Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  In another world there might have been more between them – an embrace, some acknowledgement of pleasure – but this was a slaving ship and everything that might be weakness was seized and devoured and destroyed, and so Tuuran said no more and left Crazy Mad where he was and set to shouting at all the other sail-slaves who’d been secretly glad when they’d thought he wasn’t coming back. The old familiar world slipped easily over him like a favoured glove, close and comforting, and it was hardly a chore to keep half an eye on Crazy Mad and what he did, especially when what he did was exactly what every sail-slave did. Sailed, drank, brawled, gambled and told stories.

  The sailing ship left and that was always a happy time for the sailors: a hold full of food and no angry captives. The galley continued in the routine Tuuran knew as well as he knew his own skin. A month passed and then another. They filled the slave pens with bronze-skinned men from a shoreline of arid rugged hills that the locals called the Kala, moving slowly north towards the southernmost coast of Aria. The sailing ship came again and emptied their cages and filled their larder and they moved on, edging up the coast; and it took even the Taiytakei by surprise when a second ship hunted them down only a few weeks later. It was a sleek warship, this one, far bigger than the one that had returned Tuuran and almost as big as the vessel that had taken him to the dragon lands. The usual platforms for archers hung amid the masts and spars but there were other things there too, and more on the deck, pointing over the side. Metal tubes filled with Taiytakei black-powder rockets, each with a glass bulb on the front filled with trapped fire. The ship stood off from the galley, weapons armed, nothing friendly about its manner at all, and lowered a boat. Just the one with a single Taiytakei aboard and some oar-slaves to row it, and three men in cowled grey robes who looked far too skinny and feeble to be working ships to Tuuran’s eyes; and then a different thought jolted him: Watch for the grey dead men.

  His eyes flicked to Crazy Mad. Took a long hard look. Crazy looked like he’d been struck by lightning, and whatever he did now, all of them would answer for it. Even before the grey-robes finished climbing aboard, Tuuran was alongside him, one arm wrapped tight around him, too tight, turning him away from the ship and towards the distant shore, away from these unwanted strangers. Whoever they were they weren’t night-skins, so that made them slaves, and slaves had no place coming aboard a slaving galley unless it was to be put in chains and sold.

  ‘I see that look and I know what it is because sometimes I have it too. One dissents, all are punished. You know this, Crazy Mad.’

  ‘I have a name.’

  ‘Yes. I keep hearing that. People ask about one slave or another, I tell them they’re wasting their time. Slaves don’t have names. But that’s not really true. Turns out some slaves do have names after all. They keep them inside but they keep them nevertheless. They hold them tight and sometimes they let them out when they shouldn’t. I have a name. I am Tuuran. And I’ll hear yours too if you can make up your mind which one it is. But not now!’ He let his arm loosen and risked a glance over his shoulder. The grey-robes were standing quietly on the deck behind the Taiytakei who’d brought them while he argued with the galley captain. ‘So tell me, slave who has too many names and a mark on his leg, who are these men in grey and what do they want? Because it’s you they’re here for, isn’t it?’

  Crazy Mad struggled but Tuuran was by far the stronger and his grip was good and tight. ‘One dissents, all are punished. Never quite got that through your thick head. What are these men in grey?’

  Crazy hissed at him, ‘Warlocks. Death-mages. Witch doctors. Necromancers! What other name do you need?’

  ‘Where I come from there are alchemists and there are blood-mages. Alchemists are good. Blood-mages are evil and wicked and villainous. Or that’s what I thought. I take it these are your blood-mages then?’ Tuuran let him go.

  Crazy Mad shoved him away. ‘Stick it, Tuuran. You vanish for half a year; you come back; you bring them with you? I’ll kill you! But not until I’ve done for them first!’

  The grey-robes were filing into the cabins at the back of the galley. Somehow Crazy Mad had the knife out of Tuuran’s belt. It was slickly done. Tuuran had to acknowledge that, even as he caught Crazy’s arm, spun him around and slammed his elbow into the back of his head, dazing him enough to grab him and drag him away, kicking and swearing.

