Dragon Queen (76 page)

The ship turned again, steering so close through the burning wreckage wrought by the fireships that they grazed the side of one burning galley, then hard the other way. For a moment they lost their wind and the sails fell slack. Someone bellowed frantic orders while the heat of the flames from the galley washed over them. The ship turned again. Without thinking, Tuuran ran across the decks and started pulling on ropes that some sail-slave should have worked. His head was full of songs, of dragons and of fire.
This
was what an Adamantine Man was for!

‘What the bloody moon are we doing?’ shouted someone. The ship heeled as the wind caught the sails again. Below him the oars were straining. A fireship floated past, one of their own, crippled and adrift and close enough for Tuuran to feel the heat from it even through his visor. He couldn't help but stare. There were
crew
on the fireship. In the midst of the flames he could see them, bulky black creatures. The heat must have been enough to melt flesh, yet they worked calmly, steering the burning ships towards their targets.

Golems. Stoneguard from Xican.

Someone was yelling. At him, he realised. ‘Never mind them, slave! Get us turned!’ Then they were past and in open water again and Tuuran laughed. He felt dizzy with the madness of the fire, the thrill and the fury of the fight, even if this was only the start where all a man could do was stand his ground and hope not to die. Far ahead the first fireships were already ploughing into the docks.

‘This isn't Bom Tark!’ Laughter surged out of him. Those spires? That bridge? Distant stars of glasships in the air? ‘Renegade slaves my arse! This isn't Bom Tark at all!’

The dragon slave left. The gondola sealed behind her. Mai'Choiro Kwen stepped carefully away from Baros Tsen's throne.

‘Will she do what is asked of her, T'Varr?’

‘She will relish it.’ Tsen closed his eyes and shook his head.

‘She'd better, T'Varr, after what your dragon has cost us. Lord Shonda will find a place for you after this. You know of course that your house is ruined.’ He snorted. ‘Not that it wasn't already.’

Tsen kept on shaking his head. He laughed the broken laugh of the beaten. ‘I know that
one
of our houses is ruined. Perhaps we both are. I certainly know that you understand exactly what we've done this hour.’

‘What
you
have done, Tsen T'Varr.
I
was never here.’ Mai'Choiro Kwen left, striding away so full of himself and sure that he was right, the way kwens always were. When he was gone and the gondola was sealed once more, Baros Tsen T'Varr slowly went back to the window and watched the dragon fly away. The slave was taking her time. It surprised him. He'd thought she'd be more eager.

‘Well. You heard all that, didn't you?’ he said as the dragon dwindled in the sky.

The Watcher appeared beside him and bowed. ‘Of course.’

‘I'd quite like to have Mai'Choiro cut into bits and fed to the little dragons. But better you do it in the Kabulingnor. Let his blood touch Shonda's feet and then make it clear. All debts are paid between us and this will go no further. A renegade kwen who would have seen Vespinarr itself destroyed has been removed. We thank Lord Shonda for his generous gift. Go and find Chrias first, however. Mai'Choiro reached him through Elesxian. Stop him
before he throws what's left of our fleet against Senxian. I don't say kill him, but please do stop him.’

The Watcher bowed. ‘And the dragon?’

Tsen took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh. The dragon was a dot in the distance now. He watched it until it was gone. ‘Well, you can't stop the dragon, can you? So you'll have to stop the rider. She's a slave and she will do as she is told and if she doesn't then we'll just have to find another one.’ He sighed. ‘Come back to me when it's done. And you'd better send the alchemist to me first. If you have to leave a dragon to wander alone with no rider, let us hope he knows what to do.’

‘Rockets!’ Bright streaks arced from inside the city, exploding in brilliant light high overhead. Tuuran watched them. He couldn't stop laughing, even when a moment later more followed, and then more, raining into the ships and the sea around him. Boulders crashed into the water ahead as the ship turned to face the land. One hit a fireship. The decks exploded, the keel snapped in two and the ship broke apart, scattering flaming debris across the water. Burning splinters rained across the decks of Tuuran's ship. Someone screamed. Tuuran caught a blur of flames and rushing movement out of the corner of his eye but when he turned to look, whoever it was had already gone over the side and into the water. Patches of the sea around them were burning as though the water itself was aflame. No ordinary fire. The ship had speed again now, racing at a shallow angle to the wind behind them. Over the noise of the fighting and the fire he heard the oar master below, screaming at his slaves.

