Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  It took Kalaiya, much later when Rin was gone, to point out that his offer hadn’t been an offer at all. It had been a threat.

  51

  Lessons in Diplomacy

  Patience was the prime virtue of an Elemental Man. The golems of stone stood unblinking, unmoving, sealed between doors of gold and broken glass, but patience, beyond all the Watcher’s other talents, was always his greatest weapon. Sooner or later the kwen and the Lady Elesxian would decide that he was gone.

  The light outside began to fade. Sooner or later they’d grow hungry.

  And so they did. He admired them for their care, placing a screen of beaten golden plates where the last glass door had been, passing through curtain upon curtain of thick silver chains, keeping him out from where the Stoneguard stood if he hadn’t already been inside one of them. But the golems were stone and not flesh, and so inside he was and they took him to exactly where he had wanted to be. To Quai’Shu’s kwen and to Elesxian, his eldest granddaughter, whom Xican had made crude and brash. Elesxian, when the Watcher closed his eyes, sounded a lot like her father. They were talking about him, about who had sent him. Shrin Chrias Kwen had her hand in his own and knelt before her. It was all very touching.

  The Watcher almost wept for them. Were they so stupid? I serve my lord and only my lord.

  Blink. The sea lord had been explicit about the Lady Elesxian. Less so about his kwen and so he chose the kwen. He burst into the air behind him, knife at the ready. Chrias was quick. He dropped and rolled away before the Watcher could get his knife around the kwen’s neck and sprang back into a defensive stance, blades drawn and swinging around him. Not that it would have saved him on another day, for the Watcher would simply appear above him, knife point down, or else burst from the ground beneath. But the kwen and his kind liked to think there was no attack that could not be blocked and the Watcher saw no reason to disabuse of him of such a ridiculous idea, not today. So he stayed where he was and sheathed the bladeless knife and held up his open hands.

  ‘Your sea lord sends his salutations to the divine and beautiful daughter of his blood and to his faithful and ferocious kwen.’ The Watcher’s words were bland, the greeting carefully neutral. Elesxian spat at his feet. She was shaking. Not so stupid that she didn’t realise she had no escape. Shrin Chrias Kwen shook his head, blades still a-whirr.

  Blink. Inverted over the kwen’s head. Finger outstretched to touch the tip of his ear, a brush of skin on skin, no more. Then back exactly where he’d been an instant before. ‘You may cease your sword dance. It cannot do what you ask of it.’ A pity. Now this kwen would tell others.

  Shrin Chrias stopped. For a second he stood frozen. Then he sheathed his swords and one hand touched his ear.

  ‘Baros Tsen is no sea lord!’ hissed Elesxian. ‘Our sea lord is Quai’Shu and he chose my father to follow him. And my father—’

  ‘Chose no one,’ said the kwen softly.

  ‘It would have been me!’

  The Watcher tried again, a little more slowly this time. ‘Sea Lord Quai’Shu sends his salutations to the divine and beautiful daughter of his blood and to his faithful and ferocious kwen.’ He gave the words a little time to sink in and then, while they were still staring at him and wondering what he would do next, he walked calmly to the improvised door of beaten plates of gold, pulled it open and vanished into the air.

  A warning. That was all. They would understand. Shrin Chrias Kwen would not be a problem again.

  52

  The Touch of the Wind

  After the foolishness with the alchemist Baros Tsen sent her the pick of his men. They were fine enough, sturdy specimens, well built and well hung and they claimed to be skilful. But they were slaves. Zafir scorned them and sent them back.

  ‘Real men.’ She smiled at Tsen when he called her to him. ‘I like to hunt and stalk my prey, not pick up the leavings of others, however pretty they may be.’

  ‘A tigress,’ he said.

  Her smile faded and she shook her head. ‘A dragon-queen, Baros Tsen.’ Maybe he meant it kindly. She could almost believe it. But if she’d had a knife with her right then she might have stabbed him for that, and patience and waiting and consequences be hanged.

  When the lord of Vespinarr in his dragon robes had his moment of madness, she’d stopped Diamond Eye from killing them all. Tsen owed her for that. Another second and the dragon would have burned all the Taiytakei to ash where they stood, and Tsen too. And she could have let it. All she’d had to do was nothing at all and they’d have been dead and Diamond Eye would have feasted on their bones. She could have climbed onto his back and flown away. But she’d done what she’d done and held Diamond Eye back, and afterwards she wondered why. Because she could? To show them that she was the mistress of their dragon? Both reason enough, perhaps?

