Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  ‘Holiness!’ Bellepheros was on his feet at once. ‘It is their Adamantine Palace! A place of marvels.’

  Zafir turned. She didn’t meet the Elemental Man’s eye – no need to gloat but now they both knew who had the power. Not him. Her life was in the hands of this Baros Tsen T’Varr, no other. She crossed to the windows on the other side, the Taiytakei soldiers moving away to give her room. She felt the Elemental Man’s eyes burning her skin as she looked out. The alchemist was right. The Crown of the Sea Lords, if that’s what this palace was called, was a jewel to make even her own Adamantine Palace seem drab and small. Scores of glasships floated over it but the palace made them all tiny. It covered the entire headland, a giant crown of gold and glass, a ring of thirteen glittering spires rising from a broad circle of white stone, each one taller than the Tower of Air. Spokes led from them to a central amphitheatre as big as her whole palace. Between the spokes, patterns of trees ran in delicate lines and swirls among a swathe of gardens. Curves of water glimmered and sparkled between many-levelled lakes and ponds and manicured waterfalls. Flying glass buttresses rose over the amphitheatre to a gleaming silver sphere that sat directly over its centre. Flashes of colour caught Zafir’s eye, puzzling things until she realised they were waterfalls running down the glass and fracturing into clouds of rainbow spray. Their own Diamond Cascade. As Zafir peered, she caught another glimmer of light like the sun off a spider’s web, joining the silver sphere to one of the towers high above the ground. It flashed and then was gone and then she saw another to a different tower. Pathways. Bridges made of glass.

  ‘Does it not take your breath away?’ whispered the alchemist.

  Zafir didn’t speak. Yes, it was magnificent, and yes, it did. Sorcery beyond anything she’d ever imagined, beyond even the strange wonders left by the Silver King in the bowels of the palace where she had been born. Yet at the same time what she saw was a pall of smoke, the gleaming glass smashed to shards, the gold running in molten rivers while a hundred dragons circled overhead and the sky filled with flames.

  Her dragons.

  I am a dragon-queen. Nothing could touch her.

  ‘Holiness?’ Bellepheros was almost brushing against her again. Annoying habit. ‘Holiness! Look up!’

  High over the silver sphere hung a vast gold-glass star.

  39

  The Council of the Sea

  The Watcher did what he did best: nothing at all. He stood in the corner of the bronze-panelled room, silent and still amid the noise and bright plumage of Quai’Shu’s heirs, inconspicuous and half-hidden but overshadowing everything. As each man and woman came dressed in their dazzling silks and their shimmering oil-sheen feathered cloaks, fluffing and settling themselves for the battle to come around the dark rosewood table, they saw him and whispered and cursed under their breath. Prayers to gods in whom they should not believe, perhaps. Or maybe a simple Why is he here? Because his being here changed everything.

  Sea Lord Quai’Shu sat at the head of his council of war and the Watcher stood close by. All others here were his servants. Quai’Shu wasn’t the lord they remembered – he drooled and rolled his eyes now – but he was their lord still and the Watcher had come to be sure they all remembered it as they battled over the spoils. He looked at their faces and met their eyes one by one. Shrin Chrias Kwen, master of the black-cloaks and of Quai’Shu’s network of spies and informants, whose men crewed and captained the sea lord’s ships and ran the sea lord’s empire. He’d be the first to turn. The kwen sat next to Elesxian, first lady of Xican, Quai’Shu’s eldest grandchild and Zifan’Shu’s named heir. Her claim to Quai’Shu’s title was strong and the kwen was her secret lover. They’d see their ascension to power as rightful and inevitable, and perhaps it was.

  Beside them sat Nimpo Jima Hsian. Quai’Shu might have dictated strategy but it was the hsian who advised him, the hsian who put the plans together, made the tactical decisions, whose schemes ran Quai’Shu’s trading empire and his networks of spies and informants and never mind what Shrin Chrias Kwen might have thought on the matter. Beside him sat Baran Meido, Quai’Shu’s second son, and Tetja Bronzehand, his third. Meido was bought and owned, body and soul, by the lords of Vespinarr. Bronzehand’s own heir had been traded as a hostage to Dhar Thosis some years ago. They would both have their claims.

