The glass shattered in her hand.
One day, be it tomorrow or ten years from now, she'd find a way home to watch him burn. To flay him and scatter his body with salt and listen to him scream. She'd do it herself.
She was bleeding. The glass had cut her. Not deeply. She ripped a piece from the silk sheets — another reminder of Jehal, since all the sheets they'd stained between them had come from the silk farms that Jehal and King Tyan guarded as though they were dragon eggs. There'd been trouble with the Taiytakei about the silk farms once. Long before she was born and she didn't know much about it and didn't care either, but someone had tried to teach her some history once and Tyan's silk farms and the Taiytakei had been a part of it. Tyan's dragons had burned their ships. She didn't remember why.
She wrapped her hand and squeezed it tight, watching the blood ooze, savouring the pain. Sometimes any feeling at all was better than nothing, and when she let her head sink into the soft Taiytakei pillow and closed her eyes, she dreamed of Jehal. Not of the revenge she yearned for but of more pleasant things. Of the times before Evenspire when they'd been lovers. Of what they used to do and how it had felt and how she knew it had felt to him, how it should still have been. She yearned for the comfort he used to bring and how he'd made her be not alone any more. When she woke in the small hours of the morning her pillows were damp with tears, and she clenched her fists and raged at herself and flapped the silk until it was dry so that no one would see and then lay there in the dark, staring up at the faceless wood over her head.
Her broken birds came back at sunrise. Hers? Yes, she was beginning to think of them that way. They looked at the blood on the sheets and on her hand and gasped when they saw the broken glass. Perhaps they thought she'd opened a vein rather than be taken by whoever this sea lord was. Zafir, as she rubbed her eyes, laughed at their horror.
‘I am not some pampered harem lady,’ she spat. ‘I am a dragon-queen. I've burned cities and I've killed men, and women too. I've gone into battle armoured in a dragon's skin. I've stood and fought with sword and axe. Look at you, staring at blood as if it's some terror.’ She tore the silk bandage off her hand, opening the wound again so that a line of crimson ran down her arm and dripped onto the bed. She clenched her fist. ‘Blood is life. What are you, if you don't understand this?’
They paled and Zafir laughed again. She thought of taking a shard of the broken glass, of hiding it somewhere in her clothes as a weapon, but whom would she cut with it? One of these poor pathetic slaves? To what end? Out of spite? No. A fearsome slave she would be, proud and unbroken until some man came with the desire and the strength to tame her, and she would let him, at least until the moment came to cut out his heart and be free.
‘Dress me.’ She let them have their way with her this time. They cleaned her wound, took precious jewels and silver and draped them around her neck and her wrists. They painted her face, darkened her skin, drew delicate designs onto the backs of her hands and wrapped her in violet silks that would have been the envy of any princess. When they were done with her they sat silent and still, waiting.
‘Why are so you afraid?’ she asked, for they were shaking, but they wouldn't talk, wouldn't even look at her today. She stared at them. Looked them over one more time, trying to read their stories from the way they held themselves and finding almost nothing.
‘Do you come from the desert?’ she asked them.
She got a look from Onyx, of all of them, a pleading look with a hint of wondering whether she was mad to ask. The other two didn't flinch.
‘What became of my dragons? Do you know? Did they simply fly away?’ Nothing, and she was left to wait in silence.
The sun outside her little window reached its zenith and moved on. Gleaming specks rose from the city once more and drifted towards the ship. The waiting gnawed at her.
‘Some bread.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘And a little honey. You do have honey?’ Her stomach rumbled. Half a day with nothing to eat, nothing to do. She was hungry and bored and tense as a tripwire but her broken birds didn't move. Out in the sky the glasships drifted closer. Zafir refused to look at them today, to even acknowledge they were there. Alone she might have gawped but not here and now, not with these women. With her slaves’ eyes watching her, these miracles were nothing. Nothing to a dragon-queen. She wouldn't allow it. You must have a heart as hard as diamond now. Her mother's words after she'd woken for the first time to find blood between her legs.
‘If I don't have something to eat soon, I'll have to eat one of you.’
Brightstar twitched. They were still afraid of her. It had been that way from the moment the hatchling dragon had come smashing through the wood and she'd faced it down but today it was crawling all over them. Afraid of what? That she'd call back the dragons to her? But if she had power to do that then she'd have used it long ago.
‘I won't hurt you,’ she said a few minutes later. ‘Why would I?’
The door crashed open, thrown wide without any warning. A Taiytakei stood before her, dressed as she'd come to know them in the City of Dragons. Coal-skinned as they all were but his clothes were rainbow-bright, a dazzle of swirling colour embroidered in exquisite silver and gold and laced with more jewels than she could count. Gaudy to her eyes, but she knew this was the Taiytakei way. Over his shoulders hung a cloak of silver feathers. Two soldiers stood behind him in their plated armour of glass and gold. Their feathered cloaks were black like the ones she'd seen before but the streamers of silk they wore beneath were lurid and filled with shapes and colour. Two brilliant lightning bolts crossed over their chests.
This is the sea lord? Zafir met his eyes. Myst and Brightstar and Onyx fell to their knees beside the bed and pressed their faces into the wooden floor but Zafir didn't move. He was a handsome enough fellow if you looked past the garish clothes and the colour of his skin. Tall. Strong. Well muscled. She looked him up and down, appraising him as she might a horse or a hatchling dragon. A little flicker of heat stirred inside her. She licked her lips. That would be what he wanted, after all. Men always did.
‘Shrin Chrias Kwen,’ barked one of the black-cloaks. ‘Heart of the Sea Lord.’
‘Bend your knee, slave!’ snapped the other. His accent was so thick that it took a moment for Zafir to understand what he'd said. They pushed into the room but she ignored them and kept her eyes on the one with the silver cloak. The one who thought he was the master here.
A black-cloak drew back a hand to strike her. She would let him, she decided, but silver-cloak stopped him. ‘Don't! Don't mark her. The sea lord will see her as she is.’
So that's not you?Then you're no longer important to me. She felt a small pang of disappointment even as she lost all interest in him. Pity. She held out a languorous hand, still with the silver chain sealed around her wrist, every gesture made with exquisite care to show how little he mattered to her. He would have to release her now. ‘Shall we go?’
Her broken birds still quivered on the floor and their terror filled the room. Zafir drank it, savoured it like a fine wine. Silver-cloak bared his teeth at her. Perhaps it was supposed to frighten her but dragons had done the same many times over the years. She raised an eyebrow very slightly, contempt hurled in his face. The muscles in his arms tightened. ‘You are a slave,’ he said to her. ‘A nothing. When you meet the sea lord, you will bow. You will press your face to the floor as these women are doing, and you will keep it there unless you are told otherwise. And you will show me, now, that you understand.’ He spoke with deliberate care. The words sounded awkward coming out of his mouth as though he was in the middle of eating something. But she understood them. She smiled and spoke slowly back.