Dragon Queen (41 page)

They stared each other down for a few seconds more and then suddenly Chay-Liang doubled over and hooted with laugher. ‘Watcher! You didn't see what happened in the dragon yard when the Regrettable Man stabbed my alchemist in the neck but I assume you at least
heard
? And Belli, to be honest, right now you look slightly absurd. Watcher, our sea lord isn't here and doesn't understand. Two days ago fifty dragons came. You know that. You were here. We were expecting eggs and you know that too. It's nothing short of a miracle that my slave has kept these dragons docile. Give us some time. A week or two.’

The Watcher shook his head. ‘You will do as you are commanded, Lady Chay. As will your slave.’

The alchemist snorted and then shrugged. ‘Very well. If that's how it has to be. Do you see the big dragon with the harness? I'm going to poison it now. To
manage
it.’

He started to get up but Chay-Liang pushed him gently back. ‘Belli! Sit down! You'll do no such thing and nor am I done with you here either. The sea lord—’

‘Has no say!’ snapped Bellepheros. This time he pushed past Chay-Liang and pulled the wires off his head. ‘I built this eyrie for a dozen hatchlings raised one by one from their eggs, not fifty all at once! Poison it is. I'll do it right now. It was going to have to be this way anyway.’ He marched out of the workshop into the passage, heading back for the dragon yard. Chay-Liang ran after him, shaking her head.

‘Belli! I agreed to the poisoning of the others but destroying the adult would be against his wishes!
Do
not do this!’

The Watcher let them pass and listened to them go, arguing back and forth, then screwed up his strength and turned into the wind and blew past them and was waiting for them when they reached the dragon yard. The monstrous copper-gold dragon was where he'd left it, squatting on its haunches in the middle. It stared at him again. Even with his back to it he felt its eyes on him. As the alchemist came out of the tunnels, The Watcher drew his bladeless knife again and held it straight out, pointing at the alchemist's chest. ‘Can you see the end, slave, where the air ends and the business of cutting begins? Keep walking as you are and you will find it.’

The alchemist stopped, then nodded and folded his arms. ‘You
couldn't simply walk, eh?’ He glanced at Chay-Liang. ‘I relish the chance to visit one of your cities, Watcher, I really do, but I don't wish to return to an eyrie filled with dead Scales and woken dragons! The adult needs to be fed and it needs to drink and if that cannot be done then it must go. I will not leave until either I see either a means in place to do this or the dragon is dead. Stab me, cut me, whatever you like, I simply will not.’ He growled. ‘I was ready for eggs, not for this!’

‘I think you've made that clear enough, Belli.’ Chay-Liang touched a hand to his shoulder but the alchemist shook her off. The Watcher felt the dragon's eyes fixed on them. He shrugged.

‘There are plenty of beasts in the Lair of Samim.’

‘But
they
are down
there
!’ The alchemist threw back his head and rolled his eyes as though he was talking to an idiot. ‘They are
not
up
here
! Or does one of you have a magic wand you've forgotten to mention – Flame knows you have enough between you – to summon the
entire herd that this monster and its little kin will devour each and every day as they grow
? No?’ He clenched his fists and took several deep breaths. ‘Watcher, the hatchlings I can manage where they are but an adult is always flown to its food, and we have no one here who can do this. Either you give me time to find an alternative or it dies. Almost certainly I'll have to kill it anyway.’ He turned to Chay-Liang again. ‘Choose. Between you. You know I'd prefer to be rid of it.’

‘You did not prepare a . . .’ The Watcher wasn't certain what word to use. Rider? Pilot? Navigator?

‘I expected eggs!’
The alchemist had to stop to take breath again. ‘I have everything prepared for hatchlings but not for this! I have no one here who can ride this dragon.’

‘It has a harness, does it not? Then I will fly it.’

‘You?’ The alchemist howled with laugher. ‘Go ahead! I'll watch. You Taiytakei love to make your wagers –
I'll
make one with you. About how long you'll last.’ He folded his arms and stood back. ‘Go on! Riders are trained for years together with their first mount raised as a hatchling. They learn together. It requires a certain way of thinking and you certainly can't simply snap your fingers and
make
one. But
you
are an Elemental Man, and surely it cannot be too
difficult
, eh? It's only a
dragon
after all!’

