Authors: Stephen Deas
‘Because I am a dragon-queen,’ she whispered. She wasn't going to burn after all. She hadn't expected that.
Her broken birds were cowering in the shadows under the bed
now, under the table, in the corner, whimpering and wailing. They made her laugh.
That
was how men made themselves into slaves. ‘Get up!’ She touched her hand to where the dragon had opened her skin and then to her tongue, tasting her own blood. A habit that came with every wound, started long ago in her mother's palace.
They wouldn't move. They huddled in their corners, mouths agape, shaking, eyes glazed. Broken. Dragons did that.
‘Get up!’ she said again, sharply this time. ‘Tend to me.’ She hauled them one by one out of their hiding places and wrenched them back from their terror. She touched her bloodied neck once more. Whether it had meant to or not, the dragon had set her free. The silver chain was still wrapped around her wrist but at its other end the bolt that had once gone through the roof of her cabin lay among the splinters on the floor. She picked it up and held it loosely in her hand, wondering. A chain like that could strangle a man. The bolt? It was heavy enough that a good throw, well aimed, hard and fast to the temple, might be deadly. But to what end? How many men were on this one ship? Dozens, unless the dragon had killed them. More than even a dragon-queen could fight, and even if she won, what then?
‘Get up!’ She grabbed the last of her birds, the one who had hidden under her bed, made her stand up and slapped her. ‘Dragons, woman. That's all they are. Great and terrible monsters, yes, but nothing more. Clean my wound and dress it. Are you afraid of monsters?’
The slave shook her head. A lie, but now the dragon was gone and Zafir was still here, she was more afraid of her, and it seemed absurd but Zafir understood perfectly, for the worst monsters certainly weren't dragons. She bared her teeth and hissed, tilted her neck and touched the bloody wound again. ‘But monsters can be killed, little bird.’
They cleaned her throat and wrapped it in silk, hands shaking all the time. When they were done, she pushed them away. She left them behind and climbed up through the ruins of the ship, heedless of the shouts she heard around her and below and to either side, until she had the sky over her head. Blackened bodies littered the decks. The sails were on fire, flaming rags falling now and then, fluttering away in the breeze. The rigging was destroyed, the decks
scorched. Patches still smouldered, while the bows of the ship were firmly ablaze. A few desperate sailors yelled, running back and forth with buckets – the dragon hadn't killed all of them then. She looked the ship over. It was ruined but it didn't look like they were going to burn to death, not yet, so she turned her back on the panic and sat at the stern near the hole the dragon had smashed as it left and watched the sun glint off the sea. The sailors who were left, if they saw her at all, were too busy trying to save their ship and let her be. She looked out over the ravaged Taiytakei fleet. Some ships were aflame from end to end, others were untouched.
One hatchling. She started to laugh. In this moment her fate was her own. She could throw herself into the sea if she wanted but these Taiytakei who thought they were her masters, now she saw them for what they were: small frightened men. Children. So no, she wouldn't throw her life away in a fit of foolish defiance. Not when she could do far worse.
Three full-grown dragons circled overhead.
Her
dragons, she reminded herself. Other hatchlings flitted aimlessly back and forth in the sky. She turned as the air shook and popped and one of the silver men appeared on the deck. He raised his hands and the fires leaped to them as though he was sucking the flames away from everything burning and drawing them into himself. When he was done, he blinked away. Now
there
was a thing to drive a spike of awe through her heart. A sorcerer clad in silver like the Silver King himself, the half-god. Was that who they were? The alchemists said the Silver King was gone for ever, destroyed by the blood-mages, that he'd been only one, unique, an aberration, but there were stories inside the Pinnacles that said otherwise. Stories etched into the walls in places that no alchemist was allowed to see. Her home.
Her
secrets, amid the rows and rows of arches carved into white stone walls which glowed with a soft inner moonlight. Doors sealed shut, doors that led nowhere except on rare nights when perhaps they opened into other worlds but she'd never seen it happen. Her grandmother had sealed much away, her mother had been the same, afraid of her own palace, but not her.
