by Stephen Deas
Belli was trembling. He cut himself with the knife and smeared his own blood over the wound in Liang’s leg and Liang squealed at the sting of it. After that he bandaged her up again and then dabbed and fussed at the cut on her face until she sat him down, held his head in her lap and made him tell her exactly what had happened, over and over until she understood.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whispered when he was done.
‘We must each pick a side,’ she answered softly.
‘I will pick whatever side has you, Li.’
‘I will fight them, Belli.’
‘I cannot defy this Silver King to his face, Li, not for anything.’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot. He is . . .’
She kissed him on the temple. ‘Then keep me safe and I will fight them for both of us.’
For a long time they sat together and she stroked his thinning hair and rocked him back and forth until he began to doze, and it was only when she heard brisk footsteps coming towards the door that she let him go and quickly hid under the bed.
The Taiytakei Crazy stabbed with his warlock’s knife did what Tuuran told them because Crazy had said they had to, but Crazy hadn’t told them they had to pretend to like it. The slaves were a bit of this and a bit of that. Some put on armour of glass-and-gold with an eager glee, others slunk away. Tuuran let those ones go and sent them back down into the eyrie to carry on pulling out bodies and setting the place to rights. The ones who had the will to fight he set to work learning how to use the black-powder cannon. The eyrie shook every time they fired, and even over the wind the noise made him jump. From the corners of his eyes he watched the dragons. The hatchlings circled the eyrie. The big one stayed sat on the wall, still as a sentinel.
The bodies in the yard were almost gone, the dead sorted and stripped, the corpses thrown over the side. He hadn’t had much of a chance to look at them and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He’d had a lover when he’d been here before. Yena. Didn’t much like the thought of finding her again, charred and hacked into bits. They’d parted badly, but still . . . Maybe she wasn’t even here. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was cowering in a room deep under the dragon yard, terrified of what he’d do when he found her, terrified because she’d been too afraid to run away with him.
Which reminded him . . . He called up a pair of soldiers from the yard. ‘The white witch. Where is she?’ Yena had been a slave to the enchantress, and it struck him now that he hadn’t seen her even though he’d sent men to find her. Hadn’t seen Grand Master Bellepheros for a while either.
The soldier shrugged.
‘Best you and I go and have a look then.’
Bellepheros woke as Li shifted under him and scrambled under the bed out of sight. The footsteps stopped outside his door. He straightened himself but no one burst in. Instead there was a polite firm knock. His knees creaked as he stood up. Every part of him carried a weight today, a heaviness. Failure. His purpose, above all other things, had always been to keep the dragons dull and stupid. To fulfil the legacy of the Silver King. And now the Silver King himself had come in the guise of a man and undone everything he’d ever stood for. All of it gone at a stroke.
He opened the door. Tuuran grinned and opened his arms as though offering an embrace to an old friend, as though nothing had changed and he’d left only yesterday and the whole ugly business with the slave woman had never happened. But it had, and most of a year had passed and everything was different. Bellepheros stepped back out of reach.
‘What do you want?’
‘Grand Master Alchemist!’ Tuuran was still grinning as he stepped in.
‘Don’t pretend we’re friends, Tuuran. Not any more. You brought him here. I saw you with him. The monster.’
Tuuran’s face turned solemn. ‘The Isul Aieha, Grand Master Alchemist.’
‘No.’ Bellepheros shook his head. Couldn’t be. Couldn’t accept that. ‘You’ve brought a monster that will end us all.’
‘I’ve brought freedom, Grand Master. Freedom for you. For me. For us!’
‘I don’t want freedom, you stupid man! I want us to be safe! All of us! Safe from the fire that comes from the sky! Safe from tooth and claw and tail! Don’t you see what you’ve done?’ But he didn’t. The look on Tuuran’s face showed that. No shame, no guilt, no fear, just hurt and anger.
‘Grand Master Alchemist, the eyrie and its people have been handed over to her Holiness Zafir, speaker of the nine realms and—’
‘No, no, no!’ Bellepheros turned away and raked his hands across his scalp. If he’d had more hair then he might have pulled it out. ‘Great Flame! And now what? Has she declared war against the entire Taiytakei race yet? How many must burn before it ends?’
