A Dragon In the Palace

by William King

  The crew knew what they were doing. They were taking no chances that any of us would give them away before they got out of port.

  Fear intensified as hope faded. I lay there, the weight of cold metal pressing on my leg. I tried moving it. The cold, heavy links of a chain scraped against my skin. The full horror of my situation settled on me. I was on a slave ship, in chains, unable to see or to speak. Nobody knew where I was. And we were on our way to a Black Ship.

  After a while, somebody shouted, “Anchors up! Lookouts to the crow’s nest! We’re away!”

  Feet thundered across the deck above my head, as sailors responded to the commands. Men chanted, “heave ho. Heave ho.”

  A huge metal chain rattled. Something thumped against the side of the ship, most likely the anchor. Wood creaked as the boat warped away from the dock. More feet raced across the deck. More commands were bellowed. I felt the motion of the ship and knew we were leaving Solsberg behind. I was on my way into a life of slavery or worse.

  How had things change so quickly? Only yesterday morning I had woke up in a bed in the Palace. Now I was here with no chance of escape. Hot tears ran down my face. I closed my eyes and willed myself to stop. I was not going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, overcome by despair. My miserable brooding was ended when I was hauled upright, the sack removed from my head and the gag from my mouth.

  I found myself looking up at an ugly, grey-haired man.

  “Wakey, wakey, sleepyhead,” he said and giggled as if he just made the funniest joke in the world.

  “I am awake, sir,” I said. I could see no sense in antagonising him. He had a mad gleam in his eye.

  “So you are! So you are! Let’s hope your friends are as bright and alert as you this lovely morning.”

  He went around removing the sacks from Jay’s head and then Ghoran’s. The big Northlander was still asleep. His face was bruised. His lips were mashed and swollen and he did not look well. At least his breathing was normal and he had not choked.

  Jay looked untouched. I was a little envious. He caught my eye and gave me a wan smile. “Sorry,” he said.

  “What are you sorry for, son?” The old man said. He giggled again.“ You’ve not done nothing to me that’s wrong. Give us a smile! Cheer up, worse things happen at sea!”

  “We are at sea,” Jay said.

  “Not yet, son, not yet. But we will be soon. We’re in the channel heading out for Slaver’s Island” the madman said. “We get there soon enough though. Then you will be at sea. It’ll happen soon enough. Don’t worry!”

  Jay looked as if he was going to argue for a moment then he looked away, eyes darting around our place of captivity, taking it all in. The ceiling was low and wooden. Around lay perhaps thirty people, all chained. The rows of captives, disappeared into the gloom beneath the deck. I had no idea how many people really were down there.

  All I could see, I counted. The Black Skulls did a lot of business with illegal slavers. I thought about what Jay’s father had said that all the people coming to the city, looking for work, seeking their fortune. Who would miss them if they disappeared?

  They represented a source of wealth for somebody. Some of the people in the hold were girls and some of them were children. That did not bode well. The old man disappeared around one of the columns that held the deck above us. I heard him making inanely cheerful remarks to other people. He laughed and giggled, clearly happy in his work.

  “It’s nice that somebody enjoys their job around here,” Jay whispered. He sounded much more self-possessed now than he had we confronted Mercius. Perhaps he had time to adjust. He had been conscious for longer than Ghoran or myself.

  “I’m guessing that we won’t be,” I said, sourly. “We’re going to be slaves or sacrifices.”

  “We are already slaves,” Jay said. “At least we haven’t been branded, yet.”

  That was a new horror to think about. I imagined red-hot metal scorching my flesh. I flinched just at the thought of it. Jay’s smile widened. It was but a shadow of the cheeky grin he usually had but there was something slightly reassuring about it.

  He inspected the leg irons. He raised his foot, barely above the level of the deck. It was an impressive feat of strength. Those chains were heavy and they were fixed to strong looking rings on the walls. He leaned forward head tilted to one side as he inspected the cuff of the manacle.