‘Ready rockets!’

‘Hoy! Crazy Mad! Berren! Skyrie! Bloody Judge or whatever you are today! Where are you?’

Lights flashed on the island behind them followed by the distant thunder of lightning cannon; and then the sky lit up as more rockets came, hundreds and hundreds streaking from the shore towards the half of the fleet that had turned towards the island and hundreds more streaking back. As they landed the whole sea seemed to catch fire and Tuuran was glad his own ship had gone a different way. He found Crazy Mad at last, doing the sensible
thing and hiding behind the fire shield. Tuuran shook him and pulled him out, pointing at the islands around them. ‘See! Look!’

‘What?’ Crazy Mad was hopping up and down in front of him, cringing at the sky as more rockets flew overhead. ‘See what?’ A thunderclap split the air. Tuuran jumped and turned to look but there was nothing. Then it came again, a jagged bolt of lightning from the island. It struck a ship, lighting it up in a blinding moment of white. Its decks shattered, the ship vanished back into the murk.

‘That.’ He pointed to the islands and to the black stone monolith rising out of the sea and the golden towers that topped it. ‘I heard the dark-skins talking! That's the Kraitu's Bones!’ It towered over them, taller by far than the cliffs of Xican, right up to the sky, reaching for the clouds. Beneath it fire swept over the water, driven by the wind. Glorious.

‘What about it?’ Another barrage of boulders and fireballs flew out from the city. They were well within range of the rockets now.

‘The Palace of Roses.’ Tuuran cringed and then laughed again as a rocket flew across the deck above his head.

‘So?’ Crazy Mad almost dragged him down. ‘Khrozus! And you say
I'm
the crazy one.’

Tuuran just laughed and laughed. ‘Do you realise where we are? No, you don't!’ He could see the shoreline clearly now, lit up by all the fires. They were still too far away to see if there were men out on the dockside to defend it, but there would be. They'd be Taiytakei.

‘So how about you tell me!’ Crazy Mad winced as something too fast to see zipped through the air between them.

‘Dhar Thosis, Crazy. This is Dhar Thosis. Where you wanted to be. I told you I'd get us here! Didn't I tell you that?’

Crazy Mad's smile was as wide as the sea. His eyes lit up a brilliant gleaming silver.

After the Watcher was gone, Baros Tsen T'Varr walked slowly over to the little hatch, always locked from the outside, to where the gondola pilot was when the glasship flew. A golem, a mindless automaton that just did what it was told. Usually.

He opened it. ‘You can come out now, Chay-Liang.’

67

Purpose

The dragon called Silence waited beside That Which Came Before long after the little one was gone. It toyed with seeing whether it could catch another but soon lost its appetite for such games. Once had been amusing; again was dull. Its attention wandered. It had been here in Xibaiya for a long time now, far longer than its usual passage. The thought came that perhaps it was putting off returning to the realms of the living. Perhaps it was waiting for the silver ones who had sent it here to find other matters to occupy their minds. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps . . .

Perhaps it was afraid?

Silence wasn't sure why it should wonder such a thing. Dragons had no notion of fear for themselves, nor any reason for one. A dragon was immortal until the end of creation as far as it knew, although the end of creation
was
fumbling mindlessly right there in front of it. Perhaps immortality was not as stark a thing as it had once seemed.

Afraid?

Dragons understood fear. They understood it perfectly. They devoured it in their prey but dragons were not afraid.

Perhaps there was some need to show this.

The dragon called Silence left the Nothing where it was, creeping and unravelling, and went in search of an egg. There were fewer to be had than before, far fewer but still enough. Most of them were in the places that it remembered. A few were somewhere far away from the rest.

It chose the few.

