‘More eggs are hatching, Holiness. I need their blood for my potions.’
‘Every dragon, alchemist.’ She shook her head as though they were back in the realms. ‘Every egg that hatches is a dragon and every dragon is precious. If you were my eyrie master and this was my eyrie, I'd have you hung to die in a cage for that.’ She smiled at him, smiled at the Taiytakei soldiers, straightened her tunic and strode out of the egg, swinging her hips. The soldiers’ eyes followed her along the wall.
‘But you are not my eyrie master, Holiness,’ he whispered. Did she know how many hatchlings were lost every week and every month in every eyrie across the realms? Did she know about the dragons who hatched and snapped and hissed and wouldn't eat because they'd already woken in some previous life and knew exactly what awaited them? Who starved themselves rather than take his alchemists’ potions, who wilfully withered and died and were reborn again, over and over and over? One egg in four failed but they were the same handful of dragons, again and again. Did she know?
Beside Bellepheros the air popped and there he was, as expected. ‘I had understood that alchemists were celibate.’ The Elemental Man's voice was flat and empty of either feeling or judgement. His face was flushed and he was out of breath.
‘You understood very wrong then.’ Bellepheros blinked. ‘We prefer our own kind, that's all.’ Because we carry the disease and so we keep to ourselves, because we know what it would mean to spread the plague. But he couldn't say that because then they'd know it wasn't just the Scales who would catch it. Sooner or later it would spread. The Elemental Man would be busy that day. He shrugged. ‘We have the same needs and urges as everyone else.’ Apparently more than he'd thought. The feel of Zafir's skin against his fingers wouldn't leave him alone. He was a man after all. Old, perhaps, but it had been a very long time since he'd felt a woman's touch.
‘Do not come here again, alchemist,’ said the Watcher.
Bellepheros laughed suddenly. ‘Actually I came here to summon you, assassin. I have need of something.’
‘Then ask a t'varr.’
‘This is not a t'varr’s work.’ He stared hard at the Elemental Man. Ridiculous really, but he always hoped that he might see, somehow and simply by looking, what made such a creature work. A man on the outside, but under the skin? What was he in there? Something else. Something more. Something. . other? He was almost sure, but all the books that might have told him, all the ancient scrolls that might have held the clues to put together, they were lost to him now, far away in the dragon realms, deep in the archives under the Purple Spur and the monastery of Sand. ‘What I need is knowledge.’
‘Then you need a hsian.’
‘I need to know what your moon sorcerers know about dragons.’
The Elemental Man shook his head. There might have been the start of a smile as he looked away. ‘You will get no answers, old slave, not from them. No one ever does.’ He looked Bellepheros up and down. ‘Should I send a woman to your study tonight? I do not think the Hands of the Sea Lord will allow you to have his dragon-rider.’
Bellepheros snorted. Idiot. ‘Who are they, assassin, these Moon Sorcerers?’ Men of silver, when every man, woman and child who lived in the nine realms knew the name of the silver half-god who'd tamed the dragons. Isul Aieha. The Silver King.
The Watcher walked away and Bellepheros was left to stare at the three Taiytakei guards who'd opened the egg. He was about to follow but something made him pause. Some thought that for a moment he couldn't pin to the floor of his mind to dissect. But only for a moment.
Walked. The Watcher had walked.
45
A HSIAN IS NOT BORN AND A HSIAN IS NOT MADE. A HSIAN IS BOTH. The words written across the entrance to the Palace of Forever where every hsian who ever served a sea lord was trained. It was called the Palace of Forever because, while a t'varr concerned himself with matter and the moving of it to be at the right place at the right time and a kwen concerned himself with the minds of men, with spirit and courage, a hsian concerned himself with time itself. All you have to do is think further ahead than any other and you will be the greatest among us. It was a simple and yet impossible creed.
The thinking that had brought him to this day had started twenty three-years ago when a new star lit up the sky above the Godspike. It first bloomed like a new moon on the night of midsummer, the last night of the year. It had lasted for a week, and every hsian across Takei'Tarr had seen it.
What does it mean?
There were old gods. Forbidden gods now, and not to be spoken of, but a hsian knew of these things because a hsian was nothing without knowledge. Probably every single one of the great savants of the thirteen cities had their own secret copy of the Rava, carefully hidden and always denied lest the Elemental Men kill them for simply knowing the old gods’ names. They'd met in secret in their Palace of Forever to wonder what this new star, born so bright and yet already dead, could mean. An omen, they agreed. Something was coming. Something to do with the ancient mistress of the night sky, most forgotten and least understood of the old gods. And then they'd looked at one another askance and each had gone their own separate way.
Jima Hsian had thought long and hard and deep, and all that thinking had brought dragons to Takei'Tarr, and now it was taking him to the far corner of the sea lords’ empire, to Dhar Thosis and the Sea Lord Senxian, Quai'Shu’s greatest rival. Not an easy journey, even for a hsian with a glasship. He'd be missed, no doubt about it. A week away from Khalishtor could never pass without comment even at the quietest of times, and Quai'Shu’s monsters were anything but quiet. For most of the journey there weren't even any places to stop. From Khalishtor he flew beneath the perpetual clouds around Mount Solence, mountain of the Elemental Masters, then over the rolling plains and hills to the high peaks of the Konsidar where the Righteous Ones still dwelt in their endless tunnels and caves, guarded from intrusion by the wrath and fear of the Elemental Men. He made a stop there, high among the Konsidar, too high for the Righteous Ones to mind or even notice he was there. The enchanters had built a mountaintop retreat, a quiet and comfortable place for sea lords and hsians and kwens and t'varrs who desired a few days of peaceful rest and tranquil meditation. It was spartan in its luxuries but kinder than the cramped living aboard an egg beneath a glasship. They shouldn't have built it, not really, not in the Konsidar, but the Elemental Men had turned a blind eye for once. Perhaps Senxian and his predecessors had found a way to twist their arms, for it was a long hard flight across the deserts to the Kraitu's Bones.
The place was rife with spies, of course, and everyone would know he was there. He put it about that he was doing exactly what he really was doing — crossing the deserts to the far coast and Dhar Thosis. No one would believe that he'd simply told the truth for long enough for it not to matter any more.
Past the enchanters’ retreat he flew alone again, trapped in a golden cage for eight days and a thousand miles. The Konsidar became bleak and dry. A little ice capped some of the mountains but the sky was blue and there were no clouds in sight and the sun was remorseless. The Righteous Ones lived far below, in tunnels so deep that they didn't care about rain or sun, night and day. Throwbacks. An Elemental Man had called them that once, but throwbacks to what Jima had never been sure. What he did know was that something had happened to make them restless. It had happened about six years ago but he had no idea what it was; nor, to the best of his knowledge, did anyone else.