Dragon Road Read online

  This wasn’t a mountain, it was a ship. A ship that – while still smaller than the Iron Hulk – was nonetheless bigger than the entire port it now approached. Her mind reeled, grasped about for the term she’d memorized in her hours upon hours spent studying ship types back in the academy days. She still came up short. Only Vlana’s laughter shook her free of it.

  “What?” the shorter quartermaster said. “Never seen a behemoth before?”

  “Sure,” Clutch said before Aimee could get words out. “But isn’t it a bit early in the year for a proper flotilla to be showing up around here?”

  Behemoth. Flotilla. Right. Aimee shook her head to rid it of the fog summoned by the vision of something so vast. Behemoths were the huge trade ships that plied the skylanes of the Dragon Road, cities unto themselves, filled with crews who were born, lived, and died upon them. They carried everything from bulk foodstuffs to the rare and exotic all across the Drifting Lands. But they never came this close. They – and the flotillas of other such ships they traveled with – would station themselves well away from the edges of the smaller ports like Ishtier and send smaller skycraft with their goods to hock. Even in Havensreach, she’d only glimpsed vessels like this at a distance. Only at the vast, mythical ports of the great powers could a behemoth hope to dock directly with the earth.

  “It–” Aimee’s words briefly failed her as she took several steps forward, then recovered, “–it’s beautiful.”

  Abruptly, she took off jogging towards the docks, away from the shopfronts and the vendors and the restaurants and the roadside stands. Away from crystal lamps and familiarity towards – as she always did – the unknown. The pilot and the quartermaster ran behind, chasing her until she reached an unused skyjack, all battered wood and rusted metal, thrusting out into the empty heavens, a would-be bridge to the clouds.

  From here the view was much clearer. Standing at the rail, Aimee could see the behemoth’s colossal frame illuminated by piecemeal splashes of light amidships, and from beneath by the soft glow of Ishtier. High up above, the top of its hull vanished into the night, identifiable only by the way its outline cut off the stars, and the running lights and windows intermittently viewable as specks along the length. It was brick-shaped: long, rectangular, the bow a flat face of huge bay doors at the bottom and multistoried, cathedralesque viewports towards the top. A city’s length away, her tail end could be noted by the muted glow of multiple exhaust ports, each larger than the biggest buildings in Havensreach’s inner ring.

  From where she stood, Aimee saw only a few windows with any clarity, but behind those, she caught glimpses of movement, and along awning-covered outer walkways and tiered, external decks, she saw the shadows of countless swarming crew-members.

  Just above the bow, running lamps illuminated a name painted onto a pitted, scarred hull. Each letter was as tall as Elysium.

  ISEULT

  Aimee let out a breath she’d held unnoticed. Turning, she flashed her crewmates a grin. “It’s named after one of the mythical lovers,” she said. “From the pre-scriptures!”

  “And she’s damn close,” Clutch said as she eyed the slowing, enormous vessel.

  “Battle damage?” Vlana asked the pilot. “Here out of emergency?”

  “If so,” the pilot mused, frowning, “she’s in the wrong damn place. There’s not a drydock in all of Ishtier that could take a behemoth.”

  A sudden rushing noise assaulted their ears, the now-familiar blast of forward engines firing to bring the immense vessel to a halt. “Well,” Clutch muttered dryly. “At least they’re not planning to crush the whole port. That’s good of them.”

  “I don’t see any damage,” Vlana added as her eyes traced the length of the ship. “Nothing more than the usual wear and tear of long-term service. She’s been patched a lot, but most of these things get completely rebuilt over the course of their lives.”

  Despite the wonder of the colossal skyship blotting the night out before her, Aimee stepped back from the rail. She stretched her memory to recall what she’d learned about ships like this: their crews and passenger populations numbered in the tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. Among them could be any number of ears, informants, or – conversely – sources of information. And before they did anything else, she wagered, they should get back to Elysium.

  “Yeah,” Clutch was saying slowly as she squinted at Iseult. “She definitely shouldn’t be here right now. Not this time of year, and not this close.”

