‘Going home any time soon?’ Tuuran asked him but Bellepheros barely heard. He grunted. Across the passage was another space, one meant to be his laboratory. Someone shrewd must have known he was coming because it was already stocked with shelves and shelves of herbs and roots and powders and liquids, none of which meant anything to Tuuran and most of which were apparently a mystery to the alchemist as well. Watching him was like watching a child in a room full of new toys, moving from one thing to the next, picking it up, opening bottles, sniffing, putting them down, moving on. He even made excited squealing noises. But Tuuran wasn't going to let it lie, not this time.
‘No. You're not going anywhere.’
‘Sorry?’
‘She's got you. That witch. She's got you good. She's put a spell on you and made you her slave.’
The alchemist paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you're going to build them their eyrie and you're going to give them their dragons and you're not even going to try to stop them.’
Bellepheros had a bottle of silver liquid in his hand which he seemed to find strangely fascinating. After a moment of thought he put it down. ‘I cannot stop them from bringing dragons.’ His smile faded. ‘Tuuran, I've begged and pleaded with all who give me their ears to sway them from this course but they don't listen, of course they don't. And if dragons come then yes, I will keep them as best I can because the consequences of anything else are unbearable.’ He picked up a piece of golden glass and tossed it into the air. It fell, but slowly like a feather. ‘Look, though! Look at this! Look at what they can do! Imagine how our world could change!’
Tuuran tried and found he couldn't. Floating glass? What use did he have for floating glass?
‘I've set my mind on a course, Tuuran. Liang agrees. One day alchemists will come here to work as they would in any other eyrie, and the Taiytakei will come to us in return. If they must have dragons, if they simply cannot be dissuaded, we'll look after them and they will teach us to build these things. It will be a brave new world for all of us.’
He looked as though he believed it and Tuuran had to turn away and screw up his face to hold back the anger. ‘No, Lord Master Alchemist. The Taiytakei will come to our land and take whatever pleases them. That's what they do. I've sailed on their slave ships for years; you have been here for a mere handful of weeks. You cannot change their ways with a simple snap of your fingers.’
The alchemist met his eye. ‘Tuuran, for this I think I can. It's too precious to them.’ He looked earnest and eager and hopeful, for a moment far younger than his years. ‘I hope they fail, Tuuran, I truly do. But if they don't, if they raise their own dragons, then it must be this way. Anything else will be the end of them.’
‘Then I hope it is, Lord Grand Master. I hope it is the end of them. I hope you fail.’ He might have spat at the alchemist's feet but he was an Adamantine Man and this was the grand master of the Order of the Scales and he couldn't see them — wouldn't see them — as two ordinary slaves, no different from any other. So he held the bitterness inside him, held the alchemist's gaze long enough to be sure the old man saw the betrayal he felt, then turned and left.
It was another day before he realised that the eyrie wasn't built on top of a sheer-sided mountain at all. That was when the glasships hanging overhead slowly began to move and the chains fastened to the rim outside the walls grew taut and hummed, when all the slaves from the palace stopped what they were doing and ran in amazement to the walls to shout and stare as the eyrie itself began to drift across the desert, free of any tether to the earth.
32
Chay-Liang stood on the rim of the eyrie with the alchemist, and try as she might to stay calm, she could feel her temper wriggling between her fingers like an eel, trying to get away from her. For the fourth time the eyrie had moved because Bellepheros wasn't content with where it sat. They were further east than she'd ever feared, much further than Baros Tsen T'Varr was happy with and ridiculously distant from where Sea Lord Quai'Shu had asked them to go. Too close to Vespinarr for comfort. She could even see the hazy distant peaks of the Konsidar on the far horizon.
‘So will here do? It had better. Tsen will send someone to push both of us over the edge if there's much more of this!’ Belli had his slave bodyguard with him, the one he'd brought all the way from Xican. The man was a monster, a simmering hulking brute steaming with resentment and he didn't like her one little bit. He glowered at her and she had to smile, though she turned away where neither of them would see. Anyone who pushed Belli over the edge would follow quickly enough. The thought of the two of them plummeting to their deaths made her smile even more, though that made no sense. She pointed at the shapes roaming across the sandy grasslands below. Thousands of them. ‘Your dragons can eat those.’
‘What are they?’
Liang shrugged and looked at the other slave who seemed to tag around after them all the time. Yena, who braided her hair each morning. The alchemist wanted his guard after the trouble in Zinzarra and the guard wanted his woman and so there they were. It was ridiculous.
‘Linxia.’ Yena bowed. ‘Desert horses.’
Bellepheros scratched his nose. ‘Are they migratory?’
Liang looked at the slave again. Yena covered her face in her hands and fell to her knees. ‘I do not understand, mistress.’
The slaves that Shrin Chrias Kwen had sent with her were perfect palace slaves, not what she wanted at all. A good slave had some sense of their own value. Tsen at least understood that. She would get them changed. Some of them, anyway. Apparently not this one. ‘Migratory,’ she snapped, saying the word loudly and clearly.
‘Do they move from place to place as the seasons change or do they always live here?’ asked the alchemist. Damn him but he was better with the slaves than she was and not just because he was one of them. He had a streak of the teacher to him. A patience she'd never possessed.
Yena glanced from Liang to Bellepheros and back again. She had no idea how to treat the alchemist. Nor did anyone else. Since he was unbranded, strictly speaking he was an oar-slave, lowest of the low. Liang treated him as an equal because to her mind that's what he was, slave or not. His bodyguard, although a higher-ranked slave, treated him as though he was a superior. And at the top of them all, Tsen treated everyone as though they were the same and just slightly beneath him. Poor girl didn't know where to start.