Dragon Queen (63 page)

She looked so far away. Zafir, riding on the back of her dragon, understood. She'd never found that anywhere but in the sky. No man or woman had given her that happiness, not even Jehal on
the best of his days. ‘I am the dragon,’ she murmured, and she might have said more but that was when the footsteps came at last from the passage outside. She hugged her two broken birds close. ‘I am sorry for this. Truly I am.’ And she meant it, and for a just a moment the fear began to escape from its cage inside her and almost overwhelmed her. Almost, but not quite, as she turned it to cold fury.

The soldiers didn't bother to knock, just smashed in the makeshift door. The kwen and a half-dozen of his black-cloaks. They grabbed her arms, pulled her away from Myst and Onyx and almost hurled her to the ground. The kwen just stared. Zafir waited, silent and with the dragon wrapped tight around her. It had always been a dangerous game to play with this one.

‘Bow, slave!’ One of the black-cloaks slapped her. She tasted blood.

‘Kwen.’ She ignored the black-cloak, cocked her head and ran her tongue across her teeth. ‘Do you have something for me?’
Bow? I'll die first, and then who's going to fly your precious dragon?

Shrin Chrias Kwen faced her, his six men around him. ‘I do, slave. I hear Tsen sends you men and you turn them away. So I have some
real
men for you.’ He spat his words at her and turned to his soldiers. ‘Hurt her if it amuses you but don't break her. Do what you like with her slaves.’

Zafir threw back her head and laughed at him. ‘These?
These
are your real men? You disappoint me, Kwen. I thought you'd be one to fight your own battles. Sword not sharp enough?’ She stood straight and tall. ‘Well I am here, little man.
You
can do nothing to me.’

‘She's all yours, boys.’ Chrias turned and walked away. Zafir lunged after him.
Oh no. No you don't. You don't get away from me, you limp-dicked shit, not this time
. As the first black-cloak snatched for her she danced aside, pulled his dagger out of his belt and rammed it under his chin. She let go as a river of blood ran down his throat and his shirt and flicked the few drops from her fingertips onto the ground. The rest of the soldiers paused, suddenly uncertain. Hands fell to hilts and to wands. Zafir bared her teeth. ‘Yes, cut me down, Shrin Chrias Kwen. Murder me if you can. Touch me if you dare, but if you do
not
dare then take your flock
of sheep away with you and go and baa at some grass.
My
soldiers were Adamantine, untouchable, unbreakable, their captain a titan to wrestle with dragons, yet he still was my toy to tinker with as I chose and so are you.’ He'd stopped. Hadn't turned, but he'd stopped and that was enough. She bent down and tore the dagger out of the dead soldier's neck, then held it to her own throat as she walked towards him. The black-cloaks moved apart, backing away from her as she came on with the knife still at her throat. Rage and confusion simmered in their faces. ‘I have killed the first man who tried to touch me. Do you not remember the ship, Kwen? You were not there but you've heard every last part, I'm sure.’ The kwen turned at last and she wasn't sure whether it was hate or lust or perhaps even fear that she saw in his face. Perhaps all three. She stood before him.

‘Kill yourself then,’ he spat.

‘Why would I do that?’ She let the knife move a fraction away. Not far, but far enough so that when he lunged at her, quick as a striking snake, he had her hand gripped in his own before she could cut herself. She didn't move, didn't struggle, didn't even try to resist as he twisted her arm and the knife fell to the ground. He was holding her tight. She'd have bruises in the morning but the bruises so far were only the start of what she'd have from this. A small price. She'd known that the moment she'd left Bellepheros.

I am the dragon
. She could feel the heat rising through her. They were inches apart. ‘Tsen sends me slaves? You send me soldiers? I am a dragon-queen, Chrias Kwen, and I deserve
better
.’ She snatched at the knife on the kwen's own belt but he was quicker, jerking it out of its sheath and tossing it to the ground behind him. Not quick enough to stop her sinking her fingers into his throat though.

‘Now what, Kwen?’ She felt the dragon inside her watching them both from up on the eyrie wall. The two of them pressed together. The hunger, the desire, the need for
something
, the clenching urge to take, take,
take
! When he didn't move, she hit him square in the face with an open palm, hard enough to make him stagger. ‘Better,’ she hissed, ‘I want
better
!’

As he blinked from the punch, she slashed him with her nails and finally he broke. He twisted her arm behind her back and hurled
her into the room. ‘Out!’ he roared. ‘All of you! Out!’ The black-cloaks scurried away as he pushed through them and grabbed Zafir by the throat. She made no effort to stop him. Maybe, if he'd still had it, she could have taken his knife this time and stabbed him after all, but that wasn't why she'd drawn him here. She had a much nastier death in mind for this one.