  “Nice lock,” he said. “But I could open it if I had a pick.”

  “And if your hands were free,” I said.

  “There’s that,” Jay said.

  “And then we could heroically fight our way through the crew of a ship, out on the open sea, and after that sail to freedom. Oh, I forgot, I don’t know how to sail and neither do you.”

  “He does,” Jay said. “Oi! You stupid northern bastard. You got us into this.”

  “He can’t hear you,” I said. “He still sleeping.”

  “Typical” Jay said. “He lies there lazing around and now we have to deal with the consequences of his idiocy.”

  “He didn’t have to come with you,” I said.

  Just for a moment Jay’s façade of bravado cracked and he looked as if he was going to cry. “I know. I’m sorry I dragged him into this. I’m sorry I dragged you into it too. If I’d known things were going to go sideways I would never have asked you to come along.”

  “But they did and we are here now,” I said. “And there’s not much any of us can do about it.”

  “No,” he said. “Suppose you’re right. I wonder what time breakfast is around here. I’m starting to get hungry.”

  I stared at him. I could not believe what I was hearing. He was hungry.

  All around us the prisoners stirred. An old man in chains glanced over at me. He looked scared. Beside him, a young woman glared at me as if she blamed me for her captivity. Two more young men, red eyed and hungover yawned and stretched as if they had just woken up in a room in a tavern. One of them looked down at his leg and gave a start of horror. Slowly, the realisation of where he was and what must have happened, appeared in his eyes. “Bastard,” he said. “I thought that last drink tasted funny.”

  He began to rattle his chains and shout, “let me out. You bastards. You can’t do this!”

  The old madman hobbled back towards, put a finger against his lips, and said “shush, son. Or Silas will hear you. Shush!”

  “No, I won’t,” the youth said. “You can’t do this to me. I’m a free man. You can’t just put people in chains because you feel like it.”

  “But it’s done,” the old man said. “If you don’t stop yelling, bad things will happen.”

  He spoke calmly and in a concerned voice. He seemed to genuinely be warning the youth to shut up. The hungover boy ignored him.

  A heavy stride creaked the stairs. A shadow blocked out the light. A massive man stepped in. He was absolutely enormous and not all of the weight was fat. His arms were thick and tattooed. His head was shaved and another tattoo was there. A large bunch of keys hung from his waist. In his hand was a short thick bludgeon. “Shut it,” he said. “Or you’ll have no teeth.”

  It took me a moment to realise that he was talking to me. “I never said anything, sir,” I said.

  “It was me, fatso,” the youth said. He rattled his chain. “Get this thing off me. There’s been some mistake. I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Oh you do,” the giant said. “Let’s see what we can do about that then.”

  He padded over to where the youth lay. The boards groaned beneath his feet. I caught a musky smell as he went past. He bent over and the club went forward. There was a cracking sound. The complaining youth spit out teeth and a lot of blood.

  “I won’t break your arms or your fingers or your legs,” the fat man said. “But you don’t need teeth since you’ll be existing on gruel anyway.”

  The youth looked up at him eyes wide with horror and fear. There was a lot of pai
n in his gaze too, as well as disbelief. He did not quite understand what was happening to him.

  The fat man put one enormous foot in the youth’s chest and leaned forward, pushing the bloody faced apprentice onto his back. He exerted his strength and leaned in with his weight on that leg. The youth gasped and spat out more blood.

  “I hope we understand each other now,” the fat man said. He looked around to make sure we had all got the point. Everybody nodded in fear. The other youth whimpered, the angry-looking young woman glared but said nothing. The child hunched up and put his arms around his knees and kept his head down as if that would protect him from the beating.

  The fat man leaned forward and stroked the child’s hair almost affectionately. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said. He sounded as if he meant it.

  The fat giant straightened up. His head almost hit the ceiling. He turned this way and that so we could all get a good look at him. He raised his wooden truncheon. Blood dripped from its tip onto the floor. He made sure we all get a good view of it.

