by Stephen Deas
He found Tuuran exactly where he'd left him, hours later, and it looked like he hadn't even moved. The big man didn't look up. Just grunted. ‘Well?’
‘First chance I get, I go.’
Tuuran muttered something under his breath. He nodded. ‘War's a year or two away yet. It'll keep. I can always come back for it later, right?’ He grimaced and pointed towards the docks and the sea. ‘There's your ship.’
Berren peered down the slope across the maze and the docks to the sea and smiled. How many times had he done this? He remembered looking out over the bay almost every day, counting ships, seeing which ones were new and where they were moored so he could go and check the flags they flew in case the one that Master Sy was waiting for was there.
The smile faltered and turned into a lump in his throat. Tuuran groaned and got up. ‘I hear they don't come here as much as they used to. Don't get on with this Ice Witch. Well we've seen how that goes, I suppose. But they still have their little palace up among the rich folk.’ He gestured over his shoulder towards the towers and spires of the Peak.
‘Deephaven Square,’ said Berren.
They walked down the darkness of the stairs and along the passage with its closed doors and boarded-up windows to keep the dead at bay. An invisible wall divided one Deephaven from the other. The Barrow of Beer, old Kasmin's haunt, was only a few streets away on the other side of it but it might as well have been across the sea. Berren led Tuuran away, through the market and up into Weavers’ Row, past the little street to the Upside-Down Temple and then down the other side, through the heaving crowds until Weavers’ Row became Moon Street and Berren could see the corner of Godsway again and the Temple of the Moon with its tower which looked out over half the city. He kept away this time and cut through the side streets to Four Winds Square, right past the yard and the little house where he'd once lived, a thief-taker's apprentice who'd only cared about learning swords. They crossed the endless parade of carts and wagons that rolled between the river and the sea and then they climbed the Avenue of the Sun to the beating heart of the city, to Deephaven Square. It was all as he remembered it. The guild house. The Golden Cup beside it. The Overlord's palace at the far end and beside that the Temple of the Sun. For a moment Berren felt again as though someone had ripped his heart in half right there. Memories burst in another downpour, enough to drown. Swords. Priests. Monks. Tasahre. Master Sy. All torn away. The pain made his eyes water and the square started to swim. This was where his life had been cut clean apart by Kuy and his kind.
Why me? Why me? But that didn't matter. Him because he was there, because he'd been in the way, because he'd fallen in with the thief-taker and no other reason than that. Sometimes the why didn't matter any more, sometimes the what and the how and everything they'd done to him, sometimes even that didn't matter. What mattered was that he would find them, all of them, one by one, one after the other, and when he did they'd pay in blood and pain and suffering, because they had done this to him.
I am the Bringer of Endings? So be it.
Tuuran nudged him. ‘You still here?’ He was pointing too. ‘See? There's the night-skins’ palace. Now as to getting them to take us where you want to go, you leave that to me.’
He cracked his knuckles and strode towards it.
61
The Point of Balance
Bellepheros understood the prickling in the air for what it was. The Adamantine Palace had felt this way after Queen Aliphera had died, when Speaker Hyram had set himself against Prince Jehal. He barely understood what had passed in the dragon realms since the Taiytakei had made him their slave; what little Zafir let slip spoke of a war, and that she had been on the losing end of it, and beyond that he couldn't see past the half-truths and lies. Maybe Zafir was mad. They'd said that about her in the Palace of Alchemy, quietly where no one would hear. All the queens of the Silver City, hidden away in their fortress of treasures, surrounded by the relics of the Silver King which they could never understand. One by one they all lost their minds.
Yes, he remembered how the palace had felt before he'd left that last time, and Baros Tsen's eyrie felt the same now, full of unheard whispers of war. The Taiytakei told him nothing, of course, but there were no new riders, no new alchemists, not a word. When he asked Li, it was obvious she felt the same, and obvious too that she knew little more than he did. She tried to hide it, but he could see how much it bothered her.
