Silver Kings: The Splintered Gods Part 2

The gla.s.s.h.i.+p drifted over the great fortress of Vul Tara, now a blackened smear. Tsen guided it up close to the cliffs of Dul Matha, up to what had once been the Palace of Roses. Two of the three towers were stumps. The dragon had done this, the dragon alone up here, so far from Shrin Chrias Kwens s.h.i.+ps, from their rockets and black-powder guns and lightning cannon, it could be nothing else.

'Where are all the people? asked Kalaiya. Tsen didnt answer. They were dead, of course.

The gla.s.s.h.i.+ps golem circled the ruined palace but no one came running waving their arms for rescue. Dul Matha was empty, a ruin left for ghosts. Chrias had done what any kwen would do if he could cleansed the place. Killed everyone and then turned on the sword-slaves hed brought with him and left nothing. The Doctrine of a Thousand Years. Eventually Tsen spotted Sea Lord Senxian himself, hanging by the neck from the jagged tip of one of his own shattered towers. QuaiShu and Senxian werent even enemies, only rivals; and even then only p.a.w.ns in the great dance between Vespinarr and the desert lords of Cashax. So much ruin and for what? Tsen stared at the murdered sea lord swinging lazily back and forth and couldnt look away; instead he nudged towards the sea lords body to look more closely. Hed been right to come here. A city gone. Wiped away. A sea lord hanging dead from his own palace was a thing you had to see. Thered be no forgiveness. They were all dead men walking, every single man or woman whod played even the most glancing part in this.

Five days in the open being pecked at by seagulls hadnt done Senxian any favours. His clothes were the only things Tsen could recognise. Maybe it wasnt Senxian at all, but Tsen rather thought it was. He shook his head. 'Ah, my Chrias, my kwen. What did Shonda offer you? Theyll hunt us to the end of every realm and you must have known it. But not me. Ill be waiting for them. Ill shout the truth as loud as I can before they hang me. He was alone except for Kalaiya but maintained the pretence of an audience anyway. Practice. Habit. All those things. You never knew when an Elemental Man might be watching, after all. 'I tried to stop it. He shook his head and turned away. 'I tried to stop it.

'I never understood why you had to let it go so far, Tsen. Kalaiya was weeping.

'It had to be seen! The words had to come from MaiChoiros mouth! The Watcher had to hear him speak them to know the truth of Shondas treachery! I told him to stop them! I sent him . . . He couldnt finish. 'I thought Id bind them in their own tangled schemes and serve them up on a plate. I thought Id buy us freedom from our debts. I thought I was cleverer than them. And I was too, but not as clever as I thought, and now the dragon-queen has ruined us all. The urge came again, as it did every time he saw the hurt in Kalaiyas face, to reach out and touch her. 'I will keep you safe, Kalaiya. Above all else, I will keep you safe.

Kalaiya held his hand against her cheek. 'I live and die by your side now, Baros Tsen. And he almost wept and had to turn away and make a show of looking about the gondola.

'Look at all this. He needed something to say and so he flailed at the walls panelled with their ellipses of perfect pale wood, exquisitely cut and carved around the silver edges of the curved gondola windows. At the plush thick carpet, the silver table, the bed where they slept with its silks as soft as goose down, at the gla.s.s cabinets with their silver frames with yet more gla.s.s inside, cups and decanters and spirits of every colour from every world the Taiytakei knew. 'Youll lose all this.

'It doesnt matter. Ill lose you. She pulled away from him and pointed through the gold-tinged gla.s.s at the last of the three great towers still standing. Tsen followed the line of her finger. Near the top of the tower was a balcony lined with cages for Senxians jade ravens and the slaves that fed them. 'Look!

'What do you see?

'The cages are empty.

'Perhaps the kwens men let Senxians ravens fly when they ransacked the palace.

Kalaiya laughed. 'No one would doubt youre usually a clever and insightful man, Baros Tsen, but sometimes youre an idiot. Who would open the cage of a hungry raven? Would you?

'No.

'Scribes fly the jade ravens. To the rest of us, theyre horrors. She shook her head at him. 'Shrin Kwens men didnt open them. The scribes of the Palace of Roses let their ravens fly before they died. She didnt say any more now because she didnt need to. He understood exactly: word had gone. Jade ravens had flown from the Palace of Roses as it fell. Of course they had. He should have thought of that.

