Dragon Queen Read online

  The Picker nodded at the bodies. ‘I done that. Indeed. Just me.’ He finished with the horses and led them alongside the carriage. Then he picked up the bottle and tossed it at Bellepheros.

  Bellepheros caught it and backed away. ‘That? That’s what this is about?’

  ‘That?’ The Picker frowned and shook his head. ‘Stupid, is you? Can’t be leaving it lying about is all.’

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  The Picker started trying to lift Bellepheros’s chest onto the back of one of the horses, but it was too heavy. He set it down again and put his hands on his hips and frowned. ‘Friends I got about the place, they sell what’s in that bottle to who wants it. You and I knows what for but they just sells to whoever asks. I has a question, though. What’s wrong with boats?’

  ‘What?’ His wits were coming back to him. ‘Listen, whoever you are. I see you know how to kill men, but I am an alchemist. I don’t want to hurt you but I will if I have to. Harness those horses back to my carriage, please, and then I suggest you go away before anyone else comes along this road.’ He squeezed his fist. His blood oozed over his wrist.

  The Picker snorted. ‘I knows exactly who you is. Bellepheros. Grand master alchemist of all the nine realms. Important fellow, right enough.’ He glanced around at the bodies lying in the leaves. ‘Didn’t expect I’d get to you quite so simply, mind. You coming with me easy or shall we make it hard?’

  One man and he’d killed half a dozen armoured soldiers of Furymouth without so much as a scratch. Bellepheros peered at the Picker. He had pale skin, but if you looked past that, if you closed your eyes and listened to the way he put his words together, he clearly came from across the sea. ‘You’re a Taiytakei.’

  The Picker laughed. ‘Does I look like one?’ Then he frowned and kicked Bellepheros’s chest in frustration. ‘Going to have to come back for that. You really need it all?’

  ‘Your skin makes you one of us. But you speak like one of them.’

  The silence after that was an awkward one. The Picker didn’t move. He looked Bellepheros up and down. ‘Asked you,’ he said, after the silence had become as brittle as glass, ‘what’s wrong with boats? Don’t like them, is that it? Make you sick-like? Seems a right-and proper-thinking fellow like yourself, heading home from Furymouth to the City of Dragons, he’d get a boat. Plenty enough of them, after all. That’s if he’s not going on dragonback. All sorts of difficult that would have been. Could have done a boat without this mess though.’ He gestured at the dead soldiers. ‘Man has a talent for something, doesn’t mean he always wants to use it.’

  Taiytakei. They knew who he was. Not some bandit, then. Bellepheros looked at his hands. They were shaking. He walked slowly to the chest, to where the Picker stood.

  The Picker scratched his head. ‘Where’s a good place to put this, nice and out of the way?’

  Bellepheros wanted to say he was sorry for what he was about to do but that felt ridiculous. He drew back his fist and then flicked his hand sharply, flinging droplets of blood straight at the Picker’s face.

  The Picker vanished. Disappeared with a small pop of air. The drops of blood spattered over the side of the carriage. The painted wood fizzed and pitted and burst into flames that slowly sputtered and died.

  ‘Waste of time, that.’ The Picker was a dozen paces behind him, breathing hard as though he’d just run up the entire stair of the Tower of Air. A sheen of fresh sweat began to bloom across his skin. ‘Waste of time to run too.’

  ‘I know what you are!’

  ‘Makes the two of us then.’ The Picker held up whatever was in his hand. As it caught the sun, Bellepheros saw it was a short sword with a blade so fine and thin that it was invisible save for the blood that still dripped from its hilt and where its edge sparkled as it cut the light. ‘Look at you. Full of books and learning. Doesn’t surprise me that you know.’ He turned his sword over in his hand, looking at it.

  ‘Blades so thin the sun shines through them.’

  The Picker nodded. ‘So they cast no shadow, you see.’ The Picker wiped the blood from his invisible blade and sheathed it again. Bellepheros tried to think what he could say. What else he could do. No point in asking what the man wanted – that was obvious now. Him. They wanted him. The Taiytakei wanted an alchemist. Beg for mercy?

