Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  In the middle of the yard she paused, looked up to the sky, closed her eyes and soaked in the sun and the warmth and the dragon’s wild hunger. In the years after that day with Azure she’d flown more and more. She’d become a rider, a dragon-princess. The joy had faded, too familiar perhaps, but she never quite forgot, and every time she climbed onto a dragon’s back she closed her eyes and thought of that day and of what had come after. She’d looked for it everywhere. With dragons at first. With men, when she’d come to understand what they could do for her. She’d found it for fleeting moments with Jehal, who would die a thousand deaths if she ever found him again. She’d come close over Evenspire in the wild mad fury of that fight; lost herself here and there for little moments until the battle had turned sour. Afterwards, when she was sure she was alone, she’d wept, wept as the little girl who’d found the door to heaven and lost it again.

  And here, of all places, she’d found it once more. Joy.

  ‘Mistress is pleased.’ Myst had found her voice these days.

  ‘Mistress is,’ murmured Zafir, still with her eyes closed. She held out her arms and stretched.

  ‘They’re looking at you.’ Myst meant the Taiytakei. Zafir opened her eyes and saw that they were, all of them. Watching her, some of them openly, some of them furtively from the towers. Tsen T’Varr and Chrias Kwen and the lord from the mountain city and a dozen others in clothes and feathers that would put rainbows and peacocks to shame were gathered together up on the wall. They were well away from Diamond Eye, but the dragon loomed over everything. And Diamond Eye was looking at her, and so now the Taiytakei were looking at her too. She wondered what it was that drew them in – the power? The hunger? But today they want me. All of them. One way or another they want me for what I have. Even Tsen.

  Taiytakei black-cloaks followed as she walked to the castle walls and mounted the steps. She lounged against the stone parapets, dressed in white silk and barefoot. The desert sun beat down and made her skin hot. Her face tingled. She stretched her arms and arched her back, soaking in the heat while Myst and Onyx stood beside her, heads bowed, still as statues. With her long tunic loose around her shoulders and her waist, her arms and ankles bare, the desert was bearable. The soldiers around her with their metal plates stitched into cloth, in their glass and gold and their long florid cloaks, she didn’t know how they could bear it. They must be sweating rivers. She looked at them, wondering, and they looked back, desire and envy and disgust mixed together in their gleaming faces while their hands gripped their ashgars and their lightning wands. They couldn’t help themselves. They think I’m a whore. She laughed at them and smiled and shook her head. They wouldn’t be the first, and whatever they thought it didn’t matter. Taiytakei women kept themselves covered from chin to ankle. So what? She wasn’t Taiytakei and none of them would ever have her unless she chose it. Another rule of steel forged on Azure’s back that day. Never again a slave to any lusts but her own.

  The Taiytakei gathered on the wall began to disperse. Tsen paused. He saw her flaunting herself in his path and turned and went a different way. What’s wrong with you? What are you afraid of? But it wasn’t Tsen she wanted anyway, and the arcane rules they lived by said that none of the others could follow in his wake save the lord who was his guest. Shrin Chrias Kwen – he was the one she wanted. She set her eyes on him and ignored the others. Later. This one first.

  Chrias Kwen met her gaze as he approached, and with a venom that made her heart beat a little faster. She let the dragon hunger wash over her, let him feel it burn his skin. As he passed, she kept her eyes on his and brushed a hand across her neck as if to wipe the sweat away. ‘Do murder some more slaves, Kwen, if it troubles you that I’m still here.’

  Myst and Onyx flinched. The muscles in the kwen’s neck tensed. He’d heard her. She laughed, a tinkling mocking laugh in case her words hadn’t been enough. He walked on. The others passed her and she pointedly watched each one as they did. A few turned to look back and then quickly looked away again, embarrassed to be seen to stare at a slave, even one who was a dragon-queen. When they were all gone, Zafir turned and leaned over the parapet into the gentle touch of the breeze. She stretched out her arms and tipped back her head, closed her eyes and flew once more on the dragon’s wings.

