Authors: Stephen Deas
Vallas Kuy howled with glee. ‘There is no
undone
. It
failed
. The Bloody Judge stayed exactly where he was. He remains still stamping his swords up and down the Dominion, bringing our brothers
to their ends one by one, filled with the Sun King's favour.’
‘No! It did
not
fail.
I
am Berren Crowntaker!
I
am the Bloody Judge!’
‘I don't know what you are but you still carry what Skyrie carried. What's left of him is in you and I am glad to have found you again.’ He held out a hand. ‘Come, brother. I've spent years seeking you out. Come, and we'll see what's to be done.’
‘Don't lie to me!’
Berren couldn't stop himself from screaming and something changed in the warlock's face. The laughing faded. Vallas was looking at Berren eye to eye now, a slow fear filling him, and in the warlock's eyes Berren could see the reflection of his own. They were silver. Bright burning silver. Vallas tried to pull away.
‘See! See! We brought you back! We did!’
‘Brought
who
back? Who am I, warlock? Who am I? What
thing
is it that I carry?’
Vallas struggled some more, his face sucking in on itself. ‘You are Skyrie!’
‘No, warlock, I am not. No riddles, or I swear I'll cut you to pieces.’
‘You already have, Skyrie.’
Berren drove the knife into Vallas again. Now when he saw the web of the warlock's soul, he saw that the strands were unravelling, snapping and falling slowly apart, whole chunks splitting away and fading to nothing. ‘What are you doing, warlock? What's happening.’
‘I'm dying, Skyrie. You have killed me.’
‘No! Not this knife. This knife doesn't cut flesh and I haven't even started on your soul. Stop it!’ And he was sure it was true, nothing more than he'd once done to himself. ‘Stop it! I command you!’
‘I don't even know how,’ Vallas sneered, and then his eyes rolled back. ‘Goodbye, Skyrie.’
‘Don't you dare die! Not before you tell me!’ Berren dived inside the warlock's memories and found them filled with a small bitter man from the marshes that Kuy had found nursing a grudge – Skyrie, so easily turned with a few sweet lies against the Bloody Judge. Flashes of the Dark Queen Gelisya, of Tethis, of spells and
incantations, of potions. Desperation as the Bloody Judge drew closer. Kuy's last grand scheme. Skyrie for the Bloody Judge in their last stand, and yes, it was all as Kuy said and he truly believed they'd failed.
‘You ask me who you are, Skyrie, but that's not the question. The question is what?’ The last strands slipped through each other.
He dug deeper. There was another. A man with one eye . . . Gleefully Berren seized on that one fleeting memory. No, not
Kuy’
s grand scheme. Someone else! The man with the half-ruined face. And then with the web of the warlock's soul laid before him and the golden knife to guide him, Berren slowly began to see the cuts and the stitches, the delicate reshaping that had been done, even as it unravelled again before him, and it turned out that Kuy was just a puppet after all, strings pulled without him even knowing it. A masterwork of slavery to make even the most jaded Taiytakei coo with envy. Owned mind and soul by the man with the ruined face and the one blind eye. ‘Him! Who is he?’ Cutting and cutting, ripping Kuy apart as he searched for answers amid the collapsing memories before they were gone. Tearing them from the dying warlock's thoughts.
Saffran Kuy's last apprentice. The one his eyes would never see
.
‘Where is he? How do I find him? What's his name?’
Aria, Skyrie, where the Ice Witch keeps him in a gilded cage but doesn't know what he is or what he can do, what he brings and what he hides. He gave you a gift, Skyrie, one that not even she knows
.
‘Gift? What gift?’
Vallas faded. His eyes closed. When Berren let him go he fell limp to the street. Tuuran was looking from Berren to the warlock and back. He shifted uneasily. ‘You're doing that eye thing again,’ he grumbled, and then he lifted his axe and cut off the warlock's head.
‘He was already dead,’ murmured Berren.
What am I? What gift?
‘Well then, now he's even more dead.’ Tuuran poked at the warlock with his foot. He kept glancing up at the ruined palace.
Something inside me?
Was that Kuy playing with him, taunting him to the end? Berren turned and stared back down the street towards the glass and gold bridge and the island of castles and the
city of Dhar Thosis beyond, filled with flames and wrapped in smoke. Vallas hadn't lied. He'd seen it in his dreams right from the very start.