And then another thought sent a s.h.i.+ver through him: that scribes were creatures of habit. They copied every message in tiny words onto a silver ring to put around a ravens leg. They copied every message exactly, word for word, line for line, but they didnt compose them. If he was lucky, if the scribes had fled in a hurry, the original messages might still be there and he could see exactly what word had been sent, and to whom.

He moved quickly now, driven by a surge of impatience. Here was something he could do at last, a useful thing, and so it must be done and be done now. He threw open the door to the cramped closet where the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps pilot golem sat dwarfish creatures made of clay, feeble-witted and barely intelligent, made by the Hingwal Taktse enchanters to fly gla.s.s.h.i.+ps and nothing else. They were exquisite works of the enchanters art, each one months of effort, but Tsen hadnt the first idea of anything except how much they cost, and right now he didnt care. They werent clever enough to do what he had in mind on their own and so he stood over the creature, one eye looking out through the window, guiding it exactly. The gla.s.s.h.i.+p rose to hover over the top of the tower and then the golem lowered the gondola on its silver chains.

Tsen looked through the gold-gla.s.s walls of the palace and saw a bathhouse built to look out over the city and the sea. It must have had a fine view once. He didnt see any bodies. The upper tiers of the tower were deserted. Empty. The men and women who had lived here had had plenty of time to see what was coming. Perhaps some had escaped?

The gondola stopped to hover by the balcony with the raven cages. The stern ramp hinged open and a howling wind rushed in at once, flapping the silk curtains on the windows and tugging at Tsens robe. He had to shout over the roar of it, over its angry whistling through the chains dangling the gondola from the gla.s.s-hip high above. 'You might want to stay here and wait, he told Kalaiya, more in the spirit of a n.o.ble gesture than anything else.

A derisive 'Ha! let him know what she thought of that. 'Whos the graceful and nimble slave and whos the fat old man? Kalaiya pushed past him onto the ramp. His heart jumped as the wind caught her and she swayed, but the ramp was wide and the balcony even wider. She turned and held out her hands and beckoned him to follow. When he did, the wind thumped into him and knocked him a step sideways.

'Theyre gone. Where the balcony opened into the innards of the tower, empty raven cages lined the walls. Scattered around them were pieces of what looked like bright green gla.s.s, strewn across the floor. Chunks of it, nothing all that remarkable until you looked closer and saw, now and then, that one was shaped as a finger, or maybe a foot or a piece of a face. Kalaiya stopped to stare, hand pressed over her mouth. Tsen pulled her on deeper into the tower.

'Does it hurt? she asked, and he realised that shed never seen this before. In all her years at his side shed never been up close and seen what a jade raven truly was. Did it hurt? He had no idea. The slaves who died tended to scream a lot but that was probably mostly the fear.

'I dont know. Come on. The scribes would live and work near the rookery. Out of the wind his feet felt sure again. 'I dont like it here. Its Senxians mausoleum and it gives me the s.h.i.+vers.

Hed feared theyd meet a gold-gla.s.s wall, the sort that needed a enchanters black rod to open, that hed have to go back to the gondola and get the silver globe Chay-Liang had made for him for cutting through; but this high up in the tower Senxian had seen no need to keep people out. A mere iron door barred the way iron so no Elemental Man could pa.s.s through which swung open at Tsens touch. Beyond was the Tying Room, where the jade ravens were fed while the scribes messages were tied to their feet. More pieces of green gla.s.s covered the floor. Bits of what had once been people. There must have been three or four before the ravens touched them, turned them this way and shattered them. No one had cleared away the remains. The scribes had left in a hurry. More cages hung open in the corners of the room, large and silver cages for men this time and the litter of green chunks was thickest around them.

Kalaiya squealed; when Tsen looked round she was holding most of someones face in her hands everything from the eyebrows down to the chin, where a large chip was missing. If youd known the man in life, youd know him now, clear as anything. Tsen gently lifted it away. The pieces the ravens left looked like jade-coloured gla.s.s but to the touch felt more like a resin, like Xizic, with a little give beneath the fingers if you squeezed hard, not the cold unyielding sharpness of brittle stone.