  ‘Mistress, why?’ Myst again. Zafir still didn’t know her real name and didn’t care to, either. Myst was good enough.

  ‘I’m thirsty.’ They followed her down into the white circle of the dragon yard and into the soft light of the tunnels beneath. Tsen had quartered her among the eyrie slaves at first to remind her of what she was, but he’d moved her before long, away from the others and put her in among the Scales. To keep her safe, he’d told her, but she saw the lie. He’d moved her to shut her defiance away.

  She let Myst and Onyx wash and perfume her. They made jasmine tea and chewed Xizic together and Zafir looked at them. They’d been with her for months now, ever since the ship. They were hers, body and soul, and she’d come to take them for granted because they were slaves, her slaves, which made them much the same as the servants she’d once had. But now, today, there was a chance they were about to die and so she saw them afresh. Not as slaves who dutifully loved and groomed and fed her but as people who had once had hopes and hungers of their own, just as she did. She took Myst by the hand. Her skin was so dark it was like staring into the moonless night.

  ‘Were you born a slave?’

  Myst shook her head but Onyx was the one who answered. ‘None of us were, mistress.’

  ‘I was born in the desert,’ said Myst.

  ‘We both were. The sword-slaves came out into the Empty Sands and the Desert of Thieves. They bought us from our people and took us back to the slave markets of Cashax and sold us to our first master.’

  Zafir listened to them talk as they told her how they’d been taken, each of them, to some Taiytakei lord who made slaves from the desert into bed-slaves fit for a sea lord. How they’d been taught about men and how to pleasure them, how to groom themselves, how to make themselves as perfect and as desirable as possible. They talked of friends made and lost as those who failed to become someone’s favourite were thrown aside. The men who were their masters, the kind ones and the cruel, and the women who taught them, who were often far crueller. Zafir half heard their stories and half listened for the crack of the iron-shod boots she knew would come on the stone outside their door, yet while she waited an unexpected sadness crept into her. A kinship for these slaves who should have meant nothing to her – who would have meant nothing to her back in her days as a dragon-queen. Not for their slavery, but for what had come with it. And a sadness, because she ought to send them away now to make them safe but she couldn’t quite bring herself to be alone, not in the face of what was coming. She could already feel her resolve weakening.

  Which wouldn’t do. There was no space in the world for pity, not for her, not for anyone. She’d learned that long ago. Even the idea of it, here of all places, made her furious. She jumped up and stepped away from them. Myst almost whimpered. ‘Mistress? Have we said something wrong?’ They looked at her like whipped dogs.

  No, and anger wouldn’t do either. That wasn’t what she needed, not with what was about to happen. The dragon. She needed the dragon. She sat down beside them again and pulled them close. ‘No. You haven’t.’ Sitting on the back of Diamond Eye. The feeling of him. The warmth, the speed, the hunger, the desire, the freedom and the joy. She took herself back and lived it again. ‘Tell me something else. Something precious. The memory you hold on to on dark days. Something that brings you joy.’

  Onyx looked sad, but Myst’s eyes were suddenly bright. ‘I remember a night in the desert,’ she said. ‘The air was cool, the sky clear like every other desert night. I am hidden, stolen away from my family and my people, not far, but out of sight and out of sound.
We are on a journey across the sands. The shaman has decided it’s the way we should go. There are whispers of black ooze rising from the dunes and harvesting the ooze for the city lords brings us riches and fat bellies. But we are still on our way. We have reached the old place the city men call Uban. Much is buried under the sand but some pieces still rise above it. I have never seen a city before, even an old and ruined one that is almost buried. It seems a magical place outside the world I know. I am waiting behind a stone that rises out of the sand, tall as the sky, for the boy that I want. And he comes to me and I see him, and his eyes are like stars.’

  She looked so far away. Zafir, riding on the back of her dragon, understood. She’d never found that anywhere but in the sky. No man or woman had given her that happiness, not even Jehal on the best of his days. ‘I am the dragon,’ she murmured, and she might have said more but that was when the footsteps came at last from the passage outside. She hugged her two broken birds close. ‘I am sorry for this. Truly I am.’ And she meant it, and for a just a moment the fear began to escape from its cage inside her and almost overwhelmed her. Almost, but not quite, as she turned it to cold fury.