‘Belli!’ Chay-Liang grabbed his arm. ‘Enough! Mind your tongue!’

The alchemist rounded on her. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because he's an Elemental Man and you're a slave!’

Bellepheros snorted in disdain. ‘Whoever and whatever, I'm correcting his ignorance! And yours, apparently.’

The Watcher left them to their snapping and slowly walked across the dragon yard to look at the monster more closely. He
probably
could – if he absolutely had to – merge with the air and appear on the creature's back. And there
was
a harness of sorts, from where it had been ridden before the moon sorcerers had taken it.

The dragon followed him with its unwavering stare.

He didn't even know how to ride a horse. What was the point when you were an Elemental Man?

‘Thought better of it yet, magician?’ called the alchemist with a scornful snort. ‘I once told your master he'd have to bring me a rider. Someone who was trained. Someone who could train others. One of us
might
learn, but it'll take months that we don't have and I dare say a good few false starts. That dragon is hungry
now
. So, either bring me a herd of animals for it to eat or may I
please put it down
?’

The enchantress seized his arm and pulled him round. ‘No, Belli!’ She glared at the Watcher. ‘But he
is
right: we have no way to feed this monster yet and so you can
not
take him away, not now.’

‘Enchantress?’ The Watcher slowly shook his head. ‘It is not a matter for debate. It is your lord's
will
.’ And so it was, and so he would see to it, and yet here they all were glowering at one another, doing nothing while the copper-gold dragon with its eyes like glaciers glared at them all. Hungry and getting hungrier. The Watcher stretched out his arms and tipped back his head and forced himself to merge with the air. He had to grit his teeth and summon all his strength and still he almost failed. The dragons were doing this to him . . .

Understanding hit him like an arrow in the heart. It was there in the dragon's eyes as it looked at him – it
was
doing this to him and it
knew
. And he was afraid then because he'd never met anything like
this before or even heard of it – something that could take away the very essence of what he was, and as he raced to the ground and felt the flow of the world ease around him until it was as effortless as ever, the relief was joyous. He reached the sand below the eyrie and kept on going, deep and far, revelling in the freedom before he circled back to find the inevitable camp of desert nomads that had grown up. It wasn't far from the eyrie, paid by Baros Tsen T'Varr for a steady stream of food and water and anything else that the alchemist required. Most of what the eyrie needed was ferried through the air by discs and sleds and glasships, but those were expensive and a t'varr was a t'varr, always trying to save his sea lord's silver.

There were a few dozen men and perhaps twice as many desert horses. The Watcher walked among them making the necessary arrangements. When it was done he blinked away again. Blissfully easy down on the ground, although even there he still felt the tissue-pull of resistance, yet harder and harder as he fought his way back. He lingered for a moment, watching the alchemist and the enchantress from high above. They
were
too close. She had him beguiled but she was blind to how much of a hold on her she'd given in return. The Hands of the Sea Lord would have to be told . . .

The dragon tipped back its head and looked straight up and right at him. He was the wind, he was invisible and made of air, and yet it knew he was there. How? Maybe the alchemist would have an answer for that? He flew down and turned to breathless flesh again atop the walls, pausing to hide his weakness before he returned in footsteps across the open white stone of the dragon yard and bowed before Chay-Liang and her slave.

‘The desert men will provide what you require. Lady Enchantress, you will please have the slaves build harnesses for their cranes to lift the Linxia you will need. Tell them how many you require and they will be provided. Have the glasships pull the eyrie as low as it will go to the ground. Right to the sand if you must.’ He turned to the alchemist without waiting for Chay-Liang to reply. ‘And you, slave! Draw up a list of all the men who work here. You will order the list by their value and you will entitle your list, “Menu in the Event of Dragon Food Shortage”. You will give it to me when we are done. Am I exquisitely clear,
slave?
You will do
this before we leave and we
will
leave today. Twenty Linxia each and every morning. They
will
be here. Do you wish them alive or slaughtered?’