  “You’re all slaves now,” he said. “I know you don’t like it but there’s no sense fighting it. Things will only get worse from here. And believe me they are plenty bad as they stand.”

  “You tell them, Silas,” the old man said. He giggled at his own wit. “They are all slaves now.”

  “That they are, Thomas,” Silas said. “That they are.”

  He turned and padded up the stairs. He paused to look at me almost sympathetically. His skin was as dark as mine. He shrugged and walked up the stairs and left the cargo hold feeling somehow much emptier for his absence.

  “Don’t fancy getting hit with that stick,” Jay said.

  “Very wise, son,” old man Thomas said.

  There was not much anybody could say after that. We lay there in silence and misery. Jay patted his stomach and then wrinkled his nose. “I don’t suppose we’ll be getting breakfast,” he said eventually.

  “I don’t suppose we will,” I replied.

  The youth with no teeth just lay there, whimpering miserably. The child had stopped crying. The angry woman stared very hard at me.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked her eventually.

  “You, moondog,” she said. “Want to make something of it?”

  “We are all in this together,” Jay said. “But if you want to fight, just crawl over here and get to it.”

  He obviously intended it as a joke. There was no way any of us could reach each other. I could get to him or Ghoran because they were chained beside me but I could not reach across the aisle to her.

  “I doubt our fat friend with the club would appreciate you to coming to blows though,” Jay added.

  “Yeah,” the woman said. “You’re probably right.”

  “How did you get here?” Jay asked.

  “My pimp sold me,” she said. “Said I was too uppity. Just because I stabbed a customer who wanted a bit for free.”

  “The nerve of some people,” Jay said. The woman surprised me by laughing.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The nerve.”

  I lay on the floor and felt lassitude sweep over me. I closed my eyes and I thought about Red. I felt a faint spark, warmth. Somebody was concerned about me. I remembered the dream I had had. Perhaps he could draw the attention of Mistress Iliana. I tried to see things through his eyes and just for a moment I could.

  I was looking at my old room. Nostalgia surged through me – if I got free of this, I would never leave it again. I would stay there and have the servants bring me meals I would study as hard as ever a boy had to become a wizard. Then, perhaps, I would go down into East Tower and find the men responsible for this and make them pay.

  Frantically I looked around to see if I could see Mistress Iliana but she was not there. Sunlight filtered through the shutters. The door opened and a servant boy looked in. I dashed for the doorway, scuttled between his legs and out into the corridor. Behind me something shouted in a voice like thunder.

  I raced along the corridor, saw a landing ahead. There was also high window that as a human boy I would never been able to reach. Red sprang into the air, his wings snapped open and he soared out into the early morning air.

  I looked down at the courtyard and the gardens. I headed for the walls. Something tugged at me, directing my gaze towards the sea. That must be where my human body was.

  I flashed away towards the north-east, heading out over the Palace walls. A sleepy-looking guard looked up and saw me and pointed. I hoped he did not decide to fire his crossbow at me. Beneath me now were red-tiled roofs. The narrow streets started to come to life. I flew onwards and then a horrible pain struck me in the chest and I groaned.

  I almost choked. Somebody had kicked me, the real me, my human body.

  The old man stood over me carrying a bucket. An unappetising aroma came from it. “Grubs up,” he said cheerfully. He produced a ladle and thrust some it into the bucket. He held it in front of Jay’s mouth and Jay got a mouthful. He took it down in one swallow and said, “delicious.”

  The old man shrugged and said, “make the most of it, that’s all you’ll be getting.”

  He moved along to me. He stuck the ladle in the bucket and pulled it out. Gruel filled it, very thin and not terribly appetising. He held the ladle out and I took some. It tasted awful, salty and nasty, but I figured I’d better keep my strength up if I could. I got one swallow and that was it. The old man passed Ghoran and said, “I don’t suppose he’ll be wanting his.”