  ‘This one’s forgotten his manners,’ he shouted at the Taiytakei guards on the deck. ‘A couple of days in the bilges and a month back on the oars.’ He took back his knife and hauled Crazy Mad to his feet. A couple of days in the bilges or as long as it took for the grey-robes to go away. But as he turned, there they were, the three of them with their hoods drawn back so Tuuran could see their shaven heads and their faces as pale as moonlight and the tattoos that started on their cheeks and ran down their necks and vanished under their robes. Symbols. Sigils. Meaningless to him, but as sure as he knew anything the same writing he’d seen on the pillar in Vespinarr, the same as on the dead slave from the eyrie, the same as on Crazy Mad’s leg.

  Soldiers stood beside them as well as the Taiytakei galley master in his coloured cloak, tattered and stained by so many months at sea. Tuuran saw the grey-robes and saw their smiles and then Crazy Mad thrashed his arms, wild-eyed, and Tuuran knew that look because it was the same look he’d had only just a few moments ago. A knife! Give me a knife! This time Tuuran was ready. As Crazy pulled the knife free again, Tuuran seized his wrist. They wrestled together, Crazy Mad screaming, Tuuran bawling in his face, ‘We’ll not all suffer just for you, you mad bastard!’ And every shout drew more attention to them both and he needed to get this idiot out of sight, out of the way, because he knew they were here for Crazy, and Crazy Mad knew it too, only what he didn’t know were all the things Tuuran had seen in his six months away. Run at them with a knife, will you? Flame-addled idiot! And it had to matter, didn’t it, because this was what the Watcher had sent him to do, and if they took Crazy away to a place where he couldn’t follow, he would never go home. Never!

  The tallest of the three grey-robes swept towards them with contempt. His fingers curled around the hilt of his own knife, clutched with a religious reverence. Crazy Mad screamed. He and Tuuran lurched toward the side of the galley and whatever Crazy howled, Tuuran roared louder so no one would hear: ‘Stupid slave! Take us all with you, will you?’ The Taiytakei slavers had their wands drawn, tense and ready. ‘One slave turns, all slaves die!’ Crazy Mad’s eyes did a frenzied dance around the galley, a wild animal looking for a way out, but Tuuran offered him none. ‘And I … am not dying … for you!’

  They hit the rail as the galley rolled and it was the easiest thing in the world to lower his hip and dump Crazy Mad over the side and watch him fall into the sea. He sank, and for a few seconds Tuuran stared after him but he didn’t come back up again. When Tuuran turned, there was the grey-robe, the tall one, standing right in front of him with his knife. A strange blade, more of a cleaver than a dagger, with a golden hilt and patterns in the sharpened steel that swirled before Tuuran’s eyes.

  They stared each other down and then Tuuran pushed the grey-robe harshly aside. ‘Piss off.’ They were only slaves, after all.

  He wondered what else he could have done. And whether Crazy Mad could swim.

  35

  The Day the Dragons Came

  ‘Grand Master Alchemist. A private word, if you please?’

  Nastria gave him a spherical glass bottle, stoppered and sealed with wax. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand and it was filled with liquid silver. The knight-marshal had no idea, of course. There was nothing curious about what the bottle contained, but what was intriguing was how it had come to be in the knight-marshal’s hands. It was a long journey home though and there would be plenty of time to ponder and plenty of comfortable inns and fine wine to help hi
m think and dead Queen Aliphera would be there, watching over his shoulder, keeping him company.

  He left the Veid Palace the next morning. He borrowed a carriage from the Viper and took a handful of soldiers for an escort while he was at it because last he’d heard there were snakes on the road to Farakkan, and so he’d need them. He tucked the knight-marshal’s bottle under his seat, carefully packed in sand.

  In the middle of nowhere the carriage stopped. A man made of rushing air tore open the door. He had a knife and blood glistened on its blade. There were bodies on the ground outside. Thousands of them, all blackened and burned. He opened his mouth to scream, but before he could, the knife flashed across his throat and his blood poured out of him and for some reason it wouldn’t stop but just kept coming, more and more and more, and when he looked up the sky was filled with dragons. ‘All but one are small. Freshly hatched from the egg, or so the alchemist says. There were three full grown beasts. The sorcerers took two, one for each of them. The third is ours.’