  “We need to get back to the ship,” Aimee said. “I need my books, and there’ll be no view like the one from the common area.”

  Her hands itched to get the texts in hand, to review her lists of ship types, to see if one of Elysium’s vast ledgers had the known behemoths written down by name and history. If it didn’t, she could always ask her teacher.

  And if he didn’t know, she thought abruptly… she could always ask Elias. The image of green eyes and a handsome face, at once the crux of a host of contentious emotions, floated momentarily through her mind before Aimee dismissed it. Not right now.

  And that was when it happened: a discharge of arcane energy from the prow of the ship erupted into the air hundreds of feet above and before it. Lines of magic shot from several different tiered decks, and Aimee thought she glimpsed the silhouettes of sorcerers at the base of each flash. Twelve of them, she counted, mingling their power to create a visible display high above the tallest buildings of Ishtier’s port. First came a rapid series of glyphs burning in the night sky – guild symbols, identifying the ship, her affiliations with the flotilla, the shipping guilds, the Skyspeakers’ Guild, the Pilots’ Guild. All the necessary credentials.

  Then a face – robed, tired, immense, chalk-pale, strong-browed, and marked with a single black bar across the left eye – appeared in the heavens. It spoke, every phrase repeated in the common, and local tongues. Words flashed beneath the moving mouth to ensure the deaf could understand, and heed what was being said.

  “Ishtier, who is bountiful and beautiful,” the voice rippled, grief-thick and formal, across the port. “We are Iseult of Flotilla Visramin. We come to you in grief for the death of your son, Amut, who was our captain. Amut of the kind hand. Amut, the Lion of Heaven. Amut of the strong arm. Amut of the wise eyes. He has passed from this world, and we have come as the wind, to lay him in his native soil.”

  The message began to repeat itself. Aimee stepped back. “Yeah,” she murmured, “back to the ship.”

  “I agree,” Clutch muttered. “Don’t like being far from my own helm and sitting in the shadow of something that imposing.”

  “There is all sorts of subtext in that statement, Clutch,” Vlana said with a wry laugh.

  “Shut up, ship rat,” Clutch said.

  The three women jogged up the ramp and into the cargo hold. Aimee didn’t stop to take stock of things, she hoofed it up the ladder and into the central corridor that spanned the spine of the prototype warship-turned-exploratory vessel that was her home.

  “Alright!” she yelled. “Who’s onboard?”

  Clutch ran past her when she reached the common area, headed for the bridge. “Vant!” the pilot called. “Did you fall asleep on your bridge hammock again?”

  “Calm your damn boots,” a muffled answer came from the exterior viewing deck. Aimee squinted, recognizing Bjorn’s voice. “We’re just finishing up.”

  Against the dim light of the port, two silhouettes could be seen on the viewing deck. Aimee did a double-take. Bjorn – discernible by his size – was standing over the angular frame of another man, seated, his back to the common area. Bjorn was holding scissors. The other silhouette – Elias, his voice confirmed – touched the side of his head. “That was really loud.”

  “Hold still, you big baby.” Bjorn forced the other man to straighten before going back to grooming his hair, apparently. “Just give us a moment, Miss Laurent.”

  “You know what, never mind,” Aimee answered, continuing up to t
he bridge, washing her hands of that… weirdness. “I don’t want to know.”

  The bridge flickered to life as she stepped onto it, just in time to watch as Clutch jerked the cord at one end of a hammock hung between bulkheads, and sent a squawking Vant tumbling to the floor. “Are you shitting me?” the pilot barked. “You have a cabin!”

  The engineer vaulted upwards and unleashed a cloud of curse words, half of which Aimee didn’t yet know. She caught a few, though. Sky jockey was in there, also Cloud-Fucker.

  Aimee had been on Elysium for some months and she still wasn’t sure if the engineer and pilot were mortal enemies or the best of friends. Maybe they didn’t know either.

  “You’re on night shift!” Clutch snapped back. “Sleeping is the opposite of what you do on night shift!”

  “I was resting my eyes, crazy halfer!”

  “In a hammock, Vant,” Vlana chided her twin, crossing the room to her navigation station.

