The Equen Queen (10 page)

‘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.