The Watcher looked down. After Khalishtor and Vespinarr, Xican wasn't much of a city, not much more than a swathe of rocky spires all jammed together around the water's edge and hollowed out. A few ships sat in the sheltered bay, pieces of Tsen's broken-up fleet. The kwen might be there or he might be in among the spires, still searching out the men he'd need to creep back into the waters of the dragon realms and steal another rider.
Or he might be somewhere else.
The Watcher turned his eyes to the Palace of Leaves floating in the air above him, a glasship of absurd proportions, a dozen and a half gold-glass discs with scores of silver and golden eggs hanging beneath them, hovering over a cluster of gold-glass towers that reached up like fingers and cold black obsidian columns from where the enchanters drew the energies that kept the palace aloft. Yes, the kwen could be on his ship or in the city minding his business, or he could be up there.
The Watcher blinked. Vanished and appeared on the surface of the highest part of the palace. Blinked again, working his way down, peering through roofs and windows. He moved from place to place, watching and searching, and although it took days, he kept on until he found what he was looking for and knew that he was right. Which only left the far more straightforward matter of getting inside to put an end to it.
He blinked again, back down to the surface and to the gates of the first glass tower. Glass and silver and gold. They all thought it was so easy to keep his kind away. The gates were closed of course, or what would be the point? The Watcher appeared out of the air before them and made a show of inspecting them. There were gaps, always gaps, but they were too small and too narrow. Beside the gates a face stared at him through a window of clear fine glass. The Watcher made a gesture to the door as if asking for it to be opened. The face frowned. The Watcher blinked and reappeared a foot to the left so the face could have no doubt what he was. The eyes within the face grew wide and the face turned away. The Watcher's fingers began to quiver. He raised a hand to touch the glass, placed his palm against it and the window shattered. One decent-sized hole. That was all it ever took. He blinked through, knives out now. The face from the window was running but he hadn't gone very far. Pale skin. A sword-slave.
Blink. The Watcher appeared in front of the running man and held out a bladeless knife, then blinked again as the man stopped. Appeared behind him and ran him through. The slave shouted an alarm as he died. Blood sprayed across the floor over cold white marble. There were other soldiers here in the open space behind the gates, the great open hollow inside the glass spire. He let them see him holding his knife towards them. They could see its blade now, a crimson edge made from the blood of the dead, but they weren't afraid of him, not yet, not when he was only one and they were fifteen and they hadn't understood what it was that had come for them. More sword-slaves. Skins of all colours.
He shifted. He was behind them as they skittered to a stop. He slit a throat. Broke a neck, twisted a head clean round so its eyes stared backwards at him as the light inside died. Ran another through as he turned.
Blink. Back the other way. Knives in clenched fists now, wading into the middle of them, striding between two with their backs turned, a blade to the heart of each as he passed them. They wore coats of metal plates layered under leather but their armour was worthless against a bladeless knife. A soldier in front of him began to turn. The Watcher opened his throat in a flash of light. Blood sprayed. Another knife rammed hard up under a sword-slave's chin. These men had done nothing wrong but there was a point to be made and they were only slaves.
Blink. They were quicker this time. Credit them for that. Blade into the kidneys of another and then the Watcher even had to duck. Shifted away a while now. Up high where they wouldn't think to look. Listening to their screams, the shouts, the terror and the panic. They needed to feel it. The whole palace needed to feel it from the top of its floating glass to deep within its rocky roots. It needed to feel the dread of an Elemental Man. The kwen, he needed to feel it.
Nine dead in as many seconds. They didn't know what to do. One of them ran. .
Blink.
. . onto the point of an outstretched knife he couldn't even see. The Watcher let him fall to the ground. Let the last few savour it. They stood in a circle now, backs together, swords out, pleading for help and mercy, doing the best they could do not to die, not that it would save them. Around the edges of the tower in their little rooms aghast faces peered out. Slaves and servants. Little kwens and t'varrs and maybe even a hsian or two, but mostly they would be t'varrs. Someone was already riding a disc up the glass side of the tower towards the tip of the spire and the hanging palace of orbs above.
Blink. Up beside the last of the soldiers close enough to smell their breath, to taste their fear and see the quiver of their skin. Right inside their guard. One knife up under the chin, the other down into the soft hollow of a collarbone.
Blink. As they fell. Down low at a crouch. Knives deep into feet. One each.
Blink. So fast the first bodies were still falling. Behind the man with the bleeding feet as he dropped his sword and opened his mouth to scream. Opened his throat instead. Snapped into air and back again, falling this time, straight down, head first, face upside down before the last two. They had a moment, a flashing instant to see what would come before the bladeless knives found their open mouths and they saw him vanish before their eyes. He appeared between them as they were still falling. Made sure that the faces peering from above had plenty of time to see him, to see who he was and what, standing in the middle of a circle of bloody death. His eyes settled on the disc rising up the wall. A face stared back at him. Screams echoed through the huge space inside the tower. Shouts, the terror spreading among the slaves and the servants who worked down here, the ordinary palace folk faced by a horror beyond their understanding save that they knew him as death. An Elemental Man. A bringer of endings.
He let them see and then vanished and appeared on the disc. The man there was a Taiytakei, not a slave — a t'varr by the feathers he wore — but the fear in his face was the same, a tangible thing. The Watcher took a step and the t'varr backed away. Another step forward and another step away, and then there was no glass beneath the t'varr’s feet, only air, and he fell and smashed on the white marble floor far below.
Fear. The all-consuming power of the Elemental Men.
48
Chay-Liang stood next to Baros Tsen, watching the Vespinese glasships drift in towards the eyrie. As the ships drew closer she could see that some were different colours, not the plain gold-glass of Xican and most of the other sea lords. Emerald-green, ruby-red, sapphire-blue and one that was almost midnight-black, surrounded by a dozen of the plain glass and gold she was more used to seeing. Huge streamers hung beneath, trailing from their gleaming silver gondolas. The wastefulness of it irritated her, but then she was already irritated with having to fit iron-clad doors into the white stone passages of the eyrie — stone, she noted sourly, that would not be scratched or pierced by any tool she could find — and she'd barely even finished when Tsen had told her to take them all out again.
For a moment the annoyance of it all got the better of her. ‘Why do I have to take all the doors off for them? Do they not have doors in Vespinarr? Does it offend them?’
Baros Tsen smiled beside her, the same affable smile he always had. ‘You don't need me to answer that, Chay-Liang. Think about what they're for. And of course you'll be putting them back again as soon as our guests are gone.’