AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My grin was so wide it split my face, “That or prize breeding stock, getting it from bull after bull.”
We both cackled at that and Flea looked somewhat mollified. “So what about the rest of these fucks?” he said. “Turn the lot of them into cows?”
“It’s more complicated than that. Whole political structures will dissolve, or some other fuck will scramble to the top of the shit heap to fill the role if I do. And there’s those that have dragons. Will they thank me for taking their bonded away?”
“Ask them,” Scalla said. We all turned to her. “They are the only ones who can tell you how they’ll be affected.”
r />
“Take our dragons! Who the hell do you think you are?” The Queen marched forward, having to yank her dress out from under the feet of those around her to do so. “Some Damorican agent here to overthrow all monarchs, placed on their thrones by the—”
I held up a hand and her mouth snapped shut. “My original plan was to turn you into a pile of gummy bears—”
“Why gummy bears?” Jez whispered. I just shrugged.
“—so let’s do it this way. Every time you say something self-involved, part of you will turn into gummy bears, OK?”
I freed her mouth and instantly she shrieked, “Riders! To your qu—” Her eyes dropped as several of her beautifully manicured fingers turned into gummy bears, each one dropping from the end of her hand and landing in a brightly coloured pile. “Someone he—!” Off went another few. I watched the woman’s breath come hard and fast as she stared at the neat stumps left. The process wasn’t painful, there were no wounds, no blood, which was more consideration than she’d given many of her victims.
“So why did you do this to me?” I said, gesturing for her to speak when she hesitated.
“You were a threat....” More gummies fell. “Your dragon would...” Several more pattered on the ground. “Damorica was...” The pile grew larger. Now the woman stood there, looking at the stumps of her arms, all of her fingers and hands having transformed away. She blinked wildly as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Let me do this for you,” I said. “You wanted me killed from the first moment you heard there was a dragon outside of Aravisia. Not because we were helping the Damorican government, not because I was rallying support or doing something vaguely political that would affect Aravisia, but because you thought you had the sole monopoly on dragons in this world and didn’t want anything to threaten that. By giving me the ‘chance’ to earn citizenship, really you were using the time to beat up support for your regime by promoting Miazydar as some kind of prize to be bestowed on the people after my ‘unfortunate demise’, thinking he would be more biddable if I died. Answer me before I turn you into a pile of confectionary.”
“Mmm...taste the rainbow,” Jez said.
“Wrong slogan.”
Mistral lifted her chin, beautiful violet eyes brimming with unshed tears, “Yes.”
Her arms and legs disappeared in a shower of gummy bears, leaving her torso and head perched perilously on top of the pile. Tears streamed down her face but she took her punishment with a stoicism that was actually admirable.
“It was my bloody idea!” Graves said, storming to the front of the pack. “Are you going to turn me into candy as well.”
“Yes,” I said and instantly he was turned into a pile of gelatinous bears.
“Bring the Queen’s dragon,” Scalla said, “before you do so much that you rob her of her opportunity for justice. Let everyone here see what the Queen has done.”
I nodded. The whole thing was ridiculous, yet there had been real pain and anguish here. I’d been focussing solely on me, but others suffered just as much, if not more. I waved a hand with one and wiped away tears with the other. Sephador landed on the earth, limp.
“Take the medications from her system and revive her. Can you bring Greynell here?” Scalla said.
“Yeah, does she want to come?”
“I think she would be best to deal with this.”
I stripped the drugs from the dragon’s system with grim pleasure. It wasn’t without its consequences. Sephador lost that placid stupefaction and it wasn’t pretty. I wouldn’t let myself look away when she lumbered to her feet. Her eyes searched the sky as if the answers are written somewhere out there in the stars. Her jaws worked, something she wanted to express that couldn’t be forced out from between them until the scream began. It was the most horrific song. In that harsh, rending eruption was the sound of agony, of coercion, of rape, defilement, the smashing of trust, the destruction of that content little bubble we all carry around with us before our eyes are forcibly opened. Tears pricked at my eyes, belated in the face of dying and being resurrected. I looked back at the blood in the sand and more slid free. Scalla and I sob in counterpoint, a small chorus to the main act. Greynell approached on light feet, settling down beside us as we watched, but Sephador whipped around, her cry broken off.
Greynell’s head dropped down to the sand and we did the same, baring the back of our necks to the explosive queen. I see, I hear your cry, my queen. Greynell’s voice was a whisper in my mind, yet Sephador stilled in response. We all hear, see your cry. Agony transformed into anger in Sephador and her head swivelled around, looking for a target.
“Show her what you did,” Scalla said to Queen Mistral, a menace I’d never heard from her before colouring her voice. Her eyes turned to me. “Show her.”
With a wave from me, the Queen was forced to remember all that she asked Olongth to do, the plans she made with her cabinet, with the ADC. Her dragon flinched with every memory, every plot. “Sephador...” Mistral sobbed, completely powerless now her riders were incapacitated and so was she. She was a ridiculous figure, nestled within the pile of lollies and stripped of her most basic form of agency. The dragon approached in fits and starts, I could see her wrestle with the information she had been given, but then something consolidated within her. Sephador’s scream was the scream of millions, all of those abused and hurt and held down by those who exploited their power. Every soul in the amphitheatre froze to bear witness, unable to look away as the queen of dragons’ head reared back, hovering over the person she loved, trusted most in the world like a snake. “No, Sephador, please!” Mistral shrieked. And then Sephador struck, those massive jaws swallowing the remainder of the Queen down, finally silencing her rider.
There was only silence as the dragon finished her meal, she turned around and screamed her challenge to every witness. No one replied, moved forward or did anything to impede her. Seemingly satisfied with this, the queen took flight, an ugly lumbering thing. This will be the first time she’s been allowed to fly the skies, Greynell said.
“Fly free,” I say, raising a hand belatedly in farewell.
