Dragon Queen by Stephen Deas

Author:Stephen Deas [Deas, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780575100541
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2013-08-15T12:13:02.625000+00:00

41

Unnatural Selection

High in the gold-glass tower, back across the Paths of Words, Baros Tsen sank deeper into the water, deeper and deeper until his nose and his eyes were all that broke the surface. Like a crocodile, back when he had space for such frivolous thoughts. A big fat happy crocodile. But not so happy now.

He surfaced. The bathhouse here was nothing like the one buried in the bowels of the Palace of Leaves in Xican. Here was far above the ground with a gold-glass roof and walls. Anyone who happened to pass over the top of the tower on a sled or a disc could look right down and see him in all his glory if they were curious enough. And the bath was far too small, and they never got the water quite right, and the Xizic oil wasn't the oil he liked, and the steam just made the glass absurdly slippery and, really, it was a surprise no one had yet broken their neck in here . . .

At least it was dark outside now and, since he hadn't brought any lamps, no one would know he was here. Dark was good. Dark with a bit of moonlight in between the gathering rainclouds. He sat very still and when the water was smooth enough for him to see his own dim reflection, he wagged his finger at it. ‘You know what? That could have gone a little better. Just a bit. Maybe, perhaps, without the part where they all started laughing.’

His reflection stared back at him. At least the bath wasn't glass too. Someone had kindly lined it with the same black marble they'd used for the tower, with the gold flecks. In the dark they glowed. It gave him the odd sense of seeing his own face loom over him out of the night sky.

‘Go on. Say something. And it had better be something useful.’ A plague of dragons to scourge away the curse of the Ice Witch and her sorcerers across the storm-dark in Aria. And it wouldn't come for a year or two because that was how long it would take for everyone to be ready, and the dragons would be bigger then, big enough for men to ride on their backs.

If Quai'Shu had been able to speak it would have been different. He was the master of that, not me. I read them; he's the one who would take their minds and transform them. And I thought my dragons would be bigger.

It had been an odd failure though. Too thorough and complete to quite make sense, as if someone had been ready for his play and carefully laid the ground against him in advance. He should have brought the grown one. Maybe that would have made a difference, if they'd all had to traipse outside to even see it. But then again maybe they just wouldn't have bothered.

‘Did it come from within?’ He looked at his reflection and his reflection shook its head. No.

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