Dragon Queen Read Free

one of us. But you speak like one of them.’
    The silence after that was an awkward one. The Picker didn't move. He looked Bellepheros up and down. ‘Asked you,’ he said, after the silence had become as brittle as glass, ‘what's wrong with boats? Don't like them, is that it? Make you sick-like? Seems a right- and proper-thinking fellow like yourself, heading home from Furymouth to the City of Dragons, he'd get a boat. Plenty enough of them, after all. That's if he's not going on dragonback. All sorts of difficult that would have been. Could have done a boat without this mess though.’ He gestured at the dead soldiers. ‘Man has a talent for something, doesn't mean he always wants to use it.’
    Taiytakei. They knew who he was. Not some bandit, then. Bellepheros looked at his hands. They were shaking. He walkedslowly to the chest, to where the Picker stood.
    The Picker scratched his head. ‘Where's a good place to put this, nice and out of the way?’
    Bellepheros wanted to say he was sorry for what he was about to do but that felt ridiculous. He drew back his fist and then flicked his hand sharply, flinging droplets of blood straight at the Picker's face.
    The Picker vanished. Disappeared with a small pop of air. The drops of blood spattered over the side of the carriage. The painted wood fizzed and pitted and burst into flames that slowly sputtered and died.
    ‘Waste of time, that.’ The Picker was a dozen paces behind him, breathing hard as though he'd just run up the entire stair of the Tower of Air. A sheen of fresh sweat began to bloom across his skin. ‘Waste of time to run too.’
    ‘I know what you are!’
    ‘Makes the two of us then.’ The Picker held up whatever was in his hand. As it caught the sun, Bellepheros saw it was a short sword with a blade so fine and thin that it was invisible save for the blood that still dripped from its hilt and where its edge sparkled as it cut the light. ‘Look at you. Full of books and learning. Doesn't surprise me that you know.’ He turned his sword over in his hand, looking at it.
    ‘Blades so thin the sun shines through them.’
    The Picker nodded. ‘So they cast no shadow, you see.’ The Picker wiped the blood from his invisible blade and sheathed it again. Bellepheros tried to think what he could say. What else he could do. No point in asking what the man wanted – that was obvious now. Him. They wanted him. The Taiytakei wanted an alchemist. Beg for mercy?
    He looked up and down the road, as if looking might make a hundred armed riders suddenly appear, riding to the rescue. But no. The only movements were the little swirls of sun-dappled leaves caught in tiny whirls in the breeze.
    ‘You know what's next, right? Clever fellow like you. Want another moment to think it all out? There's no one coming on this road for an hour each way. Likely more. Checked I did, before I came. No rush.’

    Bellepheros was quivering all over now. ‘So you're just going to take me back to Furymouth, is that it?’
    ‘Stick you on a ship and sail you away.’
    He still had his little knife in his hand. Now he held it to his own throat. ‘I won't let you.’ Standing there ready to cut his own throat, and still he had a head full of questions clamouring to be asked, the sort of questions an alchemist learned to have about everything. How do you work? Where do you come from? What do you do? How do I make you useful? What happens when we die? The last always a good one after a bottle of fine wine. Maybe now he'd find out. He was an alchemist, after all, so he knew exactly where to cut, and it struck him as he stood there that the questions were more powerful than the fear, that for him it had always been that way. Dying wouldn't trouble him that much at all. ‘You can really turn into air, water, earth, as and when you wish?’ He shook his head. ‘Just . . . whenever you want?’
    ‘Fire too.’ The Picker took a deep breath and cocked his head. He walked a little closer