Suddenly her heart was beating very fast.
Maybe it would work. And maybe it wouldn't.
Maybe she didn't want it to.
Not yet.
Carefully she unwrapped the chain. She sat heavily back on the bed and held her head in her hands and screwed up her eyes. Tears wanted to come but she wouldn't let them. Couldn't. She'd learned that. Tears had only ever made it worse. Tears showed you were weak and a dragon-rider was never weak.
Slow deep breaths until they went away.
She stood up again. Movement was good. Doing anything at all, that was good. She was thirsty. She unstoppered the glass decanter and sniffed at it, tasted the liquid, decided it was simply water and drained it, then held the glass in her hand and stared into its facets. There was a thing of wonder. It was beautiful. She'd never seen anything like it. She paused, staring into it, and then she hurled it across the room with all the violence she could find. It hit the wall and smashed into a million glittering shards. She stared at them. It was like staring at her own life.
She hadn't moved when the three timid women came back later with food and water and more of their oils and ointments. They shuffled in with their heads bowed and didn't dare to look up at her, but she heard one of them gasp when they saw the broken glass.
‘What did I do to you?’ she asked them. ‘What do you want?’ But they ignored her. They were shaking as they swept up the broken glass and hurried away. Zafir grabbed the last before she could escape and shook her. Flame, but they were passive, docile, broken little things! Yet underneath their fear she saw how much they loathed her. ‘Why? Why do you hate me? Was it the man I killed?’
The girl shook her head as if to refuse an answer but it was written all over her face. No. So they hated her for something else.
‘You're right to be afraid of me,’ she said and let go. The girl ran away.
After the second day, when she saw there could be no escape, she let them bring her food. She let them wash and dress her because whatever little she had left, she could still keep her pride for as long as they let her. They brought her tall thin bottles of wine and she started to pretend the women were hers, her own servants, and let them be. The pain in her head eased. The bruises faded. The cuts where she'd lacerated herself with the chain quickly healed. Her ankle and the shoulder were wrenched but not broken. Two weeks and the swelling had gone; another two and they'd be as strong as ever. No damage done. On the outside at least she'd be perfect again.
‘What are your names?’ she asked the women but they still refused to speak. Were afraid to utter even a single word. She found out what she could by reading their faces as she asked her questions. They were slaves whose master was dead. They didn't know what would happen to her when the ship reached their home. They knew nothing of the war Jehal had waged against her or how it had ended. They'd never heard of her, or of him, or of the Pinnacles or the Silver City. They had no idea at all who she was except that she'd killed a man. The white-haired Taiytakei Quai'Shu — yes, she remembered his name, she made sure of that — was the ruler of this little floating kingdom, she got that much; but they didn't know his purpose and they shook with fear and almost cried when she asked them about her dragons.
It wasn't so hard to guess. She'd had a shrewd idea, by the end, what Valmeyan had been doing in Clifftop, what he'd been looking for.
One night, two weeks after they'd taken her, the ship sailed through a great storm and bucked and heaved like a dragon at war. In the middle of it was a stillness. She lay on her bed trembling in the darkness, alone, the scared little girl she spent so much time trying to forget. When her broken birds came the morning after it was gone she was still trembling inside. She kept it buried though, carefully hidden from sight, and none of them saw, and by the time they came again, the fear was gone.
They painted her, made her beautiful to their own queer eyes, and that was when the dragon voice ripped all their thoughts into pieces.
I am Silenceand I am hungry.
Dragon eggs. That was the treasure the Taiytakei had stolen. And now, that voice told her, the eggs were hatching and they were all going to burn. She smiled. Laughed a bitter laugh while her heart stayed as hard as diamond.
She was Zafir. She was the dragon-queen.
20
I am Silenceand I am hungry.
The newborn dragon bit the dead moon sorcerer's head in half and ate it. In the little wooden room which smelled of salt and tar, yet another egg cracked open, and then another. More dragons awake and reborn, dull and slow-witted, still shaking off the tentacles of alchemy.
The dragon called Silence was impatient. It didn't wait for them. It tore and scampered up through the bowels of the ship, a blur of claws and fangs and motion, searching for the sky until it burst a wooden deck-hatch into a shower of splinters, and there it was, glorious clear blue air. Wisps of high white cloud laced the sky. It saw them and it yearned for them.
Free!
It stretched its neck and jumped into the air and looked for land but there wasn't any, only the sea and half a hundred other ships, maybe more, scattered around in one single great herd. It drank the sight and spread its new wings for the first time, stretching out the folds and creases, and leaped into the air. Around it in the water some of the ships were already burning. Other waking dragons. It felt them, felt their thoughts. They were confused. There were many though.
Sleep!
Calm!
A soothing feeling washed through it. A voice, but more than that. A power. An old power. Moon sorcerers. More of them. The words drifted in among the others, soothing and caressing their confusion, calming the dull uncertainty as the lingerings of their enslavement slipped reluctantly free. In the midst of awakening they were open to such lullings.
But not the dragon Silence. The dragon Silence understood. It had woken before its last death and had thrown off those shackles. It had come from the egg sharp and clear as a dragon should, aware of everything it had been and everything it could become, bright with memory and rage. The others had not.
What is your name?
What did we call you. .
. . once long ago?
The sorcerers, wherever they were, sensed its rebellion. They were guarded, not like the one below, the one whose essence the dragon had stolen and now carried inside it. The dragon hesitated. A true half-god would have crushed its will in a heartbeat. Long ago, one half-god alone had tamed thousands. These were weak. Feeble beside those it remembered. Toddlers with the barest fumbling grasp of true power. Barely gods at all.
What became of you, little moon children?
Stay, dragon. .
Stay and tell us your name. .
They showed their weakness that it could resist them at all. Was this all that was left?
No. I will not.
Other thoughts battered it. Little ones. Terrified. Confused. Angry. It felt them all as they ran squealing and screaming and wailing and cowering, cringing in the furthest corners they could find, thoughts drenched with delicious fear, drawing it like a wasp to sugar. The dragon glided back to the boat where it had been reborn, skittered and leaped across the wooden deck, claws gouging splinters, scattering them into the air. The little ones howled and ran but they were slow and weak and easy. It flipped one and then another over the edge of the ship with a flick of its tail. The pain of shattered bone and the clammy dread of cold sinking death washed out of them, savoured and devoured. The dragon unfurled its wings and reared back and watched more of them simply leap to their doom, so drenched in terror. Others ran scuttling into their holes as they always did, as if this fragile wood could resist a dragon. It caught the last in its jaws and bit off an arm. The man staggered, shrieking. The dragon's claws scythed him down. For a moment it was alone, the little ones all squalling below.