Authors: Stephen Deas
That ship took him to another, with colours and signs on its sails that he'd seen before. He saw land again. They sailed towards it, beside it, to a cove in the middle of nowhere along an unfamiliar wild coast and lowered their sails and waited in the calm seas and turned to face the wind, and there at last was his corsair galley, his slave ship. He knew it at once and his heart smiled as he saw it. A strange feeling swept him through. A warmth. A relief and yet an anxiousness. He was as close as a man like him got to such a thing as home – as long as he could keep from memories of his
true
home.
The ship and the galley both lowered their boats, captured slaves leaving, barrels of water and biscuits and arrows coming the other way. Up in the ship's rigging the archer platforms were manned by sharp-eyed Taiytakei bowmen. Food and weapons and money for slaves, that was the way the corsair galleys worked. It wasn't the first time they'd met another ship in the middle of nowhere and exchanged goods like this but it was the first time Tuuran had been on the other side.
Oar-slaves rowed him over. Tuuran scrambled with ease up the heavy net lowered over the side of the galley, climbed aboard, put his hands firmly on his hips, took a deep breath and let it slowly out again, scanning the decks and smiling a toothy smile. A few new faces but most of them were familiar and he met their surprised eyes with his grin.
Tuuran is back
.
Old friends rejoice; enemies quiver and quail
. The sail-slaves watched him. Times like this they had little to do but the air was always thick with tension. Handing over the catch from the last few months always brought home what they were: slaves taken from their own lands and turned, now making more of the same for the very people they'd once sworn to hate. A few grinned back at him – old friends – but Tuuran passed them by. There'd be time for greetings and half-forgotten scores later. Some of the Taiytakei who remembered his face stared as well. A couple even grinned, maybe pleased to have him back, while others gaped. He passed them too. He was after Crazy Mad, and there he was, walking to the far edge of the deck, his back to the sailing ship as though he wasn't interested at all, looking down into the sea. Well, he wasn't going to get away with
that
.
Tuuran dropped a heavy hand on Crazy Mad's shoulder and clasped him tight. ‘Hello slave. So now is your time to throw me in the water, I think.’
Crazy Mad jumped like he'd been stung. ‘Tuuran! What are you doing back here?’
‘What do you think? Back among my old friends. Missed all of our fun, missed stealing men and women from their homes to make into new slaves for our masters, of course.’ And now he'd seen how those masters lived. Hadn't given it much thought before. ‘You're not at your post, slave. Do you like rowing?’
In another world there might have been more between them
– an embrace, some acknowledgement of pleasure – but this was a slaving ship and everything that might be weakness was seized and devoured and destroyed, and so Tuuran said no more and left Crazy Mad where he was and set to shouting at all the other sail-slaves who'd been secretly glad when they'd thought he wasn't coming back. The old familiar world slipped easily over him like a favoured glove, close and comforting, and it was hardly a chore to keep half an eye on Crazy Mad and what he did, especially when what he did was exactly what every sail-slave did. Sailed, drank, brawled, gambled and told stories.
The sailing ship left and that was always a happy time for the sailors: a hold full of food and no angry captives. The galley continued in the routine Tuuran knew as well as he knew his own skin. A month passed and then another. They filled the slave pens with bronze-skinned men from a shoreline of arid rugged hills that the locals called the Kala, moving slowly north towards the southernmost coast of Aria. The sailing ship came again and emptied their cages and filled their larder and they moved on, edging up the coast; and it took even the Taiytakei by surprise when a second ship hunted them down only a few weeks later. It was a sleek warship, this one, far bigger than the one that had returned Tuuran and almost as big as the vessel that had taken him to the dragon lands. The usual platforms for archers hung amid the masts and spars but there were other things there too, and more on the deck, pointing over the side. Metal tubes filled with Taiytakei black-powder rockets, each with a glass bulb on the front filled with trapped fire. The ship stood off from the galley, weapons armed, nothing friendly about its manner at all, and lowered a boat. Just the one with a single Taiytakei aboard and some oar-slaves to row it, and three men in cowled grey robes who looked far too skinny and feeble to be working ships to Tuuran's eyes; and then a different thought jolted him:
Watch for the grey dead men
.
