‘Down!’
Diamond Eye fell out of the air, wings tucked in and gathering all the speed he could. The wind wrenched at her, straining to pull her out of the saddle, but the harness was a good one and held fast even after all it had suffered. Bellepheros and his glass-worker woman, the enchantress, they would make her a new one. Tsen would see to it once he understood what she and her dragon could do. The world would change now, and for a while Tsen would be the engine of that change.
Until she was done with him.
She closed her eyes. The wind tugged at the skin of her cheeks, at her lips. As Diamond Eye shifted beneath her to open his wings, she leaned forward to press herself against him. He stopped almost dead in the air a few feet above the ground. The force crushed her, and the wind of his wings lifted and hurled the litter of broken glass into a storm of razor edges that cut through the air. He landed, head held high and twitching from side to side in silent challenge. If there were enemies waiting then Diamond Eye would know. Dragons did that. They felt your thoughts. There was nowhere to hide. They'd know you were there and they'd read your mind, and if you meant harm to their riders then they'd feel it before you even knew it yourself, and you'd burn.
Dragons. Glorious. Terrible.
She fumbled for the buckles on her helm that held it to her shoulders and tugged them apart. One fell to pieces in her fingers. A shame. Such beautiful armour all ruined now except the dragon-scale that lay beneath. The helm's visor was a maze of cracks only held together by whatever force went into a Taiytakei enchanter's art. The golden dragon curled across the crest was scarred, marked by flying stones and glass. For a moment she thought about throwing it away. Riding without a helm was like riding naked, free and open to the wind and with a frisson of danger, but she still had to cross the desert again, back to Tsen's eyrie, and that was a long way to go with the howling wind in your face.
If that's where I choose to go. Zafir thought about that for a bit, then put the helm carefully down beside her and reached for a skin of water. She was filthy, drenched in sweat, sticky-skinned, bloody-faced and thirsty. You didn't notice when you flew. Hunger and thirst fell away, lost in the ecstasy of the dragon. When you landed, it all came back. She tipped almost all the first skin over her head, running her other hand through her hair and over her face, washing off the salt and the blood, then drank a mouthful.
She wasn't alone. Two men were creeping towards her, cautious and afraid but coming closer nevertheless, flitting from one pile of rubble to another, hoping not to be seen. Futile. Diamond Eye felt them so she knew they were there. And Diamond Eye was hungry.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No more fire. Let them see us. Let them drink us in, us and what we have done.’
Diamond Eye rumbled. Zafir undid enough straps to get out of the saddle and stand up high on his back. She looked around her one more time. Smoke and flames poured from broken holes in the outer palace. Five of the six lesser towers still stood but the sixth was a jagged stump. She didn't even remember doing that. Bodies lay blasted against the walls by the wind of Diamond Eye's landing, jumbled among the chunks of stone and iron and broken glass.
‘Sea Lords of the Taiytakei?’ She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Do you see me, lords of the sea? You think you are the masters of the world, but you are not. You will learn to fear. You will learn to beg. You will plead and none of it will save you. Not from me. For I am Zafir! I am the dragon-queen! Do you hear me?’
She waited. If there were Elemental Men here then they would come. If they had a way to touch her, she would only know as they appeared at her back and slit open her naked throat.
Die slowly and badly, slave. I do not wish you well. The words of the Watcher as he'd prepared to kill her.
‘But it was you who died,’ she whispered. ‘I killed you and I have your knife. And as you say, I am what I am.’
There were no Elemental Men. The two soldiers who now came towards her openly were sword-slaves, bared arms held high to show their brands.
Mad. Mad mad mad, but Berren followed anyway. He tucked the warlock's knife into his belt and gripped his sword and then wondered what, exactly, was the point. The dragon was enormous. Obviously it had been big, it had to be big. He'd seen it flying through the air, seen it smash the glasships over the docks. He'd seen it over the sea against the ships and he'd seen it over the island and over the palace. He'd seen the rider on its back, a mere speck against its bulk. He'd seen it lift up a giant made of stone and as tall as a barn and carry it high into the air and smash it on the rocks below. All these things. But on the ground with its neck and its tail stretched out, it was simply enormous. As long as a ship, maybe longer. And what was a sword going to do against something like that? Like the big man said: nothing. Not even annoy it. It scared him witless. A true monster that would eat him and barely notice. And yet. . What was the eagerness he felt as he followed Tuuran, picking their way through the daggers of broken glass and the flayed bodies?
Madness. Had to be.
*
Tuuran passed through huddled groups of Taiytakei dead, their armour battered and their bright cloaks ragged and scorched. They smelled of burned feathers. They'd been fierce and proud and terrible once, glorious and regal, but now he looked at their faces and saw the wide eyes, the terror and the blank incomprehension. They hadn't known what to do, any of them, and all the armour, all that gleaming glass and gold and all those bright colours, their shields and their batons that hurled lightning and their wicked spiked ashgars, all of those fell away to nothing and they were just men as scared as a virgin oar-slave. It made him want to laugh. Laugh at them for their mad pride, laugh at Crazy Mad for thinking he was any better, at himself for refusing to be scared of even a hundred-foot monster made of fangs and fire that tore cities apart for fun. Or of a man whose eyes turned silver, for that matter.
The dragon lowered its head to the ground as if to look at them, and that only made it seem even bigger. Its eyes were the size of a man's head and slitted like a snake's. Its teeth protruded from its jaws, bone swords. There were great tears in its wings and gashes through its scales. Blood ran down its flanks and dripped onto its claws and onto the rubble beneath, but it had won, and victory poured out of it in waves, for that was all that mattered. It stared at them, unblinking, as if to ask what in the name of the Great Flame they thought they were doing. Then it cocked its head and rubbed it against the ground. Laughing at them, if monsters could laugh. Tuuran bared his teeth and laughed right back. He lifted his axe over his head and held it in both hands.
‘I am Tuuran, dragon-rider, ’ he roared. ‘And I am Adamantine.’
The two men came right up to Diamond Eye's head. Zafir was about to ask them who they were when Diamond Eye did the strangest thing. He cocked his head to one side and rubbed it against the ground. Zafir blinked. It was a rare gesture. She'd seen it among her dragons when they fought one another for mates but she'd never once seen it used to a human. It was submission.
‘Stop it!’ she hissed. ‘Get up!’
The big one grinned at the dragon and lifted his axe over his head. ‘I am Tuuran,’ he roared. ‘And I am Adamantine.’
She frowned and stared at him because something about his voice was familiar. It was the first voice she'd heard from her own land for months that wasn't Bellepheros. Maybe that was it. An Adamantine Man sworn to serve the speaker of the nine realms.
Slowly she climbed down from Diamond Eye's back. Slowly because half the harness was missing and because she was starting to feel how everything hurt, how much a toll this battle had taken on both of them. The dragon's wounds looked terrible but they wouldn't slow him. They'd heal, and so would she.