by Stephen Deas
‘And is that what you have told them?’ She wasn’t listening any more. It could all have come quietly to an end, peacefully and painlessly and possibly even with a touch of grace, but the moment had passed. It wasn’t much to ask, was it, to be allowed to slip silently away? But no. They wanted something from her. Always, always they wanted something more. No peace. No rest. No mercy for pretty Zafir.
‘I have.’
A dragon-queen to the end. ‘Then let them hatch. Let dragons burn this world to ash. I spurn your poisons.’ She turned her back on him. She heard him go and sank back into her corner and held herself. One more betrayal. Nothing left.
Inside her head the Adamantine Man was shaking his head and wagging his finger at her. An Adamantine Man went with his axe in his hand, screaming bloody defiance to the very last gasp of air in his lungs. An Adamantine Man fought, damn it, and a dragon-queen should do no less. She sat for a long time, thinking of Tuuran, thinking of that night in the Pinnacles and of all the things she’d done and what they had cost her. And of him again in Dhar Thosis, bowing at her feet. Did he even remember? And then last of all when she’d chased the hatchling into the abyss of the Queverra. The fleeting sense of him.
She was still wondering about that as she put on the glass-and-gold armour of a Taiytakei dragon-rider and climbed onto Diamond Eye’s back. She scratched the dragon’s scales, not that he ever noticed.
‘Eggs,’ she said. ‘And him. Find both.’
48
Hatchling Disease
Tsen let the Kwen’s soldiers bind him. It occurred to him that he ought to put up at least some sort of fight, but what would he do except make an even bigger fool of himself? At least a man could go with a little dignity. More than Chrias would have when the disease finally took him.
An insidious plague, the alchemist had said. Takes a long time for the first symptoms to show. By the time you know it’s out, it’s spread through half a city. And it had been a horrific thing to watch the Scales fall slowly to pieces. When the disease had begun to spread through the men of the eyrie Tsen had ordered everyone who carried it to be eaten by the dragon. It was the most brutal thing he’d ever done by far. Ever, and yes, kwens and t’varrs across Takei’Tarr did things like that all the time, but not him. Not Baros Tsen.
There were signs of it, when he looked, among some of the other men here. And he knew by now that the alchemist had the disease himself and kept it dormant with potions. So did the rider-slave. Shrin Chrias Kwen didn’t have any potions and so it was killing him, and soldiers weren’t so good at keeping themselves to themselves. Unless the kwen had told them, probably none of them even knew what they carried. Not yet.
He thought all these things as they tied him up and then he thought about the rider-slave. Zafir had done this. The dragon-queen had sent her plague out into the world. His world. He wondered whether she’d planned it that way all along or whether it had been merely personal vengeance on Chrias. Both perhaps? And it occurred to him then that for all these months when he’d thought he was matching his wits and cunning against Shonda of Vespinarr, he’d actually been fencing with Zafir, the slave who was once a dragon-queen, and that she’d thoroughly and comprehensively beaten him. She’d burned Dhar Thosis. She’d set this plague among his people. She’d brought down his house and everything in which he believed, and that was barely even the start.
Maybe she’s dead. Small consolation. In a way he was happy for Chrias to kill him now. Dhar Thosis was bad enough. The rest? The rest he didn’t want to see.
Chrias’s soldiers dragged Tsen outside and threw him down. They were almost done with filling in the mass grave. Tsen supposed the dead were Sivan’s men who’d hadn’t fancied changing sides. He didn’t feel sorry for them. Didn’t feel sorry for Chrias either, nor any of the men he’d brought with him. Didn’t even feel that sorry for himself. There hadn’t been much chance of any other outcome. Kalaiya. It was all for her.
Chrias emerged from the tent. ‘You must have wondered why I let you know I was still alive,’ Tsen said. ‘Why I let you see where I would be. Did you not think it was a trap?’
‘Of course it’s a trap.’ Chrias glanced up at the sky and spat. ‘But without your alchemist I’ll die. So why not? Maybe your dragon egg will get me something.’
Tsen laughed. ‘It makes no difference. I dropped the eyrie into the storm-dark, Chrias. I let the glasships go and watched it fall.’
‘I was watching through your eyes, Tsen. I know what you did.’
