The Emperor smiled again.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said. “Look at him. This is the Warblood I remember. The creature who killed Bonesnap of Belarius so swiftly, so savagely, that he tore the head off his body the way I might tear the wings off a moth.”
I remembered. It was a good kill.
“I once called you marvellous,” he said. “I would no longer describe you as such.”
He was wrong. I had never been more magnificent than now.
Clasping hands behind his back, he began to walk a slow circle around me.
“Do you remember how many men died that day in the Crown, Cirrus?”
“Twenty-seven, Imperator Augustus.”
“Is that all?” He raised a brow. “I thought it was more. It seemed like more.”
“Twenty-seven killed, over one hundred scorched.”
The man grunted. He was at my tail now. One lash and I would break both his legs.
“We went to see him, you and I,” he said. “I wanted to see if it was the same funeral dragon who impressed all the rich dying in Bangarden, but you? You wanted to see if this Warblood was the same young fishing drake who could disappear into the night sky like the smoke from a fire. It was a bold plan, Cirrus. Bolder even, because you refused to kill him when you were ordered to do so. You could have been executed for that.”
He threw a glance over his shoulder.
“Ruminor smiled on you for your boldness that day. He spared your life. As did I.”
“Ruminor smiles on us all,” said Cirrus.
The Emperor was at my shoulder now. He paused.
“But then he was gone,” said the Emperor. “Like the Eyes at Dawn. I wonder how that happened? Ruminor was not smiling then, was he?”
Cirrus clenched his jaw but said nothing. The Emperor glanced down at Rue, still bent like a storm willow. He had not once looked up.
“Is this his rider?”
“Yes, Imperator Augustus,” said Cirrus.
“He looks like a soul-boy.”
“Yes, Imperator Augustus,” said Cirrus. His eyes remained forward. Rue’s remained on the ground.
“Imagine that,” said the Emperor. “A soul-boy riding a war dragon. What an inexplicable place our world has become.”
He dropped a hand onto to Rue’s head, patting him once, twice, three times. It infuriated me. I wanted to snap my jaws around that hand, just like I had Philius’, taste the bone crunch under my teeth.
My heart was as black as my hide.
The Emperor moved back to the table, laid a ringed hand on one of the maps.
“According to our espionars,” he said. “This is where she is being kept, here, on the fourth hill of Nathens. Are you convinced you can make it there?”
“We can make it, Imperator Augustus,” said Cirrus.
“And how long does it take?”
“Five days to cross the Nameless Sea by ship,” snapped a general in bronze and leather. “Even a trireme cannot make it faster.”
“A dragon can,” said Cirrus. “It’s three days by dragon.”
“You will head out before the fleet,” said the Emperor. “If you fail, they will not.”
Cirrus nodded swiftly.
“And once there, do you think this soul-boy and his bloody dragon can do what we ask of them?”
“I do, Imperator Augustus,” said Cirrus.
“Can you make them?”
“They are Skyborn, Imperator Augustus,” said Cirrus. “Trained to do the will of the Remoan people.”
The Emperor grunted.
“The will of the Remoan people is to eat, drink and let blood in the games.”
He turned back as if to study the maps.
“I will rescind the death sentence on Warblood, Jewel of the Crown of Salernum if you are successful in Lamos.”
“We will be successful in Lamos,” said Cirrus.
“Of course you will,” said the man. “After that show, the bloody dragonsong all day and all night, I have no doubt of that. I’ve never witnessed such a thing in all my life. Perhaps he is the Emperor of Dragons, now. Hmm, Draco Imperator. What an inexplicable world…”
Two of the generals laughed and he glanced over his bare shoulder, smiled.
“We will see if he is Stormfall of the Flights or Warblood of the Crown,” he said. “For in the same way he presented me the head of Bonesnap of Belarius, he will present me with the head of the Lamoan drakina.”
His smile a knife once more.
“He must become a Killer of Dragons once more to prove to me that he is no longer a Killer of Dragons. What a marvellous, brutal, inexplicable world…”
The generals surrounded him and with that simple gesture, we were dismissed.
