She climbed from Diamond Eye's back, taking a skin of water down with her, and began to strip off her armour. In the eyrie she'd worn it as though it was tawdry and tattered. There had been eyes on her then, Taiytakei eyes, and she was the dragon-queen, haughty and imperious and filled with disdain for anything they could offer. Now she could be a child, gawping with awe at each piece, at the exquisiteness of the glass and the gold, of the construction so far beyond anything the smiths of the Silver City could ever have made. Beautiful. Almost the most glorious piece of craftsmanship she'd ever seen. Almost, except for. .
She stopped. Someone else was with them. Not that she could hear or see them but someone was, nonetheless. The dragon felt a presence and so she felt it too. Diamond Eye was casting his eyes around, thinking how hungry he was. Wary, Zafir put the last piece of her armour down and looked about. She wasn't afraid — it was hard to be afraid with Diamond Eye beside her, his hunger pulsing out in waves through her thoughts. But cautious nevertheless, given who it must be and the look in Tsen's eye when she'd left him. ‘Watcher, you should show yourself before my dragon eats you.’
The Watcher appeared a little way away. He walked towards her slowly and carefully, and sat down cross-legged, keeping a respectful distance. ‘Your dragon will not eat me, slave,’ he said. ‘You are admiring the work of our enchantress. They are very fine pieces. Baros Tsen wastes her talents by keeping her at work in the eyrie. They would fetch a fine price and he could use the money.’
A flush of anger washed through her. She'd been seen after all, after being so careful in the eyrie. By one of them. Diamond Eye bared his teeth and hissed behind her. Maybe she should let him eat the Elemental Man. But the Watcher was too quick. He'd vanish and then appear again behind her with his knife and that would be that. ‘I am impressed,’ she said at last. ‘And curious to know how they were constructed. But they are not the best pieces I have seen.’ Which was true. In the Pinnacles, deep under the Octagon and past the Hall of Mirages, there were the mysterious treasures the Silver King had wrought and left behind, carefully put away where no blood-mage or alchemist would ever be allowed to wake them up again; compared to those even the exquisite craft of Bellepheros's enchantress seemed dull.
‘You are not flying the way you were told.’ The Watcher looked at her.
‘Is that so?’ She smiled and took a few steps away from the armour laid out around her, back towards Diamond Eye until she was standing almost beneath him. ‘If it is then you've taken a very long time to point that out. Do you intend to remain here for the night, Elemental Man?’
‘I do not.’
Zafir stared at him, half-tempted to let him see the subtle signs and signals just to see if he'd bite. But she let the temptation go. He wouldn't. He wasn't the kwen, nor any of the kwen's men. She wouldn't snare this one so easily, at least, not that way.
His face was stony. He stared at her and said nothing.
‘Well if you have nothing to say, killer, you will excuse me, but I've spent a very long day on the back of Diamond Eye and have only just touched the earth. Avert your eyes if you will.’ Not that she cared. She turned her back on him and walked another few steps until she was fully beneath the bulk of the dragon, stripped away the dragon-scale leggings, lifted the short soft skirt beneath and squatted. The relief was so sharp that she let out a little sigh of pleasure. When she was done she walked back and knelt across from the Elemental Man, picked up the skin of water she'd brought down from Diamond Eye's back and drank deeply. ‘Is that why you're here? Did you come to tell me that I'm going the wrong way?’
Back the way she'd come, back towards the distant eyrie, the setting sun in the clear sky turned the desert and its mesas into islands in a lake of fire. The Elemental Man watched her drink for a while. ‘Did Baros Tsen tell you to do this?’ he asked.
Zafir paused. Delicious water trickled down the skin of her throat. ‘I'm his slave, killer, not yours. Ask him.’
The Watcher shook his head. ‘I do not need to.’
‘Then why ask me?’ She finished off the water and rummaged in her knapsack for something to eat. ‘Are there Elemental Women as well as Elemental Men?’
‘There are not. We are eunuchs.’
Which perhaps explained a lot. ‘How disappointing for you.’
‘It is a small loss compared to the powers we learn. One that is barely noticed.’
‘But how can you know if you don't know what you're missing?’
The Watcher snorted and Zafir couldn't tell whether he was laughing or merely disgusted by the thought. ‘The temptation of our nature is strong enough. More would be ill advised. If such things are of so much interest to you, the Righteous Men who live in the depthless caverns beneath the Konsidar are able to change their shape at will. They are not as we are but they are born of a similar seed. They are masters of flesh and bone and they can adjust themselves with considerable fluidity when the need arises. Or the desire. Very few know this truth that I have shared with you, even among the Taiytakei. Enjoy it a while, while you can.’
Zafir let out a scornful laugh. ‘Shall I suppose that you've shared this with me to spare yourself my further interest, imagining somehow that you had it?’ She shook her head. ‘But you did not. So have no fear of me, elemental eunuch.’ The knapsack offered her dry flatbread, hard enough to make axeheads, and salted meat. Linxia meat probably. Both made her grateful she still had all her teeth, and annoyed that she'd left the rest of the water on the dragon's back. ‘Will you be a gentleman for me, Watcher? Vanish yourself to the back of my dragon and retrieve another skin of water for me?’
‘I will not.’
Something in his voice was off. Not only disdain and disgust but something else. ‘Because I am a slave?’ But it wasn't that. He was afraid of the dragon. She climbed up herself, took her time over it, found another skin of water and took a third to be sure and tossed them both down to the earth. Stripped to her underclothes, the air still felt warm but it was cooling. The sun was setting and the stars were beginning to show and the desert air was cold at nights. Not that she'd notice, sleeping beside the living furnace that was Diamond Eye. ‘Why are you here then, Elemental Man, if not to stare at my strange pale body and let your eyes wander over it, not sure whether it attracts or repels you — yes, I've seen enough of that. It's very hard not to notice these things and it tires me to the bone. But not from you, which makes your company a touch more welcome than otherwise. Nor from Baros Tsen, for that matter — is he a eunuch too?’