‘Even if he got out, the alchemist can’t do anything except stop it from getting worse. The Elemental Men have him now. You should have gone somewhere quiet and died having some fun.’ And so should I. And, dear forbidden gods, he found it bothering him again, now of all times, why the rider-slave hadn’t given him the disease when she’d had the chance, why she’d changed her mind and knocked the glass out of his hand. It made him peevish. Is that the best you can do for your last thoughts?
‘At least I get to watch you go first, Tsen.’
‘Was I so bad to you?’
Chrias laughed. ‘We both wanted to be the new lord of Xican, Tsen. No harm in that. No grudges, no regrets, but no remorse, and you still die.’
‘You were right. Liang was right.’ Tsen looked the kwen over. ‘The dragon-rider did this to you. But couldn’t you see how much she hated you?’ He might have told his tongue to be careful but all things considered there didn’t seem much point. Not that his tongue ever listened to him anyway.
‘I saw. You should have put her down like the rabid dog she was right at the start.’
‘Yes.’ The people of Dhar Thosis, Tsen thought, would probably agree. ‘But I didn’t. Because of you. She played me well, Shrin Chrias Kwen. She made me into a fool.’
‘She played us both, T’Varr.’ And Tsen couldn’t find much to argue with there.
Chrias walked stiffly back into his tent and returned dragging Kalaiya. ‘You know the next thing I’m going to do, Tsen? I’m going to have you beg. I’m going to have you beg for your woman.’ He patted himself between the legs. ‘It hurts but it all still works, and there are plenty here who have the sickness already yet barely notice. Shall I pass her around between them in front of you while you watch? You can think of me dying slowly of this cursed plague and you can think of her dying of it too.’ He bared his teeth. ‘Everyone knows about you, Tsen. About time she had a proper man, isn’t it? Beg me not to do it. Beg, T’Varr!’
Tsen twisted on the ground and spat at him but Chrias dodged the spittle. He came suddenly close and ripped Tsen’s tunic open, looked between Tsen’s legs and laughed.
‘Some people said you were secretly a eunuch but now we all know better. So it just doesn’t work, eh? But you’ve still got a hole in that fat arse of yours. Beg well enough and I’ll spare your woman and pass you around instead. Maybe being buggered by a dozen soldiers will finally light some fire in you, T’Varr.’
‘Your many bastards must be so very proud of you, Chrias!’
‘I hope so.’ Chrias pushed Kalaiya away. ‘What makes me hate you, Tsen, what really makes it beyond the pale between us, is that you actually think I’d do that. You loathe me for being a kwen. You think I’m an animal and yet you barely know me at all. What wrong has she ever done me? None. What sort of monster do you think I am? I’ll hang you, quick and simple, and then I’ll let her go, Tsen. You can have that much as you die.’ He turned and walked away. ‘String him up.’
Out across the desert, somewhere under the storm-dark, Tsen heard the shriek of a dragon.
*
Diamond Eye launched himself off the edge of the eyrie, spread his wings and glided out over the pre-dawn glow of the storm-dark. Zafir felt him looking, searching. Eggs were difficult. Eggs weren’t living things, not yet, just waiting vessels of flesh and bone until somewhere a dragon died and its soul came looking for a new home. The glasship then. Bellepheros had said that’s how they’d been taken. Glasships had a
taste to them. She’d found even before Dhar Thosis that Diamond Eye could feel their presence even when he couldn’t see them. Something about the enchantments that made them fly, though other pieces of gold-glass seemed dead.
They flew to the edge of the storm-dark, dropped beneath it and immediately found the glasship floating over the desert with its gondola open, resting on the sand. No one came out to gawk and Diamond Eye already knew there was no one here alive. Zafir landed and slid off his back to see anyway. There were a handful of bodies outside the gondola and two more inside. Zafir ignored them. She ran her fingertips over the walls. They came away grimy with a greasy black ash.
The eggs weren’t here. She stayed a while, circling the gondola on foot, looking at the tracks. There were a lot – and it would have been easier to see them from the back of a dragon but she was afraid that the wind of Diamond Eye’s wings would disturb the sand and wipe them away. As she looked she felt a sharpness from the dragon. Diamond Eye surged towards her as a killer appeared.
