei ship again, though it wasn’t that far from where they’d left it. The night-skins had either repaired the jigger mast or stepped a new one, and they were ­making good speed once more. Zafir flew Diamond Eye ahead of their course and then had him land as gently as he could in the sea. The dragon stretched out his wings while Zafir unbuckled her harness and freed Chay-Liang’s sled, then discarded most of her gold-glass armour, even her boots, down to her dragonscale undercoat. She kept her gold-glass vambrace with its lightning thrower, and that was all. While they waited for night she flew the sled in circles, barefoot, feeling out the balance of it and how to stand against the wind to move at speed, while Diamond Eye looked on, amused and curious.

  Guide me to them. As night fell she skimmed the waves towards the Taiytakei ship. It was easy enough to find, with its lanterns swinging on its deck and the light that came from its cabin ­windows.

  They have watchers, little one. Diamond Eye flitted among their thoughts, showing her what they saw. Zafir wrapped a black silk about her and arced around the ship, coming from the stern, crouching low to make herself as small as she could. When the lookout turned away she dashed the sled in close and lurked in the shadow of the ship itself.

  Where is the navigator? The navigator would know the ship’s charts. He’d know how to read them. Also, if Red Lin Feyn had been anything to go by, he’d be the most dangerous person aboard.

  He sleeps. Diamond Eye watched her thoughts and the navigator’s too. Somewhere at the stern.

  Good for him.

  The watchman shifted and turned his back. Zafir brought her sled up over the deck and alighted beside the remnants of the shattered lightning cannon. She crouched in its shadows, wrapped in silken darkness. She had the lightning thrower muffled in cloth to hide its brilliance, and a bladeless knife in her other hand, but a bolt of lightning would wake the ship, and a knife was never a certain thing, not even the irresistible blades of the Elemental Men.

  The watchman walked past her. Behind his back she crept around the broken cannon. She crouched again by one of three short sets of steps down to the main deck, waited for the watchman to make another circuit, then as he passed her flitted down the closest steps and hid in the shadows beside them. This hide-and-seek was an unfamiliar tension, taut enough to have her quietly shaking. Skulking in shadows wasn’t what dragon-riders learned. Dragon-riders crashed towers and tore down walls.

  She listened to his footsteps, to the occasional cough, to the creaks of wood and rope and the now-and-then rattle of a badly sheeted sail, to quiet voices and low mumbles in the dark. Somewhere towards the bows a light flared as a watchman lit a lamp, and yet with Diamond Eye to guide her the Taiytakei were spread out like a map, clear as the stars, and she knew instantly which way to go and when and what was safe, and where she might be seen.

  Wide storm-shuttered windows looked out over the ship from the raised aft deck. Zafir scuttled closer. Two sunken doors led to one large room where several lamps hung burning on the wall, too well lit for her to slip through unseen. A woman sat on a bench beside a table, head bent, poring over some sheet of paper with compass and ruler, but she was too far away for Zafir to reach. Slip through the door and the woman was certain to look up and see. Which left her stuck outside …

  Tuuran would have sworn round about now, she thought. She’d never learned to swear.

  Diamond Eye reached into the woman’s thoughts. A tickle of a notion, a suggestion of a face by the far window. The woman got up and went to look. She thought she glimpsed something for a second time. Zafir saw her more clearly now. A Taiytakei of some standing by her braids.

  She is their leader, their captain.

  The woman opened the door nearest her and looked out. As she did, Zafir slipped in through the other, padded barefoot across the room, eased open another door that led deeper into the ship, and closed it silently behind her. Creeping about like a thief. The Crowntaker had been a thief once, or so Tuuran had it. He should be doing this, then, not her.

  The papers on the table might have been charts. For a moment Zafir wished she had brought Tuuran after all. He’d been a sailor. He’d know a chart when he saw it and maybe how to read it, but that wasn’t why she wished he was here. She trusted him. Simple as that, and she hadn’t trusted anyone for a very long time, not really, not even her lover Jehal – especially not Jehal. Growing up in the Pinnacles had taught her that trust was a weakness, and she wasn’t sure she much liked the idea of it lurking inside her. But, wanted or not, there it was.

  A passage ran aft. One door to either side, one straight ahead of her. She went for the one ahead, crouched beside it, listened hard and heard nothing but the ship itself, the soft groaning of its wood as though a beast alive. She lifted the latch and tiptoed in. Moonlight shone through unshuttered windows. There were chests and cabinets, a table, chairs and a large bed. There was someone …

  A glint on the table glittered and twitched. A marble sprang into the air and shot at her. Glass erupted around her, the spherical trap of an enchanter’s cage. She fell, crashing into a chest, rolling helplessly about the floor, flailing to find her feet. The glass was so clear that she could barely see it. She smashed into the table, trying to shatter the cage, but it didn’t even crack. The night-skin man in the bed jumped awake and snatched for a wand. Zafir lurched almost upright, lunged as her feet started to move beneath her, and crashed back down, rolling across the floor. Odd, but she didn’t feel afraid, only stupid and annoyed with herself for being caught.