‘I've done it. It's made.’ She stood in the door of his study now. ‘Would you like to see?’ He turned and saw the twitch of a self-satisfied smile on her face and couldn't help smiling back. The dragon-rider armour. She'd been working on it for weeks. It had sucked her into its novelty and complexity, however much she despised Zafir. Tsen had been nagging her to finish. Another little sign of war.
‘Will I be impressed?’
‘She liked the helm, didn't she?’
She. Hissed out with sour distaste as if someone had force-fed her lemons all morning. ‘You don't fool me, Li. You're pleased with yourself. Smug, and I like you smug.’
The smile came back. ‘Yes, perhaps I am. I've surpassed myself for the rest, even if I say so myself.’ She gave a little bow and Bellepheros's own smile widened. He couldn't help but admire her. Dedicated, devoted, talented. You should be running this eyrie. But then he'd been thinking that for months. We should be running this eyrie.
‘You, who could build a glasship. But I like that look on your face. Show me then.’ He put down the book he'd been reading on the flora of the Konsidar and let her lead him. He walked behind her, not at her side. He was supposed to be a slave and she was supposed to be his mistress after all, even if no one else in the eyrie gave any weight to that now. Outside her workshop he waited for her to call him in. There was always a sense of anticipation and he liked to draw it out, wondering what marvel she might have for him. The enchanters’ works filled every corner of the Taiytakei system of the world. They made it tick. Their constructs were everywhere; their engines drove and powered almost everything more complex than a horse or a mule and yet it seemed to Bellepheros that the enchanters themselves were treated little better than slaves, poor relatives to the revered navigators and the terrible Elemental Men. Always the fate of those who are builders. They were like alchemists, perhaps, servants to the dragon-lords of the nine realms, but every alchemist knew that that wasn't really true. Alchemists were slaves to their dragons, not to men.
He shook his head. The kings and queens he remembered had been the same as these sea lords. Mad, all of them, and if Baros Tsen were forced to choose between Zafir and Li, Bellepheros was quite sure the t'varr would choose his slave and let his enchantress go. Zafir, who rode dragons. He could always buy another Liang.
‘You can come in now,’ she called.
And by the oaths I once took I should choose the same, but I'm not so sure that I would. The greater good of the realms seemed as insubstantial as a vapour now. He shook himself and walked into the workshop. ‘They treat you as they treat me,’ he said as his eyes darted around, looking for what was new or different since the last time. ‘Doesn't it trouble you that you build their world yet receive so little of its glory?’
Li looked at him and smiled and shook her head, and maybe there was a trace of something sad in her eyes. ‘Oh, we enchantresses talk sometimes among ourselves of what they'd do without us.’ It was an old conversation, he saw that straight away. ‘Back in the Hingwal Taktse. We all think it at some time or another. We could stop making their glasships and the black needles that give them their power. We could take away the glass and the gold. They'd manage perfectly well without us for a while. The consensus when I was there was three years before enough things broke down to trouble them, five and they'd be on their knees. That's a long time, Belli. Plenty of time to destroy us or enslave us or persuade us. But what's far more likely is that we'd all grow so bored with nothing to do that we'd give in and give them back what they wanted. Just for our own pleasure of building
it.’ She smiled. ‘There's no running from an Elemental Man, Belli, and we all take far too much pleasure in what we do to stop. We're like you. When all is said and done we love our creations, and that's enough for us to be happy with what we have.’
‘Like me?’ He couldn't argue with that. ‘Ah, what we could do, you and I, with the knowledge we each have. Imagine if we could take it away and share it all with no secrets between us! Give us a year and we could turn both our worlds on their heads but we'll never get the chance. Baros Tsen T'Varr will keep us apart because he doesn't understand what we might do if we truly worked together; and if ever he did, he'd still keep us apart for fear of it.’ He laughed. He'd had that thought for months too, but until now that was all it had been: a thought.
Li stared deep inside him, eyes a-sparkle and a smile flickering around her lips, and he saw she knew it too. ‘But Belli, why would I want to turn my world on its head? Or yours, for that matter? For the most part I like it. It's comfortable. I get to do what gives me pleasure. What should I change?’
