The dragon turned. Its tail swept across the dragon yard and there were more screams. Then it climbed onto the eyrie wall and launched itself into the air. Liang raised an eyebrow. She took Belli's hands in her own and forced him to look at her. His skin was pallid and there were dark lines under his eyes. ‘How long, Belli? I need to know how long before I can tell Tsen we've found everyone who has the disease.’
Bellepheros closed his eyes. ‘A month, perhaps, before it begins to show. Among the Scales it was quicker but they're exposed every day so that was to be expected.’
‘This isn't over, is it? These are just the first.’
The alchemist shook his head. ‘It always spreads, despite my efforts to hold it back. There are others here who carry it. A few of your people. I know who they are.’
‘Soldiers?’
He looked a bit surprised, then nodded. ‘Two so far. Tsen knows. They'll never be allowed to leave now. But I'm certain there are more in whom the disease has yet to show itself. How did you know?’
‘When did you last sleep, Belli?’
‘I slept last night.’
‘You dozed on your couch. When did you last sleep a full night in your bed?’
He turned away from her. Around the eyrie all eyes in the assembled crowd were following the dragon. ‘Tell Baros Tsen T'Varr that no one may leave the eyrie for another month at least. After that, for the month that follows, I will inspect any who must depart for sign of the disease. I should be able to see it by then. Really, everyone here or everyone who ever has been should keep to themselves for half a year to be sure.’
‘Half a year?’ Chay-Liang laughed. ‘I'll tell our t'varr but I can't be sure to make him listen.’ The dragon was circling high over the eyrie now, still clutching the cage in its claws. Higher and higher, and then it simply crushed the cage in the air above them. Little specks began to fall. They were too high for Liang to see their flailing arms and legs or to hear their screams but she found she could imagine them clearly enough. The dragon tucked in its wings and dived after them, snapping them up one after the other.
‘Couldn't you simply have made them into more Scales, Belli? Did they have to die?’
‘I could. I have no need of any more, but I could. Don't underestimate the Hatchling Disease, Li. It's a slow and insidious killer that will grip half an eyrie before it even reveals itself. Entire cities have died of it because it's never seen until it's already spread far and wide. All who live here need to understand that. Tsen's right to set an example. He's right to make everyone afraid to their very bones. A dozen men or women lost is a sadness, a tragedy, but a small one. If the disease spreads though the eyrie, I'll do what I can to contain it. But if it ever gets out, Li, you have no alchemists, no resistance, no defences, nothing. It will savage your cities. Your sailors will carry it, unknowing, across to other lands. You can see that dragon, Li, but you cannot see the Statue Plague. No, Tsen's right to do this, although he shouldn't have let the dragon eat them. He's reminded it that we're food.’
‘Did it have to be so cruel?’ The dragon was coming closer. Falling like an arrow, guiding itself with twitches of its tail. As the last few slaves fell past the eyrie towards the desert below and the dragon rocketed after them, Liang glimpsed Zafir. She was pressed down hard on the dragon's back, dressed in the dragon armour Liang had made for her.
Belli shrugged. ‘All I said to Tsen was not to let the dragon eat them.’ He shook his head. ‘Her Holiness may have suggested otherwise. Still. .’ He looked out over the crowd in the dragon yard. They were still silent. Stunned. ‘You can't deny it's put his message in their heads. Her line always did have a flair for the dramatic when it came to spilling blood.’
Liang stared out over the desert. The dragon was somewhere underneath them now. She shook her head. ‘And all this because some idiot soldier took a Scales to their bed? Wouldn't that person be the first to show the disease? And why? Why would anyone do that? They were told, all of them. You could hardly have been more clear!’
‘I wonder that myself.’ And from the way he looked at her she knew he wondered something else too. ‘I don't think it was from a Scales. They're all men, and for that very reason. The slaves with the disease are almost all women. If a soldier caught it from the Scales and then spread it, it would be a soldier who was both very busy and had uncommon tastes. Besides, the Scales all deny it.’
‘So did the slaves we just fed to a dragon.’
‘They had the disease, Li. There's no doubt of that.’ He shook his head. ‘No. It definitely came from one of the kwen's soldiers. I suspect more than one.’
‘If it wasn't from a Scales then how did that soldier have it in the first place?’
Belli looked away. ‘An injured Scales, bleeding perhaps. We've had a few of those. A smear on a man's hand just before he eats, perhaps that could do it.’ He didn't sound or look convinced; in fact he sounded as though he was making up stories to hide something he already knew perfectly well. ‘Perhaps someone has come too close to a new hatchling or one of the tools used to clean it. Although I've taken even more care than usual about such things.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps it doesn't matter. It will happen, now and then. As well to get the first outbreak over with. What matters is that it never gets off this eyrie. No one who has it can leave.’
The dragon rose from the desert and landed on the eyrie walls with a spreading of wings and a thunderclap of wind. It licked its lips. Zafir released herself from her harness, dismounted and walked towards Liang. She carried her helm under her arm and came with a swagger, her short slave-cut hair rising in sweaty spikes as she ran a hand through it. She seemed filled with an energy that dragged men's eyes after her like slaves on a leash. Even Liang could feel it, the tension and the pent-up possibilities that raged, barely contained, around the dragon-queen when she came back down from the sky.
‘Your craftsmanship is superb, Lady Enchantress.’ Zafir gave her a tiny bow with only the slightest edge of mockery and walked away. Liang silently swore. She knew she despised this woman, knew she was right to, but still, here and now, it had felt as though the sun had come out from the clouds to shine on her for a moment before casting her back into shadow.
‘Poison,’ she muttered to herself, quietly enough that Belli wouldn't hear. ‘That would do it.’
A handful of slaves climbed over the battlements that night and lowered themselves to the desert floor in a cage suspended from one of the cranes on the eyrie rim. Slaves with the disease that Bellepheros had missed, preferring to take their chances with the desert than with a dragon. The alchemist shook his head when he heard.
‘Well, you can understand it,’ Liang said to him.
‘There's no shame to being eaten by a dragon.’ He only looked sad. ‘Better than having your joints slowly seize one after the other until you can't move, until your skin is as hard as stone and you can't even breathe any more.’ Not that they'd last that long in the desert sun but Tsen sent the dragon to find them anyway. Liang and Belli watched it fly and then they walked among the eyrie slaves, Bellepheros poking and prodding yet again at the soft parts of their skin. They talked of deserts as they worked. She told him of the Godspike and the Queverra. He spoke of his own home, of the Desert of Sand and Stone and the Plains of Ancestors. Of a people he called the Syuss who seemed to Liang like their own desert tribes but who had dragons too. ‘The desert around Bloodsalt was the worst. Worse than this.’