The Splintered Gods

by Stephen Deas

  An Elemental Man appeared close to her, his face a rictus of strain. Diamond Eye bit him in two. Another appeared a dozen yards away. The dragon was already moving but this killer carried a wand and fired it at once. Zafir jerked as the lightning hit her and sparked across her gold-glass scales. Her eyes fluttered and then the feeling passed. The Elemental Man vanished. Diamond Eye crashed into the eyrie wall beside another lightning cannon but the soldiers manning it had already fled. Zafir saw Tuuran run up the far wall and jump into another to wrestle with the Taiytakei inside. The Crowntaker had moved away from the hatchlings. Another handful of soldiers ran out into the dragon yard, these with gold-glass shields as big as a man. The Crowntaker gestured and the hatchlings scattered, racing at them. Lightning thundered and flashed. Hatchlings fell and leaped up again, throwing themselves among the soldiers, shredding them with tooth and claw, shrieking with glee. Diamond Eye jumped off the wall. A moment later, something exploded where he’d been, and then his tail cracked like a whip overhead and a rag-doll flail of broken limbs arced away over the eyrie edge and on down to the maelstrom below.

  On the walls, in the dragon yard, amid the mayhem, the Taiytakei were fighting among themselves. Why?

  The Black Moon has turned them to his cause. Diamond Eye whipped around and spat a stream of fire into the air, incinerating an Elemental Man as he appeared overhead. I hear their thoughts. The dragon’s own were tinged with a vicious glee. I know where they will be. In the middle of the dragon yard three killers appeared around the Crowntaker at once, one behind, one crouched in front, one upside down over his head, all three with their blades stretched to greet him. The next instant all three were gone, puffs of black smoke and dust torn to shreds by the howling wind. Diamond Eye wheeled in the air. He soared low over the walls, cleansing them, pouring flames. I hear their thoughts. A hatchling skittered down the entrance to the hatchery tunnels and disappeared into the bowels of the eyrie. I hear them die. Other hatchlings climbed the walls and dived over the sides. Their cries mingled with the desperate howls of men. The last Taiytakei too stupid or slow to have fled into the tunnels were cornered and torn limb from limb. The Crowntaker stood in the very centre of the yard now, watching it all, silver fire pouring from his eyes like burning moonlight.

  ‘He bound you to me.’

  Yes.

  ‘And if I release you, what will you do, dragon?’

  You cannot undo what he has done.

  Liang snatched the box of fire globes she’d stolen from Tsen’s rockets. There was the bomb she’d made before she’d left for the Konsidar. She put that on a sled with a crate of unshaped glass. She could hear the soldiers outside, shouting at slaves to get out of the way, to stay in their rooms, to hide and barricade their doors. Liang hadn’t the first idea how to kill, hurt, stop or even merely annoy the adult dragon, but wasn’t that why there were lightning cannon on the walls? And the Elemental Men – surely, surely, it had crossed the mind of at least someone that Zafir was neither stupid nor likely to go meekly to the scaffold?

  She ran out into the tunnels. A burst of screams echoed around the twist of the passageway. The walls lit up with a flare of orange light and a crack of lightning shook the air and then another. Another scream . . .

  A torrent of flames poured around the curve of the passage. It rushed at Liang with nowhere to go except on and through and past. She cringed, willed the gold-glass in her hand into a bubble and cowered inside it. Another crack of lightning rattled her ears and then an armoured soldier raced around the curve of the passage towards her, arms flailing, eyes bulging in terror. ‘Dragon!’ She caught his arm as he passed and tugged him off balance. He tripped over her sled and sprawled. She was already shaping the glass in her other hand into a wider shield.

  ‘Hold your ground and give me your wand!’

