‘Three men clad in silver with eyes of blood and the faces of dead gods. Do you know why we are here?’ asked Quai'Shu suddenly.
‘I am to kill them?’
The answer seemed obvious, and then it was immediately every bit as obvious that it wasn't right. Quai'Shu’s smile seemed to chide him for his presumption. ‘No, servant, you are not their end. You are an offering.’
The Watcher bowed. ‘You mean to give me to the sorcerers who live here?’ For a moment he wondered if he might murder his master rather than be given up as a gift.
‘Perhaps.’ Quai'Shu gave an impatient frown. ‘But you are a treasure. Priceless. Why would I give you away? What could be worth so much?’
Elemental Men spoke with actions and deeds. Men like Quai'Shu, the Watcher had learned, spoke mostly for their own ears. He held his silence. The sea lord was playing with him.
‘What are we, we Taiytakei? We sail between worlds. We cross the storm-dark and what do we do? We find what they want and we give it to them.’ He smiled. ‘Do you know how many lands I've seen?’
The Watcher nodded. ‘All of them, master.’
‘No one has seen them all. Some have yet to be revealed. But I've seen many. Perhaps all of them that matter. Do you know what I've found?’
The Watcher shook his head.
‘I've led my family and my fleet for two decades and I've led them well. The City of Stone prospers. In the all-devouring duel between Cashax and the Vespinese, I've taken my side and ridden it with care. A good ally to one, never a dangerous enemy to the other. Small as we are, I've kept Xican's place in the Great Sea Council among the thirteen cities who quietly rule the six known worlds. Yet I am not satisfied. Another few years and I'll be too weak for these voyages. The mantle will pass to someone younger. One of my sons. I'll be remembered as a good captain but not a great one. Not yet.’ He turned and looked the Watcher in the eye for the first time since they'd reached the island. ‘What have I found? I've found whatever I wanted to find. That is what we do. It's what makes us what we are. Every desire but one I've sated. In the court of the immortal Sun King, who is revered as a god and who wears armour made of the very matter of the sun itself, I found something unexpected. I knelt in his presence. It was uncommonly bright but otherwise like that of any other man, king or otherwise. Yet what I found there was a desire I have not been able to sate.’
‘Do you wish him dead, master?’ asked the Picker. He frowned at once, at his own impertinence perhaps, but the Watcher understood perfectly. Killing for mere amusement? Elemental Men had done so before but such murders were shameful. And then he felt ashamed too, for Quai'Shu surely wouldn't stoop to such a thing.
‘Do I seem so little to you?’ Quai'Shu hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat it onto the white sand. ‘I want something that will not be given, not for anything in the world. Dragons. That was the desire the Sun King showed me in his palace. For a dragon, he said he would give me anything. I could not satisfy him. I promised myself I would not rest until I could, but later my thoughts wandered far. I am set on a new course. I will bring dragons to all our captains of the sea. They will change our world.’
‘Dragons, master?’
‘Dragons.’
The Watcher had seen dragons in pictures. Quai'Shu had seen dragons too. From a distance, but for real and with his own eyes. The princes of the dragon lands guarded them jealously. The Watcher knew this because Quai'Shu had said so.
‘As captain of my house I've been cautious and prudent and it has made me rich. For most of my life that's all that mattered, to keep the keepers of my coin content; now, in the twilight of my years, it's not enough. Does that seem strange to you men of the elements? Foolish? No matter. Here we are. Dragons cannot be bought and so I mean to steal one. A scheme worthy of an Elemental Man. I would see if these Diamond Men will help. I will buy them if I can, with the most precious thing I can offer.’
Looking for sorcerers who might not even exist. But if they did. .
‘The Key.’
The Watcher kept the key on a string around his neck, hidden under his shirt, kept against his skin so he would always know it was there. It didn't look much like a key, but Quai'Shu had promised it would work. It was a flawless diamond, cold, too cold to touch for long, and so he kept it wrapped in layers of soft cloth. Safe and close. It had cost Quai'Shu a year of profit, more than a dozen brand-new ships, and he would never tell a soul how he'd finally found it, though the Watcher knew it had come from mysterious Qeled. From the Scythians, perhaps? It said much that Quai'Shu had given it to him to be its guardian.
The Watcher peeled away the black silk cloth and held the diamond up to the sun. Even here in the heat the cold burned his fingers. The chill crept along his arm, down his spine and all the way to his feet. He was used to doing things that couldn't be undone, to taking journeys into places that were little more than myth or rumour; after all, that's what Elemental Men did, why they were made, but still . . He could feel the magic humming through the key. Something alien, something different, something greater even than the sorceries of his masters. He held the diamond up to the sun until his fingers screamed at him and he let it go, holding the silver chain that bound it instead.
‘Let it fall.’
The Watcher dropped the key in the sand. He didn't know what he should expect now. For the sand to grow into a vast bridge across the jungle canopy? To part and reveal dim winding steps twisting down a black hole into the ground?
But not nothing.
Quai'Shu waited for another minute and then plucked the diamond off the sand by its chain. The Watcher wrapped it in its black silk and put it back under his shirt. A part of him wasn't surprised. If any of the stories were true, the moon sorcerers were nothing short of gods, beyond the understanding of even an Elemental Man. If none of them were true then Quai'Shu had come a very long way to leave with nothing; yet the sea lord's face looked calm.
The Watcher took a deep breath and turned around. The second boat coming from the ship was almost at the beach now, filled with men to carve a path through the jungle if they were needed. He'd do that for his master if he was asked. He'd become the wind and scale the mountains and the towers themselves and ride the earth to the sorcerers who lived there, if they truly lived there at all. But in his heart he knew that if the moon sorcerers were real and the key had failed then it was because, as offerings went, he wasn't enough.
Your desires.
He jumped and spun around. The ship was gone. Everything was gone except the beach and the jungle and the mighty hands of black rock that clawed at the sea and his master beside him. The Picker was gone too. In his place stood three men.
Men? No.
Their hair was long and white. They wore armour that glittered and gleamed as though made of pure polished silver, shaped and faceted like the eyes of an insect. Their faces were those of young men, handsome and strong, fast but pale as the dead, and their eyes. . their eyes were the colour of fresh blood and as old as the world.
Three of them. Three towers.
Yes. Their lips didn't move but their words rang inside his head. They spoke together, three voices into one alien melody.