More arrived, two more sea lords — seven of them in one place together, something almost unknown — and dozens of their kwens and their hsians. The murmuring grew. The sands trickled away, and as the last grain fell the navigator who held the hourglass spoke. Tsen smiled. Today wasn't about Quai'Shu’s dragons, but one day it would be. And how many of you will come then?
‘The Ice Witch of Aria.’ There was a pause and then the navigator continued. Tsen sighed and tried to pay attention. Chrias Kwen would receive his own information. Jima Hsian probably knew everything he would hear today and far more besides. But Tsen listened anyway as the navigator went on. Aria was a realm that Tsen had never seen and in which he had no interest. He was a t'varr after all, charged with putting things in their correct places, and once they were there he had little interest in what they actually did. Given the choice he preferred his vineyards and his bathhouse. But the navigators’ voices betrayed their alarm — they were anxious, all of them, even afraid. Sorcerers were growing in Aria like weeds, the strongest already a threat even to an Elemental Man, it seemed. Their world was changing quickly — too quickly. They'd learned to forge near-perfect glass, might soon unravel the secrets of the enchanters, had taken Scythian steelsmiths and. .
A furore broke out at that. Not at steelsmiths being somewhere they weren't supposed to be — that was a mere annoyance and quickly solved by the swift cut of a bladeless knife — but for them to be there at all meant that someone had taken them across the storm-dark along with secrets the Taiytakei had chosen not to share. Now the sea lords smirked and twitched and looked among themselves to see if any face would reveal who'd made such a dangerous trade and what prize they might have won in return. The t'varrs and hsians and kwens behind them whispered to one another, exchanging wagers. Tsen heard Quai'Shu’s name more than once. He closed his eyes for a moment. It would be easy to let go, to let others do whatever needed to be done. It would be like sinking back with a large happy sigh into warm scented waters, but that wasn't why he was here. Not why Quai'Shu and Jima Hsian — and even Tsen himself these last two days — had cashed in every favour they owned to have this debate here and now with a dragon in the wings outside.
The navigators waited, quietly letting the rest have their moment to build their little conspiracies, biding their time, and then the first navigator glared at the lords around him, fixing his eyes on them one after another. ‘They were taken, my lords. Do not look within. A sorcerer from another realm has walked between the worlds.’
The silence unleashed was deep and long as the meaning sank in. Someone other than a navigator has crossed the storm-dark. We have an equal.
A competitor.
A threat.
And here it comes. My moment. In the silence Baros Tsen T'Varr coughed and had their attention at once. Ah, but this was going to be difficult and he wasn't even sure he wanted to do it. But he had eyes fixed on him. The lords and t'varrs and kwens and hsians of the thirteen cities. What he wanted was his bathhouse. His apple wine. His peace and quiet the way it had been a week ago but it was too late for that. He'd made this happen. This moment. Inspired or mad? He wasn't sure but now he stood up. ‘I believe the lord of Xican may be able to offer a solution.’ No going back now. ‘A plague to ruin worlds.’ That was what the alchemist had said when they'd taken him, wasn't it? Yes, and that, in the end, was why their lord had spent twenty-odd years of his life and broken his house's bank to steal these monsters. Because of Jima Hsian's warning: Some day, in our lifetime, something will come. In the Dominion, in Aria, from out of the depths of Qeled, something will rise. Something that will threaten us all and we must be ready for it.
Twenty-three years ago. Midsummer's night and every hsian in Takei'Tarr had said the same, but Quai'Shu was the only sea lord who'd listened.
‘What plague?’ The first navigator asked the question in all their eyes. Tsen let his smile grow wide. He had them where he wanted them. Every last one.
‘I will show you,’ he said. ‘But there will be a price, my lords. And it will not be a small one.’
40
Zafir's breath caught in her throat. The Crown of the Sea Lords did that to her every time her eyes strayed to it. She told herself not to look, told herself that the Pinnacles, her old home, were larger and grander; and they were, three whole mountains carved and tunnelled and. . and wrought long ago by the will of the Silver King. But still she couldn't help the stolen glimpses and glances. So much glass, so much gold, so much light and so much sheer size! And the orb that floated far above it, all spines and spires of glitter. Each time it trapped her with its majesty she forced herself to see it shattered by dragons, its great golden shards falling like rain. Dragons. They were the true wonder. She was their mistress. She clung to that like a drowning man to driftwood.
The glasship drifted to a halt at the edge of the Crown beside one of the gold-glass towers. The black-cloaks pressed a stud in the wall and the bronze shell of the gondola split open. A ramp eased down. They led her out over a flat black circle of polished marble towards the looming tower. Brass gates as tall as a ship hung open. As she passed through them, she saw they were wrought from top to bottom with pictures beaten into the metaclass="underline" a huge tower topped by a circle of cloud, ringed by lesser towers; a man standing on the prow of a ship facing a storm full of lightning; men bearing gifts, bowing in supplication. At the very top, etched right across the doors, were the twin lightning-bolts of Xican.
Beside her the alchemist was looking up at them too. ‘Feyn Charin,’ he whispered. ‘The story of the first navigator.’
The black-cloaks led them on into the vast hollow tower, between walls of pale marble and gleaming glowing glass, across a floor of more black stone speckled with flecks of gold like the night sky. They took her to a glass disc that floated over the floor and pushed her onto it and stood in a circle around her. The alchemist, when he saw it, groaned and clutched his belly, and when he sat, got down by the edge, closed his eyes and gripped it tight with his hands. He looked old now, old and scared and she wondered why, until without any warning the glass rose and floated up through the inner space of the tower. Her heart jumped into her mouth at first but she quickly pushed it back where it belonged. The black-cloaks, if anything, looked bored. To them this was simply how things were, not to be given a second thought.
Dragons. She recalled sitting on Mistral, diving over the edge of the Pinnacles, the wind a storm in her face. They'd played a game, before her mother had forbidden it, with three great poles that jutted out of the cliffs, one at the top, one in the middle, one by the bottom, each with strips of coloured cloth tied to the end. One by one each dragon-rider took their dragon to the edge of the cliff and dived, the aim to snatch a coloured strip from each pole as they arrowed past, a test of skill and courage for rider and dragon alike. She'd been the fastest but it wasn't for playing the game that her mother had forbidden it. That had come when Zafir had insisted she be the one to climb out on the middle pole to tie on the strips so they could play again. It jutted fifty feet from the cliff, the ground half a mile below, no ropes, nothing to catch her, nothing to save her. She'd crawled along the top of the pole where the other riders hung underneath and the ground had stared up at her every inch of the way, and she'd stared right back while the wind that whipped around the cliffs had tugged at her clothes, and she'd felt so alive! She'd slipped twice, tying on the strips, nearly fallen each time but she'd caught herself, and when she finally came back, her heart was racing so fast and she was shaking so much she could barely stand. Now, as she looked at the black floor of the tower a mere few dozen yards below, she smiled. The Taiytakei thought they were so grand and so elegant, so full of arrogant poise and perhaps they were, but where was their fire?