Dragon Queen (43 page)

‘I am, Holiness.’

‘Yet you helped them? After what they've done?’

Bellepheros bowed his head. ‘My duty is to keep the dragons in check, Holiness. Always and only that. I tried to dissuade the sea lord who took me. I failed.’ He looked up again, now with a note of defiance. ‘And it was right that I did. If I hadn't helped them to be ready when these dragons came . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I have done my duty, Holiness, as I always have.’

‘They could all burn, Master Alchemist, and I wouldn't shed a tear.’ She leaned close, ready to whisper in his ear,
Let their dragons awake. Let them reap what they have sown. Let them burn, all of them
. But he was an alchemist. ‘When we are alone, let me tell you what they have done to our home. See if you might reconsider where your duty truly lies.’

Abruptly Bellepheros turned around. He began pointing to the other men in the cabin. ‘These two, as you may have already imagined, are our master's soldiers. Our master in practical ways is Baros Tsen T'Varr. Through these men he will hear every word we say. They are his ears. This one –’ he pointed to the man in the middle, the one in drab black beside the rainbow colours of the soldiers ‘– this one is our sea lord's very own Elemental Man. Our master is the only sea lord to own such a magician outright. Do you know, your Holiness, what an Elemental Man is?’

Zafir pursed her lips.
Thank you, alchemist, for demanding that I show my ignorance
. ‘I have heard many stories, Master Alchemist.
It would take a shrewd mind to discern the fact from the fiction.’

‘Indeed it would, but our stories are largely true. They are killers of monsters, men who can become the wind, the water, fire or earth. I've come to know this one very well. I am sure you'll come to know him too.’

Ah. A spy then
.

Bellepheros turned back to the window. The fleet was receding now, the city coming closer. ‘Khalishtor, Holiness. The City of Gold and Glass. Imagine it as our City of Dragons. It is the centre of their realms yet a place where no one lord holds sway. The enchanters abide here, those who make such wonders as this glasship and other creations that will briefly amuse your eye. The navigators too, the ones who guide the sea lords’ ships across the Endless Ocean and the Sea of Storms. At the Palace of Glass the sea lords hold their court.’ Bellepheros glanced at the other men behind them. ‘Our master intends to present us and one of his dragons. He wishes to show us off.’ Zafir watched the old alchemist as he talked. He'd shown her already where his loyalties lay. Unleashing the dragons the Taiytakei had brought with them, letting them grow wild and untamed, letting them loose to do what dragons would do, in that he'd fight her tooth and claw; so for now she put the thought aside and stared out at the city as they drifted closer. It sprawled between two headlands. More ships cluttered the bay between them, closer to the land than Quai'Shu’s fleet had come. Towers of glass or diamond rose in a circle from the far headland, glittering golden in the late afternoon sun. Between the headlands the buildings were packed in close and tight. A handful of the floating glass discs hovered in the air near the sea. Everything sparkled.

‘That is where the Elemental Men are made.’ Bellepheros pointed to the single mountain that rose behind the shore among gently sloping hills, its peak decked in a cloak of cloud, and then to the glass spires on the far headland. ‘And there are the enchanters.’ His voice dropped. ‘There is little love between them.’ A touch to the way he said it told her this was a thing for her to remember.

Smoke rose from a far point in the city near the sea. As Zafir watched, one of the hovering discs drifted towards it. Behind the press of buildings along the shore, strips of green and stands of trees sat among wide squat buildings. The glittering was golden
glass, more of it in the more open parts of the city. A spire here, a tower there. Occasional black obelisks rose among them, several beneath flying glass discs. Tethers?

‘Watch that one, Holiness.’ Bellepheros pointed to the glasship close to the pall of smoke. Zafir did as he said. As the glasship reached the smoke, the air beneath it turned into a haze and then mist. ‘Water,’ said the alchemist with admiration. ‘From the sea. They simply fill a gondola like this with it and then drop it from the sky! Their cities no longer suffer the peril of fire!’

‘Slave!’

She didn't look up. At first she didn't realise the Elemental Man was speaking to her until Bellepheros gently nudged her. After that, ignoring the assassin was deliberate.

‘Slave!’ he barked again.

Bellepheros turned round, knelt and bowed his head. ‘Master Watcher?’ Zafir stayed exactly where she was, staring out of the window. They'd either kill her for disobedience or they'd tolerate it, and if they were going to kill her then they might as well get on with it. Better sooner than later.