  She barely had time. The hatchling hurtled around the twist of the passage in pursuit, claws scratching and scraping and scrabbling on the stone. Liang fired lightning at its face and slammed it into the tunnel wall, a tangle of wings and claws. The soldier was back on his feet. Liang shifted her shield to engulf them both, grabbed his lightning wand and stuck it through the glass beside her own. The hatchling untangled itself and hissed. Liang let fly with both wands and the air rang with thunderbolts, echoes loud enough to rattle bones. She picked up the bomb and threw it. The thunder of the explosion slammed into her. Pieces of semi-molten wire flew like shot. One side of the shield shattered and Liang found herself on the floor. Something hot stung her face and a deep burning pain started in her calf. She scrambled to her feet. She couldn’t see through one eye but the other was working well enough. The hatchling was crumpled. Half its face was shredded to the bone and one of its eyes was missing. It crawled and clawed its way a few feet towards her and then shuddered and stopped. Liang’s leg buckled under her. A piece of glass like the blade of a knife was sticking out of her calf.

  She wiped the blood off her face and wrestled the dazed soldier to his feet. ‘Go! I’ll make as many as I can. Send someone back to get them. And for the love of Charin, kill the dragon’s rider. Find an Elemental Man and send him after the Arbiter and tell her that Chay-Liang said to please make her pretty little head explode.’ As the soldier started off, Liang shouted after him, ‘And make sure you destroy the eggs too!’ Because it was quite enough to have to deal with a dragon once, even a little one, without having to deal with it all over again a few hours later.

  Diamond Eye tipped his wings and circled the eyrie rim, rooting out the soldiers who’d sought shelter in the piles of rubbish. He flew slowly as though stalking them and then landed, and each time the eyrie shook under his weight. Whenever a Taiytakei broke cover, the dragon simply watched to see what his prey would do. The first fled in such panic that he ran right off the edge of the eyrie and plunged howling into the annihilation of the storm-dark. Others Diamond Eye lashed with his tail, batting them far into the air. Some he caught with tooth and claw and ripped apart, or held them down and burned them until their glass and gold melted into a smear on the stone.

  A sled rose into the air across the eyrie and sped away. Then another and another and then more. The hatchlings shrieked and dived in furious pursuit. Diamond Eye leaped from the rim, curled and arced under the eyrie’s black stone belly, weaving among the flickers and rivers of purple lightning. He came at the fleeing Taiytakei from beneath, overhauling the sleds one by one, plucking away their riders and throwing them into the sky, shattering glass with a swing of his tail or simply sending men tumbling through the air with the wash of his wings. His joy howled through Zafir’s head, but this wasn’t Dhar Thosis where it had engulfed her and become her own. She felt a coldness now that Diamond Eye was free. An awe and perhaps even a fear. A dread of what would follow. The dragon didn’t need her any more.

  ‘Stop!’

  He turned, sullen and resentful, and landed in the dragon yard, simmering while the hatchlings cavorted in the air, tearing down the last of the fleeing sleds. Zafir slid from his back. She walked away through the carnage of fire and lightning and death. Tuuran and the Crowntaker lived. Oh, and when she peered, the alchemist was cringing in a corner, pressed up against the wall, and the poor bastards in their cages by the gallows seemed unhurt. Everything else was dead, lightning-charred, fire-scorched, ripped to shreds or all of that and more. Men torn limb from limb, scattered in pieces and then roasted.

  The hatchlings wanted more. They crashed across the eyrie, talons scrabbling on the stone, tumbling in their eagerness, and raced for the tunnels with their heads full of blood and slaughter. They’d kill everyone, man, woman, slave, soldier, kwen, t’varr . . . A delicious coldness filled Zafir. They deserved it. All of them. Every Taiytakei, every slave, every man, every woman.

  Dragon thoughts. She pushed them away. Make them stop, dragon! We do not need this massacre. She reached the passage which led to where the Scales had lived. There were hatchlings down there, two at least. She’d seen them go inside. She r
an across the dragon yard to the tunnels where the slaves were quartered. Tell them to stop. She raced inside to the room that had been hers before she’d taken to living on the wall at Diamond Eye’s side. She’d had a door at least, which was more than most slaves ever had, and by some miracle no one had kicked it in. She tried it but it wouldn’t move. She hammered her fist against the iron. ‘Myst! Onyx?’ Make. Them. Stop.

  No answer. She barged her shoulder against it and felt it give a little, as though held shut by someone then a voice came back: ‘Mistress?’

  ‘Let me in.’ They were alive. The slaves who’d been hers since the Taiytakei had taken her from her home. The rush of relief took her by surprise – how strongly it shook her. She heard the scrape of wood on stone and the door opened. Myst and Onyx looked at her, wide-eyed at her scorched blood-streaked armour.

