Forged by Fire (21 page)
I picked a ripe durian fruit from the metalwork basin beside me, rose, and placed it before him. “It’ll spoil if it’s not eaten soon.”
He slowly looked up. His eyes were dark as wet loam and brimming with intelligence. Like the other rebels, he was haggard from undernourishment, and his beard and hair were long and unkempt. Flakes of dried blood were peeling off his forehead and cheeks in lentil-sized circles. One of his victims had sprayed under his knife last night, it seemed.
He reached out and took the durian. The peppery, urinelike smell of the fruit burst from the skin as his blade sank into it.
“Tell us who you are, Zarq,” Tansan said quietly. “Tell us how you know the Wai Vaneshor.”
So I did. I told her whom the man they called the suwem bai kam really was, and how, in an Arena wager backed by Malaban Bri, an influential merchant tycoon, I’d unseated the Roshu of Xxamer Zu and set Ghepp as the overseer in his stead. I spoke of Daronpu Gen, now the missing Wai Vaneshor for Ghepp, and of the ancient prophecy that Gen knew of that spoke of my destiny as the Skykeeper’s Daughter.
My throat went dry. I paused to drink some clove-and orange wine from a rock-crystal ewer. With the sweet wine on my lips, and my head buzzing slightly, I spoke of Waikar Re Kratt, known not only as Lupini Re, but Lupini ReLutche because of his recent appropriation of that Clutch. I told of the Skykeeper that Kratt wielded through my sis ter, Waivia, and explained that it was my mother’s haunt, an insane creature created from my mother’s mad obsessions, her Djimbi magics, and, circuitously, Kratt’s sadism. I drank more wine.
I recounted my stay in Temple’s obscure jail and of the things that had occurred to me there and how I’d played a crucial part in the rescue of both myself and Jotan Bri, sis ter of the merchant tycoon Malaban Bri. I spoke of venom and dragonsong, Longstride and the rite performed upon me under the jungle canopy in the dark of night. Suddenly the wine was no longer sweet enough—or perhaps was too sweet—and I pushed it away from me.
While pacing before the table where Knife-carver sat, I told them why no bull dragon had ever hatched from an egg on a Clutch, nor ever would. I told them that bull dragons didn’t hatch from eggs, that they incubated within yamdalar cinaigours, the keratinous involucres a dying female dragon secretes about herself. Eight weeks the transformation from female to male takes, I said. Eight weeks.And for decades—for centuries—members of the arbiyeskus throughout Malacar had been disposing of dragon cocoons diligently every month, four weeks before the dragons within had completed their transformation into bulls. By the time I was finished, Knifecarver had eaten the durian, and the dull sunlight dribbling through the many openwork windows of fine, hard stucco cast shadows of arabesques and leaf motifs upon the tiled floor. It was well past high noon.
The dragonmaster pounded on the door and demanded entrance. Sounds of a scuffle with the guards outside. Shouted invective from the dragonmaster.
“We’ll keep the suwembai kam,” Knife-carver said. “As the former dragonmaster of Re, he has skills we’ll need when the bulls are born.”
“Be careful of him, Tansan,” I warned. “He’s often irratio nal, frequently cruel, and always impatient. Life holds no sanctity for him. None.”
I didn’t know what had transpired between the two in the jungle camp, but her scarred jawline was hard as she stared at the door.
“We’ll use him to our ends and dispose of him when he’s no longer needed,” she said with a curl of her lip.
A moment of silence. We were all avoiding talking about the crucial revelation in my narrative. Knife-carver studied me from under his shag of hair.
“The calcarifer fish does this, changes from female to male,” he said quietly.
“Moths, butterflies,” Tansan said. “They change from worm to winged insect while inside cocoons. But I have my doubts about what you tell us, Zarq. There’ve been times when illness and negligence have prevented the arbiyesku from its monthly hashing in the cocoon warehouse. Surely somewhere, over the many years, a bull dragon would have hatched from an involucre. It’s too unlikely that for centu ries no one has stumbled upon this secret.”