  She’d met cages like this before. Shonda of Vespinarr had tried to put one around her, and that night hadn’t ended with any happiness at all for the man who claimed to be the mightiest in all the seven worlds. This one too was about to end badly for someone.

  Diamond Eye!

  The night-skin followed her with his wand. Glass lamps lit up, bright and harsh. Zafir cringed from the light. The night-skin scurried around her, nervous as a foal, then ran out. She heard him cry staccato shouts of alarm, the words muffled by the glass around her. A door outside opened and slammed shut. Zafir eased herself upright, delicate and slow, feet spread wide and braced against the cur
ve of the glass cage. A different Taiytakei came in, took one look at her and drew a sword and another wand. More shouts rang out in the passage, fists banged on other doors, pounding feet, more yells of intruders and alarm. A bell started to ring.

  I come.

  ‘I’m not a stowaway,’ said Zafir. She tapped hard on the glass, then punched it. The night-skin with the sword flinched, glared, then fired his wand. The ship quivered to the thunderclap as lightning arced across Zafir’s prison. She yelped and jumped. The glass rolled and took her feet from her again, tumbling her to the floor. She settled for sitting cross-legged, trying to rub the ringing of the thunderbolt out of her ears. Another Taiytakei in a nightshirt came in, and then the woman Zafir had passed before, and finally the man she’d so rudely woken from his bed. They kept their distance, peering at her; they were scared, prison or no prison.

  The woman with long braids slowly came closer. ‘Show your brands, slave,’ she said.

  ‘I have none.’ Zafir didn’t move. Diamond Eye was close. She could feel him. ‘I am not a slave.’

  ‘I am Captain Beccerr, and the Servant on Ice is my ship.’ The woman crouched beside Zafir to look her in the eye. ‘What are you doing on my ship, slave?’

  The navigator was staring at Zafir’s gauntlet and vambrace. ‘Who made those?’ he asked. ‘Where did you get them?’

  Zafir ignored him. ‘You should let me out of this prison now,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve seen this work before.’

  ‘You should let me out right now,’ Zafir whispered. Not that they—

  The ship shuddered. It heaved and pitched. The floor tilted. Zafir yelped as the glass cage rolled and tipped her over. She curled, squeezed tight, arms wrapped over her head. The cage jolted into the bed, knocked her sideways and started to roll again. She slid inside it like ice in a shaken glass, hunched up, thrown this way and that, the cabin spinning around her, tilting as though some great weight was dragging the back of the ship into the sea …

  The enormous bulk of Diamond Eye’s head appeared at the window. A foreclaw smashed through wood and glass. Everything slid towards the dragon’s furious glare. A talon flicked the navigator onto his back and ripped his belly open to his spine. Claws closed on another Taiytakei, crushing him into pulp and bony splinters. The last two scrabbled for the door, scrambling to see who could get away the fastest. One flung a lightning bolt over his shoulder without bothering to look, while Diamond Eye caught Zafir’s glass prison, squeezed and shattered it. Zafir sprawled across the cabin floor, gasping, head spinning, counting bruises and blinking hard, trying to work out how much of the cabin’s leaning was real and how much came from being shaken like a dry old nut in a shell. The ship groaned and splintered. Diamond Eye hung from the back of it, half submerged.

  Zafir lurched to her feet. She paused by the navigator in case there was anything to be done for him, but Diamond Eye had ripped him almost in half. He was alive, but not for much longer.

  ‘It didn’t have to be this way,’ she whispered and cut his throat. Dragons and ships. Always the same.

  The Servant on Ice was sinking, and fast. Diamond Eye reached a talon for her. Come, little one. This wooden sea-palace meets its demise.

  Not yet. Zafir raced in the wake of the other night-skins, ­stumbling this way and that, bouncing off the walls into the room with the charts. The ship shuddered again, almost pitching her to the floor, all at crazy angles now. She clung to the table. Through the windows she could see the listing deck, split and splintered, wild-eyed sailors swirling and shouting in confusion and panic, slipping and falling and sliding across the deck, some already ­diving into the sea. The Servant was going down fast. Zafir snatched the charts from the table, staggered back to the cabin, slipped and fell and pulled herself up again. She snapped her eyes about for something she could use to keep the paper safe and dry but there wasn’t any time, and the sea was already close to the cabin windows. Diamond Eye had gone, but a moment later the dragon ripped the cabin roof and smashed his head inside. Zafir stuffed the charts between her teeth and grabbed at the mounting ladder, then clung to it as Diamond Eye pushed himself free of the wreckage. Men on the deck were spilling into the sea whether they liked it or not, two longboats already floating free, Taiytakei and sail-slaves alike splashing and flailing to reach them. A few night-skins clustered around the lightning cannon on the foredeck, trying to bring it to bear. Diamond Eye lurched awkwardly away.

  The cannon. Rip it out of the decks. We’ll take it back with us.

