Authors: Stephen Deas
‘Humour me. I have to watch over you until the glasship that leaves for Vespinarr is ready.’
‘Very well. Hyram had been made speaker. He had his great tour of the realms. You were there.’
‘I remember.’
‘He took some of us with him. Showing us off. First time any of us were on the backs of dragons – now there was an uneasy thing, I can tell you. But we were his guard and so we did as we were told and followed him to Bloodsalt and to Sand and Outwatch, and then afterwards to the Pinnacles.’ Tuuran stood up and started to pace. A fury still burned at the injustice. ‘It was there. There was a feast. Everyone got drunk, same as always. The lords and ladies had gone to their beds. Middle of the night and I needed a piss but
that's not such a simple thing in the Pinnacles. They don't have pots in the corners of their chambers, they have special rooms for it dotted about here and there but never where you want them. Well I went and found one and then after I was done, somehow I walked the wrong way.’ Because he was drunk? No, because he was curious and the Fortress of Watchfulness was supposed to be filled with miracles and there was no one to stop him. ‘I ended up some place I wasn't supposed to be. All filled with a soft silver moonlight that came off the walls, same as the tunnels here.’ He glanced at the alchemist and got a nod of understanding. Bellepheros had seen it too then. ‘I could see a man and a girl, shadows picked out by the light. Lovers, I thought at first, but then I saw I was wrong and they weren't lovers at all. A lord and some poor servant girl. I should have left it alone, knew that even then. But he had her pressed against the wall and she was trying to get away from him, and I was drunk and it was wrong, whoever he was, and there was a thing inside that just snapped right there and then, worn out from sickness at all the things I'd seen in Bloodsalt and Sand and even back before in the City of Dragons, rich men and their ways, thinking they could take whatever they chose, that no one would ever stand up to them. So I went up and threw him to the floor and told him to leave her alone. I saw then I was wrong. She was no servant but some rich little lady just coming to bloom, a real beauty too – not that that made it any different – wrong was still wrong – but there was a moment there when it wasn't what I was expecting and I was drunk and it made me slow, and in that moment the girl had my knife out of my belt and stabbed him. She must have killed him with the first or the second thrust but she kept on stabbing and there was blood everywhere. Flame!’ He sat down again. ‘I tried to stop her and so she tried to stab me too, like she had no idea I wasn't the same person. Strangest thing was, she never cried out, never said a word. Played it all out in silence and then she seemed to come to her senses and dropped the knife and ran away, and I was too stupid to go after her and bring her down and hold her to account for what she did.’ He held his head in his hands. ‘Thing is, I could see from how she was that this wasn't the first time, far from it, and there was a part of me thought
Good for you
. Because he deserved it even if he was some great lord.’
He took a breath or two now, letting the memory pass a little, surprised at how raw it felt even from so far away. ‘So there I was with a dead man killed by my knife. I took it and ran. There was a little of his blood on me but not much. I rubbed it away as best I could. The knife I licked clean. Didn't have anywhere else to put his blood. I went back and joined my brothers in their cots and in the morning I drank as much wine as I could lay my hands on and tried to pretend it hadn't happened. Thought maybe it would go away. A mystery never solved. But it wasn't just
some lord
that girl killed. In the dark I hadn't seen but it was Prince Mazam, the queen's consort. Lord of the Pinnacles and the Silver City.’
Bellepheros jerked. ‘
What?’
‘Thought you'd have heard of it.’ Tuuran laughed. It all seemed so stupid now. ‘Being a lord high alchemist.’
‘But he choked in some . . . accident . . .’ The alchemist's words died around him. ‘Yes. It was around that time. When Hyram went to the Pinnacles. Oh my.’
‘They knew it was my knife. I don't know how but they knew. I never told them about the girl.’ He shrugged. ‘They were going to kill me anyway so what difference did it make? From the look on her face he had it coming. Flame knows how many others he'd raped. So I said nothing but I think they knew. Poor girl ran away covered in blood so they must have caught her but I never saw what happened to her if they did. And I thought over what I'd seen and how they'd kill me anyway, just for being there. So I decided. He'd had it coming. Even if they found the girl I'd say it was me. Good for her for murdering that raping bastard.’
He had to stop a moment. Take a deep breath and let his heart slow a beat. ‘They held me there for weeks. Long after Hyram and my brothers were gone back to the City of Dragons. When they did take me out, they took all manner of clubs and knives and other torturers’ things I couldn't name to my skin but I never said a word about the girl. Had to be useful for something, being what I was, that was how I saw it. Never understood why they didn't kill me but they didn't. They took me to Furymouth and they sold me instead.’ He shrugged. ‘I'm buggered if I know why. Had to be a dragon's rage more trouble than simply throwing me off a cliff.’
