Dragon Queen

by Stephen Deas

  Crazy Mad smirked and pushed him. ‘Thank you? You had no idea this was where those ships would be heading!’

  Tuuran grinned back. ‘Well if that’s so, Mister Crazy Bloody Judge then you’d best thank me for being so bloody lucky!’ His grin faded. Not so lucky if you lived here. Here, away from the worst, people were standing at their windows full of disbelief, but that wouldn’t last when they saw what was coming. They’d be on the street soon, running – should be doing that right now if they had any sense, fleeing for the safety of the hills, although there was no safety there, not from a dragon. Stay and hide until the fighting was all done, that was probably best, unless the dragon decided to remain and burn every house until the stones cracked. You couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t. No quarter! The Taiytakei had shouted that a lot. They were here to wipe out this whole city then, were they? Every man, woman and child killed and every building burned to ash? Was that how the Taiytakei fought one another? He had no idea. As far as he’d been able to make out, mostly they did their fighting by getting other people to do it for them and putting wagers on the outcome.

  ‘The warlock,’ said Crazy Mad. ‘Vallas Kuy. He’s here. I can almost taste him in the air.’

  ‘Daft bugger! All I taste is smoke and ash. So where is he?’

  Crazy Mad shrugged. Tuuran laughed. There was no way Crazy Mad was going to find anyone, not in the middle of a battle, not when he didn’t know where to look. ‘Good luck with that, then.’ He walked down the alley into a small yard and climbed a pile of empty crates up onto a roof. Crazy Mad watched him and smiled.

  ‘Takes me back to Deephaven. Before I was the Bloody Judge. When I was a thief I did this sort of thing all the time.’

  ‘What? Burn cities to the ground?’

  ‘No, you ox, this!’ He scrambled up from window to rooftop as though it was the easiest thing in the world, vaulting past Tuuran. ‘Gods but you’re so slow, big man.’

  They stood side by side for a minute watching the city burn. Smoke blew over them, thick and acrid. Here and there amid the flames were scars where whole streets had been smashed by the fire bombs or by the dragon or the falling glasships. Tuuran reckoned it didn’t much matter which if you were underneath. He could see broken glasship skeletons, a few of them, some of their great discs still intact and sticking up high above the ruins. He swept his arm over the destruction and then out to sea where a hundred ships were burning. The dragon was out there. He could see it by the bright columns of fire that lit up now and then inside the pall of smoke. They moved like a dragon, sweeping through the air. ‘This.’ He grinned. ‘I came here for this.’

  ‘Well, good for you.’ Crazy Mad rolled his eyes. ‘Now that you’ve got it, you can help me hunt warlocks. If you don’t mind, though don’t let it stop you from a good bit of smashing and looting and burning, of course.’ As they watched, another stream of rockets shot out from deep in the city, arcing towards the sea. Tuuran squinted. There were still lots of little boats riding the waves to the shore. The rockets landed among them. Crazy Mad squinted up and down the coast. ‘Do they have fishermen here?’

  ‘It’s a city by the sea so it’d be pretty strange if they didn’t.’ Tuuran shrugged and looked back to where the dragon had gone now, to the island with its flashes of lightning. ‘Over there, maybe?’

  Crazy Mad stood up. He started pacing, talking to himself. ‘Like he was in Tethis. Like Saffran Kuy. Except Saffran lived by the river, not with the fishermen. The fish for his army of little spies were brought to him. Sun and moon! He has to be here somewhere, and we have to find him.’

  ‘Got any sense, he’ll be long gone.’ Tuuran turned his back to the dying city. ‘Me? I’ll help you look if you like. I just want to kill me some of those night-skin slaver bastards while I’m at it and I’ll be happy.’ He looked further along the curve of the shore and traced the route the Taiytakei at the docks had told him with his fingertip. Another half a mile to the first bridge and the nearest of the three islands. The Eye of the Sea Goddess, was it? Then up and up to a sheer pinnacle hundreds of feet above the waves, gleaming towers clustered around its crown. Another bridge, the one he’d seen so clearly from the docks. Then the last pillar of rock with its glittering palace and its towers of glass and gold. His finger stopped and pointed. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s where I’m going. If I was a blood-mage or a death-mage or a whatever it is you’re looking for and I was stupid enough to still be here in the first place, that’s where I’d be. With the kings and lords of this city. Safest place, if there’s a safe place to be had at all.’ He grinned. ‘Well, safe until the likes of us get up there.’

