Dragon Queen (21 page)

She hurt. That was the first thing she knew. Her head pounded and her shoulders throbbed. When she tried to move, the pain was sharp and piercing. When her eyes opened again, she was in a bed in a tiny room that rolled from side to side. Ships were rare in the dragon realms and so it took a moment for her to realise where she was.

The sheets were soft like the ones Jehal had brought her from his silk farms on Tyan's Peninsula but here they carried an unfamiliar scent, something bitter and foreign. She tried to move but waves of pain and nausea overwhelmed her. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply against them. For a while she lay still. Her fingers explored her skin, searching out the damage. It was all she could do.

She was dressed in unfamiliar clothes and the smell wasn't the sheets, it was her. They'd torn her dragon out of the sky, bruised and battered her, stripped her, half killed her, and then they'd bathed and cleaned her, washed her in oils and ointments which smelled sharp and foul and dressed her in alien silks.

Her left foot was so swollen she could barely move it. One shoulder felt stiff and sore, too uncomfortable to move. She didn't remember either injury happening.

The pain slowly ebbed but the nausea didn't. She gagged. Sat up, sharp with sudden fear, and threw up into a bronze pissing pot beside the bed, a few trickles of sticky bile. The smell of it tied her stomach into a tighter knot. She turned away. Lay back, head thumping. The low wooden beams were oppressive and too close. At least it wasn't dark. That would have been too much to bear.

A metal ring was bolted through the middle beam, the sort that might be used to hang a lantern except this one had a wrought silver chain attached to it. It seemed an odd thing until she realised that the chain reached down to the bed and to a bracelet around her wrist, silver and worked into a tangle of lightning bolts. She'd never seen silver of such delicate strength but in a stroke it turned her room into a prison.

She closed her eyes. The sickness wouldn't leave her and the pain in her head was drilling into her bones. They hadn't killed her then. She wasn't sure whether she was glad of that or not. She'd meant them to, meant to give them no choice, but now . . . life was more . . . more desirable than death? Was it? Better than facing her ancestors, perhaps? Or perhaps not, because now it would be as it always was: there would be a man, sooner or later, who sought to own her, a man who saw her as a pretty thing for his own pleasure and nothing else. Even Jehal had been like that, although at least
he
had been equally exquisite.

I killed the last one
, she told herself as she drifted away.
If there's another, I'll kill him too
.

When she woke, there were strangers in her cabin. Three women, scared little birds with white belted tunics flapping like wings. She flew at them, heedless of her pain, and they squealed and shrieked and wept and cringed in the furthest corners where her chain wouldn't let her reach them. They had dark skin, night-dark like the Taiytakei, but they were slaves. They came from the deserts in the far north, perhaps. There were whispers of dark-skinned men up there, far across the sands. She hadn't heard of Shezira or Hyram dealing in slaves but that didn't mean they didn't.

‘Who are you?’ They cringed. ‘Who is your master?’ They shook their heads. One of them started to weep. ‘Do you know who I am?’ They cringed again. ‘Where are you taking me? Why? Whoever is your mistress or master, bring them here!’ More questions, until
she felt light-headed, but all they ever did was quiver and stare.

Scared little birds. Weary to the bone she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, listening to them. When they thought she was asleep they scurried about and then ran away like fearful mice and left her alone. The room stank again, some new bitter spice over the lingering smell of stale vomit. It disgusted her. At least her head felt clearer.

They'd emptied the pissing pot. Good. She needed it, and this time she just about had the strength to swing her legs out of the bed and squat. Awkward with one foot and one arm not working, but she found a way. When she was done she looked around. Her cabin might have been a fine place as little wooden rooms on tiny floating palaces were measured, but Zafir wrinkled her nose at almost every part of it. The silk hangings on the walls were bright and pretty and intricate, woven patterns of emerald-green and lapis-blue and white and gold but they were just patterns and had no story to them. The wooden bed, chest, table and chairs were dark carved wood and the bath was plain bronze. They were all as good as any she might find in the dragon realms, but no better. No better because the speaker of the nine realms already owned the best that any Taiytakei craftsman would ever carry across the seas and every last piece was tainted and tarnished by the metal around her wrist.

