by Stephen Deas
Oh by all the elements get a grip, woman. How old are you? She could be your daughter and she's a slave and of course the alchemist finds her pretty. Maybe he only likes his women pale-skinned. She closed her eyes and touched her temples. Did I just think that? I did. O Charin preserve me!
‘Are you unwell, Enchantress?’ Tsen sidled up beside her as two of the three silver gondolas opened their doors. A handful of Taiytakei soldiers in cloaks of pure white feathers and armour of jade and silver-glass lined up, and Baran Meido and Bronzehand too, but Chay-Liang barely noticed as the third silver egg split open. Two men stepped out of it. They were both wrapped in flowing silk, pure snow-white like a slave's tunic but each had three emerald and sapphire dragons entwined on their garments, and as the gentle breeze tugged the folds of their robes the dragons seemed to writhe and chase each other. Their cloaks were the same, a million tiny white feathers with three shifting green and blue dragons wrapped around one another. Even when the air fell quiet, the dragons still seemed to move. Both men wore the braids of their hair down to the ground, so long they touched the white stone of the dragon yard and dragged across it. Liang always told herself not to be impressed by cloaks and silks and feathers and braids because they were all nothing more than money, not a measure of a person's worth at all, but today she stared. Couldn't help herself, for the two men who'd stepped out of the silver egg were possibly the two most powerful men in all the worlds. Sea Lord Shonda of Vespinarr was certainly the richest and his t'varr, who also happened to be his brother, Vey Rin, decided on what those riches should be spent.
As her eyes flickered from one to the other, she realised she couldn't tell which was which. A t'varr and a sea lord standing together. Even their braids were the same length.
‘You've never seen them before, have you?’ hissed Tsen from the corner of his mouth. ‘Left or right? A salver of jade says you get it wrong.’
Liang ignored him. On the other side of the t'varr their own sea lord sat on a chair on a gold-glass disc that Liang had made for him, and she knew that Tsen had pushed Quai'Shu up into the dragon yard himself. Quai'Shu had deteriorated steadily since Khalishtor. Moments of clarity were few and far between. Mostly he asked to be taken to see his dragon, to sit with it, which meant sitting with her, the woman who'd murdered his first son. He seemed not to notice, or else he didn't remember, but to Liang's surprise seeing the two of them together troubled Tsen more than anything. Liang had no idea why.
Shonda and his t'varr stopped in front of Quai'Shu’s makeshift throne. Tsen fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the hard white stone of the dragon yard. Liang did the same. All of them did except for Quai'Shu, who simply stayed where he was and stared blankly into the air. Sea Lord Shonda of Vespinarr took one look and wrinkled his nose. He pointed up to the dragon on the battlements. ‘Is it ready?’
Tsen rose again, a cue to the rest of them. ‘No, Sea Lord, it is not yet ready to be flown. If you had waited a few more days-’
‘I came when it suited me.’ Shonda beckoned his white-cloaks and walked past Tsen and Quai'Shu towards the dragon. ‘When it's ready to fly you can tell Mai'Choiro Kwen. He will come and you will show him.’ He swept past with Vey Rin T'Varr at his side. His white-cloaks followed and then Baran Meido and Bronzehand.
‘My father doesn't look at all well. At least he's still alive, eh?’ Meido winked at Tsen as he walked past. ‘Doesn't look like he's going to last much longer though.’ As Tsen fell in beside him, he leaned closer. ‘Bronzehand leaves for Qeled in a week. By the look of things I might win both my wagers without even having to do anything.’
Liang followed a few steps behind. Tsen let out a great sigh and held up his palms. ‘I keep him as well as I can. Dragons are very dangerous creatures.’
Shonda of Vespinarr climbed the battlement steps and stopped on the top of the wall a respectful distance from the dragon. It had noticed them now and had torn its eyes off the glasships to watch them, jaws ajar, lazily flicking its forked tongue over its sword-like teeth. The rider had noticed them too. She was standing up, preening and flaunting herself again. Liang gritted her teeth.
‘Impressive creature,’ said Shonda with a mildness that sounded a little forced. He turned his eyes past Tsen to Chay-Liang. ‘Will it survive your arsenal, Enchantress?’