  In the days that followed she thought about what might have been. Climbing onto Diamond Eye’s back. Jumping off the edge of the eyrie. Vanishing out into the desert. What if she’d done that and their lightning hadn’t brought her down before she got away? What then? The Elemental Man would have come for her, that’s what Bellepheros always said. She’d get a mile or two before he caught her and cut her head off her shoulders and there wouldn’t be a thing she could do to stop him. But when she looked, it wasn’t that that had stopped her.

  What if he hadn’t caught her? What then? Alone in the desert. They’d hunt her. Fine – she had a dragon – she’d hunt them back. Whatever came for her she’d fight it, and sooner or later she’d die because she had nothing to protect her from the lightning or from Diamond Eye’s fire.

  But it wasn’t that either. Maybe it was because whatever she did, whatever battles she won, she could never go home. Her old life was a world away, a crossing of the storm-dark, but it wasn’t that. Even if she smashed and burned their world piece by piece until she forced them to take her home, even if she found a way to do that without them slitting her throat, what then? What was there? What would it look like? One rider and one dragon against whoever had taken her throne?

  Closer to the mark now.

  She was waiting. She hadn’t realised it until now but that was the truth of it. She was waiting for something to happen. She didn’t know why or what but it felt right. And she would return to take her throne one day, but when she did it would be with an army at her back. And she didn’t know how or when, but that was how it would be, because she was who she was.

  And all the time Tsen orbited those thoughts, every single one, and she had to wonder why that was. Did she like him? Flame, I hope not. But no, not particularly. He’d made her a slave and one day she’d kill him for that, and the thought didn’t particularly trouble her. And yet while she was waiting and had nothing else to do, he fascinated her. It was his simple lack of interest. She didn’t know what to do with that. However hard she tried, it wouldn’t leave her alone.

  The days passed. The eyrie took to moving slowly over the desert again. Three glasships floated above, pulling it along by their tethers, inching it above the dunes, hour after hour, day after day. The salt marshes and the distant rivers of the Lair of Samim vanished in the night, replaced by a sea of sand. On the far horizon a range of mountains was a constant outline in the haze. Other glasships came and went, sometimes more than one each day, and every morning great floating glass sleds drifted up carrying soldiers and desert men and barrels and crates and pens full of Linxia for the dragons to eat. They came early in the morning and spent half the day shadowing the eyrie while the rim cranes lifted animals and men and supplies for slaves to take over the wall into the dragon yard. Usually they were done by midday, sometimes not until the middle of the afternoon, and then the sleds would go south again, only to return the next morning as the eyrie made its relentless way north. With little else to do, Zafir spent her days watching the other slaves at work or dozing beside Diamond Eye, sprawled
in the hot desert sun, thinking the same lazy thoughts in the same lazy circles.

  Waiting. But for what?

  Sometimes she picked and bit at the little hard places of the Hatchling Disease. She wore a gourd around her neck now, wore it constantly since the alchemist had given it to her. Drink it slowly through the day, every day. Take more before you sleep. It will stop the disease from getting worse. I can do no more. It tasted foul but she drank it anyway, and whatever was in it, the disease hadn’t grown. She’d seen alchemists with these gourds before, plenty of them. When she’d been speaker she’d never known what they were for and had never thought to ask.

  Tsen had seen her wearing it too but she’d heard the alchemist explain: All riders drink this. It helps with the control of the dragon. Her words in his mouth, because if he’d told Tsen the truth she would have ripped him apart. No one else could know. No one. She watched the glasships as they came and went. Sometimes with Taiytakei in bright-coloured cloaks and robes and long braided hair, sometimes filled with slaves and crates and boxes quickly scurried away underground. She had no idea who or what or why. Everything she heard came from Bellepheros, and most of what he heard came from the enchantress, and the enchantress had become tight-lipped of late. Strange things were happening among the Taiytakei. She could sense it. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing. Something was coming, and all since that day with the mad lord from the mountains. Whatever Bellepheros knew, that was only the tip of it.

