Forged by Fire (26 page)
Malaban Bri was a barrel-chested man with eyes outlined heavily with kohl and front teeth overlaid with gold. A shadow of several days’ stubble coated his cheeks, emphasizing the dark circles under his eyes. Travel-sweated and weary, he’d arrived at the Bri villa just as I’d returned from my visit with Waivia. Now he stood beside me, less than an hour later, surrounded by hundreds of glass tanks roiling with kwano snakes, while Jotan toured the dockyards for a suitable whore.
“If I could just have you press your seal here, Bayen Hacros,” the conservatory superintendent murmured.
Malaban brusquely stepped toward the man’s desk—a great wooden structure wet with rot—and impatiently pressed his seal into the hot wax the superintendent had drizzled onto the docket of sale.
“I want my escoas loaded promptly and ready to fly out as soon as possible,” Malaban demanded as he peeled his seal from the docket. “I’m in a hurry.”
“They’re being loaded as we speak, Bayen Hacros.” The superintendent rolled up the docket, eyes glistening in the oncoming gloom of dusk. “Such an impressive offering yours will be, with all the hundreds of snakes you intend to burn at temple. A death in the family?”
Malaban Bri gave him a cold look and didn’t answer, and the superintendent colored, murmured an apology, and gestured for us to follow him up a set of algae-slick stone stairs to the roof of the conservatory.
The superintendent should have known better than to inquire into the personal reasons why a man such as Mal aban had chosen to buy so many snakes direct from the conservatory, instead of from the hawkers’ kiosks located around every temple within the city. Such a grand purchase usually indicated a grievous sin on behalf of the purchaser: forced sodomy, murder, theft . . . some act that required, for those who could afford it, much forgiveness from Temple and the One Dragon. The conservatory kwano snakes were sold by the hundreds each day to those wishing to earn fa vor in the One Dragon’s eyes by paying to burn the snakes upon a temple altar. Really, the superintendent should have known discretion was required.
We ducked through a warped wooden door onto the conservatory roof. The sun was sinking in the cloud-clotted sky, and a light rain was blowing off the bay. The wet air made me shiver as it touched my nape. Dressed in the kidleather breeches, waistshirt, and fur-lined jerkin Jotan had given me, I looked nothing like the student who’d earlier accompanied a midwife to see Wai-ebani Lupini Re. I couldn’t help but glance nervously from the setting sun to Malaban.
“We’ll leave before dusk,” he said without looking at me, and he strode toward Lords Etaan and S’twe, who would be accompanying us back to Xxamer Zu, along with sev eral of their heralds mounted upon escoas laden with bam boo crates of kwano snakes.
I bit my lip nervously. Where was Jotan?
As if in answer to my concern, the door behind me squealed open and Jotan came onto the rooftop, panting as if she’d run.
“I found one,” she said, taking my hands into her cool ones. “Dark haired, aosogi, roughly your height. She boarded the
Zvolemein
as I watched.”
My teeth chattered. “What if she loses nerve? She—”
“You’ll be away from here shortly. Those escoas are fresh and strong; by the time the sun sets, you’ll be long gone.”
“We’re unarmed. If she sends mounted paras after me . . .”
We both knew who I meant by
she
.
“Fly swiftly. Reach Xxamer Zu as soon as you can. I paid the whore well, and she seemed eager enough to start a new life under the name of danku Cuhan Kaban’s Kazon via. She knows she’s to receive the monies your sister pur portedly entrusted to the ship’s captain, upon docking in Skoljk; that’s a powerful inducement for her to keep her mouth shut and sail to Xxeltek.”
I nodded and we looked at each other, realizing that this was farewell.
“Come with me,” I said hoarsely. “Leave Sak Chidil be hind.”
“It’s my choice, Zarq,” she said firmly. “I know there are alternatives; your Daronpu Gen offered me one, a charmed purgative. I refused. This is my choice. Don’t waste your pity on me.”
Malaban Bri hailed me; the escoas had been loaded. Time to flee the city, before the sun set and darkness made flight impossible. Time to bring my precious cargo of kwano snakes to Xxamer Zu—and swiftly, too, for crammed as they were in those bamboo crates, the snakes would be dy ing of stress, suffocation, and cannibalism if we dallied.
“I’ll send word when the dragonmaster breathes his last,” Jotan said, her cold hands still in mine. The dragonmaster lay in the Bri villa, his life seeping from the crack in his skull. “Now go. Go.”
We embraced, quickly, and she nipped my neck, below my right ear. Then she spun and left, and moments later I was mounted upon a frisky escoa with Malaban Bri, and the cupolas and temples and whorehouses and factories of Liru and Lireh were falling behind us.
