Текст книги "The Equen Queen"

Автор книги: Alyssa Brugman

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In the Dungeon

Tab was in the dungeon when they crossed the vortex the second time. For a while she slept, and then she had been staring at the egg, watching it quiver and roll across the floor, trailing a waft of pungent smoke like a church incense burner. She had tried covering it with a dirty, old blanket she found, but the fabric began to smoulder, and filled the cell with acrid smoke, so she took it off again. She was afraid of what would happen when the egg finally opened, but for the time being, at least she could warm her hands by it.

Soon the dungeon bars started to vibrate and the ground shuddered. She clung to the metal shafts in the doorway, imagining the whole city collapsing on top of her, crushing her into shredded meat.

Low cries and grunts came from nearby cells as the turbulence tossed the other prisoners around in their cells. The egg rolled toward her and Tab held it steady with one hand, ignoring the burning sensation. It was preferable to having the egg smash against the wall, releasing a disoriented, frightened baby dragon in a small space.

After a while the trembling stopped. Tab let go of the egg, leaned her back against the bars and waited. Other prisoners called out to each other. From their conversation Tab guessed they must have been the sky-traders that Storm and her City Watch had rounded up after the previous vortex-jump.

Tab took out her Loraskian mood stone and turned it over in her hand. It seemed cloudier than it had been before, but it could have been the light.

Soon she heard footsteps coming down the stairs – too light and quick to be the prison guards, and too soon to be conquering sky-traders. She dared hope it was her friends and was delighted when they called out to her.

‘I can't believe it's you!’ Tab thrust her hands through the bars and Philmon and Amelia grabbed one each.

‘You must be starving! We brought you some bread and cheese.’ Amelia pushed a muslin-wrapped package between the bars.

Tab rocked back on her heels and loosened the cloth quickly, tearing great chunks of bread. She took the canteen from Philmon's outstretched hand and poured the water into her mouth.

Amelia and Philmon told her about their adventures fighting with the sky-traders, how Amelia had protected the Archon's Palace, holding the wall in place with her skills in levitation when the fortifications were almost breached, about their trip back through the vortex, and about what awaited them on the other side – not one, but two sky-cities!

‘Tolrush?’ Tab asked, wide-eyed. Quentaris had left her enemy city behind not long ago. As Verris had reminded her, it was only a matter of time before Tolrush found them.

‘No, it's a new city,’ Amelia answered. ‘It's huge.’

She told Tab about the enormous battle city bound by metal and studs. Of colossal, robed soldiers, with dome-shaped helmets easily seen with the naked eye, even from this distance, how they could hear the drums pounding, punctuating the soldiers’ training drills, and intricate ceremonies with coloured flares.

‘The sky-traders are sending up flares in answer, but we don't know what they mean. They are both just floating there at the moment, but there's a new battle in the air,’ Philmon added. ‘You can feel it.’

Tab took out her mood stone again, and her friends followed suit. The gems were definitely darker and cloudier than they had been, although it was hard to make out the colour in the dingy light.

‘Must be the Loraskians,’ Tab mused tucking her gem back into her pocket.

Then Tab remembered seeing Torby. So much had happened that she hadn't had a chance to tell her friends how she had seen him in the window and how he had sent down a gust of wind like a hug. ‘Stelka seems to think we would be a distraction to him, but I don't know. If I was sick I'd want to know that someone out there cared about me getting better.’

Amelia and Philmon promised to go past the window when they could, in case Torby was looking out again.

‘And Melprin?’ Tab asked between mouthfuls.

‘She's made a real mess of the sky-traders’ city,’ Philmon said, grinning. ‘You should see it! Their sails are torn, masts are down, buildings are rubble.’

‘But where is she?’ Tab asked.

Amelia shook her head. ‘Nobody has seen her.’

All their eyes turned towards the egg.

‘What are you going to do?’ Amelia asked.