‘Your people's hunger for slaves.’ The words jumped out as though afraid he'd bite them back if they gave him any time to think about them. Probably would have too. The two of them stared at each other, struck silent for a moment. ‘Could you not build a dragon of your own?’ he asked her. ‘One of glass and gold?’
‘I built two. Little ones. Gold with jewelled eyes and little dim minds of their own.’ She led him across her workshop. It was far larger than his own study but so crowded with bits and pieces she was working on that it always felt cramped. He'd come to know it well. Sometimes when she was moulding glass he came in just to watch. Of everything he'd seen, the Taiytakei glass still struck him the most. So clear, like water, and he'd watched her do it a dozen times and he still didn't understand how she made it like that.
Different sand she always said when he asked why her glass was so perfect while everything he remembered from the realms had been dull and warped. Different sand and hotter fire. Did you see what your dragon does to the desert sand? Your glass makers should take their work to your eyries. Then you'd have much better glass. And he'd thought about that afterwards and saw that maybe she was right, and that he'd never have thought of that on his own. Not a chance.
‘Do you like it?’ The armour was strewn across the benches in pieces. Bellepheros tried to imagine how it would look when it was put together, all overlapping plates of silver and gold and enchanted glass. ‘I started with your dragon-scale,’ she said. ‘I put a very thin soft leather underneath it. I don't think you have one quite like it where you're from.’ She tossed him a strip of brown cloth. ‘Here. Feel.’
‘Rabbit skin?’ It was soft enough and light enough but there was no fur. Almost no fur.
‘Ratusk. They're bigger. But it serves the same purpose. The strength lies in the dragon-scale.’ She pouted at him. ‘You never told me how hard it is to work that!’
‘I certainly did!’ They'd been arguing about that ever since she'd started.
‘You told me it was hard; you didn't tell me it was next to impossible! So the dragon-scale holds it together. There's padding on the inside where you said it should be. I would have fitted it to her in person but she is. . hard to borrow.’
‘Hard to borrow?’ Bellepheros snorted. ‘When she's not riding the dragon she sits around all day doing nothing! You mean you don't like her.’
Li's nose twitched. ‘No, I don't, and I won't have her here. She's broken and she's dangerous and she troubles me; and what troubles me more, Belli, is that you don't see it.’
‘Li, do you think I'm so blind? But she's my queen, my speaker. I have a duty to her. I swore an oath.’
‘She is a slave now, Belli.’
‘And so am I.’ And for that he closed his eyes to Zafir's madness. Deliberately, wilfully, and he knew it, and it made him angry, angry with himself for being an old fool. ‘In my world she would have been my mistress. She was a sea lord and more.’
‘I think she seeks to supplant our kwen.’ Li laughed aloud, but Bellepheros didn't.
‘I've been asked to prepare the dragon for war. Does our lord mean to burn somewhere? Because if he does then I think you might ponder long and hard before you reserve all of your disdain for our dragon-queen.’
‘O Belli!’ She frowned and poked him. ‘Yes, they're speaking among themselves of a war with Senxian, even if they don't admit it to the rest of us, but it won't come to that. Senxian is a sea lord and the Elemental Men will not allow it. The consequences would be fatal and far-reaching and Tsen knows it and he's not stupid. And I promise you, Tsen T'Varr is not a man to burn cities either, not really. He's too. . well, content, I suppose. It's all posturing and noise and flapping of wings, nothing more. They'll not fly your dragon to burn anything that matters. Tsen simply wouldn't do that.’ Which wasn't what Bellepheros had been hearing in what little time he had with Zafir these days, nor what his own eyes were seeing around him, but then he and Zafir were merely slaves and sometimes wars truly were phoney ones, fought without swords and blood and dragons but with merely the idea of them. Sometimes.
‘I hope you're right. The dragon is made and bred and ready for such things and her Holiness is quite beyond my influence or control. I don't think Tsen or any of the rest of you quite understand what you'd unleash.’ Li gave him an odd look, as if trying to peer inside his head. A dark anger came over Bellepheros and he snapped at her, ‘Come and learn our ways instead of taking us as slaves and then you'd know!’
