Behind her the Scales were coaxing the dragon out onto the bridge. It kept opening its wings, wanting to fly instead of walk. Its claws skittered on the hardness of the glass. Chrias Kwen walked with the Scales and the dragon as though it was nothing. Proving his fearlessness, perhaps? ‘How young is it?’ she whispered to Bellepheros. ‘Does he not care about the Statue Plague?’
Bellepheros had turned the sickly yellow-white of old bone. He was gasping for breath, a black-cloak either side of him guiding him and holding him up. He barely managed to even look at her. ‘He doesn't know, Holiness,’ he gasped. ‘I've held nothing back but not all men listen as they should. In some matters I feel little urge for repetition. Sometimes one must learn by seeing and doing and suffering a little from one's mistakes.’
He doesn't know? She smiled, a vicious little smile of imagining the kwen riddled by the dragon-disease, joints creaking, weeping sores forming over his hardening skin until he froze rigid and set like stone. ‘Thank you for that thought, Master Alchemist. We must talk more.’
‘Holiness, forgive me!’ Bellepheros was too lost in his own misery to really listen. Maybe that was as well. ‘I'm no dragon-rider and I do not take well to such heights. Caves and libraries are my home, not this.’ He was shaking like a leaf in the wind and his face was now as white as her silks.
The black-cloaks urged them on, impatient. At the far end the kwen touched his black wand to the silver orb and its bright mirror skin flowed open to embrace them. Zafir's fingers brushed it as she passed through, trailing across its gleaming skin, ice-cold and glass-smooth and hard as diamond. ‘There are places in the Fortress of Watchfulness where none of us go,’ she murmured to Bellepheros as he stepped through behind her. ‘Deep places. There are things left behind by the Silver King that are a little like this, though much smaller.’ The alchemist didn't seem to hear her. He looked ready to collapse and the Taiytakei soldiers were as good as carrying him. Perhaps that too was for the best. The old blood-mages had never understood what the Silver King had made and the alchemists who followed had never been allowed close. Creations. They were mysteries that had never been unravelled.
Beyond the silver liquid skin warm wood walls welcomed them, exquisite but mundane. Across the floor some fifty strides away more silver faced her. A gently lit space arced overhead, following the curve of the egg's outer shell. Thick woollen rugs were scattered across the floor, full of colour, and after the glass bridge they felt lush and warm under her bare feet. She wriggled her toes in them and it felt oddly pleasant. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone for so long without boots.
The kwen and his black-cloaks swirled around her towards a cluster of ornate bone-carved tables, chairs and crystal bottles of many-coloured liquids. Other Taiytakei circled warily in their rainbow clothes, with their cloaks and capes of bright feathers and their long braids. They watched but their eyes weren't on her; they were on the kwen and his hatchling. Zafir smiled to see them — yes, let them stare and gawk in wonder! The dragon was on edge. She could see from the way it twitched its tail. It sensed the fear and anxiety, the uncertainty all around it. Beneath the potions that dulled its mind lay old and powerful urges that even Bellepheros couldn't quell. These Taiytakei, what were they but prey? It made her smile. She caught the hatchling's eye and for a moment they regarded one another. I understand.
Bellepheros, gasping, moved beside her and sat down with relief. ‘They need a rider, Holiness,’ he said under his breath. ‘The dragons and the Taiytakei both. They need someone who is trained. Someone the dragons will understand. Someone who will not be afraid. They have one that is full grown and they have no one else to fly it.’
Zafir let that sink in. That was why they needed her? They hadn't thought to take someone else? Flame! There must have been a hundred riders across the realms who'd lost their dragons in the war! And that was the thread on which she hung?
The hatchling eyed her, almost as though it knew her. Soon. When you're bigger and have the back for me to sit on and the sickness you carry is gone. It would be months before the dragon could be ridden and even then it would really still be a hatchling. Yet it looked back at her hard as if to say, Yes, but I will grow, and we will ride, and when the time comes my fire will be fierce. .
One that is full grown. That meant they had one of the dragons she'd flown from Furymouth. The sort of monster she would need to bring this world crashing to its knees in flames and ash! Cloud Claw? Diamond Eye? ‘But there were three, Bellepheros, not one. I saw them take three. If the Taiytakei have one, where are the other two?’
He didn't answer but she thought perhaps she knew. The silver men. Three of them. Three dragons. But then why did they let one go?
The kwen and his men helped themselves to the wine or whatever else the Taiytakei kept in their bottles. They hardly spared her and Bellepheros another glance. ‘This is their heart,’ she murmured. She could feel the power here. She saw it in the flash of all these colours, in the brilliance of the feather cloaks all around her, in the length of the braided hair. But she saw it in their eyes too, in the unflinching stares, the pinched mouths. Used to obedience, all of them.
‘As I have said, Holiness, this is their City of Dragons,’ said Bellepheros. ‘Their Adamantine Palace.’
‘Is it true they have no speaker?’
‘Kings and queens they call sea lords. Their enchanters and the navigators who dwell above us are perhaps their alchemists but they have none to speak for them as one.’
‘Then they may be turned against one another.’
‘Perhaps.’
Perhaps? Kings and queens always turned against one another. She flinched away as the hatchling moved restlessly closer then realised that Chrias Kwen was watching her. He laughed at her. ‘Afraid of your own monster, slave?’
So much disgust. So much hate. Anger? Yes, anger. Envy? Is that what she saw there amid all that hungry desire to hurt her? She threw back her head and laughed right back in his face. ‘Fear?’ Angry men were easily made into fools, and lustful men too, and this kwen was both. She shivered. ‘Fear?’ she said again. ‘Of that? What you misread, Shrin Chrias Kwen, is disdain. That is a toy. A pretty thing for your master to show to his friends but that is not a dragon, not yet.’
They glared at one another until the inner wall flowed open and there was Baros Tsen T'Varr himself. ‘Chrias Kwen.’ The t'varr smiled, showing his usual jovial mask. Zafir watched the looks that passed between them. No love, not a bit of it. In a dark street with knives at their sides and no eyes to bear witness, only one of them would ever walk away. ‘Bring the dragon and the slaves. Our lords wish to see them.’
She followed the kwen and the t'varr as she was bidden into a wide circle of a room whose walls were silver, whose floor was solid gold, where a soft light fell from above and marvellous thrones surrounded her. They stood her in the middle with the alchemist to one side of her and the hatchling kept carefully away from all the Taiytakei in their magnificent clothes. The black-cloaked soldiers pressed close as if fearful that Zafir would launch herself in another murderous fury. And one day I will. But when I come again it will be with dragons, and nothing in the skies will save you.
Tsen started talking, preaching about how he and his dragons would pour fire over a place whose name she'd never heard and turn it into ash. She watched the other Taiytakei as they listened. They were curious at first. Fascinated, but they weren't afraid. If anything she felt scorn from them. What could such a tiny monster achieve against a nation mighty with sorcerers?