The Splintered Gods (29 page)

Tsen laughed. ‘And my alchemist and my rider and some of those Scales slaves with their vile disease too? Why not simply steal the lot?’

‘Just an egg. One would have done, although I would have preferred several to be safe. Unfortunately, events caused a change of plan and so I stole you instead. You will help me. In return I will steal your Kalaiya for you.’

He wouldn’t say any more and so Tsen sat back and enjoyed the shade and the warm air and the cold fresh water of the river. He moved to the bow of the boat and stared up the river. The Jokun came down from the mountains less than a hundred miles away. The water there was like ice, and it flowed down into the desert quickly, keeping its freshness. The odd thing was that there were creatures living in the waters of the lakes and lagoons that would die of cold if they tried to swim in the river, and other creatures in the river that would slowly cook in the warmer pools of the Lair of Samim. Two different worlds joined together but unable ever to
meet. Like the Taiytakei and the Righteous Ones of the Konsidar.

Oh, look at you, with your clever metaphors for life. How useful. Got any metaphors to get us out of here?
Tsen had a bit of a think about that and found that no, he didn’t. Instead, he quietly decided that Sivan must be a lunatic because only a madman would know what a dragon was and then try to steal an egg without an alchemist to control the hatchling that would eventually come out of it.

In the night his Bronzehand finger tingled. He slipped the ring off and let Bronzehand see where he was, for all the good that might do him. He didn’t have a bowl of water handy to return the favour but he walked out into the cool dark air and the breeze off the mountains and trailed his hand in the water of the river, letting Bronzehand see the Lair of Samim around him. He kept the ring off. Didn’t seem to matter much now. Maybe Bronzehand had a way to tell some of the others, but if he did, none of them tried to see through him to find out where he was. Besides, unless Sivan was a liar, Bronzehand was probably very happy with matters just as they were.

After two days on the river, the swamps of the Lair fell behind them, the banks turned rocky and barren and Tsen saw the first distant summits of the Konsidar ahead, the southern rim that cradled the Vespinarr basin before the greater peaks of the Righteous Ones further to the north. Another day and another night and the river changed again, became narrow, fast and angry. They left the boat and the silent frightened sailors behind and returned to the shore. Sivan had other men waiting – hired sword-slaves with little interest in anything but money, Tsen thought, but when he made the same offer as he’d made the sailors, they were every bit as afraid. Mortally, dreadfully afraid. When Tsen tried speaking to them, they looked away. They wouldn’t even meet his eye. He wasn’t sure, but he thought perhaps they pitied him.

‘Who is he?’ he whispered to one, but if he knew he didn’t say.

33

The Lords of Vespinarr

When they were done asking questions of the corpse that looked like Baros Tsen T’Varr but wasn’t, Red Lin Feyn and her soldiers took his body back to the bathhouse. Liang watched them go, left alone with Bellepheros. They looked at each other in silence for a long time and Liang tried to see the man she’d thought she’d known. He looked exactly as he always had – scruffy, tired and slightly irritable, the same Belli she’d worked with all these months – but now he’d brought a dead man back to life. Two, in fact. She was glad of the gloom. It meant he didn’t see how she stared at him. She took a deep breath and forced the lump out of her throat.

Belli sat down. ‘What now?’

‘What you’ve done is sorcery. The Arbiter . . .’ Liang shook her head. ‘She has to tell them, Belli. She has to. The killers. And once they know . . .’ Words kept trying to jump out of her mouth. He’d done this for her and now . . . ‘Sorcerers shattered the world, Belli. They made the storm-dark. The killers won’t allow it to happen again. It’s what they’re for. What now? I don’t know.’

‘I’m not a sorcerer, Li.’

Liang didn’t know what else to say. ‘Is it true? The dead can’t lie?’

The alchemist stuck out his bottom lip. ‘I’ve never known otherwise.’ He started towards her and then stopped. ‘Li, abyssal powders are not used often or lightly.’

‘Belli! It’s not what you
choose
to do. It’s what you
can
do. Oh Xibaiya!’ She had to turn away again.

After another long silence Bellepheros grunted, hauled himself back to his feet and paced across the room. ‘Your killers could send me home, you know, if they don’t like what I do.’

‘They could.’ But they wouldn’t. More likely, when they knew what he could do, they’d launch an expedition to the dragon-realm
and put every alchemist they could find to the knife. ‘How long dead . . .’ She knew exactly what they’d think. Could someone with this sort of power dig up the corpse of Feyn Charin and pull out all his secrets? What about the monstrous sorceress Abraxi or the nightmare terror of the Crimson Sunburst?
Never mind what the alchemist says, best to be sure.

Bellepheros was watching her. He looked sad.

‘They could send us all home, Li,’ he said. ‘Me and the dragons and the eggs and the hatchlings and her Holiness. Wouldn’t that be better? Just let us go back where we belong.’

Liang rounded on him. Her words came out hot and full of anger. ‘Why do you always call her that, Belli? Holiness? Look at her! Do you think her some sort of goddess?’

