by Stephen Deas
According to the strict definition of duties, a t'varr was responsible for arranging things. Huge things. If Quai'Shu wanted an eyrie in which to raise dragons, his t'varr found it for him, as Baros Tsen had done. And if Quai'Shu desired his whole fleet to sail to the western realms to steal dragon eggs, why then Tsen T'Varr would dutifully make sure that those ships were available and properly provisioned, and if he wept with fear at how few of them might return, he kept such concerns to himself — or more likely brought them here to the steam and Kalaiya's ever-patient ears. But every expedition across the storm-dark is a dance with catastrophe, is it not? What's done is done. It will be what it will be. Yes, and plenty more trite platitudes besides. Put it away. Sweat out the anxiety. Enjoy an hour to yourself. Every day was worse now, wondering how many ships would be lost this time. All he could do was fret. In Xican he didn't even have the eyrie to distract him any more but at least now when he went back there he wouldn't go alone.
Kalaiya leaned across the bath and took his hand, gently massaging his palm, tugging at his fingers. It was an unconscious thing she did without any thought and he loved her all the more for that. ‘You're thinking again,’ she chided. ‘When all is ready, does it not pass from you? You provide the ships, Baros Tsen T'Varr. Our sea lord's kwen has the duty of crewing them and sailing them and his hsian is responsible for what they do when they get there, not you. Is this eyrie not simply a different ship?’
Tsen purred. ‘As if Quai'Shu ever lets Jima Hsian do anything! Now there is a terrible post if ever there was one.’
Kalaiya cocked her head, still pulling at his fingers. ‘Unless what you want is a quiet life lying in your bath, stroking your rather over-large belly and wondering how next to amuse yourself. Yes, yes, it sounds quite terrible.’
Lucky apostate. And I bet you'd find these preposterous demands a thoroughly welcome diversion, Jima Hsian. You could amuse yourself trying to work out what in the name of Xibaiya this alchemist is actually doing. Then again, that's what you're already at, isn't it? Making your predictions? He laughed. ‘Do you know what Jima said when our lord demanded I find him a flying castle where he could grow dragons? “Challenges to the intellect do give a little pepper to a life of pleasurable hedonism and mild over-indulgence, eh Tsen?” I said he was more than welcome to it. But I've built it now. It's mine.’ And you're not having any of it, not any of you, not after all the effort I put into the bathhouse there. Ha! He took Kalaiya's hand in his own. ‘Hsians deal in ideas. Kwens in men. T'Varrs in things and money.’
‘Not the oil in the machine, but the machine itself,’ she laughed too, and her laughter was like music.
‘I miss you so much, every time I leave.’ He shook his head. The machine itself — it was certainly a T'varr-ish thing to say.
‘You don't miss me, you miss this.’ She gestured around at the steam-filled cave, but she knew he meant it.
Tsen smiled and leaned forward. ‘I did give our lord's eyrie its own bathhouse, and it is rather fine.’
‘And was the company rather fine too?’ Her eyes glittered, but they danced with mockery, not with jealousy. She knew him too well. He pulled his hand away and closed his eyes, sipping on a glass of sweet apple wine from his own orchards. The design here was his, and lying in the water was like lying in the warm sea at night, the illusion of endless open space above and to every side.
Kalaiya touched his arm. ‘Where are you, Tsen? Look — the veins in the marble glow below the water. They didn't used to. Have you even noticed? I like it.’
‘A thoughtful present from Chay-Liang to welcome me back.’ He supposed he'd have to watch her more carefully now. Not that he didn't have to anyway. She'd wrapped the alchemist around her finger and made him her pet, and even an enchantress couldn't be so naive as to not realise how important a piece he was in the great game of the sea lords.
‘You should give her some of your wine.’
Tsen snorted. ‘Not that thoughtful!’ He stared at her. No my lord or my master or kowtowing or averting her eyes, they were long past that. She was smiling, and her smile made him melt inside every time because there was no artifice there, only warmth.
‘My t'varr. Keeps all our sails filled with wind. I'm glad you're back. Take my advice — make Chay-Liang your friend. And yes, take me to the desert. You know I'd like that.’ Sometimes, when she thought he wasn't looking, he saw the harshness of the sands in her eyes. I know you always missed it. Taking her to the desert wasn't just for him.
