Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  He waited outside Quai’Shu’s private rooms until the sea lord emerged again, clothes changed, scented and sweet. Six black-cloaks and LaLa came with him. Not quite a guarantee against any assassin but certainly an open threat of the consequences that would follow.

  ‘Well you don’t look happy, killer. Does our plotting not amuse you?’

  ‘It saddens me, Hands of the Sea Lord, that I have to wonder which of you will be first to try and poison my lord.’

  ‘I can tell you it won’t be me.’ And what other wagers were made after I left? Some, for sure. Alliances, bargains, some to be honoured, others to be betrayed. The usual goings-on of a sea lord’s council. He grinned to himself. Pleasant though to hammer a wedge between Meido and his niece. Perhaps we should look and see if we can find another? ‘If I – if we – can see that he lasts six months, Baran Meido has thrown his support behind me. If not? Well, then the eyrie and the dragons will be his and I will be his servant. Lady Elesxian was most obviously unamused so I would say she and Chrias Kwen are my enemies for now, but it will be Meido who tries first, LaLa. I am sure enough of that to give you good odds on a wager of our own, if you like.’

  They guided Quai’Shu towards the wall facing the Proclamatory, to the rising glass platform that would take them to the Paths of Words, the narrow glass bridges that reached from the towers of the Crown’s outer ring to its silver heart and the Great Sea Council. Tsen sat Quai’Shu safely in the middle where he couldn’t fall, then shielded him from darts and arrows with his black-cloaks. He tapped the glass with his black rod and then found his eyes darting from place to place, already looking for the first of Meido’s killers. Now there’s a thought. Did he have that wager in mind before he even came? Wouldn’t put it past him.

  No. Couldn’t think like that or he’d go mad before even a day was out, and so he forced himself to be still and looked at the view. Even a sea lord never tired of this: the sun low behind him already setting the horizon aglow and firing the rippling sea. Orange light filled the void around him like a memory of a time when the world had burned and the pale stone walls were tinged pink as if with blood not quite washed away. In front of him the other twelve great towers gleamed and flickered, their shapes catching the sun and then losing it again as Tsen and his sea lord rose. The mighty coliseum of the Proclamatory was lost in an abyss of shadows. Above it the Paths of Words glittered while the evening sun turned the silver sphere of the Great Sea Council to a burnished copper. Much higher still, the vast glass Star of the Navigators shone like a jewel at the peak of a copper-gold crown. There lived the handful of men and women who held the knowledge to cross the storm-dark, the key to every sea lord’s power.

  It wasn’t always this way. There was another world once, brighter than this one and whole. He glanced at LaLa. However hard your sort try to make us forget. With no Endless Ocean and where the storm-dark didn’t rage. Where every artifice of the enchanters would seem pale and shallow. A lost world. Useless to dream of such things and it might not even be true, but still … Tsen stared up at the Star. Thing is though, if it is true, how did it fall? I’d like to know, because here in front of me is the font of every sea lord’s power and I wonder how easily that too might fall.

  In the light of the setting sun the Star seemed to glow as though it was on fire and suddenly all Tsen could think of were dragons. He shuddered. And now I’m just letting my imagination get melodramatic – clearly I need Kalaiya here to slap me to my senses. He poked LaLa, because there was something about poking an Elemental Man that always brought him sharply back to the here and now. ‘Bronzehand has bowed out and allowed himself to be sent to Qeled.’ Along with half of what Baran Meido had promised in his wager, Tsen suddenly realised. Cunning bastard. Gives away half his power to remove one rival and then negates his sacrifice by a wager of everything he has. Yes, too cunning by half. ‘Jima Hsian remains as enigmatic as ever. He’s a hsian though. If he saw this coming then our lord would already be dead.’ He could say things like that to LaLa. Not to anyone else. Perhaps I should stop calling you that now? If I was you I really wouldn’t like it. But there’s that little devil that says I have to.