Her
fears had come from something else, and so she'd crept among those forbidden places, finding in them a sanctuary from the monster she saw every day. And though she'd never seen anything beyond
the arches but blank stone walls, she'd seen plenty more to hold her eye: carvings, mosaics, murals, all of them witheringly old. Things the Silver King had made. She'd come to know the old half-god, in her way. She saw his sadness. A pining for something long lost. Memories of others of his kind, perhaps, for whatever the alchemists said he clearly hadn't been alone, not always. A catastrophe that he had somehow brought about. It was all there in the forgotten pictures on her walls.
And now they were here?
Across the waves the fires winked out one after another. Some ships were already lost, listing as they took in water. They sank as she watched then, their last fires put out as the sea swallowed them. She counted. Ten ships lost. Forty-six left by the end. Not as many as she'd thought. Little boats struggled through the waves between them, carrying men. Flags ran up masts and fluttered, messages sent. She didn't know what any of it meant but she understood what they were saying. The air was thick with it.
What do we do? What now? What happened to us?
Then, to her surprise and delight, the old white-haired Taiytakei came stumbling from his cabin – Quai'Shu who thought that all of this was his, every ship and every man, the dragons and perhaps even the half-gods, but most of all her. He was like a dragon-king and so she knew him, knew how his mind would work, even if instead of dragons he had ships. She weighed the bolt in her hand. Another man who thought he could own her. She'd done for the first and she'd do for this one too. No one would stop her, not this time.
She hesitated though as she watched him. The Taiytakei sailors all fretted and bowed around him but something inside him was broken. His presence was gone, his veneer of command, and all he was was a weak old man who didn't understand what was happening any more. As she understood, Zafir smiled. He'd stared a dragon in the eye just as she had and the dragon had snapped him. The smile lingered a little longer. She let go of the bolt. The dragon had shown her the way. These were just men like any others. Patience, and they would fall.
The Taiytakei led Quai'Shu away with his vacant eyes staring blindly at his scattered fleet. She didn't struggle when they came to
take her too, across the sea to a ship that still had sails. She watched the fleet split. Perhaps because she hadn't tried to run they let her wander free now. She sat on the decks out of the way, watching, and she knew they saw her compliance as acquiescence, as defeat, but they were wrong. Her broken birds knew better. Something had changed between them. They were flags to her mast now, all three of them, afraid and unsure of their fates but they'd tied themselves to her. She saw it in their eyes. Still afraid, yes, but the fear had turned to something else too.
Awe.
The dragon had done that. Given her that gift.
The remaining dragons circled overhead and then flew away, all of them, the silver half-gods on the backs of the adults and the hatchlings trailing in their wake. A sigh of relief rose from the ships as they left, for they were the greatest terror that any of these men had ever seen.
Now and then a Taiytakei – she could barely tell their dark faces apart and disdained the effort of trying – would tell her to move, or to do this, that or the other. They spoke to her slowly as if she was a fool. She smiled and bowed and did as she was told because she had seen now that they could be broken.
Patience, and they will fall
.
And so they sailed on until the first dark line of land smudged the horizon and the Taiytakei fleet came home with a dragon-queen in its midst.
As well as its spires, its floating orbs and great glass discs, the Palace of Leaves in Xican extended down into the stones themselves. Deep in its bowels Baros Tsen, t'varr to Sea Lord Quai'Shu of Xican, had built his bathhouse. It was, false modesty aside, magnificent. Not too ostentatious but perfectly formed. Large enough so that when steam filled the cave, the walls vanished into the mist. Tall enough and dark enough to give the illusion of being outside. Tiny little spark-lights dotted the ceiling, arranged to mimic the stars. You could pick out the constellations if you wanted. The floor was simple black marble – none of the glass and gold that filled the rest of the palace – and in the centre the marble fell away in a series of steps into a square heated bath where the water was always kept exactly as he liked it. Hot but not too hot, more often than not scented with the particular flavour of Xizic from near Hanjaadi that he happened to like, with a potpourri of other scents flirting at the edges. There were perhaps a hundred different oils in pots in a simple wooden chest, and beside the bath, in a bowl scooped out of the marble, there was always ice and a crystal chalice of cold apple wine. It was the best bathhouse in the palace, possibly the best across the whole of Takei'Tarr, and that was because Baros Tsen T'Varr, it was whispered, loved his baths more than anything in all the eight worlds. And Tsen had heard the whispers too and knew who the whisperers were, because that was the nature of who he was, and he didn't mind what they said because if it wasn't exactly true, nor was it far wrong.
