Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  Bellepheros stepped close and reached around her. ‘Then make them easier if you can. A rider must arm and mount alone or they’re not worthy of their dragon. Zafir will hold it against you if the armour demands more hands than her own. In fact she probably won’t wear it.’

  ‘Our knights are dressed by others.’ Liang laughed as Bellepheros’s fingers fumbled with buckles plated in gold. ‘Most of us are, in fact. Well, those for whom tradition and form and the matter of appearance are important. Not us enchanters. We dress ourselves.’

  Bellepheros snorted. ‘Hard to imagine an alchemist with time for such niceties. Most days we fall asleep in our day clothes and then wake up the next day and carry on as we were.’

  ‘I’d noticed.’ She was using her teasing voice. She held her arms out wide as he did up the last of the straps and then stepped away.

  ‘It is quicker and it does save time.’

  Li snorted. ‘I know, I know, and we both know I’m no better. And so what? Does anyone ever notice?’

  Bellepheros’s voice fell quiet. ‘I notice, Li.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure you do, but we both know that’s only because you’re every bit as bad. I’ve seen you in the same robes four days in a row with the same stain on the hem.’

  ‘I change them when it gets too bad. Don’t I?’

  She laughed at him with a warmth that sent a pang of sorrow through him. ‘You do.’ Then she smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘So your dragon-rider doesn’t mind parading like a bed-slave, but she must dress herself in her own armour? How do I look?’

  ‘Defiance in every breath, Chay-Liang.’ Bellepheros looked her up and down, trying to imagine Zafir. ‘We’re makers and oilers of the machines of the world, you and I. We have little say in their use and their direction. You look magnificent. You should be the one on the back of a dragon.’

  Li shuddered. ‘I think not!’ She fumbled around the clutter on her workbench. ‘The gauntlets are my best work. Would you change things, Master Alchemist? Would you steer your dragons? Gauntlets, gauntlets. And where’s the helm? Do I have it?’

  ‘Zafir kept it. And no. Steer my dragons? I’d prefer not.’

  ‘Why? Ah!’ She turned back. ‘Now with these she’ll need no help at all.’ She was right too: the gauntlets were a marvel. More segmented bands of metal, gold bound to glass once more and wrapped over dragon-scale.

  She handed one to Bellepheros and he put it on. They were lined with a fur that kissed his skin, instantly warm but never hot. Pieces of gold exquisitely worked into delicate shapes were welded to the plates of the fingers and thumb. He wondered what they were for until he clenched his fist and his hand became a dragon’s head, mouth open, fangs poised, eyes agleam. He let out a little sigh of envy and pleasure. ‘It’s a self-fulfilling doom, isn’t it? Who else would be an alchemist? If not us then who else would do those things that must be done and for little or no reward save the quiet knowledge that the world has not burned for another day?’ He held up the gauntlet, fist closed. ‘Although if it means I get a pair of these then I might reconsider. They’re spectacular, Li. I’ve never seen their like. Never anything even close.’

  Li laughed and struck a pose with the dragon armour wrapped around her. ‘You’re bleak today. So will this suffice for your mistress who is a slave to fly to our master’s war-that-will-not-happen?’

  ‘Bleak? Li, every alchemist is taught this over and over again: we know we can never win, that our task is never done and that one day, whether we like it or not, whatever we do, some rider will ruin everything for which we strive. It already happened once. A long time ago. A few dragons woke because of one stupid rider and it was almost the end of all of us.’ Bleak? When my mistress who is a slave is Zafir? Should I be joyful?

  ‘Almost? But then only almost, Belli.’ Li laughed, and her laugh touched him as it always did and gave him a little strength. ‘The Picker, of all people, once said this: when those who rule drop our fragile world amid their squabbles, our purpose is to catch it before it smashes. That’s what makes an Elemental Man. Think on that, Belli. They are watching out for us.’ She cocked her head. ‘So? Armour? Good enough? Yes?’ She nodded vigorously. ‘Say yes now, Belli. With much enthusiasm, if you please.’

  Bellepheros bowed and forced himself to smile, for the enchantress had a kind heart and was not like the others he served here. ‘It’s superb.’ He winked. ‘As you very well know, my Lady Li. As you very well know.’

