by Stephen Deas
Ah well. Her Holiness and a sorceress. Let them sort it out between them. Kept them both out of his way. After what he’d seen, he couldn’t wait any more.
The iron door to his study was closed. The Elemental Men had insisted on putting a guard outside but the iron door was why he’d kept Li here in the first place. That and it was easier than trying to move her. She was in his bed and he was camped in his laboratory.
‘Anyone come by?’ The guard shook his head. Bellepheros bent and inspected a corner of the door where he’d wedged a piece of leaf against the frame. ‘Then you might as well come in.’ They’d said they were putting a guard on Li, but he hadn’t had a single moment to work in peace since she’d been poisoned. Eyes, always eyes watching him. He had a bad feeling that it was about to get a lot, lot worse, and for a moment, inside the sanctuary of his study, everything he’d just seen suddenly hit him all at once. He stood in the middle of the room, then bent double, gasping for breath. He felt sick. The woman was a sorceress! When he’d tried to speak through the web of silence she’d wrought, he’d felt his blood curdle in his veins.
No, he couldn’t be sick. He just needed to do this now. Quickly.
The guard was frowning. ‘You all right?’
‘The Arbiter has come.’ That shut him up. Bellepheros shook himself. No time for trembling now, old man. Later . . . Li was on the bed where he’d left her, wrapped in all the blankets he could find. He put a hand on her brow. As far as the watching guard could tell, that was all he ever did, check on her and force a little water into her now and then – he and the guard both took a good swig of it before they fed any to Li – but what he’d forced into Li when he’d found her dying on his floor hadn’t been a potion but his blood, pure and strong, and there were consequences to doing a thing like that. The first and most important consequence was that Li wasn’t dead, but there were others. He closed his eyes, reached into his own blood and through it across the bridge he’d made to Chay-Liang. Blood-magic. The terrible temptation every alchemist had to face. He had a hold on her now whether he wanted it or not. He could, if he chose, compel her to his will. He could read her feelings and perhaps even her thoughts. He could make her a slave far more than she’d ever made one of him. Not that he wanted to. Not that the thought didn’t appal him. But he could.
The poison in her veins was a villainous one and Li was still fighting off its last claws. Another few hours, maybe another day. He straightened. ‘Not long now. If she wakes and I’m not here then you must send someone to find me. Do it straight away. She’ll be thirsty. Give her water.’
The Taiytakei smiled. He looked relieved – happy even – but then Bellepheros thought he caught a hint of something else. Something anxious and then a glance at the water jug.
‘I’ll make sure it’s pure,’ Bellepheros said. Not that he had any reason to suspect this particular Taiytakei of anything, but still . . . He forced a smile. ‘I have a couple of chores to see to. Actually, no, I can give her something else that might help. Would you mind getting me the decanter of wine from the desk in my laboratory?’ He took the bladder from the dead cook out of his bag and poked a tiny hole into it with a scalpel, then squeezed the goo inside into a small clay bowl. It stank, the most noxious smell imaginable. The Taiytakei, who’d come to peer over his shoulder, recoiled.
‘Unholy Xibaiya, alchemist! What is that?’
Telling him it was the rotting liquefied brain matter of someone who’d once cooked food for them both didn’t seem politic. ‘It has a particular name but basically it’s fermented dragon shit,’ he lied, then glanced back and grinned. The soldier had retreated to the door. ‘You get used to the smell.’
‘You do?’
Not really. Bellepheros coughed and made a face. ‘Well . . .’ Out of sight he pricked the heel of his hand with the scalpel and dripped three drops of his own blood into the bowl. ‘Could you get the wine?’ When the Taiytakei didn’t move, Bellepheros let his shoulders slump and gave a little sigh. ‘Right.’ Yes, yes, the whole tiresome matter of never having a moment alone with Li. Not that he wanted one, but having someone watch everything he did in his own study, he could have done without that. He sprinkled a little powdered obsidian into the bowl, dripped in three drops of moonshade and a half a dozen of clove oil. The clove oil didn’t actually do anything useful, but he liked the smell of it a whole lot better and it went some way to mask the stink of rotting brain. ‘I’ll take this to the laboratory and then it can go to the hatchery in a bit. It can stink out there instead of in here.’ He forced a smile for the watching guard and stirred the pot until everything was mixed together nicely. ‘Right. Wine.’ He walked out with his pot. The soldier didn’t see the scalpel he took with him, hidden up his sleeve.
