Authors: Stephen Deas
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.
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 once 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
.
The baths were ready for him as they always were. He let Rin have a good look at them, though there wasn't much to see. The chamber at the eyrie's heart was a hemisphere of white stone that glowed too brightly in the daytime, just right at twilight and was a little too dim at night. Tsen had tried to think of ways to change it but the stone did what the stone did and it turned out there wasn't much to be done about it. Ten white stone archways ringed the centre of the room. They weren't much to look at, not ornamented in any way, just arches. Somewhere in the middle, when they'd first found this room, had been a plinth of yet more white stone. Tsen supposed it was still there but now his bath filled the space inside the arches. Black marble flecked with gold, the same as he had in Khalishtor. Shallow steps between each arch led up to the bath. He'd thought at the time it was a shame they hadn't been able dig through the white stone and set the bath into the floor as it should have been; now he knew a little more about what this white
stone did, he didn't mind so much, even if it
was
all a bit of an ugly hodge-podge.
Vey Rin walked around the outside of the cavern and then up the steps to the bath and dipped his hand into the water. He didn't say a word, but when he came back to Tsen he nodded. They left the last of Shonda's white-cloaks and Quai'Shu’s black-cloaks outside, disrobed, then let the eyrie slaves take their clothes and close the iron doors to the bathhouse behind them. The only doors Tsen had told Chay-Liang to leave as they were.
‘My quiet place.’ Tsen smiled once they were alone. He walked up the steps and eased himself into the water. The slaves had got the temperature just right for once and his old favourite Xizic oil too. His, not Rin's. Rin preferred the subtler Xizic of Shinpai. ‘A shadow of my bathhouse in Xican and a mere speck of dirt beside your own in the Kabulingnor, but one makes do as one can.’
‘Apparently one does.’ Rin slipped into the water beside him, clearly unimpressed. Tsen gestured to the white stone of the cavern, glowing as it always did.
‘Even my enchanters cannot mark this stone. It is impenetrable to them in some way.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘It has forced many compromises into my design.’
Ha! And there's a thing you probably didn't know when you came here and I probably shouldn't have told you at all, but there you go and now I have. Startling enough to merit a word with your lord and a small panic at Hingwal Taktse, I should have thought. I'll tell Chay Liang to expect some guests shortly, shall I?
Little moments like this came between them rarely. He made sure to savour it. He could see Rin thinking, trying to decide whether he was lying.
I wonder how you would take it if I told you how impenetrable my stone is to certain others too, eh?
Elemental
others, but I think I'll continue to keep that little jewel to myself
.
‘Will your usual slave not join us?’
Yes, and thank you for that little needle-nod to my weakness
. ‘Kalaiya? Do you think she should?’
Of course not, not when we're here to discuss the future of both our lords, or do you already know that I'll tell her everything anyway?