The jade raven was fat and bloated now, dopey and slow but it came when Rin called in clicks and whistles, hopping out of the cage and the ruins of the slave who'd once stood there. It flapped lazily onto Rin's arm. Tsen couldn't help but recoil a few steps, but the bird didn't seem interested in him. It preened a few of its feathers and then settled. Rin gently tugged the silver ring from its leg. He stood calm as he squinted at it with the bird on his arm, a lethal enigma of a creature made by sorcerers long dead and that no one understood, and Tsen wondered at the absurdity of Rin's blind belief in his own invulnerability; but then the dragon shifted on its wall across the eyrie and he felt the castle tremble under his feet again and laughed at his own absurdity instead.
Rin peered at the message ring, struggling with the tiny words, then threw it high into the air over the rim of the eyrie. It glittered once as it caught the sun and then vanished towards the sands below. He clapped a hand on Tsen's shoulder. Tsen flinched — Rin still had that damned bird perched on his other arm. ‘Well, there's a thing. The Great Sea Council has agreed to turn your dragon on the renegades and outlaws of Bom Tark.’ He smiled. ‘It seems that not one lord raised an objection. I dare say there will be quite a turnout to come and watch.’
Tsen winced. He only had himself to blame. Bom Tark. A few thousand runaway slaves. He'd made the suggestion before he'd seen the dragon fly. A few houses burned and a few hundred slaves killed, he'd thought, and then it would be done, but he knew better now. It wouldn't be that way at all, not with that monster and not with her. A chill ran over him and prickled his skin, even under the blaze of the sun. And a dozen glasships hovering overhead filled with fat old men like me. Hsians and kwens and t'varrs and maybe even sea lords peering out from their nice safe gold-glass windows. Scratching their chins and complaining about the wine as thousands die, clucking their tongues and furrowing their brows and making notes, complaining about the smoke spoiling their view and and feverishly wondering who might burn next. And my dragon-rider. . He shook his head. She'd leave no room for doubt. She'd be perfect. Meticulous and ruthless and utterly thorough. She'd leave Bom Tark a black scar on the jungle coast. Every ship and building burned, every single man, woman and child dead. Worst of all, she'd delight in it.
‘Are you cold?’ Vey Rin raised an eyebrow.
‘I am disheartened.’
‘You are also, to remind you in your own words, drowning in debt. The dragon is all you have. You have to use it or sell it, Tsen, and you know that perfectly well. Lord Shonda would buy you in a flash. Live your life with us in every bit as much luxury as you live it now. Full of comfort but empty of any danger. Grow your apples and make your wine and spend your days in your bath with your slave. Why not, Tsen? Really, why not?’
‘While you burn whatever amuses you?’
Rin's face went cold. That was the end of their friendship, such as it was now, right there, which only went to show how little it had been worth. ‘Aria, T'Varr. I speak to you as one of our discipline to another but you're not the only one who might one day be lord of Xican. Don't imagine that Lord Shonda doesn't speak to the others.’ He frowned. ‘What's happened to you, Tsen? You saw everything so clearly not all that long ago.’
Tsen laughed in his face. ‘Your lord can speak to whoever he wishes. The dragons are here and they're mine. They will go where I say.’
Rin shook his head. ‘Your thinking has grown muddy, old friend.’ He didn't wait for an answer but instead walked towards the dragon. A Scales sat beside it, but neither the alchemist nor the rider was nearby. Safer to be close to them when they've flown than when they haven't, but safest of all to simply stay far away. They can be careless even when they are not malicious. The alchemist had told him that weeks ago and Tsen had been perfectly glad to heed his warning.
‘Rin!’ Tsen stopped fifty paces short, safely further than the length of the dragon's tail. Rin didn't. ‘What are you doing?’ In a flash of madness he found himself almost hoping that Rin did get too close, that some accident did happen. And then I should just get on with it and burn the Kabulingnor while I'm at it? Idiot! Shonda would murder us all!
Rin turned and Tsen could see the strain on his face, the fear. ‘I want to touch it,’ he called. ‘Before I go.’
‘Are you mad? You sound like Chrias. He did the same, but he's a kwen and you expect that sort of foolishness from kwens! Rin, please!’
Rin walked right up to the dragon. The Scales was waving him back but the Scales was a slave and Rin was a t'varr, the Hands of the Sea Lord Shonda. He reached out and touched the dragon's foot. The dragon didn't seem to notice. Rin backed away, turned and walked as fast as his dignity would allow and it was over and no one had died. Tsen found he was sweating and panting and he hadn't even moved. Rin was shaking when he came back. He still had that bloody bird on his arm too.
‘Are you happy now, Rin? Or would you like to dive off the rim of my eyrie and see if my dragon can catch you? Would that be enough excitement for you?’
Rin's eyes were wide. He grinned, and for an instant he wasn't a t'varr but just a man, one that Tsen had once rather liked. ‘I remember a Baros Tsen who would have raced me to be there first.’ He stared at the dragon. ‘It's so. .’
‘Big?’ That was a word for the dragon. Big.
‘Yes, but not just its size.’ He was gasping for breath. ‘We're safe here? Yes? Out of its reach?’ There was a quiver in his voice. Fear. Not surprising after what he'd just done but there was more, something. .
Rin clucked and clicked his tongue and lifted his arm. The jade raven launched itself into the air and flew straight at the dragon. Tsen stared in disbelief. ‘Rin!’ His mouth stopped working and simply hung open. No words. He had no words for this.
‘I'm sorry, my friend,’ and for once Tsen truly believed him, ‘but Lord Shonda commands it.’
‘Why?’
‘There are sorcerers in Aria.’
The bird landed on the dragon's back. The dragon ignored it. ‘Couldn't you have at least tried it on one of the small ones?’ Tsen wanted to punch someone. No. Because if it works then everything changes and I have almost nothing and Shonda has the power again. And to think I called you a friend once. You bastard!
The dragon's head snapped round. The jade raven jumped into the air. The dragon shot fire, missing it but spraying flames across half the dragon yard as the bird flew between its legs. The dragon stamped, the shock shuddering through the whole castle. Tsen staggered into Rin. ‘You stupid t'varr! What have you done?’
The bird flew out into the open space outside the eyrie. The dragon's tail flicked out, precision perfect. The jade raven plunged at the last moment, but the dragon seemed to anticipate the dive. The very end of the dragon's tail caught the raven like a whip and the bird exploded in a cloud of gleaming green feathers that hung for a moment in the sky before they floated slowly away. What was left of the bird fell towards the desert and out of sight, as broken as the slave it had just eaten.
‘It didn't work.’ Rin's eyes gleamed. ‘It didn't work, but it felt it!’
Tsen gaped. ‘And are you pleased or disappointed? I have a mind to put your name to my Elemental Man for that.’ And he might have said more, or simply pushed Rin off the edge of the eyrie himself, but now the dragon had turned. Its eyes fixed on Tsen and Vey Rin and it stared, exact and calculating, hungry and malevolent. Tsen cringed. The alchemist had said fifty paces but even a thousand would have felt futile now. He couldn't move and the monster was towering over them both and it seemed almost as though it was inside his head, pinning him to the stone beneath his feet. When it came it came fast, crushing the Scales beneath its feet as though it had forgotten he was there, intent focused entirely on Tsen. He felt himself falling apart on the inside and still he couldn't move. Was this what happened to Quai'Shu?