  He dipped a little into the bucket and had some himself. “Needs more salt,” he said and laughed.

  And so he went on, disappearing into the shadows on the other side of the support column feeding everybody a mouthful of gruel and then passing on. He did it with a peculiar care. He intended to see everybody got their portion. I could hear him mumbling and humming as he went along. He gave the impression of enjoying his work.

  “Of course, he’s keeping an eye on us,” Jay said. He nodded wisely to himself.

  “Yes,” I said. “Because we are such a danger to the crew.”

  “He will be, when he wakes up,” Jay said. He nodded in the direction of Ghoran. “He’s always going on about how much he hated being a slave and how he would never be one again. I shudder to think what he is going to be like when he wakes up and sees that thing on his ankle.”

  “I doubt there’s much he could do,” I said.

  “Yes, you’re probably right,” Jay said. “It won’t stop him from trying. Then he might get himself killed. Or at least lose a few teeth. Which, let’s face it, he deserves.”

  “You going to hold this against him for a long time,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  We chatted away in low voices. We are just trying to keep our spirits up. Neither of us could see much chance of getting away. The chains on our legs were heavy. We had no weapons. We were a long way from home. We could not sail.

  Time passed and old Thomas moved up and down the hold, making sure that we all got some water from a different bucket. He fed us the gruel occasionally as well. “Can’t have the merchandise too damaged,” he said and chuckled. “Lowers the price. You got to be fit and healthy when you go out into the fields.”

  “Is that we were going, sir?” Jay asked.

  Thomas shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I just work here. If you want my advice you’ll sleep while you can. There won’t be much rest where you're going.”

  Eventually, darkness enshrouded us, people fell asleep, one by one and Thomas went upstairs and did not come back down. I heard something moving along the outside of the ship. It made a strange scratching sound; I sensed a familiar presence and I looked up the small draconic head leaned in through the open portal and glared at me. Red came through and landed on my lap.

  He licked my face. I felt a wave of affection coming from it and the sharp edge of its tongue. I was so glad to see Red that I almost wept.

  “Bloody hell,” Jay sa
id. “Is that your pet? How did it find us?”

  It was a good question. We had been sailing for hours and could have been a long way out to sea. I tried to imagine Red staying airborne for all that time and I could not. From his mind, I caught the image of another ship, of sitting on its mast and staring north. I had no idea what it meant just as I had no idea what he was going to do now that he was here.

  In the gloom I saw faint sparks coming from his nostrils. I smelled his brimstone breath. I thought about the pitch on the deck and about the wooden ship. I thought about what setting it all alight would do. It would certainly do none of us any good, I thought. If the ship was to catch fire in the night, we would all either be burned alive or drowned.

  “What new?” said a familiar voice. “I fall asleep and miss something.”

  I was relieved to hear Ghoran’s voice. He sounded his usual confident self. I immediately felt better for no good reason. Our situation was every bit as desperate as it had been a few minutes ago but the Northlander was awake and my dragonling was with us. Surely, we must be able to do something.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “We’re on a slave ship,” Jay said. “Just so you know.”

  “I know we on ship. I smell sea. I also guess slaver because chain around ankle.” Ghoran sounded as if he was explaining something patiently to a moron. “Question is what we going to do about it?”

  “We were just waiting for you to wake up, you lazy northern bastard,” Jay said. “Then we thought we would pull the chain from the wall, beat the guards to death with it and sail triumphantly home.”

  “Good plan,” Ghoran said.

  I heard grunting in the darkness. “Flaw in plan. Chain not budge.”

  “Then we need a fallback,” Jay said.

  “I’m glad you’re here to keep us informed about such things,” I said. “We need to get these chains off.”

  “If my hands were free, I could do it,” Jay said.

  Red had stopped licking my face and had settled down on my shoulder. An idea struck me. “I think I can get your hands free.”

  “How can you do that?” Jay asked.