The alchemist blinked. For a moment the Watcher thought he was going to rebel, and if that was how it was then he'd get carried from his eyrie over a soldier's shoulder like a naughty child. His lips pinched. But the alchemist closed his eyes and shuddered, shaking his head. ‘Thirty animals, not twenty. And dragons can do their own slaughtering. They're very good at that. How long, Watcher, before I'll return?’

The Watcher's eyes bored into the alchemist. ‘Are you tired, slave?’

‘Of course he is!’ snapped Chay-Liang. ‘We all are! What did you expect?’ She peered hard at him. ‘Are
you
tired, Watcher? I didn't think that happened to Elemental Men.’

‘It does not.’

Her look lingered but now the alchemist was busy talking of feeding schedules and the administration of the necessary potions, shaking his head sourly all the time as he did.
Wait for them to be hungry. Each hatchling must drink one flask every day. Tying the flasks around an animal's neck will suffice. Dragons are prone to eat their prey from the head down and in large pieces. Do not approach the hatchlings yourself. Remember they still carry Hatchling Disease. Keep the Scales segregated. They will have the disease in their blood by now
. So on and so forth. The Watcher listened. Chay-Liang was bored and barely paying attention as if she knew all of this already. So much the better if she did.

‘The dead hatchlings are to be left. Don't touch them. We'll have a use for their residues but I'll deal with that when I come back. As for the adult?’ The alchemist closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘A war-dragon, and a large one. Empty the dragon yard and release the animals into it every day, each with a flask of potion strapped to its neck. Continue with more, one at a time, until the dragon is sated enough to allow the hatchlings to eat. While it feeds, don't allow anyone else into the yard for any reason. Beware the tail and the wing. In eyries far more die from those than from fire and tooth and claw. This dragon has at least been trained so it shouldn't devour our Scales, nor should it fly without a rider to
guide it. If it does either of those things then poison it if you can and run far and fast if you can't. Pinned to the ground it will grow restless. Its hunger to fly will be voracious. We'll likely have a few weeks before it loses its last vestiges of self-restraint at which point, without a rider, I
will
poison it, whatever you say. You really might as well let me get on and do it now but perhaps it'll be a good lesson for you both to see what it's like, a dragon with no control. Perhaps then you'll listen with more open ears, eh?’

On and on. In days long past the Watcher had talked to Chay-Liang about her gold-glass arcana and how they worked, how she channelled the energy of the earth, but it was like talking with a different tongue. Listening to the alchemist was the same, how he could enter his blood and manipulate it to make his potions, how the essence of a half god buried and held at the brink of death under the mountains of his realm was also a part of him. Alien. And when the Watcher tried to speak of how it felt to become one with the elements of the world he found himself trying to describe colours to a blind man, sounds and timbres to someone who was deaf. The witch and the alchemist though; somehow for them it was different. They struggled but they'd found a common language, one he didn't understand.

The glasship to take the alchemist to Khalishtor came to rest high above the eyrie wall and the fragile golden egg it carried made its descent. The alchemist bowed to Chay-Liang as he readied himself to leave at last, already hours later than he should. ‘Good fortune to you.’ He sounded stiff and reluctant. ‘A flask a day to each . . .’

‘Of the hatchlings. And thirty to the monster. Yes, yes, I know. All will be well.’

‘I know, I know. You only really need me for my blood, don't you?’ He actually smiled as he said it, and the enchantress smiled back and the Watcher shook his head because this was not slave and mistress at all. ‘The Scales, Chay-Liang. Watch the Scales. I've given them potions that will slow its progress but I fear the Statue Plague as much as I fear the dragons themselves. If I'm not back within a twelvenight and you have no certain word of me, poison them all without delay or hesitation.’

The enchantress wore the dour face of someone who'd heard the same admonishment far too often. She shooed him away. The
alchemist gave an awkward bow and took a last look across the yard at the dragon and the hatchlings chained to the stone. The dragon
was
restless, even the Watcher could see that. It stretched out its wings and opened its mouth wide and bared its teeth. It was staring at the glasship now.