by Stephen Deas
‘Where did you come from, eh?’ He hefted his axe and took a step back. A good suit of dragonscale and he might have stood a chance against a new hatchling. Naked? Well, it was just going to burn him, wasn’t it? Best to run. Really was. Yet he didn’t.
The hatchling turned a baleful glare on him and flared its glittering wings. Tuuran spotted the broken egg behind it. They had a few, and the Black Moon had said not to touch them, and so no one had. But the Black Moon wasn’t here any more, and her Holiness and her dragon weren’t here either to give a bad hatchling a kicking, and all of a sudden it was down to him, standing naked with a big axe against a murderous whipwire of claws and tail and fire.
Hatchling fire was weak fresh out of the egg. He knew that. Took them a few hours to find their full heat, but that only meant burning to death slightly slower, more was the pity.
The hatchling twitched. A cold flood of sense finally got hold of Tuuran’s feet; he was about to turn and run, fast as he bloody well could, when a flash of silver moonlight lit the white stone. The hatchling froze, and then Crazy Mad was next to it where Crazy Mad hadn’t been a moment before, pulling that hideous knife of his out of the dragon’s scales, and Tuuran reckoned he knew exactly what had happened and how Crazy had got there so quick: he’d done that same thing he’d done out in the desert when they’d been taken by slavers and the dragon Silence had come poking around inside their heads. Crazy had stopped time, that’s what he’d done, strolled up to the frozen dragon lazy as you please, stabbed it with that knife of his and told it to do whatever he said. Except it wasn’t Crazy Mad who could stop time and turn men to dust and make dragons into slaves, it was the Black Moon, and that’s what the flash of silver light was, and the Black Moon wasn’t gone, and Crazy had known all along, and here it was again, the half-god, and it made Tuuran want to scream and weep all at once. Still there in Crazy’s head, just not doing very much.
‘Go away,’ said Crazy, quiet as the night. ‘Leave him alone.’
The hatchling looked confused. It lunged another step at Tuuran, stopped, shook itself and then flew away, straight over Tuuran’s head, dripping slime from its egg all over his face. Tuuran spat it out of his mouth and almost retched – vile, sulphur and salt. He didn’t bother watching where the dragon went. Off to be with the other two, most likely, sulking with them because they wanted to fly off and eat people and burn some towns and villages for the sheer fun of it, and the Black Moon wouldn’t let them.
The silver light went out of Crazy’s eyes. Crazy sank to his knees in the middle of the dragon yard, the same place he’d been when they escaped the storm-dark from the Silver Sea. Tuuran hauled him to his feet.
‘You stop that, Crazy.’
‘He’s back, Tuuran.’ He looked harrowed. ‘Just like that and he’s back.’
‘No.’ Tuuran shook his head. ‘Not back. It was just a thing. It’s not quite gone, but it was just a thing.’ He was talking too loudly. Shouting almost. ‘You’re still you. Like you’ve been for months now. It’s not back. It’s not. It’s …’ He knew he didn’t have the first idea, but then he was saying it for himself, not for Crazy any more. Crazy knew better. Crazy had known better from the start. He saw that now. ‘Shit.’ He steadied himself. ‘You’re still you, Crazy.’
‘For now.’
‘We’ll find a way. Somehow. We’ll get it out of you. I promise.’
‘You promise?’ Crazy shook his head. ‘I know you mean it, big man, but what can you actually do? You can’t hit it with an axe …’ He trailed off and looked at Tuuran hard, then drew another knife, a good plain night-skin steel blade. He offered Tuuran the hilt. ‘Actually maybe you can. Kill me, big man. Kill me and be done with it while you still can. It’s the only way out for any of us.’
‘No.’
Crazy grabbed Tuuran’s hand and pulled it to the knife. ‘Do you think I didn’t try to do it myself? But he won’t let me. That cost him, doing what he just did. Kill me while he’s weak. Because you won’t get him out, whatever you say, and if you let him get strong again it’s going to be the end of the world for all of us. You, me, your dragon-queen, Myst, Onyx, the children growing inside them. Could be a son you’ve got coming. You want the Black Moon to cut his newborn soul?’