  The soldiers didn’t bother to knock, just smashed in the makeshift door. The kwen and a half-dozen of his black-cloaks. They grabbed her arms, pulled her away from Myst and Onyx and almost hurled her to the ground. The kwen just stared. Zafir waited, silent and with the dragon wrapped tight around her. It had always been a dangerous game to play with this one.

  ‘Bow, slave!’ One of the black-cloaks slapped her. She tasted blood.

  ‘Kwen.’ She ignored the black-cloak, cocked her head and ran her tongue across her teeth. ‘Do you have something for me?’ Bow? I’ll die first, and then who’s going to fly your precious dragon?

  Shrin Chrias Kwen faced her, his six men around him. ‘I do, slave. I hear Tsen sends you men and you turn them away. So I have some real men for you.’ He spat his words at her and turned to his soldiers. ‘Hurt her if it amuses you but don’t break her. Do what you like with her slaves.’

  Zafir threw back her head and laughed at him. ‘These? These are your real men? You disappoint me, Kwen. I thought you’d be one to fight your own battles. Sword not sharp enough?’ She stood straight and tall. ‘Well I am here, little man. You can do nothing to me.’

  ‘She’s all yours, boys.’ Chrias turned and walked away. Zafir lunged after him. Oh no. No you don’t. You don’t get away from me, you limp-dicked shit, not this time. As the first black-cloak snatched for her she danced aside, pulled his dagger out of his belt and rammed it under his chin. She let go as a river of blood ran down his throat and his shirt and flicked the few drops from her fingertips onto the ground. The rest of the soldiers paused, suddenly uncertain. Hands fell to hilts and to wands. Zafir bared her teeth. ‘Yes, cut me down, Shrin Chrias Kwen. Murder me if you can. Touch me if you dare, but if you do not dare then take your flock of sheep away with you and go and baa at some grass. My soldiers were Adamantine, untouchable, unbreakable, their captain a titan to wrestle with dragons, yet he still was my toy to tinker with as I chose and so are you.’ He’d stopped. Hadn’t turned, but he’d stopped and that was enough. She bent down and tore the dagger out of the dead soldier’s neck, then held it to her own throat as she walked towards him. The black-cloaks moved apart, backing away from her as she came on with the knife still at her throat. Rage and confusion simmered in their faces. ‘I have killed the first man who tried to touch me. Do you not remember the ship, Kwen? You were not there but you’ve heard every last part, I’m sure.’ The kwen turned at last and she wasn’t sure whether it was hate or lust or perhaps even fear that she saw in his face. Perhaps all three. She stood before him.

  ‘Kill yourself then,’ he spat.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ She let the knife move a fraction away. Not far, but far enough so that when he lunged at her, quick as a striking snake, he had her hand gripped in his own before she could cut herself. She didn’t move, didn’t struggle, didn’t even try to resist as he twisted her arm and the knife fell to the ground. He was holding her tight. She’d have bruises in the morning but the bruises so far were only the start of what she’d have from this. A small price. She’d known that the moment she’d left Bellepheros.

  I am the dragon. She could feel the heat rising through her. They were inches apart. ‘Tsen sends me slaves? You send me soldiers? I am a dragon-queen, Chrias Kwen, and I deserve better.’ She snatched at the knife on the kwen’s own belt but he was quicker, jerking it out of its sheath and tossing it to the ground behind him. Not quick enough to stop her sinking her fingers into his throat though.

  ‘Now what, Kwen?’ She felt the dragon inside her watching them both from up on the eyrie wall. The two of them pressed together. The hunger, the desire, the need for something, the clenching urge to take, take, take! When he didn’t move, she hit him square in the face with an open palm, hard enough to make him stagger. ‘Better,’ she hissed, ‘I want better!’