He led Kalaiya away. She was shaking. 'They were slaves, he said as if that somehow made it better, and then remembered that she was a slave too. He forgot that more than he should. 'Criminals, he added quickly, guessing how Senxian would have chosen them. 'Murderers. Rapists. The worst sort. Theyd have been the sick and the old, though, the ones Senxian couldnt put to useful labour. 'They were going to die anyway. That at least was probably true.

A screen of metal chains pa.s.sed for the next door, another device to stop Elemental Men from entering. Tsen pushed through into a hall. They eventually found what he wanted the Writing Room up some narrow stairs. He clucked his tongue in frustration when he saw the bronze mesh basket where the scribes threw the letters after they transcribed them. It was blackened and full of charred pieces. He crouched beside the basket, fingering the few corners of paper that survived, looking for anything that might still be legible. Fragments of words, that was all. The rest crumbled into ash, staining his fingertips grey.

'Tsen?

He shook his head. A waste of time. 'It was a fine idea, my love.

'Tsen! Look! She was standing over one of the scribing desks. There were pieces of paper in her hand. She thrust them at him. 'Look!

Vespinarr. Shonda.

Senxians gla.s.s.h.i.+ps lie in broken pieces. The Vul Tara burns. Nothing remains. The creature has shattered two of the towers of the palace. I am in the third. Somehow we are spared. Everyone is fled. All is ruin . . .

He read on then walked back through the Tying Room and onto the balcony again, into the roar of the wind, seeing the scene as it might have been. Perhaps whoever wrote the message had been standing here, fighting to hold his paper and pen. The writing was scratchy and erratic, hard to read, scribed in haste and panic, but what sort of man would stand here at all with a furious dragon tearing the towers around him? He tried to see it: across the sea a pall of smoke over the city as he watched the dragon burn everything in its path. It came to the palace itself. They thought they were safe inside their mighty towers of gla.s.s and gold but the dragon had smashed their walls and shattered their ramparts. It had ripped lightning cannon and the black-powder guns alike from their mountings and tossed them over the cliffs into the sea. It had gouged holes in stone and gla.s.s and filled the palace with fire. Panic spreading as fast as the flames, the scribes opening the cages and letting their ravens fly, turning and running . . . but the man whod written this, whoever he was, had stopped them. The two other great towers of the Palace of Roses had come down, cracking like rolling thunder, showering every part of the palace below with shards of golden gla.s.s as large as houses. Hed stood and watched them fall. And when the two towers had fallen and the third stayed standing, when he found he wasnt dead, hed written of what hed seen. Terse and concise yet eloquent. One last scribe and one final raven.

It destroys everything with ease. There is nothing left to stop it. QuaiShus soldiers are advancing in its wake. It gouges lesser structures with tooth and claw. It lashes the great towers with its tail until they crack. It makes holes in them and fire bursts from its mouth and pours inside. It strikes the towers then it hurls itself at Senxians own and clings to it until it cracks and a full third falls away. The falling tower strikes the Rose near its base. The Rose disintegrates. I watch it crumble and die.

Tsen edged to the lip of the balcony. Those other towers were in full view, or would have been. He tried to think what it would have been like to stand with their bulk looming over him and then watch them shudder and fall. The noise, the cacophonous thunder of splintering gla.s.s . . .

It shows no sign of weakness or fatigue but it has left the Thorn untouched. Perhaps its force is spent? Though I have no doubt QuaiShus soldiers will not spare us.

Tsen stuffed the papers inside his robe and decided hed seen enough. Enough of what the dragon had done to Dhar Thosis and enough of what the mysterious scribe had written, addressed to Lord Shonda of Vespinarr. In the gondola, as the gla.s.s.h.i.+p drifted away from the corpse of Dhar Thosis and the taint of smoke that hung in the air, he had Kalaiya pour some water into a bowl. He took off all his rings and dipped his fingers in and kept them there to see whether any remnant of the old alliance would answer. Shrin Chrias Kwen and Baran Meido were blank. Hardly a surprise. QuaiShu was sitting in his eyrie, mad as a hare. That left the youngest of QuaiShus sons, Bronzehand. He went to the window and let Bronzehand look through his eyes for a while, taking it all in. Bronzehand who was dallying in the island fleshpots of the Scythian steelsmiths when he should have been on the sh.o.r.es of Qeled. Hed been clever, Tsen saw. Hed left when the dragons came. Bronzehand also had another ring, linked to someone outside QuaiShus cabal. He toyed with it a lot. Tsen didnt think any of the others had noticed.

