Dragon Queen (71 page)

Bellepheros shrugged ‘Then I'll imagine that lightning storms are more common in these parts than they are in my home realm.’ He couldn't see her face now. The next part of the armour was a long coat of dragon-scale. Hatchling skin was soft, the best for making armour and also the rarest, for the duty of every eyrie master was to see that as many hatchlings as possible survived. It always made him laugh when some king or queen started banging that old drum again. Survive? As if they needed any help with that! The ones that died were the ones that
chose
to die. The ones that knew what Bellepheros and his alchemists did to them and refused to suffer it.
Ah Li, still a few secrets I haven't told you . . .

She glared at him. ‘Now you're smiling. What have I done wrong?’

‘Nothing. Other thoughts.’

‘Well you're having far too many of those today for my liking, but go on then.’

Bellepheros laughed. ‘I wish I could. But in short: how much simpler the world would be if it was governed by the likes of you and I, with care for one another and cautious eyes turned firmly toward the future instead of by greedy lords eyeing one another with suspicion, forever looking for their own secret advantage.’

‘Don't be so sure. We both have our own secrets too, eh?’ She raised a sharp eyebrow at him. ‘There. Have I done well?’ She had the coat on now. Buckles down on the side, under the arm. He'd never seen it done that way but there was a sense to it. Joints were always weak points. This way the arm would protect it. He looked Li up and down. With the buckles pulled tight, the dragon-scale fitted her like a second skin. A little too tight in places and a little too long, but Li was a touch stockier than Zafir and not as tall.

‘It's magnificent. Zafir will be . . . content.’

‘
Content?
She'd better be a sight more than
content
!’ The enchantress picked up the bulky part of the armour, the part that looked like the shed skin of some armoured animal. Overlapping plates of glass and gold shaped like diamonds, thin as anything, arranged to mimic a dragon's scales and as flexible as the true dragon-scale beneath. She lifted it over her head and the plates cascaded down her front and back, over her shoulders and down the upper parts of her arms. They glittered as they caught the light. In the sun they'd be glorious, perhaps blinding. ‘And now what do you think?’

‘I think I've never seen its like or its equal, Li. You've made it look like dragon-scale.’ He nodded, approving. ‘It's the most elegant rider's armour I've ever seen. No one in my land could have made something like this. You've made it for riding dragons and for nothing else – our armour isn't normally made that way but her Holiness will understand. She will, I think, very much appreciate its purity of purpose. She won't let you see, of course, but she'll delight in this gift. I thank you, Chay-Liang of Hingwal Taktse, on her behalf. It is magnificent.’ He grinned.

Li shook her head. ‘It will turn most arrows and it will turn fire and lightning.’ She started to strap on the arm guards. ‘A little help with this? They're awkward.’

Bellepheros stepped close and reached around her. ‘Then make them easier if you can. A rider must arm and mount alone or they're not worthy of their dragon. Zafir will hold it against you if the armour demands more hands than her own. In fact she probably won't wear it.’

‘Our knights are dressed by others.’ Liang laughed as Bellepheros's fingers fumbled with buckles plated in gold. ‘Most of us are, in fact. Well, those for whom tradition and form and the matter of appearance are important. Not us enchanters.
We
dress ourselves.’

Bellepheros snorted. ‘Hard to imagine an alchemist with time for such niceties. Most days we fall asleep in our day clothes and then wake up the next day and carry on as we were.’

‘I'd noticed.’ She was using her teasing voice. She held her arms out wide as he did up the last of the straps and then stepped away.

‘It
is
quicker and it
does
save time.’

Li snorted. ‘I know, I know, and we both know I'm no better. And so what? Does anyone ever notice?’

Bellepheros's voice fell quiet. ‘I notice, Li.’

‘Oh I'm sure you do, but we both know that's only because you're every bit as bad. I've seen you in the same robes four days in a row with the same stain on the hem.’

‘I change them when it gets
too
bad. Don't I?’

She laughed at him with a warmth that sent a pang of sorrow through him. ‘You do.’ Then she smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘So your dragon-rider doesn't mind parading like a bed-slave, but she must dress herself in her own armour? How do I look?’