  Bellepheros sat up gasping, panting, the cry of alarm still building in his throat. It was starlight-dark. There was no carriage, no knife, no masked men, but it still took him a moment to remember where he was.

  Two long, slow, deep breaths. Dreaming again. The same nightmare that came back now and then. Once he’d caught his breath he chided himself for being surprised that it had come back tonight, after what the evening had brought.

  In the far corner of the room a tiny candle burned on a stone slab. It was a slow-burner, something that would make a little flame all through the night. He stumbled out of bed and fumbled for his desk until he found the lamp he kept on it and lit it from the candle. There were no windows down here under the eyrie, but he knew from the glow of the white stone walls that outside the desert horizon would be a deep blue, not quite black. Dawn was an hour away.

  He went to the desk and sat down. On another morning he might have tried to go back to sleep but not today. That bottle that Shezira’s knight-marshal had given him was still there. He made a little mark on the underside of the desk. Another day. Two hundred and forty-five since the Taiytakei had taken him now, give or take a couple. He was an alchemist and nothing if not meticulous about such things.

  A gentle knocking disturbed his despair and his door creaked open. ‘Belli? Should I leave you alone?’

  Yes. But that wouldn’t do. ‘No, no, come in. We have a great deal of work before us so we might as well get on with it.’ Li. She was his watcher, his jailer, his assistant, but above and beyond all else she was his friend, and by the light of the Great Flame he needed her for that now. A few short hours and their whole world had been turned on its head. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Eggs. You were supposed to bring me eggs! Not this!’

  ‘I have enumerated the dragon kin,’ she said and pushed her glass lenses up her nose. ‘There are fifty-seven hatchlings and the large one. Also I’ve made qaffeh.’ She put a hot metal pot on the desk in front of him. The bitter smell made him smile. It was a Taiytakei drink and the likes of Prince Jehal and others who lived in the seaport of Furymouth spoke of it with awe. Bellepheros had never tried it until Li had all but forced it on him. She lived on the stuff. He couldn’t think of a single time when she hadn’t had a fresh hot pot of it to hand.

  ‘Remember to keep away from the little ones,’ he said absently. The Taiytakei made a sticky sweet spongy bread which they dipped in their qaffeh and he’d acquired so much of a taste for it that even the thought was making his mouth water. ‘They’re easily young enough to still carry the Hatchling Disease.’

  ‘They’re dry. No residues of their birthing products remain.’

  ‘So they may seem but they need to be washed, Li. By the Scales. Did they all feed?’ No, wait, they did all of this yesterday didn’t they? When the dragons suddenly popped out of the sky and filled the eyrie to its rim. Flame! There was nothing he could do for so many! Twenty-six Scales he’d prepared, far more than he’d thought would be necessary, and suddenly he needed five times that number. No. They’d started a feed and he’d run from one to the other, shouting and yelling at the Taiytakei and at all the slaves to keep away and stay underground and … and what? He pressed a hand to his forehead. He didn’t remember coming back to his bed.

  ‘They were all washed and they were all fed, Belli.’

  ‘The adult? You’re sure the adult fed? And drank?’

  ‘Yes.’ Liang bowed. ‘I saw to every one.’

  He could have held her hand and cried. She was better at this than him, she truly was, and if he’d had it in his power he would have turned her into a true alchemist so there could be two of them and the burden of the dragons wouldn’t be his alone and never mind everything else. But of course he couldn’t, because there was no essence of the Silver King for her to drink and weld into her own blood.

  ‘Waiting for this?’ With a flourish she presented a loaf of Bolo bread and tore it in half. ‘Shall we break our night fast?’

  He was shaking so much he didn’t trust himself to answer but he took the bread and dipped it and let its sweetness melt over his tongue while he tried to push some order into his thoughts. If the dragons had eaten then they had his potions inside them. They’d be dulled for a while. It was the adult that mattered the most. If a hatchling woke they might still use the adult to hunt it down. If the adult woke and broke free then no force in the world would stop it.