***
Killer of Dragons.
Killer of Dragons.
Warblood, Undefeated Jewel of the Crown of Salernum, Killer of Dragons and Men, tasked with the greatest task of all – killing the golden drakina of Nathens.
I perched on the high bank above the harbour, the sun warm on my skin even as the ocean breeze was cool. I breathed it in, allowing the smell of salt to take me back to a happier time. I could see fishing skiffs with young dragons in the prows, some heading out, others returning home. They were oblivious, those young dragons. They couldn’t imagine the life that was waiting for them, one of carts and wheels and harnesses and whips. If they were lucky, they would die in a hurricane or in the jaws of a Black Monitor, not under the axe of a stick.
Rue was sitting next to me, arms wrapped round his knees. He had made no move to tend my wounds but I’m not sure I would have let him. It all made sense now; the special training, the night raids. He had known what they wanted of me for a very long time, I suspected. Cirrus too. That was why he spared me that day on the mountain after my escape from the Crown. I gazed at Ironwing, dozing in the afternoon sun, wing talons crossed beneath his chin. He was large, elegant and majestic. But somehow the silver coat seemed a little duller, the armour a little more tarnished than it ever was before.
Next to him, Aryss, fanning her wings in the breeze. As beautiful as Summerday and just as wicked. She was Galla’s dragon, working for the Emperor just as her rider was. I studied her, remembering the time I found her in my den. There had been blood on her wing but I never cared enough to investigate. I was still struggling with the thought that it had all been a ruse.
I had hoped to be her drake.
Rue was shaking his head. I could hear whispers of his thoughts but I ignored him, turned my eyes back to the harbour and the boats and the dragons. They were preparing to cross the Nameless Sea with a hundred ships and even more dragons. The ships had red-striped sails but it was the oars that gave them strength and speed. And on the prow of each ship, a dragon tethered to a bronze ram. I remembered how Rue would attach my harness and I would pull the little skiff while he rowed against the tides. This was the same, only bigger.
“You should go,” Rue said. He was looking out over the sea as well, likely remembering our time on the water. “Go north. Venitus is north, so your aerie is north too. Go now before they leave. I’ll be fine.”
Tears. Tiny rivers of water glistening on his cheeks like rivers. Sticks didn’t know how much like the elements they were, didn’t realize they were made of earth and rain. Dragons were made of wind and fire. Maybe we were meant to be together, uniting the elements in universal balance.
Then again, when so many killed and died, maybe not.
“They won’t kill me,” he lied. “But if they do, it’ll be for the best. Ruminor still hasn’t given my soul back so there’s no point in living like this. I wonder if there’s a place where soul-boys go when they die.”
The harbour cliffs were a mosaic of scales. There were more dragons here than in the Corolanus Markets, more than in the Pits, and more even than in the Citadel where they lived and worked by the hundreds. In fact, I never knew there were this many dragons in all the world.
I thought of the g
olden drakina of Nathens. She likely had no idea she was at the center of a war between nations, between mythical brothers. All she would care about would be her clutch, and I realized that if there was in fact a clutch, then at some point there would have been a drake. Was he still there in Nathens, or was she gravid when she had been stolen?
Had she, in fact, been stolen?
All stories told by sticks. They lied like they breathed, not even knowing how or why.
I had no band at my throat, no chain at my foot. I had no saddle nor bridle nor even rider. At this very moment, I could leap into the sky and be gone, follow the earth force back to the Anquar Cliffs and the aeries of my people. I could do that, return to my home and fight for the Fang and take mates and live until I died a great island of a drake, leaving only young dragons and old stories in my wake.
But then, all these would die.
I remembered the cannons – the flash of the iron and balls of lead that tore dragons apart; that rendered their wings little more than ash and crushed their chests like mountains. These War Dragons knew nothing of Lamoan cannons. They would feed the Monitors and the sea snakes and Draco Oceanus, the great Dragon of the Sea.
