He walked around the alchemist's study as he slowed his racing heart, one delicate pace after another, eyes flitting over the mayhem of open books and crumpled papers and bottles and vials and pots and jars which lay scattered across every surface without any hint of order. Elemental Men were, above and beyond all else, hunters of sorcerers and magicians and he knew in his belly that this alchemist was more than he seemed. There were books written by the enchanters. There were herbs and powders, and potions the alchemist had made. A dozen open glass beakers sat in a row on the alchemist's desk, all of them different shades of vivid green and each with a note beside it. The Watcher thought the notes were code at first — wondered even if they might be the same sigils and symbols he knew from the Azahl Pillar and elsewhere — but when he looked closely he eventually recognised a few of the words. Just bad handwriting. He shook his head. The alchemist made him uneasy. He'd brought almost nothing with him from the dragon lands but that didn't seem to have stopped him, had barely even slowed him down.
He caught himself. Almost nothing. On the desk, pushed aside in one corner but out in the open nevertheless, sat a small round bottle of silver liquid metal. The alchemist had brought that, of all things.
Outside he heard them coming, still bickering with each other, but they walked on past the alchemist's room and their voices faded. The Watcher followed on foot, keeping back, listening to their conversation.
‘You need to stop, Belli. It won't take long. I've seen how you struggle. I've been meaning to do this for months. Yes, well, now you have no choice, because I'm telling you.’
In between, the alchemist was arguing and objecting that now wasn't the time although he never said for what. The Watcher dropped back a little further then stopped. He'd give them a moment to begin whatever it was the enchantress had in mind and then catch them in the middle of it.
He stood alone, his dark robes stark in the hostile white passages with their quiet inner light, and it felt strange to be loitering like this, flesh and bone, not turned into light or shadow. The eyrie had been floating out in the desert for as long as anyone could remember. Simply there, and no one had thought of what to do with it until Baros Tsen T'Varr had tethered glasships to its rim and moved it. It was a strange place, made before the world broke into pieces and then forgotten, and it resented the Elemental Men. Thoughtless and mute but it resisted their presence and it always had, even before the alchemist and his dragons. He gave them a few minutes, contemplating the eyrie's builders and who they might have been, then marched into Chay-Liang's workshop. The alchemist was sitting on a chair with a nest of metal wires over his head and a book in his hands, still complaining bitterly that he had other things to be doing. Chay-Liang was stooped in front of him, fiddling with the wires.
‘Enchantress!’
The alchemist looked up sharply as he spoke which earned him a curse. Chay-Liang didn't even look round. ‘Watcher!’ She poked the alchemist. ‘Be still, you! Where have you been, Watcher?’
‘To the Grey Isle, lady.’ He addressed himself to the alchemist: ‘Slave! You will travel to Khalishtor at once to bow before our sea lord. You are to bring one of the monsters.’ A hatchling could fit inside a gondola, if the gondola was a big one. The adult dragon, well, tails and wings outstretched it was probably the size of a whole glasship. He couldn't begin to see how they might move it. On a particularly large sled?
The alchemist blinked as though the Watcher was utterly mad. ‘At once? Entirely out of the question.’
‘Still!’ Chay-Liang took two beads of glass and put them very carefully in among the wires right in front of the alchemist's eyes. She touched them and the glass began to flow. ‘Close your left eye and look at the book and tell me when you can see the letters without squinting.’
The Watcher took a step closer. ‘It is not a request.’
‘No?’ Chay-Liang still didn't look round. ‘Then I shall call it what Belli is too polite to say: the absurd demand of the deeply ignorant! Completely unfeasible.’
The alchemist snorted then tensed. ‘There! There! That! Great Flame, how did you do that? No! Back!’
‘I'll do it more slowly this time.’ Chay-Liang hunched closer.
The Watcher took another step. ‘Enchantress, the dragons are your duty to manage. I am not interested in difficulties. I am only interested in your obedience to our sea lord's wishes.’
She waved a hand vaguely in his direction. ‘Just wait a moment.’
‘There!’ The alchemist was beaming. ‘There! That's perfect. Clear as anything!’
Chay-Liang sighed and straightened. ‘I'm so glad I won't have to watch you squinting any more.’ She shook her head and turned to face the Watcher at last. ‘How long has he been here? And how long has he pretended that his eyes are perfectly fine, thank you very much?’
The Watcher hardened his voice. ‘Lady! Our sea lord sends his commands! Your slave shall come with me to Khalishtor. At once.’
The smile fell off the alchemist's face like a stone off a cliff. ‘Controlling the dragons is not something Li can do, Elemental Man. And I cannot manage them, as you so glibly put it, if I am not here!’
Li? Not my mistress? Not even Lady Chay? Li? The Watcher bared his teeth and drew out the bladeless knife. ‘Slave! You will obey our sea lord! One way or the other.’
The alchemist met his glare, one eye strangely large through the glass lens Chay-Liang had made, the other hidden by unshaped glass and the nest of wire. He shook his head. ‘This is the arrogance and ignorance of power without wisdom. It's stupid, dangerous and ridiculous. I refuse.’ He looked pointedly at the bladeless knife. ‘And how, exactly, do you think that will help?’
‘Have you been waiting all this time, slave?’ The Watcher smiled. ‘Waiting for these monsters and now that they're here you disobey? Do not even think these thoughts, slave, for I will crush them right now before they grow roots. I do not wish to hurt you but I will if I must. Or others, if needs be.’ He kept looking straight at the alchemist. Let him wonder who those others might be.
They stared each other down for a few seconds more and then suddenly Chay-Liang doubled over and hooted with laugher. ‘Watcher! You didn't see what happened in the dragon yard when the Regrettable Man stabbed my alchemist in the neck but I assume you at least heard? And Belli, to be honest, right now you look slightly absurd. Watcher, our sea lord isn't here and doesn't understand. Two days ago fifty dragons came. You know that. You were here. We were expecting eggs and you know that too. It's nothing short of a miracle that my slave has kept these dragons docile. Give us some time. A week or two.’
The Watcher shook his head. ‘You will do as you are commanded, Lady Chay. As will your slave.’