His eyes flicked to Crazy Mad. Took a long hard look. Crazy looked like he'd been struck by lightning, and whatever he did now, all of them would answer for it. Even before the grey-robes finished climbing aboard, Tuuran was alongside him, one arm wrapped tight around him, too tight, turning him away from the ship and towards the distant shore, away from these unwanted
strangers. Whoever they were they weren't night-skins, so that made them slaves, and slaves had no place coming aboard a slaving galley unless it was to be put in chains and sold.
‘I see that look and I know what it is because sometimes I have it too. One dissents, all are punished. You know this, Crazy Mad.’
‘I have a
name
.’
‘Yes. I keep hearing that. People ask about one slave or another, I tell them they're wasting their time. Slaves don't have names. But that's not really true. Turns out some slaves
do
have names after all. They keep them inside but they keep them nevertheless. They hold them tight and sometimes they let them out when they shouldn't.
I
have a name.
I
am Tuuran. And I'll hear yours too if you can make up your mind which one it is. But
not now
!’ He let his arm loosen and risked a glance over his shoulder. The grey-robes were standing quietly on the deck behind the Taiytakei who'd brought them while he argued with the galley captain. ‘So tell me, slave who has too many names and a mark on his leg, who are these men in grey and what do they want? Because it's you they're here for, isn't it?’
Crazy Mad struggled but Tuuran was by far the stronger and his grip was good and tight. ‘One dissents, all are punished. Never quite got that through your thick head. What are these men in grey?’
Crazy hissed at him, ‘Warlocks. Death-mages. Witch doctors. Necromancers! What other name do you need?’
‘Where I come from there are alchemists and there are blood-mages. Alchemists are good. Blood-mages are evil and wicked and villainous. Or that's what I thought. I take it these are your blood-mages then?’ Tuuran let him go.
Crazy Mad shoved him away. ‘Stick it, Tuuran. You vanish for half a year; you come back; you bring them with you? I'll kill you! But not until I've done for them first!’
The grey-robes were filing into the cabins at the back of the galley. Somehow Crazy Mad had the knife out of Tuuran's belt. It was slickly done. Tuuran had to acknowledge that, even as he caught Crazy's arm, spun him around and slammed his elbow into the back of his head, dazing him enough to grab him and drag him away, kicking and swearing.
‘This one's forgotten his manners,’ he shouted at the Taiytakei
guards on the deck. ‘A couple of days in the bilges and a month back on the oars.’ He took back his knife and hauled Crazy Mad to his feet. A couple of days in the bilges or as long as it took for the grey-robes to go away. But as he turned, there they were, the three of them with their hoods drawn back so Tuuran could see their shaven heads and their faces as pale as moonlight and the tattoos that started on their cheeks and ran down their necks and vanished under their robes. Symbols. Sigils. Meaningless to him, but as sure as he knew anything the same writing he'd seen on the pillar in Vespinarr, the same as on the dead slave from the eyrie, the same as on Crazy Mad's leg.
Soldiers stood beside them as well as the Taiytakei galley master in his coloured cloak, tattered and stained by so many months at sea. Tuuran saw the grey-robes and saw their smiles and then Crazy Mad thrashed his arms, wild-eyed, and Tuuran knew
that
look because it was the same look he'd had only just a few moments ago.
A knife! Give me a knife!
This time Tuuran was ready. As Crazy pulled the knife free again, Tuuran seized his wrist. They wrestled together, Crazy Mad screaming, Tuuran bawling in his face, ‘We'll not all suffer just for you, you mad bastard!’ And every shout drew more attention to them both and he needed to get this idiot out of sight, out of the way, because he knew they were here for Crazy, and Crazy Mad knew it too, only what he didn't know were all the things Tuuran had seen in his six months away.
Run at them with a knife, will you? Flame-addled idiot!
And it had to matter, didn't it, because this was what the Watcher had sent him to do, and if they took Crazy away to a place where he couldn't follow, he would never go home. Never!
The tallest of the three grey-robes swept towards them with contempt. His fingers curled around the hilt of his own knife, clutched with a religious reverence. Crazy Mad screamed. He and Tuuran lurched toward the side of the galley and whatever Crazy howled, Tuuran roared louder so no one would hear: ‘Stupid slave! Take us all with you, will you?’ The Taiytakei slavers had their wands drawn, tense and ready. ‘One slave turns, all slaves die!’ Crazy Mad's eyes did a frenzied dance around the galley, a wild animal looking for a way out, but Tuuran offered him none. ‘And I . . . am not dying . . . for you!’
