Dragon Queen (89 page)

She didn't wait for him. She strode off, limping, and he followed, for what else could he do? All the way through the spiralling white-lit tunnels of his eyrie to his most private sacred space, the baths he'd built at the eyrie's heart. She shrugged off her dragon-scale and slipped off her shift at the edge of the waters and never looked round, only raised a hand to beckon him to join her. He closed the door behind them and watched her step in, wincing at the water's heat. Other men might have looked past her ugly pale skin and her muscular arms and legs and her hard curves with no softness in them at all, past her bruises and her scars and the streaks of dried blood. When Tsen looked at her he felt . . . nothing. He ought to be feeling outrage and fear and disgust, that was what he
ought
to be feeling. And maybe some dread, and he
ought
to be calling his black-cloaks to have her killed and thrown off the edge of the eyrie for what she'd done, but what did it matter when they were already both as good as dead? At least this time she didn't try to flaunt herself. Today her eyes were hard. The pretence of anything tender was gone. She was, at last, her true self.

He followed her into the water and poured a glass of apple wine for each of them. She took hers from him in silence.

‘We are alone,’ he told her. ‘Truly alone. No one else will hear. You have my ear as you asked, slave. Speak then, for when you are done I will very likely have you killed.’

She looked at him long and hard through the steam from the hot water that caressed his skin. He sipped slowly, savouring the exquisite taste of his wine. No sense in not enjoying it. He wondered how long it would be before the news of what he'd done to Dhar Thosis reached anywhere that mattered? Days? A few weeks? And then the killers would come. How long depended on whether any glasships had escaped. Perhaps she could tell him that.

‘What happened to my Elemental Man?’ he asked when she didn't speak.

‘Your
Elemental Man? Perhaps he had a name, once?’ Then she shrugged and let out a tinkling laugh. ‘He tried to stop me from carrying out your orders. What else could I do?’

‘You
killed him?’

She shook her head. ‘Diamond Eye killed him.
I
could kill
you
, though. Right now if it suited me. I could snap your neck.’ She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that he almost believed she meant it. It got to him, the pointlessness of such a threat now.

‘If that is your intent then go ahead, slave. Shall we go together? We may as well. The Elemental Men will wipe us from the very memory of the world itself for what you've done.’

A slight smile curled her lips. ‘For what
I've
done.’ Beside the bath the decanter of apple wine sat in a brass bowl of iced water on a small stone pedestal. She reached across him and took it, filled her cup and then smashed the decanter on the bath's marble rim. She picked up a shard of glass and ran it across the palm of her hand. Blood dripped into the water. Tsen tried not flinch; not that he was particularly afraid but simply from the sight of her. She was a savage, and her blood and her nakedness tied his insides in knots. He forced himself to be still. ‘I want my freedom, Baros Tsen T'Varr.’ Blood dripped from her fingertips and splashed into her wine. Tsen winced again. Such a waste. ‘Are you not clever enough to give it to me?’ She stretched out her arms and her legs. Bruises from the battle of Dhar Thosis stained her pale skin. ‘I knew another man like you once. He was almost as cunning but not quite.
Much
better between the silk though.’

‘I am not interested in your sex, slave.’

‘I know.’ She laughed again. ‘And I'm thankful for that, and so should you be, because if you
were
interested, then by now I'd have opened your throat. I'd be bathing in your cooling blood, waiting for your soldiers to burst through the door to finish me. Call me slave again and I may yet do so. My name is Zafir. I am mistress of the Silver City and speaker for the dragon-kings and dragon-queens of my realms. We both know you didn't mean me to destroy that city. So now set your mind to sending me back where I came from, and I will set mine and my dragon to aiding you. I trust you're clever
enough to do
that
, at least? You may keep the alchemist if you must but I want the Adamantine Man who once served him. You should find him easily enough. He was in Dhar Thosis too, so I imagine he's now with your kwen if your kwen survived the battle.’

‘Chrias?’ For a moment Tsen looked at her hard. ‘I happen to know that he did. We have ways, he and I.’ He watched for any reaction. Irritation or annoyance, perhaps, but if there was a flicker of anything, it was glee. ‘Would you like to see him?’

Zafir shook her head, although he saw the instant of hesitation. ‘Give me what I want or I will find another who will. Your friends from the mountains, perhaps?’

For a moment Tsen ignored her. He reached over the edge of the bath to the pedestal with its brass bowl, reached into the water and flipped all the ice out to the floor, then dipped his middle finger into it. ‘Quai'Shu had an enchanter bind us all together, years ago.’ He held up his other hand and raised his little finger. ‘Jima Hsian, though Jima was quick to find a way around it.’ Then his first finger. ‘Bronzehand. Come. See.’ The water in the bowl was already shimmering. ‘We may see through one another's eyes as and when we wish, unless precautions are taken. Many sea lords bind their kin and their kwens and hsians and t'varrs together like this.’ He watched the water in the bowl. ‘Most of the time we keep each other blind, but not today.’ Through the kwen's own eyes he saw Chrias in a gloomy room, staring at the soft skin on the inside of his arm, the place where slaves were branded. Staring and staring and rubbing at something. By the look of things he'd already rubbed it raw, or else it was a burn from the fighting in Dhar Thosis. Hard to tell. He glanced at the dragon slave but she made no move to see for herself. When he looked back into the water, Chrias was walking through a door and then along a passage, following one of his black-cloaks. They were at sea, on board a ship. He waited long enough for Chrias to get up to the deck and look about and see that land was nowhere in sight. ‘I wonder what he's up to. Running as far and fast as he can with a hold full of Shonda's silver if he has any sense.’ He shook his head and pulled his finger out of the water. ‘I will consider your proposal, Dragon-Queen.’

