“Get off!” She shook herself free and trotted out of reach. “I’m going to find something to eat. You coming or not?”
Sirus watched her march determinedly towards the nearest warehouse then ran to catch up, all the while casting repeated glances at the sky, one hand on the knife in his belt. The warehouse was mostly empty apart from a few crates stacked in a corner of the cavernous interior. Katrya gave voice to some protracted profanity when Sirus used the knife to lever off the lids to reveal only crockery. They moved from one warehouse to another until they finally uncovered some food, a shipment of fruit preserved in brandy.
“Slowly,” Sirus cautioned as Katrya gulped down half a jar of tangerines. “Too much at once and you’ll make yourself sick.” She just stuck her tongue out at him and kept eating. In the event it was the brandy that had more of an effect than the fruit and Sirus was obliged to half carry her to the quayside, a sack full of jars slung over his shoulder.
“My Auntie Sal lived there,” Katrya slurred, gazing at the ruined tenements.
Sirus’s gaze roamed the wharf until he found the smallest craft, a fishing-boat about a dozen feet long with a single narrow stack rising from its guard-box-sized wheel-house. He had no experience of piloting a vessel and reckoned the smaller the better.
“Shouldn’t we find the others?” Katrya enquired as Sirus led her to the boat. He didn’t answer, feeling the weight of the silence more heavily with every passing second. All his instincts led to one conclusion; they had to get away from here, and soon.
“What about the door?” Katrya pressed as he threw the sack onto the boat and used a mooring rope to pull it closer to the quayside. Sirus raised his gaze to the great door positioned in the centre of the harbour wall. From the level of detritus and algae building up where the metal met the water it was clear it hadn’t been raised in weeks.
“We’ll just have to fire up the engines,” he said, nodding at the wheel-houses on either side of the door. “I’ve seen it done, once. My father took me to . . .”
He trailed off as he saw the expression on her face, wide-eyed and pale, staring fixedly at something that had banished her drunkenness in an instant. Fighting a sudden paralysing dread, Sirus pulled the knife from his belt and followed her gaze.
The drake sat atop a near by goods cart, head cocked at an angle as it regarded them with a curious gaze, its tail coiling idly like a somnolent snake. Two very salient observations immediately sprang to Sirus’s mind. Firstly, the drake’s size. It was far smaller than any he had seen before, little bigger in fact than an average-sized dog, forcing him to conclude it must be an infant. Second was its colour. Not Black, not Green, not Red. This drake was entirely White.
The drake stared at them both for a long moment and they stared back. Sirus would later consider that they might have gone on staring at each other forever if Katrya hadn’t voiced a small, terrified whimper. The drake started at the sound, tail thrashing and wings spreading as it opened its mouth to issue a plaintive screech. The cry echoed around the docks and through the empty streets beyond, a clear clarion call.
“Have to shut it up!” he said, starting forward, knife at the ready. The drake’s cries redoubled in intensity and volume as he came closer, causing it to hop down from the cart and scuttle away, casting baleful glances at him as it did so, like a spiteful child fleeing a bully. Enraged by its continued screeching Sirus charged towards it, deaf to the warning Katrya screamed after him.
The drake had begun to clamber up a warehouse wall by the time he got to it, claws scrabbling at the stone, screeching all the while. It bared small, needle-sharp teeth at him, hissing as he drew the knife back, all the horror and suffering he had endured adding strength to his arm. You did this!
Something looped around his neck and pulled tight, jerking him off his feet an instant before the knife would have pierced the drake’s hide. He found himself dragged backwards across the flagstones, trying vainly to suck air into a constricted throat. He could hear Katrya screaming and lashed out with the knife, the blade finding no purchase before something hard cracked against his wrist and the weapon fell from his grip. Hands closed on him, seizing his limbs and head, pressing him down with unyielding force. Faces loomed above him, spined and deformed silhouettes against the sky. Spoiled.
Knowing death to be imminent, Sirus tried to spit his defiance at them but the cord about his neck permitted no sound. As one the faces loomed closer and he was flipped onto his stomach, impossibly strong hands bound his wrists with more cord before he was jerked to his feet. He staggered, gasping for breath, finding that the cord about his neck had been loosened slightly. He was able to make out his captors now, a dozen or so, clad in a variety of garb that indicated different tribal origins, though he doubted that would make much difference to his eventual fate. Should have risked the drop, he thought.
His gaze paused on one of the Spoiled, marked out by his clothing, fabric instead of leather or coarse woven hemp. Looking closer Sirus saw it to be the ragged and besmirched tunic of a Corvantine infantryman. He assumed it must have been looted from the bodies of the slaughtered garrison, then he saw the face of the wearer. This one’s deformities were not so pronounced as the others, the scales about his eyes and mouth barely noticeable and the ridge on his forehead scarcely more than a series of small bumps in the flesh. Also, his eyes, black slits in yellow orbs, regarded Sirus with a clear expression of recognition.
“Majack?” Sirus said.
The Spoiled gave a short nod before he and his companions stiffened in response to another cry, not the screech of the infant but something far deeper and more commanding. They raised their gaze to the sky as a very large shadow descended. A Black? Sirus wondered, squinting upwards as the shadow obscured the sun. The notion died when he saw that this drake had a wing-span greater than any drake known to science, but it did match one known to legend.
CHAPTER 2
Lizanne
She was dreaming of the evacuation again when the noise of her father’s latest invention woke her. She bobbed in the chilly swell as the Blue rose above her, water cascading from its coils, eyes bright with malicious intent as it lowered its gaze to regard her as one might regard an easily caught fish, and spoke, “Can’t you make him stop? Just for a few hours.”
She groaned, blinking bleary eyes until the drake’s visage transformed into the red-eyed, tousled-haired and annoyed face of Major Arberus. She grimaced, shaking her head and sinking back into the bed-clothes. “He’s your father,” Arberus went on.