Silver Kings: The Splintered Gods Part 1

Silver Kings.

The Splintered G.o.ds.

Stephen Deas.

To alchemists and enchanters everywhere.

Cover his face so that he may not see the light.

A half-G.o.d came to my realms centuries before I was born. He brought with him the Adamantine Spear which slew the Black Moon and brought down the Splintering of the world. He was the Isul Aieha, the Silver King, who tamed dragons and gave power over them to men; and men in turn took his gift and tore him down. They took his broken body into a deep cave, drove a spike into his head and drank the silver ichor of the moon that dripped from his wound and took his power into their blood. They call themselves alchemists. With the taint of the half-G.o.d in their veins their potions keep our dragons dull and make them forget.

I am the dragon-queen Zafir, once the Speaker of the Nine Realms, Mistress of Dragons and Keeper of the Silver Kings spear. With my treacherous lover Jehal beside me and a litter of corpses in our wake, I took the Adamantine Throne for my own; but my lover betrayed me for his starling bride and so dragons filled the skies with fire and screams and men died and neither one of us cared a whit save that the other should fall.

And fall we both did.

Amid our chaos, a dragon woke. One who became an avalanche of rage and memory and flames. The dragons threw the curse of alchemy aside and flew at Jehal to burn him and his kingdoms to ash, but I saw none of it, for by then I was a slave, taken by the Taiytakei.

Behind a pretence of obedience I have watched these new men who claim to be my masters, I, a queen of dragons. I have watched their schemes. Baros Tsen, dancing on knife-blades, weaving his web around those who thought they were his lords. Once-loyal Bellepheros, grand master alchemist, taken as a slave a year before me, fretting and pacing and doing nothing to change the cataclysm he sees coming. Not so loyal any more, I fear. His mistress, the enchantress Chay-Liang, Baros Tsens ally and the only one who sees me as I am and fears me as she should.

And Majestic Diamond Eye, my great war-dragon whom they cannot bear to lose, whose awe-striking grace stays their hand from ending us both. I have watched and I have made them pay for their hubris, dear and long and in pain and blood and fire and plague, in glories of vengeance and flames.

I am Zafir. Dragon-queen.

Why did I not run when I could?.

The Soap Maker.

The soap maker emerged from the gloom and pointed a crooked finger at the shadows in the corner of the room. The finger beckoned once, slowly curling up on itself like a dying wasp. A bronze stand shaped and carved like the upturned severed limb of some terrible lizard slid across the floor. A grinding sound rattled the air. The bronze began to writhe and squirm and flow like liquid as a golden claw rose through it, a clear gla.s.s globe nestled within its talons. The soap maker paused before it.

'Sometimes we guide them, he said. 'Sometimes we place obstacles before them. Sometimes we merely watch and crack our fingers and cover our faces with gleeful smiles. Listen to my words and learn and then listen and learn again. You will do this over and over and over, every day for the rest of your life. When your arms are withered and your eyes are failing, then you will see the shapings our prophet has cast. They play out around us. A path has been made, pick-pocked with signposts that cannot be missed. The soap maker clasped his hands. 'Everything Ive shown you these last months you could have learned from some crone in a village hovel. Potions and herbs and hedge-witch tricks. They have their uses, but today we walk the true path to power and not some fancy dance of spirals devoid of deeper meaning. You will understand this in time. You will feel it in the chill rattle of your bones.

The words that marked the start of the soap makers path were as familiar to both of them as the dark stains on his fingers: The first basic principle of knowledge is to understand the animating force that brings life to all creatures . . .

'Above all else, I will teach you one thing: I will teach you how to hide. The soap maker snapped his fingers. A box made of old black wood slid into the air and hovered between them. The inside was lined with velvet, deep red like fresh blood, and on the velvet lay a knife with a golden haft carved into a thousand eyes. Patterns in the blade moved and swirled. The soap maker took the knife and held it as though it was something more precious than life itself. 'I will show you, Skyrie, how it feels to have a piece of your soul cut away. I will show you how to make yourself into scattered parts so that nothing can ever find you, not even a dragon.

Skyrie, for whom dragons were nothing but stories, wondered why the soap maker would say such a thing.

The box shut itself and drifted away as the soap maker came closer. 'I will show you how to find these pieces and make yourself whole again. From such a journey comes enlightenment, and from enlightenment comes understanding. All these things will be yours, Skyrie. The prophet has chosen you to be a vessel.

His face changed for a moment, and Skyrie thought he saw a different visage, one hed seen once before. A half-ruined face with one blind milky eye.

Baros Tsen TVarr.

1.

Dhar Thosis.

