‘It is.’ She'd seen to that at least. Diamond Eye must have worn the same harness for almost a month by now without it being changed once. Bellepheros apparently didn't know how. They'd have to do something about that.
Tsen still didn't look at her. ‘Chay-Liang says your helm is ready. Today you'll fly for me and show me what a dragon does.’
Zafir almost purred. ‘And once I'm in the air, how will you stop me from turning my dragon against you, from burning every creature here to ash and smashing your castle to rubble?’ Down on the wall Diamond Eye turned his head and looked straight at her almost as though he'd heard her thoughts.
Tsen barked out a laugh. ‘In time Chay-Liang will make a collar for you so you cannot turn your dragon against me, slave. For now you will have a guardian. The Watcher. You will do as you are told today or he will kill you instantly and never mind that I have no other rider. Do you understand me?’
Zafir raised an eyebrow at his back. ‘I understand, Baros Tsen T'Varr. Are there enemies out in the desert? A city you wish me to destroy? For that is what dragons do.’
‘Not yet.’ At last Tsen turned to look at her. He held up his hands and then bared his teeth. ‘I would apologise for my terrible manners, slave. But since you are a slave, I shall not.’ He had a coldness to him, something she hadn't seen when they'd flown across the world in his glasship together. It had come over him in the last few days. He seemed somehow disappointed in her and it made her want to please him, and that in turn made her unreasonably angry. Please him? Who is he to call a dragon-queen his slave? Burn him, that's what you should want!
And I do, she told herself. And I will. But it's more complicated than that.
Complicated? When was the last time it had mattered to her to please anyone at all? She'd wrenched that out of herself years ago, hadn't she? But as she wondered, she found herself staring into a wall of doubts and fears that she didn't dare to touch.
I want to break him.
You'd better.
‘Have I upset you?’ she asked.
‘Upset me?’ Tsen closed his eyes and shook his head and looked away at the dragon. ‘You are a slave, dragon-queen. An important one, I will allow, but that is still what you are. Show me what this dragon can do today. Show me that my sea lord's madness and his ruin of our fleets has not been in vain.’
He beckoned her away from the tower and they walked together past the first of the long tubes pointed up into the sky, mounted on the familiar pivots she knew from the scorpions in the Pinnacles and the Adamantine Palace. The tubes were set at a high angle, several of them to each mount and all slightly different. She looked at them. Bellepheros had said they were weapons, but if they were she had no idea how they worked. ‘These. They are like scorpions?’
‘Cannon,’ said Tsen, his thoughts somewhere else.
‘That's a name for which I have no meaning.’
He paused for a moment, gave her a puzzled look, then stepped towards the nearest. As he did, soldiers came hurrying along the wall towards it, anticipating his desire. They were Taiytakei, these soldiers, not slaves. Tsen turned back to Zafir and for a moment his coldness was gone. ‘In our world our power lies with our fleet. Our ships are our heart, our wealth, our treasure. You understand that, I think. They are that which makes us what we are and so they are perhaps a little like your dragons. It's been a very long time since one sea lord last waged war against another.’ His eyes wandered just for a moment and there was a flicker of a hesitation in his voice. He caught it quickly, so fast she almost didn't hear it. Almost. Then he was smiling, his mask intact again. ‘The Elemental Men respond quite, ah. . finally to such things, you see. But there are others who ply the seas.’ He looked up to the glasships towing the eyrie deeper into the desert. ‘And also the skies.’ One of the Taiytakei soldiers had hopped onto a small sled and had flown to the top of the tubes now. Zafir watched. The soldier dropped a cloth bag as large and heavy as a sack of flour into the top of one of them. Then a bundle of straw rammed in hard with a long pole. Finally he tipped in a basket of black iron balls each as big as a clenched fist. Tsen beckoned her on, away. ‘At sea a ship may outrun a glasship but a fleet at anchor or a city or this castle cannot. You have seen a glasship float above Khalishtor and pour water upon fire; imagine if you will that it might pour fire instead.’ He turned back to the soldiers around the cannon. ‘Put your hands over your ears, slave, and watch carefully the mouth of the barrel.’
Zafir put her hands over her ears. Tsen made a gesture. The soldiers retreated, all except one who struck the base of the tube with a heavy hammer. A flash of flame burst from the mouth of the cannon. The entire castle shook beneath Zafir's feet and then came a smell that reminded her of sickening dragon. The noise, though, that was a terror, worse than the lightning-throwers the Taiytakei soldiers carried on their belts. Even with her hands pressed to her ears it reached inside and filled her, and as it left it shook her bones so hard she thought she might never hear again.
‘The balls of iron fly into the air.’ Tsen's voice sounded strange until Zafir realised he was shouting at her and it was the ringing in her own ears that made him sound so odd. ‘Hard enough to shatter the glass of a glasship. Did you see them?’
Numb, Zafir shook her head. No, all she'd seen was the flame, and then the noise had devoured everything. And Diamond Eye, jerking on his wall across the eyrie, snapping round to stare, wings flared, fangs bare.
‘No. They travel very fast. These cannon, as you see, are tiresomely slow to prepare and desperately unwieldy. It is a delicate dance between sky and ground, slow and fatal. Sadly, unlike a lightning cannon, a weapon such as this cannot be placed on any ship. I wonder, though, how useful it might be against a dragon.’ He cocked his head but Zafir couldn't even think yet. She closed her eyes and shook her head and staggered away and Tsen had to get one of his soldiers to help her. It took minutes before the ringing cleared enough for her to take a deep breath and turn and look back at the cannon. A slight haze of ugly brown smoke still hung around the end of its barrel.
‘No use at all, I would say,’ she said at last, as her mind found its sharpness again.
‘None?’ He laughed at her.
‘I've seen dragons carry stones and casks of fire and drop them from on high but that is not a rider's way. Fire and tooth and tail and claw. I will come at you low and fast.’ She laughed at him. ‘Take me to my Diamond Eye, Baros Tsen T'Varr, and you will see.’ Her ears were still singing to the sound of the cannon but she could barely hold herself in now. The anticipation. The thrill. To ride a dragon again. .
The Scales were waiting for them, and Bellepheros and the usual Taiytakei black-cloaks with their spiked ashgars. The alchemist held up a thick and formless coat as Zafir came near. Like a rider's dragon-scale riding coat except there was no dragon-scale and the coat was made of thick furs and looked as big as a tent. Two Scales stepped out in front of the alchemist and placed a pair of boots in front of Zafir's feet. They were enormous, heavy leather and lined with more fur. She felt immediately clumsy with her feet inside them. ‘I look ridiculous.’
‘It is the best I can do with what is here.’ Bellepheros hung his head. ‘The dragon-scale will be another week before it's ready. These will keep you safe from your own fire, though. The coat is clumsy too.’ Then he shook his head and looked even more ashamed. ‘The gauntlets are worse, I'm afraid.’
He held them out to her after she'd wrapped the coat around her like a robe and the Scales had tied a steel chain around her waist. Mittens! She looked at the alchemist, horrified, but it was that or nothing, and on a dragon's back the wind could flay the skin from your fingers and freeze your hands to your harness, while the wash of your own dragon's fire could burn them to the bone. Still. . Zafir shook her head. ‘This one time, Master Alchemist. I will not fly like this again.’