The Splintered Gods

by Stephen Deas

  The fresh bodies were unbranded oar-slaves, most of them, but there were sword-slaves in there too. Tuuran smiled at the Taiytakei soldiers and shook his head and kept on coming. One hand went behind his back as if to scratch an itch. He rolled his shoulders, loosening his shield arm. This was all going to go bad, wasn’t it?

  The closer soldier whipped out his wand and fired. Tuuran saw it coming and dropped to his haunches. Lightning cracked and sparked off his shield. His ears rang, his eyes stung, a sudden sharp tang in the air bit at his nose. Never mind that though. He moved fast, a sudden dash forward, the hand behind his back clamped around the shaft of his axe.

  ‘You shit-eating slavers never change, do you?’ A second thunderous flash of lightning deafened and half-blinded him, but he was still moving and his axe was swinging around his head, and the two Taiytakei in front of him were gawping like a pair of old men, too busy wondering why their lightning hadn’t killed him to be thinking straight. The swing of his axe took the first soldier across the face, smashing his helm and showering bits of it down his throat. Most of his chin and his teeth jumped loose in a spray of red. The axe didn’t stop. Tuuran steered its blade into the second man’s shoulder. The first Taiytakei fell back, sank to his knees and held his hands to his face and then crumpled. Tuuran gave him a few seconds before he either fainted or drowned in his own blood. The second soldier was still up, screaming, hand clutched to his shoulder, a few teeth and bits of the first soldier’s face wrapped around his neck. Tuuran hadn’t met any armour yet that could turn a sharp axe on the end of a good strong arm, but the gold-glass had taken the sting out of his swing. Well, that and the first man’s face.

  Out on the bridge the Taiytakei stacking barrels had stopped. Eight of them, and they all had their own wands and were reaching for them. A little voice in the back of Tuuran’s head wondered whether he’d properly thought this one through. He kicked the wounded soldier hard in the hip and slammed into him, face to face, driving him towards the others. Lightning hit them, bursting in sparks all around the wounded man’s gold-glass. It bit at Tuuran’s face and fingers. He yelped and jumped away, almost dropped his axe, shoved the wounded man at the others, sparks still jumping from his armour, stumbled and almost fell. Eight at once? Soft in the head that was . . .

  Change of plan. He cringed behind his shield, stooped and kicked at one of the sleds they’d used to carry the barrels and sent it gliding back the way he’d come. He jumped on it as the soldiers found their wits, turned as fast as he could as they threw lightning at him, and hunkered down, the shield held behind him, eyes almost closed, teeth gritted, muttering a prayer or two to his ancestors as the sled carried him back to the end of the bridge. Thunderbolts rang around him. He felt them hit the shield. His hand went numb and then the sled reached the rubble of the barricades and Tuuran threw himself helter-skelter behind the first cover he could see. He took a moment and a few deep breaths. He certainly wasn’t about to get up close into a fight with eight lunatics throwing lightning about the place when they were surrounded by explosive barrels of black powder.

  ‘Well then, Tuuran, now what?’ The fresh bodies told him all he needed to know: the Taiytakei were killing everyone. Scorching the earth. He wasn’t even much surprised. You didn’t let loose a horde of slaves and then expect them to walk meekly back into their chains when it was done. And you certainly didn’t leave them to spread havoc and a dangerous taste for freedom.

  He peered out and then ducked back as more lightning came his way. ‘I was on your side you mudfeet,’ he yelled at them, not that it was going to make any difference.

  A movement caught his eye in the cracked stone and splinters of what might once have been a watchtower. A piece of burning wood flew from it onto the bridge. Another followed and then another. They skittered across the glass and landed around the Taiytakei and their barrels of black powder. Tuuran sank down, grinning. Lightning flew back, raking the wreckage of the watchtower but didn’t seem to make any difference to the burning sticks flying out onto the bridge. When the lightning finally stopped, Tuuran risked a look. Taiytakei were running full pelt away. The barrels sat still and quiet. Pieces of wood burned around them.

  ‘Hey!’ Tuuran threw a stone at the ruined tower. ‘Crazy? That you?’