  He looked up and down the road, as if looking might make a hundred armed riders suddenly appear, riding to the rescue. But no. The only movements were the little swirls of sun-dappled leaves caught in tiny whirls in the breeze.

  ‘You know what’s next, right? Clever fellow like you. Want another moment to think it all out? There’s no one coming on this road for an hour each way. Likely more. Checked I did, before I came. No rush.’

  Bellepheros was quivering all over now. ‘So you’re just going to take me back to Furymouth, is that it?’

  ‘Stick you on a ship and sail you away.’

  He still had his little knife in his hand. Now he held it to his own throat. ‘I won’t let you.’ Standing there ready to cut his own throat, and still he had a head full of questions clamouring to be asked, the sort of questions an alchemist learned to have about everything. How do you work? Where do you come from? What do you do? How do I make you useful? What happens when we die? The last always a good one after a bottle of fine wine. Maybe now he’d find out. He was an alchemist, after all, so he knew exactly where to cut, and it struck him as he stood there that the questions were more powerful than the fear, that for him it had always been that way. Dying wouldn’t trouble him that much at all. ‘You can really turn into air, water, earth, as and when you wish?’ He shook his head. ‘Just … whenever you want?’

  ‘Fire too.’ The Picker took a deep breath and cocked his head. He walked a little closer and picked up a sack, gestured at the knife. ‘Think that will work? I knows a blood-mage. Worse than you, maybe. And say you’s quick enough to cut before I stops you. I just find another. More men die. Got a good name for me to go looking for?’

  Bellepheros hesitated. His hands were shaking. Trying to think it through. Trying not to be afraid because why, what was there to fear? And yet fear had him tight now.

  The Picker took another step. ‘Why’s it so hard here, what I do?’ He wrinkled his nose at the dead men. ‘Right you was, about where I’s from. Mostly. But where I learned, it was easy. Easy like talking. Could do it all day long. Here it’s like tar. Took years to get used to it. Still knocks the wind out of me doing so much at once.’ He held out the sack. ‘You need to be putting that knife down now and putting this over your head.’

  ‘Dragons.’ Bellepheros shook his head. ‘You think taking me will somehow bring you dragons?’

  ‘That’s what it is, Mister Grand Master Alchemist of the Order of the Scales. Dragons. Always was, always will be.’

  Bellepheros shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Going to make this difficult, are you?’ The Picker looked down at the sack. ‘Suit yourself.’ He turned his back and started to walk away and then vanished in a swirl of fallen leaves, and at the same time Bellepheros felt a hand on his arm, yanking the knife away from his neck and then a blinding pain under his ear where his jaw met his skull. The knife fell from his fingers. He gasped and whimpered and staggered forward. It hurt so much that he couldn’t see, couldn’t even think any more.

  The Picker scooped up the sack and threw it over the alchemist’s head. Bellepheros fell to his knees. The Picker hauled him back to his feet. ‘And there’s another thing. That spear. Easy one for a fellow like me, you’d think. But no. Can’t shift that at all, not one little bit. Why?’

  Bellepheros
still had blood on his hand, blood that could burn or bend wills. He flailed at the Picker through the haze of pain. The Picker caught his arm and bent it behind his back, forcing him to the ground again, knees digging into him, pressing his face to the earth. He could barely breathe. On his back, the Picker was making soothing hushing sounds as a rope slipped around Bellepheros’s neck and drew tight.

  ‘Peaceful here, isn’t it? Don’t you worry, I’s not going to kill you. Just needs you quiet a bit.’

  The rope drew tight. Bellepheros writhed but the Picker had him fast. He choked. Gasped. His lungs heaved but the rope was tight around his throat. A dark sea roared over his thoughts and drowned them. He felt the warmth of the sun on his hand and the dry autumn leaves crack between his clenched fingers. He heard the distant singing of the birds. And then nothing.

  3

  Tuuran

  When Bellepheros came round, he was hog-tied across a saddle with a bag over his head and cloth stuffed into his mouth. Stabbing pains shot through his head to the steady thump thump of a dull thudding ache.