‘You came back with Sea Lord Shonda and without the elemental Man who escorted you. You will return to the eyrie now and I will come with you. You will await the Arbiter. You will do this or I will end you here.’
Zafir stamped her foot, shook her head and snorted. ‘Your kinsman died under Shonda’s lightning. You have his body. See it for yourself.’ But perhaps in the confusion of the stolen eggs, of the eyrie plunging to its doom, of Shonda’s confession, perhaps they didn’t know. Perhaps the killer’s broken corpse was still lying in Shonda’s savaged gondola, unnoticed. Pity. She should have had Diamond Eye dangle him as well in front of that crowd – a sea lord and an Elemental Man. She smiled. ‘My dragon will find your missing eggs for you.’
‘No. You will not fly again. My knife awaits you.’
Zafir climbed onto Diamond Eye’s back, buckled on her harness and then held up her arms in surrender. ‘So be it.’
She smiled again as he sat behind her and strapped on his harness nice and tight.
The Elemental Men appeared around Shrin Chrias Kwen’s camp simultaneously. There were only three but that didn’t matter. One rose from the sand not far from the gallows close to the camp’s heart. Another flickered in at its edge, behind the kwen but in Tsen’s line of sight. He didn’t see the third until later.
‘Do not run!’ ordered the first.
‘Killers!’ roared Chrias. ‘Circles!’
Tsen watched, fascinated. Surely the only sensible thing to do was to throw yourself face down into the sand and lie very still, but Chrias’s soldiers scurried together into tight circles of fighting men, blades drawn. The kwen had four soldiers close around him.
‘The Way!’ he shouted, whatever that was, and the clusters of soldiers all started moving at once, racing for the pavilion at the heart of the camp.
The Elemental Men vanished. One appeared out of the sand in front of Chrias and stabbed up. A soldier screamed and sank in a spray of blood. By then the Elemental Man had already flickered over the top of them. His bladeless knife flashed down. He vanished as a second man fell with blood pouring out of his mouth, appeared behind a third and ran him through from behind. Chrias and his last bodyguard ran, not that running would save them.
Kalaiya was suddenly on her feet. ‘Stay down!’ Tsen screamed at her, but she ignored him. She picked up a sword from one of the dead soldiers and ran to his side.
The killer appeared again in front of Chrias and the fourth soldier, knife outstretched. The soldier ran straight into the bladeless knife. It passed through his armour without a pause and sliced his heart in two. The kwen’s hand flicked sideways, quick as a striking snake. The Elemental Man vanished and appeared crouched at his side. His bladeless knife flashed at Chrias’s ankle and the kwen was suddenly missing a foot. Chrias screamed and went down. The Elemental Man rose slowly, stumbled, then sank to his knees and toppled into the sand.
Kalaiya sawed through the ropes around Tsen’s wrists and feet. She gripped his arm, shaking like a leaf in a gale, eyes wide, quivering with fear. Her fingers were as rigid as an iron band. ‘What do we do? What do we do?’
Tsen wished he knew. Lie down and stay very still and wait for it all to be over, that was what they ought to do. Trouble with that was what happened later, when the killers realised who he was and hanged him. First Sivan, then Chrias, now the killers. He had, he decided, enjoyed better days.
‘We run,’ he whispered, wondering if those were the most foolish words he’d ever say.
Diamond Eye powered into the sky, past the edge of the storm-dark and on. Higher and higher. The Elemental Man behind her was tense. The dragon felt his unease and so Zafir felt it too. She angled towards the eyrie to ease his mind, still climbing until they were a little above it, and then she dived, gently at first to build a little speed.
The great cliff, she murmured. Do you remember it? Do you remember what we used to do? The plunge, a mile straight down without a pause. There was a way to lie to keep the wind from slipping between rider and dragon and tearing them apart. Riders went there to learn. The ones who didn’t get it right, sometimes they learned, sometimes they died, but everyone went one way or the other sooner or later because when it came to a fight gone wrong then down and fast was the only way to live.