  62

  The Void

  The Taiytakei were leaving Aria. All of them. They weren’t wanted and never had been, and while that had never bothered them before, the coming of witches made of fire who burned their ships was making the place uncomfortable. Perhaps it reminded them too much of dragons, but in the meantime, as they packed their chests, they were happy to take every slave or sailor they could get.

  Tuuran was already at sea with them by the time he learned all that. Going to exactly where he wasn’t quite sure, but at least it was the right realm. He thought maybe they were heading for Dhar Thosis. The glass sliver given to him by the Elemental Man had seen to that.

  ‘Ah well.’ He stood at the stern with Crazy Mad beside him, watching the waves churn below. The salt wind across his face felt good. Free, even if they were back as they’d been six months earlier. No one had said anything, but they had their swords, their stolen leathers and boots, and they were the swords, armour and boots of Taiytakei sword-slaves and so that’s what they were. ‘You know what they do to slaves who run away, right?’ he said. ‘They send Elemental Men to hunt them down.’ Although now he’d seen one it seemed a bit of a waste, and there didn’t seem to be all that many Elemental Men about, and he’d heard an awful lot of stories of slaves running away.

  ‘Yeh? The men who turn into wind and water and fire?’ Crazy Mad shook his head. He didn’t believe a word of it, but then Crazy had gone all suspicious ever since Tuuran had sorted out their ship. All How did you do that? and it didn’t help that the Taiytakei were being friendly as anything.

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  Crazy leaned over the edge of the ship and spat. Gulls circled over their wake. Crazy Mad hated gulls and he always had. ‘Just don’t like them,’ he said when Tuuran asked, but it still seemed strange for a sailor to have such a thing about gulls. Crazy had shrugged at that too. ‘Not so strange when you know they’re the eyes of the devil who cut a piece out of your soul.’

  He was eyeing them now. Tuuran yawned. ‘Your warlocks sound strange. All this nonsense. Our old blood-mages were a much more straightforward lot. Just wanted to take a few virgins and bleed them dry, make themselves the odd monster or two and rip a few good-hearted nobles apart. Not that we’ve had any blood-mages, not for a very long time, not real ones.’ He stretched, frowning for a moment inside, remembering the alchemist Bellepheros and suddenly not as sure of that as he might have been. But those days were gone and he’d never be going back and so there wasn’t much point dwelling on it, was there? ‘You can throw in the good-hearted nobles while you’re at it. Probably the virgins too.’ He sniggered at his own joke and then slapped Crazy Mad on the back. ‘Got some sailor’s gossip for you, my friend: the real Bloody Judge, they say he’s in the Dominion now. The Sun King’s … I don’t know what. The night-skins would call him a kwen. General, I suppose. Done well for himself by the sound of it.’

  ‘I’m the real Bloody Judge.’ Crazy Mad didn’t look at him or raise his voice. He sounded more as if he was trying to convince himself than Tuuran.

  ‘You should find him. Have it out between you.’

  ‘No. Not now, not yet.’ Crazy Mad drew his arm back a
nd threw a stone at one of the gulls. It flew out of his hand like a bolt from a ballista, straight and true. Tuuran had never met anyone who could down a seagull with a stone like Crazy could. Didn’t think he ever would either. ‘It’s the warlocks I want. The ones who came out to the middle of the ocean. They were looking for me. I want to know why. I want to know what they did.’ Being on the move was making Crazy Mad pickier with his questions. The further they sailed, the more he scratched at his memories like an old scab. ‘I told you – I met him once just after it happened. I went looking for the warlock who did it and I found the other me. And that’s what he was. When I looked him in the eye, it was me in there. And I think he knew it too before he sent me off to be a slave.’ Berren let out a heavy sigh. ‘So no. I need to know what they did. I need to know how it can be undone.’

  The wind was picking up. Tuuran pitched backwards as the ship ploughed into a particularly big wave. The sea was getting choppy. They’d been out for days and the storm-dark was close. Tuuran wasn’t sure how he knew. He couldn’t see it on the grey horizon yet, but maybe after enough times you got a feel for these things. Maybe the Taiytakei sailors knew and so he knew too. A sailor’s instinct.

  ‘The one who came looking. The one called Vallas. The one with the knife with a handle made of gold and filled with stars. He’s the one I want and his knife too. Whatever he did, that knife can undo it.’