‘No!’
‘Then kill me, big man! You don’t know what he is! You don’t know what he’s going to do! But I do, and I’d rather die.’
‘No!’ Tuuran pulled his hand away and took a step back.
‘Kill me! Kill me, you cowardly shit! Do it!’ Crazy came after him brandishing the knife. Tuuran backed away, then turned and ran down into the eyrie. Crazy didn’t follow him, but the rest of the night really wasn’t much fun after that.
20
The Starknife
Six months before landfall
Zafir soared the sky, vast, empty and blue. She could see the curve of the world. A rich dark blue above, lightening to white along the horizon all around her, then darkening to the hammered steel of the sea beneath a white puff blanket of cloud. It was cold this high, and each breath caught in her throat as though she breathed a lungful of ice. The devils of tumult and turmoil stalked her from her visit to the caves with Tuuran. The fear, the dark. That night in the Pinnacles. Tuuran, ten years of slavery for the blood on his knife. The cold scoured these things from her thoughts.
I should have done better for him.
Diamond Eye flinched and changed his course. He wasn’t listening. He’d found something. The sense of a murmur, far away. Thoughts. Little ones.
A ship? Her mind snapped to attention. She jumped into Diamond Eye’s senses. Yes. A ship. She arrowed for it, Diamond Eye dropping to fly just above the cotton-ball clouds, weaving between them with fractious energy. He wanted to burn something, and Zafir agreed. Fire and claw would do nicely. She slipped inside his thoughts, and together they crept among minds and sights. Through the eyes of its crew Zafir saw a Taiytakei three-master laden with supplies of war for the Sun King, thrown far off course by the uncaring meanderings of the ever erratic storm-dark. The ship was riding low under full sail, battering hard through the waves and making good speed, the deck awash with spray under bright sun and a clear sky. She sailed with a sense of unwary contentment.
But not for long.
They stooped out of the sun. At the very last, as Diamond Eye flared his wings ready to rake the ship’s decks with fire, Zafir changed her mind. Cripple them. No more. They may have things we need. Things we could take.
Diamond Eye didn’t like it. He spat a small cough of flame as he swooped across the ship’s stern, then smashed through the mizzen mast and lashed his tail across the aft deck, splitting the jigger mast in two and shattering the aft lightning cannon. Zafir threw herself hard against his scales and clung tight. A wanton spray of rockets flew after him as he soared away, set alight by his fire, launching themselves haphazardly into the air. He wheeled for another pass, and then jinked as a bolt of lightning came at him from the front of the ship. There was a sorcerer aboard. The kind who crossed the storm-dark. Diamond Eye felt their presence. A navigator like the Arbiter Red Lin Feyn.
A surge of anger flashed inside Zafir. She crushed it. Leave them be. A world-crossing Taiytakei trader … They’d have charts. They’d know where they were. They’d know how to get to land and where to cross the storm-dark and how …
Do you command me so, little one? She felt Diamond Eye’s disgust.
No. She’d made a promise. No more slaves. No, I only ask.
A navigator to cross the storm-dark, though. They could guide her home! That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Tuuran surely did, if he was honest, and Bellepheros too, and certainly the witch Chay-Liang. They were all content enough out here, but only because they imagined they had no choice; and up to now they hadn’t, but …
So for them, then. Not for her.
Really?
&n
bsp; The Black Moon was creeping alive again. Diamond Eye felt him stirring inside the Crowntaker. Something had roused him. He was close to waking, and when he did …
Do you see? she asked the dragon. We cannot stay.
Diamond Eye turned away, simmering. Zafir flew him high again, circling out of sight for a while as she thought about what to do.
Could you find this ship again?
Yes.
Wherever they went, no matter where that was?
No.
