Dragon Queen (70 page)

Li looked at him and smiled and shook her head, and maybe there was a trace of something sad in her eyes. ‘Oh, we enchantresses talk sometimes among ourselves of what they'd do without us.’ It was an old conversation, he saw that straight away. ‘Back in the Hingwal Taktse. We all think it at some time or another. We could stop making their glasships and the black needles that give them their power. We could take away the glass and the gold. They'd manage perfectly well without us for a while. The consensus when I was there was three years before enough things broke down to trouble them, five and they'd be on their knees. That's a long time, Belli. Plenty of time to destroy us or enslave us or persuade us. But what's far more likely is that we'd all grow so bored with nothing to do that we'd give in and give them back what they wanted. Just for our own pleasure of building it.’ She smiled. ‘There's no running from an Elemental Man, Belli, and we all take far too much pleasure in what we do to stop. We're like you. When all is said and done we love our creations, and that's enough for us to be happy with what we have.’

‘Like me?’ He couldn't argue with that. ‘Ah, what we could do, you and I, with the knowledge we each have. Imagine if we could take it away and share it all with no secrets between us! Give us a year and we could turn both our worlds on their heads but we'll never get the chance. Baros Tsen T'Varr will keep us apart because he doesn't understand what we might do if we truly worked together; and if ever he did, he'd still keep us apart for fear of it.’ He laughed. He'd had that thought for months too, but until now that was all it had been: a thought.

Li stared deep inside him, eyes a-sparkle and a smile flickering around her lips, and he saw she knew it too. ‘But Belli, why would I want to turn my world on its head? Or yours, for that matter? For the most part I like it. It's comfortable. I get to do what gives me pleasure. What should I change?’

‘Your people's hunger for slaves.’ The words jumped out as though afraid he'd bite them back if they gave him any time to think about them. Probably would have too. The two of them stared at each other, struck silent for a moment. ‘Could you not
build a dragon of your own?’ he asked her. ‘One of glass and gold?’

‘I built two. Little ones. Gold with jewelled eyes and little dim minds of their own.’ She led him across her workshop. It was far larger than his own study but so crowded with bits and pieces she was working on that it always felt cramped. He'd come to know it well. Sometimes when she was moulding glass he came in just to watch. Of everything he'd seen, the Taiytakei glass still struck him the most. So clear, like water, and he'd watched her do it a dozen times and he still didn't understand how she made it like that.

Different sand
she always said when he asked why her glass was so perfect while everything he remembered from the realms had been dull and warped.
Different sand and hotter fire. Did you see what your dragon does to the desert sand? Your glass makers should take their work to your eyries. Then you'd have much better glass
. And he'd thought about that afterwards and saw that maybe she was right, and that he'd never have thought of that on his own. Not a chance.

‘Do you like it?’ The armour was strewn across the benches in pieces. Bellepheros tried to imagine how it would look when it was put together, all overlapping plates of silver and gold and enchanted glass. ‘I started with your dragon-scale ,’ she said. ‘I put a very thin soft leather underneath it. I don't think you have one quite like it where you're from.’ She tossed him a strip of brown cloth. ‘Here. Feel.’

‘Rabbit skin?’ It was soft enough and light enough but there was no fur.
Almost
no fur.

‘Ratusk. They're bigger. But it serves the same purpose. The strength lies in the dragon-scale.’ She pouted at him. ‘You never told me how hard it is to work that!’

‘I certainly did!’ They'd been arguing about that ever since she'd started.

‘You told me it was hard; you didn't tell me it was next to impossible! So the dragon-scale holds it together. There's padding on the inside where you said it should be. I would have fitted it to her in person but she is . . . hard to borrow.’

‘Hard to borrow?’ Bellepheros snorted. ‘When she's not riding the dragon she sits around all day doing nothing! You mean you don't like her.’

Li's nose twitched. ‘No, I don't, and I won't have her here. She's broken and she's dangerous and she troubles me; and what troubles me more, Belli, is that you don't see it.’

‘Li, do you think I'm so blind? But she's my queen, my speaker. I have a duty to her. I swore an oath.’

‘She is a slave now, Belli.’