I shook my head, reached for a fistful of nuts from a met alwork box inlaid with copper and gold. I wanted to rid my palate of the taste of the wine, of the sharp reminder of how inadequate a substitute anything was for venom. “Dragons are aerial creatures by nature. Think of a jungle crown, where the dragons live in the wild. Think of the cocoons on a tree branch, clinging hold tighter than any vine. Think how the in volucres that are secreted around the branch are exposed to blistering sunlight, day after day.”
I felt again the heat of the bonfire shriveling the skin on my arms and cheeks during Longstride’s rite. “Involucres have to be exposed to heat for the transformation to be successful.”
“Like eggs incubating beneath a brooder’s belly,” Knifecarver said quietly.
I nodded. “Exactly. It’s always been the practice for brooders to be herded into a warehouse, to be kept con veniently out of the way until they appear irrefutably dead and can be ground up with impunity and used as fodder. Temple vouchsafes to protect our divine dragons during their journey down the Claw Path to death by enclosing them in a warehouse, but what Temple does, unwittingly, is deprive them of transformation and life.”
Tansan gestured outside. “And during the Wet? How do bulls hatch without the heat of the Fire Season’s sun?”
“I don’t know.” I brushed off the fibrous, papery shells of the nuts I’d been peeling. “Maybe they don’t hatch during the Wet. Maybe the cocoons just rot. Maybe it’s the One Dragon’s way of keeping things in balance, making sure the jungle isn’t overrun with bulls. I don’t know.”
“So we create our own heat,” Knife-carver said.
“Burn any wood we can get our hands on,” I said, nod ding at the exquisitely carved tables throughout the room. “Keep controlled bonfires roaring night and day.”
“It won’t work,” Tansan said flatly. “The smoke will fill the warehouse and smother everything within. Flies, car rion beetles, firetenders, whatever might be developing in the involucres. Nothing will survive.”
I felt profoundly foolish. She was right. We’d be creat ing a smokehouse like those used to cure meat, albeit on a larger scale.
“Do we know that it’s heat alone that the involucres re quire?” Knife-carver murmured. He leaned forward, chair creaking, and took a handful of the same nuts I was eating. “Maybe the involucres are like plants. Maybe they wither from lack of sunlight, not heat.”
The rite had been held during the night, under the dark jungle canopy. Longstride and the matriarch hadn’t re quired sunlight to perform their rite. I shook my head em phatically. “It’s the heat. As for the smoke . . .”
“We knock down walls, cut holes in the roof.” Knifecarver shrugged. “Simple.”
“Do we know for sure that it’s eight weeks the involu cres require to mature into bulls?” Tansan asked.
Again, I was stumped. The gong that had rung during Longstride’s rite had resounded eight times. I’d assumed it represented eight weeks. Could’ve meant eight months, though. I said so aloud.
“Eight months is a long time for something the size of an involucre to go unharmed in the jungle,” Knife-carver said, and again he gave that humorless smile that thinned his lips and further caved in his bearded cheeks and made his eyes look sunken. “The jungle destroys anything without roots that stays motionless too long. I’ve lived in it long enough to know.”
Tansan was still frowning, and I felt my certainty slipping away.
“I’ve worked in the arbiyesku warehouse during Fire Season,” she said finally. “The heat in there is stifling at high noon. If cocoons require only heat and time to transform into bulls, a bull would have hatched somewhere, by acci dent, over the centuries.”
Silence a moment as all my confidence dribbled away and left me confused and uncertain.
“Sunlight must be the key,” Knife-carver said. “That’s the primary difference between a cocoon exposed in the jungle and one shut in a warehouse during the Fire Season. Sunlight.”
Tansan nodded. “It must be so. Sunlight and heat and time. That’s what we deprive the cocoons of by placing them in a warehouse. That’s what prevents the transforma tion from completing.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it again.They were wrong, I felt certain: Longstride’s rite had been performed on me at
night
. And yet Tansan was right: Somewhere, by accident, an involucre should have had the opportunity to develop into a neonate bull if all that were required was heat and time.
There had to be something else. I was missing some thing....
“We have little sunlight,” Tansan said. “The Wet has be gun.”
“Only just,” Knife-carver said. “Given enough heat, per haps the light we have will suffice.”
“We have to try,” Tansan said.
I nodded but felt no confidence. I was missing something. I was sure of it now.
“Will you fly alone to your contact in Lireh?” Tansan said, switching subjects so suddenly I was momentarily without an answer.