Liang felt herself quivering. She dug her nails into her thumb. Stop it! ‘We have yet to try, Sea Lord.’ She bowed.
‘It would be unwise to-’ Tsen began, but Shonda shut him up with a wave. He whispered in the ear of one of his white-cloaks. The man bowed deeply, hesitated a moment, then turned and walked towards the dragon. He stopped halfway between them and stood there. Hairs prickled on the back of Liang's neck.
Her mouth fell open. ‘Sea Lord, may I ask what. .’
The white-cloak pulled his golden wand from his belt.
‘No! Sea Lord! Please! Do not!’ She saw Zafir between the white-cloak and the dragon. The slave was shaking her head but she was smiling, the bitch was smiling. Even as the white-cloak raised his wand and pointed it at the dragon, Zafir dropped to one knee, ducked and pressed her hands over her ears. Liang looked away. The noise shook the eyrie, lightning as strong as a wand could make, a crack of thunder so loud that even the hatchlings at the far end of the dragon yard stopped snapping at one another and turned to look. The lightning hit the dragon square on the nose. Tsen and Bronzehand and a few of the white-cloaks who hadn't had the wit to see what was coming and look away reeled and staggered, stunned by the noise and the light. Liang looked back, horrified. The dragon bared its teeth. Its eyes narrowed and its wings flared, sending a wind along the battlements that almost knocked her off her feet, but that was just the dragon keeping its balance as its tail whipped around from behind its legs. The dragon-slave threw herself flat as though she knew exactly what was coming but the white-cloak didn't see it at all. The end of the tail took him from the side like a mountain falling from the sky. It hit him with such a force that his armour exploded, pieces flying off it in all directions. It probably shattered every bone in his body as it hurled him hundreds of feet into the air, away over the edge of the battlements. Liang watched him fall to the desert far below. He didn't scream.
Everyone moved at once. The white-cloaks all went for their wands. Zafir was on her feet, running straight at them, but the dragon was quickest of all. Its head shot forward. Frighteningly fast, faster than Liang had ever seen it. Its eyes were locked on Sea Lord Shonda and Liang's blood ran cold. It knew! It had seen the sea lord give the order and it knew! Its mouth opened and Liang could feel the heat of it.
‘No! Stop! All of you stop!’ Zafir was between the dragon and the white-cloaks, one hand thrust out each way, palm up. ‘Do not, do not, do not!’ Her voice cut the air. The white-cloaks had surrounded Shonda, wands all raised. Shonda somehow managed to stay still. Zafir turned her head slowly to the dragon, hands still up. ‘No!’ she commanded it again. ‘You may not.’ They stared each other down, dragon and rider, for ten long heartbeats, and then Zafir's head snapped back to the white-cloaks. ‘That was foolish. Now withdraw or it will eat you.’ She pointed a finger straight at Sea Lord Shonda. ‘It will eat him. It's not stupid.’
‘Sea Lord. .’ Tsen had misplaced his voice for a few seconds, but now he found it again. Another handful of heartbeats passed and no one moved. Then Shonda turned his back on the dragon and walked with deliberate slowness away.
‘We have seen enough,’ he said, and Liang had to admire his control. He was shaking, but only enough to see if you really looked.
49
Men of Stone
Blink. Two soldiers stood in front of the Watcher, backing quickly away. The next moment he was behind them. They fell as blades thin as a hair slit them open.
The glass palace of Elesxian was small as palaces went. Xican was a nothing place, dull and lifeless except for the docks and the sailors who came and went with the sea lords’ fleets. A fine place for listening to the wind though,
and for learning what moves were afoot among the lords who sent their fleets this way. The quickest paths to both the Dominion and the dragon realms lay through the storms that danced across the seas off Xican.
Blink. A half-shut door, two men on the far side desperately trying to close it. Glass, not that glass would keep him at bay for long. They were too slow and there was a gap and it was enough, and he was through and behind them. The bladeless knives flashed and blood sprayed across their glitter. Wasteful to kill so many. Shameful for one who'd learned to move like a ghost in shadows but he wasn't here to kill, not really.