He sighed, forcing himself to have a good long look at what the dragon had done so that Bronzehand would see it too. It would have been nice to talk to someone who wasnt Kalaiya, someone who could actually do something, but Bronzehand was in another world. Maybe hed prefer to stay away. Tsen could hardly blame him for that. Xican was doomed. There would be no more sea lords of the Grey Isle. Better to waste away a happy life in the fleshpots of Scythia than come back to this.

What have we done? What have I done?

He read the pages again, all of them, one after the next, slowly and meticulously, then slipped the last ring on his finger and pushed Bronzehand away. Perhaps other sea lords would come to see for themselves, perhaps not. Most of Senxians fleet was at sea, scattered across the many worlds. His heirs would claim the ruins. Theyd rebuild Dhar Thosis and maybe wipe away the scars, but the world would never be quite the same. Shonda had shown it could be done. The five-hundred-year peace, broken. The Elemental Men defied. Thwarted.

He poured a gla.s.s of apple wine and gave it to Kalaiya, held her hand and squeezed it tight. 'Thank you. He gave her the papers. 'Keep them safe.

Kalaiya shrugged. 'What use are they?

'Shrin Chrias Kwen flew no banners, but in these letters the soldiers are said to be Sea Lord QuaiShus. How can that be? Because this was written by one of Shondas spies, sent to be his eyes. Someone who knew what was coming before it came. Proof of it. Proof that Shonda knew.

'Then theres hope?

Tsen laughed bitterly. 'For me? No. For the rest of you? Perhaps.

It was a long journey back to the eyrie and he read the letters perhaps a dozen times, picturing with each what it must have been like, trying to see through the eyes of this spy, piecing it together with what little hed wrung from the rider-slave Zafir. It would only be later that the last few words would snag in his thoughts.

It landed amid the rubble. Two men came from among QuaiShus soldiers and spoke with its rider.

Zafir had never mentioned that. And it would occur to Baros Tsen to wonder, then, who could have had the courage and the audacity to walk up to a dragon, and what, exactly, did they have to say?

5.

The G.o.dspike Further from the sea, as the gondola drifted away, the city looked more as Tsen remembered it, stone streets and bell towers and houses and little market squares and then the shanty towns of the sword-slaves and the oar-slaves and the outcasts and the poor and the desert men whod come and never left. He wondered who claimed the city now. Anyone? As theyd drifted over the desert from the eyrie, him and Kalaiya, hed pondered whether hed find the streets full of people hard at work rebuilding what theyd lost, s.h.i.+ps cl.u.s.tered around the docks, the damage perhaps far less than he feared. Now he wondered: was there even anyone left? But surely there must be. Chrias and the dragon couldnt have killed everyone. Could they?

On the top of the sand ridge that marked the edge of the desert Tsen saw a short line of tents. Behind the peak of the ridge, out of sight of the city, they had cages. Slavers, already come to pick at the citys corpse. He swept the gla.s.s.h.i.+p lower, filled with a fearsome fury, intent on scattering them with the s.h.i.+ps lightning cannon, but after a few moments he pulled away. Exactly how much of a hypocrite are you, Tsen? It comes with the territory, but thats rich even for you.

The more he thought, the less he could see what good it did for Bronzehand, far out to sea and in another world, to see all this. When Dhar Thosis was out of sight, Tsen read the letters again, poring over them, searching for any nuance that might d.a.m.n the lord of Vespinarr just that little bit more. Shonda had wealth beyond imagination. Did he not have a spy bound to him the way Tsen and QuaiShus others were bound? Surely hed seen it all with his own eyes as it happened, him and MaiChoiro Kwen and Vey Rin TVarr and whoever else had planned this ruin. Why the letters then?

Evidence? He couldnt let them go. Kept going back to them until Kalaiya took them while he was sleeping and hid them with the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps golem. She told him where they were but with a warning look.