  ‘Shrin Chrias Kwen came in the night,’ Bellepheros told her, and then stopped and frowned as sparks lit up her eyes. When she asked him to go on he told her how the kwen had gone straight down the tunnels and spent the small hours of the night shouting and raving at mad old Quai’Shu. She listened, but as she did she saw the memory of Brightstar’s blood spreading across polished wood. When he was done, she walked to his workbench and picked up the first knife she saw. He raised a hand, opened his mouth, then closed it again. She smiled and nodded as she left.

  ‘A wise man knows when not to speak.’ She hid the knife in her room.

  When she went outside next, another glasship was over the eyrie, a silver gondola coming slowly down on its chains. Another Taiytakei lord come to see Diamond Eye. A kwen from the mountains this time, but he wasn’t the kwen she was looking for.

  Shrin Chrias Kwen. There was no knowing how long he’d stay. She might not have much time.

  ‘Slave!’

  She jumped. The black-cloaks had come up behind her and she’d been so deep in ways to kill their kwen that she hadn’t even noticed. They led her away to one of the squat towers that dotted the flying castle’s walls. Tsen was there, staring out at the sand. The t’varr didn’t turn to look at her, just waved the black-cloaks away. Something had changed in him the day Diamond Eye nearly burned them all. She’d wondered at first if the dragon fear had got to him, but it wasn’t that. His mind was somewhere else. Some heavy new burden he carried. One heavy enough to show.

  ‘I found this eyrie three hundred miles from here,’ he said without turning. ‘It took me a month to move it. Quai’Shu thought it would serve well for the dragons. It would appear he was right.’

  Zafir looked out across the desert. Far off to one side the dunes gave way to stone crags, lifeless and bare, before rising on to the distant mountains. Ahead was a sea of sand, rolling as far as she could see. This was how the northern dragon realms had been, though she’d never seen them with her own eyes. Hyram, Shezira, Lystra, they’d all come from a land like this.

  Lystra. For a moment her fists clenched. Sometimes her ankle still ached, even now.

  ‘You disagree?’ Tsen misread her.

  ‘Safe enough from assassins and thieves and poisoners.’ She shrugged and took a sip from her gourd.

  ‘More so as we fly further into the Empty Sands but there will soon be no herds of animals for our dragons to eat. The alchemist says this is necessary. Is it?’

  Zafir shrugged. ‘In Bloodsalt riders used to fly their beasts from the eyrie to far-off feeding grounds.’ Bloodsalt. Another place she’d never been, but Hyram had come from Bloodsalt. He’d talked about it sometimes after he’d spent himself inside her, while she was trying to keep herself from being sick. ‘Perhaps it makes matters hard for the alchemists with their potions – I wouldn’t know – but otherwise I see no reason it couldn’t be done here once Diamond Eye can be flown. Why would you move, though. Nowhere is safe from your Elemental Men, is that not so?’ Nowhere that wasn’t surrounded by gold or silver or iron, if she had it right. Was that why the eyrie had grown so many iron doors of late? Curious how they’d arrived and then gone and then come back again, either side of the mad mountain lord coming to visit.

  Tsen beckoned her out onto the walls. Diamond Eye was perched across the yard, his claws and his jaws clenched tight, tail lashing back and forth with a tense energy. Now and then he opened his wings and stretched. He’d been like this for days now, pausing only when he was fed as though he sensed what was coming. ‘The alchemist says you do not need your dragon-rider clothes, that thick furs will do.’

  Look at you, Diamond Eye. How eager you are. You yearn to fly, don’t you? How long have they kept you tethered? Well so do I, and so we shall! Zafir looked to the part of the yard where Bellepheros had hung the skins of the hatchlings he’d butchered for their blood. An adult dragon would take a month to burn from the inside and be cool to the touch again. For some reason hatchlings took even longer. Their skins were hanging now, the Scales treating them with vinegar and scraping them with salt. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If they’re thick enough to turn the wind and the cold. But I will need a helm. The wind is blinding and a blind rider is of little use.’ Another few days and the skin would be ready to cut. Hatchling skins weren’t as thick as dragon-scale from an adult but they made more flexible armour, and either would turn fire and that was mostly what mattered.

  ‘The harness is sufficient?’ Tsen was looking down too, but not at the hatchlings. He was looking at the silver gondola from Vespinarr, and Zafir wondered why he wasn’t down there welcoming today’s guest. It wasn’t like him.

