‘The desert men will provide what you require. Lady Enchantress, you will please have the slaves build harnesses for their cranes to lift the Linxia you will need. Tell them how many you require and they will be provided. Have the glasships pull the eyrie as low as it will go to the ground. Right to the sand if you must.’ He turned to the alchemist without waiting for Chay-Liang to reply. ‘And you, slave! Draw up a list of all the men who work here. You will order the list by their value and you will entitle your list, “Menu in the Event of Dragon Food Shortage”. You will give it to me when we are done. Am I exquisitely clear, slave? You will do this before we leave and we will leave today. Twenty Linxia each and every morning. They will be here. Do you wish them alive or slaughtered?’
The alchemist blinked. For a moment the Watcher thought he was going to rebel, and if that was how it was then he'd get carried from his eyrie over a soldier's shoulder like a naughty child. His lips pinched. But the alchemist closed his eyes and shuddered, shaking his head. ‘Thirty animals, not twenty. And dragons can do their own slaughtering. They're very good at that. How long, Watcher, before I'll return?’
The Watcher's eyes bored into the alchemist. ‘Are you tired, slave?’
‘Of course he is!’ snapped Chay-Liang. ‘We all are! What did you expect?’ She peered hard at him. ‘Are you tired, Watcher? I didn't think that happened to Elemental Men.’
‘It does not.’
Her look lingered but now the alchemist was busy talking of feeding schedules and the administration of the necessary potions, shaking his head sourly all the time as he did. Wait for them to be hungry. Each hatchling must drink one flask every day. Tying the flasks around an animal's neck will suffice. Dragons are prone to eat their prey from the head down and in large pieces. Do not approach the hatchlings yourself. Remember they still carry Hatchling Disease. Keep the Scales segregated. They will have the disease in their blood by now. So on and so forth. The Watcher listened. Chay-Liang was bored and barely paying attention as if she knew all of this already. So much the better if she did.
‘The dead hatchlings are to be left. Don't touch them. We'll have a use for their residues but I'll deal with that when I come back. As for the adult?’ The alchemist closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘A war-dragon, and a large one. Empty the dragon yard and release the animals into it every day, each with a flask of potion strapped to its neck. Continue with more, one at a time, until the dragon is sated enough to allow the hatchlings to eat. While it feeds, don't allow anyone else into the yard for any reason. Beware the tail and the wing. In eyries far more die from those than from fire and tooth and claw. This dragon has at least been trained so it shouldn't devour our Scales, nor should it fly without a rider to guide it. If it does either of those things then poison it if you can and run far and fast if you can't. Pinned to the ground it will grow restless. Its hunger to fly will be voracious. We'll likely have a few weeks before it loses its last vestiges of self-restraint at which point, without a rider, I will poison it, whatever you say. You really might as well let me get on and do it now but perhaps it'll be a good lesson for you both to see what it's like, a dragon with no control. Perhaps then you'll listen with more open ears, eh?’
On and on. In days long past the Watcher had talked to Chay-Liang about her gold-glass arcana and how they worked, how she channelled the energy of the earth, but it was like talking with a different tongue. Listening to the alchemist was the same, how he could enter his blood and manipulate it to make his potions, how the essence of a half god buried and held at the brink of death under the mountains of his realm was also a part of him. Alien. And when the Watcher tried to speak of how it felt to become one with the elements of the world he found himself trying to describe colours to a blind man, sounds and timbres to someone who was deaf. The witch and the alchemist though; somehow for them it was different. They struggled but they'd found a common language, one he didn't understand.
The glasship to take the alchemist to Khalishtor came to rest high above the eyrie wall and the fragile golden egg it carried made its descent. The alchemist bowed to Chay-Liang as he readied himself to leave at last, already hours later than he should. ‘Good fortune to you.’ He sounded stiff and reluctant. ‘A flask a day to each. .’
‘Of the hatchlings. And thirty to the monster. Yes, yes, I know. All will be well.’
‘I know, I know. You only really need me for my blood, don't you?’ He actually smiled as he said it, and the enchantress smiled back and the Watcher shook his head because this was not slave and mistress at all. ‘The Scales, Chay-Liang. Watch the Scales. I've given them potions that will slow its progress but I fear the Statue Plague as much as I fear the dragons themselves. If I'm not back within a twelvenight and you have no certain word of me, poison them all without delay or hesitation.’
The enchantress wore the dour face of someone who'd heard the same admonishment far too often. She shooed him away. The alchemist gave an awkward bow and took a last look across the yard at the dragon and the hatchlings chained to the stone. The dragon was restless, even the Watcher could see that. It stretched out its wings and opened its mouth wide and bared its teeth. It was staring at the glasship now.
‘Come, slave!’ The Watcher ushered him to the waiting gondola.
‘We all want to fly,’ the alchemist said. ‘I'll not have time to make a rider for this one. When I poison it on my return, by then you'll see why it has to be done, both of you.’
The Watcher sealed the gondola around them. When he'd done that, he bowed. ‘There will be no need for that, slave. A rider waits for you in Khalishtor. Her name is Zafir. I hear she claims to be a queen.’
The look on the alchemist's face was delicious.
38
Years ago, in the dragon realms in the court of her mother Queen Aliphera of the Silver City, ambassadors of the Taiytakei had come to pay their respects. Zafir had watched them carefully. Their colourful silks had made their faces seem even darker than they were. Their cloaks of bright feathers and gold and silver thread which they wrapped right around them swirled like wings when they threw out their arms to prostrate themselves before her mother's throne; and with the long braids of their hair scattered in an arc around their heads as they kowtowed, they reminded her of the ornamental birds of Bazim Crag. But what stuck most in her mind, what had lingered in the air of the Octagon long after they were gone, was the smell, the sweet musky smell that followed the Taiytakei everywhere. Xizic. The sailors chewed on lumps of it, the soldiers sprinkled it into their pipes. Even her slaves smelled of it. That morning when they killed Brightstar, she caught a whiff of it on the black-cloak's breath.
They forced her down to her knees and pressed her head hard into the floor. Beside her, the light hadn't gone from Brightstar's eyes. ‘Like this!’ snapped the black-cloak whose sword still dripped. As they pulled her up and dragged her away, her foot slipped in Brightstar's red blood, still warm. She almost fell and a trail of sticky red footprints followed her, quickly fading. Her head buzzed with what the Heart of the Sea Lord had done while his soldiers’ hands held her arms hard enough to bruise. The urge crackled inside her to pull away and fight them, to kick them, steal their swords and stab them, but she pushed it away and walked between them straight and erect. She would not lose her control. She would not let them have that victory. A dragon-rider knew her passions. She revelled in them, embraced them and rode them like the hurricanes they were, but a dragon-rider was always, always, their mistress. If they couldn't ride their own, how could they ride the fury of a dragon?