He blinked. Stared off into space a while, filled with remembering,
then sat and cracked out a laugh. ‘Like I said, stupid. If I'd kept my nose out of other people's business I wouldn't be here. Yena could have been that girl last night, whoever she was. The man I kicked bloody, he could have been Prince Mazam. And if there's ever a next time, I'll do the same.’
Bellepheros looked dazed and lost. ‘You almost killed him.’ He shook his head. ‘And the woman? I don't think I've ever seen anyone more terrified.’ He shook his head. ‘What use are you, Tuuran?’
‘What use?’ Tuuran spat. He ripped open his shirt and pointed to the scar on his chest. ‘This! This is what use I am, Lord Grand Alchemist. You don't want me here and I don't want to be here, so just send me back where I came from if you can't send me home. Send me back to my ship. I was happy enough there.’ He started to pace the alchemist's room, an animal in a cage.
‘I don't know if I can. Li is hopping with fury. She wants you hanged.’
Tuuran stopped. A rough circle of dried skin covered in strange writing was on the alchemist's desk. It took him a moment to realise it must be the skin from the assassin the witch had destroyed. He picked it up and looked at it more closely, then grinned and bared his teeth. ‘Well, how about I give you a reason?’ He waved the skin in the alchemist's face. ‘I've seen this writing before.’
The alchemist shook his head. ‘In old books? On the walls deep inside the Pinnacles? I know. I just don't know what it means.’
Tuuran put the skin carefully down. ‘Do I look like I read books? On a man, Lord Grand Master Alchemist. On a living man.’ Crazy Mad. The great big birthmark – or whatever it was – on his leg that he always tried to hide.
The Watcher was waiting for Tuuran in Vespinarr, shooing away the oar-slaves and the Vespinese soldiers who crowded around the gondola as it landed. Tuuran tensed and then made himself relax and look away. He knew well enough by now what the Watcher was for and how little point there was trying to stand against him.
‘I'm not here to kill you,’ said the Elemental Man, which made Tuuran laugh because no slave across all the worlds mattered
that
much, and if the witch wanted him dead she could have done it herself.
‘So why are you here?’
‘Because of the writing on the assassin's skin. I have seen it before. In two places, in fact. Where have
you
seen it?’ He led Tuuran away from the open space full of gold and glass where the ships-that-flew brought their shining eggs, and towards a bridge of yellow stone over a wide blue rushing river.
‘First time was in my homeland, deep in the bowels of an old palace, but that's not what interests you.’ He frowned, struggling for breath. The air felt thin, as though he was high up in the peaks of the Purple Spur.
‘The mountain air can be strenuous.’ In the middle of the bridge the Elemental Man stopped. Tuuran looked around him at the city sprawled up the slopes on either side, at the Silver Mountain that overlooked everything else with its walls and palaces and old forts dotted across its slopes, at the massive towers of the Kabulingnor Palace on Mazanda's peak on the mountain's crown. The Watcher pointed down along the flow of the river. ‘The Yalun Zarang flows that way for fifty miles to the edge of the plateau. It descends in a series of cataracts towards the coast, to the Lair of Samim and Tayuna. A mere handful of miles east of the city the Jokun river does much the same, but they never meet and through the Lair they
wend their separate ways. The Jokun will lead you to Hanjaadi. It's the Jokun you see from the eyrie. Its cataracts are among the most beautiful things in all the world.’
Which was all very interesting if you were an alchemist, Tuuran thought, but not to a slave about to go to sea. He looked out over the frothing water rushing among its rugged boulders, filling his lungs with cold mountain air. ‘Really.’
‘To my eyes the City of Stone is unsurpassed. But they
are
beautiful. Tell me of this slave you know and the marks he wears.’
So Tuuran told the Watcher of Crazy Mad and his time on the slave galley as the Elemental Man led them away across the bridge and through the crowded city streets. ‘He said it was a brand but I've seen lots of brands and it wasn't. I don't know what it was. Part of it was a scar, a great big one. Seen plenty of
those
. But not the signs around it. He was a strange one, Crazy Mad. Said all sorts of things but he kept the truth to himself. Very careful when he was awake. Not so much when he was asleep.’ He told the Watcher how Crazy Mad had cried out at night,
Skyrie, Skyrie!
and of his grumblings of warlocks. ‘Lots of hidden layers to him, that one.’ He stopped.