Tab sighed. ‘The council believes that when it hatches I'll be able to talk to it, or maybe meld with it to calm it down, but I'm not sure if I can. I only know one dragon, and she isn't like a cow, or a rat, she's…’ Tab trailed off. ‘I can't explain it, but it doesn't work that way.’

‘Nice friends you've got – throwing you in here as if you were a crook,’ Philmon observed.

Tab said nothing. It was not so long ago that she was just a dung brigader. The only reason she was useful to the council was her powers. If she could subdue the hatchling, well and good. If not, she was disposable anyway.

Better the dragon remain enclosed in a dungeon than out on the city streets causing havoc.

‘Maybe it will bond with you? Maybe it will think you are its mother?’ Philmon whispered.

Amelia thumped her cousin's arm. ‘It's not a chicken, Philmon!’ She turned to Tab. ‘I could stay here with you,’ she offered.

Tab smiled gratefully. ‘That's really nice of you, but there's no use us both getting scorched. Has anyone seen Fontagu, or Tattoo?’

‘Tattoo?’ Philmon asked, frowning.

‘The equen qu…’ Tab began, but then she remembered where she was, with all those sky-traders in the cells around her. ‘You know, the pony from the sky-traders,’ she murmured.

‘I've been down to see them,’ said Philmon. ‘They're cute aren't they? But the ostler told me they were called Trinket and Talisman. I don't know where you got Tattoo from.’

Obviously neither of her friends knew about Tattoo. Tab was dying to tell them so that they could start the search, but the whole dungeon was silent, and she realised that all the other prisoners were eavesdropping.

‘I don't think we can talk here,’ she whispered.

Her friends looked around at the other cells.

‘This is crazy,’ Amelia tutted. ‘We've got to get you out of here.’ She grabbed Philmon's sleeve. ‘Come on. We're going to find the keys.’

Tab leaned against the bars in the corner and watched her friends disappear up the stairs. When they were gone she tried to think back over what they had discussed, and cursed herself for her rashness. Now the sky-traders knew everything she knew – well almost everything.

Suddenly a hand grabbed Tab's and she squealed with fright. Someone in the next cell held her fingers tightly. The light was dim and Tab couldn't see a face.

‘I know something you don't know,’ a sing-song voice taunted.

Tab jerked her hand away. ‘What makes you think I care what you know?’

A face moved into a shaft of light and Tab recognised the sky-trader Chak. Vrod must have been just teasing when he said he was going to make a meal of the sky-trader. Tab didn't really understand troll humour.

Chak's eyes darted about, took in the egg and then settled on Tab's face. ‘Got yourself a little problem there,’ she jeered.

Tab's eyes narrowed. ‘What do you want?’

‘You've discovered our equens. You want some more, yes? You don't have to steal them from us.’

Tab waited, not wanting to reveal any more than she already had.

‘You and your little games committee have some sway with your council,’ Chak continued. ‘Make the council let me go and I will tell you where they come from. You can get as many as you like. They don't put up much of a fight.’

‘You're nothing but filthy slavers. If you tell me, I will go there, but not to steal them, to set them free,’ Tab replied with a scowl.

Chak laughed and withdrew into the dark. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘Where?’ Tab demanded. She tried to rattle the bars between them but they were unyielding.

‘You think I'm going to tell you while I'm still in your stinking dungeon? Pfft!’ came Chak's voice from the gloom.

Tab settled into the corner and waited for her friends. It would gall her to do it, but she probably could talk Verris into setting Chak free – once Tab proved that Tattoo existed in the first place.

Where was the equen queen? Who was this mysterious giant with six axes that Fontagu had talked about? What had happened to Melprin? And Quentaris was on the verge of battle with not one, but two sky-cities! There were so many things to worry about that Tab's head spun. She had to sort it all out, but where to begin?

She closed her eyes. After a moment she heard a tiny ping noise.

The egg bounced. Tab crept closer on her hands and knees. The egg sat in the middle of the floor gently smouldering. She stayed still and stared until her knees started to hurt. She had been gawping at it for so long that she began to think she had imagined it moving, when it bounced again. Then there was a pop sound. The shell cracked. A piece fell out of the side and a foot emerged from the hole.