  Last of all was Baros Tsen T’Varr, the glibly named supply master who ran Quai’Shu’s treasury and was responsible for the providing of whatever was necessary to support absolutely anything at all. Who believed, whatever anyone else might say, that he quietly ran Quai’Shu’s trading empire and probably his network of spies and informants too. Six tigers in a room. How Quai’Shu had stopped them from eating each other was a mystery, but he had. Now the Watcher was the only thing that made them pause from falling upon one another and devouring the first to show weakness, and that was why he was here.

  He stepped forward from his shadows and reached for Quai’Shu’s hand. The tigers were too proud to simply stop their conversing but they noticed, oh how they noticed. The Watcher opened Quai’Shu’s fingers and placed a gavel in his hand and closed them again and made him bang the table three times, silencing their chatter. If he’d been like them, his wager would have been on the kwen to speak first. To stake his claim.

  ‘There’s no money left.’ Tsen T’Varr beat Chrias Kwen by a heartbeat. The kwen’s mouth was open but the words hadn’t been quick enough. ‘None. We’re broke. No, I correct myself: we are sinking in debt and about to drown. Nothing more than the top of our mast remains above the water and even that is falling fast.’

  ‘This venture has cost us a quarter of the fleet.’ Jima Hsian sniffed. ‘Thirty-six ships lost. Twelve more that will take months to repair. We must build. Our strategy is at risk.’

  Tsen leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘And to which shipyard shall we turn, Hsian? Who will build for us on credit with no promise of payment? You’ll be lucky if I can pay Chrias’s sailors to crew the ones you’ve still got.’

  ‘The Vespinese shipyards in Hanjaadi will build if I ask.’ Baran Meido smiled at them all through lidded eyes, as if they were all here for his amusement. ‘If I ask.’ Chrias Kwen nodded. So, three of them already in it together.

  ‘Your troubles to resolve, T’Varr. I cannot make money for you to spend without ships and crews to sail them,’ said the hsian.

  ‘Then I suggest you find some nice long voyages to places they might like to go.’

  ‘Qeled,’ said Bronzehand.

  Elesxian rolled her eyes and clutched her head. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Give me ten ships and a good crew and this Elemental Man here, and I’ll bring you something back from Qeled that will make our t’varr stop bleating once and for all!’

  ‘Another reckless venture? Look at what this one has cost! You’ll waste ten more ships and come back with nothing. If you come back at all.’

  ‘Sounds to me like he should go,’ purred Baran Meido.

  Chrias laughed. ‘Our lord has brought back dragons and our t’varr still squeals!’

  ‘Likely as not you’d come back dead, little brother.’

  Meido and Bronzehand stared each other down. Bronzehand’s eyes shone. ‘Is that a wager, brother?’

  ‘Five ships.’

  ‘Done!’

  ‘Wait. Do you propose to let him have ten to waste in the first place?’ Elesxian shook her head.

  ‘He’ll have none of mine.’ Tsen T’Varr shrugged. ‘Not unless our lord demands it.’ He cocked his head. ‘Don’t think that’s likely to happen by the looks of it. Wasted wager.’

  Meido chuckled. ‘Pay these penny-pinching prunes no mind. I’ll have the Vesp
inese prepare ships for you, brother. For a half-and-half split of whatever you find between us and them.’

  ‘Wait!’ The Watcher coughed again but none of them seemed to notice until he banged the gavel. Then slowly they fell to silence until Bronzehand stood up.

  ‘Gentlemen! Sister.’ They all looked at him. He shrugged. ‘Well, my father is incapable, isn’t he? We must agree on someone to speak for him.’ He looked hard at Quai’Shu. ‘Unless, Father, you have something you wish to say on this?’

  Chrias Kwen banged his fist on the table and glared at Tsen T’Varr. ‘Why have you not yet executed the slave who murdered Zifan’Shu?’

  Tsen T’Varr met his eye. ‘I will, Chrias. But not until I can afford it.’

  ‘You’d get a good price if you sold her,’ muttered Jima Hsian.

  ‘She must pay!’ snapped Elesxian.

  Tsen smiled and offered out his hands. ‘Exactly. She must pay. And she will pay for the murder of your father, first lady, when the debts that our sea lord has incurred are lessened. Until then she will pay in other ways. She is, after all, part of the fruits of his labour.’ He stood up. ‘Dear friends, tantalising a prospect as it is to dispatch a part of our rather ragged and meagre fleet on some expedition to Qeled, I suggest our discussions might be better centred on how we shall use the fruits of our last expedition to defray the expense of it. In other words, how shall these dragons pay their way?’