'We have two more days, she whispered. 'Two more days just for us when no one can touch us. After that it will be gone. She wasnt beautiful, probably never had been, but she had a grace to her, an elegance, a poise. When shed caught his eye, years ago, it hadnt been with an obsequious smile or her perfect kowtow, it had been the slightest curl of disdain that came afterwards, the one she gave him now. A sort of pity, as though she knew how foolish he really was underneath his clever words and his braided hair that touched the floor and his dazzling rainbow feather robes. Hed come to look for that over the years, the wrinkle of her nose when he said something particularly foolish.

'Did I tell you that ten years ago QuaiShu went to see the moon sorcerers? he said. It was an odd affection between them, deep and solid. Not love exactly, certainly not l.u.s.t, but something profound anyway. Somehow shed become a necessary part of him and yet all they ever did was talk. 'No, I didnt, because I never told anyone. QuaiShu only told me years later. Shed kissed him once, back when she hardly knew him, when she supposed that must be what he wanted, and it had been nice enough but it had told them both that it wasnt.

Kalaiya c.o.c.ked her head. 'They brought the dragons to the eyrie.

'They did. He stared at her. Perhaps she was the missing piece of his soul, the piece hed lost back in Cashax in his youth raising h.e.l.l with Vey Rin and the rest. Perhaps hed been lucky enough to find it again unlike the others but that just sounded ridiculous.

'Tsen? She snapped her fingers at him. 'Tsen. Youre staring right through me!

'Yes. He shook himself. 'The moon sorcerers went with QuaiShu to the dragon-realm. He was supposed to bring back eggs but the eggs started to hatch while he was at sea. We lost a dozen s.h.i.+ps and QuaiShu lost his mind. Tsen shrugged. 'Or perhaps he lost it as they set sail, when the dragon-queen murdered ZifanShu on the decks of QuaiShus own s.h.i.+p. But, years before, QuaiShu went to the moon sorcerers to ask them for their help. He never said what it was that he gave them. I never knew how he bought them.

'I thought they were a myth.

'If QuaiShu wasnt my sea lord then I would have said the same. I would have called him a liar. There was something there, a deeper darkness around QuaiShus dragons that went beyond Shonda and Vespinarr and Dhar Thosis but Tsen, for all his brilliance, couldnt begin to fathom it. Nor did he want to. In his golden gondola, surrounded by silver and gla.s.s and pale wood, he snuggled close to Kalaiya, and they chewed Xizic and watched the desert sunset together. He lay in bed and tried to sleep, and when he couldnt, she got in beside him and stroked his hair and told him stories of the happy days theyd had together not so long ago. When the sun rose, he spent the next day looking at her, then out of the window at the desert and then back again, living in that moment for what little time they had left. She never said, but she needed him exactly as he needed her. That was the miracle of her; perhaps he did love her after all, just for wanting him.

He let the peace of the desert take him. In the evening he landed the gondola on the top of a lonely mesa far away from anywhere and the two of them watched the sunset together, glorious fiery reds in the sky while the sand turned to liquid gold and he felt Kalaiyas warmth beside him, leaning into him. Another day and then theyd be back and all this peace would be over. Or maybe it wouldnt. Maybe the eyrie would be gone and the dragon with it and MaiChoiro Kwen and Chay-Liang and all the rest, and everyone would think he was dead and he could fly away and be free . . . Or, more likely, the Elemental Men were already waiting for him.

He put his arm around Kalaiya as the sun went down. It had been an act of cowardice running away to Dhar Thosis to see what the dragon had done, a few last days together in quiet comfort and solitude before the end of everything jumped out of a wall and ate him. And so, because he was still a coward at heart, the desert stars were bright before he turned away and walked slowly back to the gondola, reluctance in every lingering step. He didnt sleep much that night, and when the sun rose again he felt the coming end sink true and deep into his bone. The storm-dark was on the horizon ahead of them, a hundred miles away and already a dark smear over the gleaming sands.