Tuuran’s face hardened. ‘I do not know, Master Alchemist, but what she has done so far is to command me as her Night Watchman to prepare this place for the defence that must come.’
‘You? Night Watchman now?’ Bellepheros laughed at the twist of it. ‘Well as you must very well know, grand master alchemists and Night Watchmen have a long tradition of antipathy, and I see it set to continue. Go. Leave. I do not want you here. I serve my order and the realms, not you or your speaker.’
Tuuran shook his head. ‘You serve the memory of the Isul Aieha. And he is returned.’
‘It’s not him!’ Bellepheros screwed up his face and clutched his head again. But he couldn’t refuse. Not if the demon came at him in person.
The scowl on Tuuran’s face was so dark now that Bellepheros thought the big man might pick him up and carry him away but at last Tuuran bowed his head.
‘I came here to ask you as a friend,’ he said. ‘As a man who was taken against his will by these Taiytakei as I was, for your help to keep our new freedom. The Isul Aieha will take us home, where we belong. I know this. I knew this man before you and I ever met. I ask, as a friend, that you help us to survive. Where is the white witch, Master Alchemist?’
Bellepheros shook his head. ‘You have woken dragons. I stand opposed. Go, Night Watchman. You’ll have no help from me.’
Tuuran’s face tightened. He sighed and nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can to keep you safe. I’ve not forgotten how we sailed from the dragon-lands together, slaves both, nor how you spoke to me of the land we left behind and taught me our stories and legends.’
Bellepheros turned his back. He didn’t move or speak until Tuuran was gone. After the door closed, he waited a while longer, then quietly crept to it and opened it. No one was listening outside.
‘Patience, Belli,’ whispered Li from where she hid. ‘The killers will come. And when they do, I beg you to hide.’
Under the sound of the roaring wind and cannons firing, Zafir hauled Sea Lord Lord Shonda from his cage and the Crowntaker stabbed him in the back with his shimmering knife. When there wasn’t any blood, Zafir frowned. The Crowntaker’s eyes had silver in them again.
‘This Taiytakei will be mine,’ he said. ‘He will do everything we ask. He can help us, no?’
Zafir looked at the other Taiytakei in their cages. Mai’Choiro and Shrin Chrias. ‘A kwen would—’
They come. Diamond Eye, in her head, a warning the others didn’t have, and she was already sprinting before she wondered why the dragon had bothered to tell her. He was in the air, throwing himself from the wall towards her, wings stretched out. She understood at once. Killers. The only safe place was beside him.
The first Elemental Man appeared behind the Crowntaker. Shonda let out a startled cry. The killer vanished and Shonda’s head rolled off his shoulders in a fountain of blood. Diamond Eye smashed into the dragon yard and slid across the stone. Zafir threw herself forward and rolled. In the dragon’s thoughts she saw the killer rushing like the wind towards her. The dragon read his mind and showed her, and she saw where the killer would be and how his knife would cut her head from her shoulders and the exact moment he would be flesh and bone again. She ducked and jinked, timing perfect. Diamond Eye roared inside her. The killer vanished and appea
red ahead of her, and again she saw it unfold a moment before. She twisted away from the blade but it cut through her shoulder, through her armour and sliced open her skin. She struck back at the air where the killer had been standing an instant too late. When he came at her a third time, Zafir threw her knife the moment before he became solid. His outstretched edge sliced a thin shallow cut in her side as she dived away. The Elemental Man looked down at himself, at the hilt of Zafir’s blade sticking from his chest. He mouthed a word as he fell.
How?
Diamond Eye flattened his head to the stone as she reached him, inviting her onto his back.
Why? she asked.
