Dragon Queen (6 page)

The Nothing of the storm-dark crept back into his head. He sighed and opened his eyes and looked again at the new world around him. As the ship moved on, it slowed. The stones grew taller and wider and more numerous, scattered around the sea, rising from the waves like the petrified fingers of ancient giants. They were flecked with green and some were marked with holes. Caves or windows but too regular to be wholly natural. As the ship turned he saw more, a coastline of grey saw-toothed cliffs jumbled one upon the other. Black spots covered them like boils of the pox. Buildings jutted out of their sides, wooden platforms and gantries like scars running from side to side and up and down, more still perched on their tops. Closer in he could make out the shapes of men scurrying back and forth along the ones closest to the sea, up ladders and across rope bridges, dangling from the faces of cliffs that rose far higher than any mast, while between the dizzying spires other ships, made small by the towers of stone around them, wallowed in the waves, rolling languidly from side to side. But none of that was what held his eye. As he pressed his face to the wall to see, he saw a palace of bright and shining gold rising over
the heaviest thicket of cliffs. It hung in the air, glittering orbs of sparkling silver dangling beneath great discs of glass like golden clouds; while from below more spires of glass and gold rose up behind the cliffs to meet them. Tuuran had spoken of them, seen far off in the distance, but not like this. Here was a creation that dwarfed even the marvels left by the Silver King. A golden palace in the sky. For a moment even the storm-dark was forgotten.

The ship edged closer. The cliffs climbed higher and their bulk gobbled up the palace and the sky both, until all Bellepheros could see was a wall of pale stone and the wooden scaffolds that hung from it. Windows and doors littered the cliff faces, some of them shuttered or closed, but most no more than simple openings into the rock. They were careful things, precise circles and arches. Closer still and the men at work on the scaffolds threw ropes to the ship, hauling it slowly in. A few were black-skinned Taiytakei; most were paler, but they all wore rags like the serfs of Furymouth. As the ship came so close that he could almost reach out from his window and touch them, he saw that some of the men were like Tuuran, with lightning bolts branded on their arms. The ones who wore the brand gave orders to the ones who didn't; and then the ship was so close that the scaffolds were above him and he could see nothing at all except for a wall of dark wet stone mottled with seaweed.

The Taiytakei, when they came to take him, glanced at the broken window. They didn't say anything but Bellepheros saw the sourness on their faces and in the set of their mouths. They took his arms and pushed him, firmly but not harshly, along a passage and up a narrow flight of steps out into the daylight. After the gloom of his cabin the brightness of the sun was overwhelming. He blinked and squinted and screwed up his face. Sailors swarmed around him, dirty white tunics over sun-browned skins. Soldiers in golden armour stood guard. They gleamed and sparkled in the sun so brightly that it took Bellepheros a moment – even after his eyes adjusted to the light – to realise their armour was made of glass tinged with gold and woven with wire. He shielded his eyes against the sun and looked for the floating palace up between the masts but the sky was too bright and blue. There was . . .
something
up above the ship, something round and glittering and golden and
huge, as big as the ship itself, but it shone so brightly in the streaming sun that he couldn't look at it for long. He screwed up his eyes and blinked again, looking back at the deck.

‘The sail-slave who was given to this one. Where is he?’ The shout came from beside him, loud and sudden enough to make him flinch. A Taiytakei drew a wand from his belt like the ones Bellepheros had already seen, glass woven with filaments of gold and glowing brightly with an inner light. Across the whole ship everything stopped. The air hummed with sudden tension. Every sailor froze and put down what they were holding and dropped to their knees, all except one who turned slowly to face them. Tuuran. The Taiytakei levelled his wand at the Adamantine Man. ‘You know what you've done, sail-slave. You've broken the law of the sea. The sentence is death.’

The window. The storm-dark.

The Taiytakei's eyes narrowed. Bellepheros shoved him. He was an old man, still half dazzled by the light and bewildered by everything around him, but it was enough. The Taiytakei lurched, the wand wavered and Tuuran was still standing.

Another soldier seized Bellepheros, a rough hand on his shoulder spinning him round, and yet another punched him in the gut. All the air flew out of him. Bellepheros doubled over, gasping. The Taiytakei with the wand ran a finger over it, dimming the light inside. He pointed it at Bellepheros now instead. The alchemist looked up helpless, still trying to breathe. The air between them snapped and flashed. Pain hit him in the shoulder and flared all over. He sagged. If it hadn't been for the soldier holding him up, he would have fallen to the deck.