The venom stung even him. Li touched his arm. ‘I will, Belli. One day, I promise. We have to show Tsen T'Varr our need for one another. He'll be our next sea lord, I think, and when that's decided we can talk to him. Properly. About all the things we've talked about among ourselves. Alchemists to come to our world, enchanters to go to yours.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I promise. We will do this.’ Then she let go and made a face and shook her head. ‘Mind you, your Holiness is not helpful in that regard. She is. . inappropriate. She has slaves to wait on her, the best, trained to serve a sea lord's son. They could expertly guide her in proper dress and demeanour and yet she behaves as. .’ Li paused as if looking for the right word and not finding it, then huffed in exasperation. ‘She's indecent, Master Alchemist. Are all your women this way?’
Bellepheros laughed, thinking of Zafir in the golden egg beneath the glasship, the first moment they'd had alone to share their secrets. She'd been protecting him, making it seem as though she was the one at fault, but surely there could have been other ways. She could have put a knife to him for a start — wouldn't that have worked just as well? ‘All of them? No. Those born to ride on the backs of dragons, though? Yes, perhaps they are, men and women both. Indecent and arrogant.’ He shrugged. ‘They don't care what you think of them, Li. Why would they when they're dragon-riders?’ He sighed and looked at the floor. ‘And are all Taiytakei so. . so. .’
‘Squeamish?’ Li cocked her head. ‘You can say it. I don't mind. And no, not all of us. In the lesser quarters of Xican and one or two other places your dragon-queen might fit in perfectly well. But most of us were brought up properly, thank you!’ She stared at him, eyes strong and defiant and daring him to mock her for it. Bellepheros took her hands.
‘And you're all the better for it, Li. But see the world for a moment from other eyes. For me, and in my shoes I think you would be the same, this slavery isn't so bad. I continue to do as I've always done. The place is different, the time, the circumstances, the materials around me, the people, the words, but the task is the same. The nature of my bondage hasn't changed, merely the clothes that it wears. I'm a slave to my dragons and always have been, far more than I will ever be a slave to you or to Baros Tsen. And you, Li, you enchanters, all of you would understand this. You would forge your magics of silver and glass and gold for Zafir and make little complaint of it in time, I fancy. But for her. . she's a dragon-queen and she cannot serve any will but her own. Look at the dragons. Look at Diamond Eye
! That is what would be her master before any of us, and she cannot allow it, nor could any rider, and so they learn never to bend, never to flex. In their own minds they must be free. They must be their own mistress or master, for how else can they be mistress or master to their monsters? Sometimes they snap and break — I've seen a good few — but Zafir will not bow to anyone, ever, and she must show that in every deed and every thought, and if Tsen finds another rider then I'm afraid you'll find that one to be much the same, for the dragons have a different name for any who are otherwise. They call them prey. Do you see? Zafir doesn't wilfully set herself against your traditions or your people. She sets herself against the will of a dragon. She's been raised from childhood to do this. For her every breath is an act of defiance and she has no more choice in that than you or I. It's the way the best dragon-riders are made.’ He gazed at the armour lying on Chay-Liang's benches. ‘How does it work, armour made of glass? Doesn't it shatter?’
‘If struck hard enough, which is why the soldiers you see carry ashgars, those spiked clubs you keep staring at. But this is to be worn on the back of a dragon and so I haven't designed it for swords and arrows but for fire and lightning. For a black-powder cannon there's little I can do.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I've heard that she's been taking men to her bed of late. Taiytakei men, not slaves. Is that true?’
Bellepheros closed his eyes and took a long breath. ‘No, Li, and why would you ask?’
Li gave a helpless shrug. ‘Prurient fascination, I suppose. So the rumours are not true? How can you be sure?’
‘There are reasons why I would know if she had, and she has not.’ Another deep breath. ‘There was. .’ But no, say it as it was, and if Li didn't like it, it was hardly his fault. ‘Some soldiers forced themselves on her. Black-cloaks. It was a while back. Afterwards she came to me to make sure there wouldn't be a child. So I would know, Li. I would know. She's not what you think.’ He looked away, aware of a nagging inside him. Think, alchemist! Think! What did you just tell Li about the nature of dragon-riders, how willing they are or are not to bend. .?