55
The Secrets of the Queverra
Tsen was beginning to think the tunnel under the desert went on for ever. The sled moved slower than a glasship but it was faster than walking. His inner t’varr, who calculated things like this in his sleep, estimated two days to reach the Queverra, five if he’d got it wrong and they were heading for the Konsidar. He couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t a terribly comforting thought because it dawned on him in a slow and roundabout way that if he’d chosen wrong then he’d sentenced them to die of thirst, whereas if he’d set off in the right direction then they might survive. He sighed and agreed with himself that next time he’d give it some more thought before he charged off down a mysterious tunnel into gods-knew-where. Yes – when next there were killers hunting him, maybe he could ask them all nicely to wait a moment while he got his bearings and made sure he had plenty of food and water. Maybe a permission note from the Arbiter. A writ or a warrant or something. And perhaps some dancing boys and a few singers to relieve the boredom too, eh? A full circus – why not?
‘What did you say?’
Talking to himself aloud again? He squeezed Kalaiya’s hand. ‘A while longer, my love. It will take us to a place we can rest.’ Nothing like a little groundless optimism to pass the time. Maybe, he supposed, if he said it enough, he could delude himself that he had an ounce of a clue where he was going. Damned Desert of Thieves was a maze of cliffs and mesas and canyons and chasms and dead ends and old dried-up river beds that went nowhere. He wondered how quickly a sled might fly there using this tunnel. At least as fast as a galloping horse, which was about as fast as the enchanters ever made them. Cheaper and safer than flying sleds over the dunes. They could travel in chains linked together, one at the front towing twenty behind it and only one man to guide them.
He sighed. T’varr-ish thoughts and he wasn’t a t’varr any more. Wasn’t much of anything, but he knew he’d be stuck with thoughts like that for ever. He was a t’varr, like it or not.
The tunnel widened. Pairs of great bronze doors the height of three men passed on either side, each carved into a relief of a giant four-armed guardian wielding scimitars in each hand. Tsen stopped the sled and spent a while looking for a way to open them, but they had no handles, no locks, no keyholes, nothing.
‘Where do they go?’ Kalaiya asked, and he had to admit that he didn’t know. He couldn’t think of anywhere useful they might pass on the way to the Queverra – not that might have water. Yes, he could think of all sorts of names for all sorts of places and point to them on a map but he’d never actually visited them because there was nothing actually there. Nothing useful to a t’varr, anyway. Just aesthetically interesting rocks and carved cliffs and giant statues and the occasional long-abandoned ruin.
Thirst slowly drained them. The sled drifted steadily on, Tsen and Kalaiya draped across it. After the second day, Tsen could barely keep his head up. He stopped at another set of bronze doors like the first and couldn’t find a way to open those either. At the third and fourth he didn’t bother. By then he was drifting in and out of sleep. Maybe there were more, maybe not. The tunnel crept into his dreams. Sometimes he woke with a start and a shout with no idea whether he’d been asleep a moment or an hour. He lost all sense of time and distance.
‘Tsen! Tsen!’ Kalaiya shook him. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, trying to work out if this was a dream or whether it was real. Two bronze doors barred the tunnel. They hung open and were decorated like the doors he’d seen with Sivan, carved with snakes. Beyond them it was dark. Tsen slowed the sled and let it drift to a stop. His heart was suddenly beating a lot faster. He forgot he was tired and thirsty and nearly dead. The desert men had all sorts of stories about the Queverra: gateways to Xibaiya, half-living half-dead things, man-monsters, terrible sorcerers, a clan of white-faced scorpion-priests who worshipped the forbidden old gods, and that was just the start of it. If even a few of the stories were true then the depths of the Queverra were as busy as Khalishtor on a Mageday market. Nonsense, of course, all of them.
‘Tsen!’ Kalaiya clung to his arm. She was younger than he was, faster and probably stronger and definitely more likely to get away, but he appreciated the gesture anyway. He stroked her hair. It soothed him. Maybe it soothed her too.
The sled drifted on. It carried them through the open bronze doors and into a darkness like the inside of a cave, and Tsen could smell stone. Damp stone, which meant there was water; and as the sled emerged into the bottom of the Queverra and Tsen saw the faint glimmer of daylight above and heard the rustle of a river, he rolled off the sled and fell to the sand and crawled on his hands and knees until he found it.