“I didn’t learn how to fly a dragon and read aerial route maps during my apprenticeship under Dragonmaster Re,” I muttered. “I need Ryn to fly me.”
“The turncoat acolyte?” Knife-carver said. “A boy. He won’t know the way to the coast.”
“He’s an apprentice herald; he can read maps—”
“Take the suwembai kam, this former dragonmaster of Re.”
I grudgingly acquiesced with a nod. I’d not the spirit to argue; I had the uneasy feeling, after the objections raised by Tansan, that the cocoons wouldn’t transform into bulls. I was missing something.
Knife-carver slowly uncoiled from his chair. He was twice as tall as I’d expected. As tall as Longstride.
“You’ll leave now,” he murmured, sheathing his knife. “Bring who you like here from this network of yours, and if we can locate him, Chinion will speak with them. We’ll begin the work at the arbiyesku today.”
I’d never before seen an aerial route map. I realized that if the monopoly over dragon ownership were to be ren dered truly obsolete, all rishi should one day not only have access to those maps, but be able to read them. I would speak with Tansan and this Chinion about the need to edu cate Clutch serfs.
We returned to the arbiyesku late afternoon. Already the place was a hive of activity that sounded chaotic but looked somewhat organized. Mallets rang against the brickwork of the warehouse; mortar crumbled and dust rose in acrid clouds. A stream of rishi poured steadily into the compound, carrying bayen furniture and the bamboo from abandoned shacks upon their backs. They dumped their loads onto sprawling piles of smashed tables, portrait frames, and divans.
Children ran hither and yon, aiding and disrupting. Elderly women were bent over cauldrons of yanichee, their voices raised in syncopated song, and the rich scent of the hot yolk broth wafted over the arbiyesku, mingling with the salty smell of the slabs of preserved meat soaking in steeptubs; clearly distribution of the food in the daronpuis’ larders had already begun.
The escoas had been hobbled, wing bolted, and crammed into six of the mud-brick domiciles belonging to the arbi yesku men. The dragons looked unperturbed by the bustle and phlegmatically accepting of their peculiar quarters. To a dragon, they also looked overfed, their distended bellies rumbling with indigestion. The domiciles reeked of gas and maht, regurgitated dragon food, and flies buzzed over the pats of manure thick upon the floors. The escoas’ saddles, reins, bridles, and saddlebags were nowhere in sight.
The dragonmaster bellowed at the children and adults gath ered outside the doors of the domiciles. “Move back, move back! A dragon’s a dragon, whether it has wings or not!”
Piah, Myamyo, and Keau, all from the arbiyesku con tingent of the myazedo, roamed in front of the entrances of the domiciles, acting as guards. Piah wore a turban of bloodstained bandages around his head and lurched heav ily from wall to wall, eyes vacant; he looked as if he should be on his back, not guarding dragons. Myamyo sported an ugly bruise around one eye, and the corresponding cheek was as fat and red as a tumor. He was dressed in some dead lord’s finery: a waistshirt of fawn byssus so delicate and silky it shimmered, an extravagantly broad sash the creamy orange of a new squash, billowing green pantaloons, and white pebbleleather boots. The clash of colors emphasized the angry red bulging from his injured face.
Keau still wore his crusted bandages around his wounded hand. He looked pallid and dazed, the whorls on his face standing out starkly, but he marched with arms akimbo, his chest puffed out. No unauthorized person would get by
him
to the escoas, oh, no.
“Where’s their tack? Why’ve they been fed so much? When were they last watered?” the dragonmaster de manded of Keau.
Keau shrugged, face impassive, eyes sliding to the sa vanna. He held no love for the dragonmaster.
Knife-carver was pushing through the crowd, coming toward us, Ryn at his side. Two-braids followed, prodding a giant, grizzled man before him. The man’s hands were bound behind his back and he wore the maroon tunic of a herald, albeit dirty and rumpled, the green crest over his left breast stained. It took me a moment to recognize the herald as Kaban, the drunken stablehand I’d knocked un conscious and tied up the night I’d liberated the escoas. I recalled the ugly bruises and dried blood on Ryn’s legs, and my skin crawled with revulsion for the man.
“Where’s the tack?” the dragonmaster shouted at Ryn.
