The Silver Kings

by Stephen Deas

  ‘Gnnnccc?’

  ‘I’m really not in the mood, Halfteeth.’

  ‘Ugnn kehhhh.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeth.’

  ‘That’s very good to hear.’ He dropped Halfteeth and pointed a finger at Snacksize, jabbing it like he might just poke out someone’s eye. ‘And you can shut it too.’

  Snacksize nodded, serious-faced, but Tuuran knew her too well for that to fool him for a moment. Biting her lip to stop herself from sniggering. She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with trying something different, boss. A different, ah … way in, if you like.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying somethi— I wasn’t … Great Flame, what do you think …?’ He closed his eyes and turned back to walking. No, they were not having that conversation. Let them think whatever they wanted. He shook himself and stretched and rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the sense of being lost. Adamantine Men were never lost. Even if they didn’t know where they were, that was because someone had made the map wrong, or rearranged the mountains and rivers in the night, or something like that. And they certainly weren’t ever lost in their own skin, because how useless was that?

  Zafir was waiting in the Octagon with Bellepheros and White Vish from Furymouth. Tuuran looked away before she caught his eye. Couldn’t be doing that, not after what he’d just done with Myst. He shuddered. So wrong, and a hundred times worse what with the secrets he knew that she’d shared with no one else. He walked quickly on through the Hall of Princes, up the Grand Stair, on and on around its sweeping spiral until his thighs were burning, forcing Halfteeth and Snacksize to keep up, striding so that Snacksize with her short legs almost had to set to a jog, and them with their heavy hammers. Petty payback for mocking him, that was. Had them nicely out of breath by the time he reached the High Hall and walked briskly outside into the rain.

  Yesterday Halfteeth had built a crude crane by the cliff edge of the Moonlit Mountain. It was like the winches on the edge of the eyrie rim, only instead of a cage attached to it this one had a giant wheel, and tied to the wheel was Hyrkallan, almost naked. The rest of Tuuran’s Adamantine Men were already up there, keeping watch, making a circle, standing guard. They were bored and sombre and wet. A few of Hyrkallan’s riders were there too. They hooted and jeered and hurled abuse when they saw Halfteeth and Snacksize with their hammers, and there were a few shouts about honour and revenge. Tuuran lifted a finger, telling them where to stick it. He wiped the drizzle from his face. Wasn’t much more than a fine mist of spray today. Should have been lashing down for a time like this. Would have been more fitting.

  Queen Jaslyn watched from a distance, cold and aloof. She really didn’t care what he was about to do, and Tuuran simply didn’t understand that. The Hyrkallan he remembered – and he did, even from all that time ago – had been a fearless, bold, strong giant, admirable in every way, everything Tuuran saw in himself. Left him to wonder what had happened. Turning traitor he could understand, and alchemists were a nuisance at the best of times, but what had Hyrkallan done to his queen? ‘Why do you suppose even his own woman despises him?’ he muttered.

  Halfteeth shrugged. ‘Despises everyone, that one,’ he muttered back.

  Wasn’t quite true but never mind. Tuuran cast an idle eye around for aspiring assassins lurking in the rubble in case any happened to be waiting for her Holiness to come out. There likely wasn’t much point, not with Diamond Eye perched on the remnants of the Silver Onion Dome, but he did it anyway. When Zafir came outside she went to stand beside Queen Jaslyn.

  ‘Two bloody ice queens,’ growled Halfteeth. Tuuran cuffed him. He watched Zafir until she turned her head and gave a little nod, then he pushed Snacksize and Halfteeth forward.

  ‘Go on then. Get it done.’

  He’d have done it himself. Probably should have. But Halfteeth had almost begged, and when Tuuran had asked why, Halfteeth had told how it was he’d become a slave sold to the Taiytakei, how old Valmeyan, the King of the Crags and lord over the Worldspine, used to send his riders out to sack the villages deep in his mountain valleys and burn their homes. How they’d murder the weak and the old and the sick, and bring the young and the fit and the children back in cages carried in the claws of dragons, to sell to the Taiytakei in the slave markets of Furymouth. Hyrkallan was the King of Sand and Stone, not the King of the Crags, but frankly Halfteeth was happy to take what he could get when it came to smashing some dragon-king’s ankles with a hammer and watching him dangle over the edge of a cliff and die and take his time about it.