Blink. A screaming servant saw him and ran. A Taiytakei. A little kwen or a t'varr, lowest of their rank, quivering in a corner, perhaps hoping he wouldn't notice him. He walked on past, blood dripping from the blades that could not be seen. He wasn't here to kill. He was here to teach.
They'd sealed the glass palace itself. Hardly a surprise since he'd let them know he was coming so that they could do precisely that. Now he would enter it anyway and show them how futile it was to even try. That, after all, was the point. That was the lesson.
Blink. A glass door. Sealed. The last and only entrance to the inner palace, to Elesxian's inner heart. He tapped and listened to the music that the glass played for him and then reached out a hand and set it quivering to the same song. The door shattered. The enchanters were always finding ways to mix metal and glass together to try and defeat an Elemental Man and the Elemental Men were constantly proving that it could not be done.
Blink. Another door. Gold. Gold or silver that wouldn't shatter, that was far better but even then not perfect. A gold door? It was new. Elesxian's palace had changed since last he'd been here. No matter.
There were more soldiers coming from behind him. Ones that didn't turn and run. He blinked behind them and slashed but for once the bladeless knives didn't bite.
Stoneguard. Xican's little secret, although not as secret as Elesxian liked to think. Golem soldiers made of stone, enchanted to life and merged in some way the Watcher didn't understand with sword-slaves. Creatures made of stone who moved as men. Enchanters’ work, a darker side of the golems they made for digging and tunnelling the ever-growing City of Stone.
They lunged at him but he wasn't there.
Creatures made of stone.
Perfect.
He was inside them.
50
Damage
Ah, the joys of hosting one's betters! How can one ever get enough of it? They went through the motions. Tsen was good at that and always had been. A part of his mind listened to Lord Shonda and his questions, and to his own answers as he guided the Vespinese lords around his eyrie. He showed them the hatchlings and the alchemist, the Scales and the dragon-scale skins they were drying. All the while another part of him thought of his bathhouse deep in the eyrie's heart and of Kalaiya. He'd need her tonight, her soothing words, her presence and her scent. I nearly died today he could tell her, and she'd laugh at him, but it was true. He was quite sure the dragon would have eaten them all if its rider hadn't stopped it. A part of him wondered why she'd bothered, and yet another part of him wouldn't have blamed her at all if she'd just let it rip them all to pieces. What sort of idiot walks up to a monster like that and hits it with a lightning bolt? He supposed he should admire the loyalty of Shonda's white-cloak for doing it at all. Makes you wonder how loyal the rest of them will be when the next time comes.
‘A good test of your control of the beast,’ Vey Rin T'Varr said while Shonda was talking to the enchantress and the alchemist. They were the only words to come from his old friend from long ago, and the cynic in Tsen decided that Rin was only saying them to distract him from listening in on whatever Shonda was talking about. Not that he needed to. Shonda's agenda was obvious. He was a sea lord and his thoughts were sea lord thoughts: How can this be mine? Rin himself didn't seem interested in the hatchlings or the alchemist or indeed anything. Because you're only here to talk about all that money I owe you? Ah well, considerate of you not to pretend otherwise.
Nasty little thoughts.
Tsen had planned to show them around the inside of the eyrie too, including the alchemist's laboratory and the quarters where the Scales lived — wearing the alchemist's leathers and mask and with dire warnings, of course, which would only have made them all the more keen. He might have taken them to his own study. He had a sumptuous feast prepared but it was all wasted. Shonda stayed for scarcely more than an hour and never left the dragon yard after he'd almost got himself eaten — was that what a dragon did? Or would it have burned them? He hadn't seen the dragon's fire yet, but that's what they did, wasn't it? Burned you and then ate the charred mess that was left? He realised he didn't know. He'd have to ask.
He bowed and kowtowed and did all the things he was supposed to and pushed Quai'Shu’s disc up to the gondolas to make the pretence of a formal farewell. Quai'Shu was muttering under his breath, something he'd been doing more and more and none of it made any sense. They watched Shonda leave. Meido and Bronzehand followed him, little ducklings paddling furiously to stay close to their mother leaving Tsen alone with Vey Rin T'Varr and the business that really mattered. The two stood side by side, watching the Vespinese glasships recede into the sky with the sea lord and Quai'Shu’s sons safe in their thin silver shells.
