The colonel fired his hand-cannon into the creature’s mouth. To the sound of an enormous detonation, the dragon’s head blew apart and spattered across the vaulted ceiling. Chunks of meat rained down far across the marketplace. The massive jaws slid to a stop against the colonel’s boot.
He turned to face his men. ‘How is Creedy?’
Banks was cradling the sergeant’s shoulders. ‘He’s lost his looks, but he’ll live. The pair of them were covered from head to foot in dragon blood. Banks looked around at the mess and grinned. ‘Supper’s on you then,’ he said.
The colonel shook his head. ‘I never much liked the taste of dragon.’
CHAPTER 1
HU
An aide held up the bottle for Emperor Hu’s inspection. Sweat trails ran down his powdered blue cheeks and through the rouge around his eyes, and he clutched the Unmer container in both trembling hands, clearly terrified of dropping it. The emperor, for his part, looked just as uncomfortable. From a distance of five feet away, Hu leaned his long white face towards the cause of this morning’s woes.
‘A sea-bottle,’ he remarked, rubbing his pointed chin. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how such tiny things can cause so much trouble. What do the Unmer call them?’
‘Ichusae, your Majesty,’ the aide said.
The emperor’s hall contained a great expanse of air so pungent with clashing perfumes that one wondered if it was safe to breathe. Sunlight slanted down through high windows in the opposite walls and baked wedges of pink marble floor. Several hundred courtiers had gathered to see the Unmer bottle: a score of the emperor’s aides bedecked in jewels and silk kamarbands, legislators huddled together like great red bears in their fur-lined robes, administrators in white wool wigs and grey sacking, shipping magnates from Valcinder, and assorted noblemen and women, favoured artisans, poets and fools, military officers and concubines wearing little but beads.