He closed his eyes and sank beneath the water. T'Varr to a sea lord. A vast responsibility and so he addressed its size as any t'varr would: he broke it down into smaller and smaller pieces and then found other people to do them until there was nothing left. Then he hired some more people to do the breaking into pieces, and more still to do the hiring, until in principle he had no real responsibilities left to attend to at all but it never quite seemed to work out that way. And never mind the small matter of our fleet and our city and our lord being so far in debt to the depthless pockets of Vespinarr that they likely own my bath, Kalaiya and probably even me by now. But meanwhile we'll simply borrow ever more, all on Quai'Shu’s promise of what his dragons will mean. Wasn't that how it had always been? It certainly felt that way.
He came up for air and sighed. On another day he might have talked to Kalaiya about it all, told her everything, his doubts and his worries and passed the burden to her and gone away feeling lighter, but that wasn't what he'd come for today. And now I'm spoiling it. ‘I'm sorry, my dear. I'm not the best company.’
‘No, you're not.’ Kalaiya held up her wine glass and toyed with it, peering at the designs on the stem. ‘This is strange work.’
‘It comes from Aria.’
‘Which one's that again?’
Another reason he loved her. He'd shown her maps with all the realms that the navigators had found in their steerings through the storm-dark a hundred times. The eight worlds, or seven or maybe nine depending on which navigator was doing the counting. She never remembered any of them. She didn't care. ‘The one that's a problem,’ he said.
‘Well, I'm sure I don't know anything about that.’ She pushed out her bottom lip at him.
Tsen shook his head. ‘When it becomes too much, Vespinarr and Cashax will pause their rivalry and something will be done.’ He leaned a little further back, sinking into the warmth again and stretched his arms behind his head. ‘Ah, the pleasure of a knotty problem that belongs entirely to someone else.’
Kalaiya's lips still smiled but not her eyes. ‘Your precious world order?’
‘Exactly. But not mine. Yours too. All of ours.’ She did that sometimes, reminded him of the last little crevasse between them. How he owned her; and when she did, it was like being stabbed. Then Kalaiya reached across the water and stroked his cheek and the flash of bitterness was gone as quickly as it came. Tsen clapped his hands with happy glee. ‘Let sea lords and their heirs pore over their charts and maps and their reports. Let Jima Hsian worry about Aria. It's not like he has anything much else to do!’ And as the conundrum comes to a head, my sea lord arrives with dragons. Why, any suspicious-minded fellow might see the telltale hand of some particularly clever hsian in such a confluence of circumstance. Very clever indeed. .
‘Jima Hsian is not the oaf you picture him to be, my master.’
‘Master?’ No, he certainly is not. ‘Have I upset you?’
‘You're thinking about your dragons again. You're not really here.’
‘I am thinking about dragons. I can't stop.’ He laughed ‘I've been thinking about dragons for years. Years and years while Quai'Shu frittered away our fleet's fortune and got us into this quicksand of debt.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I had no choice. I went to him with the quiet suggestion that maybe, just maybe, it was time to behave a little more — sail and sea help me, me of all creatures, saying a thing like this — responsibly; and then he brings back the alchemist and a plan and now there really are going to be dragons
after all. They'll be here very soon. I think. . I think I'm actually scared, Kalaiya.’
‘Can I see them when they come?’
Tsen looked longingly at his glass of wine, almost empty. If he didn't raise more money soon then he'd be selling his private cellar just to get by, but the lords of Vespinarr with their bottomless pockets would pay anything at all when it came to dragons. Baros Tsen T'Varr and his lord Quai'Shu would see to that.
Kalaiya poked him with her toe under the water. She pouted. ‘You're not even listening to me!’
‘No.’ He hung his head. ‘I came here to tell you that you'd come with me when I left again and to celebrate that with you and to be away from everything else, and I've failed, abjectly failed.’
‘I asked, master, if I can see these dragons when they come.’ Her eyes said she was playing with him this time, not truly cross.
The air quivered. The candle flames flickered. At the edge of the shadows the steam swirled. Tsen felt it through the stone and the water. They were suddenly not alone. Kalaiya squealed and Tsen's heart paused in its beating for a moment as the shape of a man moved closer through the steam; and then he breathed out again as he saw it was the Watcher and not some other Elemental Man sent to kill him.