We camped overnight at the same ganotei han the dragonmaster and I had used on our journey into the capital. In pairs, we shared watch through the night, and we left as the first greenish light cracked open the predawn sky.
Long and hard we flew that day, as the crated snakes grew lank from heat and confinement. By late noon we reached Xxamer Zu. Upon my direction we landed at the arbiyesku.
No sooner did our lathered escoas touch down upon the sun-bleached savanna behind the warehouse than we were surrounded by rishi, as well as several hostile myazedo reb els. Malaban Bri slowly dismounted, as did I. Lords Etaan and S’twe remained mounted. So did their heralds, who looked supremely uneasy at our reception.
Bonfires raged in the cocoon warehouse; I could see the flames through the gaping holes that had been knocked into the walls, and the smoke that curled up into the over cast sky through the holes that had been punched through the warehouse roof. A waste of wood, those fires. The co coons required kwano snakes as well as heat.
I moved forward, but a rebel stepped in front of me and pointed a sword at my belly. “One step more and I’ll gut you like a fish, bayen filth.”
I froze. It was Alliak, and he didn’t recognize me, dressed as I was in a bayen man’s clothes.
Behind me, I heard Malaban Bri growl in his throat. “Do you greet all invited guests in this manner?”
“It’s me: Zarq,” I said hoarsely to Alliak. “I mean, Ka zonvia. The hatagin komikon’s roidan yin.”
His suspicion left no room for him to observe the truth. “Get on your hands and knees,” he growled.
“Alliak—”
“On your hands and knees!”
Slowly I obeyed. No sooner did my knees and hands touch earth than he brought the broadside of his sword across my rump. I howled in outrage and pain and leapt to my feet. He slashed the sword at me as I spun to face him, and if not for all my training as a dragonmaster’s appren tice, steel would have bitten deep into my skull. As it was I barely moved in time, and the tip of his sword hissed across my cheek, slicing it open in a white-hot, thread-fine line.
“Alliak!” I bellowed. “Put your sword down!”
Malaban Bri was shouting something, the escoas were snorting and rearing, people were both surging forward and backing up, and the snakes in the crates thrashed and hissed.
Alliak shouted something at me that I couldn’t under stand for the roaring in my head. Malaban Bri bellowed a response. Faces. All manner of blades pointed at me: pitch forks, coraks, swords, scythes.
“Where’s Tansan?” I cried.“I’m Kazonvia. I’m a
woman
.” I fumbled with my jerkin to bare my breasts, but they must have thought I was going for a weapon, because as one they surged closer—
Then a voice rose above the others:“Back away from her! She speaks truth! She’s a woman, and she’s myazedo.”
Tansan. She pushed herself to the fore and stood before me, fine, strong shoulders straight, hips balanced, arms held easily at her sides. She was dressed still in the bloodstained white shirt and dark bayen men’s breeches that she’d worn during the takeover of the Clutch.
As she stood there—a formidable force of calmness and authority—I dizzily remembered what the dragonmaster had said of her:
There’s more to that woman than what’s ap parent. I’ve seen the way these myazedo obey her; she uses dark magics, I’m sure of it
.
Weapons slowly lowered. Those who surrounded us moved back. I was woozy, and my head was buzzing, and my ear, where Alliak had struck me, was as hot as liquid wax. I reached a hand toward my ear; only the lower lobe remained. My ear had been cut off.
I let out a string of curses so foul eyes around me wid ened. For one wild moment I heartily regretted sending the unknown whore onto the
Zvolemein
in my stead. Then I clamped down on the turmoil of emotions clashing within me and shoved aside the brutal reality that I’d just been mutilated, again, for life.
Swaying, clutching the bloody place where my ear had once been, I stared with blurred vision at Tansan. “For the love of wings, who did you think we were?”
She frowned. “We almost shot you down from the skies with crossbows. Communications between Ghepp and Kratt have been tense, and when it became clear you had no intention of landing at the messenger byre—”
“Ghepp’s managed to keep Kratt away?”
“Barely.” Her eyes flicked to Malaban Bri. “The myazedo will have seen your arrival from the stockade. A contingent of armed rebels should arrive shortly; they’ll escort you back with them.”
The crowd pressing around us showed no sign of dispers ing. My legs were starting to give way beneath me. Tansan turned and smoothly spoke to Alliak in Djimbi. He barked at the crowd, which reluctantly began drifting away.
Tansan turned back to me. “You need tending. Savga shouldn’t see you like this.”
I shook my head and almost fainted from the motion. “We first have to unload our cargo into the warehouse. The snakes won’t last another night in those crates.”
“Snakes?” Tansan’s voice was calm, unhurried.
“Kwano snakes. The cocoons won’t be able to transform into bulls without them.”
Her face momentarily slew sideways, and I would’ve pitched groundward if Malaban Bri hadn’t foreseen my swoon and moved beside me.
