‘What a delight.’ She gave him an acid glare. ‘I can barely contain myself.’ But yes, she understood. The doors were for stopping an Elemental Man, and the first thing anyone who saw them would wonder would be what use they were when an Elemental Man could simply merge with the stone instead and simply pass round them. And the second thing that a man like Shonda would then realise would be that the doors must mean that they couldn't pass through the stone. And Tsen didn't want them to know that.
The t'varr shook his head. ‘They always have to show off, don't they?’
‘The Lord of Silver flaunts his wealth? When will that ever change?’ Chay-Liang sniffed. There was more to life than silver. Other kinds of wealth worth more than money.
‘Oh, I hope never.’ Tsen turned and flashed her his perfect white teeth and she had to crush the urge to slap his smile off him. ‘And the question you really wanted to ask is Why are they here? Well think about that one too, mistress of our lord's eyrie.’
Chay-Liang jumped as if she'd been stung. ‘What? Me?’
‘Not really, of course, but that's what they think. They're here to see our dragons. . your dragons. Their, ah. . investment. And to see our sea lord since he's so close by. And of course they're really here to see whether Quai'Shu is as ill as they think he is and how much of a stake in our little enterprise they can wheedle out of us in exchange for the debt our lord has amassed.’
‘You mean you have amassed.’
Tsen's smile didn't waver. ‘I suppose I do. I suppose what I really mean is we have amassed.’ He patted Liang on the shoulder. From almost anyone else she might have taken offence, but Tsen was wearing his harmless amiable fat-man persona and he slipped into it so well that it worked even on her, even now, even when she'd known him for so long that she knew it for exactly the facade it was. ‘Go on, go and get your alchemist and your dragon ready. I'm sure that's what they really want to see. Your dragon-rider too if you can be sure she won't suddenly set about them.’ He laughed. ‘Not that I'd particularly mind in some cases. Oh, and LaLa is about some other business and not here to keep an eye on things. There's no way they should know that of course, but you can never be too cautious with our dear friends from the mountains. Keep your alchemist safe.’
‘Not here?’ Chay-Liang raised an eyebrow. ‘Exactly when we need him! Their arrival shows interesting timing.’
For a moment Tsen's mask slipped and his eyes glinted like a pair of daggers. ‘Doesn't it just?’ He shook himself and turned away. ‘There's going to be a big formal meal and all the usual hooha. Meido and Bronzehand are both with the Vespinese but don't you worry about that. My problems. Just make sure your dragon doesn't eat anyone. Or your rider either.’
‘They are not mine, T'Varr!’
‘Today they are, Liang, today they are.’
Tsen strolled away down the battlements towards the steps that led to the dragon yard. Chay-Liang watched him go. He passed a cluster of air cannon, the black-powder guns that pointed into the sky to shatter any glasships that strayed overhead. They were inferior in almost every way to lightning cannon except for the one crucial flaw: a lightning cannon wouldn't trouble anything made of gold-glass.
Would they trouble a dragon? She looked past Tsen across the dragon yard to where the monster was perched on the far wall. It was staring at the approaching glasships with the fixed intensity of a predator. Even from here she could feel its restless tension. She could feel its hunger. It wants to fly, Belli said. He was on the wall too now but on the far side, close to the dragon and with the rider beside him. Liang bristled as she saw them. It had been a bad day from the start and now she had to get this slave — Zafir, was it? — to cooperate when neither of them liked each other even one little bit. A slave who owned slaves of her own? Tsen should never have allowed that; and the woman might have been a queen in her own land but here she certainly wasn't. She was a slave, that was all. An unbranded slave, which made her a nothing, yet she strutted as though she was mistress of everyone.
Mentally Liang slapped herself. The alchemist was an unbranded slave too, and they got on just fine. Or they had until the rider had shown up with Tsen. The whole eyrie had heard about what had happened next. It had run through the slaves like wildfire. And in Tsen's own gondola too, and barely a few minutes after she'd arrived! Disgusting.
Jealous, Liang?
Yes, she was, and deathly disappointed that Belli would do something like that, and damn the stupid alchemist because he seemed to worship the ground on which this woman trod when he should really have known better. She treated him like a slave and he took it! He took it as though it was perfectly normal, when he was the one who made this eyrie work, he was the one who made the potions and tamed the monsters. What did she do? Nothing! She could fly their monster, could she? But so far all she'd done was flaunt herself and strut and look down her nose at everyone. Everyone! She barely deigned to show any respect even for Tsen.
Liang huffed and turned her back on the Vespinese glasships. Stupid to let a slave get under her skin like that. She walked to the dragon yard. Bellepheros had come down from the wall to be with the Scales now, herding the hatchlings towards the wall to make space for the gondolas to land. She laughed a little as she walked over to him. Wouldn't do for Tsen's visitors to catch the dragon disease now would it? It had already crept out once and now Belli had all sorts of quarantine rules in place. No one is to have intimate relations with anyone else for two months. He'd actually said that, and when she'd blinked and looked at him and he'd smiled at her and said, I mean no sex — that's how it usually spreads, she'd turned bright red. And yes, it had been funny, because yes, she was a bit of a prude, even among the Taiytakei, but at least she wasn't too full of her own importance to admit it. The alchemist, as always, was shockingly direct. All he could ever find to do with her squeamishness was laugh at it. Usually she ended up laughing too; and obviously she had known what he was talking about in the first place.
Today her laughter died. No intimate relations? Tell that to your rider. Tell that to yourself every time she's around. Maybe the slave could catch the disease. Liang smiled again at that. She'd seen what it was already doing to the Scales. Wouldn't that be a shame?
She waved at Belli in the dragon yard and he waved back, warning her not to get too close, and then he left the hatchlings with their Scales and came to greet her. He always used to smile when he saw her but not any more, not since Zafir had come.
‘We have visitors,’ she told him. ‘They'll want to see you. They'll want to see the dragon too.’
‘They can probably see Diamond Eye already.’ Yes, and there was another thing. He'd taken to calling the dragon by that name the moment she had told him to. Liang looked up at the battlements. Zafir sat beside the monster, looking at it while the dragon lowered its head and looked back. Their faces were a few feet apart and the dragon made her seem so incredibly small. It would have made anyone seem small, but Zafir was the only one who would sit so close to it. The only one who wasn't at least just a little bit afraid, damn her.
‘I don't trust her at all,’ she muttered. ‘Look at them. It's almost as though they're talking about us.’