Other slaves came while the alchemist was bathing. They brought food, a great feast when set against the endless rice and beans that Tuuran was used to. The new slaves whispered to the ones already there and the ones already there whispered back and they all stole glances at Tuuran. He smiled and bared his teeth back at them, putting them at their unease, and tasted all the food. He wasn't sure how he'd know if anything was poisoned until he keeled over and died but it was the sort of food that most sail-slaves couldn't dream of even seeing from a distance. The old luxuries of lemons and fire-brandy and wormy biscuits would never be the same after this! It made him laugh, imagining his old friends, Crazy Mad and the rest, bickering over a handful of fresh lemons. And he'd been no better either. Food of the gods, lemons. And now he looked at what was in front of him and shook his head. Ah, Crazy, if only you could see!
The thought came to him that he was much larger and stronger than the alchemist and so perhaps a small dose of poison wouldn't trouble him? He tasted the food some more to be sure. It seemed like it was his duty. After he was done, the furious slaves carefully rearranged everything to make it seem untouched. He watched them at it and laughed some more and shook his head.
The alchemist took his time with his ablutions. The palace slaves dressed him when he emerged and then he picked at the food with little interest. If he noticed that half had already gone, he didn't show it. When he was finished, the slaves would have done more if he'd asked but he sent them away. Tuuran watched them go. ‘Is this how life is in the Palace of Alchemy?’ he asked. Food made for them? Servants and women at their beck and call? Sounded fine enough. Certainly looked it.
‘We put on our own clothes and the food is distinctly inferior.’ Bellepheros had a faraway look on his face and Tuuran saw something there that stabbed like a knife. A hunger, a desire, a curiosity and a passion and, most of all, a wonder. He'd seen that look before on a woman's face, besotted with him after he'd shown her what an Adamantine lover could be like. She'd called it love. And he felt a touch of it too, but what he felt was awe, and awe wouldn't stop him from trying to go home. What he saw in the alchemist, that was the seed of something more.
‘You'll get comfortable here, Lord Grand Alchemist. Careful with that.’ He wrinkled his nose and sniffed uneasily. The room smelled of sweet fruit and a touch of Xizic. Seductive. He looked away and back again at the alchemist in case he was wrong but he wasn't.
‘In the Palace of Alchemy we're masters of our own destiny. Here I am not. They can never hide that.’ The alchemist snorted but that look in his eye didn't shift one little bit.
‘You will. I would.’
The alchemist waved at the food. ‘Help yourself. Enjoy it while it's here.’
Tuuran dutifully tried a little bit of everything again. ‘Better than ship's rations, that's for sure.’ He looked longingly at the door, wishing for the women magically to reappear. For all he knew this was the one night he'd have in this palace and then he'd be back to the sails or the oars. Or maybe the slave he'd punched was more important than he'd thought and they'd simply throw him into the sea after all. ‘It won't last.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I've been a slave to the Taiytakei for years and it never does.’
The Taiytakei came for the alchemist the next morning, and it turned out that Tuuran was right about the one night in the palace. When Bellepheros came back he looked angry and scared and bewildered all at once.
‘We're going to the desert,’ he said.
Tuuran nodded. ‘Just remember who you are, Lord Master Alchemist. Remember who you were and remember where you came from. Just that.’ Bellepheros still had that look, though, and Tuuran's words tasted ashen in his mouth, as though they already knew they were wasted.
27
Chay-Liang watched the alchemist because watching him was a quiet joy. There'd been something about him from the moment she'd first seen him. Yes, he was a slave, and yes, he was a pale-skinned foreigner, but the way his eyes darted from one thing to the next made all of that meaningless. She could see him thinking, that was the joy, and not the sort of thinking that she saw from the sea lords and t'varrs and hsians and kwens that filled her life. Not the how-do-I-get-what-I-want-from-you thinking that made her sick to the pit of her stomach but the what-is-this-how-does-it-work-where-is-the-door-to-understanding thinking that was her own, which had surrounded her among the enchanters at Hingwal Taktse when she'd been an apprentice there and a journeyman, and even in her early days as a mistress of her craft.
She led him into the gondola beneath the waiting glasship. It was a shame that the Palace of Leaves had been so cleverly built that one simply opened one bronze door and then another and stepped from palace to gondola without even realising; although given how the alchemist had taken to their arrival, maybe it was better this way. Perhaps drifting through the sky would come a little easier in a room of his own with only a handful of little glass windows looking over the outside world. It would be like the cabin on a ship, except larger of course and made of gold.
‘Your slave cannot come with us,’ she said as she showed him where they would both be living for the next two weeks. A gondola was a small place to be confined for so long but the opportunity was too good to miss. He'd have nowhere to go and nothing to do and no one else to talk to. Just the two of them and the mindless golem automaton that was their pilot; and by the time they reached the Lair of Samim, perhaps he would have told her everything he knew, everything there was to learn about dragons. She was eager for that, for the knowledge he had.
‘I need him,’ the alchemist said, and she smiled and nodded and then shook her head.
‘No, you don't.’
‘Well, then, I want him. Your master promised me anything for which I asked. Save my freedom, naturally, the one thing I wish for most of all.’
His petulance and the little flash of impotent anger made her laugh. ‘I know you do and I've already arranged for him to travel with the other slaves. He'll make a fine bodyguard for you.’
‘I don't need him for that! Do I?’
His ignorance was refreshing. It made her smile and warm to him even more than she already had. ‘Let's hope not.’
‘I want to go home.’
For now you do. That was her other challenge for the next two weeks. As well as siphoning away all his knowledge she meant to show him the glories of the world in which she lived. His curiosity and fascination with it were already doors into his mind, ajar, ready to seduce him with ideas and possibilities, and it would be better that way, surely, than making him work by threats and force. One day, she hoped, she could lead him right up to the gangway of a ship home, offer it to him and watch him say no.
She took his hand and led him to the window, charmed by how he flinched away from the sky, and pointed to the palace and showed him its parts. ‘Do you see the old ship suspended in the air? Her name is the Maelstrom and she is nigh on five hundred years old. Feyn Charin, the first enchanter to cross the storm-dark, reshaped her for that crossing, not far from here. She was the first ship of her kind, the first to cross between worlds. Do you know how many worlds there are? Yours and ours are but two.’
The alchemist shrugged. He was feigning boredom but he couldn't quite hide the spark in his eyes. She kept hold of his hand and led him away from the window to the desk that was hers and had been for years. Her gondola, her glasship. I made this. All of it. She'd tell him that when he was ready but that wasn't now.