Vey Rin clambered out of the bath. ‘You might want to have him check up on your friend Jima Hsian. Strange friends he has recently. Unlikely ones, all things considered, and you might find it clears your mind to my proposal.’ He stretched. ‘I think we're finished. You've done some nice design here, given what you had to work with. You always did have a taste for how a bathhouse should feel. If this all turns bad for you, Tsen, I have a place for you in Vespinarr. You'd do a much better job of this than I ever did. We could go to the tiger pits together like we used to.’ Rin chuckled and shook his head. ‘An evening with you and we haven't made a single wager? You must be working too hard.’
Tsen followed him out, even though all he wanted was to stay exactly where he was and have Kalaiya come and join him to tell her about the madness that Vey Rin T'Varr had just put in his head. But he didn't. Partly because what kind of a host would he be to let Vey Rin see himself out, and partly because of that last little needle there. I could live in Vespinarr? I could be a part of your family? I could be your bathhouse designer? One tiny step above a sword-slave? I don't think so, Vey Rin T'Varr.
It took Kalaiya, much later when Rin was gone, to point out that his offer hadn't been an offer at all. It had been a threat.
51
Patience was the prime virtue of an Elemental Man. The golems of stone stood unblinking, unmoving, sealed between doors of gold and broken glass, but patience, beyond all the Watcher's other talents, was always his greatest weapon. Sooner or later the kwen and the Lady Elesxian would decide that he was gone.
The light outside began to fade. Sooner or later they'd grow hungry.
And so they did. He admired them for their care, placing a screen of beaten golden plates where the last glass door had been, passing through curtain upon curtain of thick silver chains, keeping him out from where the Stoneguard stood if he hadn't already been inside one of them. But the golems were stone and not flesh, and so inside he was and they took him to exactly where he had wanted to be. To Quai'Shu’s kwen and to Elesxian, his eldest granddaughter, whom Xican had made crude and brash. Elesxian, when the Watcher closed his eyes, sounded a lot like her father. They were talking about him, about who had sent him. Shrin Chrias Kwen had her hand in his own and knelt before her. It was all very touching.
The Watcher almost wept for them. Were they so stupid? I serve my lord and only my lord.
Blink. The sea lord had been explicit about the Lady Elesxian. Less so about his kwen and so he chose the kwen. He burst into the air behind him, knife at the ready. Chrias was quick. He dropped and rolled away before the Watcher could get his knife around the kwen's neck and sprang back into a defensive stance, blades drawn and swinging around him. Not that it would have saved him on another day, for the Watcher would simply appear above him, knife point down, or else burst from the ground beneath. But the kwen and his kind liked to think there was no attack that could not be blocked and the Watcher saw no reason to disabuse of him of such a ridiculous idea, not today. So he stayed where he was and sheathed the bladeless knife and held up his open hands.
‘Your sea lord sends his salutations to the divine and beautiful daughter of his blood and to his faithful and ferocious kwen.’ The Watcher's words were bland, the greeting carefully neutral. Elesxian spat at his feet. She was shaking. Not so stupid that she didn't realise she had no escape. Shrin Chrias Kwen shook his head, blades still a-whirr.
Blink. Inverted over the kwen's head. Finger outstretched to touch the tip of his ear, a brush of skin on skin, no more. Then back exactly where he'd been an instant before. ‘You may cease your sword dance. It cannot do what you ask of it.’ A pity. Now this kwen would tell others.
Shrin Chrias stopped. For a second he stood frozen. Then he sheathed his swords and one hand touched his ear.
‘Baros Tsen is no sea lord!’ hissed Elesxian. ‘Our sea lord is Quai'Shu and he chose my father to follow him. And my father-’
‘Chose no one,’ said the kwen softly.
‘It would have been me!’
The Watcher tried again, a little more slowly this time. ‘Sea Lord Quai'Shu sends his salutations to the divine and beautiful daughter of his blood and to his faithful and ferocious kwen.’ He gave the words a little time to sink in and then, while they were still staring at him and wondering what he would do next, he walked calmly to the improvised door of beaten plates of gold, pulled it open and vanished into the air.
A warning. That was all. They would understand. Shrin Chrias Kwen would not be a problem again.
52
After the foolishness with the alchemist Baros Tsen sent her the pick of his men. They were fine enough, sturdy specimens, well built and well hung and they claimed to be skilful. But they were slaves. Zafir scorned them and sent them back.
‘Real men.’ She smiled at Tsen when he called her to him. ‘I like to hunt and stalk my prey, not pick up the leavings of others, however pretty they may be.’
‘A tigress,’ he said.
Her smile faded and she shook her head. ‘A dragon-queen, Baros Tsen.’ Maybe he meant it kindly. She could almost believe it. But if she'd had a knife with her right then she might have stabbed him for that, and patience and waiting and consequences be hanged.
When the lord of Vespinarr in his dragon robes had his moment of madness, she'd stopped Diamond Eye from killing them all. Tsen owed her for that. Another second and the dragon would have burned all the Taiytakei to ash where they stood, and Tsen too. And she could have let it. All she'd had to do was nothing at all and they'd have been dead and Diamond Eye would have feasted on their bones. She could have climbed onto his back and flown away. But she'd done what she'd done and held Diamond Eye back, and afterwards she wondered why. Because she could? To show them that she was the mistress of their dragon? Both reason enough, perhaps?
In the days that followed she thought about what might have been. Climbing onto Diamond Eye's back. Jumping off the edge of the eyrie. Vanishing out into the desert. What if she'd done that and their lightning hadn't brought her down before she got away? What then? The Elemental Man would have come for her, that's what Bellepheros always said. She'd get a mile or two before he caught her and cut her head off her shoulders and there wouldn't be a thing she could do to stop him. But when she looked, it wasn't that that had stopped her.
What if he hadn't caught her? What then? Alone in the desert. They'd hunt her. Fine — she had a dragon — she'd hunt them back. Whatever came for her she'd fight it, and sooner or later she'd die because she had nothing to protect her from the lightning or from Diamond Eye's fire.
But it wasn't that either. Maybe it was because whatever she did, whatever battles she won, she could never go home. Her old life was a world away, a crossing of the storm-dark, but it wasn't that. Even if she smashed and burned their world piece by piece until she forced them to take her home, even if she found a way to do that without them slitting her throat, what then? What was there? What would it look like? One rider and one dragon against whoever had taken her throne?
Closer to the mark now.
She was waiting. She hadn't realised it until now but that was the truth of it. She was waiting for something to happen. She didn't know why or what but it felt right. And she would return to take her throne one day, but when she did it would be with an army at her back. And she didn't know how or when, but that was how it would be, because she was who she was.