  Crazy Mad scuttled out from the rubble, hunched low in case the bridge exploded or some idiot started chucking lightning at him again. He hurdled Tuuran’s floating sled and dived into the dirt beside him. ‘And how far did you think you’d get without me, big man?’

  ‘As far as I bloody wanted.’ Tuuran smiled as he said it. Might have been true – probably was – but it felt right, the two of them side by side.

  ‘No ships to take me back to Aria here.’ Crazy shuffled closer, watching the bridge and peering at the Taiytakei on the far side. ‘No ships to take us anywhere at all, by the looks of it.’

  ‘Told you so.’

  ‘Smug piece of shit.’ Crazy crawled to the sled and poked at it. ‘What’s this then?’

  ‘Cargo sled. The night-skins use them to move stuff about when they can’t use slaves. Must have carried the powder up from the ships.’

  Crazy poked at it some more. He seemed fascinated by the way it hovered over the ground and moved back and forth with even the lightest touch. ‘What happens if I push this off a cliff? It just keeps floating, does it?’

  Tuuran shrugged. ‘Well I was hoping so. That or it plunges to the sea, tips everything off as it goes and then settles itself nice and happy a foot above the waves with everything else smashed to bits on the rocks below. Definitely one or the other. Maybe depends on how much you put on top of it.’ He shrugged. ‘How would I know? Do I look like a night-skin to you?’

  Crazy gave him a dirty look. ‘Best I don’t answer that, big man. So, you planning on waiting here for them soldiers up at the palace to come and find they haven’t got a bridge any more and then for the two of us to fight a few hundred Taiytakei for the only way off this place? Or were you thinking more about slipping off somewhere quiet while they’re all still busy. Because I’m easy, either way.’ Crazy turned, tugging at the sled. After a moment Tuuran followed, walking back up the road out of range of the Taiytakei across the bridge. The barrels still hadn’t exploded.

  ‘You should have thrown more fire,’ Tuuran said.

  Crazy Mad shrugged. ‘I threw enough.’ He chuckled. ‘You wait, big man. Just when you’re not ready . . . then boom.’ He snapped his fingers.

  It was probably a coincidence that the bridge exploded a moment later, but with Crazy Mad these days you could never quite be sure.

  2

  Baros Tsen

  Baros Tsen T’Varr, first t’varr to the mad Sea Lord Quai’Shu of Xican, blinked. For a moment the incongruity of his circumstances overwhelmed him. He sat in his bath, the gloomy air full of steam and the scent Xizic, lit by the soft light of the walls in the bowels of his dragon-eyrie. The dragon still roared its victory on the walls up above, but here, deep below, he couldn’t hear its calls. He was naked, alone in the near-scalding water with a woman whom a great many men desired. He’d put himself in her power because it seemed the only way to stop her, and now he was quivering with fear.

  And how, exactly, did you think this was going to help?

  ‘Give me what I want,’ said the dragon-queen, ‘or I will find another who will. Your friends from the mountains perhaps.’ She was looking right through him. Her copper hair, cropped in the manner of a slave, was plastered in haphazard spikes and tufts across her scalp. Her face was bruised and fresh streaks of dried blood stuck to her cheeks. Her eyes were ferocious. He turned away, trying to think, looking at the walls. They were the same white stone as the rest of the eyrie and shone with an inner light that waxed and waned with the rise and fall of the sun and the moon. The bath sat in the centre of a large round room, on the floor instead of sunk into it because no one had found a way to cut the enchanted eyrie stone. A ring of arches surrounded it, simple and unad
orned. Beneath the bath was a plinth, a slab of white stone that struck Tsen as uncomfortably like a sacrificial altar. They hadn’t been able to move it and so he’d had the bath placed on top of it and not given it another moment’s thought. Until now. Now the idea of being naked with that altar beneath him made him shiver. He felt very much like a sacrifice. Very much indeed.

  She’d killed the Elemental Man he’d sent to stop her, which was laughably unbelievable except she’d come back with his knife to prove it. She’d burned a city to ash and shattered its towers into a desert of splintered glass. She’d done it in their Sea Lord’s name and by doing so had ruined them all.

