The Battle of Dragon's Bay

The Battle of Dragon's Bay

Caeruthir I

WARNING: This story contains scenes of a nonconsensual nature

From the upper levels of the sprawling Imperial Palace, Princess Daiyu watched her father's armies return from the war. The heralds insisted that they returned victorious, but the ragged state of their clothing and battered armor told another tale. Rank after rank of exhausted, beaten soldiers passed beneath her window while people in the street cheered and spread flower petals across their path. Daiyu did not share their joy.

"Most Exalted Highness," said a voice from behind her, and she slowly turned away from the window, slatted to prevent any mere commoner from peering into the hallowed halls of power. In the hall behind her, before her dozen maids, stood a palace eunuch. The man kept to the shadows, peering suspiciously around the corner. Daiyu did not fear, for this man was one of her creatures. "The barbarian emissary is with your father," the eunuch whispered before disappearing down the hall.

"Princess," said her chief handmaid, Zhi. Behind her, the others nodded their agreement. "We should listen in."

Daiyu sighed. The dreaded day had come at last. For weeks, they had listened to what reports of the war had filtered into the women's quarters of the palace, desperate for any good news. The war against the southern barbarians had dragged on for ten years now, and for the last two years they had sensed its end drawing close. A stalemate had persisted in the south, absorbing ever more of the imperial state's men, money, and attention. The new fleet her father had built sat idly at anchor, for the men conscripted to row it had instead been given spears and sent south to the border, where most of them died of disease.

At last, her father had agreed to terms. Where ten years ago, he spoke of smashing the southern barbarians and executing the tyrant by a thousand cuts, he was now settling for tribute and recognition of captured territory.

"We should," she said at last. She straightened her silk robes, adjusted her headdress, and strode quickly through the halls of the palace to her father's smaller audience chamber, her beaded tassels clacking all the way. The great throne room lay empty most of these days, for the pomp and splendor it deserved had become too expensive during the long war. Her father preferred to do business in the more intimate chamber anyway, with just himself and the serpent he called First Minister.

The princess emerged into the upper gallery of the audience chamber, again shielded from view from below, and could hear voices already. In the room below, she saw only her father, seated on his throne, the first minister, a southern barbarian, and a mere four palace guards. Through the fine silk screen that shielded her from view, the room looked gloomy, and the expressions on the men's faces matched.

"...million taels of silver, and a resumption of the regular spice tribute," her father's minister was saying. The southern barbarian nodded.

"Agreed. Does His Imperial Majesty agree to my master's terms?"

"Your terms are steep," the first minister replied cooly, consulting a scroll in his hand. "Two border fortress, the Axis of the Heavens, and an imperial princess' hand." Daiyu tensed at the last term. She was the last of her father's children to be married. Her eunuchs had told her that the emperor was saving her to marry whomever he made viceroy of Indica after the tyrant's defeat, but that option was now eliminated. The first minister tapped his pen against his lips in thought. "Dorhacin must return the sacred idols he stole during his southern campaign. And release all prisoners of rank, without ransom."

The barbarian considered a moment, then nodded. "And we agree to no further exchanges of territory?"

"Your master's control of the southeastern wilds is recognized, contingent on his suppression of the pirates who plague the region. If he cannot contain them, the imperial state will take control of the region itself."

"My lord is master of Indica," the barbarian boasted. "Pirates will cause him no trouble at all."

"Hmm," the first minister demurred. He looked down at his tablet again in thought.

"My agents," the emperor spoke suddenly in a hoarse voice, breaking the silence. "must have access to the Alchemists' Cities. The alchemists are close," he wheezed, "close to the secret of eternal life. I must have it."

"Of course," the barbarian soothed. "My lord Dorhacin's chief alchemist assured him that they were merely months away from unlocking the secret, and that was before I left on this embassy. They might have discovered it even now, as we speak!"

Daiyu's mouth twisted in a sneer. Five of the tyrant's previous chief alchemists had made the same promise, if the rumors were to be believed. All five of them had lost their heads shortly thereafter when the promised elixir failed. Dorhacin was a harsh, cruel man, who executed servants, alchemists, ministers, generals, and -- her greatest concern -- wives.

