Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  ‘People assume a great deal,’ he said as they slipped under their separate sheets on their second night in the sky. ‘Do not let it concern you.’ And she realised that yes, people did assume so very much, and that she’d come to count on it.

  ‘What are you trying to show me with this?’ she asked. ‘Do you have some guard here I cannot see who keeps you safe from me? Alone, so very much could come to pass. It still might.’

  ‘And little of it good –’ he yawned ‘– and yet here we are and you haven’t murdered me even once.’

  ‘It’s always there, that thought.’

  ‘I suppose it is, and I’m quite sure you could have done so if you wished. I am just a fat old man, after all. And no, there is no guard.’ He laughed. ‘Although of course I might be lying.’ He smiled again. ‘I knew another slave once. Like you in some ways, very different in others. You wouldn’t kill me even if you were certain there was no hidden guard to stop you. If you wanted to die, you’d be dead. And we will never quite trust one another, and one day, if I’m foolish enough or you’re clever enough, you’ll find a way to be free. But I don’t think I can have what I want from you any other way.’ Another chuckle. ‘Yes, Dragon-Queen, you’re being tested just as you have been testing me. We both know this. I think we’ve both done quite well too. Perhaps even surprised one another.’

  Tested? But in more ways than the obvious, surely. She felt the answers there as she fell asleep, flitting and fluttering at the edges of her reason yet always dancing between her fingertips as she reached for them. It dawned on her as she dreamed that this t’varr might be a lot more dangerously clever than he seemed.

  On the morning of the fourth day the clouds thinned and faded away. They flew over dry brown land wrinkled and scarred by rivers, crossed a line of hills and drifted towards a scorched and yellow desert. The glasship sank. Tsen went to stand by one of the windows at the front above the little door leading to the place where the pilot golem was. In the warmth Zafir shivered when he showed her. The closest a Taiytakei could come to being a dragon-rider and they replaced their pilots with automata. Then he beckoned her to stand beside him and pointed. To share his window they had to stand close, so close that now and then they touched.

  Sitting on the desert ahead was a huge rock. ‘My eyrie,’ he said.

  No. Not sitting on the desert but floating over it, and on its back was a round fortress of thick sloping walls and low squat towers and … other things whose nature she couldn’t make out from so far away. It reminded her a little of Evenspire with its sloping walls meant to stand up to dragons. She saw it and laughed. It floats in the air so has no tunnels deep under the ground and so there’s nowhere to hide when the dragons come. ‘Whoever is master of that eyrie had better make victory a habit,’ she murmured.

  Maybe Tsen misunderstood her. He pulled away, faced her, reached out a hand and touched her brow with two warm fingers. ‘Yes,’ he said. He went back to his chair but Zafir stayed, watching until the floating eyrie was beneath them and she couldn’t see it any more. She’d seen the one thing that mattered by now. The golden war-dragon perched on one wall. A monster. Her monster. Her heart skipped a beat. She knew him at once. Diamond Eye, for the deathly pale blue of his eyes like glacier ice.

  The glasship slid slower and lower through the air and finally came to a halt on the sloping wall. Through the windows Zafir took in Tsen’s eyrie. The space was huge, bigger than any walled circus she’d ever seen, bigger than the Speaker’s Yard in the Adamantine Palace. Bigger even than the spaces inside the vast walls of Evenspire and yet almost empty. A few huts in the middle, a lot of crude tents around them, lines of sails strung up on ropes, partitioning the yard like low walls, flapping in the wind. In one area she saw hatchlings chained to the stone. She tried to count them. A dozen perhaps, give or take.

  The back of the gondola split apart and the ramp of gold and glass lowered. Tsen made a little gesture and Zafir stepped outside, but the t’varr made no move to follow her. On top of the walls were squat towers, little more than a few stone pillars with a roof on top; along and below the walls were dozens of long blunt-ended tubes made of thick iron. Each was mounted on a mesh of metal wheels built to turn quickly. They were nothing like the scorpions defending the Adamantine Palace: the tubes pointed up rather than out and there was no dragon-scale shield to protect the firer. Strange.