Wet footprints speckled the marble where slaves had padded to and fro only moments before, lighting the hundred candles that ringed the floor. They were gone now, the doors closed and sealed for his privacy. Baros Tsen T'Varr lowered himself gingerly into the pleasantly stinging water and sniffed, taking a deep lungful of
steam and the scent of Xizic. He smiled. Across the water, his lady Kalaiya smiled back, a slave but a very special one.
And actually I like my slave and my apple orchards better than my baths, though it would pain me to lose either. Our little secret, eh?
For there wasn't anyone in the many worlds more special than Kalaiya. To Tsen, at least.
He took a deep breath and then another. The Xizic scent rose around him. He'd let Kalaiya choose today and she'd gone for something a little different. Deeper and more subtle than his own favourites. His eyes narrowed as he tried to place it. ‘The finest oil of the desert from Shinpai,’ he guessed, and watched her face. From all the way across the desert on the far coast of Takei'Tarr. And her own scent hid behind it like her face hid behind the steam.
She kept him guessing a moment and then her smile brightened and she nodded. ‘You always have to be right. One day I'll trick you, you know.’
‘I hope so.’ He sighed deeper into the water and tipped back his head until only his nose and his eyes were above the surface. Sometimes when he looked at her and saw that little prickle of resentment that every slave carried with them, somewhere deep down he wondered at himself for keeping her, for not letting her go.
I love her. I should let her fly if flight is what she wants
. He thought exactly the same thing every time he saw her. But he never did and never would.
‘You look happy today,’ she said when he sat up and looked at her again. Her face was soft and warm, glistening in the damp heat, slightly mocking perhaps but always kind.
‘Life is good, my dear.’ More ritual words to go with the ritual of thought. He said them every time they bathed and usually he meant it. The life of a t'varr to a sea lord was a fine thing. On other days he might have laughed at that –
unless your sea lord is Quai'Shu with his impossible schemes of dragons
. But not today. Today he brought with him something wonderful.
‘Are you back here for long?’ She'd been his favourite for years, taken from the desert by Cashax slavers long ago, and he'd found her, and she'd understood him at once, better than any of the Xicanese. She knew his secrets and she kept them and so he was good to her. And he liked her. A lot. That little thing so rare.
‘Not for long, my dear. But when I return I'll take you with me. Some things will be so much less awkward that way.’ And how wonderful it would be to have her with him again all the time, just like it had been in Xican before. He half-sat, half-lay in the water, letting its almost painful heat wash through him. He was sweating already. A bathhouse was a place for sweat. And for reflection and drifting and the numbing of thought.
According to the strict definition of duties, a t'varr was responsible for
arranging
things. Huge things. If Quai'Shu wanted an eyrie in which to raise dragons, his t'varr found it for him, as Baros Tsen had done. And if Quai'Shu desired his whole fleet to sail to the western realms to steal dragon eggs, why then Tsen T'Varr would dutifully make sure that those ships were available and properly provisioned, and if he wept with fear at how few of them might return, he kept such concerns to himself – or more likely brought them here to the steam and Kalaiya's ever-patient ears.
But every expedition across the storm-dark is a dance with catastrophe, is it not? What's done is done. It will be what it will be. Yes, and plenty more trite platitudes besides. Put it away. Sweat out the anxiety. Enjoy an hour to yourself
. Every day was worse now, wondering how many ships would be lost this time. All he could do was fret. In Xican he didn't even have the eyrie to distract him any more but at least now when he went back there he wouldn't go alone.
Kalaiya leaned across the bath and took his hand, gently massaging his palm, tugging at his fingers. It was an unconscious thing she did without any thought and he loved her all the more for that.
‘
You're
thinking
again,’ she chided. ‘When all is ready, does it not pass from you? You provide the ships, Baros Tsen T'Varr. Our sea lord's kwen has the duty of crewing them and sailing them and his hsian is responsible for what they do when they get there, not you. Is this eyrie not simply a different ship?’