"My agents will learn the truth," the emperor said. "And I will have it once it is done."

"Of course, of course. Is there anything else to settle?"

"No," answered the first minister. "This audience is at an end."

The barbarian bowed low and departed, leaving the emperor and first minister alone with the guards. Daiyu watched from above, biting her lip with worry.

The first minister turned to his master, and they put their heads together in quiet conversation. Daiyu decided to wait no longer. She swept down the stairs with her maids in tow and emerged into the audience chamber from the back. Her father looked up with a slow start and frowned.

"Dearest daughter," he gasped, trying unsuccessfully to rise from his seat.

"You want me to marry the southern barbarian tyrant?" she demanded. The emperor sighed heavily, and the first minister folded his hands over the tablet before him.

"It is necessary to secure the peace," her father's minister said patiently.

"He's a brute," Daiyu protested. "I hear he has killed a dozen wives already."

"Concubines," the minister corrected gently, "Women of low status. He would not dare touch a daughter of the imperial blood."

"How can I be so sure?" Daiyu demanded. "It will be my head on the block if you are wrong."

The first minister sighed. Daiyu scowled at him from behind the beaded tassels of her headdress. How she hated this man! Always so smug and patronizing, scheming and plotting to aggrandize himself as her father wilted under the pressures of running an empire.

"Princess," the minister began slowly, as if talking to an imbecile. "These are matters of state that do not concern you. They are best left to men with experience in these matters."

"It will not be you who pays the price if you are wrong," Daiyu retorted hotly. "Father, please. I--"

Her father raised an aged hand, but did not meet her eyes. "This a matter of state. I will not hear dissent on it. Do as you are commanded."

"If your armies had done has commanded," Daiyu shot back with tears welling in her eyes, "we would not be subjected to this indignity. If your ministers," she jabbed a furious finger at the one present, "had done as commanded..."

"Enough!" her father roared, suddenly on his feet. He glowered down at her from atop the throne, for a moment looking the image of the mighty sovereign she remembered from her youth. But it was only an instant. "Enough," he repeated, this time wheezing for breath. "This is necessary to secure the peace. You are dismissed."

"It will be a short peace," Daiyu hissed defiantly.

She turned and stormed out amid a clacking of beads, anger quickly giving way to the black cloud of despair hanging over her. Long deprived of the alchemists' indigo spice, her father was old and weak. Like the state he ruled, he had sunk into decrepitude and indolence. Her many brothers plotted against each other from their government posts and provincial estates. The succession would be bloody, and Dorhacin, this southern tyrant, would never tire of war. Would he renew his invasions during the time of civil war, or would he think to claim the entire state for himself, through her?

Perhaps her bloodline would protect her, as the first minister said. Or perhaps she would fail to give him a son, and end up another of his dead wives.

---

That night, in the wide bath in her chambers, Daiyu felt the grip of despair catch up to her at last. Her maids sat in the bath with her, some shoulder deep in the water and others sitting on the rim of the great marble tub, all naked. They washed themselves and her together, pulling her long, dark hair into a lustrous black train behind her, soaping it and combing it as they sang. Zhi poured a basin of hot water over the princess' shoulders and ran a cloth along her naked shoulder blades.

Daiyu paid them no mind, instead staring straight ahead into her reflection in the room's mirrored wall. She looked into her eyes, green and hard like jade, and shuddered in the hot water. She was beautiful, with a full, pale face, flawless skin, curving hips, and ample breasts, a wife any man would be overjoyed to have, but Dorhacin was not just any man. Lurid tales of his bloodthirsty nature floated up from the streets. Tales of rivers of blood and towers of skulls, entire cities destroyed and depopulated in his mad wars. Rumors said that he was a man who employed torturers like other employed musicians, and that his palace was always alive with the screaming of prisoners.

She did not get the reports of her father's spies, but news always filtered through the palace servants and what few eunuchs she had swayed to her side. To hear them speak, Dorhacin was a demon made flesh, who delighted in nothing but agony and death. His thirst for blood was never ending, whether on the battlefields of his campaigns or at the macabre feasts he regularly hosted in his palace, where attendance was mandatory.