  As he blinked from the punch, she slashed him with her nails and finally he broke. He twisted her arm behind her back and hurled her into the room. ‘Out!’ he roared. ‘All of you! Out!’ The black-cloaks scurried away as he pushed through them and grabbed Zafir by the throat. She made no effort to stop him. Maybe, if he’d still had it, she could have taken his knife this time and stabbed him after all, but that wasn’t why she’d drawn him here. She had a much nastier death in mind for this one.

  I am the dragon. I am the dragon.

  He pushed her down to the ground and ripped her tunic. Her fingers curled into claws. She tore at his face. He pinned her down, all his weight on top of her.

  I am the dragon.

  He wrenched her over onto her belly and pulled her legs apart. She bucked underneath him as he took her there with her slaves watching, and for a short time she couldn’t have said whether she meant to throw him off and murder him or whether she meant to pull him deeper and deeper until every part of him was inside her skin.

  I am the dragon.

  A wall of fire burst inside her. It burned her sweat to steam and scorched her skin to ash. She was high, high as the stars and falling into the hurricane, wings tucked back, shattering the sky and the fire filled her, tooth and claw and tail, with a strength to smash the world itself to pieces.

  I am the dragon.

  The feeling faded as it always did. She remembered where she was again. She felt the kwen stabbing away inside her, listened to his grunts and quietly remembered another time and place and said nothing. When he was done and drawing away from her, she rolled onto her back. Her eyes glittered. Her lips curled for him, a smileful of hate. Still in his armour except for one shrivelling piece. Men. Wherever they are they make their armour the same so that can be the first part of them to come out of it. What does that say about what you are?

  ‘I remember you,’ she breathed. ‘So full of what you are and so empty of any meaning.’

  The kwen shouted at his soldiers and stormed away, and whatever he said was so harsh and sharp that she couldn’t understand; and it was only when the soldiers came down on her, one after the other, that she knew. She fought these ones – couldn’t not – but they’d left their knives outside and there were six of them and only one of her. She remembered the faces, though, of the ones who took her with gleeful lust, the ones who twisted their lips in disgust, and the one whose eyes showed pity. The one who didn’t touch her at all would be the one who would live. The rest had sealed their fates right there. Each one would die, and she wouldn’t even have to lift a finger.

  They left her on the floor when they were done. Myst and Onyx stared, untouched. The dragon inside looked down as if to ask why and what she meant by this. She met its eye. No regret or sorrow. I sought this out. The pain will go and the venge
ance, when it comes, will be a long and lingering joy and I will feel not one iota of remorse. No one can touch either of us. Not while we can fly.

  She struggled to her feet. Painfully. All three of them were still alive. That was something. Better than she’d feared. For a time they huddled together, and for a little while Zafir wasn’t the dragon-queen any more, she was just Zafir, and the locked dark room was a thing that hadn’t happened yet. She whispered softly in the ears of her broken birds, ‘They came because I made them come.’

  ‘Mistress?’

  ‘And I was afraid for you. I was afraid of what they’d do to you. And I should have sent you away, but I couldn’t bear to be alone.’

  Later, when Myst and Onyx had bathed her and clothed her and oiled her bruises, she went back to Bellepheros. She couldn’t quite hide the awkwardness of her gait. She waved the gourd around her neck.

  ‘More.’

  ‘You don’t need more, Holiness. It will not help.’

  ‘All of it. I want all that you have. Every single last drop.’

  He frowned and looked her up and down and then frowned some more. ‘Has there been a change, Holiness? Are you hurt?’

  Zafir smiled, sour and tired. ‘I have ridden long and hard today and it has been a while. I am stiff and sore from the saddle, Master Alchemist, nothing more. Why? Do I concern you?’

  ‘My duty is to keep these dragons dull, Holiness. You will understand that, I know, for you were speaker once. But beyond that my duty and my love are yours.’ He began to gather the potion. Zafir watched where he went. One bottle from his desk, two from a chest beside his bed. ‘I do need them, Holiness. The Scales will die far more quickly without the potion.’