  The view blurred in front of him as the platform climbed the inside wall of the tower. There were men standing right in front of him on the other side of the great glass wall with short cropped hair, plain white tunics and brands instead of feathers. Slaves on a little platform sat atop a silver egg suspended by silver chains, cleaning the glass with rags and buckets of water. Tsen looked up. High above floated a glasship. Beyond that, clouds were sweeping in from the north. Rain again? Ah, Khalishtor! But after so much time in the desert I suppose I shan’t begrudge you a little of your favourite weather. He glanced up at the glasship again. Extravagant to use one for such vanity. Maybe he should speak about that to the t’varr who looked after this tower. One of his own staff? Had to be, but he was buggered if he could think of a name. ‘It would be best, first, to address our debts,’ he said, largely to himself since LaLa surely didn’t care and Quai’Shu had slipped into his daydreams again. And then the glass-cleaning slaves were far below and the glass beneath his feet slid in effortless silence to a stop.

  There were no doors to the Paths of Words, only gold-glass that opened like a flower to the touch of Tsen’s black rod. He tensed. Never liked this bit. Whenever he reached the top he always remembered the wind first, the howling gusts that blew across the Paths. There were no guard rails, nothing at all to stop a man from falling. It was a test, Quai’Shu had said many years ago when he’d first brought his promising young t’varr here. Yes, and wasn’t it just. Worst bloody weather in ten years. Howling great thunderstorm. Winds to snap anchor chains and pissing with rain. First thing that happened when you opened up the wall was lightning hit the Star of the Navigators and I almost fell off. Only those of courage may enter the Sea Council, you said. Only the ridiculously bloody stupid today, I thought, but I did it, even if you almost had to carry me. People still remember. We had the Great Sea Council to ourselves. Everyone else had far too much sense to be out in that weather. Today was calm, but this was a different Quai’Shu now, old and broken. Would it be such a bad thing if you fell? You wouldn’t be the first. But if you do, then let it be because you’ve had enough, old man, not because of me, not even if LaLa wasn’t here and the two of us were alone. A witless sea lord was burden enough for any house, never mind one so crippled with debt, but Quai’Shu was Tsen’s lord and master, had been his mentor once though there might not have been much love over the years, and even without Meido’s wager he wouldn’t simply stand by and do nothing. They walked side by side, arms wrapped around each other through the wind over glass as clear as water and then hundreds of feet of emptiness, and it seemed nothing more than two men who were well past their prime, both uncertain and a little fearful, holding on to one another to share what courage they had. As you did for me in that storm. Although the glass is wider than it seems and there really isn’t much danger of falling, not if your feet are sure, but it does things to a man’s mind to look down, doesn’t it? Straight through the air to the gardens and the trees and the contours of the water terraces so far below and you start to wonder, don’t you, old man? What it would be like to fly, truly to fly.

  The glass platform sank back towards the ground. Others would follow bringing the alchemist and the dragon-rider and the little dragon. He laughed. Yes. Little dragon – the hatchling was as large as a horse and its tail made it more than twice as long. It would be interesting to see how that could be coaxed along the Paths of Words and he almost wished he could stay to watch. But Quai’Shu was his concern now; for the next six months, nothing else mattered. There were other people whose purpose was to see to such things as slaves and monsters.

  From tower to Crown, the glass bridge was five hundred bold paces long, give or take a handful. Quai’Shu took far more than that and they were
slow ones too, but Tsen tolerated it. When they reached the globe of gleaming silver that was the heart of the Crown, he tapped his rod against its bright skin and the silver shimmered and flowed like liquid, opening before him. The globe of the Great Sea Council was another relic, a thing from a different time like the floating castle that had become his eyrie. The enchanters had found it and resurrected it long ago. Did they understand it? He didn’t know. Could they have made it themselves, this thing of liquid silver? He thought not, but he’d never know because neither the enchanters nor the navigators would ever speak of such things, not to one who wasn’t their own.

