by Stephen Deas
‘Going home any time soon?’ Tuuran asked him but Bellepheros barely heard. He grunted. Across the passage was another space, one meant to be his laboratory. Someone shrewd must have known he was coming because it was already stocked with shelves and shelves of herbs and roots and powders and liquids, none of which meant anything to Tuuran and most of which were apparently a mystery to the alchemist as well. Watching him was like watching a child in a room full of new toys, moving from one thing to the next, picking it up, opening bottles, sniffing, putting them down, moving on. He even made excited squealing noises. But Tuuran wasn’t going to let it lie, not this time.
‘No. You’re not going anywhere.’
‘Sorry?’
‘She’s got you. That witch. She’s got you good. She’s put a spell on you and made you her slave.’
The alchemist paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you’re going to build them their eyrie and you’re going to give them their dragons and you’re not even going to try to stop them.’
Bellepheros had a bottle of silver liquid in his hand which he seemed to find strangely fascinating. After a moment of thought he put it down. ‘I cannot stop them from bringing dragons.’ His smile faded. ‘Tuuran, I’ve begged and pleaded with all who give me their ears to sway them from this course but they don’t listen, of course they don’t. And if dragons come then yes, I will keep them as best I can because the consequences of anything else are unbearable.’ He picked up a piece of golden glass and tossed it into the air. It fell, but slowly like a feather. ‘Look, though! Look at this! Look at what they can do! Imagine how our world could change!’
Tuuran tried and found he couldn’t. Floating glass? What use did he have for floating glass?
‘I’ve set my mind on a course, Tuuran. Liang agrees. One day alchemists will come here to work as they would in any other eyrie, and the Taiytakei will come to us in return. If they must have dragons, if they simply cannot be dissuaded, we’ll look after them and they will teach us to build these things. It will be a brave new world for all of us.’
He looked as though he believed it and Tuuran had to turn away and screw up his face to hold back the anger. ‘No, Lord Master Alchemist. The Taiytakei will come to our land and take whatever pleases them. That’s what they do. I’ve sailed on their slave ships for years; you have been here for a mere handful of weeks. You cannot change their ways with a simple snap of your fingers.’
The alchemist met his eye. ‘Tuuran, for this I think I can. It’s too precious to them.’ He looked earnest and eager and hopeful, for a moment far younger than his years. ‘I hope they fail, Tuuran, I truly do. But if they don’t, if they raise their own dragons, then it must be this way. Anything else will be the end of them.’
‘Then I hope it is, Lord Grand Master. I hope it is the end of them. I hope you fail.’ He might have spat at the alchemist’s feet but he was an Adamantine Man and this was the grand master of the Order of the Scales and he couldn’t see them – wouldn’t see them – as two ordinary slaves, no different from any other. So he held the bitterness inside him, held the alchemist’s gaze long enough to be sure the old man saw the betrayal he felt, then turned and left.
It was another day before he realised that the eyrie wasn’t built on top of a sheer-sided mountain at all. That was when the glasships hanging overhead slowly began to move and the chains fastened to the rim outside the walls grew taut and hummed, when all the slaves from the palace stopped what they were doing and ran in amazement to the walls to shout and stare as the eyrie itself began to drift across the desert, free of any tether to the earth.
32
Regrettable
Chay-Liang stood on the rim of the eyrie with the alchemist, and try as she might to stay calm, she could feel her temper wriggling between her fingers like an eel, trying to get away from her. For the fourth time the eyrie had moved because Bellepheros wasn’t content with where it sat. They were further east than she’d ever feared, much further than Baros Tsen T’Varr was happy with and ridiculously distant from where Sea Lord Quai’Shu had asked them to go. Too close to Vespinarr for comfort. She could even see the hazy distant peaks of the Konsidar on the far horizon.
‘So will here do? It had better. Tsen will send someone to push both of us over the edge if there’s much more of this!’ Belli had his slave bodyguard with him, the one he’d brought all the way from Xican. The man was a monster, a simmering hulking brute steaming with resentment and he didn’t like her one little bit. He glowered at her and she had to smile, though she turned away where neither of them would see. Anyone who pushed Belli over the edge would follow quickly enough. The thought of the two of them plummeting to their deaths made her smile even more, though that made no sense. She pointed at the shapes roaming across the sandy grasslands below. Thousands of them. ‘Your dragons can eat those.’
‘What are they?’
Liang shrugged and looked at the other slave who seemed to tag around after them all the time. Yena, who braided her hair each morning. The alchemist wanted his guard after the trouble in Zinzarra and the guard wanted his woman and so there they were. It was ridiculous.
‘Linxia.’ Yena bowed. ‘Desert horses.’
Bellepheros scratched his nose. ‘Are they migratory?’
Liang looked at the slave again. Yena covered her face in her hands and fell to her knees. ‘I do not understand, mistress.’
The slaves that Shrin Chrias Kwen had sent with her were perfect palace slaves, not what she wanted at all. A good slave had some sense of their own value. Tsen at least understood that. She would get them changed. Some of them, anyway. Apparently not this one. ‘Migratory,’ she snapped, saying the word loudly and clearly.