When the Elemental Man spoke again, the edge had gone from his voice. ‘Alchemist, if you have not seen the Crown of the Sea Lords, the view now approaches its best from the windows on this side.’

‘Holiness!’ Bellepheros was on his feet at once. ‘It is their Adamantine Palace! A place of marvels.’

Zafir turned. She didn't meet the Elemental Man's eye – no need to gloat but now they both knew who had the power. Not him. Her life was in the hands of this Baros Tsen T'Varr, no other. She crossed to the windows on the other side, the Taiytakei soldiers moving away to give her room. She felt the Elemental Man's eyes burning her skin as she looked out. The alchemist was right. The Crown of the Sea Lords, if that's what this palace was called, was a jewel to make even her own Adamantine Palace seem drab and small. Scores of glasships floated over it but the palace made them all tiny. It covered the entire headland, a giant crown of gold and glass, a ring of thirteen glittering spires rising from a broad circle of white stone, each one taller than the Tower of Air. Spokes led from them to a central amphitheatre as big as her whole palace.
Between the spokes, patterns of trees ran in delicate lines and swirls among a swathe of gardens. Curves of water glimmered and sparkled between many-levelled lakes and ponds and manicured waterfalls. Flying glass buttresses rose over the amphitheatre to a gleaming silver sphere that sat directly over its centre. Flashes of colour caught Zafir's eye, puzzling things until she realised they were waterfalls running down the glass and fracturing into clouds of rainbow spray. Their own Diamond Cascade. As Zafir peered, she caught another glimmer of light like the sun off a spider's web, joining the silver sphere to one of the towers high above the ground. It flashed and then was gone and then she saw another to a different tower. Pathways. Bridges made of glass.

‘Does it not take your breath away?’ whispered the alchemist.

Zafir didn't speak. Yes, it was magnificent, and yes, it did. Sorcery beyond anything she'd ever imagined, beyond even the strange wonders left by the Silver King in the bowels of the palace where she had been born. Yet at the same time what she saw was a pall of smoke, the gleaming glass smashed to shards, the gold running in molten rivers while a hundred dragons circled overhead and the sky filled with flames.

Her
dragons.

I am a dragon-queen
. Nothing could touch her.

‘Holiness?’ Bellepheros was almost brushing against her again. Annoying habit. ‘Holiness! Look up!’

High over the silver sphere hung a vast gold-glass star.

39

The Council of the Sea

The Watcher did what he did best: nothing at all. He stood in the corner of the bronze-panelled room, silent and still amid the noise and bright plumage of Quai'Shu’s heirs, inconspicuous and half-hidden but overshadowing everything. As each man and woman came dressed in their dazzling silks and their shimmering oil-sheen feathered cloaks, fluffing and settling themselves for the battle to come around the dark rosewood table, they saw him and whispered and cursed under their breath. Prayers to gods in whom they should not believe, perhaps. Or maybe a simple
Why is he here?
Because his being here changed everything.

Sea Lord Quai'Shu sat at the head of his council of war and the Watcher stood close by. All others here were his servants. Quai'Shu wasn't the lord they remembered – he drooled and rolled his eyes now – but he
was
their lord still and the Watcher had come to be sure they all remembered it as they battled over the spoils. He looked at their faces and met their eyes one by one. Shrin Chrias Kwen, master of the black-cloaks and of Quai'Shu’s network of spies and informants, whose men crewed and captained the sea lord's ships and ran the sea lord's empire. He'd be the first to turn. The kwen sat next to Elesxian, first lady of Xican, Quai'Shu’s eldest grandchild and Zifan'Shu’s named heir. Her claim to Quai'Shu’s title was strong and the kwen was her secret lover. They'd see their ascension to power as rightful and inevitable, and perhaps it was.

Beside them sat Nimpo Jima Hsian. Quai'Shu might have dictated strategy but it was the hsian who advised him, the hsian who put the plans together, made the tactical decisions, whose schemes ran Quai'Shu’s trading empire and his networks of spies and informants and never mind what Shrin Chrias Kwen might have thought on the matter. Beside him sat Baran Meido, Quai'Shu’s second son, and Tetja Bronzehand, his third. Meido was bought
and owned, body and soul, by the lords of Vespinarr. Bronzehand's own heir had been traded as a hostage to Dhar Thosis some years ago. They would both have their claims.