There were clothes in the chest. Gauzy silks, the colours gaudy, the weave as soft as the sheets but with the same alien tang. The glass in the round windows that looked out across the sea, now that was another matter. She'd never seen glass so clear, nor glass like the decanter that sat in a silver rack on the table.

She looked at all these things and then hobbled to her feet and stood right under the ring in the ceiling to put as much slack in the chain as she could make. Enough to wrap it once around her waist. She took a deep breath, tensed, then jumped and let her whole weight snap the chain taut. It bit into her skin but didn't snap, didn't even give. She tried it again. This time she ripped her silk shift and drew blood. She sat back on the bed, gasping, wincing at the renewed pains in her shoulder and her ankle. When she had her breath again she stared blankly at the floor. For a few short months she'd had everything. She'd been the speaker of the nine
realms. Dragon-queen of the world. Until Evenspire and the great betrayal, and after that everything had unravelled, one thread after another until now, and now she had nothing. Worse than nothing. A slave to the Taiytakei. What would that make her? A curiosity perhaps for a while because of who she was and what she'd been.

She'd seen the way the one she'd killed had looked at her. He wouldn't be the last.

And then what?

She stood up, hopped back to the middle of the cabin and very slowly wrapped the chain twice around her neck. To see if it would go. It would.

Suddenly her heart was beating very fast.

Maybe it would work. And maybe it wouldn't.

Maybe she didn't want it to.

Not yet.

Carefully she unwrapped the chain. She sat heavily back on the bed and held her head in her hands and screwed up her eyes. Tears wanted to come but she wouldn't let them. Couldn't. She'd learned that. Tears had only ever made it worse. Tears showed you were weak and a dragon-rider was never weak.

Slow deep breaths until they went away.

She stood up again. Movement was good. Doing anything at all, that was good. She was thirsty. She unstoppered the glass decanter and sniffed at it, tasted the liquid, decided it was simply water and drained it, then held the glass in her hand and stared into its facets.
There
was a thing of wonder. It was beautiful. She'd never seen anything like it. She paused, staring into it, and then she hurled it across the room with all the violence she could find. It hit the wall and smashed into a million glittering shards. She stared at them. It was like staring at her own life.

She hadn't moved when the three timid women came back later with food and water and more of their oils and ointments. They shuffled in with their heads bowed and didn't dare to look up at her, but she heard one of them gasp when they saw the broken glass.

‘What did I do to you?’ she asked them. ‘What do you want?’ But they ignored her. They were shaking as they swept up the broken glass and hurried away. Zafir grabbed the last before she
could escape and shook her. Flame, but they were passive, docile, broken little things! Yet underneath their fear she saw how much they loathed her. ‘Why? Why do you hate me? Was it the man I killed?’

The girl shook her head as if to refuse an answer but it was written all over her face.
No
. So they hated her for something else.

‘You're right to be afraid of me,’ she said and let go. The girl ran away.

After the second day, when she saw there could be no escape, she let them bring her food. She let them wash and dress her because whatever little she had left, she could still keep her pride for as long as they let her. They brought her tall thin bottles of wine and she started to pretend the women were hers, her own servants, and let them be. The pain in her head eased. The bruises faded. The cuts where she'd lacerated herself with the chain quickly healed. Her ankle and the shoulder were wrenched but not broken. Two weeks and the swelling had gone; another two and they'd be as strong as ever. No damage done. On the outside at least she'd be perfect again.

‘What are your names?’ she asked the women but they still refused to speak. Were afraid to utter even a single word. She found out what she could by reading their faces as she asked her questions. They were slaves whose master was dead. They didn't know what would happen to her when the ship reached their home. They knew nothing of the war Jehal had waged against her or how it had ended. They'd never heard of her, or of him, or of the Pinnacles or the Silver City. They had no idea at all who she was except that she'd killed a man. The white-haired Taiytakei Quai'Shu – yes, she remembered his name, she made sure of
that
– was the ruler of this little floating kingdom, she got that much; but they didn't know his purpose and they shook with fear and almost cried when she asked them about her dragons.