Zafir smiled and sighed. ‘To life and its potency.’ She raised her glass and then saw that his was empty, leaned across and tipped
some wine from her own into his. Tsen forced himself to smile back.

‘To life, Dragon-Queen, although I am bewildered by the idea that either of us may cling to it for much longer.’

The wine was tainted by her blood and it would spoil the taste. He pretended not to notice as he lifted the glass. The smile on her face stayed exactly as it was, fixed in place.

‘I'm glad Shrin Chrias Kwen wasn't killed,’ she said. ‘And you may keep that middle finger. I'm so looking forward to watching him die.’

84

A Crack of Light

She watched Baros Tsen T'Varr lift his glass. He was looking at her as he did it. She raised her own and then hesitated and didn't quite know why. Shrin Chrias Kwen would die, slowly and in agony, knowing that she had killed him. Tsen would see it all happen and know that without her the same fate was his. All he had to do was drink. It was perfect.

And yet she hesitated.

She couldn't get the Adamantine Man out her of head. Hadn't been able to ever since she'd left Dhar Thosis. There were some who said with little sneers in their voices that the Speaker's Guard were all the same, that they couldn't be told apart except by themselves and that that was exactly how it should be. There was nothing in the way the one in Dhar Thosis had moved to make Zafir think she'd seen him before, but she remembered his voice as though she'd heard it only yesterday.

Leave her be, you fat prick!

The Pinnacles. His knife. And though it had made no difference, he'd never said that it had been her, not him, who'd murdered her mother's consort; and for that she'd sent him to Furymouth to be a slave. She'd done it to save him. And now here he was.

Dragons were uncaring and hostile and utterly ruthless. They were monsters that devoured anything they found to be weak. She'd long ago grown to learn that their riders were the same. Worse because they had to be. Everyone around her. Her as well. The monsters made them what they were. They had no choice. None.

Baros Tsen touched his glass to his lips.

Bellepheros watched the dragon-queen's return. He watched where she went and he watched as Baros Tsen T'Varr followed her down
into the eyrie, and he saw the horror and the utter disbelief on the t'varr’s face. Then he went back to his study. Each step felt heavier than the last. He sat at his desk and held his head in his hands for a long time. He picked up the bottle of liquid silver that he'd brought with him all the way from Furymouth. He looked at it, felt the weight of it. It was the poison that Quai'Shu had given to one of the princes of the dragon realms so that he might murder his rivals. It was subtle and it killed slowly. Its fumes in the air brought on a madness, but in such a gradual way that no one ever saw until the venom had saturated the bones and the organs of its victim and corroded them from the inside.

He stared at it.
I am not like them. I cannot be. I fight with words. Only words
.

But he still didn't put the bottle down.

Zafir lurched suddenly forward and slapped the glass out of Tsen's hand. They stared at one another, each as surprised as the other. Then she turned quickly and climbed from the water, throwing on her shift. She stooped and picked up the bladeless knife of the Elemental Man.

‘The Adamantine Man who served our alchemist,’ she said again, and her voice was twisted and choked. ‘By whatever gods you believe in, find him. Bring him here! And when you do, you fall on your knees, Baros Tsen T'Varr, and you thank him. You thank him as though you owe him your life. Because you do.’

Then she was gone and Tsen had no idea what had just happened. None at all.

Liang stood in the yard watching the dragon. It was acutely restless, fidgeting and turning and flapping its wings and curling and uncurling its tail and its neck. Now and then it plucked a piece of debris out of its scales. Its discomfort rolled through her, turbulent and disquieting, and she almost didn't see Belli hurrying across the yard towards the tunnels where the Scales lived. When she did, she waved at him, and when he pretended not to see her, she ran, robes flapping around her feet, until she caught him. He was flushed and out of breath and his face was stricken with anguish. He kept shaking his head, even before she started to speak.

‘What's wrong with the . . .’
What's wrong with the dragon?
she was about to ask, but her eyes were drawn to his clenched fist and the bottle he was trying to hide within it. She looked at it long and hard and then looked him in the eye. His head fell. He started to shake. It took her a moment to realise it but he was sobbing. She touched his arm and held out her hand. ‘That is not who you are, Belli,’ she whispered. ‘You are a builder, a maker, a healer, an architect. Give it to me. You are not a poisoner. You are not a murderer. Leave that to others.’

Wordlessly he gave her the bottle. Her fingers closed over it. It was heavy.

‘Stay here.’ She clasped his hand in her own. ‘Stay, Belli. Just stay.’

He nodded and she walked briskly away, across to the walls and climbed them and then threw the vial of silver poison hard and far, away over the edge of the eyrie to be lost in the desert sands far below. When she came back, he was where she'd left him. She took his hands and then, when that didn't seem to be enough, embraced him and held him tightly. ‘I'm sorry,’ she said because after all she'd been the one to put the idea into his head. ‘I'm so sorry.’

She held him until his weeping stopped, and then they stood apart and looked over at the dragon. ‘What's wrong with it?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Zafir must be more wounded than she seemed.’ Then he shrugged. ‘He feels his rider's anguish.’

Zafir walked as quickly as she could away from Baros Tsen and his bath, as fast as her pride would let her, back to her own little room. She was shaking. Everything the dragon had given her was gone. She curled up in a corner against the walls, holding Myst and Onyx tight to her, covering herself in their comfort and their warmth.

‘No pity for pretty little Zafir,’ she murmured and touched a hand to her breast. ‘My heart is here. What's left of it. When they come, make them strike true.’

Epilogue

They Just
Come Back Again

The eggs were waiting for it, a cluster of them alone and far away from the others. The dragon Silence felt their call. Urgent skin that begged for the spark of life.

Afraid?