All I ever wanted was my freedom.
If I didn’t go, Rue would die as well. They would kill him. Even if I took him far, far away, he would never be able to return to the world of sticks. He would be alive but he would be alone. As alone as he’d been all his life.
All he ever wanted was a soul.
Could I give him that?
If Lamos lost her dragon, Remus would reign supreme.
If Lamos had cannons and dragons, Remus would be forced to change.
But all these dragons – the Skyborn that had roared and sung and breathed fire all night for me, those that I had called my people – would be dead.
I stole a glance at him, the boy weeping at my side. In point of fact, he was no longer a boy but a man, as much as I was no longer a young drake. I was a dragon with horns and with a mane of spines and a heart that had been turned to stone.
I watched the water roll down his cheeks.
Water could crack stone. Water could shatter it.
All he ever wanted was his soul.
“My soul,” he said quietly. “And you.”
I turned my face to his, blew my warm breath across his neck. He reached up a hand to stroke my cheek.
“I’m sorry, Stormfall,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for all of this.”
And he pressed his face into mine, his tears running across my beak and onto my tongue.
Salt. They were salt. Not like rain, but like the sea.
He was almost a dragon.
We left the shores of Terra Remus at noon.
Chapter 22
NAMELESS
It was good to be on the water once more.
The buffeting winds, the leaping whitecaps, the schools of silverfins and bloodbass and lemonwhites. Oh, the lemonwhites. I dove into them, mouth wide, scooping as I used to in my earliest days only this time, blowing the seawater out through my teeth and swallowing as many as I could at one time. It felt good to be eating them, crunching and chewing or swallowing as I willed. I was a dragon without band, free and fighting for my kind.
In fact, it was liberating. Rue had no saddle or bridle but clung to me with both arms, almost a part of my spines now for I was no tame dragon. I was no Flight Dragon, nor Pit dragon, nor fisher dragon. I was not Stormfall or Snake, Nightshade nor Hallowdown. I was not even Warblood. I was, like the vast sea we flew over, Nameless.
The Shadow Flight followed our lead, discarding saddles and bridles for the necessity of bareback. The colour coordination between dragon and rider was important now, and the riders flattened low along our backs. At a distance, it was difficult to see them at all, which was an effective strategy. We were flying into Lamos, where dragons had never been. If seen, the only way we would not raise an alarm would be as wild drakes, drawn to the nation because of the drakina.
At least, that was the theory.
We flew the first day low to the water and I showed them how to skim the surface for schools of silverfins. Silverfins loved the warmth and were easy to snag with little effort from above. Bloodbass next and I delighted to soar high only to plunge headlong into the depths at the flash of red, bringing up almost a dozen at one time. Rue quickly learned to leap from my back the moment I hit the water and I know the others watched with shock as I caught him on my back once I surfaced. It was a dance – dragon, water and stick, in that order. Rue knew it and danced along. We were more one than we had ever been, both freed slaves serving hard masters. Life was our master. Life and fate and destiny and death. But I wasn’t Stormfall any more.
Part of finding my new name, I reasoned. I knew nothing and everything. I was going to kill a dragon to save dragons. Nothing made sense anymore, but then again, I suppose it rarely had.
I also taught the Flight how to rest on the surface of the water. They were mountain dragons accustomed to snow and rock and high altitudes. While these had been like those that had saved the Udan Shore, I distinctly remember Ironwing grooming himself afterward on the sand. Water was a stranger to them.
It came back like I had never left, the tucking of the wings and the forward lean, allowing the waves to hold my weight. Simply by example, I taught them to paddle their feet like the oars of a ship. It felt so good – the water between my toes, splashing on my chest, running down my arched neck. And my tail, steering like a rudder, made weightless by the ocean force pushing up against it. The salt stung the wounds raw from the Emperor’s chains but it healed as well. Oh yes, it healed.