Last of all was Baros Tsen T'Varr, the glibly named supply master who ran Quai'Shu’s treasury and was responsible for the providing of whatever was necessary to support absolutely anything at all. Who believed, whatever anyone else might say, that he quietly ran Quai'Shu’s trading empire and probably his network of spies and informants too. Six tigers in a room. How Quai'Shu had stopped them from eating each other was a mystery, but he had. Now the Watcher was the only thing that made them pause from falling upon one another and devouring the first to show weakness, and that was why he was here.

He stepped forward from his shadows and reached for Quai'Shu’s hand. The tigers were too proud to simply stop their conversing but they noticed, oh how they noticed. The Watcher opened Quai'Shu’s fingers and placed a gavel in his hand and closed them again and made him bang the table three times, silencing their chatter. If he'd been like them, his wager would have been on the kwen to speak first. To stake his claim.

‘There's no money left.’ Tsen T'Varr beat Chrias Kwen by a heartbeat. The kwen's mouth was open but the words hadn't been quick enough. ‘None. We're broke. No, I correct myself: we are sinking in debt and about to drown. Nothing more than the top of our mast remains above the water and even
that
is falling fast.’

‘This venture has cost us a quarter of the fleet.’ Jima Hsian sniffed. ‘Thirty-six ships lost. Twelve more that will take months to repair. We must build. Our strategy is at risk.’

Tsen leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. ‘And to which shipyard shall we turn, Hsian? Who will build for us on credit with no promise of payment? You'll be lucky if I can pay Chrias's sailors to crew the ones you've still got.’

‘The Vespinese shipyards in Hanjaadi will build if I ask.’ Baran Meido smiled at them all through lidded eyes, as if they were all here for his amusement. ‘
If
I ask.’ Chrias Kwen nodded. So, three of them already in it together.

‘Your troubles to resolve, T'Varr. I cannot make money for you to spend without ships and crews to sail them,’ said the hsian.

‘Then I suggest you find some nice long voyages to places they might like to go.’

‘Qeled,’ said Bronzehand.

Elesxian rolled her eyes and clutched her head. ‘Are you mad?’

‘Give me ten ships and a good crew and this Elemental Man here, and I'll bring you something back from Qeled that will make our t'varr stop bleating once and for all!’

‘Another
reckless venture? Look at what this one has cost! You'll waste ten more ships and come back with nothing.
If
you come back at all.’

‘Sounds to me like he should go,’ purred Baran Meido.

Chrias laughed. ‘Our lord has brought back dragons and our t'varr still squeals!’

‘Likely as not you'd come back dead, little brother.’

Meido and Bronzehand stared each other down. Bronzehand's eyes shone. ‘Is that a wager, brother?’

‘Five ships.’

‘Done!’

‘Wait. Do you propose to let him have ten to waste in the first place?’ Elesxian shook her head.

‘He'll have none of mine.’ Tsen T'Varr shrugged. ‘Not unless our lord demands it.’ He cocked his head. ‘Don't think that's likely to happen by the looks of it. Wasted wager.’

Meido chuckled. ‘Pay these penny-pinching prunes no mind. I'll have the Vespinese prepare ships for you, brother. For a half-and-half split of whatever you find between us and them.’

‘Wait!’ The Watcher coughed again but none of them seemed to notice until he banged the gavel. Then slowly they fell to silence until Bronzehand stood up.

‘Gentlemen! Sister.’ They all looked at him. He shrugged. ‘Well, my father is incapable, isn't he? We must agree on someone to speak for him.’ He looked hard at Quai'Shu. ‘Unless, Father, you have something you wish to say on this?’

Chrias Kwen banged his fist on the table and glared at Tsen T'Varr. ‘
Why
have you not yet executed the slave who murdered Zifan'Shu?’

Tsen T'Varr met his eye. ‘I will, Chrias. But not until I can afford it.’

‘You'd get a good price if you sold her,’ muttered Jima Hsian.

‘She must pay!’ snapped Elesxian.

Tsen smiled and offered out his hands. ‘Exactly. She must pay. And she
will
pay for the murder of your father, first lady, when the debts that our sea lord has incurred are lessened. Until then she will pay in other ways. She is, after all, part of the fruits of his labour.’ He stood up. ‘Dear friends, tantalising a prospect as it is to dispatch a part of our rather ragged and meagre fleet on some expedition to Qeled, I suggest our discussions might be better centred on how we shall use the fruits of our
last
expedition to defray the expense of it. In other words, how shall these dragons pay their way?’