“Kwano snakes are deadly, Zarq-the-deviant.” Tansan’s voice had dropped low, and her eyes were now opaque. My news was straining the tenuous trust between us, and I could see in her face that I was bucking an age-old belief amongst Clutch rishi about the kwano being demons incar nate . . . a belief started and perpetuated by Temple.
“Not deadly. Not demons,” I gasped. “In destrier stables, we decapitate kwano suckers without being harmed—”
“Adult kwano snakes are different from suckers. Adult kwano have fangs.”
I mustered every ounce of conviction I could and by sheer will forced my vision and voice steady. “A kwano snakebite can cause sickness, yes, which can fester and cause death, but the snakes aren’t venomous. The kwano are snakes, mere snakes, and if we don’t unite them with our cocoons, in eight weeks’ time nothing will emerge from those involucres but maggots.”
I could see her swiftly recalling the conversation I’d last had with her, when I’d revealed to her my past and the secret to breeding bulls in captivity. I could see her remembering her own voiced doubts as to why, over time, a bull had never emerged from a cocoon by chance; could see her realize how the daily cleansing of the warehouse of any stray snake—if such a snake were necessary for the cocoon’s transforma tion—would effectively remove the possibility of a transfor mation ever taking place.
As I did the night we seized Xxamer Zu from Ghepp, I forced myself to wait for her to leap over yet another hur dle and trust me.
“So we unload the snakes now,” Tansan said at last, the scar on her chin gleaming white as alabaster against her dusky, whorled skin. “But we can unload the snakes with out you. You need to be treated, debu via.”
For the first time,
debu
didn’t sound derogatory, coming from her lips.
I didn’t join Malaban Bri and Lords Etaan and S’twe in their meeting with Chinion, for that night I slept soundly in the arbiyesku compound, drunk on fermented maska milk, Savga curled sweet and small at my side. Tight-lipped and shoulders stooped with worry, Fwipi had dressed my ear before I’d passed out. It was clear she was afraid of the vast changes occurring in her life.
I didn’t join Malaban Bri the day following, nor the day after that. My journey to Liru, my visit with my sister, my passionate intimacy with Jotan, and my damning use of venom all left me supremely reluctant to be around talk of rebellion, or to be around Malaban Bri and his bayen cohorts. I was filled with an urge to reconnect to the Clutch serfs of Xxamer Zu and to the land itself; I felt a need to cleanse myself of the ostentatious wealth of Liru and heal myself from Waivia’s resolute farewell. I wanted simplicity and hard work and camaraderie to surround me. I wanted to feel honest sweat run down my back.
I needed to purge myself of weakness.
I joined one of the tree-felling teams camped in the scrub land to the south of the Clutch, where the savanna buckled into tree-dotted hills, which, in turn, after several miles, grew into jungle-covered mountain. The felled trees were needed to keep the bonfires burning in the cocoon warehouse; work ing on providing that firewood was where I was most needed.
With much protestation, Savga remained behind at the arbiyesku with Fwipi and her baby brother, Agawan. Piah accompanied me to the tree-felling teams, but after several days of backbreaking labor, he decided he disliked being so far from myazedo headquarters, the messenger byres, and the exhilarating information daily arriving of the skir mishes igniting in Lireh.
Thunk of ax biting into wood. Gleaming muscles swing ing steel under a brooding, heavy sky. Clank of chains as felled trees were hitched to brooders; grunts of dragon and human straining against a tonnage of deadweight. Nights sleeping beside smoldering fires on a coarse grass mat.
The daily toil of Clutch life continued alongside the up heaval of a Clutch readying itself for possible invasion. While the daronpuis’ larders were systematically emptied and the goods distributed, and while hoes worked clods of parched soil at dawn and dusk, the old Xxamer Zu forge sprang into an activity that it hadn’t seen for half a century. Bayen pots, jewelry basins, and metalwork of all sorts were gathered from the bayen thoroughfare and forged into crude swords, even while women gave birth, the sick and elderly died, and Ghepp sent missives to his brother while Malaban Bri and his cohorts schemed with the myazedo leaders behind closed doors.
The swing of my arms wielding an ax. The smell of sweat. My desire for venom fiercely, desperately pushed deep within me.
Piah appeared one dusk, a mere week after I’d joined the tree-felling teams. I sat alone, sucking a bitter slii stone and contemplating what I intended to start on the morrow: teaching my people. I thought I’d hold lectures each night in a different part of the Clutch, and begin educating the rishi. I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t no tice Piah wandering amongst the clusters of rishi that were gambling and chatting upon the tree-shorn hillock, until he stood directly before me.
His prominent larynx bobbed in his throat as he grinned widely at me. “News, hey-o.”