There was nothing between sea and sky but a vague difference in colour, a line that cut this world in two. Blue as far as I could see – clouds above, darker dips below. Before and behind, east, west, north and south. Only water and not water and dragons.
And at night, I saw stars.
Stars over the ocean are unlike any stars over the land. They go on forever, longer and farther and deeper because the waters reflect them in the inky blackness. Even with both Eyes of my father, Draco Stellorum, Wide Open above, I was a part of it all, almost invisible in the night. The riders talked for a long time then, discussing plans in soft voices as if not daring to break the spell of an ocean night.
“You sure the maps are good, Cirrus?” asked Chryseum’s rider, a short, wiry man named Markus Platt.
“Octarius vouched for them,” said Cirrus. “The mercator paid with his life to get the maps to him.”
“Why?” said Galla and from my back, I could feel Rue turn to look at her. “I mean, why would a Lamoan mercator want such information in the hands of their enemy?”
“Because he wasn’t a Lamoan mercator,” said Rufus Dane, Jagerstone’s rider. “He was a Remoan espionar.”
“The Empire has had espionars in Lamos for years,” said Cirrus. “This talk of dragons is not new.”
There was a silence as the information settled in.
“So,” said Rue. “The maps will take us not only across the Nameless Sea but into Nathens as well?”
“Getting to Nathens will be more than half the battle,” said Cirrus. “In two nights, we must pass through the Wall of Moons.”
Dane hissed at that, raised his water skin to his lips.
“We won’t have stars, Cirrus,” he said.
“Ships do it,” said Cirrus.
“And ships have rudders,” said Platt. “I’m not about to ride backwards and keep a hand to steady Chryseum’s tail, that’s for gods-damned sure.”
The golden drake snorted. So did Cirrus.
“They have the earth force,” he said. “That should keep us going in the right direction. The real danger will be altitude. It’s hard even for dragons to stay level inside the Wall.”
Both Dane and Platt grunted at that.
“Why?” asked Rue. “What is the Wall of Moons?”
“Do you remember back when you were a fisher boy?” sa
id Cirrus. “Of a time when the winds would die and the clouds would come down from the skies and you couldn’t see anything or go anywhere because it was all fog?”
“For days at a time,” said Rue, nodding his head. “We called it Ruminor’s Veil.”
“Well, Ruminor’s Veil is for dead men,” said Dane. “It falls across the middle of the Nameless Sea. You can’t see anything, you can’t hear anything. It’s like flying on a blind dragon.”
I thought of Summerday, beautiful and wicked and blind.
“You think you’re going up,” said Cirrus. “But suddenly, you’re going down. I’ve heard of riders hitting the ocean when they thought they were just under the clouds.”
“Sometimes it’s two-days thick,” said Platt.
“That’s all we need,” said Dane. “Fly for two days and come out of it right on the shores of Atha Lamos.”
“And being blown out of the sky by their gods-damned cannons.”
The men laughed quietly, experienced soldiers all.
Rue sighed, stretched out along my back and I knew he was thinking. Still, he fell asleep quickly with the sea rising and falling like the breath of a great dragon. It was beautiful and I was at home, a creature of sea and sky and stars. The Wide Eyes of my father, Draco Stellorum, watched over me as I slept.
Selisanae, the Dragon of the Sun, rose to chase my father from the dawn and that morning, we feasted on entirely new types of fish before launching into the vast blue sky. We flew all day, high enough to taste the clouds but low enough to see shapes of large Black Monitors in the water. I had never been out so far without land in sight and it brought back memories of gluttony, of flashing teeth and storms sweeping me far away from home. When night came once again and with it the Wide Eyes of my father, Draco Stellorum, I was grateful to set down under his sleepy gaze, although I didn’t trust that he’d protect me one bit.
We slept in loose formation, close but not touching, heads tucked over our backs. Rue slept between my wings and my neck, warmed by my body and rocked by the sea. I admit I dozed for the most part until I was roused by a sound breaking the waves.
Dragon of Ash & Stars: The Autobiography of a Night Dragon Page 21