  Crazy Mad didn’t even blink. ‘Then that’s where we’re going.’

  ‘Good!’ Tuuran rubbed his hands. ‘Should be a lot of fighting to get up there, I reckon.’ And yes, it helped that that was where the Taiytakei lords would be waiting to meet his axe and where all the gold would be afterwards, and what more could an Adamantine Man ask than to sack the palace of one of the kings who’d bound him into slavery? Yes, up there would do very nicely, and if you were looking for a crazy mage while you were at it, well, why not? He jumped back down to the alley, axe over his shoulder, short stabbing sword in his hand, the way it always used to be long ago, and jogged off towards the shore, humming to himself with Crazy Mad running beside him.

  73

  Lightning

  Diamond Eye plunged among the glasships. Lightning shattered the air above Zafir, beside her, all around her. Noise deafening, light blinding, yet Diamond Eye jinked and dived and rose and rolled between the thunderbolts. The air smelled of fire and sorcery, the burning tang that sometimes rose from the depths of her old palace where the Silver King had made his miracles. One bolt struck Diamond Eye’s wing. Sparks arced along its length. They rippled over the dragon’s scales and crackled across her armour; for a moment the wing fell limp and Diamond Eye tipped sideways and plunged, but only for a moment before he recovered and powered up again. The glowing golden rims of the glasships brightened to fire once more but they were too slow. Diamond Eye tore through them, in among them, tooth and claw and tail and fire, smashing and shattering them. One loosed a lightning bolt as he raced above it. Zafir felt the straps of her harness creak and groan as the dragon wheeled and landed on the glasship’s back. He tore at its golden heart and let loose a torrent of fire until the glass glowed red and the gold began to melt, until the heat was unbearable even through the dragon-scale lining of her armour and her face was as red as a cherry and the sweat ran off her in rivers. Parts of the harness began to smoulder. She was almost weeping, begging him to stop before he cooked her alive and yet he wouldn’t, he simply wouldn’t. She felt his rage at these ships-that-flew, all-consuming, burning her on the inside as his flames scorched her without.

  A bolt of lightning hit the glasship. She felt the shudder. More sparks ran over Diamond Eye’s scales and then another thunderclap. She felt her skin prickle.

  Stop! But he wouldn’t, and she almost fainted from the heat until at last the glasship shuddered and began to slide out of the air. Diamond Eye let it go. Zafir watched it tip and plunge into the burning city. It hit the ground and exploded in a shower of smashing glass and twisted gold. Diamond Eye powered up again, wings shovelling the air with such force that the wind itself almost screamed in pain. He aimed for the next.

  ‘Smash it! Smash it!’ Zafir howled. She had to open her visor, had to, so the rush of wind could cool her face and her head, because otherwise she was going to melt like the glasship gold. ‘Smash it! Tooth and claw!’ More fire now and she’d be scorched to the bone, but Diamond Eye shot underneath the next glasship. Its rim shone with a ferocious white light, lightning ready to be unleashed. He lashed it with his tail and the g
lass disc cracked. Lightning flashed and danced down Diamond Eye’s scales. A white aura shivered and crackled over Zafir’s armour. Every hair stood on end. Her skin tingled and her heart fluttered as the gold amid the glass began to glow and little sparks flicked from her fingers into the dragon’s back. Diamond Eye twitched. For a moment he froze in the middle of the air and began to fall again, but then his wings moved once more and the stolen lightning arced back and the glasship’s core exploded. Shards flew like arrows, peppering Zafir, rattling against her. She felt the sting of something on her cheek where she’d left her visor open. Behind them the glasship broke in two and fell out of the sky. She watched it go. It had a bright glowing fireball hanging underneath it, and she watched that too as it hit the ground and burst into an inferno. She had enough wits at least to close her visor before the wave of scorched air came and threw them upward, dragon and rider both, as the glasship’s remains vanished into the flames. Diamond Eye snarled and dived at the next and then the next, one by one until the last of the glasships fell. The glasships were the Taiytakei’s terror. They would come with their fire bombs and their lightning cannon and destroy everything in their path – like dragons – but for dragons they were easy prey. A dragon was worse and now they knew it. She’d given Tsen what he’d wanted all along – a demonstration of a dragon’s power – and she wished he was here to see it, to beg her to stop so she could tell him that she’d barely even started.