In the mirror, she saw a shadow take shape behind her. It loomed over her, blotting out the image of her handmaids, and it held a blade of white fire in its hand. Her shoulder turned cold as one hand grasped her, the flesh turning black and bitter. The shadow raised its blade to her throat. She thought to scream, but her voice failed her.

She blinked, and the shadow was gone. She was still in the bath with her handmaidens, and there was no mark anywhere on her perfect skin.

I will not, she decided. I cannot.

She stood up, water cascading from her naked body in glassy waves. Her maids retreated from her and watched as she waded wordlessly through the bath and stepped out on the far side. She strode across the floor, drops of water falling from her bare body to splash beside her wet footprints, to kneel before the grand shrine to the gods. Golden figures looked down on her with eyes of diamond, sapphire, ruby, and emerald. Daiyu lowered her forehead to the cold marble, feeling her long, wet hair drape down her bare back.

"Gods save me," she whispered. She raised herself up again, palms turned up to the roof. "Gods save me!" she cried. "This is a fate I cannot bear! Deliver me from this, and I will repay you!"

"Highness!" Zhi cried, hurrying through the bath to her side. "Do not make bargains with the gods that you cannot keep!"

Daiyu ignored her, pleading with the mute golden statues for salvation. She knelt naked before them, eyes wild as she begged the gods. "A hundred oxen!" she promised. "And a thousand casks of wine! Whatever you want, just save me from this marriage to a brutal barbarian tyrant!"

Zhi pulled on her arms and hauled her to her feet. "Calm yourself, Highness. It will be alright." She ran a soothing hand through Daiyu's hair, but the princess did not hear her. Her eyes were instead fixed on the statues. They did not move. No light twinkled in their jeweled eyes.

"They do not reply," Daiyu murmured in disbelief.

"Then you are not beholden to them. The gods can be so cruel, Highness. It is better to take your chances with a mortal than with them."

"They will answer," Daiyu insisted. "They must answer. I cannot marry the tyrant."

---

The preparations for her voyage took weeks, throughout which she protested the marriage again and again, but to no avail. Her father would not hear it, and his accursed ministers repeated his words back to her. Even the eunuchs refused to help. After fruitless weeks, she was abruptly hustled onto a river barge with her handmaidens and shipped down river to the great port city of Shinza, where the imperial fleet was anchored.

It was the first time Daiyu had left the imperial palace grounds. Women of the court were not permitted to wander freely, and it was death for a commoner to look upon the uncovered face of a princess. She traveled in a grand pavilion aboard the barge, isolated from the crew by screened windows and attendants at the doors. Sitting by the windows on the upper level of the pavilion occupied most of her day, just watching the world go by. Scenes she had seen only in paintings now played out before her very eyes. There were peasants in the fields, laboring over their rice crop. Barges passed by in the opposite direction, carrying animals, rice, timber, pottery, and too many other goods to name. Many times, the barge found fishing boats in its path, and had to shoo them out of the way with the ringing of a great bronze bell on the prow.

One fisherman was not fast enough, and the barge plowed him under, crushing his little boat under its bulk and condemning him to drown in the river. Daiyu thought it horrible, but through the screened windows she heard the guards laughing at the unfortunate man.

At last, they made port in Shinza, where a carriage was waiting to transport her to a grand palace along the riverbank. There, from the upper terrace, she could see the fleet that would take her to Dorhacin being loaded.

Dozens of ships crowded the wharf, some merchant junks and others warships of her father's navy, but all of them were dwarfed by four massive junks, each more than a four hundred feet in length and fitted with five towering masts. These ships had been built at massive expensive to lead the navy to war. Each of them had required an ancient elden oak to be transported from the northern forests to make its keel, for no other type of wood could bear the weight of such an enormous vessel. They bristled with guns along the central deck of five, and carried a complement of hundreds of soldiers.

Yet despite all their might, they had languished in port since they were launched, for the fleet could not sail to battle. Now that peace had arrived, the admirals had at last found a use for them; carrying the princess and all her treasures to her new husband, a great display of naval might to shore up the dynasty.