They hit the rail as the galley rolled and it was the easiest thing in the world to lower his hip and dump Crazy Mad over the side and watch him fall into the sea. He sank, and for a few seconds Tuuran stared after him but he didn't come back up again. When Tuuran turned, there was the grey-robe, the tall one, standing right in front of him with his knife. A strange blade, more of a cleaver than a dagger, with a golden hilt and patterns in the sharpened steel that swirled before Tuuran's eyes.
They stared each other down and then Tuuran pushed the grey-robe harshly aside. ‘Piss off.’ They were only slaves, after all.
He wondered what else he could have done. And whether Crazy Mad could swim.
‘Grand Master Alchemist. A private word, if you please?’
Nastria gave him a spherical glass bottle, stoppered and sealed with wax. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand and it was filled with liquid silver. The knight-marshal had no idea, of course. There was nothing curious about what the bottle contained, but what was intriguing was how it had come to be in the knight-marshal's hands. It was a long journey home though and there would be plenty of time to ponder and plenty of comfortable inns and fine wine to help him think and dead
Queen Aliphera would be there, watching over his shoulder, keeping him company
.
He left the Veid Palace the next morning. He borrowed a carriage from the Viper and took a handful of soldiers for an escort while he was at it because last he'd heard there were snakes on the road to Farakkan, and so he'd need them. He tucked the knight-marshal's bottle under his seat, carefully packed in sand
.
In the middle of nowhere the carriage stopped. A man made of rushing air tore open the door. He had a knife and blood glistened on its blade. There were bodies on the ground outside. Thousands of them, all blackened and burned. He opened his mouth to scream, but before he could, the knife flashed across his throat and his blood poured out of him and for some reason it wouldn't stop but just kept coming, more and more and more, and when he looked up the sky was filled with dragons. ‘All but one are small. Freshly hatched from the egg, or so the alchemist says. There were three full grown beasts. The sorcerers took two, one for each of them. The third is ours.’
Bellepheros sat up gasping, panting, the cry of alarm still building in his throat. It was starlight-dark. There was no carriage, no knife, no masked men, but it still took him a moment to remember where he was.
Two long, slow, deep breaths. Dreaming again. The same nightmare that came back now and then. Once he'd caught his breath he chided himself for being surprised that it had come back tonight, after what the evening had brought.
In the far corner of the room a tiny candle burned on a stone slab. It was a slow-burner, something that would make a little flame all through the night. He stumbled out of bed and fumbled for his desk until he found the lamp he kept on it and lit it from the candle. There were no windows down here under the eyrie, but he knew from the glow of the white stone walls that outside the desert horizon would be a deep blue, not quite black. Dawn was an hour away.
He went to the desk and sat down. On another morning he might have tried to go back to sleep but not today. That bottle that Shezira's knight-marshal had given him was still there. He made a little mark on the underside of the desk. Another day. Two hundred and forty-five since the Taiytakei had taken him now, give or take a couple. He was an alchemist and nothing if not meticulous about such things.
A gentle knocking disturbed his despair and his door creaked open. ‘Belli? Should I leave you alone?’
Yes
. But that wouldn't do. ‘No, no, come in. We have a great deal of work before us so we might as well get on with it.’ Li. She was his watcher, his jailer, his assistant, but above and beyond all else she was his friend, and by the light of the Great Flame he needed her for that now. A few short hours and their whole world had been turned on its head. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Eggs. You were supposed to bring me eggs! Not this!’
‘I have enumerated the dragon kin,’ she said and pushed her glass lenses up her nose. ‘There are fifty-seven hatchlings and the large one. Also I've made qaffeh.’ She put a hot metal pot on the desk in front of him. The bitter smell made him smile. It was a Taiytakei drink and the likes of Prince Jehal and others who lived in the seaport of Furymouth spoke of it with awe. Bellepheros had never tried it until Li had all but forced it on him. She lived on the stuff. He couldn't think of a single time when she hadn't had a fresh hot pot of it to hand.