‘LaLa! You startled me!’ He spoke as kindly as he could manage but he couldn't hide the edge of fear swiftly turning to ire. Death by Elemental Man mostly happened to kwens and hsians because they were more the kind of people who harboured ambitions, while t'varrs were a different breed; but still, under the circumstances. . He turned to Kalaiya. ‘I'm sorry, my dear. Don't be afraid. The Great Sea Council mostly prefers us t'varrs to murder each other in more genteel ways, with banks and money and trades and exchanges, and in these I am in my element. LaLa's old-fashioned ways only come out when one of us is backed into a corner with nowhere left to go.’ He threw up his hands in mock despair. ‘At which point everyone goes for the throat in an unseemly scramble for the spoils while the drowning take as many of the vultures with them as they can before the corpse of their fleet is picked clean.’ He tutted. ‘I can't imagine why. But I am neither drowning nor a vulture and we are far from such a corner.’ Although by no means as far as I would like.
The Elemental Man stood there, distant, wreathed in steam and pointedly silent. Tsen sighed and stood up. On his feet, the water reached his hips, steam rising in coils and curls around him. ‘I'm sorry, Kalaiya. It seems this may be a matter for which you must leave us.’
She went without a word. He watched her go, mute and demure, but underneath he could tell that the appearance of the killer had shaken her. Perhaps he was the only one who knew her well enough to see, but then, who could blame her? This had been his time. Hers. Theirs. ‘I will make it up to you,’ he called after her. ‘You'll see both dragons and the desert. I promise.’
When she was gone, and only then, the Watcher bowed and fell to his knees. He shuffled closer, a dark shape in the gloom and the steam. It was the sort of quaint tradition that made Tsen laugh, since they both knew that one of them was a deadly sorcerer-assassin, guardian of the very fabric of creation and honed in his skills from the moment he'd been born, while the other was a fat naked man standing in a bath. And he kowtows to me while my slave freely shows her scorn. It was a strange world. Tsen sat back in the water. And why not? ‘Come on in, if you like.’ Not that the Watcher ever would.
‘I apologise from the well of my soul, Hands of the Sea Lord,’ whispered the Elemental Man. Tsen smiled. They were all so. . traditional.
And that was about when the Watcher's exact words sank in, and Baros Tsen would never think those lovely thoughts of the quiet life of a t'varr again. From the well of my soul. Even in the heat of the water his skin prickled. ‘Who, LaLa? Who is dead?’
‘Zifan'Shu is murdered.’
Quai'Shu’s heir. Ah well. Dim-witted jackass. Never liked that one anyway. ‘How? And aren't you and the Picker supposed to stop things like that?’
The Watcher never raised his eyes from the floor so Tsen didn't get to see his face. He was good with faces. One little virtue in a sea of vices, as he put it himself, but he was a hard man to lie to. It was a skill he found useful mostly when gambling. ‘I was in a different world.’ The Watcher's voice gave nothing away. ‘The Picker was already dead.’
‘The Picker is dead?’ Tsen shook his head. ‘An accident? No. Someone. . someone killed an Elemental Man?’ That was supposed to be impossible, wasn't it?
‘He was killed by a dragon, Hands of the Sea Lord. Sea Lord Quai'Shu. .’ the Watcher seemed to struggle for a moment to find the right words ‘. . has lost his mind.’
Tsen's own thoughts stuttered, fumbling for a place to start. ‘Lost his mind? With grief, you mean, for his son?’ Hardly seemed likely, knowing Quai'Shu.
Ah yes, and then of course it had to come, that stupid sly little thought. The sea lord is mad? His heir is dead? He'll need a new one then, won't he? One who can see out his vision. And there's no reason for it to be someone who's tied to him by blood, none at all. It could be anyone. A kwen or a hsian. Or a. . a t'varr?
Shut up! Stupid nasty little thought. Could at least have had the decency to wait until later when he was alone.
Then a different and more chilling thought chased it out. ‘The fleet?’Not much point in being the sea lord of nothing after all. .
Quiet, you!
‘There is some damage but most remains intact.’
‘Some damage? LaLa, some is a word of terror to a t'varr, especially when what follows is damage. What damage, exactly?’ He shook his head, paused and frowned, still trying to put the pieces together. ‘And how do you know, LaLa? Where have you been? You were supposed to be in the middle of an inhospitable desert watching my alchemist and Chay-Liang. Not so close to the sea, that.’ With the words out and their taint of suspicion hanging between them, he found himself again pondering the incongruity of a sorcerer-assassin who could turn into wind and fire and rain being questioned by a naked man in a bath. A possibly very short-lived naked man in a bath. That was what came of being a sea lord's t'varr, he supposed.