I am the dragon. I am the dragon
.

He pushed her down to the ground and ripped her tunic. Her fingers curled into claws. She tore at his face. He pinned her down, all his weight on top of her.

I am the dragon
.

He wrenched her over onto her belly and pulled her legs apart. She bucked underneath him as he took her there with her slaves watching, and for a short time she couldn't have said whether she meant to throw him off and murder him or whether she meant to pull him deeper and deeper until every part of him was inside her skin.

I am the dragon
.

A wall of fire burst inside her. It burned her sweat to steam and scorched her skin to ash. She was high, high as the stars and falling into the hurricane, wings tucked back, shattering the sky and the fire filled her, tooth and claw and tail, with a strength to smash the world itself to pieces.

I am the dragon
.

The feeling faded as it always did. She remembered where she was again. She felt the kwen stabbing away inside her, listened to his grunts and quietly remembered another time and place and said nothing. When he was done and drawing away from her, she rolled onto her back. Her eyes glittered. Her lips curled for him, a smileful of hate. Still in his armour except for one shrivelling piece.
Men. Wherever they are they make their armour the same so that can be the first part of them to come out of it. What does that say about what you are?

‘I remember you,’ she breathed. ‘So full of what you are and so empty of any meaning.’

The kwen shouted at his soldiers and stormed away, and whatever he said was so harsh and sharp that she couldn't understand; and it was only when the soldiers came down on her, one after the
other, that she knew. She fought these ones – couldn't not – but they'd left their knives outside and there were six of them and only one of her. She remembered the faces, though, of the ones who took her with gleeful lust, the ones who twisted their lips in disgust, and the one whose eyes showed pity. The one who didn't touch her at all would be the one who would live. The rest had sealed their fates right there. Each one would die, and she wouldn't even have to lift a finger.

They left her on the floor when they were done. Myst and Onyx stared, untouched. The dragon inside looked down as if to ask why and what she meant by this. She met its eye.
No regret or sorrow. I sought this out. The pain will go and the vengeance, when it comes, will be a long and lingering joy and I will feel not one iota of remorse. No one can touch either of us. Not while we can fly
.

She struggled to her feet. Painfully. All three of them were still alive. That was something. Better than she'd feared. For a time they huddled together, and for a little while Zafir wasn't the dragon-queen any more, she was just Zafir, and the locked dark room was a thing that hadn't happened yet. She whispered softly in the ears of her broken birds, ‘They came because I made them come.’

‘Mistress?’

‘And I was afraid for you. I was afraid of what they'd do to you. And I should have sent you away, but I couldn't bear to be alone.’

Later, when Myst and Onyx had bathed her and clothed her and oiled her bruises, she went back to Bellepheros. She couldn't quite hide the awkwardness of her gait. She waved the gourd around her neck.

‘More.’

‘You don't need more, Holiness. It will not help.’

‘All of it. I want all that you have. Every single last drop.’

He frowned and looked her up and down and then frowned some more. ‘Has there been a change, Holiness? Are you hurt?’

Zafir smiled, sour and tired. ‘I have ridden long and hard today and it has been a while. I am stiff and sore from the saddle, Master Alchemist, nothing more. Why? Do I concern you?’

‘My duty is to keep these dragons dull, Holiness. You will understand that, I know, for you were speaker once. But beyond that my duty and my love are yours.’ He began to gather the potion.
Zafir watched where he went. One bottle from his desk, two from a chest beside his bed. ‘I do need them, Holiness. The Scales will die far more quickly without the potion.’

‘Then they will die but you may give them something to think they are still loved. Is that all you have? Give them to me. All of it.’

He did, and he looked infinitely sad as she tipped them out onto the floor, one by one. When she was done, he held up another bottle. ‘And I, Holiness? May
I
keep the Hatchling Disease at bay?’

She smiled at him. He was an old alchemist and so of course he carried it. ‘Yes. But keep it safe and keep it close.’ She tapped the gourd around her neck. ‘There will be others, you see. Taiytakei. And when they come to you with the Hatchling Disease, the potions you give them will do nothing at all; and when
that
comes to pass they will take whatever you have, for that is what desperate men do. Be ready for that day, Master Alchemist. I'm sure you'll make more. I won't forbid it, but hide it well.’ She turned to go and then turned back. ‘I almost forgot. I require another gift from you. A small thing, one that's so far beneath you I hesitate to ask but I must. Dawn Torpor.’

