Authors: Stephen Deas
‘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?’
‘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
dragon
yard, 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.’
‘Was that . . . a
regrettable
incident?’ he croaked and she let go of him and reeled back in astonishment. What must be almost his last breath and he was trying to make a joke of his own murder?
His eyes followed her, though, and they weren't the eyes of a man about to die. He took her hand and showed her his neck where the knife had struck. Beneath blood that was still wet and warm on her fingers there was no wound at all. He pulled her close so they were eye to eye. ‘I can teach these slaves to make a simple potion. I can teach someone like you to make almost anything at all. But true alchemy lives in the blood, Li, and that is a thing that cannot be taught. There is one place in the world where a true alchemist can be made, an alchemist who can dull a dragon. An alchemist who is truly a master of his own blood, and that place is deep within my homeland. Fortunate for both of us that it's not so easy to be rid of a blood-mage.’ He stood up, an old man who'd just had his throat ripped open and yet showed no sign of it, and she looked at him with new eyes. For a moment he even made her afraid.
Then he stumbled and put a hand on her shoulder to keep himself from falling, and the moment was gone. ‘Now I think I need to lie down for a while,’ he said. ‘One last thing. Dragon blood. I'll need dragon blood before the eggs come. If you could manage that sooner rather than later, I'd much appreciate it.’
She let him lean on her. The relief she felt that he was alive was more than it should have been for any slave, however precious.
Tuuran was wrestling the man who'd just killed the alchemist, setting free all that burning frustration in a frenzy of bone and sinew when the world exploded. The witch's lightning shattered everything and he was flat and floating, blind and deaf and dumb. Paralysed. Dead maybe, but then his eyes came slowly back. Not much else but he could see the sky. Its brilliant blue burned into his skull until a face blotted half of it out. Yena. She was wringing her hands. From the way her lips moved she might have been calling his name but all he could hear was a ringing. He tried to move, to take her hand, to tell her that he wasn't hurt, not really, but he couldn't. Eventually someone picked him up. They left Yena behind and carried him to a dim place lit by the glowing white stone walls and laid him on his back and left him.
The assassin slave had had marks on him. Tuuran had caught a glimpse as they'd fought. The alchemist needed to know. It seemed important and so he tried his hardest to move. His muscles screamed in pain, all of them, but he made them do it, one by one. Except all he managed to do was roll off his dormitory bed and land like a helpless sack of potatoes on the floor. He floundered there like a landed fish and didn't hear Yena come in because about the only thing he could hear at all was the screeching whine in his ears. He could hardly even hear his own voice. The first he knew she was there was her touch on his shoulder and he could barely move to turn and look at her.
‘Go away!’ He hated that she saw him like this. Helpless. He gritted his teeth and tried to pretend the pain wasn't there as he hauled himself, one flopping limb at a time, back onto his bed. Then lay there, exhausted. Even breathing hurt. Even every heartbeat. He screwed up his face. His eyes were watering and Yena was still there, hadn't gone away like he'd told her. He turned away from
her but he could still feel the warmth of her hand on his shoulder, gently stroking him. ‘Go away,’ he whimpered. ‘Go away. Leave me be!’ This wasn't how an Adamantine Man should be, not ever.