“Under the women’s barracks.” Ryn’s eyes were bright, and he looked like he’d slept well.
I nodded at him. “Are you ready to fly again?”
“He goes with me in search of Chinion,” Knife-carver said.
“You keep him safe, make sure he returns. I vowed no harm would come to him.”
“He’ll fly me back.”
That was as good a promise as I was going to get.
Ryn didn’t look overly concerned. His night amongst the arbiyesku, and the news of the liberation of the Clutch, seemed to have erased his fearful timidity. He was stand ing close to Knife-carver, looking at him with the bashful idolization young boys usually reserve for war heroes and dragonmasters.
The herald Kaban was watching Ryn with equal interest, though his eyes were filled with a hostile greed that made me want to smash him, the way one smashes a louse. Ryn felt Kaban’s gaze on him, and the boy’s hand dropped to his waist. A crude leather sheath was belted at his slender hips.
“You’ve a blade,” I murmured.
Ryn nodded. “I’ve been taught how to throw it, too.” He spoke loud enough that Kaban could hear. The man sneered and spat.
“Children should know how to defend themselves,” Knife-carver said, eyes steady on mine, and I could see in his stance and hear in his voice that either he’d learned how Ryn had suffered at the hands of Kaban the herald, or had guessed. “A child should know how to cut a man so that he can’t rise again.” In the domicile behind me, an escoa snorted. Children squealed. The novelty of seeing a winged dragon close up, combined with the thrum of activity and smells of yolk broth, had made the children highly excitable.
Crowded by onlookers, the dragonmaster, Ryn, and I saddled three escoas and slid halters over their snouts. Kaban made a caustic comment about the stupidity of flying a dragon without a nose barbell and bridle, and Two-braids slammed the butt of his knife so hard against Kaban’s ear, it sounded like a nut had been smashed open with a rock.
Knife-carver stepped quietly beside the reeling man. “If a boy half your age has mastered an escoa without a bar bell, what kind of herald are you if you can’t?”
Knife-carver’s poise and tone unnerved me. He re minded me too much of Kratt. Kaban wouldn’t live the day out, I was certain; nor would he die cleanly or quickly. The knowledge made me feel tainted, when all I wanted to feel was a grim satisfaction. But I didn’t say anything that might prevent the murder. No. And, placed in the same circum stances, I would certainly remain silent again.
Two old men from the tanners’ clan brought us sacks of food. We loaded the sacks into our saddlebags, then led the escoas behind the compound, onto the savanna. A crowd of children followed us; as we removed the escoas’ hobbles and wing bolts, more rishi gathered.We mounted; the crowd mur mured. As the dragons hop-lunged across the brittle grasses and their great wings spread wide and stirred dust from the ground, a huge cheer rose from both the gathered rishi and those swarming over the arbiyesku warehouse.
To the sound of that exultant cheer, we rose into the sky and went our separate ways.
* * *
Come evenfall and a rainsquall, the dragonmaster and I landed at one of the ganotei hani, airway tracts, that are maintained—some better than others—throughout Malacar. These strips of relatively flat land are biannu ally seared of all flora and are located near a river or lake and, occasionally, one of the overland egg-train routes. The ganotei hani are used by heralds, First Citizens, Temple au thorities, and militia traveling on dragonback. Once a year, the ganotei hani along the aerial routes between Clutches and Arena are swarmed with retinues of bayen gamblers, daronpuis, and dragonmaster apprentices, all of whom are accompanying bulls to and from Arena.
Needless to say, the ganotei han we camped at was not on one of the major routes. The tract of land hadn’t been seared for at least a year, and we landed upon a thick growth of new ferns and fireweed, amongst old blackened tree stumps sprouting lichen and moss. As rain pelted down, I watered our escoa at the swampy lake, wading cau tiously in amongst mangrove roots and thick water vines, then joined the dragonmaster in making a crude shelter of leaning fronds and branches.
Thoroughly drenched, we crunched crispy strips of vinegar-dried fish and worked at tart chunks of slii fruit leather as rain penetrated our primitive refuge and turned the ground beneath us to mud. We spoke not a word to each other, slept fitfully and miserably, and woke at dawn.
We flew long that day, resting twice for the sake of our escoa.