Tuuran smashed his way through a jammed door into what he hoped was going to be a vault of riches beyond his wildest dreams. It wasnt. He looked around, trying to quash his disappointment. Just paper. Neat little books of it. Big fat ledgers and small slim journals, and he couldnt make head nor tail of any of it. Gold and silver, of which he certainly could have made something, were distinctly lacking. It didnt bother him nearly as much as it ought to, though. A dragon had come and burned the city. On its back had been the girl from the Pinnacles, the girl hed saved when theyd both been ten years younger, and she was alive and grown into a furious and terrible queen, and all the years hed spent as a slave because of what hed done that night suddenly had a meaning. Crazy Mad had found his warlock too, and Tuurans axe had cut off the warlocks hand and then his head, and Crazy had taken the warlocks weird knife. As for the rest the war and chaos and death and fire, the ruin of a city under the flames of a furious dragon and the swords of a raging army as for that, he was made for it. He was an Adamantine Man.

He rummaged through the papers again and didnt find anything that looked to be worth much except a couple of silvery paperweights and a quill pen made from some exotic pretty feather. He stuffed them into his shoulder bag. The bag was almost full; in every room he entered he always found something. He took a couple of books too. Made good kindling, books, and you could always wipe your a.r.s.e with them. When he was done, he picked his way back out of the shattered tower, through the litter-strewn ruins between cracked and crazed walls of enchanted Taiytakei gold-gla.s.s, boots crunching on a carpet of broken glittering shards. The remains of the palace were quiet now, deserted except for a handful of night-skin soldiers poking through the rubble for anything precious that might have survived when the towers had come down. Most of the Taiytakei had moved on, rooting out the handful of defenders too stupid to know a lost cause when it stared them in the face from the back of a dragon. In the next yard along, through a beautifully elegant ruby-gla.s.s arch which had somehow survived, three soldiers crouched around a litter of tumbled stonework, twisted metal and shattered golden gla.s.s, prodding at it. Tuuran had no idea what theyd found. As he watched, a palace slave, miraculously alive, crept out of some hiding place and ran away. No one tried to stop her. No one paid attention. There wasnt anywhere for her to go.

Crazy Mad was sitting on the edge of a wall, looking out over the cliffs and the sea and the burning city. The dragon was gone but Crazy Mads eyes were set in its wake. Tuuran sat and nudged him.

'Some nice loot in there, he said. 'You should grab some while you can.

Crazy Mad didnt answer; but then Crazy carried a darkness inside, and a day with him wouldnt be complete without a pause for a bit of inner turmoil. Tuuran didnt mind. After everything hed seen today, maybe he was in the mood for some thinking too a thing as rare as the moon eclipsing the sun, but there it was so he sat quietly beside his friend, looking out over the water. Theyd sailed together across three worlds and fought battles side by side in every one of them. Theyd crossed the storm-dark, chasing after Crazy Mads warlock, and theyd found him and done for him, and that was all good it wasnt as if Tuuran had had anything better to do. And then there was the Elemental Man whod promised to take him home if Tuuran kept an eye on what Crazy Mad did, though hed never said for how long or why or what to look for.

There was the dragon, too. The dragon had him thinking. Remembering. Ten years as a slave, years since hed given up on going home, and now here he was, right back with all those longings again. And the girl from the Pinnacles, the dragon-queen Zafir, the speaker of the nine realms. She would have been his queen now. Duty. Desire. Purpose. They ran through him like fires out of control, messing with his head, confusing him. Crazy wanted to go to Aria and chase more warlocks. The long and short of it was that Tuuran didnt.

A shout rang out from the rubble, then another and a crack of lightning and he was off his wall in a flash, crouched behind the gold-gla.s.s s.h.i.+eld hed stolen off a dead Taiytakei halfway up the Eye of the Sea G.o.ddess, peering out in case everything was about to kick off again.

'Bird! Bring it down!

He couldnt see who was doing the shouting but he saw the next flash of lightning, a jagged crack of it launched into the sky, fired off at some speck, a black dot against the deep blue, nothing more.

'Bring it down! It came from the tower.

Tuuran hunched up against the broken stone wall and watched, pieces of shattered gold-gla.s.s all around him. He didnt have a lightning wand because the wands only worked for the night-skins. Did the slave brands see to that? He didnt know. He watched the bird until he couldnt see it any more. The night-skins threw a dozen lightning bolts, trying to bring it down, but they all missed. Eventually they stopped shouting at each other and got back to whatever they were doing.

Tuuran waited a bit, just in case they decided to change their minds and started throwing lightning again; when they didnt, he got up, stretched his shoulders and wandered around the walls, skirting the smashed chunks of gla.s.s from the two fallen towers of what had once been the glorious Palace of Roses, all odd shapes and splinters and corners now, some of them as big as a house, all scattered among glittering gravel. Three towers of gla.s.s and gold had once stood here, colossal things that sc.r.a.ped the sky itself when hed looked from the city below, but only one was left standing. The dragon had brought the other two down, rending them with claw and las.h.i.+ng tail, cracking them cascading to the jagged stumps that remained. The elegant yards and immaculate gardens that had once run between them were covered in twinkling splinters and sparkling rubble. Dead men pieces of dead men lay in scattered piles against the outer walls, and many of those walls were cracked and splintered too. In the sunlight the ruins gleamed like a vast pile of gold. Tuuran sn.i.g.g.e.red to himself at that. Like an immense heap of treasure with a dragon on the top, only the dragon had gone.