Water.
Freedom.
When they were both sated, Tsen started looking for a way out and something to eat, and that was where everything started to go wrong again.
Red Lin Feyn stepped out of her gondola at the edge of the desert abyss. The first surprise was the slaughter. The camps of the slavers had been torn down and abandoned. The corpses littering the sand and the stone had been dead for a good few days and the vultures had had their fill. Most of the bodies were picked to the bone. No one had come back to burn them.
The second surprise was finding two of the killers beside her. She felt them an instant before they appeared, a moment long enough to wonder whether they were here to murder her. They bowed though, and their knives stayed sheathed.
‘The dragon and its rider,’ she asked. ‘Is it done?’ She didn’t want them here.
They didn’t know. They’d followed her from the eyrie all the way, whispering breezes around the sanctuary of her gondola. She tried ordering them to leave but they wouldn’t. She’d passed her judgement, they reminded her. She was no longer the Arbiter of the Dralamut, merely an exalted navigator, and so they would do as they pleased; and what pleased them now was to know why she’d come to the Queverra and not returned home.
‘Well you might as well make yourself useful,’ she told them, ‘and find out what happened here.’ She walked among the bones and tatters, picking at the ruins of the camp, trying to piece the story together. When the desert men fought among themselves, they tried not to kill each other because there was no money to be made from a corpse while a healthy living man could be sold. This was something else. Hundreds of men had come through and all at once. There were no tracks except the ones that led away. Some of the corpses wore rags torn by the vultures. A few had pieces of armour. There weren’t any weapons. A lot of the dead had either been stripped or been naked to begin with. She found a corpse under a collapsed tent. When she gingerly pulled back the canvas, what was left of the dead man’s skin was painted white.
She began to see.
Lin Feyn moulded a globe of gold-glass into a sled. She stepped on it, sat cross-legged and guided herself up and out over the Queverra’s abyss. ‘I believe I will find the last of the missing eggs here,’ she told the two killers. ‘And the skin-shifter who took them. That is why I am here. I do not require your help.’
The killers didn’t answer. After a short time she felt them go. Doubtless they’d be waiting for her at the bottom. As she sank into the depths and a twilight gloom closed around her, she looked for firelight from further below and saw nothing. She let herself fall, gently and steadily, calm and composed. The twilight turned to near-dark, split by a ba
r of brilliant sky miles above. Near-dark turned to night-black, gashed by faraway dazzling sunlight. As she approached the chasm’s bottom, Lin Feyn slowed to let her eyes accustom themselves to the deep darkness. The ledges and terraces were abandoned and lifeless. She reached with her ears and heard only the rustle of water over sand. She knew what had happened now.
She reached the bottom. As she stepped off her sled the killers reappeared. She bowed to them and they bowed back. They kept their forms as flesh here out of courtesy, for the Queverra was a place where neither the Taiytakei of the surface nor the shifters of the Konsidar exerted dominion yet both claimed it as their own. In truth, the depths of the Queverra were a forsaken place, but Lin Feyn considered the shifters had the better claim.
‘The painted men have gone,’ they said. ‘There is no one here.’
‘I had deduced as much.’ Lin Feyn kept her face perfectly blank. ‘Do you know why?’
‘No.’
‘Then I will tell you why. Someone has walked out of Xibaiya. Or something.’
‘The skin-shifter.’
Red Lin Feyn said nothing. She took off her slippers and stood in the cold water of the river, letting her toes sink into the sand. The water was only a few inches deep and the sand was as black as night. She looked slowly up and down the length of the Queverra, careful not to linger on the dazzling line of the sky. Dim shapes of stone arches loomed overhead. There were shadows that might be caves flanked with white stone pillars scattered here and there along the length of the abyss, peppering the walls. Some were beside the river, but others were up along the cliffs, or even faced onto the stone spans above. They glowed with a soft light, unsettling. She’d been here before. The light was something new. The nearest pillars marked an entrance, a tunnel into the stone. She walked to them and touched one.
