Authors: Stephen Deas
‘We have no money, Not Kalaiya. We drown in debt to half the other lords of the Great Sea Council and they all know it. They'll strangle us and starve us and bleed us until we fail; and then while we're dying but before our heart quite stops beating, they'll fall on us and carve up our corpse.
That
is how they will try to take my
dragons. If we fight among ourselves for our sea lord's power, we only make it easier for them. That's the truth of where we are.’
The Elemental Man came closer and offered Tsen a towel.
Of course it is. But we'll still fight
.
‘The others won't see the debt. They'll be blind to it – a t'varr’s problem for when the dust clears. Every one of them would trade our dragons to have Quai'Shu’s cape. All of them except me because the dragons are all I have.’ Tsen wrapped the towel around himself. It was like putting on a fur. ‘So somehow we make them show their worth and start the bargaining. We must begin by putting Shrin Chrias Kwen in his place. Firmly so.’
The Watcher nodded.
‘The eyrie will be our fortress, Not Kalaiya. We'll keep the dragons close where they cannot be touched. We'll need glasships to and from the eyrie every day and
that
will be expensive, and that will also be how they try to get their assassins in.’ He sat on the edge of the bath and took a few great lungfuls of steam. Sweat beaded on his skin.
Is this how it will be now? For the rest of my days, living in a cage of my own design?
Tsen laughed. ‘How do I truly keep us safe, Not Kalaiya? How do I keep
you
safe, above all? Perhaps I shouldn't do this. I'd need a lot of metal to encase my whole eyrie, and Liang has far too much to do already and where will I find another enchanter who will build such a thing and know they will not –
can
not – be paid? But I can't say it isn't tempting. Other lords might easily afford an Elemental Man, if only for the day it would take to open my throat and see me bleed dry.’
The Watcher shrugged. Tsen shook himself. Even this stupid pretending game was making him miss Kalaiya far more than made any sense. She helped him
think
, that was it. He turned and poked the Watcher in the chest. ‘Very well. Yes, Elemental Man, I'll preserve Quai'Shu’s dreams. We shall have dragons, and we alone. Does that appease you?’ He thought he saw LaLa smile but it must have been a trick of his eyes in the gloomy haze since Elemental Men never smiled, and it
was
very dark. They never got angry either. All they ever got were whatever tasks they were set done, ruthlessly and completely. Tsen had to laugh again. Couldn't help himself. ‘Oh, they'll all try to kill me sooner or later, won't they? Dissuade them as best you can, LaLa, if you would? Now
go. Oh, and have someone make the slave woman ready to receive me. My dragon-rider.’ He let his distaste bleed out into his words. Then he stopped and shook his head. ‘And why
did
you come and bother me in my bath again? You never gave me an answer to that.’
‘To ask you a question, Sea Lord-in-Waiting.’
‘Have I answered it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. At some point you can tell me what the question was. Just so we can both know when it turns out I was joking or otherwise didn't quite mean it.’ He took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Go on then. Run along.’
The Watcher paused. ‘Sea Lord-in-Waiting, I cannot pass the white stone walls of the eyrie. It is like metal to me. This is not known to others. You will not need your enchanter.’
They regarded one another long enough to be sure they both understood. Then the Watcher knelt and pressed his head to the floor, a thing that an Elemental Man was rarely called to do, and vanished into the warm stone floor. Tsen poured himself another glass of wine. Beautiful stuff. Far too delicate to be wasted on an Elemental Man. You had to work for years to forge a palate capable of appreciating the delicate nuances within its richness. For some reason the bathhouse steam, with its touch of Xizic, brought out the best of its flavours. Enhanced it. And that was what a sea lord did, wasn't it? Brought out the best in everything around him?
The Elemental Man had touched his head to the floor as if bowing to a master, not to an heir or a regent.
Am I starting to do something right?
Outside he wrote a note to be sent by jade raven to Chay-Liang at the eyrie: ‘
Doors on all the ways in from the dragon yard. On anywhere that must be safe. Not glass or wood. Sealed in iron. LaLa cannot pass through the stone.’
And she would understand, perfectly, what he meant and why.
As an afterthought, he added, ‘
On my bathhouse too.’