  At last she let herself look at the dragon, like a treat saved for the end, and all else was forgotten. Diamond Eye. A war-dragon from her own eyrie, massive, mature but still in his prime. A real monster, almost eighty strides across the wing and thirty tall when he lifted his head, scales of gold and gleaming crimson but also silver and greens and blues across his belly, a tail that could bring down castle walls with a single swipe and the strength and the power to lift a Taiytakei ship clean out of the water and crush it to firewood. That was a dragon, and this was what it meant to be a dragon-queen.

  A tightness crossed her face. A flash of sadness, quickly twisted to an anger she couldn’t hide. Her dragon, ridden by riders she’d trusted with her life, and the Great Flame knew there’d been few enough of those by the end. Dead now and gone for ever. She stared at Diamond Eye and the sadness flared again. They’d served her to the end. Even in their dying, they’d served. No other riders left but her and so Shrin Chrias Kwen was denied his hanging and she was alive and here and given, once more, a dragon to fly. And we will, my beautiful deathbringer. We will. We’ll show this world what we can be, both of us. The anger shifted to a fierce glee. The hunger she’d felt before Evenspire. There will be a reckoning. One day we will burn them all. And as she thought it, the dragon lifted its head and turned towards her, and she could almost feel it noticing her and seeing her for the first time and knowing who she truly was. As it should be. For I sat astride you many times, my deathbringer. I felt your wings beat at my command and you heard my thoughts and my will. You’re mine and we will be one again.

  As if he heard her, Diamond Eye spread his wings and lifted his head and snorted a column of fire into the sky. The soldiers around her flinched and she laughed. You know nothing. You all call me slave but you know nothing.

  Tsen came out of the egg at last, the Elemental Man beside him, and she smiled some more and nodded to herself. He’d been there all the time then, as the alchemist had warned he might be. Loitering, so there had been a guard, and Tsen hadn’t been quite as much at her mercy as he’d wanted her to think. He’d tricked and lured her and lulled her and she had the vague sense that a game had been played between them these last few days, one she didn’t quite understand and had comprehensively lost. But the dragon filled her head now. Tsen could wait.

  He looked serene, untroubled as he stared at the monster on the walls. ‘Well, yes,’ he said after a bit to the Elemental Man beside him. ‘You said it was big but I suppose it’s one of those things you need to see for yourself to really understand what big actually means. My, my. What a difference it would have made had we brought this one to Khalishtor.’ He looked at Zafir. ‘And you will fly this creature for me.’ And she wasn’t sure whether it was a question or simply a statement of what would be.

  Parts of a harness still hung around Diamond Eye’s back. ‘Yes,’ she breathed and had to fight back the urge to go to the dragon right now, to look for the mounting ladder and climb straight up onto its back, even in this useless slave-silk tunic they made her wear. Seeing the dragon now, the longing was a physical pain. ‘And so will you,’ she said.

  Tsen laughed and his belly shook under his peacock robes. ‘No, slave, I will not.’

  ‘Oh, you will.’ She smiled at him. ‘How could you resist?’

  He was still laughing. ‘It will be very easy.’ He walked away along the top of the walls and then down steep steps
into the dragon yard. Zafir watched him go until he vanished through a hole in the base of the walls. She was for a moment alone. For the first time in days.

  The dragon. Still looking at her. Calling her. Come, rider, for I yearn to soar and do you not feel the same? And she did, but the thoughts must have been her own because dragons didn’t talk, not when they were dulled, and if the alchemist’s potions had somehow failed wouldn’t the eyrie be a smoking ruin?

  But still … Yes, Diamond Eye. We’ll fly soon. A promise to herself. She started along the wall and down the steps, looking for Bellepheros and his potions.

  43

  The Sea Lord’s Granddaughter

  Shrin Chrias Kwen sent the fleet on its way home from Khalishtor, gathering as many soldiers as he could before it left. They were poor troops – slaves mostly, ill trained with little armour and old weapons that would break as likely as damage anything else – but they were the best he could get in a few days. In Xican he might find more.