‘The moon sorcerers themselves came.’ The Watcher sounded awestruck now. ‘They brought the dragons. They. . they showed us what happened. Chay-Liang and I.’
‘Dragons? There are dragons now?’ Father and daughter, where does it end? ‘Last I heard we were trying to steal eggs. Are you telling me now that there are dragons, on top of everything else, sitting in my eyrie, a thousand miles from here, wondering what to do with themselves?’ That was the t'varr in him. People were dead. For all he knew the world might be ending, but if it was, the offence was that it wasn't ending according to the proper plan. ‘Eggs,’ he said again, wagging a finger that apparently couldn't restrain itself. ‘Hatched in secret and revealed in their own good time.’ Live dragons? Xibaiya! Do the Vespinese know? Who else? And what are they worth? He frowned. Nasty little thought again, away with you! ‘Are they. . burning everything? Should we pack our chests and flee across the storm-dark while we still can?’ He'd thought he was joking when he started that sentence but by the end he wasn't so sure.
‘The alchemist is dealing with them, Hands of the Sea Lord.’ The Watcher touched his brow again to the slick marble of the floor. Tsen's head was drowning him in possibilities now, far more than he could manage all at once. He had to pause, if only for a moment.
‘Are they. . are they everything Quai'Shu said they were? Wild uncontrollable fire-breathing monsters? Unstoppable, yet tamed by this alchemist? They are tamed, yes, LaLa?’
The Elemental Man raised his eyes and met Tsen's gaze. Not something he was supposed to do to a sea lord's t'varr but Tsen decided he'd take it as a compliment this time. ‘They have left one full-grown adult. It is magnificent, Baros Tsen T'Varr. Unlike anything I have ever seen, and I have seen a great deal. I do not fear any man in any realm, nor any beast, but I fear this dragon.’ The Watcher's eyes went back where they were supposed to be. ‘Hands of the Sea
Lord, yes, they are tamed but the alchemist urges you to return as swiftly as you can to the eyrie. He-’
Tsen cut him off. ‘No, no. The fleet will be here in a few days. I can't leave until I've seen it for myself. Do they still carry anything interesting or have all the eggs hatched and mysteriously flown to my eyrie by the hand of some mostly mythical wizards?’ Myeyrie? He raised an inner eyebrow at himself. How easy that came. ‘No, I need him to come to me. I need him to bring one of these dragons. A manageable one.’ Stupid thoughts came at him now as they always did, ones that had no business giving themselves a voice: This is no way to take a bath. ‘I'm sorry to treat you as a messenger but a jade raven won't be as quick and so I need you to do this for me. Make these arrangements at the eyrie and then return here and be with me when the fleet arrives and we shall see for ourselves whether Quai'Shu has yet found the mind again that he so carelessly lost.’
The Elemental Man didn't withdraw, which struck Tsen as odd as their conversation was clearly finished. ‘Hands of the Sea Lord, the fleet is not coming here.’
‘What?’
‘They have set course for Khalishtor.’
‘Well, who told them to do that?’
‘I suppose our sea lord.’ The Watcher bowed and backed away now, shuffling on his knees until he almost vanished in the steam-haze in the far corner of the bathhouse. There was a pop of wind and a swirl of mist and he was gone. Tsen sank slowly back into the water. The edge had gone from its heat, or maybe he was just getting used to it. His glass was all but empty. Still, he'd enjoy it for as long as he could. And there I was, complaining away at the burden of my work when it was merely ordinary.
He sent for Kalaiya again. All the preparations he'd made to receive the eggs would have to change. Stick everything in a ship and sail to Khalishtor, he supposed, and all his people too. That alone would keep half the palace busy. But it wouldn't be quick enough. Glasships. He'd have to use the house glasships. And then if Quai'Shu had lost his mind then the Council of Sea Captains in Khalishtor would have to be told. He'd need to talk to the fleet treasurer before that could happen. He'd need to know how truly bad it was. And there were other arrangements to be made. The council's debate on the Ice Witch that Quai'Shu had quietly paid a great deal of money to postpone until the proper time.