  She felt Diamond Eye’s moment of disbelief, and then the dragon wheeled. The ladder swung through the air. Zafir clung on grimly and climbed as fast as she could. She hauled herself into the saddle and stuffed the charts into a bag and buckled it safe. Diamond Eye dived at the Servant as Zafir rushed herself into the riding harness.

  Be gentle. She didn’t have time for buckles before they smashed into the fire deck, seized the cannon and ripped it free. A good piece of the ship came up with it.

  They flew away then, raining splintered deck planks behind them, not staying to see what happened to the stricken Servant and her crew. The night-skins had their boats – Zafir had seen that much – but they were in open ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere. As they left, the ship’s last lanterns winked out one by one, drowned as the sea took them.

  I didn’t want them to die. They were night-skins and so they were my enemy; still, this wasn’t the end I meant to bring. The sense of regret took her by surprise. It wasn’t the person she was used to being, and she wondered why and what had happened to her. A dragon-queen showed no mercy. She should exult in the doom of the Taiytakei ship, surely? Diamond Eye certainly did – his satisfaction was like a warm smothering wrap of soft fur. Dragons and ships mixed like fire and water. Everyone knew that, but still it bothered her.

  Like the skies over Dhar Thosis, little one. The dragon had nothing to offer her regret but scorn.

  By the end of the next day later Zafir was on the eyrie again, so weary she could barely stand, but with charts and a stolen lightning cannon that Chay-Liang could perhaps mount somewhere on the eyrie’s rim. She staggered down the silver-lit tunnels to Tsen’s bath, shedding armour as she went, and Myst and Onyx sat beside her on the edge, massaging her shoulders, feeding her fruit and fish and sips of apple wine and great gulps of fresh cold water until she felt human enough to them tell the story of her escape; but she’d barely started when she suddenly stopped.

  ‘Do you want to go home?’ she asked them.

  They looked at her as though she was mad. ‘Home, mistress?’

  ‘Back to the desert of Takei’Tarr where you were born.’ She looked at their swollen bellies, at the unborn children they carried, each with a dozen fathers. ‘Don’t you want to raise your children among your own?’

  Still that look, as though she was a lunatic. Onyx held up her arms, palms out, showing her brands. ‘We would be slaves again, mistress. Always.’

  ‘But don’t you want to be with your own people?’ She was asking herself, not them. Because she didn’t, not really, not when she thought about it, not when she looked deep enough to see past duty and ambition and righteous vengeance. Stealing these Taiytakei charts could set her free of these islands, but to return to what? War and strife? To clambering over the backs of one another to see who could claw their way to the Adamantine Throne, and then clinging to it with a death grip, stabbing at anyone who came too close until finally she was thrown aside to lie with all the rest in a corpse pit of cruelty and ambition?

  No. Myst and Onyx didn’t want to go back. They were content here. Happy even. And she realised then, to her great surprise, that they weren’t the only ones.

  ‘No, mistress,’ said Myst, ‘but I would like to fly with you on the back of your dragon one day.’

  Zafir stared. She’d never imagined Myst or Onyx being anything but utterly terrified of Diam
ond Eye. One glance at Onyx told her that she thought much the same. ‘You’re not scared of him?’

  Myst hunched into herself, shy and coy. ‘No, mistress. Not any more.’

  Zafir looked at the two of them, bewildered. They were happy. They laughed and giggled together and took lovers as it suited them. Above all they felt safe. And I did that. I, Zafir. And right there was as good a reason as any to stay, wasn’t it? She’d done something good, so rare and precious. And with these charts what had she brought them? An escape from something they didn’t want to leave, and perhaps nor did she. A way to abandon what was safe and propel them all into an uncertain storm, and for what? What, for the love of Vishmir, would it be for?

  Am I afraid, then, of that storm? Then I must face it, for a dragon-queen faces every fear and looks it in the eye and never backs down. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t what might come that she feared, but what she might regret leaving behind.

  ‘Give me the charts,’ she said. Myst gave them to her. Zafir paused for one long moment, and then pushed them into the water and watched the ink begin to wash away. She felt light, almost weightless. Her eyes danced and she started to laugh. Myst and Onyx looked at her in wonder, and then started to laugh too. Let us stay then, she thought. All of us. Stay and make something. And it felt so good to let everything go, as though the weight of a hundred worlds had lifted from her. She picked up her story of the Taiytakei ship and had got as far as Diamond Eye’s crashing arrival when the Crowntaker barged in. Didn’t knock, just slammed the door open and walked straight in, right up to the bath, and sat on the edge and stared at her nakedness. Myst and Onyx edged away, nervous as lambs.

  ‘Is this a custom from your land to be so graceless?’ Zafir asked, and then shrugged. ‘Do you like what you see?’ There was something very wrong with him. His face had a tension ready to explode. She met his eye, looking for the traces of silver that would warn her of the Black Moon awake inside, but there were none. ‘Well? Or is this your way to remind me that my girls and I do not live alone on Baros Tsen’s eyrie and must now and then share his bath?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘You do smell like you need one.’