  Tuuran looked Crazy up and down. ‘They say your Bloody Judge carries a knife like that.’ Maybe it would just be easier to tell Crazy Mad about the Watcher’s glass sliver and being sent to keep an eye on him and a lookout for the grey dead too while he was at it. It wasn’t like he was supposed to be doing anything that he hadn’t been going to do anyway.

  ‘I did – I mean he does. Now. They’re twins.’

  ‘I like your stories, Crazy.’ Tuuran hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the deck. ‘They get more grand and more ridiculous every day but they never quite fall apart. You’ll tell me you’re a lost prince next.’

  ‘I was mistaken for one once. Will that do you? And what’s wrong with spitting over the side like the rest of us? The deck-swabbing slaves upset you?’

  Tuuran laughed. ‘Because I’m a slave, Crazy Mad, and so are you.’ He turned and swept his hand over the ship. ‘This is our prison. That out there,’ he jerked his thumb at the sea, ‘that’s freedom. That’s where I want to be. This? This I just want to see burn. A dragon would be nice.’

  ‘You could have stayed in Deephaven. You didn’t have to come.’

  ‘Could have.’ Tuuran shrugged. ‘Didn’t want to. Never been much of one for my own company night after night.’ He shoved Crazy Mad, almost knocking him over the rail and into the sea, then grabbed him at the last minute and slapped him on the arm. ‘Need someone to push about, you see.’

  ‘Arsehole!’

  ‘Ach!’ Tuuran let go. ‘You can do so much better than that.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Dhar Thosis, I think. Wherever the Taiytakei choose to take us. Or Xican, maybe?’

  ‘Vallas Kuy, big man. He in Xican?’

  Tuuran threw back his head. ‘And how would I know that? How many worlds will you search before you find him? You, the ignorant sail-slave. Dhar Thosis is the place to start. We can get a ship there from Xican if we must.’ He shrugged. ‘That much I can manage for you, but if I were you I’d go looking for the man who’s strutting about with my name.’

  Crazy Mad looked at him balefully. ‘How many worlds are there? How many do I have to search? Because I will, Tuuran. All of them. Until I find him.’ And Tuuran had no doubt that he meant it.

  That night the ship turned towards a line in the distance that was the storm-dark. The air grew thick and the wind howled and swirled, unsure of its own direction. Lightning raked the horizon. Night-black clouds roiled as far as Tuuran could see, thicker and thicker as the ship aimed for their heart. Always the same. And as the sky grew so dark that the moon and the stars were lost, the Taiytakei banished everyone below, as they always did.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ he said to Crazy Mad and the other slaves as they sat in the darkness with just a few lamps to light their faces while the ship pitched. ‘The lightning turns purple. The stars and the sun and the moon go out.’ The storm grew worse. Wood creaked and popped. Slaves wailed and moaned, but not Tuuran and not Crazy Mad either.

  ‘I’ve crossed it before too, you know.’

  No one else was listening. The other sail-slaves in the hold clung to one another, clutched at whatever they could reach as the ship lurched and heaved. The lamps fell over. One by one they rolled across the wooden planks and snuffed themselves out. Tuuran grabbed the last before it died. The ship crashed up and down, lashed and ripped by the wind and the waves. Tuuran and Crazy Mad wedged themselves against a wall, side by side against the pitch and roll of the ship. Tuuran clutched Crazy’s arm. Crazy Mad’s eyes gleamed. Almost glowed. ‘And then, when you think the ship is about to fall apart …’

  ‘Let go, you daft bastard!’ shouted Crazy over the noise of the ship and the storm outside, and then the abrupt stillness of the storm’s heart hit them. It knocked the words out of Tuuran’s mouth. There was silence for a moment and then Crazy arched his spine and tipped back his head and his eyes turned luminous silver like the moon. They lit up the hold and he screamed, and Tuuran could hear the other slaves in the hold screaming too, and then something terrible and vast swept into his head and hurled him away. Dragons! Filling the sky. Hundreds! Thousands! The air black with them and thick with their cries flying to war …

  ‘MINE!’

  Men arrayed under the sun, light gleaming from silver so bright it blinded. Massed among spires so high they scratched the clouds, flawless white stone …

  ‘MINE!’