  “Look, just because I know how to optimize,” the engineer grunted.

  “Where’s Harkon?” Aimee cut in. As funny as this was, she couldn’t justify what she wanted to do without his permission.

  “He’s either portside giving one of those lectures he gives any school that will take him for money,” Vant said, “or he’s sleeping. So go find him or risk waking him up.”

  “The latter, if you must know,” the sleep-heavy, deep voice of Harkon Bright said from behind them all, a look on his face halfway between irritated and amused. “But thank you for your discretion. It’s comforting to know that my crew still can’t do anything quietly.”

  “This one is Aimee’s fault,” Vlana said from her console. “A behemoth showed up and she insisted we come back. Shouting.”

  “Traitor,” Aimee muttered.

  “I keep telling people you can’t trust my sister,” Vant beseeched the ceiling. “Nobody ever believes me.”

  “To be fair,” Clutch said, “it’s close enough to port that I’m surprised there isn’t panic in the streets.”

  “It’s right up against the docks,” Aimee affirmed.

  “Practically fucking them,” Clutch added. “The catwalks look all sorts of uncomfortable.”

  Harkon’s brows drew together. He looked at Vant expectantly.

  “What?” the engineer asked. “It’s a ship coming into port. They do that.”

  The master portalmage turned his gaze to Aimee next, with an expression that said “please justify waking me up. Now.”

  Aimee drew herself up to her full height, flashed that same smile that had owned the valediction at graduation, and said, “I want to do a flyby.”

  Harkon frowned, considering. “Reasons?”

  “One,” Aimee said, “she’s away from her flotilla. That’s highly unusual. Two – as Clutch mentioned – she’s clogging up the whole port, which has got to be making people angry. Three, according to the magical projection they just sent into the sky, their captain died and they’re looking to bring him home. I think it merits a closer look.”

  Harkon weighed that. He arched a single eyebrow. “And it doesn’t hurt, I imagine, that you’ve never seen a behemoth this closely before?”

  “Oh, not at all,” Aimee said with a grin. “But since we’ve got reason anyway…”

  Silence. The crew looked on. Then Harkon straightened the collar of his evening robe and said, “Do it.”

  Vant unhooked his hammock from the bulkheads and threw it over his shoulder in the most indignant way possible. “Someone better tell the hair stylist and his client that it’s about to get windy out there,” he said before he vanished down the hall.

  The metadrive thrummed to life moments later. There was a brief, clamorous exchange between Clutch and the dockmasters before the mooring clamps released, then the ship swept free, turning in a soft arc through the starlit sky. Elysium had been docked quite a distance from the central port, so they now approached Iseult from the rear, and well above. Vast exhaust vents glowed blue in the darkness, their dull roar audible even at range. Clutch angled the wheel forward, then aimed the ship starboard. Elysium dropped, turned, then began to move along the side of the city-sized skycraft. Aimee saw a vast upper deck carved deep with verandas, rich balconies, and the swells of domed structures that could be anything from houses of worship to stargazing labs to internal gardens.

  “Typical behemoth,” Clutch muttered. “Huge. Lower level covered in scaffolding and ad-hoc ramshackle crazy. Upper levels looking like a bunch of pretentious architects vomited all over a flying brick.”

  The sounds of heavy footfalls announced the arrival of Bjorn and Elias on the bridge. The former wore a long leather apron that he used for cooking and barber work. Aimee did a brief double-take. Elias’s hair, previously long, thick, and falling to his shoulders, was now cut short, highlighting the angular lines of his long, thin face. There were dark circles beneath his green eyes, and the hand that gripped one of the bridge rails was white-knuckled. He caught her glance, gave her a small nod. Her small smile in response was reflexive.

  “Now that thing’s a sight,” Bjorn muttered from the back. “Less hodgepodge than typical.”

  “Iseult is co-flagship of Flotilla Visramin,” Harkon explained from just behind Aimee. “Her sister ship is Tristan, but it seems she came here alone.”

  “Not worth diverting an entire flotilla for one man’s funeral?” Vlana posited.