Dawn Torpor so I will not grow fat from you or your men, Shrin Chrias Kwen
. She watched the alchemist's face, watched his eyes go wide and his mouth hang open, his face blanch.

‘Holiness!
What—’

She cut him off with a fierce clenched fist. ‘They took what they wanted, Master Alchemist, as they took us from our homes and made us slaves. They did not ask, they were not kind, they are not dragons and you owe them nothing. When the Hatchling Disease begins to take them, they will come to you. You will do nothing to help them. They will all slowly die in lingering fear and agony and I will watch and spit in their faces. Do you understand, Grand Master Alchemist?’

When she left, she was on Diamond Eye again, tearing the air, clouds of sand billowing in their wake as they burned the desert to glass. She was almost singing.

56

Dhar Thosis

The Watcher appeared on the Divine Bridge a thousand feet above the sea. To his left, rising still higher, stood the Dul Matha, the Kraitu's Bones, which rose half as high again from the sea below in rings of walls and steps with the gatehouses that guarded the Palace of Roses at its peak, the home and dwelling of the ninth sea lord Senxian. It had been a shrine once, in the very distant past before the enchanters had made the first glasships. Pilgrims had come thousands of miles from every city, from every fledging realm, to bring their offerings of hope to the Goddess of Fickle Fortune.

Dhar Thosis. The City of Golems, they called it, although there were hardly any here and the name belonged better to Xican with its Stoneguard.

The Watcher looked past Dul Matha to the larger but much lower island a little way beyond it, Vul Tara, known as the Pilgrims’ Island because visitors to the shrine always came that way if they arrived by ship. It was a fortress now, armed with bolt throwers and black-powder and lightning cannon, but the shelters remained, the refuges and the hostels. Unclean godliness remained scattered across Vul Tara, despite its weapons. He couldn't see the seaward side from the top of the Divine Bridge, but that was where sheer-walled monasteries rested on the tops of low black cliffs, and on the lower parts of the island poor pilgrims still came to pray to the relics from the shrine that Ten Tazei once built on the top of the Kraitu's Bones.

The pilgrims’ ships would have anchored where ships still anchored now, in the sheltered open water between the shore, Dul Matha, Vul Tara, and the third and largest island, the Eye of the Sea Goddess where the sea titans slept and where Senxian's administrators and sea captains now lived, each in their own palace with their own kwens and t'varrs and hsians, servants and soldiers
and slaves. A whole island of palaces now, each striving to surpass its neighbours, but it had not been so back in the time of the shrine. They called the island the Eye of the Sea Goddess but they should have made it her nose because that was the shape of it from far away, rising gently from the sea beside the shore, curving up ever sharper to a rounded summit that fell away to a sudden sheer nothing from a thousand feet in the air. Sprawling stone villas loosely jostled one another down by the sea, while at the top rose a forest of gold-glass towers, packed together like slaves in a gondola. The towers were the richer palaces. Few could afford a home built by enchanters.

Two hundred paces across the sea from the peak of the Eye of the Sea Goddess, the Dul Matha rose. The Divine Bridge crossed that space now, floating on enchanted gold-glass, but the Watcher wondered how it might have looked to those ancient pilgrims as they climbed down from their ships squeezed between the towering islands; as they rowed to the Vul Tara and their first night ashore, heads craned back to stare at the sky and the Divine Bridge high above them, searching for a first glimpse of the most famous shrine in the world – or so it had once been. They would have looked again as they rowed back the other way, across to the mainland and to what had once been a swamp, the salt marsh grown over time into the working rump of the city of Dhar Thosis. The swamps and the channels of brackish water were still there, some of them built over, others built around, others still slithering their way between the packed-stone streets of the shore city. There might have been jetties where the shore-side docks now stood, with a few little wooden huts perhaps sheltering sellers of slivers of wood or bone claimed to have come from the shrine. After that the pilgrims would have walked the swamp trails, now city streets with names like Pilgrim's Path and Quicksand Alley. They would have turned their backs on Dul Matha at first, following the curve of the shore until the Kraitu's Bones vanished behind the Eye of the Sea Goddess where they would have crossed the causeway, a treacherous tidal path now supplanted by the gleaming glass and gold spans of the Bridge of Eternity. They'd have climbed the winding paths up the Eye towards its peak, past temples and other shrines long since flattened to make way for palaces. All the way to the top of the Eye
and they'd have come here, to where the Watcher stood now, to the start of the Divine Bridge.