Tab scrabbled back against the wall. The clawed toes flexed and relaxed. Smoke drifted out from the hole around the foot and accumulated in a dirty cloud on the ceiling. A trilling coo came from inside the egg, or it could have been inside her head. Tab wasn't sure.

The claws curled up again and Tab could hear a pock, pock, pock hollow sound, like someone tapping a tin bucket. Her heart raced.

She heard footsteps on the stairs again. ‘Hurry!’ she called. Philmon and Amelia joined her at the bars.

‘We don't have the keys. We couldn't find the jailer,’ Philmon panted. ‘Can you get her out with magic?’ he asked Amelia.

Amelia shook her head, her face miserable. ‘These dungeons were made to hold people with skills. They're enchanted.’

There was a second pop and a clank from the egg as a new piece of shell fell out and hit the floor. Another leg emerged.

Amelia grabbed Tab's hand through the bars. ‘You can do it, Tab. You can talk to it.’

Next came a loud crack and the egg shattered. Broken pieces hit the flagstone with a clink and a clatter. The cell filled with smoke. The three friends and the other prisoners all began to cough.

With every breath, Tab drew the hot smoke into her lungs. She choked on it, but she needed air, and took a deeper breath. She coughed again and again, so much that her sides hurt. She started to panic. She couldn't breathe, but she couldn't stop breathing. Every breath was making her head hurt, inhaling a stench that made her stomach churn, and she still had no air.

‘Get down!’ shouted Philmon.

Tab sprawled to the ground. The air was clearer closer to the floor and she took a deep breath. Even musty dungeon air tasted clean after the dragon smoke.

She heard an excited buzzing, trilling, squeaking coming from the baby dragon and the leathery sound of the dragon's limbs as it thrashed about the cell. She felt a burning pressure in the small of her back as it scrabbled over her.

Then came a thunderous crash. Tab covered her head. A shower of debris and dust fell over her. The shrill warbling sound faded away.

When she looked up the smoke had cleared a little, although her eyes still stung and watered. All that was left were some broken pieces of shell, chunks of bluestone, and a large hole in the wall. The baby dragon was gone.

A Secret Chamber

‘Where has it gone?’ Philmon asked, pressing his face against the dungeon bars. ‘Did you see it? What did it look like?’

Tab shook her head and a shower of dust fell around her. She crept forward and felt around the edges of the hole in the wall where the baby dragon had burst through. She poked her head through, waving her hand in front of her face trying to clear the smoke. ‘There's a corridor. I can see a wall on the other side.’

‘More dungeons?’ asked Amelia.

‘Where does it go? What do you see?’ Philmon insisted, hardly able to contain his curiosity.

Tab peered in each direction. ‘I don't see anything. It's dark.’ Ark, ark, her voice echoed in the hollow opening.

She climbed through into the dank space – wobbling as she tried to keep balance on the broken rocks and debris scattered on the floor. ‘I don't see any more cells. It's just a passageway. There's moss on the walls, a few spider webs and old sconces, but I don't think they've been lit for a while. It smells stale and damp.’ She sniffed, but her head still seemed to be filled with smoke from the cell. ‘I think it's been closed up for a long time.’

Tab heard another trill ricochet along the passage walls and then a splintering crash.

‘What was that?’ Philmon asked.

‘She already said it was dark,’ said Amelia. ‘I think we can guess it was the hatchling.’

‘I hope…’ added Tab. She tiptoed down the corridor, keeping her hand on the wall for balance. The moss was cold and slippery under Tab's fingers. Every now and then she would come across a slimy mollusc leaving a trail of sticky goo.

Tab heard Amelia and Philmon arguing back in the dungeon, which seemed cosy and safe to her now.

‘I hope you're not trying to fit your head through those bars, Philmon.’

‘These two are wider,’ he replied confidently.