‘Warlocks?’ The Watcher was listening with a sudden intensity, as though all of this meant something, which was more than it ever had to Tuuran.
‘That's what he said. What do you want with him?’
‘And this man was on your ship? And that's where you wish to go?’
‘No, magician, I want to go home.’ Tuuran shook his head and blew air between his teeth. ‘But I'll take my old ship if that's what's on offer.’
‘It is. You will stay close to him. You will be rewarded if you do.’
‘I will, will I? And what's that reward going to look like? Going to slice off my head with that magic knife of yours when I'm no use to you any more like you did with that man who tried to kill my lord grand master?’
The Watcher shook his head. ‘Serve your purpose to me and I'll have you sent back to your home. You'll be free.’ A smile flickered at the corner of the Elemental Man's mouth. ‘I let the second Regrettable Man go, didn't I?’
‘Except his arm!’ Tuuran looked the Elemental Man up and down and shrugged. ‘All right. I agree. What do I do when I get to the ship? You want him brought back here somehow or do I just watch?’
The Elemental Man shook his head and walked in silence for a while, on through the streets and up the lower slopes of the Silver Mountain to an obelisk that stood in the middle of a great square in front of some great palace set at the foot of the mountain's roots. ‘The Azahl Pillar,’ he said as they drew near. ‘Emperor Vespin brought it here from somewhere in the Konsidar. No one knows quite where. The inscriptions here are the oldest across the whole of Takei'Tarr. They were cut before the Splintering. They are the same as the ones on this slave, are they not?’
Tuuran rubbed his nose and squinted at the carvings in the white stone. ‘Not
exactly
, but . . .’ He pointed at a few of the sigils. ‘I remember that one. And that one.’ He let out a long slow breath.
‘But?’
He closed his eyes, trying to remember, trying to be sure. ‘They're the same as the ones I saw back in the Pinnacles. Sigil for sigil. I think. Or maybe not
exactly
the same, I can't remember, but if not, then very nearly.’ He grinned. ‘Send me back and I'll find out for you.’
The Elemental Man ignored him. ‘The Regrettable Man who came to Baros Tsen T'Varr’s eyrie bore similar marks, though the one in Zinzarra did not. And they are like . . . others I have seen.’ They walked again, back through the city to the river and to a busy quay and barges packed full of slaves. The Watcher handed Tuuran a sliver of glass etched with words and symbols. ‘With this you may call for aid from those who serve the sea lord of Xican. Show it when you reach Tayuna. Tell the harbour masters the name of the ship you wish to find. They will see to it.’ He walked briskly down the steps to the riverfront and waved Tuuran aboard a waiting barge. Tuuran scowled over the frothing water. ‘Watch the sail-slave with his marks. Watch for the grey dead men. Watch but do not intervene. I will find you when I can. If you do this for me then freedom is yours when it's done.’
‘Watch him? For how long? How do I find you?’ But the Watcher had already turned away and was quickly gone, lost in
the riverside crowd. The barge master cast off his rope and ran to the front, yelling and shouting at the slaves there equipped with big thick poles. Tuuran made to stand up but the barge was moving now, getting faster, lurching and starting to spin in the surging river. ‘Grey dead men?’ he shouted back. ‘Who are they? When
what's
done?’ But he got no answer and was left to wonder whether he was alone now or whether the Elemental Man was still there, a part of the wind and the river; and then after that, as they bounced through the Yalun Zarang rapids and he was drenched in freezing spray, he was too busy clinging to the sides of the barge to wonder much of anything at all.
It took a week to reach the sea from Vespinarr, a week full of wild dashes down a river feisty with mountain snow-melt and of dangling in rickety cages lowered beside curtain-cascades of water, the Yalun Zarang cataracts. They crossed the river behind one of these on a ground-flat path of rock ten feet wide beneath a colossal black overhang with the river roaring down beside them, loud as the white witch's lightning and quivering the ground with its force. In Tayuna Tuuran found his way to the docks and showed his sliver of glass and said the name of the vessel he was looking for and was put on a ship that took him to another, and then to yet another; and whenever he showed the Watcher's glass the Taiytakei took him without question and set him to work, just another sail-slave, making his way around half the coast of Takei'Tarr and then a week across the open ocean to the horizon stain of the storm-dark. He counted through the stillness as they crossed it. Five hundred heartbeats before the ship lurched and shook and they were through to the other side and back amid the howling winds and the hurling waves and the churning violet-streaked sky.