  She let Diamond Eye have his way and swoop lower. Where the glasships had fallen the city was ablaze beyond hope, but he wanted more. She closed her eyes and leaned into him, pressing herself against his scales to avoid the scorching choking wind as he flew through it and burned whatever was left to burn. Hungry! His urge to feed wrapped around a vicious gleeful joy, the frenzy of the burning shattering thing she’d allowed him to become.

  ‘Ships.’ When she had him out over the sea she let him burn those too, but she kept him away from the little boats bouncing on the waves with their cringing soldiers. A part of her hardly cared – Let them all burn – but that was an animal part. The cunning in her said no, let the soldiers reach the shore, let them live and let them fight and wait until the end and be the ruin of them all when they think it’s done. So she burned whatever was in her path and left the rest alone, and set her dragon towards the island lit up with flashes and thunderclaps where there would be a battle worthy of them, where more ships clustered, burning and adrift. A large four-master reared out of the waves, sails still intact. A flag flew from its mast and Zafir wondered if perhaps all of the ships had flown flags to show for whom they fought. It hadn’t occurred to her. In a dragon war you knew the dragons from your own eyrie, all of them by sight. You knew your friends and your allies and anyone else was the enemy. And it wasn’t so much that the riders knew, it was the dragons – they knew.

  Diamond Eye tucked in his wings and arrowed for the ship. They are all the enemy. Her own thought, but he latched on to it with a crushing hunger. Dragons and ships. Oil and water.

  ‘No.’ Her voice was hard and sharp. There were no reins to pull on with a dragon, no ropes to turn its head. The alchemists had once explained it to her as a crude sort of telepathy, and then she’d seen it for herself, not so crude at all when the dragon was free of the alchemists’ potions, but for those under their sway, the years of training and conditioning to obey meant that they simply knew what their rider wanted and they did it.

  Diamond Eye still arrowed for the ship.

  ‘Stop!’

  They had always, always obeyed her, even Diamond Eye, but in this world he’d become different. He was right on the edge of her control, had been from the first moment she’d sat on his back. She winced and leaned forward to press herself into his scales again. He was exhilarating and terrifying both at once. Why? Why have you changed?

  He took the ship from the stern, flaring his wings and crashing into the mizzenmast and snapping it like a twig. Zafir made herself as small as she could. Diamond Eye ploughed on, smashing through the next two masts and into the centre of the deck, splintering the wood beneath. He powered up again, clutching at the ship with his claws as if trying to tear it clear out of the water. The screams of the sailors fought with the cracking of wood and then Diamond Eye shrieked and let go and soared away again as the ship pitched sideways. As the dragon flew up he bent his head between his legs, throwing Zafir forward so she was hanging helpless from the saddle, and poured fire over the receding deck.

  Stop!

  He lashed the bows with his tail as he passed. The top half of the last mast cartwheeled into the air. Stop? No.

  Yes! Zafir stared at the island ahead. A hundred ships sat in the water, half of them on fire, some no more than shattered hulks. Rockets flew to and fro. Bright flashes of lightning arced over the waves, and with each one another ship exploded. She screamed at him, her words ripped away by the howling wind. ‘There! Go there! Tooth and claw! Tail and Fire!’ The ship they left behind was listing. Sinking. Was that where Shrin Chrias Kwen had been? She wasn’t sure what answer she wanted to that. Crushed and burned by a dragon would be a fitting end but she’d already made him another, slower and more painful and more delicious by far. Let him die in slow agony, knowing he’d brought it on himself. Not glorious battle-death.