‘And so am I.’ And for that he closed his eyes to Zafir's madness. Deliberately, wilfully, and he knew it, and it made him angry, angry with himself for being an old fool. ‘In my world she would have been my mistress. She was a sea lord and more.’

‘I think she seeks to supplant our kwen.’ Li laughed aloud, but Bellepheros didn't.

‘I've been asked to prepare the dragon for war. Does our lord mean to burn somewhere? Because if he does then I think you might ponder long and hard before you reserve
all
of your disdain for our dragon-queen.’

‘O Belli!’ She frowned and poked him. ‘Yes, they're speaking among themselves of a war with Senxian, even if they don't admit it to the rest of us, but it won't come to that. Senxian is a sea lord and the Elemental Men will not allow it. The consequences would be fatal and far-reaching and Tsen knows it and he's not stupid. And I promise you, Tsen T'Varr is not a man to burn cities either, not really. He's too . . . well, content, I suppose. It's all posturing and noise and flapping of wings, nothing more. They'll not fly your dragon to burn anything that matters. Tsen simply wouldn't do that.’ Which wasn't what Bellepheros had been hearing in what little time he had with Zafir these days, nor what his own eyes were seeing around him, but then he and Zafir were merely slaves and sometimes wars truly were phoney ones, fought without swords and blood and dragons but with merely the idea of them. Sometimes.

‘I hope you're right. The dragon is made and bred and ready for such things and her Holiness is quite beyond my influence or control. I don't think Tsen or any of the rest of you quite understand what you'd unleash.’ Li gave him an odd look, as if trying to peer inside his head. A dark anger came over Bellepheros and he snapped at her, ‘Come and learn our ways instead of taking us as slaves and then you'd know!’

The venom stung even him. Li touched his arm. ‘I will, Belli. One day, I promise. We have to show Tsen T'Varr our need for one another. He'll be our next sea lord, I think, and when that's decided we can talk to him. Properly. About all the things we've talked about among ourselves. Alchemists to come to our world, enchanters to go to yours.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I promise. We
will
do this.’ Then she let go and made a face and shook her head. ‘Mind you, your
Holiness
is not helpful in that regard. She is . . . inappropriate. She has slaves to wait on her, the best, trained to serve a sea lord's son. They could expertly guide her in proper dress and demeanour and yet she behaves as . . .’ Li paused as if looking for the right word and not finding it, then huffed in exasperation. ‘She's
indecent
, Master Alchemist. Are all your women this way?’

Bellepheros laughed, thinking of Zafir in the golden egg beneath the glasship, the first moment they'd had alone to share their secrets. She'd been protecting him, making it seem as though she was the one at fault, but surely there could have been other ways. She could have put a knife to him for a start – wouldn't that have worked just as well? ‘All of them? No. Those born to ride on the backs of dragons, though? Yes, perhaps they are, men and women both. Indecent and arrogant.’ He shrugged. ‘They don't care what you think of them, Li. Why would they when they're dragon-riders?’ He sighed and looked at the floor. ‘And are all Taiytakei so . . . so . . .’

‘Squeamish?’ Li cocked her head. ‘You can say it. I don't mind. And no, not all of us. In the lesser quarters of Xican and one or two other places your dragon-queen might fit in perfectly well. But
most
of us were brought up properly, thank you!’ She stared at him, eyes strong and defiant and daring him to mock her for it. Bellepheros took her hands.

‘And you're all the better for it, Li. But see the world for a moment from other eyes. For me, and in my shoes I think you would be the same, this slavery isn't so bad. I continue to do as I've always done. The place is different, the time, the circumstances, the materials around me, the people, the words, but the task is the same. The nature of my bondage hasn't changed, merely the clothes that it wears. I'm a slave to my dragons and always have been, far more than I will ever be a slave to you or to Baros Tsen.
And you, Li, you enchanters, all of you would understand this. You would forge your magics of silver and glass and gold for Zafir and make little complaint of it in time, I fancy. But for her . . . she's a dragon-queen and she cannot serve any will but her own. Look at the dragons. Look at Diamond Eye!
That
is what would be her master before any of us, and she cannot allow it, nor could any rider, and so they learn never to bend, never to flex. In their own minds they
must
be free. They
must
be their own mistress or master, for how else can they be mistress or master to their monsters? Sometimes they snap and break – I've seen a good few – but Zafir will not bow to anyone, ever, and she must show that in every deed and every thought, and if Tsen finds another rider then I'm afraid you'll find that one to be much the same, for the dragons have a different name for any who are otherwise. They call them prey. Do you see? Zafir doesn't wilfully set herself against your traditions or your people. She sets herself against the will of a dragon. She's been raised from childhood to do this. For her every breath is an act of defiance and she has no more choice in that than you or I. It's the way the best dragon-riders are made.’ He gazed at the armour lying on Chay-Liang's benches. ‘How does it work, armour made of glass? Doesn't it shatter?’