‘I don't think,’ said Vey Rin, stroking his chin, ‘that I will ever see a glasship in quite the same way again.’
Tsen said nothing. They'd been t'varrs together for years. Long before that they'd actually been friends — real friends — two wild young things who thought the world existed for their amusement and pleasure without much of a care in the world or thought for the consequences of what they did. Nowadays they were sometimes friends, sometimes adversaries, always too much of one to fully be the other, but they still had an understanding. They'd come to know each other well enough to know each other's silences.
‘I've always rather taken them for granted,’ said Rin after a while. ‘It never had occurred to me how fragile they really are. Now it does.’
My monster could rip a gondola from its chains as easily as you or I might pluck a flower. It could throw it through the sky as you or I might throw a ball for fun. That about right? Frightening, is it? I suppose it must be. ‘Glasships have their lightning cannon,’ said Tsen mildly. And whatever else your enchanters have secretly done to them.
‘And you really haven't seen what happens when you fire one at that thing?’ They were still staring at the gondolas, watching them fade into the desert haze, little gleaming pricks of light in the sky.
‘I really haven't.’ And now you can have some fun trying to decide whether to believe that or not, and I can have some fun too trying to guess which way that goes. We already both know what worries you: that I have tried it and that the dragon survived. What then, eh? ‘I was thinking,’ he added, ‘of not finding out at all. If the cannon kills my dragon then I will have to wait for the little ones to grow. If the dragon kills the cannon then I can imagine a few sea lords might find that a touch upsetting.’ Which is like saying the dragon is a touch big, even if we all know that the Elemental Men would never allow me to turn my monster against my dear friends in the Great Sea Council.
‘Uncertainty can be your ally only for a while, my friend.’
‘True, but there are no lightning cannon in Aria.’
‘Point.’ Vey Rin turned away from the drifting points of colour in the sky. For a while he stared at the dragon. The monster was watching the gondolas too and you had to wonder what it was thinking. Nothing, if you believed the alchemist, but Tsen wasn't sure that he did. The creature watched the world around it with far too much purpose in its gaze.
Rin shivered and pulled his eyes back to Tsen. ‘And that is something I should like to discuss. Along with one or two other more tedious matters.’
Money. Tsen smiled. ‘Of course, old friend. The usual?’
‘Yes, I would like that.’ Vey Rin smiled back and for onc
e he really meant it. They walked together across the yard, past the dragon on the battlements. Zafir was sitting beside it again, head tipped back, sprawled under the desert sun. Rin pursed his lip. ‘Interesting slave you have there.’
‘Oh, I have several.’
‘I think you'll particularly want to watch that one.’
Really? Why, I don't think that would ever have occurred to me without you mentioning it. Thank you so much, you patronising sod. ‘I think we have an understanding.’ We have a something, anyway.
‘You have other slaves who can ride the dragon?’
Tsen laughed. No point in even trying to lie about that. ‘You think I'd use her if I did? It is being arranged, Rin, as with many other things. Our lord had planned for hatchlings and eggs. The adult is an unexpected bonus to which we are adjusting as best we can.’
‘I'd adjust quickly if I were you.’ They walked into the cool shade of the spiralling tunnels. ‘We might talk about how Vespinarr can help you with that.’
‘I'm sure that will be most pleasant.’ You mean we might talk about how much more debt I can accrue and what you'd want for it, and how difficult my life might become if I don't do things as you want them done? Yes. A delight indeed.
He led Vey Rin down into the depths of the eyrie and the bath-house. As they walked thorough the curling white stone passages with their quiet light, they gossiped and idly speculated on the nature of the eyrie itself. As much a wonder as the dragon in its way, but it had sat abandoned in the desert for decade after decade, floating above the sands because no one had found a use for it. An inexplicable oddity, too dour and drab to be a palace, a thing of almost no value at all and yet still a mystery and a miracle. Just because it has slept and done nothing for all these years, don't imagine there is no danger dormant within it. Thank you, Jima Hsian, for those last words to keep me up at night.