  ‘It is.’ She’d seen to that at least. Diamond Eye must have worn the same harness for almost a month by now without it being changed once. Bellepheros apparently didn’t know how. They’d have to do something about that.

  Tsen still didn’t look at her. ‘Chay-Liang says your helm is ready. Today you’ll fly for me and show me what a dragon does.’

  Zafir almost purred. ‘And once I’m in the air, how will you stop me from turning my dragon against you, from burning every creature here to ash and smashing your castle to rubble?’ Down on the wall Diamond Eye turned his head and looked straight at her almost as though he’d heard her thoughts.

  Tsen barked out a laugh. ‘In time Chay-Liang will make a collar for you so you cannot turn your dragon against me, slave. For now you will have a guardian. The Watcher. You will do as you are told today or he will kill you instantly and never mind that I have no other rider. Do you understand me?’

  Zafir raised an eyebrow at his back. ‘I understand, Baros Tsen T’Varr. Are there enemies out in the desert? A city you wish me to destroy? For that is what dragons do.’

  ‘Not yet.’ At last Tsen turned to look at her. He held up his hands and then bared his teeth. ‘I would apologise for my terrible manners, slave. But since you are a slave, I shall not.’ He had a coldness to him, something she hadn’t seen when they’d flown across the world in his glasship together. It had come over him in the last few days. He seemed somehow disappointed in her and it made her want to please him, and that in turn made her unreasonably angry. Please him? Who is he to call a dragon-queen his slave? Burn him, that’s what you should want!

  And I do, she told herself. And I will. But it’s more complicated than tha
t.

  Complicated? When was the last time it had mattered to her to please anyone at all? She’d wrenched that out of herself years ago, hadn’t she? But as she wondered, she found herself staring into a wall of doubts and fears that she didn’t dare to touch.

  I want to break him.

  You’d better.

  ‘Have I upset you?’ she asked.

  ‘Upset me?’ Tsen closed his eyes and shook his head and looked away at the dragon. ‘You are a slave, dragon-queen. An important one, I will allow, but that is still what you are. Show me what this dragon can do today. Show me that my sea lord’s madness and his ruin of our fleets has not been in vain.’

  He beckoned her away from the tower and they walked together past the first of the long tubes pointed up into the sky, mounted on the familiar pivots she knew from the scorpions in the Pinnacles and the Adamantine Palace. The tubes were set at a high angle, several of them to each mount and all slightly different. She looked at them. Bellepheros had said they were weapons, but if they were she had no idea how they worked. ‘These. They are like scorpions?’

  ‘Cannon,’ said Tsen, his thoughts somewhere else.

  ‘That’s a name for which I have no meaning.’

  He paused for a moment, gave her a puzzled look, then stepped towards the nearest. As he did, soldiers came hurrying along the wall towards it, anticipating his desire. They were Taiytakei, these soldiers, not slaves. Tsen turned back to Zafir and for a moment his coldness was gone. ‘In our world our power lies with our fleet. Our ships are our heart, our wealth, our treasure. You understand that, I think. They are that which makes us what we are and so they are perhaps a little like your dragons. It’s been a very long time since one sea lord last waged war against another.’ His eyes wandered just for a moment and there was a flicker of a hesitation in his voice. He caught it quickly, so fast she almost didn’t hear it. Almost. Then he was smiling, his mask intact again. ‘The Elemental Men respond quite, ah … finally to such things, you see. But there are others who ply the seas.’ He looked up to the glasships towing the eyrie deeper into the desert. ‘And also the skies.’ One of the Taiytakei soldiers had hopped onto a small sled and had flown to the top of the tubes now. Zafir watched. The soldier dropped a cloth bag as large and heavy as a sack of flour into the top of one of them. Then a bundle of straw rammed in hard with a long pole. Finally he tipped in a basket of black iron balls each as big as a clenched fist. Tsen beckoned her on, away. ‘At sea a ship may outrun a glasship but a fleet at anchor or a city or this castle cannot. You have seen a glasship float above Khalishtor and pour water upon fire; imagine if you will that it might pour fire instead.’ He turned back to the soldiers around the cannon. ‘Put your hands over your ears, slave, and watch carefully the mouth of the barrel.’