  Tuuran still should have said no. Was his job to do as the Night Watchman. But Snacksize had come too, though she’d waited outside and kept herself quiet, making like she wasn’t there while she listened to every word, and Halfteeth had leaned in and whispered all shifty-like that it was the same for her, and that she’d gladly take a hammer if it was offered and maybe a knife too, because the King of the Crags and his riders weren’t too fussy about what state their slaves were in when they sold them, and the night-skins were none too kind either, and it was sometimes far, far worse for the women than it was for the men. He wouldn’t say more and Snacksize would never say a word, but it set Tuuran to thinking of her Holiness and how, all things being as they were, she might quietly approve if she knew. She never would know, but that was by the by, and so here they were.

  Snacksize’s hammer came down, smashing the bones in Hyrkallan’s wrist. He screamed. Tuuran watched Zafir and Jaslyn. Maybe her Holiness flinched, but Jaslyn stayed still as stone. The queen of Flint, like they used to call her mother.

  Halfteeth did Hyrkallan’s ankles next. One, two, nice and quick. The riders of the north stood sullen in the drizzle and watched, and Tuuran’s Adamantine Men watched them in turn, and the dragon Diamond Eye watched them all. Snacksize took her time with the last swing. Had some words to say, it seemed, though they were lost in the rain before they reached Tuuran’s ears. He saw her spit in Hyrkallan’s face, and he was about to go and do the job himself if she didn’t get on with it, but she lifted the hammer before he could take more than a step and brought it down. The two of them backed away. The Adamantine Men on the crane worked their cranks and winches, and the wheel lifted into the air and turned and flipped on its back. Now Hyrkallan dangled underneath, tied by his shattered hands and feet. The crane turned and the wheel moved out over the edge of the cliff, and that was where they left him, howling and screaming curses at Zafir. Wasn’t right, killing a man like that, but it was what he’d done to old Grand Master Jeiros, who would have hung there and died just the same if King Jehal of Furymouth hadn’t happened by in the nick of time. Whisked him away to the Adamantine Palace by all accounts, just so they could both watch the world end in flames a few days later. Tuuran shook his head. Fate could really be a shit sometimes.

  Her Holiness turned and left. Some of the riders and most of the Adamantine Men left too. Tuuran watched Halfteeth and Snacksize saunter back inside, grinning and joking. A few riders stayed to stand and stare and listen to Hyrkallan howl. Queen Jaslyn didn’t move, and Tuuran found himself staring too, not looking at Hyrkallan or even hearing him, but gazing right through to the endless grey sky, lost in thoughts he didn’t want. It was killing him, slowly, that Crazy had vanished. Was bad enough when he was here, but the difference between abject darkness and a glimmer of light was worlds and lifetimes, life and death.

  Even in the drizzle he was getting soaked. He went back inside and thought about looking for Bellepheros, but Bellepheros always just sent him brusquely away. Would have been different with Chay-Liang still here. She would have brought him round, no matter that she and Tuuran didn’t get on either, no matter how she’d spat scorn at her Holiness and everything she stood for. With the three of them together he might have approached Zafir to winkle out where she truly stood. And maybe that could have made for four. Her with her dragon, Bellepheros with his alchemy, Chay-Liang with her gold-glass,
and him with his … well, with his axe. Maybe together they could face the Black Moon and drive him out, and Crazy could be his old friend again. Berren the Crowntaker. The Bloody Judge. Whatever name he wanted. But Chay-Liang was gone, and what had happened in Merizikat hung heavy between all of them, and Bellepheros wouldn’t talk to him, and her Holiness kept her counsel carefully to herself and wouldn’t let him in.

  He went to find Halfteeth and Snacksize instead, off together getting roaring drunk in celebration of putting old demons of their own to rest. He drank with them in case that somehow helped, but they didn’t really want him, just got louder and wilder and crazier and ended up slinking out, arms draped around one another, off to the nearest place they could find where they could fuck, while Tuuran slumped morose in a corner. Not good company. He kept drinking until he puked and could barely walk, and then spent the last half of the day and most of the night sleeping in Myst’s bed while she came and went around him, or else staring into space, lost and wondering what to do, hardly much noticing when she sat beside him and stroked his brow and brought him cups of hot water infused with herbs which mostly turned cold on the table beside her bed, untouched.