  Once the fleet’s orders had been given, he took his own glasship and followed, taking the direct route over the land. He crossed the gleaming aqueduct of Shevana-Daro which ran like an arrow of light from the city to the edge of the mountains. Then over the sea past the Zinzarran island of Bal Ithara with its sheep and its rain and its bloody-minded farmers who eked what living they could from a land that hated them, and from there on to the Grey Isle and the City of Stone. Home.

  Go and find more riders. Quai’Shu had already lost them some thirty ships, burned by dragons while anchored in the bay outside Furymouth, and that had been before he’d helped King Valmeyan steal all of the Prince Jehal’s dragon eggs. Perhaps the Mountain King had won his war but Chrias Kwen had met both and thought he probably hadn’t. If the prince was back on his throne in Furymouth then the best that any Taiytakei could expect was to have their ships burned to ash around them. The fat fool of a t’varr was right, though. One alchemist and one dragon-rider was too few of either.

  He looked down over the desolate rain-swept stone of the Grey Isle. Here was as good a place as any for monsters, wasn’t it? Elesxian could start building, have the Stoneguard dig tunnels and caves ready for the slaves and the dragons when he found a way to wrest them from Tsen’s grip. They’d need their own alchemist though, ready and waiting, and as for a rider …

  He closed his eyes. An expedition to the dragon lands meant paying for a navigator to take them across the storm-dark. It meant half a dozen ships at the very least. He’d have to land his men far away from either city or eyrie so the ships wouldn’t be burned by wandering dragons with their riders. He’d have to find the sort of men who could stay hidden in a hostile land for weeks, perhaps months, who could slip into an eyrie full of dragons and slip away again with captives who’d be far from happy about being taken. One of the lesser shifters, one of the failed Elemental Men, a windwalker or an earthshifter perhaps, but again they cost a small fortune and Quai’Shu had already almost ruined them.

  Almost ruined? Such things were a t’varr’s domain and t’varrs were always prone to exaggerate, but Chrias had his own spies. As far as he could see, Tsen was right. Xican was so deep in debt that they’d all be slaves before another year was out and for what? Eggs and babies! Vespinarr would own them all before much longer! If they had their way, they’d take Tsen’s eyrie and everything in it for a fraction of what it was worth and put Meido on his father’s throne, no better than the Vespinese puppet lord of Tayuna; and yes, Tsen had no love for the Vespinese either and he might fight them tooth and nail, but how, when success depended on a slave who brewed potions from his own blood and would doubtless soon be murdered and that … that murderous whore-slave who ought to be hanging from nails through her feet for what she’d done to Zifan’Shu … Yes. Alchemists and riders, another few of each and soon, but not given to Baros Tsen and his eyrie. They’d be held safe and in secret in Xican, out of harm’s way.

  He sighed. Tsen was actually damn good as a t’varr. Why couldn’t he be content? What did he want that he didn’t already have? But there was no point dwelling on that – Tsen clearly wasn’t content and so he’d have to be brought to heel and that meant taking his power away. Chrias turned from the window and paced tiny circles inside the gondola. He couldn’t send his black-cloaks to the dragon lands – they were Taiytakei and could never pass as anything else. It would have to be slaves. Slaves from the dragon lands themselves. The Taiytakei had plenty, and mostly they hated the dragon-riders and the alchemists. If times had been different he’d go among the sword-slaves who’d come from there and pick them himself and yes, he’d probably lead the expedition with a handful of his own best men but not now, not with Quai’Shu as he was. He’d need someone else. Someone he could trust with six ships and two hundred men and possibly the future of the Grey Isle itself.

  He stopped his pacing and smiled. Someone to be the next kwen when he wore Quai’Shu’s cape. Now there was a prize worth having.