  Beside the bath sat a brass bowl on a pedestal filled with water and a little ice. Tsen usually kept a bottle of his best apple wine there, comfortably chilled for him to sip at his leisure. The dragon-queen had smashed it just a minute ago, but he always had more. He flipped the ice out to the floor and then dipped his middle finger into the water. As the ripples shimmered, he told the dragon-queen how he and Shrin Chrias Kwen were bound together and how they could, if each other allowed it, watch over one another. Or spy, as we all prefer to think of it. Chrias who led Quai’Shu’s soldiers. He’d never seen a vitriol quite as pure as that between the dragon-queen and Quai’Shu’s kwen.

  He tried to show her but Zafir made no move to look. Tsen shook his head and pulled his finger out of the water. ‘I will consider your proposal, Dragon-Queen.’ He tried to keep his face still, to give nothing away. The Chrias he’d glimpsed in the water had the dragon-disease, the incurable Statue Plague that the alchemist from the dragon-realms had tried so very hard to contain. Tsen had no doubt at all that Zafir had done that.

  ‘To life and its potency.’ Zafir smiled and raised her glass. When she saw that Tsen’s was empty, she leaned across and tipped him some wine from her own. There were drops of blood in it from when she’d smashed the empty bottle and pointedly cut herself in case he’d forgotten how dangerous she was. He made himself look at her again. Her skin was red and raw where her armour had chafed. There were three fresh cuts on her face and deep dark bruises, black and purple, one around her eyes and many on her arms. When she ran a hand through her hair it stuck up and out at all angles. Her bared teeth gleamed in the light of the white stone walls. Tsen forced himself to smile back.

  ‘To life, Dragon-Queen, although I am bewildered by the idea that either of us may cling to it much longer.’ He pretended not to notice the blood as he lifted the glass. The smile on her face stayed exactly as it was, fixed in place.

  ‘I’m glad Shrin Chrias Kwen wasn’t killed,’ she said. And Tsen understood perfectly well, for the alchemist in his eyrie held the only cure for the Plague and the alchemist was beholden to the dragon-queen. Chrias would die, slowly and in agony. He could see it in her eyes. But you always knew she was dangerous. You chose to play with the fire, Tsen, when you could so easily have simply snuffed it out. Are you feeling burned enough yet? The people of Dhar Thosis surely are.

  The dragon-queen raised her glass and then hesitated. She was watching him, a strange play of emotion flickering across her face. Victory and doubt. Joyous glee and shame and a terrible guilt. A hopeless, relentless drive. Tsen couldn’t begin to fathom it. As he touched his glass to his lips, she suddenly sprang forward and slapped it out of his hand. It flew off into the steam and shattered somewhere on the floor; and it was all so unexpected that Tsen didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, just sat in the water, paralysed as they stared at one another, each apparently as surprised as the other. A moment passed between them and then the dragon-queen climbed from the bath, her movements sharp and fast. Throwing on her shift, she stooped and picked up the bladeless knife of the Elemental Man she’d killed. ‘The Adamantine Man who served our alchemist,’ she said, her voice twisted and choked. ‘By whatever gods you believe in, you find him. Bring him here! And when you do, you fall on your knees before him, Baros Tsen T’Varr, and you thank him. You thank him as though you owe him your life. Because you do.’ Then she was gone.

  For a while Tsen stared after her. He had no idea what had just happened, and all he could think of was how utterly hopelessly helpless he’d been when she’d moved. She was fast, but that wasn’t it. She’d taken him completely by surprise. And he still couldn’t move because even now it was so damned unexpected. Why had she . . .

  May the slugs in my orchards pity me. It dawned on him then, far too late, what she’d almost done to him. He looked in horror at the wine spilled across the rim of the bath and the shattered glass somewhere on the floor below and saw again Shrin Chrias Kwen as he’d been a moment before, shimmering in the water, rubbing at the hardening patch of skin on his arm where the dragon-disease was taking hold. Zafir had done that to him. She carried the disease, and that was how she’d given it to him, on the day when he and his men had raped her to make her understand that she was a slave. It was in her blood, and her blood had been in the wine she’d shared, that she’d put into his glass. He’d taken it for madness when she’d smashed his decanter and cut herself, but no, she’d known exactly what she was doing. She’d brought him down here to give him the Hatchling Disease and then dangle his life in front of him. And he would have drunk her wine, too stupid to see the trap wrapping its embrace around him. If she hadn’t slapped the glass out of his hand . . .