He came back without his stinking pot and carrying a silver tray which he set down on the desk. He poured a little wine onto a piece of clean cloth, took the cloth to Li’s bed, about to squeeze a little into her mouth, and then stopped and looked at the Taiytakei soldier. The soldier looked back. There were two glasses on the tray. ‘A little wine will help her recovery –’ Bellepheros grinned ‘– but perhaps we should do as we do with her water?’ He poured a little into each cup and let the soldier choose which one to drink. They raised their glasses to each other. The soldier grinned too as he knocked it back.
‘This from old Tsen T’Varr’s stock, is it?’
Bellepheros shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t drink much, to be honest. The lady Chay-Liang found it . . .’
There were several things he might have said or done next but he didn’t do any of them because the iron door was still open and now two women in white tunics were standing there, looking nervously inside. Bellepheros sighed. Zafir’s slaves. ‘What does she want now?’
‘Master alchemist.’ Myst and Onyx both bowed as though they didn’t know what to make of him. He was a slave too, so no better than they were, but then so was their mistress, who almost seemed to run the eyrie sometimes, and Bellepheros was the one person – now that Tsen was gone – that she treated with anything other than contempt. ‘Master alchemist, can you come please? Our mistress asks.’
‘Tell her to come here,’ he snapped. ‘I’m in the middle of something.’
They bobbed and bowed and shuffled their feet and didn’t go away. ‘Lord alchemist, our mistress will not come. But she . . . asks kindly for you to attend her. And we beg you, both of us. Please.’
Bellepheros looked at them hard. Zafir sent them now and then with petty errands and asked him odd little questions and sometimes demanded his presence. So far he’d obliged her. This time . . . this time he was half-minded to refuse and send them away, but something about them was off. They were worried. They were also the only two people in the eyrie who’d do anything except breathe a great sigh of relief when the Elemental Men finally hanged Zafir, but for the time being he had good reasons to want that day to be a little way away. ‘I don’t suppose she wants to start hunting the hatchling that burned my laboratory, does she?’
‘We are to tell you that she will consider it.’
Bellepheros glanced at Li, at the soldier and at the wine. He took a deep breath. The air stank of cloves and something rotten, but all that could wait a little. ‘Very well.’ He shrugged an apology at the soldier. ‘I won’t be long. Keep her safe and let no one enter until I get back.’
The soldier followed him out and closed the door and resumed his post. Bellepheros didn’t bother with the leaf this time – this time he was quite sure that the soldier would keep Li safe. He followed Myst and Onyx out into the wind and up to the wall where Diamond Eye perched, staring at the Godspike. Zafir lay on the dragon’s back, basking in the sun. As Bellepheros approached, she beckoned him to climb and join her. Bellepheros rolled his eyes. Yes, he understood why she wanted him up there, because the Elemental Men couldn’t come so close to a dragon without turning back into flesh and bone and so Diamond Eye’s back was the safest place for them to talk without
being overheard. But really? The ladder flapped and swung in the wind. Heights and open space both made him sick with anxiety, and he was an old man and his knees hated climbing anything at all, even gentle steps. Besides, it wasn’t right for an alchemist to sit on the back of a dragon. They did it when they had to but it wasn’t how the world was supposed to work. Dragons and alchemists, oil and water.
‘Holiness . . .’ She probably couldn’t even hear him from up there over the wind, and even if she could it wouldn’t make any difference. He took a deep breath and steeled himself. She’d left space for him to sit in front of her as always, but this time, as soon as he was up, she reached around him and pulled him tight up against her and locked her arms around his waist.
‘Holiness . . .?’
‘Didn’t you ever want to fly, alchemist?’