  ‘You don’t even look anything like her,’ he muttered as much to himself as to anyone.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘What does that tell you?’

  Tuuran didn’t have the first idea what it told him, and didn’t think he wanted to either. When the fog of drink cleared out of his head at last he drowned himself in duties instead, running around the Pinnacles and getting in everyone’s faces. If wild dragons had come then he might have raced up the Grand Stair to shout challenges to the blind sky, but no one had seen any dragons for weeks, not since Zafir and the eyrie had come, and a fine job Tuuran had been doing, playing that up to anyone who would listen – Zafir the dragon-queen, who had come from nowhere, and the skies empty ever since – but he could have done with one now. A good fiery end full of bluster and fury.

  He headed another expedition around the Silver King’s tunnels to keep himself busy. Rounded up a few feral men. He spent days at a time down there until he knew the place like the back of his hand. Kept himself away from all the shit that was mucking with his head, and so that was where he was when word came of the eyrie’s return, seen off in the distance coming in from the far Raksheh; and right then all thoughts of ferals slipped out of his head like smoky ghosts in a midday gale, and off he ran, axe in hand, straight on up, half mad with anxiety and the other half with murder, all ready to chop off the Black Moon’s head and be done with it, through the ruin of the Queen’s Gate and racing a sled to the eyrie until he reached the rim and saw the Crowntaker standing on the wall, rainswept and waiting for him, and saw no silver in the Crowntaker’s eyes, and Crazy Mad still alive in torment behind them.

  ‘You’re still in there, then.’ Tuuran looked hard, trying to look into Crazy’s skull at whatever was going on inside.

  ‘Still here.’ Crazy looked at Tuuran’s axe, the white knuckles clenched around its haft. ‘Bit late for that, big man. You know he won’t let you.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  Crazy flicked the rain off his face. He turned away, a flash of bitterness. ‘We went somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Don’t know. Something to do with the other one like him. The Issle Ayer or whatever you call it. I don’t remember much.’

  ‘Isul Aieha,’ murmured Tuuran. ‘The Silver King.’

  Crazy paced the wall, twitching and restless. They both had the same desperation inside them, Tuuran knew it, only for Crazy it was magnified a hundred times. Had to be, trapped in there with some half-god monster. ‘It’s all blurs until the end. He did something that hurt him real bad, so bad it almost killed him. I remember stumbling out of a place a bit like this.’ He paused a moment and swept his arm vaguely over the eyrie. ‘I had something in my eye, and then there was blood on my fingers. Ruins on a steep hilltop over a waterfall. A river in the middle of some forest. But it’s all snatches. Bits and pieces stolen while he took us back up to the eyrie. After that I just … drifted out. There’s something he wants here, big man. Something to do with that Issle Ayer. He wants it real bad.’

  Tuuran clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re still in there, Crazy. Hang tight. We’ll find a way.’

  ‘Oh, I know how to kill him now,’ Crazy said. ‘Not that it’ll do any good.’

  ‘How?’

  Crazy snorted. He looked across the dragon yard. The dragon they’d killed over Farakkan had burned itself to ash from the inside now, and all that was left were scales and bones. Huge great wing-bones. Then Crazy turned his back to it and stared out at the sky instead. He picked his way down the outer slope of the eyrie wall, out to the rim.

  ‘Crazy …’

  Crazy spun back and barged Tuuran away, glaring, baring his teeth. ‘No, big man. You’ll never get him out. You won’t find a way. You can’t.’ He walked right out to the rim and stood on the edge, toes clenched at the void past the top of the Moonlit Mountain, the sheer cliffs to the Silver City far below lost in the haze of falling rain. ‘You don’t understand. He could be done with me any time he chooses. He keeps me here for fun. You haven’t the first idea what he is, and you won’t do anything to him that he doesn’t want. You can’t. He’s a god, Tuuran. A god!’

  ‘Only a half-god, Crazy. Only half.’

