Stephen Deas: Dragon Queen

What did they do to you, Skyrie?

*

When the dragon came back, the hatchlings shrieked and screamed and flapped their wings, straining at their chains, clamouring its victory. Baros Tsen watched it land. He made a show of being slow and not very interested as he ambled across the eyrie to look. It was damaged, bloody scars streaked across its belly and its flanks, but there was a savage joy in the way it held itself. The rider was much the same. He watched her slide off the monster's back and stagger as if half dead, pulling off her armour piece by piece and letting it fall as she walked. She moved awkwardly, held her head gingerly, and he could see bloody scars on her face and the bruises around them. He smelled her before she reached him. She stank. Yet she had the same look about her as the dragon: gleeful and filled with a fierce pride. He couldn't bring himself to look at her. She was only a slave, after all. A slave he'd thought to be dead by now. He could correct that mistake and have her killed right here and now. Should , really, but he had to know what had happened first, how it really was. ‘The slaves of Bom Tark are no more?’ he asked, aware of any ears that might be near.

She looked him in the eye, unblinking. Smiling. ‘I flew as I was asked, Baros Tsen T'Varr. I found a city and I tore it to pieces. There were ships too. I'm afraid most of them are gone. There was no resistance of any great consequence.’ Arrogance dripped from every word and gesture.

Tsen forced himself to look at her. ‘Destroyed? All of it?’

The smile didn't change but the gleam in her eyes brightened. ‘Oh yes, Master Tsen. All of it. Every part a shattered smoking ruin. I doubt many survived at all.’

‘Then you have done well, slave.’ He waved her away, and waved at the air as well, hoping the smell of her would quickly follow. Turned his back. So the Watcher had betrayed him? The Elemental Man had allowed Dhar Thosis to die? It was against everything for which the Watcher and his kind stood and yet they'd let it happen, and so Sea Lord Shonda had been their advocate all along, not their adversary as Tsen had thought. A terrible thing had been done and the world would think that he had ordered it. A savagery not seen across the Takei'Tarr for hundreds of years.

He closed his eyes. Someone would die for this, but he had something even the Watcher hadn't known. A second witness to the truth. Chay-Liang. And now what? Turn the eyrie back towards Khalishtor? Abase myself in front of the lords and navigators and give them the truth and Chay-Liang's word and demand that the Elemental Men explain themselves? Or. . Or perhaps not . He smiled. Now there was a thought. He would enter the Crown of the Sea Lords, yes, but not to abase himself. There would be uproar. They would demand his head and the destruction of his house, the dismantling of his fleet. He would be passive, sorrowful, head bowed. Yes , he would say. It is a terrible thing that Shrin Chrias Kwen has done. And yes, when I am sea lord then he will be caught and he will be punished and every memory and trace of him erased. Of course. And yes, when I am sea lord then reparations will be made and Xican will make every effort to restore Sea Lord Senxian's heirs to their glory . And the outrage would continue, for he might as well have turned to them all to tell them where to stick it and thumbed his nose in their faces, but then he would hold up his hand. Aria , he would say. Something must be done. Here is that something . And the Crown of the Sea Lords would shake at his words and he would lead them out onto their balconies, each one to their own Path of Words, and they would all stare at the dragon perched atop the Crown and their outrage would fall silent and they would choke on it. He'd send the dragon away, and whatever it was they wanted done to Aria and its Ice Witch, he would do it for them. And they would pay; and his t'varrs would talk to other t'varrs about extended lines of credit and cancellations of loans and the remains of his fleet would be saved and Quai'Shu’s dream with it, and all would be well, and he would get away with it because he hadn't done this. He would get away with it because the Elemental Men had permitted Dhar Thosis to die. Because this was their design in the end, not his. .

The smell hadn't gone away. The dragon-rider slave was still there. He almost struck her, the first time he would ever have raised a hand to anyone. She deserved it after what she'd done, but then he saw what she had in her hands. The hilt of a knife, and he saw which hilt of which knife. And it wasn't that the knife didn't have a blade, only that it was so thin that he couldn't see it. And he realised then that the Elemental Men hadn't permitted anything at all and that he was utterly and completely ruined. He closed his eyes. And what were you thinking, stupid T'Varr? That was the dream of a kwen. It would never have worked. Someone would simply have killed you .

‘You tried to murder me,’ she said and tucked away the bladeless knife once more. He couldn't answer. ‘As you see, I require a bath.’ The same smile, exactly as it had been since she'd landed. ‘And your ear, or I will burn your whole world black. Do you understand me?’

She didn't wait for him. She strode off, limping, and he followed, for what else could he do? All the way through the spiralling white-lit tunnels of his eyrie to his most private sacred space, the baths he'd built at the eyrie's heart. She shrugged off her dragon-scale and slipped off her shift at the edge of the waters and never looked round, only raised a hand to beckon him to join her. He closed the door behind them and watched her step in, wincing at the water's heat. Other men might have looked past her ugly pale skin and her muscular arms and legs and her hard curves with no softness in them at all, past her bruises and her scars and the streaks of dried blood. When Tsen looked at her he felt. . nothing. He ought to be feeling outrage and fear and disgust, that was what he ought to be feeling. And maybe some dread, and he ought to be calling his black-cloaks to have her killed and thrown off the edge of the eyrie for what she'd done, but what did it matter when they were already both as good as dead? At least this time she didn't try to flaunt herself. Today her eyes were hard. The pretence of anything tender was gone. She was, at last, her true self.

He followed her into the water and poured a glass of apple wine for each of them. She took hers from him in silence.

‘We are alone,’ he told her. ‘Truly alone. No one else will hear. You have my ear as you asked, slave. Speak then, for when you are done I will very likely have you killed.’

She looked at him long and hard through the steam from the hot water that caressed his skin. He sipped slowly, savouring the exquisite taste of his wine. No sense in not enjoying it. He wondered how long it would be before the news of what he'd done to Dhar Thosis reached anywhere that mattered? Days? A few weeks? And then the killers would come. How long depended on whether any glasships had escaped. Perhaps she could tell him that.

‘What happened to my Elemental Man?’ he asked when she didn't speak.

‘Your Elemental Man? Perhaps he had a name, once?’ Then she shrugged and let out a tinkling laugh. ‘He tried to stop me from carrying out your orders. What else could I do?’

‘You killed him?’

She shook her head. ‘Diamond Eye killed him. I could kill you , though. Right now if it suited me. I could snap your neck.’ She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that he almost believed she meant it. It got to him, the pointlessness of such a threat now.