‘You are still a slave, however much the sea lord wants you.’ The Taiytakei with the wand turned back to Tuuran. As far as Bellepheros could tell, the Adamantine Man hadn't moved. Hadn't even tried to run. He was just standing there, ready to take his fate.

Bellepheros finally sucked in a lungful of air. ‘I need him!’ he shouted. ‘I need him to do my work!’ Tuuran would not die for him, not for showing him a secret. He reached inside himself, into his blood. He'd use what he had, here and now if he had to.

‘Liar.’ The Taiytakei ran his finger along his wand. Its light grew fierce once more.

‘I will not work unless I have him!’

‘You'll do as you're told, slave.’ The Taiytakei levelled the wand.

‘You will give me what I ask for to build an eyrie for you or the dragons you bring to me will roam free and burn your kingdoms to ash!’ Bellepheros was shaking but there were things that needed to be said. ‘I am the keeper of the dragons! I have defied dragon-kings when the need arose. You have taken me against my will from my life and my home but you can
not
make me do what you wish without my consent. Kill me, hurt me, threaten me and you will get
nothing
. I require this man! I
demand
him.’

The look on the Taiytakei's face didn't change. A slave was a slave and there were no exceptions. But then his eyes shifted and he looked past Bellepheros and the soldiers who held him, and Bellepheros saw the wand lower a fraction.

‘The sentence is pain,’ said a woman's voice.

The Taiytakei touched his wand. The light inside it dimmed a little and then Bellepheros reeled as the air cracked like a lash and lightning jerked across the deck. Tuuran screamed as it threw him into the air. He fell so hard that Bellepheros felt the planks shiver under his feet, and lay twitching and whimpering. The alchemist stared. An Adamantine Man learned to take pain more than any other man, and here was one of them curled up and wailing like a whipped child.

The Taiytakei with the wand glowered at Bellepheros and marched away. Bellepheros turned to see the woman who'd saved Tuuran. She wore gleaming white robes which looked as though they meant something, but he had no idea what. Strangest of all, she wore two round pieces of glass bound across her eyes, like the curved glass of a Taiytakei farscope. They made her eyes oddly big. He didn't know what to make of the look on her face. Sizing him up, perhaps. Staring at her didn't seem to trouble her; rather she seemed curious, intrigued, disdainful and perhaps a little disgusted. He couldn't make out her age but she certainly wasn't young. She wasn't tall, but the armoured Taiytakei around her made her seem shorter than she really was. She watched him watching her until he looked away.

Two armoured men hauled Tuuran to his feet. He was still shaking even when they dragged him over and threw him at Bellepheros. ‘This one is yours now, slave. You'll be accountable.’

Bellepheros helped Tuuran up. An odd feeling that, him at his age helping an Adamantine Man to his feet. ‘You're shivering.’

‘So would you if you felt their lightning so strong. Thank you, Lord Master Alchemist. I owe you my life. They'll make you regret this though.’

Bellepheros nodded towards the woman in white. ‘Thank her.’

‘I will not!’ Tuuran shuddered.

‘Why? Who is she?’

‘An enchantress.’ Tuuran made a sign against evil. Bellepheros frowned and stole another glance at the woman. She was still watching. ‘An enchantress? What does that mean? A blood-mage?’ There were no magicians of any other kind in the dragon realms. He shook his head.
If that's what she is and the Taiytakei have stolen dragon eggs at last, they can suffer the consequences and all my oaths be damned
.

Tuuran shook his head again. ‘No, not that. A witch!’

The woman turned and swept away. Taiytakei soldiers pushed Tuuran and Bellepheros in her wake to a gangway that reached from the side of the ship to the platforms on the cliffs. ‘Why didn't you run?’ Bellepheros asked.

‘If I'd tried then they'd have killed the whole crew, every one of them,’ said Tuuran. He glowered at the Taiytakei soldiers. ‘And also I can't swim.’

Bellepheros digested this. He frowned. ‘An enchantress?’ he asked again.

‘I told you. A witch.’ Tuuran hissed and pointed at the golden wand hanging from the belt of one of the soldiers. ‘They make the rods that summon lightning and ships of glass that fly through the air and every other abomination that breaks the natural laws of the world.’