The air smelt old, swampy and slightly sulphurous. It reminded Tab of the odour of the manure piles while they were fermenting and before they turned sweet, a smell she often experienced back when she worked for the Dung Brigade.

It was so dark in the corridor that Tab started to see bright splashes of colour in front of her eyes. She paused, turning back to the light coming through the cleft in the wall to the dungeon. Her friends were still quarrelling and it made her smile.

‘I'm stuck!’ complained Philmon.

‘Well, you shouldn't have tried to push your big head through! I told you it wouldn't fit,’ Amelia rebuked.

‘Ow! Stop it! Don't pull. You're making it worse…’

Tab sighed, and walked further into the dark tunnel, wishing her friends were able to come with her. It wouldn't seem so scary with them bickering all the way. But on her own she was picturing all kinds of beasts in the shadows ahead, a giant snail, so tall that its googly eyes on sticks brushed against the tunnel's ceiling. She would walk straight into it, get entrapped in its goo and it would run over her slowly. Even before it crushed her to death, she would drown in the gluey, foul, boggy-smelling slime.

In her head she saw a hundred thousand tiny beetles with metal teeth, each bite loaded with poison. They would scuttle out of a drain in a swarm and strip the flesh from her bones while a scream froze in her throat.

She imagined a phalanx of hulking insect-soldiers with bulging eyes and wings folded about them like cloaks. She shivered. The baby dragon had nothing on the creatures Tab could envisage in her head. In Quentaris anything was possible. A vampire with a long staff – fangs glistening. A gargoyle, a troll, a werewolf, a fat serpent, a zolka.

Tab crept further still. The passage floor was flat and smooth, although she seemed to be heading ever so slightly downhill. She closed her eyes and sent out her thoughts, trying to sense if something was there. In her mind she could hear the incoherent but contented, metallic gurgles from the hatchling up ahead. It was not afraid. In fact, it seemed to have found something that it liked. Tab shuddered again – not sure if she wanted to know what that was.

‘Tab!’ Her friends called out. ‘Are you still there? What have you found?’

‘I'm here!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘It's still just a corridor.’

Just then the wall beneath her fingers dipped away and in the hollow she felt a softer surface – wood. Further along she found a metal wedge. It was a hinge. A door. In the centre there was a hole. Its edges were rough and splintered from where the hatchling had burst through. She traced around the split wood with her fingers and climbed through.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was a cool, musty smell that was familiar to her, but she couldn't place it. She heard the baby dragon chittering, the leathery sound of its limbs and its clicking claws as it moved around – like harness jangling and creaking. Every now and then she saw its eyes glimmering as it swung its head towards her.

She wasn't afraid. She knew the baby dragon didn't mean her any harm. It didn't think of her as its mother, like Philmon had suggested, and not a sibling either. A pet was closer, but still not quite right. The feeling that she got was that the dragon considered her its familiar – an attendant, or a spirit guide.

Within a few steps Tab's foot hit something unyielding. She reached out to keep her balance. It was a box, or chest of some sort, too heavy to shift. She slid her foot along its base, until she found the end. She shuffled forward, but there was another box, and another. Groping with her hands she discovered the chests were stacked two or three high.

A storage room of some sort, Tab guessed.

She found one that she was able to lever open, and she reached inside cautiously. Cold, round, metal that chinked and clinked as she ran her fingers across it. Glass beads.

No, not beads, jewels! Tab gasped. Coins and jewels! Boxes and boxes of them! That was the smell she recognised – silver moons and gold royals! She wished that she had a torch. She wanted to see. Tab felt hot inside her chest and prickly at the ends of her fingers. She could imagine all the treasure glistening in a torch's flickering light.

She could be the richest person in all Quentaris. She would live in a tower with thick pelts on the floors, tapestries on the walls and a fireplace in every room. She would have exotic pets, and servants. She would eat cake every day. Tab would have a tiara made with red gems that she would wear at a rakish angle, and a matching cape, even just to walk down to the tavern for a meal.