  ‘The moon sorcerers.’ Li paused to wipe her lenses. ‘I think I never quite believed that The Watcher and our sea lord had actually met them. I certainly didn’t think they ever left their island.’

  Lists in his head. Checking them off one by one. He’d made a lot of potion over the weeks and months since they’d brought him the dragon blood he needed. As much as his own blood would allow. Enough for today but enough for how long after? He didn’t know. Not for ever, not as the dragons grew. There would have to be a cull. Better to do it sooner rather than later then. But how to explain? He could lay it out to Li step by logical step. Yes, and she’d see he was right. But Tsen? And the sorcerer-assassin who watched over them? He wouldn’t.

  ‘And you told me what a dragon would be and I had an idea in my mind, but … by Xibaiya, Belli, it’s as big as a glasship!’

  Did he have poison? Yes of course. Enough? No. What else did he need then? He screwed up his face. Lists. He’d have to write it all down. What needed to be done. Each step, one after the other. O Flame, don’t make me have to do this in secret! I can’t, I simply can’t!

  ‘Belli?’

  And soon. Sort out what needed to be done. All of it while Tsen was away. Before his sorcerer spy came back from wherever he was. However long he had. Let it all be done without their say, one way or the other, that was best. Argue about it after the fact. But so much, so much, and it all had to be done today! As soon as he could!

  ‘Belli!’

  Liang. If there was sense to it, she’d see it, she would. One thing they had in common, the way they thought. It bound them closer than their differences pushed them apart. Help me, Li! You have to help me with this. Please!

  ‘Bellepheros!’

  He jumped, his thoughts knocked sideways. She still called him that sometimes when he wasn’t paying attention or when she was angry with him. ‘What? What is it, Li?’

  She pushed another chunk of bread his way and nodded earnestly. ‘Qaffeh makes everything better.’ He smiled as she put her hand on his. ‘Chaos has come, Belli, but we shall make order. There’s much to be done and some of it will be hard, but we shall prevail. You will show me what and why and I will stand beside those of your decisions that are right to my eye. You know this, Grand Master Alchemist Bellepheros, keeper of our sea lord’s dragons. Tsen is in Xican and will take days to get back here, if he co
mes here directly at all. The Watcher has gone to tell him that his dragons have come and even he can’t travel such a way and back again in a day, and even when he does return, he’ll not interfere. You’ll do what you must, and I’ll be beside you. So it’s not so bad.’

  Yes it is! Bellepheros took a deep breath. He let it out slowly and forced away the lists and the whirl of all the things that needed to be done. Maybe she was right. Maybe there was time if he was organised enough. And efficient. And didn’t forget anything, and had everything he needed to hand … A lot to do, though. A lot to do …

  ‘In fact, I don’t think we’ll be troubled much at all until the remnants of Sea Lord Quai’Shu’s fleet make it back to Khalishtor harbour, charred and ragged by the sounds of things. And surely the worst of whatever they carried is here already. It is already here, Belli? There’s not some other secret about dragons that I should know?’

  Bellepheros laughed, slightly hysterical. ‘Why? Isn’t this enough for you?’

  Li raised her cup and clinked it against his. She smiled. ‘I know. You’re terrified!’

  Bellepheros giggled again. Couldn’t help himself. ‘Terrified? Yes! Of course I’m terrified. And if you’re not then you don’t understand them! One egg! I was ready to start from one egg and work my way up, not this. One slip, one thing forgotten … and boom!’ He threw up his hands. ‘Woken dragons. Your world ends!’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘We’re not helpless, Belli!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. The little ones don’t bother me much.’ Then she frowned. ‘The big one? Yes, all right. Yes, that one … troubles me. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

  Bellepheros sipped at his qaffeh. Swilling its bitter taste around his mouth calmed him a little. ‘Not really. But perhaps it helps to hear you say it.’

  ‘You’d have to be mad not to feel it. It’s so …’ She threw up her hands. ‘Big. That’s all there is to say, really. I could cage the little ones in glass and gold if I had to, or batter them with lightning. But the big one? No, I’m not sure I could make something to hold it.’ She reached across the desk and took his hand again and squeezed. ‘But you, you scrawny old man, are the master alchemist. They shouldn’t frighten you.’