  Crazy grabbed Tuuran’s shirt in his fists. ‘The Silver Sea. You remember that?’ Tuuran nodded. ‘He went to a place where there were arches like in Tsen’s bathhouse. Only bigger. He opened them, and that’s where he got burned. So listen: all you have to do is find a way to get him down to the bathhouse, open up them gates back to the Silver Sea and then push him through. There’s something waiting there now. Something terrible, and it’s him it wants, not me. So that’s how you kill him, big man. Not too hard, eh?’ He spat. ‘But he’ll never let you. Never. Touch him and you’ll turn to ash. Go on, push me over the edge and see what happens.’ Crazy clenched a fist and hammered it against his own breast. ‘I’ve tried a knife. I’ve tried … I tried his knife. I tried having your dragon-queen cut him out of me. Nothing works. You with your axe, what were you thinking? Take my head off with it? Your dragon-queen tried that, too, don’t you remember? First time we met. So push me!’

  Tuuran held up his hands. He was about to step away when Crazy shoved him with such violent force that it staggered them both. Crazy stumbled back and went over the edge. Tuuran tried to catch him, missed and almost went over himself. He watched the Crowntaker as he hit the mountain summit close by the edge of the cliff …

  No. Almost hit. But in the last moment he wasn’t there. Tuuran ran back to his sled and shot down to where Crazy should have fallen, almost pitching himself off in his hurry, and found nothing at all except a creeping sensation on the back of his neck that he wasn’t alone; he turned round and the Crowntaker was behind him, only a breath away. His eyes were flecked with silver. Glimmered with it. Crazy was gone. He was the Black Moon again now.

  ‘Only a half-god.’ The Black Moon nodded. ‘The last one of those to come this way tamed an entire race of dragons and raised a thousand blood-mages in their place, and when they brought him down do you know how many survived?’ Crazy Mad, the Crowntaker, the Black Moon, cocked his head. ‘Eight, big man. Eight. A thousand blood-mages and eight of them lived, and what have you got? An axe. You’d open a way to the Silver Sea, would you? Then go with your dragon-queen and fetch me my brother’s spear. The gates will bow to it. With that you could do what you want. Not that you ever will, but you could. Now go away.’

  The Black Moon stood in the rain, looking out at the sky, and Tuuran wondered what he saw; but whatever it was, all Tuuran’s eyes found was grey and rain, bleak and pitiless and without a sunlight shred of hope. He went inside and figured on quietly drinking himself into another stupor, perhaps staying that way until someone eventua
lly threw him out and her Holiness told him she’d take Halfteeth as her new Night Watchman now, because she could do with someone a little less useless, thanks, and then maybe he could just vanish off across the sea somewhere so they could all forget about him. He could go drown himself in vinegary wine in some windowless cesspit of a cellar under a blanket of rotting slime-coated piss-stench straw …

  Yes, that or something like it. Was about what he deserved, because what use was there for a man who couldn’t help his friend? Wasn’t an Adamantine thought that, seeing as Adamantine Men didn’t have friends; Adamantine Men only had the legion. But it was there nevertheless, big and bright and burning as the sun, and what was Adamantine and what wasn’t could just go fuck itself for a bit.

  What use?

  As it was he didn’t even make it to the Octagon before Big Vish caught his arm.

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘You need to come, boss.’

  Tuuran brushed him off. ‘Find someone who cares, Vish. Aren’t you supposed to be watching Hyrkallan’s corpse?’

  ‘You told me to mind the grand master alchemist, boss. So should I take him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Boss?’

  Tuuran stopped. Took a breath. Because no, Big Vish just wasn’t going to leave him alone, not unless Tuuran put an axe blade through his head, because Big Vish was just too damned dumb to ever take a hint. The world wasn’t that kind. ‘Take who?’

  ‘The grand master, boss.’

  ‘Take him where?’

  Vish took a deep breath, as though Tuuran was being unreason­ably obtuse. ‘To Jasaan. You know, the Adamantine Man who went off looking for the alchemist Kataros.’

  Tuuran blinked. ‘What do you mean “take him”? Wasn’t Jasaan the one who jumped off the summit with a pair of dragon wings strapped to his back? He must be smashed to a bloody pulp somewhere at the bottom of the cliffs.’