She would buy her own tavern. And a pie shop! She would make up recipes for pies and have a whole kitchen full of cooks making them around the clock. She would taste pies all day long – in a ruby tiara and a red satin cape.

But who else knew about this storeroom?

Tab's eyes narrowed. A possessiveness she had never known before wrapped around her. She felt mean and cold and covetous. She wasn't sure if she was receiving these feelings from the dragon. There was no way to tell, since she'd never even contemplated this magnitude of riches before.

All at once she understood Florian, the Nibhellines and the Duelphs, and even Fontagu. There was no such thing as enough. Once you had wealth you had to hang on to it, and get more – just in case, because everybody would try to take it from you, given half a chance – even people you thought were your friends.

Tab stuffed her pockets until they bulged, then thought better of it. She couldn't just walk around the streets of Quentaris with treasure in her pockets. She would be mugged and probably murdered within two blocks. Tab put it all back except for three coins and two gems – aside from the Loraskian stone. She considered leaving the mood stone down here with the rest, but she had become used to the weight of it.

She would have to move the treasure out slowly, a little bit at a time. Where? Tab rattled the royals together in her pocket, liking the feel of them as they warmed in her palm.

The hatchling jumped forward. Tab scrambled back, and fell, but it leapt forward again. She sensed its form crouching over her, its eyes like two lamps. She felt its heat radiating on her skin, like sunshine, but somehow oily.

Suddenly her head was filled with images of carcasses, spilt blood and scattered limbs. The dragon chattered and trilled louder and more urgently. In her mind she saw a bullock lying on its side with its guts spilled out, flies encrusted around the edges of the wound. Her mouth filled with saliva, and her stomach churned, but it wasn't revulsion, it was a deep and savage hunger.

The baby dragon latched onto the word in her mind and sent it back to her.

›››Hunger

‘All right,’ she muttered, holding her fingers to her temples.

›››HUNGER! HUNGER! HUNGER!

‘I get it!’ Tab said, wincing.

›››HUNGER! HUNGER! HUNGER! HUNGER!

More visions of cow and oxen corpses flashed through her head, along with a high-pitched whine that stung somewhere behind her eyes. She stumbled back the way she had come, stubbing her toes and grazing her elbows on the various chests in her path. The baby dragon stayed close, stepping on her heels, chirruping and tittering. She felt her way along the rough wall to the door and climbed through it, scraping her shins.

Once in the corridor the hatchling took the lead, bounding along ahead of her, halting every now and then to scold her over its shoulder. Tab could see the glow of its eyes in the dark and she jogged to keep up.

Soon they came to the hole in the wall that led to the cell. As the dragon crossed through the light she saw just a flash of it, shimmering a greenish-gold colour and then it was gone, along the corridor and away.

Tab stopped and poked her head in the hole.

‘I've been so worried!’ said Amelia, gripping the cell bars. ‘You were gone for ages!’

‘What's down there?’ Philmon asked.

Tab saw that he had managed to extract his head from the between the metal shafts. Her hand slipped into her pocket and cradled the coins. She could have told him about the treasure, but she knew she wouldn't. Greed had already crept inside her and buried itself there.

The dragon's call echoed down the corridor. ‘What did it say?’ Philmon asked.

‘It's hungry,’ she said.

‘Is it going to eat you?’ Philmon asked, wide-eyed.

Tab shook her head. ‘It wants cow. Preferably one that has been dead for a while.’

‘Where are you going to find an old, dead cow?’ Amelia wanted to know, wrinkling her nose.

The hatchling chattered crossly before racing ahead.

‘I don't think I'll need to. It's doing a good job of finding things all by itself. I'm just following where it leads,’ Tab answered. ‘I have no idea where this tunnel will come out.’

‘We'll find you,’ Amelia said. ‘Oh, and be careful – the guards know that it's hatched.’

Tab nodded. She imagined the city streets now full of City Watch and marines with nets and crossbows at the ready, all set to take down the baby dragon as soon as they laid eyes on it. She had to protect it. She owed it to Melprin. Besides, she and the hatchling were bonded now.