‘Defiance in every breath, Chay-Liang.’ Bellepheros looked her up and down, trying to imagine Zafir. ‘We're makers and oilers of the machines of the world, you and I. We have little say in their use and their direction. You look magnificent.
You
should be the one on the back of a dragon.’

Li shuddered. ‘I think not!’ She fumbled around the clutter on her workbench. ‘The gauntlets are my best work. Would you change things, Master Alchemist? Would
you
steer your dragons? Gauntlets, gauntlets. And where's the helm? Do I have it?’

‘Zafir kept it. And no. Steer my dragons? I'd prefer not.’

‘Why? Ah!’ She turned back. ‘Now with
these
she'll need no help at all.’ She was right too: the gauntlets were a marvel. More segmented bands of metal, gold bound to glass once more and wrapped over dragon-scale.

She handed one to Bellepheros and he put it on. They were lined with a fur that kissed his skin, instantly warm but never hot. Pieces of gold exquisitely worked into delicate shapes were welded to the plates of the fingers and thumb. He wondered what they were for until he clenched his fist and his hand became a dragon's head, mouth open, fangs poised, eyes agleam. He let out a little sigh of envy and pleasure. ‘It's a self-fulfilling doom, isn't it? Who else would be an alchemist? If not us then who else would do those things that must be done and for little or no reward save the quiet knowledge that the world has not burned for another day?’ He held up the gauntlet, fist closed. ‘Although if it means I get a pair
of these then I might reconsider. They're spectacular, Li. I've never seen their like. Never anything even close.’

Li laughed and struck a pose with the dragon armour wrapped around her. ‘You're bleak today. So will this suffice for your mistress who is a slave to fly to our master's war-that-will-not-happen?’

‘Bleak? Li, every alchemist is taught this over and over again: we know we can never win, that our task is never done and that one day, whether we like it or not, whatever we do, some rider will ruin everything for which we strive. It already happened once. A long time ago. A few dragons woke because of one stupid rider and it was almost the end of all of us.’
Bleak? When my mistress who is a slave is Zafir? Should I be joyful?

‘Almost? But then
only
almost, Belli.’ Li laughed, and her laugh touched him as it always did and gave him a little strength. ‘The Picker, of all people, once said this: when those who rule drop our fragile world amid their squabbles, our purpose is to catch it before it smashes. That's what makes an Elemental Man. Think on that, Belli. They are watching out for us.’ She cocked her head. ‘So? Armour? Good enough? Yes?’ She nodded vigorously. ‘Say yes now, Belli. With much enthusiasm, if you please.’

Bellepheros bowed and forced himself to smile, for the enchantress had a kind heart and was not like the others he served here. ‘It's superb.’ He winked. ‘As you very well know, my Lady Li. As you very well know.’

62

The Void

The Taiytakei were leaving Aria. All of them. They weren't wanted and never had been, and while that had never bothered them before, the coming of witches made of fire who burned their ships was making the place uncomfortable. Perhaps it reminded them too much of dragons, but in the meantime, as they packed their chests, they were happy to take every slave or sailor they could get.

Tuuran was already at sea with them by the time he learned all that. Going to exactly where he wasn't quite sure, but at least it was the right realm. He thought maybe they were heading for Dhar Thosis. The glass sliver given to him by the Elemental Man had seen to that.

‘Ah well.’ He stood at the stern with Crazy Mad beside him, watching the waves churn below. The salt wind across his face felt good. Free, even if they were back as they'd been six months earlier. No one had said anything, but they had their swords, their stolen leathers and boots, and they were the swords, armour and boots of Taiytakei sword-slaves and so that's what they were. ‘You know what they do to slaves who run away, right?’ he said. ‘They send Elemental Men to hunt them down.’ Although now he'd seen one it seemed a bit of a waste, and there didn't seem to be all that many Elemental Men about, and he'd heard an awful lot of stories of slaves running away.

‘Yeh? The men who turn into wind and water and fire?’ Crazy Mad shook his head. He didn't believe a word of it, but then Crazy had gone all suspicious ever since Tuuran had sorted out their ship. All
How did you do that?
and it didn't help that the Taiytakei were being friendly as anything.

‘I've seen it.’