Baros Tsen called for Zafir again that same night after she discovered she was slowly dying and there was nothing that anyone but Bellepheros could do about it. It was late, long after dark and she was already asleep, curled up on her thick rug when the black-cloaks came. Myst and Onyx did their best to dress her in the few minutes the soldiers allowed. When she walked to the balcony and stepped onto the waiting sled, she looked back at them. They were staring out through the wall, watching her. Then the sled slipped away into the starlit gloom inside the tower and rose into the darkness until it emerged into the upper space and settled on a glass roof. Tsen was already waiting, and he waved the black-cloaks away. When they were well out of earshot, his words were blunt and straightforward.
‘How long will it take for these hatchlings to grow?’ Her answer didn't please him, but he surely knew it already from Bellepheros. ‘I have one fully grown dragon,’ he'd said at last. ‘I wish to show my rivals what it can do. For that I am told I require a rider. Can you do that?’
Yes. He asked her what she needed and she told him that too: Bellepheros the alchemist. A harness. Armour. The simple truths of the matter. If she'd had her wits about her she might have asked for so much more – lied and lied and who was
he
to be any the wiser? But tonight all she could think of was the disease, the horrid mark on her skin that would never go away, whose spreading, above anything else, must be stopped. Right there and right then she would have given him anything if he could have promised her that.
‘Where is the alchemist?’ she asked, the only question in her head, burning away all other thought.
‘I sent him back with his monster.’ The t'varr gave her a look
then. A kindly look almost like a father, although she'd only known those as monsters too. She had to bite her lip not to beg him to let her go to be there with the dragons and the alchemist whose potions she needed more than water. But she did not beg,
would
not. Not ever. Not to anyone, not for anything.
‘You killed my sea lord's first-born son and heir,’ Tsen said, and his face never changed. ‘You have enemies – Shrin Chrias, my lord's kwen. I don't know what you did to
him
.’ He shrugged. ‘Others. I'll give you someone to watch over you. He'll keep you safe and he'll keep you to your promises, but for now he has other matters to address and I can't spare him. So you'll remain here, a slave and nothing more, until I'm ready. You will not be seen to matter. Have no fear though.’ He smiled a sad little smile. ‘My desires are not theirs. Not what a sea lord should crave. Serve me well in this and for as long as you do I'll not turn you over to them. Cross me even once, slave, and you're dead to me. I do hope you understand.’
‘I wish to be with my dragons,’ Zafir said, as close as she could bring herself to ask for what she truly wanted.
‘But for now I wish you to be here, slave.’ He sent her away and waved for the black-cloaks to take her back.
For the next few days they kept her in the brightest of cages, gleaming and gilded with bars that she never saw but sensed nonetheless. Tsen sent her more slaves, maidens to wash and clean and feed and clothe her, and Zafir sent them back. The first two, Onyx and Myst, they were enough. They'd seen her face down a dragon. They'd seen her face down Shrin Chrias Kwen who'd murdered Brightstar. She owned their souls now while the others, however skilled, were surely spies.
One day Myst and Onyx covered her with perfume and Tsen himself took her on a glasship. They drifted above the glittering spires of Khalishtor and he pointed to all its wonders. None of it mattered but she forced herself to go through the motions he wanted of her. She saw the magnificence of his world, the opulence, the richness, the sheer delights to be had at every turn for those who were close to a sea lord. This man she needed somehow to own, and yet all she ever saw when she closed her eyes was that little patch of skin, Hatchling Disease, the dragon on the ship that
had given it to her and the vengeful look in its eye. She tried to rub the roughness away, rubbed it red and raw until all the flakes were gone but they were back again two days later, and there were other parts of her too now that she thought to look. Other places where she was not quite as soft as she'd once been. Little calluses, so small and slight she wouldn't even have noticed if she hadn't been looking for them.