  “I imagine not,” Harkon considered. “But it’s still a big detour. The Dragon Road demands strict schedules.”

  “There are no lights running on the upper deck,” Elias murmured. “Odd.”

  “Why?” Aimee asked over her shoulder.

  “The lamps of a behemoth’s upper deck are a signal to smaller craft,” Elias explained quietly. “They alert other ships in the flotilla, or port, that there’s something immense and covered with dwellings out there.” He frowned, peering across the darkened expanse before them. “They only kill the lamps if their grid is down, or if they’re paranoid about raiders.”

  “Raided behemoths often, did you?” Vlana muttered bitterly.

  Elias fell immediately silent. A quick glance at his face showed Aimee a rapid spasm of regret and pain, before the iron curtains of discipline and control dropped, and his face was a mask again.

  The panel to Clutch’s right abruptly flashed, and the auto-quills started furiously scribbling across their parchment. Aimee crossed the bridge as the pilot focused on keeping them straight, checked the reading, then looked back at her teacher in surprise.

  “Uh, teacher? We’ve got a communication incoming. Addressed to you by name.”

  Harkon frowned. “Let it through.”

  A half second later, the spell-projected image of a copper-skinned man with a wispy, pale beard hovered in the center of the bridge. A ragged scar traced from forehead to cheek on the left side of his face, the eye a jarring milk-white. When he saw Harkon, his smile – if Aimee could call it that – looked genuine. “I’ll be damned. Hark, what in the name of the thousand gods are you doing here?”

  “What I always do, Rachim: explore, fly, get into trouble. What are you doing on a behemoth?”

  The man named Rachim seemed to shift, glanced behind him, and lowered the tone of his voice. “Long story, but suffice to say, I’m in charge of a few things on Iseult these days. Inter-ship relations falls under the purview. We should talk.”

  Harkon seemed to catch something in the tone. As Aimee watched, her teacher’s frown deepened, and he said, “Name the place.”

  “Here,” Rachim answered. “I’m issuing you and your crew a formal invitation to the funeral of Captain Amut. I’ll be in touch with more details soon, but for the moment, you might want to veer off. My superiors are twitchy tonight.”

  “We’ll be there,” Harkon said, and without a further nod or comment, the projected image vanished.

  “Well, that’s not nothing,” Aimee said thoughtfully in the silence that followed.

  “Clutch,” H
arkon said. “Take us back to berth. We’ve got some errands to run.”

  His eyes swept Elysium’s assembled crew. “…And you all need to find something suitable to wear.”

  Chapter Three

  The Grief of Iseult

  There had to be a phrase, Elias reflected, in at least one of the languages he knew, for the supreme, self-conscious awkwardness of being a mass murderer attending the funeral of a good man. More likely, he acknowledged, it didn’t yet exist because it hadn’t yet been invented. His situation was unique.

  Two days since the flyby of the behemoth called Iseult, and now he stood with Elysium’s crew upon a vast marble-tiled platform that floated between the port docks and the behemoth behind them. They stood in a line, along the edge of an open column between two clusters of mourners, waiting beneath the sun-shading vastness of Iseult’s immense, cathedral-like bow. All to his left, Elias’s new crewmates waited in somber silence, whilst around and in front of them were spread a panoply of figures draped in importance both genuine and presumed. Many displayed the oddly-shaved heads, the elaborate jewels and spell-fashioned hodgepodge of fine, expensive clothes worn by shipboard courtiers, standing in the company of stoic, uniformed officer aristocrats. The black knight saw lips painted gold, guild brands outlined in body gems, silver and platinum adorning the delicate fingertips of men and women alike. Upon their city-ship, these people were wealthier than some land-born kings.

  And Elias Leblanc couldn’t stop noticing how murderously on edge every damned one of them was. Oh, none of them desperately clutched at the – largely ceremonial, occasionally real – blades hanging at their hips, nor did they finger the elaborately designed custom firearms upon their belts with the familiar terror of people about to start shooting. But to the senses of a trained killer, there were cues in abundance, when a group of people thrummed with the energy of unease and paranoia. The smell of fear, Lord Roland had called it.