Crazy leaned over the edge of the ship and spat. Gulls circled
over their wake. Crazy Mad hated gulls and he always had. ‘Just don't like them,’ he said when Tuuran asked, but it still seemed strange for a sailor to have such a thing about gulls. Crazy had shrugged at that too. ‘Not so strange when you know they're the eyes of the devil who cut a piece out of your soul.’

He was eyeing them now. Tuuran yawned. ‘Your warlocks sound strange. All this nonsense. Our old blood-mages were a much more straightforward lot. Just wanted to take a few virgins and bleed them dry, make themselves the odd monster or two and rip a few good-hearted nobles apart. Not that we've had any blood-mages, not for a very long time, not real ones.’ He stretched, frowning for a moment inside, remembering the alchemist Bellepheros and suddenly not as sure of that as he might have been. But those days were gone and he'd never be going back and so there wasn't much point dwelling on it, was there? ‘You can throw in the good-hearted nobles while you're at it. Probably the virgins too.’ He sniggered at his own joke and then slapped Crazy Mad on the back. ‘Got some sailor's gossip for you, my friend: the real Bloody Judge, they say he's in the Dominion now. The Sun King's . . . I don't know what. The night-skins would call him a kwen. General, I suppose. Done well for himself by the sound of it.’

‘I'm
the real Bloody Judge.’ Crazy Mad didn't look at him or raise his voice. He sounded more as if he was trying to convince himself than Tuuran.

‘You should find him. Have it out between you.’

‘No. Not now, not yet.’ Crazy Mad drew his arm back and threw a stone at one of the gulls. It flew out of his hand like a bolt from a ballista, straight and true. Tuuran had never met anyone who could down a seagull with a stone like Crazy could. Didn't think he ever would either. ‘It's the warlocks I want. The ones who came out to the middle of the ocean. They were looking for me. I want to know why. I want to know what they did.’ Being on the move was making Crazy Mad pickier with his questions. The further they sailed, the more he scratched at his memories like an old scab. ‘I told you – I met him once just after it happened. I went looking for the warlock who did it and I found the other me. And that's what he was. When I looked him in the eye, it was me in there. And I think he knew it too before he sent me off to be a slave.’ Berren let
out a heavy sigh. ‘So no. I need to know what they did. I need to know how it can be undone.’

The wind was picking up. Tuuran pitched backwards as the ship ploughed into a particularly big wave. The sea was getting choppy. They'd been out for days and the storm-dark was close. Tuuran wasn't sure how he knew. He couldn't see it on the grey horizon yet, but maybe after enough times you got a feel for these things. Maybe the Taiytakei sailors knew and so he knew too. A sailor's instinct.

‘The one who came looking. The one called Vallas. The one with the knife with a handle made of gold and filled with stars. He's the one I want and his knife too. Whatever he did, that knife can undo it.’

Tuuran looked Crazy up and down. ‘They say your Bloody Judge carries a knife like that.’ Maybe it would just be easier to tell Crazy Mad about the Watcher's glass sliver and being sent to keep an eye on him and a lookout for the grey dead too while he was at it. It wasn't like he was supposed to be doing anything that he hadn't been going to do anyway.

‘I did – I mean
he
does. Now. They're twins.’

‘I like your stories, Crazy.’ Tuuran hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the deck. ‘They get more grand and more ridiculous every day but they never quite fall apart. You'll tell me you're a lost prince next.’

‘I was mistaken for one once. Will that do you? And what's wrong with spitting over the side like the rest of us? The deck-swabbing slaves upset you?’

Tuuran laughed. ‘Because I'm a slave, Crazy Mad, and so are you.’ He turned and swept his hand over the ship. ‘
This
is our prison.
That
out there,’ he jerked his thumb at the sea, ‘that's freedom. That's where I want to be. This? This I just want to see burn. A dragon would be nice.’

‘You could have stayed in Deephaven. You didn't have to come.’

‘Could have.’ Tuuran shrugged. ‘Didn't want to. Never been much of one for my own company night after night.’ He shoved Crazy Mad, almost knocking him over the rail and into the sea, then grabbed him at the last minute and slapped him on the arm. ‘Need someone to push about, you see.’

‘Arsehole!’

‘Ach!’ Tuuran let go. ‘You can do so much better than
that.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Dhar Thosis, I think. Wherever the Taiytakei choose to take us. Or Xican, maybe?’