By late afternoon I caught my first glimpse of the ocean, a band of steel shimmering in the distance. It rose up, like a wall, to touch the clouds. I was appalled that water could stand upright like that until I realized, with a hot flush, that the water wasn’t standing upright but stretching long and far into the horizon.
I shuddered and readjusted my grip on the saddle rungs. As we neared the ocean, the land below us changed into farmland and vineyards and villages. We flew up and over a two-humped mountain that had been shorn of every tree, and there, abruptly, was the bay of Lireh and the sprawl of caravansaries and taverns, factories and warehouses, smith ies and ports and temples and market squares that led to the great capital city of Liru beyond.
Liru itself was wedged upon the mountainside to the north, visible as great tiers of marble mansions, sandstone palaces, and gleaming white cupolas. Rising ponderously from that grandeur were the huge triple domes of Wai-Liru Temple, obese monstrosities plated in green copperscale tiles. Torqued onion domes with lustrous purple spirals clustered around the mammoth domes, bright in the fine rain blowing off the bay.
Another escoa was circling the vast city, descending for a landing, and a second dragon, a russet-and-ivy speck, was disappearing over Liru Mountain. Under the dragonmas ter’s guidance, our dragon banked, circled wide over the massive ships dwarfing the dockyards, and began a slow descent.
I felt bewildered by the sprawl of the capital city, by the huge ships moored at the docks, the hundreds of little caravels bobbing around them, and the people swarming on the wharves beyond. And the smell and look of the sea! I’d never before inhaled its wild, salty tang, never be fore looked toward the horizon to see nothing but eversurging ocean. The sheer size of it was terrifying, and the smells of seawater, wood, hempen rope, turpentine, coal, and the mildewed canvas of ship sails were all marvelous and foreign.
How would we ever find Malaban Bri in all that?
The dragonmaster flew our escoa to a raised stone ros trum the size of a small courtyard, situated at the edge of a wharf. A bevy of women were gathered upon the rostrum, around its outskirts; at our approach they ran for the stone ramp that descended to ground level in three precise, rect angular switchbacks.
“Damn whores, get out of the way!” the dragonmaster bellowed. Our escoa took the vertical position of landing and her wings backbeat against the air. Clawpads slid over wet stone. We landed light as chaff. I wondered how I had ever been so green as to almost fall off a dragon at landing.
Neither the dragonmaster nor I was able to dismount easily, though. My spine felt stiff as an oyster shell and my legs were as rubbery as old kelp, and the dragonmas ter looked as if he were suffering the same sensations. We avoided each other’s eyes in our chagrin over the limita tions of our bodies.
The women who had been standing upon the rostrum prior to our landing came back up the ramp, hips swing ing, bells tinkling on their ankles. Their stained blouses were cut low over dark bosoms that had been painted with clear oil.
The women grinned, some toothless, and broke into a ca cophony of hawking cries, boasting of their abilities, their inexpensive charges, the heights of ecstasy they guaranteed between their legs. I gawped at them.
The dragonmaster was deaf to their enticements and ef ficiently bolted our escoa’s wings shut. I followed him down the ramp, blushing furiously as a whore pressed her breasts against me. She reeked of woodsmoke and old ale.
Hunched against the drizzle, we started along the wharves.
The non–egg laying, dewinged dragons known as satons were everywhere, pulling wagons laden with bales of jute and tobacco leaf, barrels of oil, sheaves of rubber, and dragons’ eggs packed in straw. Their drivers shouted at the throng to make way, while urchins darted in behind them, scooping up any deposited manure the moment it hit the wharves’ worn planks and darting away with the fuel. Ste vedores bearing incredible loads of wild-scented mahogany planks lumbered along piers and up gangplanks as wagons of iron ore rumbled past us.
Stray dogs slunk between legs. Beggars squatted along the edges of the docks. Thick-bodied, brown-skinned women—descendants from the island of Lud y Auk—slit open fish with scale-flecked knives, pale fish guts strewn about their sandaled feet.
Wide-eyed at the stew pot of goods and people clogging the wharves, I walked with one hand upon the neck of our imperturbable escoa. Her keratinous scales were cool and wet, but between them, her leathery hide was warm and soft, pulling taut, then wrinkling a little, with each sham bling lunge forward. Beneath my bare feet, the wet, worn wharf was gummy and pebbled with grit.