‘Do they move from place to place as the seasons change or do they always live here?’ asked the alchemist. Damn him but he was better with the slaves than she was and not just because he was one of them. He had a streak of the teacher to him. A patience she’d never possessed.
Yena glanced from Liang to Bellepheros and back again. She had no idea how to treat the alchemist. Nor did anyone else. Since he was unbranded, strictly speaking he was an oar-slave, lowest of the low. Liang treated him as an equal because to her mind that’s what he was, slave or not. His bodyguard, although a higher-ranked slave, treated him as though he was a superior. And at the top of them all, Tsen treated everyone as though they were the same and just slightly beneath him. Poor girl didn’t know where to start.
‘Mistress, they don’t live here all year. They come in the cool seasons but in the hot season they follow the river past the Tzwayg to the foothills of the mountains.’ Yena glanced uncertainly at the alchemist again. Liang rolled her eyes.
‘Well then.’ Belli was shaking his head. ‘I’m afraid—’
Liang interrupted: ‘How long before they leave, slave?’ Here was the far edge of the salt marshes. Already far enough away from where they’d been told to be.
‘I think two or three months, mistress.’
Liang nodded, her mind made up. ‘Yena, there are other slaves here from the desert. Many of them.’ Most of them in fact, since Tsen T’Varr hadn’t felt the need to look all that far for men to staff his eyrie. ‘Ask among them and find out everything you can about these creatures. Find one who knows them well and send them to me.’ She fixed a glare on the alchemist. ‘They’re here now. When they move we’ll follow them. Would that be acceptable? If not, please explain to me why.’
‘I … I suppose.’
He suddenly smiled. Liang closed her eyes and raised her head and thanked all the gods she wasn’t supposed to believe in. ‘Right! Well then! Since that’s settled, what do we do next?’
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�˜Men,’ he said firmly. ‘The ones who will become Scales. Has to be men. No women.’
She didn’t quite understand what he meant by a Scales. Some sort of carer for the dragons. A handler, perhaps, but there was clearly a lot more to it than that. Sometimes he made it sound almost like a servant, at other times like a lover. Whatever they were, she supposed she’d find out soon enough. She led them up the wall and down the inside, away from the rim and into the round white-stone yard, still musing. The walls had steps on both sides. Walls didn’t generally make it nice and easy for someone to climb to the top from the outside otherwise what was the point? But whoever had built these had had other ideas and it bothered her that she couldn’t fathom what they were. Why build a wall that was no more than a steep hill? Why build one at all on a castle that floated in the air? The inner structure of the eyrie was an even deeper curiosity. Five passages that spiralled inwards underground from the walls, meeting in one central chamber, the biggest and deepest by far – and the one that Baros Tsen, in his bizarre wisdom, had decided to make into his personal bathhouse. He’d blocked off all the entrances bar one, making it impossible to get from any one of the five spirals to any other without coming out and crossing the yard. And then each spiral had a structure of its own, a mystery of random rooms and branching tunnels. She’d drawn one of them out a few days ago, carefully mapping the paths and passages with Belli ambling around beside her, deep in thought. It was something to do while the eyrie moved from place to place. When she’d looked at what she’d drawn it had made no sense.
‘It looks like the coil of a new fern on the cusp of uncurling,’ Bellepheros had said when he peered over her shoulder. And he was right, and it irked her that she hadn’t seen it and he had.
One of the spirals housed Tsen and Chay-Liang and the alchemist and anyone else of any importance. One housed the slaves who looked after them. Tsen had kept another for the slaves who were still building parts of the eyrie – or would as soon as Bellepheros stopped moving it about – and that one would house the soldiers later. The other two were for the alchemist to use as he saw fit and the first thing he’d asked for had been men to become his Scales. No special skills are required. I’ll see to that. Which was a stupid thing to say in front of the t’varr since they’d now be the cheapest slaves that Tsen could possibly find.
Those same slaves were now lined up in the yard, waiting for them. The dragonyard, she’d decided it would be called. As they came close, Bellepheros put a hand on her shoulder and stopped.
‘You understand,’ he whispered, ‘that the men I choose will all die. A good Scales can last a decade but the Hatchling Disease will take them despite the best potions I can make. Their skin will harden until they can no longer move or breathe. They will become human statues. Only the Scales may have contact with a newly hatched dragon and they will have quarters of their own, isolated from the rest. We call it the Statue Plague. There’s no cure, Liang, and it can be spread among men by …’ he looked awkward for a moment ‘… by contact. Between bed partners for the most part, but by blood too and it takes a while for it to show, by which time it can spread far and wide. Unchecked, those who have it will live a month or two but they may not even know they have it at all for several weeks. There have been occasions in our history when the disease has escaped an eyrie. Half a city was once burned by dragons to contain it. Scales may not have wives or children and they may not have lovers outside their own kind.’ He frowned. ‘Not that they often do, the disease being what it is.’ He looked slightly uncomfortable again – for her, because he knew she squirmed inside talking so openly about things like that. ‘It’s why many alchemists are celibate too. Aside from the Scales we are most at risk and all of us contract it sooner or later. For those who don’t deal with hatchlings every day I can make potions that will slow it to a stop, but I can only make it for a few dozen, not for thousands upon thousands. Once dragons hatch here, the men who are to become our Scales may never leave this eyrie. Ever.’
