“Because it’s wrong,” he said, working his way back to his feet.
“It’s because the powerless, having no understanding or experience with how much real power can save or destroy, think too simply. They see things as either right or wrong, but the world and the purposes of those in it are distorted, misjudged when reduced to so basic a binary.”
Tau shook his head, and testing his balance, he took a step toward Nyah. “Wrong is wrong,” he said, needing to know what was around the corner behind her and seeing that, only a few strides away, the tunnel ended at a closed door. “It’s in there, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Turn around,” Nyah said, pointing back the way he’d just come. “We’re going that way.”
He wasn’t ready to leave. “They’re intelligent, neh? It’s why they can hold on to the Gifted when they’re entreated. They’re intelligent and you trapped one of them underground and behind locked doors for almost as long as we’ve lived on this land.”
The vizier held his gaze with hers. “You think too simply, and you’re wrong on the last count.” She crossed her arms and stepped aside. “The doors to unwanted truths are rarely locked, since so few wish to face what’s behind them.”
Nyah didn’t think he’d go in. She thought him unwilling to witness the cost of their survival, but Tau had seen the cost and suffered it. He’d been there, helpless, forced to watch Zuri spend her life to save others, and he’d be damned if he couldn’t at least stand in the presence of the thing that had killed her. So without even a last look in the vizier’s direction, he stepped up and pushed open the unlocked door.
TOOLS
The dragon’s prison was hot as Hoard and cavernous. It stank like an inyoka’s failed eggs and was lit by guttering torches losing a battle against the dark. The space, taken in its entirety, looked like the Goddess had inverted and dropped a rough-hewn bowl of hardened clay onto a cobbled path, and Tau stood on cracked, crumbling stones, smoothed by the passage of countless feet.
A few steps farther into the room, spread out around the cavern at equal distances, were six Gifted. They held themselves stiff as boards, hoods up, eyes closed, heads down, and most of them swayed with the unsteadiness of exhaustion. They were in Isihogo. Tau could tell. It was also the only explanation that could account for the restless slumber in which the beast before him was held.
With no more than forty strides separating them, it was the closest Tau had come to a dragon, and though it was far from grown, he was awed by the creature’s size. The youngling was massive, and its scales, blacker than tar and harder than hammered bronze, blended into one another in a darkness so complete he couldn’t hold on to their shape or depth in his mind.
In the prison, no one spoke, but it was not silent. The chamber rumbled and hissed with every breath the creature took, and with his back to the tunnels and the wide-open cavern in front of him, Tau’s stomach had begun to settle, but trying to make sense of the dragon turned it anew. He couldn’t focus on any part of it without the scales twisting the light and pulling his eyes this way and that.
“Goddess . . . ,” he said.
And behind him, Gifted Thandi whispered to Nyah. “There’s been an edification from Palm. It’s about the handmaidens.”
“Are they well?” the vizier asked.
Ignoring them, Tau walked farther into the prison, trying to understand the thing before him.
“They rode past Palm’s walls last night,” Thandi told Nyah. “An alarm was raised over the missing horses, but the handmaidens were not pursued.”
“They got out,” Nyah said. “Praise the Goddess, the news will ease the queen’s mind.”
From muzzle to tail, the youngling was many times Tau’s length. It was big enough to smash him beneath a single one of its claws, and being closer, he could see that it was missing scales along its body. The skin beneath the scaleless patches was gray, puckered, and angry, like the surface of a badly healed wound.
He looked back at them. “You’ve held that thing here for lifetimes, in an existence between dreaming and death. You’ve used it to control its kin and harvested weapons from it by ripping pieces of its body away.”
“We’ve kept our people safe, Champion,” Nyah said, letting her gaze fall to the guardian swords at his sides, “and none among us are innocent when all among us benefit from what is done here.”
Unwilling to face her, Tau turned back to the prisoner. The heat, he realized, was coming from it. He went closer.
The dragon’s eyes were closed and its mouth was shut, though he could see a few of its fangs peeking beyond the meat of its lips. Its teeth were coal black and scythe-like, tools for tearing flesh.
“Do you think this helps, being here?” Nyah asked.
He ignored her, letting the heat assault him, punishing himself for his inadequacies, and Nyah walked up to stand beside him. She stood tall and proud, even though her breathing was rapid and she had to squint against the invisible blaze radiating from the youngling. “Our queen needs us.”
Tau said nothing, his eyes on the dragon and its stirrings.
“While you’ve sequestered yourself these past few days, the remaining Greater Noblewomen in the city took it upon themselves to form a ruling council.” Nyah’s mouth twisted. “They think to ‘advise’ the queen.”
“There’s already a ruling council in Palm City,” Tau said.
“The insects in Palm rule over none but the treacherous, and how can they be a ruling council when they bow to Odili?”
The sounds of the three syllables making up Odili’s name felt like the tap of fingers wrapping round Tau’s throat. They made it hard to swallow and harder to speak.
“Are all monarchies so brittle?” he asked. “Why can Odili claim that the queen’s sister is our true ruler and get Palm City bowing to Queen Esi instead of Queen Tsiora?”
“It’s a mistake to think this break the result of a single blow,” Nyah said, shifting back half a step and wiping a hand across the sweat on her forehead. “In the moment, as the knife scrapes your spine, it may seem that way, but the ones who’d kill you from behind are not hotblooded. They’d never trust your death to just one strike.”
“So, there were other attempts to overthrow Tsiora?” Tau asked. “Well, you’re the queen’s vizier. Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you see this coming?”
“It’s always coming,” she said. “The knife was no surprise, only its timing.”
She wiped her forehead again and took another step away from the heat.
She tilted her head toward the dragon. “What you said earlier—you were right. We’ve enslaved this creature and kept it from its family.”
Tau had his left hand on the pommel of his strong-side sword and his grip tightened. “Why say that? Did you let me come in here to taunt me with the things you’ve done?”
“Could I have stopped you?” she asked. “And why shouldn’t you see how far we’re all capable of going to keep those we love safe?”
He turned to face her. The skin on her lips was cracking from the heat.