  Alive. That was what mattered. Zafir squeezed past. And what she really wanted now was to strip off her armour and throw it aside and have them wash her clean, scrub her skin with cold water and soft oils, dress her in silks and lie beside her as she closed her eyes. Somewhere safe. That was all she’d ever really wanted. She whispered, though no one was listening, ‘Make them stop.’

  Distant screams echoed through the tunnels. Furious hatchling shrieks as Diamond Eye called them back. Zafir pulled her hand-maidens close.

  ‘Stay here,’ she whispered. ‘And I will keep you safe.’

  Liang lurched back to her workshop. She looked at her leg. Bloody and messy but she’d just have to make do. So Bellepheros had tried to poison the dragons and it hadn’t worked, was that it? Or maybe it had and this was the result? Easy enough to have the rider-slave take the dragon out into the deep desert to do the killing, wasn’t it? Why did they have to do it here? Oh yes, for the show of it. She ought to go up and see for herself but she could barely walk.

  She rushed the first bomb. Bigger than the last but not as hard to carry. Bigger was probably better, wasn’t it? Neatly ended her wire problems too – hardly mattered whether it was quarter-finger electrum or third-finger white gold when it was fizzing through the air like a ball from a cannon. She set to work on the next. She’d made seven and had run out of spare wire when she realised the eyrie had fallen quiet and that the soldier hadn’t come back.

  Her leg was killing her.

  53

  Old Wounds

  The light of the white stone walls was bright and cold. It carried a touch of silver to it now and didn’t seem to Zafir quite as she remembered it. More moonlight than sunlight, though the sky outside was still brilliant dazzling day. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there holding Myst and Onyx. Not long. Couldn’t have been. She turned back and opened the door again and there was Tuuran standing right outside. She walked past and then stopped and turned and looked him in the eye. He bowed and carefully looked away. Stupid old traditions had no place here but he was an Adamantine Man, drilled without mercy as to what was expected of him.

  Eventually all wounds healed. They had to, didn’t they?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It was a little thing that changed nothing and yet it was huge. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said that, not to anyone. Sorry had died in the Pinnacles.

  Tuuran’s bow grew deeper. Perhaps he didn’t know what else to do.

  ‘Look at me,’ Zafir commanded. ‘I said I’m sorry.’

  Tuuran looked at her. ‘A speaker does not apologise to an Adamantine Man,’ he said gruffly. ‘Not for anything, your Holiness. We serve. From birth to death, nothing more, nothing less. We are your most loyal servants.’

  ‘But I was no speaker when I took your knife from your belt. I was merely a young princess who apparently inspired the wrong thoughts. I know you held your silence. I know my mother knew you were innocent. I knew you were innocent. I should have had you freed. Instead I had you sent away as a slave.’

  Tuuran looked away. ‘Had you not, I would have been hanged for my crime.’

  ‘There was no crime.’

  ‘But there was, Holiness. He was a prince. I spoke out of turn. It was my knife and I didn’t stop you. That was enough.’ He dropped to the floor and pressed his head to the stone. ‘I have not forgotten, Holiness,’ he said as he rose. ‘I have never felt a shred of regret for what I did. I was content for my life to be forfeit and I have not forgotten that it was saved.’

  Zafir couldn’t breath. An unfamiliar lump choked her throat. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She should be the one abasing herself. He was supposed to be angry with her, furious for his years of slavery. A little forgiveness. That was all she wanted. Gratitude? She couldn’t begin to understand gratitude. How? ‘Forgive me, Tuuran.’

  ‘There is no forgiveness to be had, Holiness. None is required.’

  Zafir clenched her fists. ‘Forgive me anyway!’ She screwed her eyes shut. Stupid! That way didn’t mean anything. ‘No. Never mind. I did not speak. Look after my slaves, Tuuran. They deserve a better mistress.’ She fled from him outside into the brilliance of the afternoon sun, where the wind caught her and pulled her a step sideways. The wind invigorated her. It blew away the smell of burned men and charred skin. She felt the sun on her face.

