‘A thoughtful present from Chay-Liang to welcome me back.’ He supposed he'd have to watch her more carefully now. Not that he didn't have to anyway. She'd wrapped the alchemist around her finger and made him her pet, and even an enchantress couldn't be so naive as to not realise how important a piece he was in the great game of the sea lords.
‘You should give her some of your wine.’
Tsen snorted. ‘Not that thoughtful!’ He stared at her. No my lord or my master or kowtowing or averting her eyes, they were long past that. She was smiling, and her smile made him melt inside every time because there was no artifice there, only warmth.
‘My t'varr. Keeps all our sails filled with wind. I'm glad you're back. Take my advice — make Chay-Liang your friend. And yes, take me to the desert. You know I'd like that.’ Sometimes, when she thought he wasn't looking, he saw the harshness of the sands in her eyes. I know you always missed it. Taking her to the desert wasn't just for him.
He closed his eyes and sank beneath the water. T'Varr to a sea lord. A vast responsibility and so he addressed its size as any t'varr would: he broke it down into smaller and smaller pieces and then found other people to do them until there was nothing left. Then he hired some more people to do the breaking into pieces, and more still to do the hiring, until in principle he had no real responsibilities left to attend to at all but it never quite seemed to work out that way. And never mind the small matter of our fleet and our city and our lord being so far in debt to the depthless pockets of Vespinarr that they likely own my bath, Kalaiya and probably even me by now. But meanwhile we'll simply borrow ever more, all on Quai'Shu’s promise of what his dragons will mean. Wasn't that how it had always been? It certainly felt that way.
He came up for air and sighed. On another day he might have talked to Kalaiya about it all, told her everything, his doubts and his worries and passed the burden to her and gone away feeling lighter, but that wasn't what he'd come for today. And now I'm spoiling it. ‘I'm sorry, my dear. I'm not the best company.’
‘No, you're not.’ Kalaiya held up her wine glass and toyed with it, peering at the designs on the stem. ‘This is strange work.’
‘It comes from Aria.’
‘Which one's that again?’
Another reason he loved her. He'd shown her maps with all the realms that the navigators had found in their steerings through the storm-dark a hundred times. The eight worlds, or seven or maybe nine depending on which navigator was doing the counting. She never remembered any of them. She didn't care. ‘The one that's a problem,’ he said.
‘Well, I'm sure I don't know anything about that.’ She pushed out her bottom lip at him.
Tsen shook his head. ‘When it becomes too much, Vespinarr and Cashax will pause their rivalry and something will be done.’ He leaned a little further back, sinking into the warmth again and stretched his arms behind his head. ‘Ah, the pleasure of a knotty problem that belongs entirely to someone else.’
Kalaiya's lips still smiled but not her eyes. ‘Your precious world order?’
‘Exactly. But not mine. Yours too. All of ours.’ She did that sometimes, reminded him of the last little crevasse between them. How he owned her; and when she did, it was like being stabbed. Then Kalaiya reached across the water and stroked his cheek and the flash of bitterness was gone as quickly as it came. Tsen clapped his hands with happy glee. ‘Let sea lords and their heirs pore over their charts and maps and their reports. Let Jima Hsian worry about Aria. It's not like he has anything much else to do!’ And as the conundrum comes to a head, my sea lord arrives with dragons. Why, any suspicious-minded fellow might see the telltale hand of some particularly clever hsian in such a confluence of circumstance. Very clever indeed. .
‘Jima Hsian is not the oaf you picture him to be, my master.’
‘Master?’ No, he certainly is not. ‘Have I upset you?’
‘You're thinking about your dragons again. You're not really here.’
‘I am thinking about dragons. I can't stop.’ He laughed ‘I've been thinking about dragons for years. Years and years while Quai'Shu frittered away our fleet's fortune and got us into this quicksand of debt.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I had no choice. I went to him with the quiet suggestion that maybe, just maybe, it was time to behave a little more — sail and sea help me, me of all creatures, saying a thing like this — responsibly; and then he brings back the alchemist and a plan and now there really are going to be dragons after all. They'll be here very soon. I think. . I think I'm actually scared, Kalaiya.’
‘Can I see them when they come?’
Tsen looked longingly at his glass of wine, almost empty. If he didn't raise more money soon then he'd be selling his private cellar just to get by, but the lords of Vespinarr with their bottomless pockets would pay anything at all when it came to dragons. Baros Tsen T'Varr and his lord Quai'Shu would see to that.
Kalaiya poked him with her toe under the water. She pouted. ‘You're not even listening to me!’
‘No.’ He hung his head. ‘I came here to tell you that you'd come with me when I left again and to celebrate that with you and to be away from everything else, and I've failed, abjectly failed.’
‘I asked, master, if I can see these dragons when they come.’ Her eyes said she was playing with him this time, not truly cross.
The air quivered. The candle flames flickered. At the edge of the shadows the steam swirled. Tsen felt it through the stone and the water. They were suddenly not alone. Kalaiya squealed and Tsen's heart paused in its beating for a moment as the shape of a man moved closer through the steam; and then he breathed out again as he saw it was the Watcher and not some other Elemental Man sent to kill him.
‘LaLa! You startled me!’ He spoke as kindly as he could manage but he couldn't hide the edge of fear swiftly turning to ire. Death by Elemental Man mostly happened to kwens and hsians because they were more the kind of people who harboured ambitions, while t'varrs were a different breed; but still, under the circumstances. . He turned to Kalaiya. ‘I'm sorry, my dear. Don't be afraid. The Great Sea Council mostly prefers us t'varrs to murder each other in more genteel ways, with banks and money and trades and exchanges, and in these I am in my element. LaLa's old-fashioned ways only come out when one of us is backed into a corner with nowhere left to go.’ He threw up his hands in mock despair. ‘At which point everyone goes for the throat in an unseemly scramble for the spoils while the drowning take as many of the vultures with them as they can before the corpse of their fleet is picked clean.’ He tutted. ‘I can't imagine why. But I am neither drowning nor a vulture and we are far from such a corner.’ Although by no means as far as I would like.
The Elemental Man stood there, distant, wreathed in steam and pointedly silent. Tsen sighed and stood up. On his feet, the water reached his hips, steam rising in coils and curls around him. ‘I'm sorry, Kalaiya. It seems this may be a matter for which you must leave us.’
She went without a word. He watched her go, mute and demure, but underneath he could tell that the appearance of the killer had shaken her. Perhaps he was the only one who knew her well enough to see, but then, who could blame her? This had been his time. Hers. Theirs. ‘I will make it up to you,’ he called after her. ‘You'll see both dragons and the desert. I promise.’
When she was gone, and only then, the Watcher bowed and fell to his knees. He shuffled closer, a dark shape in the gloom and the steam. It was the sort of quaint tradition that made Tsen laugh, since they both knew that one of them was a deadly sorcerer-assassin, guardian of the very fabric of creation and honed in his skills from the moment he'd been born, while the other was a fat naked man standing in a bath. And he kowtows to me while my slave freely shows her scorn. It was a strange world. Tsen sat back in the water. And why not? ‘Come on in, if you like.’ Not that the Watcher ever would.