  And in the darkness of the night the silver light of the moon shone down, hard and violent, and it burned and he clenched his fist and he would not bow, not ever, not even to the god that had made him, not now because he knew, he KNEW what lay beneath and behind and beyond.

  ‘Go away!’ For a moment he was Tuuran again but the words sounded like they weren’t his. Like they came from Crazy Mad. ‘Leave me alone!’

  The vision went as suddenly as it came. Tuuran caught his breath. The ship was lurching as though the storm had never broken and Crazy Mad was staring at the ceiling, eyes bright and gleaming silver-white. Tuuran slapped him – hard – and the light slowly faded. Crazy rolled his head, looked about as though he didn’t quite know where he was and then shook himself. Tuuran grabbed him. ‘What in the fire of the Flame was that?’

  Crazy Mad shrugged as though this sort of thing happened all the time and was hardly worth mentioning. ‘I see things sometimes. From the other man’s life. The one who used to have this face. Skyrie.’

  ‘The one who lived on the edge of a swamp somewhere? Some swamp!’ Impossible to see in the darkness now, but Tuuran could sense the other sail-slaves shrinking away from them. Some were still wailing and moaning. He could hear others muttering under their breath, little mantras and prayers as the storm hurled the ship to and fro. Cautiously he lifted his lamp and peered at Crazy Mad’s face. Crazy squinted and peered back.

  ‘Strange things happen when you cross the storm-dark, right? People see things. What I see is a man standing over me in robes the colour of moonlight, with a face one half ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire and with one blind eye, milky white. Happened the last times too, ever since … I am the Bringer of Endings. That’s what he says. Every time.’ For a moment Crazy Mad didn’t sound either crazy or mad. Just scared. And Tuuran must have sounded it too. ‘What is it
, big man?’

  ‘Your eyes,’ said Tuuran. ‘They went silver. Pure solid silver and they glowed. That didn’t happen the last time we crossed the storm-dark.’ He took a deep breath and let it out between his teeth. Now he’d seen it again there was no pretending about the other time any more. ‘It’s not the first time. When the grey dead came. After they were gone and I hauled you out the water. Same thing.’

  Crazy Mad grabbed him. ‘I need to find who did this to me. I need to find Vallas Kuy!’ And Tuuran thought, Yes, Crazy Mad, you probably do.

  They reached land within a week, quick for a crossing of the storm-dark. They were sailing with other ships now, until the whole flotilla anchored together off a cluster of mountain islands draped in a thick carpet of green, deeper and darker than Tuuran had ever seen. The ships lowered boats for fresh food and water, and Tuuran and Crazy Mad went with them to a gleaming beach, a small curve of white sand squeezed between two jagged fingers of black rock. A few dozen yards from the sea the sand gave way to a wall of trees and plants tumbling on top of each other for precious sunlight. Distant shrieks and hoots echoed across the water, but none held Tuuran’s ear for long.

  Three mountains, not great or grand or even particularly tall but sheer and sharp, rose from the green heart of the island. Each had a tower on top. They seemed small from this distance but two of them caught the sun in a shower of colour, and Tuuran knew, because he’d heard the stories, that they were carved of solid diamond.

  63

  Hatchling Disease

  A dozen glasships dragged the floating eyrie deeper and deeper into the desert. The dunes beneath them were lifeless and after a while, to Chay-Liang, they all looked the same. For a long time no other glasships came. Chrias Kwen was back again but no others, no return of any of the Vespinese. Chrias, she knew from overhearing things that she wasn’t supposed to, was preparing to go away to Xican to gather his fleet and then to … She wasn’t sure. It wasn’t her business. To the dragon realms to speed the hunt for another rider-slave so that this one could meet the fate she so deserved? But surely that hunt was already well under way. No, this was something else. The Great Sea Council, after two hundred years, was finally going to burn out the runaways of Bom Tark, and Baros Tsen’s dragon was going to be their tool. And after that, Aria and its witch. It shouldn’t trouble her, she told herself. The slaves in Bom Tark were probably murderers and rapists and thieves else why run away? And this other realm? Far away. The Great Sea Council was only doing what was needed to preserve their way of life. Her way of life. But it did trouble her. No one deserved to be set upon by that monster and the murderously deranged slave who sat on its back. And Belli was no help at all. I’m a slave. Would you burn me too if I ran away? And what do you think you are to anyone from another realm if not a witch?