  ‘The Sun King will pay you any price you ask,’ said Jima Hsian. ‘If you can find a way to take them to him.’

  ‘Well, that’s not why you brought them here, Jima Hsian, but why not start with it? Will one dragon suffice? A young one?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, that’s one thing settled. The navigators found a way to bring them here after all and we can certainly spare one of the little ones. Hatchlings, they call them.’ He laughed a little as if they were all in on some joke. ‘I will see that you get it, Jima, and then shall we talk of their other more … challenging uses? And Chrias, find me someone to replace the dragon woman and I’ll gladly put a hook through her tongue and hang her up for the jade ravens. Now how else—’

  ‘No!’ Quai’Shu snapped and the rest of them almost jumped out of their skins. Even the Watcher flinched. ‘No,’ he said again. They looked at him as though he was mad. ‘You take my legacy and already you sell it to the Sun King. Do I have a say? Do you even bother to ask? Do I want to sell my monsters? You will not sell my dragons. You will not kill my rider. You will do none of those things.’

  ‘Then perhaps I will sell your fleet,’ snapped Tsen T’Varr, ‘to pay for your indulgence!’

  Chrias was on his feet in a flash. ‘You will …’

  Quai’Shu waved a shaking finger across the table at Tsen T’Varr. He was quivering. ‘Dragons. Nothing else. Let me see them. I want to be where they are. Take me there, T’Varr. You are master here. Tell them what we need. And take me back! I want my eyrie! I want my dragons.’

  Quai’Shu fell quiet. Silence filled the room.

  Meido stood up. ‘I’ll wager—’

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Tsen T’Varr had a good voice on him when he chose to use it and now he cut Baran Meido clean in two. ‘I believe our lord has spoken.’ He smiled at them all and turned to Quai’Shu. ‘Sea Lord, we have so many dragons that I’ve already been forced to cull them. Please see reason. Let the Sun King fill our coffers. But!’ He turned and shook a finger at the rest of them. ‘I have only one alchemist and only one dragon-rider, and if we lose either then we really all might as well not have bothered. So we’ll not sell anything to anyone – indeed, perhaps we cannot – until we have more. Chrias Kwen, I will ask you this: prepare a ship to return to the dragon lands. One will do. Tell me what you need. You may have the pick of anything you wish save for LaLa here. I think it may be best if you went yourself. It’s too important and cannot be allowed to fail.’

  ‘I will do no such thing!’

  ‘He is needed here,’ said Lady Elesxian coldly. ‘In our time of weakness we do not send our kwen away!’

  ‘I think our t’varr may be on to something,’ drawled Bronzehand.

  Tsen smiled at him again. ‘If Vespinarr will loan you the ships, what is to be lost in going to Qeled save a wager?’ He glanced at Baran Meido and his smile broadened. ‘Although you too may not have LaLa. I’m afraid his place is firmly at our lord’s side until the matter of a successor is settled. Jima Hsian will make us some money. Tell the Sun King he can have his dragon one day but make him pay! I’ll keep the wolves away and give our lord’s hsian and kwen what they need. I will beg,’ he said, ‘for that’s where we find ourselves.’

  Tsen bowed and sat down. The silence that followed was a long one.

  ‘What if we were to offer a stake in the eyrie?’ mused Jima Hsian. The Watcher shifted back into his shadows and smiled to himself. There. That was how a sea lord did it. Tigers on the outside, kittens in the middle. As long as you promised them money.

  Chrias Kwen stood up. ‘Ten per cent, Hsian,’ he said. ‘No more. You may offer it as you see fit and get the best price you can. I’m sure that will be more than enough to spare Tsen T’Varr the ignominy of begging …’

  He stopped as Quai’Shu suddenly rose. ‘I need the water closet,’ he said shrilly. Then he looked down at himself as the smell eked its way across the room. The Watcher took his hand before any of the others could do it. Before they fought over him as they’d fight over everything else.