  He stepped through into an open comforting space that glowed with its own light – another thing that made him think of his flying eyrie. It was a simple structure inside, one quicksilver globe inside the other. The Great Sea Council sat in the inner globe and from there they ruled the six known worlds. A series of spacious halls had been built between the two layers where the entourages of the sea lords might mingle and wait for their summons to the council itself. And, on the council’s more exciting days, occasionally stab one another.

  The inner skin flowed and opened before the touch of Quai’Shu’s rod. There were no guards here, no soldiers, no weapons. You either had a wand that would make the walls part for you or you didn’t, and if you didn’t then there simply wasn’t a way in. Quai’Shu had one. So did Tsen, and Jima Hsian and Chrias Kwen. Probably not any of the others, not yet, but that would soon change. Chrias Kwen will see to one for Lady Elesxian, so I should probably do something for Meido myself.

  Inside the inner sphere the black-cloaks gently manoeuvred Quai’Shu to his place among the thirteen thrones of the sea lords, arrayed in the shape of a horseshoe. Plain wooden benches were lined up behind each throne, simple and unadorned and desperately uncomfortable after not very long at all, but only sea lords sat in thrones. Four of them were already here, Quai’Shu the fifth, a sign of the importance of their twilight debate today. LaLa stood beside him – oh yes, and no pair of eyes missed that little statement, did they? – while the black-cloaks withdrew to the edge of the circle. Soft light shone from the walls, from the floor and from the roof, tinged with orange to reflect the setting sun outside. Tsen stretched his ears and listened to the whispering among the kwens and the t’varrs who served the other sea lords. Wagers, mostly, on who would attend and who would not. Across the horseshoe the throne for Lord Shonda of Vespinarr sat empty. Tsen touched a finger to his brow to salute the man who sat behind it, Vey Rin T’Varr. Rin smiled and returned a faint nod. More than half a lifetime ago he and Tsen had been friends together in the desert, chasing slaves. As far as it was possible for either of them, Tsen liked to think that old friendships still counted for something.

  The walls parted and closed again as other t’varrs and kwens and hsians took their places, or now and then left and came back again minutes later, running petty errands for their restless masters. A hush rippled over them as three navigators entered, their braided hair almost touching the floor and as long as his own. Their cloaks of feathers were iridescent things, a deep blue but shimmering in every colour of the rainbow as they caught the light. Their robes were the same. The navigators had no thrones and stood in the centre, back to back and facing outward, meeting the eyes of the assembled lords, something that only a navigator was privileged to do. One of them held an hourglass. Tsen squinted at its sands. The speaking would begin when the sun fully sank into the sea.

  More arrived, two more sea lords – seven of them in one place together, something almost unknown – and dozens of their kwens and their hsians. The murmuring grew. The sands trickled away, and as the last grain fell the navigator who held the hourglass spoke. Tsen smiled. Today wasn’t about Quai’Shu’s dragons, but one day it would be. And how many of you will come then?

  ‘The Ice Witch of Aria.’ There was a pause and then the navigator continued. Tsen sighed and tried to pay attention. Chrias Kwen would receive his own information. Jima Hsian probably knew everything he would hear today and far more besides. But Tsen listened anyway as the navigator went on. Aria was a realm that Tsen had never seen and in which he had no interest. He was a t’varr after all, charged with putting things in their correct places, and once they were there he had little interest in what they actually did. Given the choice he preferred his vineyards and his bathhouse. But the navigators’ voices betrayed their alarm – they were anxious, all of them, even afraid. Sorcerers were growing in Aria like weeds, the strongest already a threat even to an Elemental Man, it seemed. Their world was changing quickly – too quickly. They’d learned to forge near-perfect glass, might soon unravel the secrets of the enchanters, had taken Scythian steelsmiths and …