“Of?” I asked quickly.
“The Great Uprising, what else?” He looked positively smug.
He dropped down onto the dirt in front of me, picked up a brittle grass blade, and stuck it between his lips. “Del egates were sent to Ordipti, in the Vale of Tigers jurisdic tion in the east. Apparently Clutch Ordipti is well-known for hating the Emperor. They were told to gather kwano snakes and light bonfires in their cocoon warehouse, so that neonate bulls can emerge from the virile cocoons housed there. Our secret’s been shared, hey-o.”
Jealousy and outrage flared up in me, that
my
secret had been passed on to others. But almost at once the base emo tions subsided under a flood of cold reason: We needed al lies and we needed bulls; what better way to obtain a great deal of both than by widening our circle of strength to in clude those already opposed to the Emperor’s rule?
“There’s more news,” Piah said, enjoying not only my rapt attention, but that of those within earshot. He raised his voice, the grass blade in his mouth bobbing up and down. “Five Archipelagic merchant ships were sunk in Li reh this week, and a dry-salter emporium owned by an Ar chipelagic lord was burned to the ground, the same night a Temple gaol was blasted open.”
“And Chinion? Has he mobilized any of his myazedo camps into action? And what about Ghepp? Has Kratt de manded that Ghepp cede Xxamer Zu to him?”
“Kratt’s been busy elsewhere, thanks to Chinion.” Piah looked as if he would burst with satisfaction. “Temple or dered Kratt southwest, to Clutch Bashinn.”
“Bashinn?”
“Chinion’s rebels attacked Bashinn, murdered daron puis, torched stables, liberated most of their destriers. A bloodbath, hey! They did the same in Clutch Maht, but with one big difference.”
He waited. I waited. People had stopped their gambling and conversations; everyone was listening. Piah was milk ing the moment for all it was worth.
Alas, I’ve never had patience for such drama.
“For the love of wings, Piah, just tell us,” I snapped.
His grin went from ear to ear, grass blade falling to the ground.
“The rebels stole Maht.”
I dared breach the silence that followed. “Maht
the bull
? Chinion’s myazedo rebels stole Lupini Maht’s
bull dragon
?”
“Rumor has it the bull flies here tomorrow, accompanied by dragonmaster Ordipti and half his apprentices.”
“Here?” I virtually squealed.
“Here.”
Exclamations, cheers, and animated conversation ex ploded around us. I can’t remember much of the impromptu celebration that followed—dizzy dancing, maska wine sud denly appearing from hidden kegs, music from drums and bamboo pipes—but I do remember thinking this: Time to go back. Time to go home, to the arbiyesku.
The next day, I did.
It was as Piah and I were shambling through the murk of a peevish morn, down from the wood camp to Xxamer Zu, that the skies overhead came suddenly alive with wingbeats.
We stopped. Looked up. Gaped.
Looking like a small mountain encrusted with amethysts and emeralds, the massive bull dragon, Maht, slowly soared over our heads, his enormous outspread wings like rip pling sheets of amber. The skies around the great bull were
clogged
with destriers that had been stolen from Clutch Bashinn and Clutch Maht, ridden by dragonmaster Ordipti and his apprentices. It was as if the firmament were a vault of jewels spilled across azure cloth; dragon after dragon winged overhead, scales like cut peridot and bloodred gar nets, tourmaline and rubies, jade and red zircon, brilliant against the diamond clouds.
The sound of so many dragonwings flapping and gliding sent a shiver down my spine. It was a wet, membranous sound that was palpable, as is the memory of wind through damp hair on a twilight eve. My scalp tingled as the myriad dragons poured in a steady stream toward the center of Xxamer Zu.
Beside me, Piah breathlessly tried to count them aloud and lost track somewhere around forty.
I felt small, yet empowered. I felt elated, yet terrified. I wanted to tip back my head and expose my throat to the sky and howl. In my blood and bones I could
feel
every one throughout Xxamer Zu stopping their morning ac tivities to watch the jewels in the sky rain down upon our Clutch like a blessing; I could feel their awe at the mas sive mauve-and-beryl mountain that was mighty Maht in flight.
“When our bulls hatch, will they grow that big?” Piah murmured in wonder.
“Hush,” I whispered, as if he were interrupting a su premely sacred ceremony, one that joined day with night, the world of the eye with that of the soul.
When it was over—when Maht had landed on the south western outskirts of Xxamer Zu, and when every destrier that had accompanied him was likewise landlocked—I felt as if I were coming out of a trance. Piah and I looked at each other, dazed and wordless, and then, slow and hot like a wind-fanned fire, grins broke across our faces. Fierce grins. Grins of determination and pride.
Grins that bespoke a fury of belief in ourselves.
Nashe—the Hatching—had begun.