  ‘Our lord has spoken.’ The Watcher said it so quietly that they had to stop and turn their ears towards him. Who will strike at you first, old man? Would your kwen? No. Someone else then? Not Tsen T’Varr, that’s for sure. You as good as made him your heir, old man. Did you mean to? Probably not. He guided Sea Lord Quai’Shu gently towards the mahogany door. ‘I will be attending the Great Sea Council,’ he told them all. ‘We both will.’ He met their eyes one by one around the table. If there was murder then the Watcher would hunt the killer down. He let them see that, let them have no doubts at all, but even as he left Quai’Shu’s sons were making a wager on how long Tsen T’Varr could keep him alive.

  Baros Tsen T’Varr looked deep into the silver cup in his hand, into the pale heady apple wine. When I look back, I suppose this will be the moment I started to wonder exactly who poured every cup I drink. My, my, won’t that be fun. Did I really have to make the poison chalice so firmly mine? But then hadn’t it been so ever since Quai’Shu ordered him into the desert to built his dragon eyrie? Probably. He clasped his hands and found himself twiddling the many rings on his fingers. He wasn’t the only one. Everyone here had rings, all of them much the same, all to counter the tiny slivers of gold-glass under the skin of each finger. The slivers had been Quai’Shu’s way of binding them to each other but it had gone down like a lead glasship and they’d all found a way around it before long. About the one and only thing they’d all worked seamlessly together to achieve.

  ‘A month at the outside.’ Bronzehand smiled and opened his hands.

  ‘You clearly haven’t seen our t’varr’s dragon fortress,’ scoffed Meido. ‘You won’t get a Regrettable Man inside it and no one here can afford an Elemental, not any more. I say three months before our kwen or his lady find a way.’

  ‘Someone already did,’ said Tsen quietly, still gazing at his wine, but none of them seemed to hear. He glanced around the table but no one caught his eye. Do I really think one of these sent a Regrettable Man to murder my alchemist? No. They’re not that stupid, any of them.

  Chrias Kwen scowled. ‘What a
re you saying?’

  ‘Natural causes, I’m sure.’ Meido shrugged.

  ‘Three months, Baran Meido?’ Tsen was suddenly on his feet, not quite sure why or what he was going to say but timing was everything. Fortune and timing, and this moment needed to be seized. Bewildered by what was happening around you or not, you didn’t get to serve a sea lord for a decade without an instinct to grasp every opportunity as it drifted by and Quai’Shu had practically handed him his own boots. ‘I’ll take that wager. I’ll make it six.’ He offered his arm and grinned.

  ‘Six. And I’ll take your eyrie and your dragons if I win.’ Meido smiled.

  Of course you will. ‘And I’ll take everything you have in Vespinarr if you lose.’

  ‘Wait!’ Elesxian jumped up. She almost threw herself at the pair of them but the great table was in the way. Too late. Oh dear, oh dear. Tsen smiled at her and Chrias Kwen as he and Baran Meido clasped arms on their wager. Have we just agreed that one of us will succeed Quai’Shu, one way or the other? No, we have a wager. Much more important!

  ‘The eyrie is not yours to give, T’Varr,’ snarled Chrias.

  ‘It is our lord’s.’ Tsen bowed to them all. ‘I merely wager the onerous task of looking after it for him.’

  ‘Against the heavy burden of our interests in Vespinarr.’ Meido smiled too. Good. They had an agreement. All I have to do is keep our lord alive through six months and a stream of assassins that will no doubt start very soon indeed. And now out. Tsen left the council room in Quai’Shu’s wake, hurrying through the glass cage that surrounded it and into the creamy open marble halls of Xican’s tower within the Crown of the Sea Lords. The atrium was an indulgence of open space, half the height of the whole tower, the roof almost lost in the vastness overhead. Two sides of the tower were raw gold-glass, the one facing in towards the amphitheatre of the Proclamatory and the other facing out towards the sea. They let in the sun – when there was sunshine to be had instead of the usual Khalishtor rain – and so the tower was bright, even down at its feet. Men and women in peacock robes moved back and forth, some with cloaks and some without but all with feathers here and there, anything and everything from a single quill braided into their hair to a forest of plumage. Like every Taiytakei they wore their hair in braids, in different numbers and colours and lengths and Tsen could look at a man or a woman, look at the colours and the patterns, the feathers and their braids and know exactly their function, who they were, their family, to which sea lord they were tied, where they came from and where, most likely, they were going. Each of us in his place and our place on display for all. Starting with the hair, and if your braids don’t reach down to the backs of your thighs then you’re simply not worth my time. Sorry but there it is.