  There were boats in the water, soldiers and oarsmen struggling through the waves to the shore. Fires raged across the island too, in and among its fortresses. More glasships were drifting from the top of the Kraitu’s Bones, the spike of stone with a palace on its crown that reminded her of the Pinnacles, of her home. She’d go there last of all, she decided. When all else was done and she could work slowly and at her leisure. She fought for breath, sought for a calm to push away the urges that threatened to devour her. The glasships first. Then the island. That’s what the kwen from the mountains had said might destroy her and so she faced them, head on, to see. She urged Diamond Eye lower. Soldiers were fighting in the streets. Metal tubes pointed in clusters up into the air around thick walls, the black-powder cannon that fired stone shot to shatter any glasship that came too close. She wasn’t sure what they might do to a dragon. ‘Those!’ She pictured them in her head. ‘Keep away from them.’

  But she knew at once that she should have learned from the ship. Diamond Eye did exactly the opposite, turned and arrowed straight at them, as though he’d heard her clearly but had made his own decision. The largest of the fortresses sprawled before them, batteries and batteries of rockets with Taiytakei soldiers racing back and forth. Four glass and gold lightning cannon pivoted towards her, one from each corner and each with a hedgehog of black-powder tubes pointing into the air. Diamond Eye soared across the walls and straight over the middle of it all. He unleashed a torrent of fire, sweeping his head back and forth. Men screamed and burned and ran, flames all around them.

  An explosion rocked Diamond Eye. Rockets fired off at random, flinging themselves up into the air, some of them arcing away across the sea, others across the land, some straight over Zafir’s head. Diamond Eye dived through them and turned, banking into the first lightning cannon. He did the same as he had to the ship, crashing into it with his bulk as hard and fast as he possibly could, wings flared, claws outstretched, tail whipping in front of him as he came down. Zafir, on his back, the last to arrive, small and helpless. The stone embrasures holding the cannon shattered. Glass exploded, metal toppled and fell. Diamond Eye tipped forward and stood still for a moment amid the ruin. He threw up his head and shrieked, the unmistakable challenge she knew so well, then turned slowly, head low to the ground, and poured fire over the remains. Cases of black powder fizzed and burned and exploded. Wooden shrapnel and fragments of stone peppered the dragon’s side. Stones and splinters pinged off Zafir’s armour. Something hit her hard on the arm and one gold-glass vambrace cracked. In the midst of the chaos, with the dragon’s inferno around her, the broken piece of
armour filled her with outrage. Or maybe it was simply the dragon’s hunger and for an instant that her guard was down for it to slip inside, but either way Diamond Eye took that moment and devoured it. He didn’t launch himself back into the air this time but ran across the open ground inside the fortress walls, crushing everything in his path and setting light to anything that wasn’t already aflame. It reminded her of Evenspire, of the Palace of Paths burning under the onslaught of a hundred dragons, the heat and the flames and the smoke.

  And that went well, didn’t it just? Get back into the air, my deathbringer! But he wasn’t hers any more, not now, and she couldn’t help a glance up back over her head for the other dragons and the great betrayal coming down from the skies to rip her off his back and tear her to pieces; and with that glance she felt another surge of rage at Jehal for what he’d done to her. It seared through her and left her as helpless as a child, all reason finally crushed by Diamond Eye’s overwhelming hunger. She wanted to smash and destroy everything, to slaughter every single last one of these men who’d made her a slave.

  They closed on the next cannon. She couldn’t see it through the flames Diamond Eye was already pouring towards it, running on his back legs as if about to spread his wings and fly, head held high so his fire would have its greatest reach. The whole cluster exploded. Pieces of stone and metal the size of horses flew into the air in whirling arcs of smoke. The metal cannon spun skyward and fizzed like fireworks. A wall of scorched air hit them both, and if Diamond Eye hadn’t been her shield it might have torn her to pieces. It lifted the dragon up off his feet and threw him back, all fifty tons of him. The world spun around her and she was flying, hanging upside down, hard stone and a litter of burning debris scattered beneath her and the unstoppable mass of a dragon falling from above. She was about to be crushed between them but at the last Diamond Eye twisted. Did he remember she was there? Or was he simply doing what any animal would do and trying to land on his feet? She’d never know, but it saved her. He came down sideways, hard and heavy, and slid across the stone. The impact savaged and rattled her every bone. Something in her back wrenched and twisted. The pain and the fear were enough to make her cry out but the harness held. She clung to Diamond Eye’s scales so tightly that she might easily have snapped her own fingers.