A cradle hung beside the scaffolds. Ropes reached up into the sky. The Taiytakei woman in white and her guard walked onto it. Bellepheros squinted up to the top of the cliff. His eyes were getting used to the daylight now. Soldiers nudged him forward after the woman.
An abomination that breaks the natural laws of the world
.
That sounded a lot like dragons. Then he staggered and grabbed at Tuuran's arm as the cradle unexpectedly jerked and began to rise. The ship fell away beneath them, first the deck and then the masts. In the natural amphitheatre of the harbour dozens more ships waited, packed closely together. Some were pressed against the cliffs, swarms of men scurrying back and forth; others sat further out and rocked in the gentle swell of the sea. Through the windows in the grey stone of the cliff Bellepheros caught glimpses of spacious rooms, of Taiytakei men and women. He saw them sitting at tables together, drinking wine, eating their meals. He saw them dressing and undressing. He saw children, and men and women entwined naked together. None of them looked to their windows as he passed. They seemed oblivious, as though it simply didn't matter who might look in on them. The other Taiytakei, he noted, looked carefully away, but he was an alchemist, ever curious about everything, and so he stared and took it all in. He could feel how much the soldiers either side of him didn't like it.

‘It's rude to stare, Lord Master Alchemist,’ said Tuuran. ‘They're prudes at heart, these Taiytakei.’ Then he leaned close and his voice dropped. ‘I am yours,’ he breathed. ‘Say the word and I'll take them over the edge to their doom.’

Bellepheros glanced down. They were past the top of the tallest mast now and halfway up the cliff. There were five Taiytakei with them on the cradle, the woman and her four soldiers. He wondered if Tuuran was really strong enough throw all five of them over the edge at once. Perhaps, but then what? Would it get either of them home? Of course not.

He gently shook his head and put a calming hand on Tuuran's arm. ‘Patience, Tuuran.’ He was beginning to see. His weapon would be his knowledge. What he knew. That was why they'd taken him and it was what they wanted from him. He would hold that over them, and if they tried to take it by force, well, as an alchemist he knew a hundred different ways to kill himself, and if that was to be his choice in the end, it would be his alone. No need for others to die, not even these Taiytakei.

The woman with the glass lenses over her eyes was looking at him. Perhaps she read his mind or read his thoughts from his eyes, for she raised an eyebrow and smiled. Bellepheros blinked in
surprise. She had a lovely smile. He hadn't expected that.

‘You are our most honoured guest,’ she said. ‘Whatever you require, I will give it to you. Whatever you ask for, you will have.’ She glanced at Tuuran. ‘You will build an eyrie for Sea Lord Quai'Shu, and if you must have a grand hall carved of solid gold and a harem of a thousand women from across the many worlds of the storm-dark to do it, so it shall be. Whatever you wish for, you will have.’

‘I wish to go home,’ said Bellepheros tartly.

The woman's face didn't flicker. ‘That one wish only Sea Lord Quai'Shu can grant.’

‘Well, we'll start with a library then,’ he snapped. If she thought he could be bought through his vices then she might as well know what they were. ‘Books. As many of them as you can get. Every eyrie should have one.’
And I'll find out who you are. I'll find out everything about you; and in time I'll find a way to use what I learn against you, for I am a patient man
.

‘Books?’ Her lips pursed. ‘Excellent! So be it. But you might have to share.’ A light danced in her eyes. ‘I like books too.’

As the cradle rose further, the windows in the cliff face became larger and more ornate, easily wide enough for a man to climb in and out. ‘Are you the lady of this city?’ asked Bellepheros.

‘Lady of this city?’ The woman laughed and the easy creases in her face told Bellepheros that she was a friend to laughter. ‘This is the city of Sea Lord Quai'Shu. I am a servant. One of many. But for now I am your mistress.’ She smiled again. ‘Or your helper, or your t'varr, or however you prefer to see me.’

‘My friend Tuuran says you are an enchantress.’

‘Your slave is right. I am Chay-Liang. You are Bellepheros the alchemist. I'm afraid enchanters rule over no cities, more is the pity.’

Your
slave? The soldier had said the same after they'd picked Tuuran up off the deck. Bellepheros hadn't taken it in before. Been too busy trying to breathe. ‘And what is it that an enchantress does?’