She was already buckled into her harness. He saw it coming a moment before it happened, let out a pained little gasp and closed his eyes with a volley of silent oaths, and then Diamond Eye flared his wings and jumped and he was tipping sideways and the only things stopping him from falling were Zafir’s arms wrapped around him. The huge vast emptiness suddenly all around him made him want to scream. He screwed his eyes tight shut and prayed he wouldn’t be sick. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t. And there was nothing to stop him falling except those arms which could let go at any moment . . .
Zafir pulled him straight again. He knew they hadn’t banked, knew that Diamond Eye was simply gliding straight over the maelstrom of the storm-dark far below them, but his tongue had swollen so much it seemed to fill his mouth, his heart was thump-thump-thump against his ribs as if trying to break free, and much of his insides desperately wanted to escape by whatever way they could. Mustering all the will he could find, he righted himself and risked a look, then quickly closed his eyes again. ‘Holiness?’ He couldn’t manage any more than that.
She hissed in his ear. ‘This may be the last time I fly alone.’
Diamond Eye began a turn, making slow lazy circles, spiralling lower towards the storm. They passed under the dark belly of the eyrie, lit up now and then by purple flashes of lightning.
‘You don’t serve me any more, alchemist. You serve them.’
‘Holiness, I . . .’ He stopped as she let him go and shoved him in the back instead. He felt himself slip, screamed and flailed to keep his balance and then she had him again, yelling in his ear over the tearing wind.
‘Don’t! Don’t you dare blow sugar up my arse. Your loyalty is long gone. So be it. You want something from me and I want something from you. Then let us bargain, you and I.’ Diamond Eye swooped and Bellepheros let out another howl of terror as he felt the dragon drop away beneath him and his stomach tried to scale his throat and jump out of his mouth. Zafir held him tight. He doubled over and threw up, spattering the dragon’s scales and his own robes, and all the while he felt her head pressed against his own, her lips right up to his ear, close enough to brush his skin. ‘I have something to show you,’ she said. The dragon dived towards the storm then levelled and skimmed its surface in a gentle arc. ‘Look down, alchemist.’
He didn’t want to look down. He didn’t want to look anywhere at all and would rather have kept his eyes firmly closed until she either threw him off or took him back, but if he was going to look at anything then he preferred the dark speck of the eyrie high above or the bright looming spire of the Godspike. The evening sun was on it, making it shine with a pale orange fire. It was vast. Huge, as Diamond Eye curved towards it, and so unspeakably tall. When he tried to look up to where it must touch the sky, his eyes kept sliding off it. He tipped sideways.
Zafir shifted with him, easy and assured. Her grip tightened. ‘It sucks you in, doesn’t it? What is it, alchemist? Do any of them know? It means something to Diamond Eye. I’ve half a mind to wake him up and ask him.’
‘Holiness!’ She couldn’t hear him though, not a word he said, not over the wind.
‘Down, alchemist, I told you to look down!’
He forced himself. The storm-dark lay spread out around them as far as he could see. The emptiness forced its way into him. The sheer size of it seemed to swell inside his lungs, filling them tight so he couldn’t breathe. He gasped and squirmed but Zafir still didn’t let him go. Dark churning clouds flecked with flashes of purple lightning, just as he’d seen when the Taiytakei had brought him on their ship from Furymouth to Xican and Tuuran had smashed open the shutters on the window in his cabin and shown it to him. The vastness overwhelmed him. The space devoured him. Heights and open spaces. He screamed. Couldn’t help himself. ‘Stop! Stop! Take me back! I beg you!’ A roaring that wasn’t the wind filled his ears. He pitched forward. The next thing he knew someone was shaking him, and for one blissful moment he thought it was Li and he’d been sleeping in his bed and it had all been a horrible dream, until Zafir pulled him upright and grabbed his head in her hands.
‘I said down, alchemist. The lightning. Look at the lightning!’
He looked at the lightning and whimpered and wailed, eyes watering in the wind. ‘What, Holiness? What am I supposed to see? I have crossed the storm-dark as you have! Yes, this is the same. I know that. They all know that! What more must I see? Please take me back!’
‘Watch, alchemist. Wait. Patience.’