It wasn't so hard to guess. She'd had a shrewd idea, by the end, what Valmeyan had been doing in Clifftop, what he'd been looking for.

One night, two weeks after they'd taken her, the ship sailed through a great storm and bucked and heaved like a dragon at war. In the middle of it was a stillness. She lay on her bed trembling in
the darkness, alone, the scared little girl she spent so much time trying to forget. When her broken birds came the morning after it was gone she was still trembling inside. She kept it buried though, carefully hidden from sight, and none of them saw, and by the time they came again, the fear was gone.

They painted her, made her beautiful to their own queer eyes, and that was when the dragon voice ripped all their thoughts into pieces.

I am Silence
and I am hungry
.

Dragon eggs.
That
was the treasure the Taiytakei had stolen. And now, that voice told her, the eggs were hatching and they were all going to burn. She smiled. Laughed a bitter laugh while her heart stayed as hard as diamond.

She was Zafir. She was the dragon-queen.

20

Silence

I am Silence
and I am hungry
.

The newborn dragon bit the dead moon sorcerer's head in half and ate it. In the little wooden room which smelled of salt and tar, yet another egg cracked open, and then another. More dragons awake and reborn, dull and slow-witted, still shaking off the tentacles of alchemy.

The dragon called Silence was impatient. It didn't wait for them. It tore and scampered up through the bowels of the ship, a blur of claws and fangs and motion, searching for the sky until it burst a wooden deck-hatch into a shower of splinters, and there it was, glorious clear blue air. Wisps of high white cloud laced the sky. It saw them and it yearned for them.

Free!

It stretched its neck and jumped into the air and looked for land but there wasn't any, only the sea and half a hundred other ships, maybe more, scattered around in one single great herd. It drank the sight and spread its new wings for the first time, stretching out the folds and creases, and leaped into the air. Around it in the water some of the ships were already burning. Other waking dragons. It felt them, felt their thoughts. They were confused. There were many though.

Sleep!

Calm!

A soothing feeling washed through it. A voice, but more than that. A power. An old power. Moon sorcerers. More of them. The words drifted in among the others, soothing and caressing their confusion, calming the dull uncertainty as the lingerings of their enslavement slipped reluctantly free. In the midst of awakening they were open to such lullings.

But not the dragon Silence. The dragon Silence understood. It
had woken before its last death and had thrown off those shackles. It had come from the egg sharp and clear as a dragon should, aware of everything it had been and everything it could become, bright with memory and rage. The others had not.

What is your name?

What did we call you . . .

. . . once long ago?

The sorcerers, wherever they were, sensed its rebellion. They were guarded, not like the one below, the one whose essence the dragon had stolen and now carried inside it. The dragon hesitated. A true half-god would have crushed its will in a heartbeat. Long ago, one half-god alone had tamed thousands.
These
were weak. Feeble beside those it remembered. Toddlers with the barest fumbling grasp of true power. Barely gods at all.

What became of you, little moon children?

Stay, dragon . . .

Stay and tell us your name . . .

They showed their weakness that it could resist them at all. Was this all that was left?

No. I will not
.

Other thoughts battered it. Little ones. Terrified. Confused. Angry. It felt them all as they ran squealing and screaming and wailing and cowering, cringing in the furthest corners they could find, thoughts drenched with delicious fear, drawing it like a wasp to sugar. The dragon glided back to the boat where it had been reborn, skittered and leaped across the wooden deck, claws gouging splinters, scattering them into the air. The little ones howled and ran but they were slow and weak and easy. It flipped one and then another over the edge of the ship with a flick of its tail. The pain of shattered bone and the clammy dread of cold sinking death washed out of them, savoured and devoured. The dragon unfurled its wings and reared back and watched more of them simply leap to their doom, so drenched in terror. Others ran scuttling into their holes as they always did, as if this fragile wood could resist a dragon. It caught the last in its jaws and bit off an arm. The man staggered, shrieking. The dragon's claws scythed him down. For a moment it was alone, the little ones all squalling below.