The world was full of things Tsen didnt understand: dragons, flying eyries, gla.s.s.h.i.+ps and lightning cannon, but none of them touched the mystery of the storm-dark. It floated a mile off the ground, twenty miles across, wrapped around that other great inexplicable marvel, the infinite pillar of the G.o.dspike which pierced its heart. The cloud seemed to swell as the miles fell away, a great vortex of shadows racked by violet lightning, twisting in dark spirals, a solitary isolated fragment of the storm-dark curtain that cut the many worlds into pieces, trapped here in the heart of the desert by a ring of white stone spires each a mile high. As the gla.s.s.h.i.+p came closer, Tsens heart beat faster. Chay-Liang hadnt said a word about him leaving her to bring the eyrie here, leaving her to do it alone, hadnt even frowned though shed surely seen right through him. No one flew their gla.s.s.h.i.+p over the top of the storm-dark if they didnt have to because sometimes the magic simply failed up there. It happened over the Queverra too and, so hed heard, in parts of the Konsidar. A gla.s.s.h.i.+p that failed over the storm-dark fell like a stone until the maelstrom swallowed and un-made it. It unmade everything it touched. The lines out to sea did the same unless a navigator wove their protective weave and used the rifts to travel to other worlds from that one masterful secret the Taiytakei had become what they were but the storm-dark over the G.o.dspike was different. Feyn Charin, first and greatest of the navigators, had entered it and returned. No one else ever had.

Tsen shuddered. Maybe the magic that made his eyrie fly would work better. No one understood that either, after all.

The clouds grew, spreading across the sky as the gondola came closer, high overhead like a dark hand reaching down to devour him. He saw the ring of spires around the edge of the cloud, caging it, their tips touching it; and, deep inside, the white stone spire of the G.o.dspike itself, piercing it, gleaming in the desert sun, a pillar of light rising through the churning black cloud up into the sky beyond, towards the stars until it vanished into the deep and blinding blue. The spires held the storm-dark at bay, the navigators said. Truth was, Tsen reckoned, no one had ever had a clue except maybe Feyn Charin himself and in the end Charin had gone every bit as mad as QuaiShu, drooling in his rooms in the Dralamut and mumbling about dragons.

The air thinned as the gla.s.s.h.i.+p rose. Tsen felt it as the roiling black ma.s.s spread slowly around them, filling the sky. The storm-dark seemed like a hole in the world and there were some who said thats exactly what it was. He saw the flashes of lightning as the gondola rose higher, deep inside the darkness, bright and violent. Travellers between worlds saw that same lightning as they crossed, either side of the heart of the darkness where everything, even time perhaps, stopped and there was simply nothing.

The gla.s.s.h.i.+p rose past the edge of it. For a full minute the storm-dark blotted out the sun, and from one side of the gondola he was dazzled by brilliant afternoon sunlight while from the other all he saw was black. His knuckles were tight, the rest of him as tense as a lanyard. Kalaiya was shaking. He put his arm around her. Shameful, but he was glad of her fear. It gave him something to do and helped him to hide his own.

'We wont. Fall. He gasped out the words between shallow breaths. 'It almost. Never. Happens. He was starting to feel how thin the air was up here.

A strange thing happened as they climbed above the rim of the maelstrom. From underneath it was simply a black void in the sky; now, from above, with the sinking sun lighting its clouds, it became a sea of colours stretched out before him, swirls of purple and violet streaked with white and wisps of orange fire like frozen flames, flickering with inner lightning. The sight of it filled him, showing him how small he was, how tiny and irrelevant. He ran from one window to the next to the next around the gondola as the storm spread slowly out beneath them, unable to take his eyes from it except to run on and then stare again. His head pounded. And yes, he was still afraid, but not of being consumed by the maelstrom. He was afraid of what might be waiting, from knowing their journey and their time were almost done. His heart seemed to beat too quickly for his chest to hold it inside him. The cloud of the storm-dark, the majestic uncaring size of it, became a peculiar comfort. Beside it everything diminished.