He laughed at her for that. ‘It’s tradition. Where I come from, failing to address one’s speaker properly can mean being fed to their dragons before the sun sets. Li, how is it possible for that man not to be Baros Tsen? He
is
Baros Tsen.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But if he isn’t then someone changed his face! How? And you tell
me
about sorcerers!’

‘I don’t know, Belli, I don’t know. It frightens me.
You
frighten me.’

‘Me? Ha!’ He sounded so full of hurt and disbelief that a part of her wanted to hug him and tell him she was sorry and that she’d find a way to understand and it would all be fine and not to worry and . . . And yet she didn’t move, didn’t speak.

The iron door eased open behind her. Red Lin Feyn slipped back in. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid I’ve been listening and
I
do know.’ The Arbiter closed the door and for a few seconds stood very still, eyes closed. ‘We are alone. That is good. Chay-Liang of Hingwal Taktse, you will listen to me now and do as I say. Do not ask questions and do not speak of this to anyone. I will explain more later when we are alone on a glasship to Vespinarr.’

‘Vespinarr?’ Liang blinked in surprise. Red Lin Feyn frowned at her.

‘I told you to listen, not to speak. You will go back to your rooms, both of you. This did not happen. The guards will remain
outside your doors. When my killers return, I will inform them I have decided on a further course of investigation. I will not tell them why, not yet. At first light you, Chay-Liang, and I will travel to Vespinarr. I will send a killer ahead to the Dralamut to demand additional guardians. We should not consider ourselves safe, either of us, so you may bring whatever you see fit to defend yourself. They will send a killer with us to watch over me. You will say nothing of what you’ve done or heard in this room tonight unless you are absolutely certain we are alone. Do you understand? Absolutely, unquestionably alone.’

Chay-Liang nodded, bewildered. ‘And Belli?’ she asked as the Arbiter turned and reached for the iron door.

‘Your alchemist slave will remain and go about his usual duties. I will leave orders for the killers to mind the eyrie and allow no one to leave. It will carry on exactly as it is until our return. They will be told this is my will. Whether they adhere to it will depend on truths yet to be unravelled.’ She fixed Belli with a hard look. ‘I will not tell them what power you have, alchemist, not yet. For now, I suggest you both consider any means by which a killer may be incapacitated or detained.’

Liang’s mouth fell open. ‘Lady . . . ?’

Red Lin Feyn opened the door and barked at her soldiers, ‘The enchantress is to return to her quarters. No one is to enter –’ she paused ‘– even if they appear to be me. Come, Chay-Liang. Back to your prison now.’

She walked away. Liang took a step after her and then stopped and turned back. She went to Belli and took his hands in hers. ‘I don’t know what you are any more, Belli, but you’re a good man. Stay that way. Be safe. Do nothing to make them suspicious.’ She looked into his eyes for a moment, felt the calloused skin of his hands under her fingers and found she wanted to do much more than hold them; but want would have to wait.

‘I’ll do my best, Li.’ He looked bemused, which made her want to laugh and cry all at once.

As soon as she was back in her room, Liang began to pack. Vespinarr? There were a lot of things she might have taken with her, the accumulated nonsense of a dozen years as enchanter to a sea lord. Things came her way whether she wanted them or not.
Pieces of glass worked with different metals in them. No one had yet found anything that made glass as malleable to an enchanter’s will as gold, but that didn’t stop the journeymen in Hingwal Taktse from trying, and now and then they found an interesting property. Then there were things people made to show off their skills, hoping to secure her attention and patronage; pieces sent to her as gifts; things sent to Tsen that he didn’t want; her own early pieces as an apprentice, kept for posterity. When her workshop had no space for it all any more, her room had become a cross between a laboratory and a museum. Little of it was actually useful. The Arbiter had already taken her lightning wand and her black rod.

She packed a dozen pieces of unworked glass and a spare robe. Over in one corner, stored carefully in a chest, were a dozen globes of trapped fire from the Dominion, where blazes were caught by the sun priests and imprisoned inside enchanted glass. The sea lords used them to tip the black-powder rockets their ships carried into battle; but after the dragons had arrived, Tsen’s rockets had been removed from the walls and put into storage. Liang had dismantled a few. She couldn’t remember what she’d been meaning to do with them now but she had the fire globes and three sealed pots of black powder.

She picked up a globe and looked at it. Fire globes set everything around them alight when they broke. Horrific and terrifying things when shot on rockets against wooden ships but not much use against dragons, which laughed at fire, and not much use against Elemental Men either, not when they could simply turn into the stuff at will. She fiddled absently with some gold-glass until she’d made a second shell around a fire globe and then filled it with black powder. It would explode with even more force now.

What am I doing?
She was shaking. Her breathing was ragged. Did she want to go to Vespinarr? No. Did she have a choice? No.
I’ve been told by the Arbiter. I have to. I don’t have a say.
She shaped the glass some more, making it into a ball with needles sticking out so it would explode into a hail of sharpened slivers that would shred anyone near it. She fiddled, refined it, moulded it, changed it, changed it back and then changed it again. Yes, a fine thing for murdering a crowd of people, but what she’d made had ended up about the size of her head and covered in spikes – too heavy to be
put on the end of a rocket, ridiculously awkward to carry and it still wouldn’t trouble an Elemental Man.