  He bit the inside of his mouth and let a little blood seep into the cloth. Then tried to merge his mind with the blood to make the cloth dissolve away. He could do the same with the sack. Then, maybe, with the Elemental Man …

  Nothing happened. The power simply wasn’t there. The blood-magic was gone. He tried again. Still nothing, and then the real panic came because, without that, what was he? A weak old man, no use to anyone. He started to struggle, pulling ineffectually against the ropes around his arms and wrists, crying out through the gag.

  The horse stopped. The bag came off his head and the world flooded with light. He screwed up his eyes and blinked furiously. A hand grabbed his hair, tipping back his head. The Picker’s face peered into his.

  ‘Worked then, did it?’

  Behind the gag, Bellepheros screamed. He couldn’t breathe!

  The Picker sighed, undid the gag and lifted him off the horse to lie flat on his back. They were in some woods, among waist-deep bracken. The air smelled of old earth and mushrooms.

  For a moment fear got the better of him. They were going to kill him. ‘What do you want from me? What have you done to me? Are you going to kill me?’ He gulped at the air like a man drowning.

  The Picker snorted. ‘Kill you? You gone daft? What I want is for you to be good and quiet till I get you where you need to be. And what I done is give you a taste of something. Tolds you I knows a blood-mage. So you’ll not be doing them sorts of tricks like you tried before, not any more. Keep your blood nice and quiet. Likes my life easy, I do.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  The Picker sighed. He turned his back and waited a while until Bellepheros stopped struggling, then heaved him over the back of the horse again like a dirty old carpet and tied the sack over his head once more. He left the gag off this time.

  ‘No one here, old man. Shout all you like. You’s clever enough, though. You’ll see where this is going if you stops to think.’

  They rode on. After maybe an hour it started to rain. Bellepheros heard the soft hiss of it on the leaves overhead, the pitter-patter of drips coming down off the trees, felt wet splats now and then on his hands and his legs. Afterwards the air smelled of trees, the rich tang of wet leaves. So they were on the fringes of the Raksheh, maybe, since that wasn’t far from where the Picker had kidnapped him. Stupid thoughts buzzed in his head: he liked the Raksheh. He had fond memories of times years ago, wandering the edge of the forest, picking mushrooms and searching for roots and flowers. The Raksheh was a paradise for alchemists, full of interesting plants and strange crawling, slithering creatures. A delight as long as you kept a sharp eye on the lookout for the snapper packs.

  In the middle of the afternoon they stopped and the Picker let him go and have a piss behind a tree and gave him some water. ‘Nothing in it, not this time,’ he said. Bellepheros wasn’t sure whether to believe him, but he was thirsty enough to drink it when he saw the Picker drink it too. When the Picker threw him back on the horse, he forced himself to be an alchemist again, to think the way he’d been taught, the way he now taught others: sum the actions of the Taiytakei over the years. Arrange them with method and logic. They wanted dragons and they always had. To control a dragon, you needed an alchemist.

  He tried asking questions. ‘Have you already got them? Are they hatchlings or are they still eggs?’ Others, anything he could think of, looking for a response, but the Picker never answered. Maybe he was thinking about it all wrong. Maybe they’d take an alchemist first, before the dragons. It made more sense.

  He wondered, vaguely, about whether he might escape. Didn’t see how, though. He needed to work his blood. Without that he was useless. And there were ways to take away a blood-mage’s powers – he knew several and he knew how to get round most of them too – but without knowing how the Elemental Man had done it, and being tied to the back of a horse as he was, all that knowledge was useless.

  They stopped before dark at some old hut deep in the forest. The Picker took off the sack and untied his hands and locked him inside. When he rattled the door, it was shut fast. He tried shouting a few times for help but no one came, and for all he knew the Picker was right outside. He huddled in a corner and spent most of the night shivering, too cold to sleep.

  In the morning he tried to work his blood again. Still nothing. He tried running when the Picker opened the door but that just made him look an idiot. The Picker watched, laughing probably, then vanished and appeared right in front of him and tripped him and tied him up and left him flat on his back while he went to fetch the horse. Bellepheros listened to the calls of the birds and the hiss of the wind among the trees. It wasn’t the Raksheh, he decided. For what that was worth. The birdsong was wrong. They’d gone back towards Furymouth. They probably weren’t far from the river.