He took out a farscope and peered through the gondola windows. Near the heart of the darkness where the G.o.dspike punched through and streaked towards the stars, he spotted a dark speck in the sky. The eyrie. Chay-Liang was flying it high. The air was so thin now that he was gasping. His head was throbbing and getting worse as they rose. Kalaiya lay back on the silks and cus.h.i.+ons, clutching at her hair, frenziedly chewing Xizic resin. Xizic helped with the headaches but Tsen couldnt look away, couldnt take his eyes anywhere else or even close them, until at last the gla.s.s.h.i.+p drifted over the top of the eyrie and the familiar craggy rocks and then the white stone circle of sloping walls and the flat bright open s.p.a.ce of the dragon yard, a mile above the storm. As it slipped beneath him, he clung to the familiarity of the shapes. The dragon, red and gold and huge, perched on the eyrie wall, staring towards the G.o.dspike. The lightning cannon and the black-powder guns, the hatchery, all as it had always been. He saw the moving specks of men and women, slaves about their business as they always were, and still it didnt tell him whether the Elemental Men had come or whether Shonda and the Vespinese were waiting for him. His blood was pounding, pulsing fit to burst every vein. The gondola came slowly to a stop over the middle of the dragon yard and he saw Chay-Liang running towards him, waving, but whether in welcome or warning he couldnt tell. He couldnt breathe. The air was too thin. He couldnt think any more.

He was going to be sick. His head felt ready to explode and his skull was too tight. There just wasnt enough air. He barely waited for Kalaiya when the gondola touched the white stone of the dragon yard before he cracked the ramp open. A wind worse than the one in Dhar Thosis howled about him. It buffeted him when he stepped out and he stumbled and almost fell, too dizzy to bother with righting himself, then staggered again and dropped to his hands and knees and vomited over the perfect smoothness of the dragon yards white stone. A slave came running to help him up. Tsen clutched at him.

'Are they here? His eyes were wild. The slave only looked bewildered. Tsen shook him. 'Are they here? The Elemental Men? The Vespinese? Are they here?

The slave pulled away in alarm and shook his head. 'No, Master TVarr. No. He kept backing away but Tsen couldnt give a s.h.i.+t any more. All the strength had drained out of him. He could barely stand. He swayed in the wind. Theyre not here yet. His head was killing him. Suddenly all he wanted and all he was good for was a bath. A long soak, a lot of Xizic tea and maybe a gla.s.s or two of apple wine. Anything to be out of this flaying wind, anything to make this headache go away. Some sleep. A lot of sleep. Hadnt had much of that these last few days.

Theyre not here. He felt like a puppet with his strings all cut. Chay-Liang was waving again but his skull was splitting open and he ignored her. Even ignored the dragon, the towering looming angry monster that glared at him as it glared at everything with its ravenous resentment. Right now he would probably have ignored an Elemental Man with a drawn blade held to his throat.

A silver cage swinging back and forth in the gale caught his eye. MaiChoiro Kwen had brought it with him for Lord Shondas jade ravens. Through the haze of pain, the cage reminded him there was one thing he had to do right now, no matter how many needles he felt stabbing through his eyes. He stumbled to the top of the wall, stopping to catch himself now and then against the howl of the wind before the gusts picked him off his feet. It was only when he reached the cage that he realised he was being ridiculous. To send a raven, Baros Tsen TVarr sat at his desk in his nice quiet study, very much out of the wind, with the pretty quill pen that Kalaiya had given him and his perfect white paper s.h.i.+pped from Zinzarra. He wrote his words in glorious peace and quiet and then summoned a slave to take it to a scribe. And, thank you very much, went nowhere near these horror-touched birds at all.

The jade raven eyed him from its cage with interest. The gale and its swinging perch didnt seem to bother it. Tsen turned away. As he did, the wind caught his robe and almost lifted it over his head, making him look even more of an idiot. He looked across the rim of the eyrie at the violet storm below. I should just jump, I really should. Save us all the bother . . . But instead he struggled back down to the yard and aimed for the tunnels that would take him out of this h.e.l.lish wind. State he was in, hed probably pick the wrong entrance without thinking and end up among the Scales or something like that.

Chay-Liang caught up with him before he could get away. 'Tsen- 'Send a jade raven, he mumbled. She could do it. Saved him from thinking. 'Send a jade raven to the Elemental Men in Khalishtor. Tell them what we did. All of it. Do it now.

'Tsen . . .

He stopped for a moment and looked at her. 'Dear G.o.ds in whom we dont believe, Liang, is it always like this up here?