Six days after she'd stood in the Great Sea Council and smiled a coy smile and tried to hide her laughter, the black-cloaks led her onto a disc and down to the black floor of the tower. This time Myst and Onyx came with her. Rain hammered from the sky and the great open emptiness of the tower thrummed with a deep rumble. More soldiers waited, not black-cloaks but men with cloaks whose feathers made a shimmering pattern of burning orange flames with a rampant red dragon in their midst. Tsen's own soldiers. Dragon-cloaks. They led her through the open brass doors and outside over the black marble where the glasships came, slick with water. The rain drenched them all, cold and angry, clinging her silks to her skin. The wind tugged her sleeves. Myst and Onyx shivered and huddled and screwed up their faces, but they were palace slaves, not dragon-riders. In the space outside the Crown, where the glasship pods hovered a hair's breadth above the ground, Zafir lifted her head and stretched up her arms as if she was worshipping the sky and let the glory of the rain and the wind remind her that, despite all she had endured, she was alive. Above her the glasships barely moved despite the wind. The ships-that-flew might be slow but she'd seen they could be precise, for what good it did them. She closed her eyes as the rain battered her face and imagined how it would feel to smash one to splinters with a dragon. A pleasure enough to dull the terror of the Hatchling Disease for a moment.
In the middle of the circle of black marble a golden egg opened for her. Myst and Onyx fell to their knees, faces pressed to the wet stone. Tsen sat inside the gondola with a trio of brightly coloured dragon-cloaks standing to attention around him. As they left, he beckoned Zafir to take their place beside him. The ramp closed behind her and they were alone. A t'varr and a dragon-queen. She could kill him, she thought. It would be so easy. No obvious weapons but he was a fat old man, while beneath her hardening skin
was a warrior's heart, fierce and furious when she wanted it to be. The glasship rose, a faint sensation she might never have noticed if she hadn't been tense and waiting for it. Tsen pored over a map, ignoring her. There was one other chair. She sat without waiting for his invitation and lounged and yawned until Tsen rolled the map away and smiled his ever-amiable smile. He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Dragon-Queen.’
‘T'Varr.’ The half-smile, the slight opening of the mouth, the tilt of the head, the lick of the lips, they were all instinct now and rarely wasted; and though her silks were thick they were soaked through and clung to every curve. But from Tsen? Nothing. She found it hard not to admire him.
‘I'm having trouble with my eyrie,’ he said. ‘My enchanters have yet to discover how to make it move on its own and so we must tow it from place to place with glasships. It's an expensive business.’ He frowned. ‘Also I have been making a list of my enemies. It has become very long. I was wondering whether I should put you on it but I seem to have run out of space.’
He was looking at her hard. Reading her. She met his eyes. ‘Your enemies will desire what you have. They will desire your dragons and they will desire me.’ She tipped her head and turned her shoulder and dipped her eyes at him. ‘Perhaps they will make offers.’
‘Oh, I'm quite sure they will, but if they do,
you
will not hear of them. You will remain in the eyrie now.’ He frowned. ‘Let us not pretend: you're no ordinary slave but you're not
that
special. You have something I want but you know that with time and effort I can get it elsewhere. I'm not going to let you go, but if you're trouble to me, I
will
get rid of you. I want you to consider this for a moment: do you wish to be a little piece on the board of a big game, moved from one square to another, bartered and traded and in the end sacrificed as all little pieces are?’ His brow furrowed. ‘You were a ruler in your own land. It must have crossed your mind that my ships are already on their way back to bring me more dragon-riders. And they won't just be
my
ships either. When they come back, you will become . . .’ He turned up his palms and snapped his fingers and blew a little puff of air across the table at her. ‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Or I could let you be what you are, within reason.
You may be mistress of my dragons for as long as they follow my wishes, however many riders I may one day acquire.’
Zafir found she believed him. Not that it would stop her in the end. ‘Let us say I'm yours for now.’ Another flutter of her eyelashes, completely wasted, and now the wet silks were simply irritating and making her skin itch. She tugged them back into shape.
‘So.’ Tsen rubbed his hands. ‘Tell me: what does a dragon-queen do when she's surrounded by enemies on all sides?’
Burn them. Burn them like she'd burned them at Evenspire. At the Pinnacles. At Furymouth. Yet as she opened her mouth she thought of Jehal, stopped and met Tsen's eye. ‘I would look very hard, Baros Tsen T'Varr, for the enemy I had not yet seen hiding among such a crowd. The one who stands beside me and calls himself a friend.’