I am Silence. I come, world of the living, awake and alert and filled with what I know
.

And hungry. Always hungry
.

The Sea Lord

68

Sail, Fight, Freedom

The air shook with the
whoosh
of rocket after rocket being fired from the carts on the decks. Berren blinked and watched them fly, hunched down, hands over his ears. A boulder crashed into the water a hundred feet to the side of the ship, shooting a plume of water into the air. A few seconds later a fine smear of spray misted his visor. Absently he wiped it away, still watching the rocket trails arcing towards the city. There were more in the air now, a whole skyful of them coming back the other way. Another hurled boulder hit the ship in front of them, shattering its stern in a shower of wood and splinters. Pieces of the vessel drifted away as its mast toppled and crashed into the waves. He hardly noticed. Just stared, hypnotised by the rockets. They seemed to move so slowly and the brightest of them didn't seem to be moving at all, just getting bigger and bigger . . .

‘Down.’ Tuuran threw them both to the deck. The rocket slammed into the front of the ship and exploded in a fireball. Slaves and Taiytakei alike rushed forward with buckets of water while flames shot up the ropes and bit into the deck and foresails. The ship turned sharply, grinding past the sinking carcass of one of its companions, and started to lose way. Men thrashing in the water screamed for help as they drifted past. The splintering cracks of snapping oars rose over the shouts and the roar of the fire and the booms and thunderclaps behind them.

Berren drew his sword and sighed for the moonsteel blade he'd once had, a sword that someone else now carried in his name. It was priceless. Only one place in all of the worlds made moonsteel, and that was in Aria. Black as night, yet now and then the steel would shimmer with silvery moonlight and sometimes he even saw the moon itself shining inside the sword. It cut through mundane mail as easily it cut through flesh and bone and it never lost its edge. The
enchanted blades of the Ice Witch, an irreplaceable gift from the Sun King for services he'd once rendered and now he had this: a plain ordinary blade, duller than he would have liked, yet another reminder of the life the warlocks had taken away from him. If they were here in this city, somehow he'd find them. He'd make them tell him what they'd done and why, and how to make it back the way it was, and then he'd cut out their sordid black hearts.

Another ship powered past in clear water. Others were coming out of the lightening sky. Dozens more were wallowing, adrift and ablaze. Ships from the armada, ships that had been caught at anchor in the harbour. Distant fire glowed ahead through the mist and the clouds of smoke drifting across the sea; the shore itself was lost now, hidden in the haze. The air reeked of black powder, burning his nose. For a moment the noise of the rockets stopped, the sudden quiet punctured now and then by the splash of a boulder striking the water. They were moving again, picking up speed. Sail-slaves with buckets of seawater ran back and forth putting out the last of the fires and hurling the bodies of the dead over the side. Booms and rumbling thunder echoed across the waves from behind. The smoke grew thicker. They were getting close.

‘Swords! Archers!’ More and more Taiytakei appeared on the deck now, armed and armoured for battle. Slaves too. Suddenly, weapons were everywhere. The ship heeled. ‘Lines and grapples!’ Berren thought he saw a flickering light in the smoke. Then another and maybe an outline. Something tall and dark. A mast. They turned hard again and yes, he was right: out of the smoke came the shape of a second ship. There were shouts across the water as the two glided towards each other. For a moment no one seemed sure whether the other ship was one of their own or an enemy, then a storm of fire arrows rained down on them. Even as the archers were still shooting, the ships came together. He felt it through his feet. Not a crashing blow but a glancing, grinding, oar-snapping impact. An arrow hit his helmet and glanced off, staggering him sideways. Another hit his brigandine coat, winding him. It hung limply from the leather, stopped by the metal underneath. He looked at the sword in his hand again. A short stabbing weapon, the sort he'd learned to use long ago in Deephaven. The sort his thief-taker master had once had.
What would you make of me now
,
Master Sy? All those years you spent hunting after the man who took your kingdom, and now here I am embarked upon the same, far away from home just like you were, chasing after warlocks as you once did. But it's not a kingdom I'm after
.