At the water's edge, eyes filled with tears and the stars winking out one by one. Dying but he wanted to live, wanted it so badly he'd do anything at all; and there he was, the man in the hooded robes the colour of moonlight, with the silver-white face, one half ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire, and one blind milky-white eye
.
‘Are you death?’
‘
I am the Bringer of Endings. Let me in.’
And he had.
Berren staggered away from the dead warlock, from Tuuran, from the wrecked and burning towers of the palace.
That was someone else. Not me! I'm Berren! The Bloody Judge. That's who I am!
‘Hey.’ Tuuran put a hand on his shoulder, slowly turning him back towards the shattered palace. ‘You found your warlock and there's a rampaging dragon smashing and burning and doing what dragons do. Can we go now?’
Berren shook his head and stared at his feet. Go? Go where? He'd come for answers and despite everything he'd actually found Vallas, and after all that the warlock had given him almost nothing. ‘I have to go back to Deephaven. I have to go home.’
‘Good for you!’ Tuuran clapped a hand on Berren's back and started off up the road towards the palace. ‘I might come too. Still reckon there's a great big fight brewing back there.’
The flood of fleeing slaves had become a trickle. Berren stared at the warlock lying on the stones. ‘Well, where are you going
now
then?’
Tuuran turned and grinned. ‘The dragon's come down. Shame to come all this way not to see who's on the back of it, eh?’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, there
is
that small matter of a palace full of night-skin lords and all their treasure. Might be some fun to be had there, I'd say.’
Berren followed him because he couldn't think of anything better to do with himself.
Sure. Stand in front of a dragon. Why not?
Diamond Eye circled the stumps of the two broken towers. The third still stood, a great chunk smashed out of one corner, a maw of jagged glass teeth tinged with gold. The ground was a litter of glittering pieces like a sea of diamonds, and among them lay the bodies of men and women, slaves and soldiers, Taiytakei and others fleeing as the towers came down on them. Zafir felt the dragon's satisfaction. She felt her own. No remorse, not a shred of it, not even the idea of it.
Slavers. You brought this on yourselves
.
There were Taiytakei soldiers still alive. She saw them hiding in the shadows, cowering behind piles of rubble, watching the dragon to see what it would do. Soldiers from the ships to cheer and wave their swords at what she'd done perhaps, or soldiers from the palace, the last few defenders, too afraid to run. She didn't care. She was done. Whoever they were, they'd take away what they'd seen and spread it like fire through dry summer grass.
‘Down!’
Diamond Eye fell out of the air, wings tucked in and gathering all the speed he could. The wind wrenched at her, straining to pull her out of the saddle, but the harness was a good one and held fast even after all it had suffered. Bellepheros and his glass-worker woman, the enchantress, they would make her a new one. Tsen would see to it once he understood what she and her dragon could do. The world would change now, and for a while Tsen would be the engine of that change.
Until she was done with him.
She closed her eyes. The wind tugged at the skin of her cheeks, at her lips. As Diamond Eye shifted beneath her to open his wings, she leaned forward to press herself against him. He stopped almost dead in the air a few feet above the ground. The force crushed her, and the wind of his wings lifted and hurled the litter of broken glass
into a storm of razor edges that cut through the air. He landed, head held high and twitching from side to side in silent challenge. If there were enemies waiting then Diamond Eye would know. Dragons did that. They felt your thoughts. There was nowhere to hide. They'd know you were there and they'd read your mind, and if you meant harm to their riders then they'd feel it before you even knew it yourself, and you'd burn.
Dragons. Glorious. Terrible.
She fumbled for the buckles on her helm that held it to her shoulders and tugged them apart. One fell to pieces in her fingers. A shame. Such beautiful armour all ruined now except the dragon-scale that lay beneath. The helm's visor was a maze of cracks only held together by whatever force went into a Taiytakei enchanter's art. The golden dragon curled across the crest was scarred, marked by flying stones and glass. For a moment she thought about throwing it away. Riding without a helm was like riding naked, free and open to the wind and with a frisson of danger, but she still had to cross the desert again, back to Tsen's eyrie, and that was a long way to go with the howling wind in your face.
