Stephen Deas: Dragon Queen

‘Help me!’ he cried, though he knew it wouldn't make any difference. ‘I'm an alchemist, not a slave!’ All he heard was laughter, and then someone cuffed the back of his head, hard enough that he saw stars and almost fell. To the rest of the world he was nothing; and the Taiytakei wandered to and fro with their slaves every day in these parts of the city and no one batted an eye. The smell gave it away. They were by the docks, and the Taiytakei as good as owned the Furymouth harbour districts. Sea lords, living in the shadow of dragons.

The heat of the sun on his skin through his clothes was uncomfortable, enough to make him sweat. Warm enough that it must still be high in the sky. He knew they'd reached the sea when a fresh breeze ran over him, tingling his skin, swirling with the harbour scents of salt and wood and tar and ropes. They lifted him up and threw him in a boat that rocked up and down with the waves. They rowed him out to sea a way and then they hauled him onto one of their ships as though he was a cow or a horse and dumped him on the deck. New voices surrounded him, Taiytakei sailors with accents he could barely penetrate. The sack stayed over his head. He reached for the power in his blood again. Still nothing.

A hand touched his arm, more gentle than the others. ‘Can you walk?’ It pulled him gently to his feet and held his arm. ‘They have a cabin for you. I'll help you there.’

Bellepheros rose unsteadily. ‘I would like. . to see.’

‘If I take that sack off, old man, they'll throw me over the side.’

The voice had no accent. Bellepheros took the man's hand in his own and felt it. Rough calloused skin used to hard work. He fumbled like a blind man until he touched the man's face. ‘You're not one of them.’

‘No. Come.’ The hand came back and took his arm again and led him forward. It led him through steep stairs and narrow passages that creaked and rolled, unbalancing him with almost every step, but the hand that led him seemed used to it. It took him through a door and let him go. Bellepheros heard the click of a lock and then at last the sack lifted from his eyes. He looked his new jailer up and down. He was a big man. Tall and broad and full of muscles. He wore a tunic, a filthy grey that had once been white, torn and ragged and belted with a frayed piece of rope. A key hung on a piece of twine around his neck, the key to the cabin door.

‘I am Tuuran.’ He held out his arms, palms upward. On his left forearm he carried a brand, a lightning bolt than ran from his elbow halfway to his fist. ‘I am the property of Sea Lord Quai'Shu of Xican.’ For all his brutish size, his eyes glistened. He kept peering past Bellepheros to the tiny round window set in the cabin wall, to the sea and the coast and Furymouth beyond. Then he backed away. ‘This realm was my home once. I was raised in the City of Dragons.’ His words carried sadness and resentment, tinged still with anger.

‘I am Bellepheros,’ said Bellepheros.

‘I know who you are, alchemist.’ Alchemist . That meant something. Tuuran's eyes flashed, then he looked away, down at the floor. ‘I was an Adamantine Man once. I'm sorry for you. An alchemist.’ He shook his head.

Absurd hope surged through Bellepheros. An Adamantine Man? One of the speaker's soldiers, fearless, sworn to serve without thought of consequence, a man who trained from birth to fight dragons. He squeezed across the tiny cabin bed to peer through the miniature window in the ship's timber hull. Across the waves the white walls of Furymouth shone in the sun under red tile rooftops. ‘I am not just an alchemist,’ Bellepheros hissed. ‘I am Bellepheros, grand master of the Order of the Scales, and if there is any part of you left that is still an Adamantine Man and does not serve these mongrels, you will have me away from this ship and returned to my kin in any way you can!’

‘The Bellepheros?’ Tuuran looked surprised.

‘Yes! Help me!’

Tuuran shook his head. He turned away, and when he turned back there were tears on his cheeks. ‘I've waited nine years to come back to my homeland.’ He moved across the cabin to sit beside Bellepheros, staring through the window too, looking out over the sea at the harbour. ‘We've been here two weeks waiting for you, and I've spent every moment of every day with the land that used to be mine just out of reach. If there was a way to be free then I'd have found it and I'd be long gone. If the chance came now then I wouldn't take you with me, old man, because you'd slow me. I'd gladly forget the vows I made and the man I once was. I'm not afraid to die, Grand Master Alchemist. In my heart I am still Adamantine. But this is a sea lord's ship, filled with soldiers in their armour of glass and gold and their wands that hurl lightning. I've looked long and hard and for many years and I'm still here. There's no escape, Master Alchemist.’ He shrugged. ‘I'm only here because of you, and now you're here too they'll be watching us both with the eyes of a dragon. Grand master of the Order of the Scales, eh?’

‘Do you have a knife?’ No, he could see he didn't. But there must be something sharp. He could pick off a splinter of wood. With a splinter he could bleed and he was fed up with having to bite his cheek. He started to look for something that would work, something to pick apart. Blood was the key. They couldn't keep his power away for ever. He'd refuse to eat. Refuse to drink until whatever it was the Elemental Man had done to him wore off. And then. .

The Adamantine Man shook his head. ‘They'll not let you out, not ever. Now that you're here, we'll be gone before dusk and I will never see my homeland again.’

The pain in Tuuran's words struck Bellepheros dumb. There is a way. There is always a way . But the words stuck in his throat. Maybe there wasn't. The enormity of it shattered his thoughts. That they really might take him away. Even walking through the Furymouth docks with a sack over his head, a part of him had thought. . well, that someone would come.

But who? With the sea between them, he knew better now. No one even knew he was missing. He had until dusk? ‘Wands that hurl lightning?’ he asked instead.

‘You'll see them.’ Across the water the sun was already sinking and the colours of the world were collapsing. In the distance little boats with sails rode the waves; on the hill above Furymouth, overlooking the sea and the mouth of the Fury river, the Veid Palace stood in silhouette. Prince Jehal, who might or might not have been a murderer, and his dragons. Resentment made Bellepheros's skin burn. For being here. For the kings and queens sitting in their palaces, ignorant and doing nothing to help him. For whoever had thrown Aliphera from her dragon and dragged him from his sanctuary in the first place.

Tuuran clenched his fists. He looked ready to smash through the side of the ship with his bare hands. ‘Do you hear? All those sounds, those little movements? We're leaving. They were getting ready before you were even aboard.’ He raised his branded arm. ‘I earned this pulling oars on one of their galleys. It says I'm a sail-slave and not an animal. I know every sound a ship makes. I've also heard it said that the high alchemist has the power to call the dragons to him. I never much believed it, but if you can, you should do it now!’

Bellepheros shook his head. He'd worked a splinter loose now and he pricked himself with it. A little blood on the fingertip. He reached for it with his mind and his shoulders sagged. Still nothing. ‘Alchemists cannot call dragons, Tuuran.’

The ship began to turn. Tuuran stared through the window until they were out of sight of land. ‘I'd hoped, at least, to see a dragon one more time,’ he said. There was despair in his voice now. Bellepheros just felt bewildered. Numb.