She burst into tears, and the tears turned into great heaving sobs. Truth was, if she was honest, she was glad that the Arbiter was taking her, and she was glad that she had no choice. She needed just to be away. To have some time to think. To not see Belli’s face every hour of every day and see him standing over a talking corpse; and yet it made her feel so utterly horrible because she was abandoning him when he needed her most and she hated herself for that, and she knew that if she was given the choice then she’d stay because that was right and he deserved it, but the Arbiter
hadn’t
given her the choice and she was so damned grateful because that meant it wasn’t her fault when she left him here alone . . .

What did that say about her? If he knew, if he could see her inner thoughts, wouldn’t he hate her? He certainly ought to.

She closed her eyes, thinking furiously about how she could keep Belli safe and what she ought to do for him and how much he deserved everything she could give, and then she must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew there were men barging through her door and the Arbiter was with them, dressed in all her flaming finery.

‘Give her five fingers of the sun to be ready. She may bring whatever she wishes.’ Red Lin Feyn swept out and Liang was about to follow, all ready to start her arguments as to why she should stay so she could look after Belli, when another pair of soldiers came running in and gave her a wooden box with a tiny brass catch. Inside it six wax-sealed vials lay cocooned in soft velvet nestled over packed goose down. Her breath caught in her throat – she’d given the box as a present to Belli not long after he’d arrived. She couldn’t remember where she’d got it – Zinzarra, perhaps – but the vials were her own work. They were simple little shapings, each no more than a few minutes’ effort, but they were all unique and she’d worked the necks into differently shaped dragons for him. As she opened it, a piece of folded paper fell out, tied in a ribbon. She picked it up and read it:

‘Be safe Li.’

Tied around the neck of each vial was a tiny label. Liang almost burst into tears again. She stuffed the box into her bag and hurried
after the Arbiter, determined to stop her and demand to stay, but when she reached the dragon yard, she abruptly stopped. The yard was swarming with soldiers. Most were the Vespinese who had come to free Mai’Choiro Kwen, lined up in arrow-straight ranks. Their polished gold-glass armour gleamed with coppery fire in the dawn sun, their ashgars rested on their shoulders and their shields were raised to their chests in perfect lines. Their emerald and silver capes billowed and flapped like flags in the constant wind and the jade in their helms and the coloured silks they wore across their chests seemed to glow.

In the centre of the dragon yard a small golden gondola sat beside the one the Arbiter had taken for herself, but the soldiers weren’t for her. Across the yard and close to the walls – as far away from the dragon’s perch as they could be – three gondolas of jade and bright shining silver rested with their ramps still closed. Red Lin Feyn stood waiting for them in all her splendour, in her Arbiter’s robe of flames and with the white headdress on, her arms spread wide and shielded from the wind by gold-glass screens while Elemental Men stood on either side. More killers watched from around the dragon yard, conspicuously outlined atop the walls. The hatchling dragons paid no heed to it all, almost hypnotised by the Godspike as ever. The great dragon was nowhere to be seen.

Liang’s escort stopped dead. They were Vespinese soldiers themselves, proud in their silver and emerald, and Liang saw they were looking up at the glasships overhead, whose chains had carried these new gondolas here. When Liang followed their eyes, she understood. The glasships above the silver and jade gondolas were stained a silvery green. The impurities made them slower but they also made them unique and only one sea lord flew them. Shonda was here at last.

For a fleeting moment, at the top of her ramp, the Arbiter became Red Lin Feyn again. She shot Liang an irritable glance and made a sharp gesture for her to come. Confused, Liang ran to the Arbiter’s side as the silver and jade gondolas cracked open. More Vespinese soldiers were running out from the barracks, forming themselves up into an honour guard as quickly as they could. The dawn sun shone across the storm-dark, lighting its swirling cloud
with apocalyptic orange. The white stone of the eyrie appeared touched with pink.

‘Go inside and make yourself invisible,’ muttered Red Lin Feyn as Liang reached the gondola. Liang hurried in and climbed the steps to the upper level. She’d never been up here. It only occupied half the width of the gondola’s interior and was reached by the sweep of an arcing silver stair. There was a huge bed and several closets and racks for . . . she had no idea what they were for but they were empty. She felt like an intruder, a thief, a burglar. This was where the Arbiter slept, where she stripped away the trappings of the Dralamut and became just an ordinary person, and Liang had no place being here. She put down her bag and wished she was somewhere else, wished that Shonda had arrived ten minutes earlier so she could have stayed in her room until all this was done or perhaps gone and spent an hour with Belli. Or later so she could have made her case to stay.

Which made her think again of the pale corpse of Baros Tsen turning to her to speak. She shivered. The alchemist was her slave. She often forgot but others didn’t. She had responsibility for him and it cut both ways. The killers would look at her long and hard once they knew what he could do. It was all too much to think about.