‘Get up!’ She grabbed the last of her birds, the one who had hidden under her bed, made her stand up and slapped her. ‘Dragons, woman. That's all they are. Great and terrible monsters, yes, but nothing more. Clean my wound and dress it. Are you afraid of monsters?’
The slave shook her head. A lie, but now the dragon was gone and Zafir was still here, she was more afraid of her, and it seemed absurd but Zafir understood perfectly, for the worst monsters certainly weren't dragons. She bared her teeth and hissed, tilted her neck and touched the bloody wound again. ‘But monsters can be killed, little bird.’
They cleaned her throat and wrapped it in silk, hands shaking all the time. When they were done, she pushed them away. She left them behind and climbed up through the ruins of the ship, heedless of the shouts she heard around her and below and to either side, until she had the sky over her head. Blackened bodies littered the decks. The sails were on fire, flaming rags falling now and then, fluttering away in the breeze. The rigging was destroyed, the decks scorched. Patches still smouldered, while the bows of the ship were firmly ablaze. A few desperate sailors yelled, running back and forth with buckets — the dragon hadn't killed all of them then. She looked the ship over. It was ruined but it didn't look like they were going to burn to death, not yet, so she turned her back on the panic and sat at the stern near the hole the dragon had smashed as it left and watched the sun glint off the sea. The sailors who were left, if they saw her at all, were too busy trying to save their ship and let her be. She looked out over the ravaged Taiytakei fleet. Some ships were aflame from end to end, others were untouched.
One hatchling. She started to laugh. In this moment her fate was her own. She could throw herself into the sea if she wanted but these Taiytakei who thought they were her masters, now she saw them for what they were: small frightened men. Children. So no, she wouldn't throw her life away in a fit of foolish defiance. Not when she could do far worse.
Three full-grown dragons circled overhead. Her dragons, she reminded herself. Other hatchlings flitted aimlessly back and forth in the sky. She turned as the air shook and popped and one of the silver men appeared on the deck. He raised his hands and the fires leaped to them as though he was sucking the flames away from everything burning and drawing them into himself. When he was done, he blinked away. Now there was a thing to drive a spike of awe through her heart. A sorcerer clad in silver like the Silver King himself, the half-god. Was that who they were? The alchemists said the Silver King was gone for ever, destroyed by the blood-mages, that he'd been only one, unique, an aberration, but there were stories inside the Pinnacles that said otherwise. Stories etched into the walls in places that no alchemist was allowed to see. Her home. Her secrets, amid the rows and rows of arches carved into white stone walls which glowed with a soft inner moonlight. Doors sealed shut, doors that led nowhere except on rare nights when perhaps they opened into other worlds but she'd never seen it happen. Her grandmother had sealed much away, her mother had been the same, afraid of her own palace, but not her. Her fears had come from something else, and so she'd crept among those forbidden places, finding in them a sanctuary from the monster she saw every day. And though she'd never seen anything beyond the arches but blank stone walls, she'd seen plenty more to hold her eye: carvings, mosaics, murals, all of them witheringly old. Things the Silver King had made. She'd come to know the old half-god, in her way. She saw his sadness. A pining for something long lost. Memories of others of his kind, perhaps, for whatever the alchemists said he clearly hadn't been alone, not always. A catastrophe that he had somehow brought about. It was all there in the forgotten pictures on her walls.
And now they were here?
Across the waves the fires winked out one after another. Some ships were already lost, listing as they took in water. They sank as she watched then, their last fires put out as the sea swallowed them. She counted. Ten ships lost. Forty-six left by the end. Not as many as she'd thought. Little boats struggled through the waves between them, carrying men. Flags ran up masts and fluttered, messages sent. She didn't know what any of it meant but she understood what they were saying. The air was thick with it. What do we do? What now? What happened to us?
Then, to her surprise and delight, the old white-haired Taiytakei came stumbling from his cabin — Quai'Shu who thought that all of this was his, every ship and every man, the dragons and perhaps even the half-gods, but most of all her. He was like a dragon-king and so she knew him, knew how his mind would work, even if instead of dragons he had ships. She weighed the bolt in her hand. Another man who thought he could own her. She'd done for the first and she'd do for this one too. No one would stop her, not this time.
She hesitated though as she watched him. The Taiytakei sailors all fretted and bowed around him but something inside him was broken. His presence was gone, his veneer of command, and all he was was a weak old man who didn't understand what was happening any more. As she understood, Zafir smiled. He'd stared a dragon in the eye just as she had and the dragon had snapped him. The smile lingered a little longer. She let go of the bolt. The dragon had shown her the way. These were just men like any others. Patience, and they would fall.
The Taiytakei led Quai'Shu away with his vacant eyes staring blindly at his scattered fleet. She didn't struggle when they came to take her too, across the sea to a ship that still had sails. She watched the fleet split. Perhaps because she hadn't tried to run they let her wander free now. She sat on the decks out of the way, watching, and she knew they saw her compliance as acquiescence, as defeat, but they were wrong. Her broken birds knew better. Something had changed between them. They were flags to her mast now, all three of them, afraid and unsure of their fates but they'd tied themselves to her. She saw it in their eyes. Still afraid, yes, but the fear had turned to something else too.
Awe.
The dragon had done that. Given her that gift.
The remaining dragons circled overhead and then flew away, all of them, the silver half-gods on the backs of the adults and the hatchlings trailing in their wake. A sigh of relief rose from the ships as they left, for they were the greatest terror that any of these men had ever seen.
Now and then a Taiytakei — she could barely tell their dark faces apart and disdained the effort of trying — would tell her to move, or to do this, that or the other. They spoke to her slowly as if she was a fool. She smiled and bowed and did as she was told because she had seen now that they could be broken.
Patience, and they will fall.
And so they sailed on until the first dark line of land smudged the horizon and the Taiytakei fleet came home with a dragon-queen in its midst.
22
As well as its spires, its floating orbs and great glass discs, the Palace of Leaves in Xican extended down into the stones themselves. Deep in its bowels Baros Tsen, t'varr to Sea Lord Quai'Shu of Xican, had built his bathhouse. It was, false modesty aside, magnificent. Not too ostentatious but perfectly formed. Large enough so that when steam filled the cave, the walls vanished into the mist. Tall enough and dark enough to give the illusion of being outside. Tiny little spark-lights dotted the ceiling, arranged to mimic the stars. You could pick out the constellations if you wanted. The floor was simple black marble — none of the glass and gold that filled the rest of the palace — and in the centre the marble fell away in a series of steps into a square heated bath where the water was always kept exactly as he liked it. Hot but not too hot, more often than not scented with the particular flavour of Xizic from near Hanjaadi that he happened to like, with a potpourri of other scents flirting at the edges. There were perhaps a hundred different oils in pots in a simple wooden chest, and beside the bath, in a bowl scooped out of the marble, there was always ice and a crystal chalice of cold apple wine. It was the best bathhouse in the palace, possibly the best across the whole of Takei'Tarr, and that was because Baros Tsen T'Varr, it was whispered, loved his baths more than anything in all the eight worlds. And Tsen had heard the whispers too and knew who the whisperers were, because that was the nature of who he was, and he didn't mind what they said because if it wasn't exactly true, nor was it far wrong.