Diamond Eye tucked in his wings, twitched his tail and dived, a sudden plunge straight past the eyrie and on at the waiting storm-dark, ever faster until she felt the wind tearing at every part of her. She leaned forward as far as she could, turning her head and pressing her visor against Diamond Eye’s scales. If the killer behind tried to stab her now, the hurricane would rip his arm out of its socket. Through the dragon she felt the Elemental Man’s fear. It drove her on, faster and faster until she didn’t dare even move a finger.
Break him. She couldn’t speak. Until the wind rips him apart.
The killer tried to turn into air but he couldn’t, not so close to a dragon. He moved at last, reaching in despair for the harness she’d tied so tightly, and that little twitch was enough. The wind caught him, ripped him up and flipped him back and snapped his neck and his spine both at once. Diamond Eye felt him go. The dragon spread his wings, arced and spiralled and slowed their fall and settled into a long gentle glide across the surface of the storm-dark. Zafir felt his glee. Maybe he felt hers too. She unstrapped herself and the dead Elemental Man, slowly and carefully lest she lose her balance, then pushed him until his body fell, tumbling into the dark clouds of the maelstrom. She watched him go and then rose to stand on Diamond Eye’s back and spread her arms, braced against the rush of air, feeling it push against her. She took off her helm and closed her eyes and let the wind tug her hair and scour her face. She howled. In her mind she stepped into the void and fell beside the killer down into the clouds and whatever end waited there. Fell and fell into a place where even her ancestors would never find her. She tried to see a reason to do it, or a reason not to, or anything that would make a difference one way or the other. All she saw was the Adamantine Man, wagging his finger.
He was a slave now. Ten years, give or take, for the gift he’d given her.
When she opened her eyes, she eased herself down and strapped herself into the harness once more.
49
The Easy Way
Deep beneath the maelstrom the darkness was close to absolute. The Godspike was far behind, very gently aglow, a faint haze in the distance. On the horizon ahead, out over the desert where the storm-dark ended, Tuuran could see stars. Crazy Mad urged his humpbacked horse into a gallop and Tuuran followed as best he could. Apparently it didn’t bother Crazy that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. Apparently it didn’t bother his linxia either.
‘Come on, big man!’ Crazy looked back over his shoulder, his eyes shining with silver moonlight. Fine – so maybe Crazy could see his hand in front of his face.
‘It’s not so easy for us mortals, you know!’
At the far edge of the storm-dark, Flame knew how many h
ours later, Crazy stopped. Tuuran let out a good long sigh, slumped sideways in his saddle and let himself fall to the sand. There were stars again here, at least in the part of the sky that wasn’t blotted out by the storm-dark’s purple gloom, and he could see where he was going again. On the whole he liked that better than careering through the pitch-black on the heels of a madman.
‘It’s up there,’ Crazy said. Tuuran had no idea how anyone could know, but Crazy’s eyes were still bright burning silver, and this was the Crazy Mad who now and then turned people into ash, and Tuuran thought he sometimes did that for no particular reason other than that they were there, and so he was happy to take Crazy’s word for it. But then, as he watched, a star winked out and winked back again, high above, and then another, and he knew that Crazy was right and he’d seen a dragon.
Crazy turned his linxia around and went pelting off almost back the way they’d come.
‘Where the bloody Xibaiya . . . ?’ Tuuran scrambled back onto his mount and shouted, but now they were going full tilt again, and Crazy Mad couldn’t hear him, and apparently it didn’t bother him that they’d been out here all bloody night with not a moment to rest. On the bright side, Tuuran’s legs had stopped complaining about all the climbing, if only so his back could gripe about the riding instead.
Miles and miles and miles more passed under the storm-dark until Crazy suddenly stopped and pointed: up in the sky beneath the cloud a bright star was coming down. A glasship. Crazy’s eyes faded to a glimmer and he set off after it, which seemed pointless to Tuuran, a glasship being what it was, and so he felt a bit stupid when the glasship mocked him by coming right on down to the ground and stopped with its gondola an inch above the sand.
Crazy pulled up a good way short, watching, and now Tuuran could hear the distant rumble of other riders not far away and then shouts coming closer. He couldn’t see much except the glow of the glasship until a haze of figures arrived around it, lit up by the glare of its spinning heart. Must have been pushing a hundred men and half a dozen wagons with them.