If that's where I choose to go
. Zafir thought about that for a bit, then put the helm carefully down beside her and reached for a skin of water. She was filthy, drenched in sweat, sticky-skinned, bloody-faced and thirsty. You didn't notice when you flew. Hunger and thirst fell away, lost in the ecstasy of the dragon. When you landed, it all came back. She tipped almost all the first skin over her head, running her other hand through her hair and over her face, washing off the salt and the blood, then drank a mouthful.
She wasn't alone. Two men were creeping towards her, cautious and afraid but coming closer nevertheless, flitting from one pile of rubble to another, hoping not to be seen. Futile. Diamond Eye felt them so she knew they were there. And Diamond Eye was hungry.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No more fire. Let them see us. Let them drink us in, us and what we have done.’
Diamond Eye rumbled. Zafir undid enough straps to get out of the saddle and stand up high on his back. She looked around her one more time. Smoke and flames poured from broken holes in the outer palace. Five of the six lesser towers still stood but the sixth was a jagged stump. She didn't even remember doing that. Bodies
lay blasted against the walls by the wind of Diamond Eye's landing, jumbled among the chunks of stone and iron and broken glass.
‘Sea Lords of the Taiytakei?’ She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Do you see me, lords of the sea? You think you are the masters of the world, but you are not. You will learn to fear. You will learn to beg. You will plead and none of it will save you. Not from me. For I am Zafir! I am the dragon-queen ! Do you hear me?’
She waited. If there were Elemental Men here then they would come. If they had a way to touch her, she would only know as they appeared at her back and slit open her naked throat.
Die slowly and badly, slave. I do not wish you well
. The words of the Watcher as he'd prepared to kill her.
‘But it was you who died,’ she whispered. ‘I killed you and I have your knife. And as you say, I am what I am.’
There were no Elemental Men. The two soldiers who now came towards her openly were sword-slaves, bared arms held high to show their brands.
Mad. Mad mad mad
, but Berren followed anyway. He tucked the warlock's knife into his belt and gripped his sword and then wondered what, exactly, was the point. The dragon was enormous. Obviously it had been
big
, it had to be
big
. He'd seen it flying through the air, seen it smash the glasships over the docks. He'd seen it over the sea against the ships and he'd seen it over the island and over the palace. He'd seen the rider on its back, a mere speck against its bulk. He'd seen it lift up a giant made of stone and as tall as a barn and carry it high into the air and smash it on the rocks below. All these things. But on the ground with its neck and its tail stretched out, it was simply enormous. As long as a ship, maybe longer. And what was a sword going to do against something like that? Like the big man said: nothing. Not even annoy it. It scared him witless. A true monster that would eat him and barely notice. And yet . . . What was the eagerness he felt as he followed Tuuran, picking their way through the daggers of broken glass and the flayed bodies?
Madness. Had to be.
*
Tuuran passed through huddled groups of Taiytakei dead, their armour battered and their bright cloaks ragged and scorched. They smelled of burned feathers. They'd been fierce and proud and terrible once, glorious and regal, but now he looked at their faces and saw the wide eyes, the terror and the blank incomprehension. They hadn't known what to do, any of them, and all the armour, all that gleaming glass and gold and all those bright colours, their shields and their batons that hurled lightning and their wicked spiked ashgars, all of those fell away to nothing and they were just men as scared as a virgin oar-slave. It made him want to laugh. Laugh at them for their mad pride, laugh at Crazy Mad for thinking he was any better, at himself for refusing to be scared of even a hundred-foot monster made of fangs and fire that tore cities apart for fun. Or of a man whose eyes turned silver, for that matter.
The dragon lowered its head to the ground as if to look at them, and that only made it seem even bigger. Its eyes were the size of a man's head and slitted like a snake's. Its teeth protruded from its jaws, bone swords. There were great tears in its wings and gashes through its scales. Blood ran down its flanks and dripped onto its claws and onto the rubble beneath, but it had
won
, and victory poured out of it in waves, for
that
was all that mattered. It stared at them, unblinking, as if to ask what in the name of the Great Flame they thought they were doing. Then it cocked its head and rubbed it against the ground. Laughing at them, if monsters could laugh. Tuuran bared his teeth and laughed right back. He lifted his axe over his head and held it in both hands.