Daniel Fox - Hidden Cities  

Dragon in Chains
Jade Mans Skin
Hidden Cities

Moshui

T HE B OOKS OF S TONE AND W ATER

Hidden Cities is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original

Copyright 2011 by Daniel Fox

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D EL R EY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fox, Daniel.
Hidden cities / Daniel Fox.
p. cm. (Moshui: the books of stone and water ; bk. 3)
eISBN: 978-0-345-52433-1
1. DragonsFiction. 2. MagicFiction. I. Title.
PR6106.O96H53 2011
823.92dc22
2010042070

www.delreybooks.com

Cover design: David Stevenson
Cover illustration: Robert Hunt

v3.1

A book without a dedication
is like a kiss without salt.
Or something.

Nuff said.

id he think she was angry, before?

Well, yes. He did think it, and he was not wrong. He had felt the slow stew of her anger, fed over centuries in chains below the sea; he had seen the sudden flare of it when she was suddenly free, when she destroyed a whole fleet of men and ships for their impertinence, abroad upon her waters; he had endured the storm of it when she found herself not so free after all, when she raged through the typhoon.

He had faced her in her fury more than once, eye to eye and far too close.

He still thought he had never seen her quite this angry, and entirely at him.

L ITTLE THING , you promised.

There were proverbs Han knew, teaching people how very foolish it was to make promises to a dragon.

I know I did. She loured above him, where he stood too close. I did promise, and I am sorry. I had not meant for this to happen.

She knew that, she was in his head.

Because she was in his head, she must know this too: that there were just two things he would not willingly relinquish, out of all the world. Despite all terror, and all betrayal. Tien was one of them, and actually this was the other: this constant grinding oppression of scale, this teetering always on the edge of a catastrophic fall. This revealed savagery, this terrible landscape, eternal wrath, this dragon.

He had tried to free her once, and failed. Her chainsor were they his chains?were more than simple iron, and not so easily cut. He had promised it again, and meant it truly. And had betrayed her anyway, and now he could not free her anywhere this side of death. She was written on his skin, in some spell-crafted liquor more potent than mere ink. And that was Tiens doing altogether, and what he knew the dragon knew, and

I will eat her. If I cannot eat you, little thing. Which they had absolutely established by now: not eat, not drown, not crush or starve or dement him into suicide, no. I will eat your vicious girl instead.

No, he said. You will not.

You cannot always keep her close. You cannot always watch her.

Right now he did not want her close. But, I dont need to, he said. The dragon was in his head, overwhelming; he was in hers, mortal and tiny and insignificant. She was written on his skin, and she could not close him out. If you go near Tien, I will know. I will not let you harm her.

Betrayal made no difference, apparently. He was no more free than the dragon; he could still not relinquish Tien.

He couldnt even match the dragons anger. Tien understood about sacrifice, where he kicked like a rabbit in a snare. She would have sacrificed herself without a thought. Seizing an opportunity, she had sacrificed Han instead.

He knew. He had been there, helpless under her hands.

He was always helpless, it seemed, except when it came to dragons.

She said, You have to sleep, little thing. Little mortal thing. While you walk in nightmare, I will kill your girl and everything you care for.

No