She flew the thousand miles back to the islands, arrowed skimming across the sea and crash-stopped in a spray of sand and stones and broken shells. She let Diamond Eye loose to do as he pleased, and climbed the winding steps and paths into the tree-house village. Huts and shelters peppered the canopy above her like giant nests, lining the stream that bubbled out of the island’s craggy heart. She paused for a moment to look at them. She didn’t come here so often any more, and when she did she came and went as quickly as she could.
The tree houses were a hotchpotch, most built from smooth planks sawn by Chay-Liang’s golem machines. Scattered among them were the very first huts, which were really little more than ill-knitted log cabins. There were remnants of old shelters on the ground and little clearings now where unwanted trees had been felled in rare patches of flat ground to make way for gardens, some even growing flowers for the sheer colour of it. There were pens with wing-clipped birds from the island forest, something like chickens but smaller. There were glasshouses among the trees up in the branches, sparkling now and then like stars in the sun, catching the light and growing ground-fruit fast and juicy. For the alchemist and his gardener-apprentice Chay-Liang had even built a glasshouse out on the beach. They’d filled it with soil and then every kind of plant they could find.
Elsewhere Zafir saw tame monkeys tied on leashes. Pets or to scare away the birds? She didn’t know. And sleds. Everyone had a sled now because the enchantress had more glass and time than she knew what to do with. Sleds to ride up into the trees, to forage for fruit or else ride out over the sea to fish, or simply to climb to their skyborn homes to rest and sleep. Zafir had seen a few skimming the waves for sport too. It wouldn’t be long before they started exploring the other islands. If they did that, if they looked hard enough, they might find out what she already knew, what these islands really were. Would it make a difference? It hadn’t to her.
The enchantress wasn’t in her workshop. Zafir eventually found her with Bellepheros a little way upstream on a rocky outcrop that jutted from the forest, a spur beside a waterfall that gave a clear view of the island spread out below. They were sitting by the rushing water on a spread of fur, sipping jasmine tea from the eyrie, nibbling fruit and soaking up the sun.
‘I want a sled,’ Zafir said. ‘One I can carry on Diamond Eye’s back.’
Chay-Liang snorted. ‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve found a Taiytakei ship, and I want to talk to them, and I doubt they’ll welcome a dragon.’ When Chay-Liang didn’t move, Zafir added, ‘They’ve crossed the storm-dark. They have charts and a navigator. I will lose them if I don’t return in haste.’
She didn’t need to say more. The witch wanted to go home more than all the rest of them put together. It took her hardly any time to make a sled; she didn’t even have to get up, and Zafir wondered how anyone could live with such power inside them and not have it burn like the sun.
‘There was a hatching,’ said Chay-Liang when she was done. She gestured to the sled. ‘You will need to get used to flying it.’
‘A hatching?’ Zafir stood on the sled in the sun-dappled shade beside the little river. She wobbled and tried to make it move, lost her balance and fell off. She ought to do this later, she supposed. Have a bath and clean herself up first. Have a good long rest before she took Diamond Eye back out. She didn’t want to, though. Impatience was ever the dragon-rider’s curse.
A hatching? The significance almost passed her by until she realised that Bellepheros didn’t have a hatchery any more, nor any Scales, that she and Diamond Eye had been away and yet the village was still here and nothing was on fire or reduced to smouldering ash.
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Where is it?’ She climbed back onto the sled.
‘Tuuran was on the eyrie. And the Crowntaker too.’ Chay-Liang glared at Zafir. ‘You know that men visit your slaves while you’re not there? Are they your whores now?’
Zafir rounded on her. ‘Myst and Onyx are neither my slaves nor my whores. You might care to remember that when they were slaves, Chay-Liang, that they were made so by people like you, who taught them to moan and squeal in delight for fat old men behind a mask of docile servitude …’ She caught herself. ‘Not you yourself, Chay-Liang. But Taiytakei nonetheless, and you are all complicit. Myst and Onyx were Zifan’Shu’s bed-slaves, so they’re probably very good at pleasing whoever takes their fancy. They do as they wish.’ She inched the sled forward and didn’t fall off this time. It was a start. Then backwards. Sideways …
She wobbled and nearly fell off again. A hatching. Another dragon out there. The thought left her uneasy. She and Diamond Eye should probably do something about that.