'So far, yes. She was grinning now as though she liked it, and for a moment, through all the pain in his head, Tsen hated her. 'Tsen- 'Later. He pushed past. She was mad, that was it. Happened to enchanters, didnt it? They cracked and all sensible thought oozed out of their edges . . . He forgave her though, five minutes later when he found shed had his bath prepared when shed seen him coming; and the next few hours were a blur of warmth and pain and Xizic resin and Kalaiya and relief that no one was here to hang him yet, all a little marred by a lethargic dread of what was yet to come. Chay-Liang brought him something from the alchemist to help him sleep; he drank it without even thinking, and when he woke up again, his head was clearer and only throbbed like a badly sheeted sail. He called her back and they walked the walls together, battered by the relentless gale as the eyrie drifted in its lazy orbit around the G.o.dspike.

'Couldnt we go lower? he shouted at her over the wind. Liang had six gla.s.s.h.i.+ps dragging the eyrie through the sky. As far as Tsen could see, shed moved the eyrie higher and higher until they were as far from the storm-dark as her gasping lungs could stand.

'We could, she yelled back. 'But you get used to it. Give it a few days.

'I may not have a few days! And if I do, I would prefer them not to hurt so much. Was it possible to sound plaintive and shout at the same time? He rather thought hed managed it.

She offered him some reeking drink or other. When he asked her what it was, she shrugged and shouted over the gale, 'Bellepheros makes it. It helps with the thinness of the air. He waved her away then watched as she shrugged and drank a mouthful and offered it again. Bellepheros. The alchemist from the dragon-lands.

'You trust that slave too much. Far too much, for what they had between the two of them was nothing like the way it should be between mistress and slave.

'What?

He leaned into her and shouted back, 'I said you trust your slave too much!

She looked at him then. Not a word, not a flicker of her eyes, not the shadow of a smirk, but he knew she was laughing at him. After a second or two he had to laugh as well. Kalaiya knew his soul. That was simply the way fate had turned. Maybe it was the same for Liang and her alchemist. At any rate, he was the last person in the world to lecture anyone when it came to overly liking their slaves.

He pulled Liang into some shelter where at least they were out of the wind and he could hear himself think, s.n.a.t.c.hed the cup out of Liangs hands and drank. 'Yes, yes. And he half-listened as she told him how breathlessness and nausea and splitting heads had blighted everyone until the alchemist started making his potions. Everyone except the rider-slave Zafir of course, who laughed at them all for being so pathetic. When Liang was done, Tsen looked about him. His eyrie, still his eyrie, kept aloft by hostile uncaring sorcery from another age.

'Were not safe here, he said. He looked up at the gla.s.s.h.i.+ps. 'Sooner or later they will fail.

'I have more, loitering over the desert, out of the way and out of sight. Belli and I talked it through while you were gone.

Belli? Tsen chuckled and shook his head. What, were they lovers now? 'You trust that slave far too much. He spoke with a twinkle in his words this time. So what if they were? 'Borrowed time, Liang. Were all on borrowed time. We must make the most of it.

'One gla.s.s.h.i.+p is enough to keep us aloft, TVarr, and we have six. See how they all pull at slight angles to one another that was the hard part to get right. If any one fails then it will fall clear of the outer rim of the eyrie. There will be plenty of time to summon another. Weve been here for days and I havent lost one yet.

'It will be quite a sight if you do. Tsen shook his head. 'But I wonder if we should release them. All of them. Let this eyrie and its monsters sink into the storm-dark and be gone. Evacuate everyone. Leave me behind. Wipe it all out. MaiChoiro can stay in his cell. Well go down together, he and I. He took a deep breath and turned to look at the dragon at last, the terror that had destroyed Dhar Thosis. Its wounds were already healing. The eyrie wall where it sat was marked by dried blood. Was there anything magical about dragon blood? There ought to be, he thought, but neither the alchemist nor Chay-Liang had run around clearing it up and cackling gleefully to themselves as they did, so he supposed there wasnt.

He frowned and touched his temple. His head wasnt hurting any more and Chay-Liang was smiling at him. He rubbed his fingers into his skin, trying to chase away the last ghosts of the pain, then he turned and stared out to the west to where, if you flew for long enough, the Konsidar rose out of the sands.