‘I will see they are contained.’
‘When the dragons first arrive I will give the chosen Scales a potion that I will make for them. One that, for want of a better way of putting it, will make them fall in love with their dragons. By the time the disease shows, they won’t much mind their condition. By then they shouldn’t want to leave, so that part will be easy for you. It would be better to raise them properly, teach them for the task from childhood so they know nothing else. That’s the way we’ve always done it in my homeland, but …’ He stopped and stared. Tuuran had gone on past them and was now eyeing up the slaves, one after the other. He pulled each one out of the line, looked him in the eye and then either shoved him back or pushed him to one side into a second group.
‘Belli? What’s your slave doing?’
‘I have no idea. Tuuran! Stop it!’
Tuuran didn’t even turn around. ‘I will not, Master Lord Alchemist. The ones I’m taking away are the ones that come from our realm. From our home, Lord Grand Master. The others don’t. You’ll not turn slaves taken from our land into Scales. And look, no night-skins at all. Why’s that? Taiytakei too good to be made into Scales, even the ones of their own that they turn into slaves?’
‘No, it’s—’ But Tuuran wasn’t listening.
Liang put her hand on her gold lightning wand. ‘To keep your master safe!’ she snapped. ‘That’s why there are no Taiytakei slaves here! Because I didn’t want a Regrettable Man slipping in among us. Does that satisfy you, slave?’
Bellepheros put his hand on top of hers. ‘Let him.’
Liang flared. ‘I put up with a great deal from that slave of yours, Belli. More than I would from any other and more than I would from many who are not. But this, this is ridiculous! I will choose who will be your Scales, not him!’
‘Li!’ Bellepheros was shaking his head. ‘No, Li, I will choose, and I would have done the same as he is doing, except when Tuuran is finished I’m afraid I must upset him and insist that it will be the men from my own land who become my dragon keepers. They will have seen the beasts and understand what they are and they may better resist the Statue Plague. The handful of times when one of your people has contracted it, its progress was noted as being swift. He’s doing my work for me, I’m sorry to say. How long before the dragon eggs come?’
Liang sagged. She shrugged. ‘Months.’
‘Good. No need to turn the slaves right away. I shall begin by teaching them all the basics they’ll need to know. We can separate them later when Tuuran is more reconciled to the idea. Give me time to bring him round, Li.’
‘I don’t think you’ll ever do that, Belli. I’m sorry, but it might be best if he were to go. Perhaps the sooner the better.’
Tuuran had finished sorting the slaves. Bellepheros pushed Liang a little towards them. ‘We’ll see. Come, let me at least pretend to inspect them.’
They walked along the line of slaves not from the dragon realms. Pale-skinned men from the edges of the Dominion. Smaller darker-skinned men from the Dominion’s heartland or more likely from the southern coast of Aria. The dark-faced muscular men of the savage Southern Realm. Men who could barely do more than grunt, sometimes.
‘Alchemist Bellepheros?’ asked one of the southerners in an accent of perfect Vespinese.
Bellepheros looked confused. ‘Yes?’
Chay-Liang’s hand was already on her wand. Tuuran was quicker, launching himself through the air. But neither of them was as quick as the assassin. His arm came up and punched the alchemist in the throat. A spray of blood went everywhere. The assassin reached to pull Bellepheros close, to finish him and listen to the alchemist’s heart stop but Tuuran smashed into him, knocking him back. Bellepheros staggered away, hand to his throat, blood everywhere.
Liang looked from one to the other, agape. They’ve killed him! They did it. They got one in. And I thought I was so careful. O Charin, no!
Tuuran and the killer were grappling with each other. Everywhere slaves were screaming and scattering and where was the Watcher when he was needed? Soldiers up on the battlements were already running but they were too far away to make any difference. The damage had been done with the very first blow.
Liang levelled her wand and let fly. The thunderclap stunned her, the shock of air staggered her and the killer was suddenly gone, a broken blackened sprawl of limbs hurled fifty feet from where he’d been. Tuuran flew across the dragon yard too but Liang had no eyes for him. She ran to the alchemist. So much blood said the killer had struck true. Bellepheros would be dead in moments if he wasn’t already. There was nothing she could do.
Yet he wasn’t. He knelt, blinking, mouth open, hand pressed to his neck, looking bemused as if he had no idea what had happened. Blood covered him, soaked him. He was dripping with it. She knelt beside him, wrapped her arms around his body and hugged him. ‘Belli! Belli! I’m sorry!’ So very wrong for a Taiytakei to hold a slave in such a way but what did it matter now? He might as well pass on with some warmth around him, in the hands of someone who truly cared for him. She held his head and whispered in his ear, ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry.’