‘So are we in danger?’ she asked. ‘Or have you a caged hatchling somewhere about? Either way I should …’ She stopped. ‘Was anyone hurt?’ Belatedly what should have been her first thought.
‘Your man Tuuran was on the eyrie when it happened. Apparently he faced the dragon down with nothing more than an axe and his manhood.’ Chay-Liang clearly didn’t believe a word of it.
‘That does sound like Tuuran,’ Zafir laughed. She rode the sled sideways straight into a tree and fell off again. ‘Is he—’
‘As I hear it, the Crowntaker appeared beside the hatchling out of nowhere and stabbed it with that blade he carries.’ Chay-Liang’s face changed when she mentioned the knife. Zafir clambered back onto the sled.
‘Tuuran saw this?’
‘He came asking Bellepheros what could be done. Then he went into the forest. That was yesterday, and he hasn’t come back.’
‘Is there anything to be done?’
Beside Chay-Liang, Bellepheros snorted. ‘Anything to be done, Holiness? You could take that evil knife off him! He’s a half-god, Zafir, and none of us can touch him. If anyone can do anything at all, I actually thought it might be you.’
‘Me?’ Zafir managed to move the sled slowly each way without losing her balance this time. Practice, that was all it came down to. That and perhaps not being so bone-weary when she tried to learn.
‘The Silver King conjured your old palace. There are relics there that your family guard with jealousy. Secrets. And your dragon likely knows more than all the rest of us put together.’ Bellepheros shook his head. ‘I don’t have the first idea how to stop him. But yes, if you wanted something done, you could take that knife away from him while anyone still can, and you could smash the last dragon eggs. None of the rest of us can go near them. You knew that, yes?’
Zafir shook her head. Chay-Liang met her eye as she did, and for a moment the years of animosity between them fell away. For a moment the witch was afraid. ‘He’s coming back, isn’t he?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Zafir shivered. The Black Moon had saved her. He was a half-god like the Silver King of legend. He’d told her she would be another Vishmir, that he would be her Isul Aieha. He’d touched the slave circlet across her brow and made it ash. He would take her home, and the dragons would flock to him, and every world would be theirs for the taking, or so he’d said back in Takei’Tarr. The two of them side by side, her and a half-god, and so why wasn’t her heart brimming with glee and delight? Why the touch of dread? Because the price of the half-god was Tuuran losing his friend?
No. Perhaps it should have been, but not that.
Because everything she’d ever trusted had turned out to be nothing but lies and betrayal? Because everyo
ne she ever let in had left her bleeding? That, perhaps?
No. Something deeper still.
‘Why can’t you touch the dragon eggs, Bellepheros?’ she asked, as skilful a deflection as she could manage.
Chay-Liang hissed, ‘Because your half-god …’ Her face contorted, as though trying to spit out words that resolutely refused to come. She snarled, an odd melange of frustration and anger and despair. ‘I cannot speak it, but we must all do as he demands, and that is no secret! He made it so while you were lying in quicksilver in Tsen’s bath, hovering between life and death. We were all forbidden from touching the eggs and the compulsion remains even if he’s not—’ She stopped and looked hard at Zafir. ‘Has he bound you to obey him too?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve never tested him.’ Perhaps she should. Chay-Liang might not be able to say it, but the witch’s meaning was clear enough. The Black Moon had cut them all with his knife. Three little cuts. You. Obey. Me. She’d seen him do it to Diamond Eye right before her eyes, woken her dragon and enslaved him all at once, and she didn’t doubt he’d done it to others too. Had he done it to her in her sleep one night? Or while she was lying in Baros Tsen’s bath? Would she even know? When the men he cut had been Taiytakei soldiers sent to kill him, it hadn’t seemed so terrible. Now … she didn’t know. Didn’t know what to think.
