Six days after she'd stood in the Great Sea Council and smiled a coy smile and tried to hide her laughter, the black-cloaks led her onto a disc and down to the black floor of the tower. This time Myst and Onyx came with her. Rain hammered from the sky and the great open emptiness of the tower thrummed with a deep rumble. More soldiers waited, not black-cloaks but men with cloaks whose feathers made a shimmering pattern of burning orange flames with a rampant red dragon in their midst. Tsen's own soldiers. Dragon-cloaks. They led her through the open brass doors and outside over the black marble where the glasships came, slick with water. The rain drenched them all, cold and angry, clinging her silks to her skin. The wind tugged her sleeves. Myst and Onyx shivered and huddled and screwed up their faces, but they were palace slaves, not dragon-riders. In the space outside the Crown, where the glasship pods hovered a hair's breadth above the ground, Zafir lifted her head and stretched up her arms as if she was worshipping the sky and let the glory of the rain and the wind remind her that, despite all she had endured, she was alive. Above her the glasships barely moved despite the wind. The ships-that-flew might be slow but she'd seen they could be precise, for what good it did them. She closed her eyes as the rain battered her face and imagined how it would feel to smash one to splinters with a dragon. A pleasure enough to dull the terror of the Hatchling Disease for a moment.
In the middle of the circle of black marble a golden egg opened for her. Myst and Onyx fell to their knees, faces pressed to the wet stone. Tsen sat inside the gondola with a trio of brightly coloured dragon-cloaks standing to attention around him. As they left, he beckoned Zafir to take their place beside him. The ramp closed behind her and they were alone. A t'varr and a dragon-queen. She could kill him, she thought. It would be so easy. No obvious weapons but he was a fat old man, while beneath her hardening skin was a warrior's heart, fierce and furious when she wanted it to be. The glasship rose, a faint sensation she might never have noticed if she hadn't been tense and waiting for it. Tsen pored over a map, ignoring her. There was one other chair. She sat without waiting for his invitation and lounged and yawned until Tsen rolled the map away and smiled his ever-amiable smile. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Dragon-Queen.’
‘T'Varr.’ The half-smile, the slight opening of the mouth, the tilt of the head, the lick of the lips, they were all instinct now and rarely wasted; and though her silks were thick they were soaked through and clung to every curve. But from Tsen? Nothing. She found it hard not to admire him.
‘I'm having trouble with my eyrie,’ he said. ‘My enchanters have yet to discover how to make it move on its own and so we must tow it from place to place with glasships. It's an expensive business.’ He frowned. ‘Also I have been making a list of my enemies. It has become very long. I was wondering whether I should put you on it but I seem to have run out of space.’
He was looking at her hard. Reading her. She met his eyes. ‘Your enemies will desire what you have. They will desire your dragons and they will desire me.’ She tipped her head and turned her shoulder and dipped her eyes at him. ‘Perhaps they will make offers.’
‘Oh, I'm quite sure they will, but if they do, you will not hear of them. You will remain in the eyrie now.’ He frowned. ‘Let us not pretend: you're no ordinary slave but you're not that special. You have something I want but you know that with time and effort I can get it elsewhere. I'm not going to let you go, but if you're trouble to me, I will get rid of you. I want you to consider this for a moment: do you wish to be a little piece on the board of a big game, moved from one square to another, bartered and traded and in the end sacrificed as all little pieces are?’ His brow furrowed. ‘You were a ruler in your own land. It must have crossed your mind that my ships are already on their way back to bring me more dragon-riders. And they won't just be my ships either. When they come back, you will become. .’ He turned up his palms and snapped his fingers and blew a little puff of air across the table at her. ‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Or I could let you be what you are, within reason. You may be mistress of my dragons for as long as they follow my wishes, however many riders I may one day acquire.’
Zafir found she believed him. Not that it would stop her in the end. ‘Let us say I'm yours for now.’ Another flutter of her eyelashes, completely wasted, and now the wet silks were simply irritating and making her skin itch. She tugged them back into shape.
‘So.’ Tsen rubbed his hands. ‘Tell me: what does a dragon-queen do when she's surrounded by enemies on all sides?’
Burn them. Burn them like she'd burned them at Evenspire. At the Pinnacles. At Furymouth. Yet as she opened her mouth she thought of Jehal, stopped and met Tsen's eye. ‘I would look very hard, Baros Tsen T'Varr, for the enemy I had not yet seen hiding among such a crowd. The one who stands beside me and calls himself a friend.’
Tsen laughed. ‘You have the makings of a kwen!’
‘And then I would burn them. All of them.’ Her jaw clenched. She hadn't meant it to show but the anger inside was too much. Jehal. Tsen. Chrias. All of them. Every Taiytakei in every realm and every dragon-lord who'd ever flown against her.
A half-smile wrinkled the t'varr’s face again. He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘But does not war destroy us all? Perhaps subtlety and dragons do not mix. They don't seem very subtle creatures. I've heard a great deal from the alchemist about what must be done to raise and train one of your monsters and also what they can do, but not what they are for.’ He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, head on his hands, his eyes on hers. ‘Let us begin. You are the rider, so answer me — how far do they fly before they tire?’
Zafir shrugged.
‘You don't know?’
‘No one does.’ She gifted him a slight smile. Deluded fool. ‘They fly on and on.’
‘Then how far do they fly before you tire?’
‘Far enough.’ She took his map and unfurled it, noting the slight flicker of irritation that caused, but there was no indication of the distances between the islands and the cities it showed her. ‘From one realm to the next in a day. If the need was strong enough, one might fly days and nights one after another without end. One must make certain arrangements for such journeys. One must be properly equipped. But it can be done.’
‘And the dragon itself doesn't tire?’
‘I'm told not. But you must know this from Bellepheros already. Why ask me?’
He brushed the question aside. ‘The fire. How much fire may it breathe?’
Zafir laughed at him. ‘Dragons don't breathe. Have you not seen?’
No, he hadn't, he'd barely even seen his own monsters! And no one had told him either. But then why would they? ‘All creatures breathe,’ muttered the t'varr.
‘Not dragons.’ Zafir took a deep breath. ‘Baros Tsen T'Varr, they do not tire. Ever. They will gout fire without end if you demand it of them. It will simply make them hungry. Starve them of sustenance for long enough and they will wither and burn from the inside and die, but they don't tire. How long that takes depends on their size. A week for the newly hatched, perhaps longer. A month or more for an adult but Bellepheros will know far better than I. Drive them hard for long enough and again they will grow hot and burn from the inside if they're not allowed to cool. They last better amid glaciers and mountains than deserts but I doubt you'll much appreciate the difference.’