  But she had. Why?

  A tingling numbness spread through the middle finger of his left hand. The bones inside seemed to vibrate gently. His bond to Shrin Chrias Kwen. His ring was still off so the kwen was watching him now, seeing through his eyes, perhaps wondering why Tsen had done the same a few minutes earlier. Too late, old foe. She’s gone. You don’t get to see her. And perhaps that’s as well, given what she’s done to you. Lazily Tsen draped his arm over the edge of the bath and dipped his throbbing finger back into the bowl of water. Quai’Shu’s intent when he’d made all his inner circle bond like this had been to tie his most trusted family and servants more tightly. Words could travel faster. They would have an edge, he told them, over the other great houses of the sea lords. They would know things ahead of allies and enemies alike. In practice, they’d all done what anyone else would have done and taken to spying on one another. So now they wore the rings. The rings stopped the bond from working but didn’t stop you from knowing that someone was trying to use it. Once they had the rings, it had worked out rather better. Sometimes they even managed to do what Quai’Shu claimed to have wanted in the first place and simply talked to each other.

  In the bowl and the iced-water within, Tsen found the kwen looking back at him. They watched each other, which was all very dull, and then in his cabin on his ship Chrias held out his arm and showed Tsen, carefully and deliberately this time, the unmistakable signs of the Hatchling Disease. Tsen muttered under his breath, You deserve it! But the visions were only visions and so Chrias wouldn’t hear.

  The kwen moved from his bowl of water and sat at his writing desk and wrote for Tsen to see, ‘If she lives, kill her. Do it now. Do it for your own good.’ He put down his pen and picked up a ring. He looked at it very deliberately for a moment, mouthed a single word and then slipped the ring on his finger. The vision in Tsen’s water vanished at once.

  Goodbye. Shrin Chrias Kwen’s last word and Tsen supposed that was the last they’d ever see of each other. If he was honest with himself, he couldn’t pretend he was particularly sorry about that. He stared into the water long after Chrias was gone. Zafir had had him at her mercy, and at the very last moment she’d changed her mind. Why?

  He put his own ring back on and looked at his hands. There weren’t that many left of the cabal that Quai’Shu had thought would take over the world. Jima Hsian and Zifan’Shu were dead. Quai’Shu himself was alive but mad and mumbling nonsense to himself a few doors up the passageway. Baran Meido, Quai’Shu’s second son, had threatened to cut off every one of his own fingers rather than allow the slivers of binding gold-glass to be implanted under his skin. Which left Bronzehand
, but Bronzehand was in an entirely other world.

  Why? Why did she stop me from drinking it?

  He stared at the question and found nothing. He played through every moment since the dragon had come back from Dhar Thosis and Zafir had slid off its back and stood before him, battered and bruised, bloodied and full of swagger, and had dropped the bladeless knife of the Elemental Man at his feet. He picked at each memory. He’d come down here with her, too bewildered by the horror of what she’d done to think properly. She could have burned them all from the back of her dragon if that was what she’d wanted, and for what she’d done they were both as good as dead. She’d ruined everyone and he’d felt nothing beyond an overwhelming sickening dread. It was his fault as much as hers. No point pretending otherwise.

  But why change her mind? Why?

  He looked for a towel. On other days he might have called Kalaiya to listen while he poured out his heart and his worries until they were both wrinkled like prunes, but he couldn’t, not today. His bath was tainted, maybe for ever. Zafir’s blood was in the water. Maybe now instead of Kalaiya’s dark skin, the ghost he’d see here would always be pale and bruised and bloodied and carry the vicious face of a dragon.

  Is the water itself tainted now? Once that crossed his mind he couldn’t get out quickly enough. He dried himself, dressed in a simple tunic, left his slaves to clean up the mess and walked briskly through the softly glowing curved spirals of the eyrie tunnels. The old luminous stone made him small and frightened today, and he was glad to reach the open space and the wide skies of the dragon yard, the hot desert breeze and the smell of sand.