  A handful of slaves was at work around the charred remains of the scaffold, taking it down. The cages still stood beside them. By some miracle the men inside remained alive. Maybe they hoped for release. Maybe they were right to hope. She didn’t know. Diamond Eye perched on the wall above them with the hatchlings beside him. She counted. Three were missing and she idly wondered where they were, whether they were still combing the tunnels or dead or had simply flown away. The eyrie felt oddly still. Paused, as if holding its breath for something.

  Diamond Eye slowly turned to look at her. Your thoughts will always be with me, little one.

  ‘Get out of my head!’

  A handful of soldiers emerged from one of the tunnels with a pack of slaves in their wake. They began dragging the bodies in the dragon yard into neat lines and stripping them. The slaves worked while the soldiers looked on sombrely. Why weren’t they terrified? They worked quietly, muted by their own survival perhaps, but not sullen or resentful or afraid. They didn’t seem like prisoners. She didn’t understand what the Crowntaker had done. She didn’t understand how or why or who he was or why she was alive. In a way it didn’t matter. He was the Silver King, a half-god who did as he pleased.

  She walked to the cages and looked up to the dragons. The hatchlings watched her with barely suppressed fury. She could see the intelligence in their eyes, the hunger. Awake and yet somehow bound to the Crowntaker, this Silver King. They whispered in the corners of her thoughts, free and full of eager joy tinged with the ever-present rage and the urge to burn.

  She stopped before Diamond Eye, a dragon she’d known since the day he hatched. He’d been her favourite until Onyx had grown bigger and stronger but he was a stranger now. Vioros, her mother’s alchemist, had once said that woken dragons felt none of the things you might expect of them, that they understood neither forgiveness nor revenge, neither spite nor mercy. They were simply dragons and did as they pleased.

  Diamond Eye towered over her like a winged mountain.

  ‘I release you,’ she said, and forced herself to meet his eye. He’d eat her now. Or burn her, or flick her with his tail and fling her high out into the sky to fall into the storm-dark.

  It is not your binding to unmake.

  ‘Then I ask nothing of you. I will give you no commands. You are free from me.’

  Diamond Eye looked at her for a long moment of silence.

  Why?

  Because now I understand what it is to be a slave.

  You have always been a slave.

  Tears blurred her eyes.

  Do you think this frees you?

  ‘No.’ The doll-woman’s circlet felt heavy across her brow but they both knew that wasn’t want Diamond Eye meant. She’d feel that circlet there for ever, long after it was gone, if it ever was. She wa
s slave to who she was.

  ‘Why? Why do I matter to him at all?’ Not to the Crowntaker but the thing he carried with him. The Silver King, the Black Moon.

  Diamond Eye didn’t answer but Zafir caught a fleeting idea of something sharp. The Adamantine Spear. The dragon should have hated her, as Tuuran should, but instead she was offered gratitude from one and indifference from the other; and if she had a purpose or a value left to her then neither had anything to do with who she was or how she thought or what she felt, only an ancient spear that sat far away in another world. The Adamantine Spear of the Silver King, claimed by her blood.

  She turned her back on the dragons. The soldiers were helping the slaves with the bodies, all of them working together. The dead were now mostly in rows, stripped and with what survived of their belongings in tidy piles beside them. No one looked at her except the four men in their cages beside her: Mad Quai’Shu, who sat almost naked in his own filth; Mai’Choiro Kwen, who cowered in a corner as far away from her as he could get; Shonda of Vespinarr, formerly the mightiest man in the world, now held in a cage by the Elemental Men for everyone to see before he was hanged. She looked at Shonda. Stripped of all his power and his peacock robes and his rainbow silks and gold and silver threads, he was fat man in a shabby tunic, old and weak and crumpled; and yet as he met her eye, he straightened and puffed himself up, and there was still something about him. An aura of command, of a man accustomed to having the world at his fingertips.

  ‘Rider-slave. I remember you.’

  ‘Every time you look at the brand on your arm?’ Zafir bared her teeth.

  ‘The one on my back hurts more. You were a queen once. The queen of all queens in your own world.’

  Zafir shook her head. ‘And look at us now, Shonda of Vespinarr, look at us now.’ She tapped the gold-glass around her head.

  ‘I think you have the better of it.’

  ‘For now. For how much longer I couldn’t say.’