Bellepheros quietly closed his eyes. Her Holiness was behind him so she couldn’t see. Diamond Eye circled. On the back of a dragon with nothing to keep him safe except Zafir, with the storm-dark churning beneath them, every second felt like hours.
A brilliant flash of light made him flinch and blink, bright enough to startle him even with his eyes shut. More purple lightning, only this time it was too bright to have come from inside the maelstrom so it must have come from . . .
‘Did you see it, alchemist? Did you see?’
Bellepheros took a deep breath and wondered whether Zafir had finally tipped into madness, whether she’d always been slightly mad, whether she was more mad than before or whether this was the same madness and he just happened to be in the way of it. Times like this he understood exactly why Li wanted rid of her and the sooner the better. They’d all been mad in some way or other, the queens of the Silver City, the mistresses of the Pinnacles surrounded by the lost works of the Silver King.
‘It came from the eyrie, alchemist. From the eyrie!’
Bellepheros nodded. ‘Yes!’ He hadn’t seen anything at all but he supposed she must be right. Lightning from the belly of the eyrie, where flares of purple played back and forth. Lightning to the storm-dark. Was that what she wanted him to see? That the eyrie and the maelstrom were somehow connected?
‘They are the same, alchemist.’
Maybe she was right. He tried to forget about being afraid and Zafir’s madness and let that idea settle inside him instead, almost grateful for something else to occupy his scattered thoughts. The eyrie and the storm-dark. They were . . . what? Talking to each other? Something. Did the Taiytakei know? Presumably they did but perhaps . . . Did they ever fly under the eyrie as Zafir had done? Did they ever see it? What if they didn’t? Was there a use to this knowledge?
Diamond Eye was rising now. Zafir pressed her cheek against his again. ‘Well? Are they? Are they the same?’
‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘Do they know?’
‘No. I’m not sure they do.’ That was a revelation even to him. But no, now he thought about it, he rather thought that the Taiytakei didn’t have the first idea.
Zafir’s voice dropped to something that was almost a snarl. ‘Alchemist, they say that everything that enters the storm-dark is destroyed, that only they have the sorcery to prevent this. What if they’re wrong?’
Bellepheros took a few deep breaths. The fear was easing a little, and he was fairly sure now that Zafir didn’t mean to pitch him off to fall to his doom, but that didn’t stop him from sinking forward as soon she let go of him, from pressing himself into Diamond Eye’s scales still sticky with his own vomit and hugging
them tight. What are you trying to say? But he couldn’t open his mouth to speak. He could barely even breathe.
Zafir flew towards the Godspike. Diamond Eye circled it, higher and higher until the eyrie was below them, and then the glasships that carried it, and then the others that floated higher still and on until they were alone in the sky and Bellepheros was gasping for air and his head was thumping for lack of it. ‘Now look up,’ Zafir hissed.
Bellepheros risked a glimpse. The Godspike rose into deep blue sky, on as far as he could see. He screwed up his face but all he could think of was how he wasn’t getting enough air and how his heart was racing and his head felt ready to explode and he thought he might be sick again and, dear Flame, he was surely going to die out here . . . ‘Holiness! Please! Enough! Let us go back!’ He closed his eyes and started to sob. He could feel her shaking. Laughing at him perhaps. His fingers were going numb and his face too. The air was as cold as ice and his robes were too thin, though the heat of the dragon underneath him and Zafir at his back kept him from shivering. ‘Please!’ he whimpered. ‘Holiness, please!’
Diamond Eye arced away from the Godspike and swirled in a shallow spiral dive for the eyrie. The dragon landed gently and lowered his head to the ground so that when Bellepheros tried to climb down and missed his footing on the ladder because he was shaking so much and crashed instead in a jumble of arms and legs to the eyrie wall, the fall wasn’t so great that he broke anything. He lay there for a while, feeling his bruises, drained and spent. Getting up was just too much. Blessed dear solid ground again. He wanted to hug it, to spread himself across it as widely as he could like a man might smear butter over bread, but he didn’t get the chance. Zafir jumped down beside him and hauled him to his feet. He was still quivering with cold and fear and he stank of his own puke, but he had enough awareness to see how things had changed between them. Time was, she’d never have stooped to something as menial as helping him up.