  In the middle of the day they came to a road. The Picker hauled Bellepheros off his horse and stuffed him into a carriage. The sack stayed over his head. For all he knew, it was the same carriage he’d been in yesterday. There were two others with him now, men who never spoke but who smelled of Taiytakei. They stopped every few hours and let him out to empty his bladder or his bowels. In the middle of the day the Picker took off his sack and watched him eat. The carriage windows were boarded shut. None of them spoke a word. After he’d eaten, the sack went back on.

  The carriage kept going, rattling up and down, shaking his bones. He felt the ground change from grassy earth to hard-packed mud. As the day wore on, the sounds outside the carriage changed too. There were people now. Animals. Birds. Seagulls. The road became teeth-jarring cobbles and he knew where they were – right back in Furymouth, where he’d started. Before long he could smell the city. He cried out for help, shouted himself almost hoarse, but no one answered and the roll and bounce of the carriage never faltered. By the time they stopped and bundled him out, he’d long since given up. Rough hands gripped his elbows and almost carried him and then dumped him down and took off his sack. He was in a big open hall. The first thing he saw was a mosaic – the great Vishmir with the sun and the moon and the stars sitting at his feet – in all its brilliant colours. The floor was a mosaic too, made of tiny tiles not much bigger than a fingernail. White, mostly, but with lines of vibrant green and vivid blue trailing across it like discarded strands of silk.

  He knew exactly where he was. The Paratheus. He looked at the dome overhead to be sure but he hardly needed to. Others thought of the Paratheus as a Taiytakei temple, but that wasn’t really true. Paratheus was just another way of saying a place of learning. It was their place, though. Their place within the sea king’s city. The air inside was cool despite the heat of the early autumn sun and smelled of incense, not of fish like the rest of the city. Even Jehal’s palace had smelled of fish.

  ‘Noisy you were in there. Didn’t help though, did it?’ The Pi
cker smiled. ‘Pretty place this.’ His smile grew wider as if he was letting Bellepheros in on some great secret. He took a step closer. ‘They had gods and so forth once. Was us who took those away from them. Like burning out the badness. Hurts when the brand comes but best in the long run. It’s all mathematics, geometry and astronomy now. And a few other bobs and bits I shan’t be speaking of just here. Supposed you might like to see this. Being as you are what you are.’

  Bellepheros met his eye. ‘I’d prefer it if you let me go.’

  The Picker shrugged. ‘Daft, you is.’ And before Bellepheros could protest, the sack was back on again. ‘Been a fine little ride we’ve had. Got me some different trouble to be stirring now, so I leave you in the tender care of others.’

  Those others, when they came, were Taiytakei through and through, black-skinned men in rough tunics, sailors, led by two men in dull feathered cloaks that had seen better days, their hair in short braids down to their shoulders. They carried spiked clubs and they dragged him and a dozen other slump-shouldered captives from the Furymouth slave market through streets lively with shouting traders and carts rattling over cobbles. Dragged him with a leash around his neck and a bag over his head and no one said a word.

  ‘Help me!’ he cried, though he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. ‘I’m an alchemist, not a slave!’ All he heard was laughter, and then someone cuffed the back of his head, hard enough that he saw stars and almost fell. To the rest of the world he was nothing; and the Taiytakei wandered to and fro with their slaves every day in these parts of the city and no one batted an eye. The smell gave it away. They were by the docks, and the Taiytakei as good as owned the Furymouth harbour districts. Sea lords, living in the shadow of dragons.

  The heat of the sun on his skin through his clothes was uncomfortable, enough to make him sweat. Warm enough that it must still be high in the sky. He knew they’d reached the sea when a fresh breeze ran over him, tingling his skin, swirling with the harbour scents of salt and wood and tar and ropes. They lifted him up and threw him in a boat that rocked up and down with the waves. They rowed him out to sea a way and then they hauled him onto one of their ships as though he was a cow or a horse and dumped him on the deck. New voices surrounded him, Taiytakei sailors with accents he could barely penetrate. The sack stayed over his head. He reached for the power in his blood again. Still nothing.