  The glasship wafted through the stone spires of the city and drew to a silent halt over the Palace of Leaves. It nudged itself up against the spike of a black stone monolith; its rim touched the very top of the stone and the arcane energy of the earth trickled through, charging the glasship for its next journey. As it did, the golden gondola eased down on its chains. It came to rest a finger above the earth, and through the windows Chrias saw that Elesxian was waiting for him. Elesxian of the Grey Isle. She was Quai’Shu’s eldest grandchild, heir of his heir, the treasured daughter who ruled the city in Zifan’Shu’s name while Zifan’Shu sailed at his own father’s side, and of all Quai’Shu’s bloodline by far the best choice for the city’s next sea lord. Chrias took a moment to compose himself. Every gesture between them carried meaning. Some to those who watched, some only to himself and Elesxian. She’d left Khalishtor too soon. He needed her to see that matters had changed between them and he needed her to see that at once; but at the same time there would be other eyes on them, and those eyes would have to be blind – all they must see was a kwen come to his sea lord’s vassal to call upon her resources.

  He opened the egg and stepped outside and bowed. Not the kowtow a sea lord would demand but a bow of almost-equals. He let himself dip perhaps an inch lower than usual. She would see that – and yes, a moment of hesitation before she began the ritual of greeting, old words known by rote, offering her home and her fire and her water. He replied with the formal words every Taiytakei knew by heart. Rituals like these were useful. They broke silences, calmed and settled angry thoughts, and today they filled the awkward handful of seconds it took to walk from his own glasship to hers, brought down to take him to the airy rooftops of her palace. As they entered her own egg – silver this one, streaked with gold, but a true golden egg was for the sea lord and his first servants only – he saw she’d come alone. As had he; and as the glasship rose and there could at last be no eyes watching through the windows, Chrias offered her his arms.

  ‘I’m sorry for the loss of your father,’ he said, the first time he’d truly been able to offer her any comfort. In Khalishtor everything had orbited Quai’Shu and his broken mind. Everyone else had largely forgotten his murdered son but Chrias. Zifan’Shu would have been a fine lord. The succession would have been clear and no one would have questioned it.

  Elesxian looked away. Instead of coming to him she sat among the gold-embroidered cushions heaped around the floor. ‘I would have followed him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Chrias sat down beside her. He came close but she leaned away and held up a hand. ‘Stop. That’s not what I want now. My father’s dead and our sea lord has lost his mind, and all for marvellous treasures that turn out to be monsters. And where are they? Out of our hands. Uncle Meido has turned on us and now he and our lord’s t’varr seem to think they can exclude us. They forget who is the lady of this city. Will you be here for long?’

  ‘Not
long.’ In Khalishtor she’d worn her masks well. He hadn’t realised how bitter she must have felt. ‘The fleet is on its way. I’ll make arrangements for its replenishment and another foray to the dragon lands to acquire an alchemist of our ow—’

  ‘Another? To what end, Chrias? To burn more ships?’

  ‘What Baros Tsen T’Varr has is far too fragile. I’ll be careful.’ He snorted. ‘And yes, I’ll be cheap. But that will likely take months before it’s done. Until then I’ll move between here and Khalishtor. We both must. Tsen can’t be left to act freely there or he’ll become Quai’Shu’s voice while he keeps our lord alive and stifled in his eyrie.’ Supplying the fleet was a t’varr’s job too, and so he could easily have sent one of his own t’varrs here to arrange the expedition instead of coming himself. People would wonder why he hadn’t. He’d have to choose. Let them see the squadron forming to cross the storm-dark or let them see his real reason. He looked at her. Elesxian. Grief was making her older than her years but she was beautiful. Skin black as the dead of night, hair braided down to her feet like a cloak, soft rounded belly …

  ‘Tsen!’ Elesxian suddenly threw back her head and snarled. ‘That impotent! What fool dragged him out of his bath and told him he could have a say in this?’

  ‘He’s not stupid, Elesxian.’

  ‘Our sea lord named my father to follow him, not that fat fool. Gods! You came here to replenish our fleet? With what? Do you have money? My coffers are beyond empty and frankly I have no idea who will lend to me. I’ve already sold more than you’d care to hear and I have little left but my city. Shall I auction it off piece by piece? And our t’varr who made this calamity will now be the one to save us from utter catastrophe? I doubt even the great Shan Su could have pulled us from this mire, but Tsen? Tsen?’ She made a strangled noise and shook her head. ‘Open the ramp! I may as well hurl myself into the abyss right away and save myself the pain of waiting. And by whose command? Who chooses that it will be Tsen?’