  A furore broke out at that. Not at steelsmiths being somewhere they weren’t supposed to be – that was a mere annoyance and quickly solved by the swift cut of a bladeless knife – but for them to be there at all meant that someone had taken them across the storm-dark along with secrets the Taiytakei had chosen not to share. Now the sea lords smirked and twitched and looked among themselves to see if any face would reveal who’d made such a dangerous trade and what prize they might have won in return. The t’varrs and hsians and kwens behind them whispered to one another, exchanging wagers. Tsen heard Quai’Shu’s name more than once. He closed his eyes for a moment. It would be easy to let go, to let others do whatever needed to be done. It would be like sinking back with a large happy sigh into warm scented waters, but that wasn’t why he was here. Not why Quai’Shu and Jima Hsian – and even Tsen himself these last two days – had cashed in every favour they owned to have this debate here and now with a dragon in the wings outside.

  The navigators waited, quietly letting the rest have their moment to build their little conspiracies, biding their time, and then the first navigator glared at the lords around him, fixing his eyes on them one after another. ‘They were taken, my lords. Do not look within. A sorcerer from another realm has walked between the worlds.’

  The silence unleashed was deep and long as the meaning sank in. Someone other than a navigator has crossed the storm-dark. We have an equal.

  A competitor.

  A threat.

  And here it comes. My moment. In the silence Baros Tsen T’Varr coughed and had their attention at once. Ah, but this was going to be difficult and he wasn’t even sure he wanted to do it. But he had eyes fixed on him. The lords and t’varrs and kwens and hsians of the thirteen cities. What he wanted was his bathhouse. His apple wine. His peace and quiet the way it had been a week ago but it was too late for that. He’d made this happen. This moment. Inspired or mad? He wasn’t sure but now he stood up. ‘I believe the lord of Xican may be able to offer a solution.’ No going back now. ‘A plague to ruin worlds.’ That was what the alchemist had said when they’d taken him, wasn’t it? Yes, and that, in the end, was why their lord had spent twenty-odd years of his life and broken his house’s bank to steal these monsters. Because of Jima Hsian’s warning: Some day, in our lifetime, something will come. In the Dominion, in Aria, from out of the depths of Qeled, something will rise. Something that will threaten us all and we must be ready for it.

  Twenty-three years ago. Midsummer’s night and every hsian in Takei’Tarr had said the same, but Quai’Shu was the only sea lord who’d listened.

  ‘What plague?’ The first navigator asked the question in all their eyes. Tsen let his smile grow wide. He had them where he wanted them. Every last one.

  ‘I will show you,’ he said. ‘But there will be a price, my lords. And it will not be a small one.’

  40

  Dragon-rider

  Zafir’s breath caught in her throat. The Crown of the Sea Lords did that to her every time her eyes strayed to it. She told herself not to look, told herself that the Pinnacles, her old home, were larger and grander; and they were, three whole mountains
carved and tunnelled and … and wrought long ago by the will of the Silver King. But still she couldn’t help the stolen glimpses and glances. So much glass, so much gold, so much light and so much sheer size! And the orb that floated far above it, all spines and spires of glitter. Each time it trapped her with its majesty she forced herself to see it shattered by dragons, its great golden shards falling like rain. Dragons. They were the true wonder. She was their mistress. She clung to that like a drowning man to driftwood.

  The glasship drifted to a halt at the edge of the Crown beside one of the gold-glass towers. The black-cloaks pressed a stud in the wall and the bronze shell of the gondola split open. A ramp eased down. They led her out over a flat black circle of polished marble towards the looming tower. Brass gates as tall as a ship hung open. As she passed through them, she saw they were wrought from top to bottom with pictures beaten into the metal: a huge tower topped by a circle of cloud, ringed by lesser towers; a man standing on the prow of a ship facing a storm full of lightning; men bearing gifts, bowing in supplication. At the very top, etched right across the doors, were the twin lightning-bolts of Xican.