‘If struck hard enough, which is why the soldiers you see carry ashgars, those spiked clubs you keep staring at. But this is to be worn on the back of a dragon and so I haven't designed it for swords and arrows but for fire and lightning. For a black-powder cannon there's little I can do.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I've heard that she's been taking men to her bed of late. Taiytakei men, not slaves. Is that true?’

Bellepheros closed his eyes and took a long breath. ‘No, Li, and why would you ask?’

Li gave a helpless shrug. ‘Prurient fascination, I suppose. So the rumours are not true? How can you be sure?’

‘There are reasons why I would know if she had, and she has not.’ Another deep breath. ‘There was . . .’ But no, say it as it was, and if Li didn't like it, it was hardly
his
fault. ‘Some soldiers forced themselves on her. Black-cloaks. It was a while back. Afterwards she came to me to make sure there wouldn't be a child. So I would know, Li. I would know. She's not what you think.’ He looked
away, aware of a nagging inside him.
Think, alchemist! Think! What did you just tell Li about the nature of dragon-riders, how willing they are or are not to bend . . .?

But I saw how hurt Zafir was! Bruised and battered. How can I even think she had a choice?
He turned away from Li, ashamed of himself. ‘They said the same about the queens of my home too, Shezira and Aliphera when they grew powerful and ruled with no king beside them. Perhaps a dragon-queen is easier to accept if you call her a whore? Perhaps an enchantress too, if she grew too strong and wilful and called herself better that you? No, Li. That's simply the unkind lies of jealous men.’
So I trust her then, do I?

She has the Hatchling Disease. Who would touch her?

But they don't know that and they don't know the signs
.

‘Belli? You look ill. Have you been forgetting to sleep again?’

Bellepheros forced a smile. ‘A touch of indigestion. Sometimes I still have to convince my ageing stomach of the merits of your food, fine as it tastes to my tongue.’ He grasped for anything else. ‘You said fire and lightning. Fire I understand. Lightning?’
There can't be more. She'd come to me for Dawn Torpor. She would. And so I would know!

For a long time Li stayed silent, watching him. Then she turned and stroked the dragon armour. ‘Would you like to wear it? I made it for the dragon slave so it won't be a good fit but you'll have some sense of its design at least.’

‘You're more her size.’

‘I am
not
!’ But when he cocked his eyes and glared at her, she shook her head and snorted and wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Well turn your back for a moment while I take off my robe then.’ Bellepheros dutifully turned his back as Li began to put the armour on. Because she wanted to, really, and they both knew it.

‘Lightning, Li? Why lightning if not for war?’

‘It's just the way we do things.’ He heard a rustle of clothes and some muttering as Li put on the dragon-scale leg wrappings first, then the soft leather undercoat. ‘You can turn round now.’ When Bellepheros looked back, Li was struggling into a pair of boots, elegant and thin, dragon-scale covered in gold. Zafir would like them. On top of the leggings, overlapping the boots, came moulded glass plates covered in woven patterns of silver and gold to cover the
shins and thighs, turned to face out from the dragon. Overlapping at the knee. Strange-looking, like the segmented armour of an insect.

‘But why protect her from lightning when that's how you defend yourselves? What if you need to stop her? Your wands and your cannon wouldn't . . .’
Oh yes
. He began to see.

‘Belli!’ Li wagged a finger at him. ‘Yes, she is being dressed for war but I
told
you: it will come to nothing. Tsen won't allow it, and even if he did, the Watcher would stop him.’