Princess Daiyu watched each day as new treasures were unloaded from river barges and carted along the harbor to the great junks. Porcelain, gold, jewelry, furniture, silks, and the mysterious Axis of the Heavens were all loaded aboard the fleet. The last of them was an ancient artifact that had long lain in the imperial palace gardens, only occasionally used by the court astronomers. Dorhacin had demanded it as one of his first peace terms, though none of the emperor's scholars could tell him why. When asked, the tyrant's emissary insisted that it would aid in the alchemists' work, and that had been enough for His Majesty, who was desperate for someone to uncover the formula for the Elixir of Life.

Along with the many treasures came guests, and Daiyu soon found herself forced to entertain. Scores of wealthy men and women, along with their vast entourages, arrived in Shinza to see her off. Some even planned to accompany her to the wedding. With the long war at last ended, the wealthy expected to return to their previous life of banquets and festivals. Word reached her that her father had celebrated the end of the war with a great feast, welcoming a thousand guests into the imperial palace. Her eldest brother had put on an orgy at his palace in the north.

Hosting was expected of her as well, and so she did. Yet she quickly found that her heart was not in it. While her guests chattered excitedly over the table, she found her thoughts wandering to the latest rumors of her betrothed coming up from the south. The word was that Dorhacin had been disappointed with the peace terms and exhibited the emissary's head in a golden bowl at his latest feast.

"Are you looking forward to your marriage?" asked a guest one night. She was Lady Shi, the wife of Shi Bei, the fleetmaster. Daiyu tried not to outwardly grimace. Lady Shi asked sweetly enough, and her pretty face was like that of a porcelain doll, but Daiyu detected a mocking note in the older woman's tone. The princess bit her lip as she considered a reply.

"Of course she isn't," chided Jiao Zhenyi, another wealthy woman who had argued her way aboard the fleet. She was a pretty woman, but with high cheekbones and a haughty, severe look to her face. She imperiously sipped from her cup as she looked Daiyu over and her lip curled in a slight sneer. "The poor girl is marrying a southern barbarian. What a horrid fate."

"But a very wealthy and powerful one," Lady Shi countered. "And in the Alchemists' Cities. It must all be very exciting."

"Exciting is one way to look at it," Daiyu admitted.

"You have my pity," Zhenyi sighed, "Your father may be called the Wise Emperor, but I do not know what he was thinking. These barbarians are little more than animals, even the rich ones. For him to insist that you wed one of these... beasts... well, it makes my head spin."

"It is a pity you couldn't marry a man here in the empire," Lady Shi added. Daiyu tried not to scowl at them. They were both ten years her senior, and still kept their good looks, but their minds had seemingly gone from too many fancy parties. Do they not understand that this man will kill me? she wondered. Have they become so consumed by court intrigue and petty spats that they think themselves invulnerable?

Lady Shi tapped her bowl, and a servant began ladling soup into it from a great golden basin. Daiyu looked at it and saw not soup, but the emissary's head.

"There are so many handsome servants in your entourage," continued Lady Shi. "Surely you might find a bedwarmer among them. Barbarians are so frightfully stupid, it would be an easy matter to hide a lover from him."

"Stupid?" Daiyu echoed incredulously. "Then why have our armies failed to defeat them over the last ten years? Why am I on my way to marry this foreign beast?"

Lady Shi shook her head slightly. "The blame there lies with your father's generals. The barbarians are stupid, lazy, cowardly animals. They would be an easy matter to defeat. But something went wrong."

Daiyu suppressed a sigh and changed the subject. "This talk of barbarians wears on me. How about a song? Singers, come!"

---

Bun sat anxiously at the helm of his galley as it approached port. Ahead of him sprawled a collection of ships belonging to the Azure Armada. For years, the elf known as the Sapphire Lord had haunted the waters off Indica, preying on the rich spice and silk trade that ran through these waters. As word of his successes grew, he attracted more and more captains to his banner. The pirate alliance was always fragile, but as long as the pirates believed in its ability to enrich them, they would respond to the call.

Today, Bun entered the port with news of a great treasure at hand and the expectation of a reward. Word of the imperial fleet setting sail had spread all along the coast and Bun had taken the initiative to enter Shinza himself and see it with his own eyes. He had seen the enormous ships, the priceless treasures being loaded aboard, and the rawness of the crews. Once satisfied that he knew enough, he had hurried back to the Azure Armada's port with the aid of an enchanted compass.