The dragonmaster barked a question at a Djimbi seaman whose whorls were the brownish green of uprooted kelp flung upon the beach. The seaman pointed at a series of leaning wooden offices near the wharves’ end. We pushed and wove through the throng toward them.
A green-streaked copper sign that had the likeness of a sextant stamped upon its center hung from two black iron chains over the turpentine-soaked timbers of one of fice. The hieratic for the caranku, the merchant guild clan, framed the left of the sextant; the hieratic for
Bri
framed the right. Rain softly pinged off the copper.
Shutters hung askew from the office windows. A legless beggar sitting on a board that had rusted casters beneath it was dozing against the building, protected a little by the warped eaves. Seagull guano had defaced the entire build ing with streaks of grayish white.
I was dismayed and alarmed. I’d expected something far, far grander from a merchant tycoon.
“Wait here with the escoa,” the dragonmaster ordered, thrusting her reins at me.
“No. I’m coming with you.”
“Then say good-bye to our dragon,” he snapped.“Thieves abound here.”
He dropped the reins and barged through the heavy wooden door beneath the copper sign.
I grumbled and waited, but felt exposed standing there alone with the escoa, so I leaned hard on the door and peered into the gloom beyond. There was the dragonmaster, standing before a massive wooden desk, behind which was seated a brawny aosogi man with a great spill of unkempt gray hair hanging about his broad shoulders. From ceiling to floor the room was surrounded by hexago nal scroll slots, each slot crammed with bamboo casings. A curled, ripped, and mildewed map hung on the wall behind the man. At his elbow sat a cold boiled renimgar, whole save for a ripped off leg—the gnawed bone of which sat near the boiled head. His desk was littered with dockets.
Both men glanced at me. Holding the escoa’s reins, I stepped inside and pushed the door partially shut. The heavy door was warped and moved reluctantly.
“And that’d be the escoa you’re talking about?” the brawny aosogi man said, nodding at the green snout just visible at the end of my reins, poking round the door. “I’ve no record of her comin’ off any ship of ours.”
The dragonmaster smacked his bald pate in exaspera tion. “Not off a boat! We flew in, flew in, yes? Two days ago, and we’ve been waiting for whomever it was who was sup posed to retrieve the damned beast, but no one’s come, and I’m telling you, I’m leaving with the escoa before nightfall if you don’t send a runner to Malaban and tell him his beast is here, and burn what he paid for the dragon!”
The brawny man placed his great knuckles on the desk and slowly heaved himself out of his wooden chair. He lumbered out from behind his desk and disappeared up a creaking set of narrow stairs. Above us, the scrape of a chair being shoved back, the muted sound of voices, the creak of floorboard planks.
The brawny man reappeared, lumbering down the nar row stairs as if movement exhausted him. “We’ll send word,” he grunted as he descended.
“We’ll wait here,” the dragonmaster snapped. “I’m not wasting more coin at another cesspool that passes as a tav ern in these parts. Two days we’ve wasted! I’ll be recom pensed for this, understand.”
The dragonmaster’s inherent vehemence made his act utterly convincing. I was hard put not to stare at him.
The brawny man lowered himself behind his desk again and waved a meaty hand in my direction. “Bring in the beg gar from outside.”
The dragonmaster turned and looked at me. “Go on, then.”
Scowling, I heaved the door open. I stared at the mound of rags outside, uncertain as to how to address them. As if feeling my gaze, the beggar slowly looked up. His nose had been eaten entirely away by disease; puckered yellow skin and two gaping holes were all that remained.
“You’re wanted inside,” I said weakly.
I watched with morbid fascination as the beggar straight ened to the height of my thighs and propelled himself to ward me via wooden paddles he held in his hands. I stepped smartly out of the way, and my escoa snorted and tipped her head to one side as he rolled in front of her.
“Open the door, hey,” the beggar growled at me. I shoved it hard with a shoulder and the beggar wheeled himself in side.
The dragonmaster’s voice, querulous and tyrannical. The desk man’s voice, low and weary. An eager yap from the beggar.
Moments later the beggar slid outside again and set off toward the city, arms paddling furiously, his casters clitter clattering over the grooves between the wharves’ planks.