In this slow methodical way he finally found the hsian. It would have been easy to strike in that first moment, to appear and open Nimpo Jima's throat and vanish again to leave his death a mystery, but there was a greater purpose to his being here and so he waited and watched for another day until Quai'Shu’s traitor of a hsian was called and walked alone into the inner sanctum of Sea Lord Senxian himself. The Watcher followed. He would kill the hsian in front of the sea lord. He would kill him so that the hsian's blood stained the sea lord's shoes. The message would be as clear as it could possibly be. It could have been you. But sea lords do not strike at one another. And Senxian would understand, and the plans that he and the hsian were laying against Baros Tsen T'Varr and Sea Lord Quai'Shu would fall quietly to nothing, and there would be no more to be done.
He merged with the air, following the hsian. Nimpo Jima sat down on the floor beside a low table. On the other side knelt Senxian in a robe of shimmering rainbows, large and strong but fat with age. On the walls hung cloaks of dazzling emerald feathers. Cups of crushed leaves sat on the table beside a coppery bowl of steaming water.
‘Hsian.’ The Watcher waited, one with the air until the moment when they were close enough for the hsian's blood to touch the sea lord himself. The song ran strong in his head here, the voices of the moon sorcerers. Mooncrown. Earthspear. Suncloak. Starknife.
Somehow — he would never understand how — he didn't see the tall pale-skinned slave who had no place at all being in the same room as a sea lord. Didn't see him until the man stepped behind the air that he had become and drove a gold-handled knife into the place where he was. The slave was dressed in grey with a tattooed face and the knife hilt was engraved with stars, and suddenly the Watcher was flesh and bone and the gold-hilted knife was inside him. He shuddered. How?
Grey robes. The grey dead men and making something. .
How didn't I see him?
The knife held him fast, paralysed. It didn't move but he felt three little cuts, three little pieces of his essence sucked away, and then a voice like thunder in his head, crushing and destroying, like the moon sorcerers had been but stronger by far. The knife withdrew and he fell to his knees. Terror welled up inside him and he had no idea what to do with it because Elemental Men had nothing to fear and so were never afraid, because nothing in any of the worlds of the Taiytakei could ever touch them.
The Picker, he reminded himself. The Picker died too. And the one before.
He couldn't move. Not a muscle.
‘You're not going to die,’ said the grey dead man. ‘None of this has happened. I was never here and no one ever touched you. You will never see me, as these men never see me, even when I am right in front of you, for your eyes will simply look elsewhere, but now and then you will hear my voice. Do what you came to do and return with the knowledge that Sea Lord Senxian will make war on Sea Lord Quai'Shu for his dragons no matter what warning is sent. When that war comes, you will find a way to steal one of your master's dragon eggs and you will take it to those who dwell beneath the Konsidar. When that is done, you will go to some place so remote that you will never be found and you will cut out your own heart.’
The knife vanished and with it every memory of what had happened, and all the Watcher knew was that he was no longer the air but flesh and bone and the two men in the room in front of him had turned to stare, horror covering their faces.
He blinked. Shifted. The bladeless knife flashed and the hsian's blood sprayed across the plates and the steaming water and spattered Senxian's arm. The Watcher stood for a moment, let the sea lord drink him in, let him understand, and then was gone, slipping slowly and steadily back through the layers of Senxian's palace with the same care with which he had come.
57
The shade of the dragon called Silence slipped among the ghosts and fleeting spirits of men. It closed its thoughts to the siren calls of waiting eggs and opened wary eyes to the slowly awakening things that now moved among the ruins of what the little ones called Xibaiya. It moved with careful speed and purpose back to the edges of the hole and the oozing spread of That Which Came Before. The door of its prison was gone, the door that had once been the Earth Goddess frozen at the moment of her death, mingled with the essence of the half-god who'd slain her. The dragon had known this already but now it sat and watched, pondering the open hole and the Nothing beyond. There was no hurry to the void and the chaos. It crept hither and yon around the rip in creation that the Earthspear had made, devouring what it touched but touching with no purpose. It was easy to stay away from those wandering tendrils of nothingness, slow and blind as they were. It would be less easy later, when everything was unravelled and only those tendrils remained.
How long will it take?
It tried to catch a passing little one but the shade fluttered away. They were such ephemeral things, these children of the sun. It would be interesting, the dragon thought, to feed one of their souls to the Nothing and watch it be consumed. Perhaps there was an insight to be gained into the nature of things. Or perhaps not, but either way it couldn't catch them. They winked into the underworld and quickly sped away, and when the dragon chased them it was slow and they were quickly beyond its senses.
Silence.
The little ones had given it that name. It had snarled against such a crude word when it had first woken, but other dragons had kept their human names and its own thoughts had subtly changed. Silence was a blissful thing. Death was silent. Here was silent. In the living realms with the little ones all around, their thoughts gibbered and jabbered constantly. Silence was beautiful.
I will keep it. I will become it. I will bring it and I will surround myself with it.
After a time it tired of watching the mindless Nothing grow, inch by tiny inch, the cancer of creation. How long will it take? Lifetimes, and the dragon was too impatient for such things. It felt the call of eggs, here and there and everywhere, scattered in places unfamiliar as well as those well known. The little ones with the ships, they had taken eggs. Perhaps it would be amusing to bring some silence to them?
It moved, but not yet towards the eggs. There was another thing, close to the bleeding wound of the underworld. Something else that lingered. A familiar taste.
Sister? Brother?
But it wasn't a dragon. Something like a dragon, but not. Something more. A silver half-god, nothing less, and the dragon wondered how one of the makers was here. The half-gods didn't pass through Xibaiya and never had. They'd had their own ways, even before they were banished by the earth.
Curious then that one of them should be here, and more curious too that it was close to That Which Came Before. Did you come to see, old one? But this is not your domain and you should know better than to be here.
As it came so close that they might have touched, it tasted a second shade, a little one, and now it understood. The two were locked together, each held fast by the other so that neither could move, a tiny mirror of the Earth Goddess and her slayer wrapped in their prison.
Old one?
The shades writhed and screamed together. The dragon turned away, sorrow and disgust all at once. Yes, an old one, one of the silver half-gods, a maker, but diminished to almost nothing, a barely flickering ember of the bright light it had once been long, long ago.