The remains of black-powder cannon lay scattered about, their gold-gla.s.s workings fractured and broken, their metal tubes and gears mangled and twisted but not so broken as to hide their purpose and thus their failure. What wasnt smashed was scorched and charred or pockmarked by the shrapnel of flying knives of gla.s.s. Where the outer ring of the palace was more than a twisted iron skeleton in a circle of debris, where it hadnt been smashed open or exploded from the inside, handfuls of Taiytakei soldiers herded groups of captives. A magnificent gatehouse stood bizarrely intact, its bronze gates as tall as a dragon. They hung open and askew and seemed to Tuuran slightly sad. Beyond, a zigzag road wound down the slope of the Dul Matha. Two more gatehouses lay scorched and burned across its way, scattered around with the charred remains of the dragons pa.s.sing. The road wound to the edge of the cliff, to the gla.s.s-and-gold Bridge of Forever or the Bridge of Eternity or something like that Tuuran couldnt remember which joined Dul Matha to the island that was the Eye of the Sea G.o.ddess. The first bridge to join those cliffs had been made from a rope spun from the hair of Ten Tazei or some daft story like that. Now a great span of golden gla.s.s levitated between them, a thousand feet above the sea. It was still intact. That was something then, since the only other way off the island palace was to plunge from the cliffs into the sea.

Tuurans eyes scanned the road, winding their way down. In a few places blackened bodies still smouldered from the dragons pa.s.sing. Furtive figures scuttled among them. Fugitives? Men of conscience lingering to give last rites to the dead and ease their pa.s.sage to the next life? Maybe just looters. The brave and the mad. Crazy people. Tuuran had seen plenty of fights in his time but none as b.l.o.o.d.y as this. No quarter. Mobs of enraged slaves tearing night-skins to pieces. The dragon burning everything. Kept a man on edge, that did. Best to keep quiet and out of the way. He went back to his wall and nudged Crazy. 'We should be going, my friend.

Crazy ignored him. Not that that was particularly strange.

When Tuuran looked again, Taiytakei soldiers were piling barrels across the middle of the bridge. He didnt much like the look of that, at least not while he was standing on the wrong side of it. 'Theyre going to bring it down, he said. 'Then were stuck here. Im not sure theyre going to let us off. The other Taiytakei didnt look they were leaving any time soon though, so he supposed there wasnt any hurry. Still, it had his hackles up.

Crazy didnt move. On other days Tuuran might have shrugged his shoulders and sat beside him, waiting for Crazy to come back from wherever his thoughts had taken him. But today Tuuran had a dragon to find. It made him restless. They were going their separate ways from here. He could feel it.

'Well then. Ill be going, he said; and when Crazy still didnt look round, Tuuran nodded to himself because this was how an Adamantine Man was after all. Each to his own duty. No regrets, no doubts, no hesitation, just getting on with what needed to be done. He turned his back and walked alone through the great bronze gates and down towards the bridge, briskly past the dead and the living. No sense dallying. It was time to move on. Making a fuss about it wouldnt change anything, however s.h.i.+t it felt to simply up and go.

He reached the bridge. Two Taiytakei stopped what they were doing and turned to meet him, barring his way. The rest kept on taking barrels off a gla.s.s sled hovering in the air beside them. The ground around the end of the bridge was thick with bodies and tumbled stone, same as when Tuuran and Crazy had first come over, a litany of dead among makes.h.i.+ft impromptu barricades that had all counted for nothing when the dragon came cras.h.i.+ng among them. The bodies he remembered were all charred black and flaking on account of the dragon burning fifty shades of s.h.i.+t out of everything, so it wasnt hard to see the corpses that had come later. A scatter of slaves, their pale dead skin untouched by dragon-fire. To Tuuran, the scars and burns that marked them looked a lot like lightning.

The Taiytakei blocking his path across the bridge had lightning wands hung from their hips. They were dressed in gla.s.s-and-gold armour and carried ornately spiked maces for smas.h.i.+ng that same armour to pieces. Ashgars. Tuuran didnt have any of those things, but he did have a nice big gold-gla.s.s s.h.i.+eld that seemed to do for the lightning and a nice big axe too; and hed found his axe could make a very pleasant mess even of a man dressed in gold-gla.s.s.

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 s.h.i.+eld arm. This was all going to go bad, wasnt 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 s.h.i.+eld. 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 s.h.i.+t-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 hadnt killed him to be thinking straight. The swing of his axe took the first soldier across the face, smas.h.i.+ng 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 didnt stop. Tuuran steered its blade into the second mans 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 soldiers face wrapped around his neck. Tuuran hadnt met any armour yet that could turn a sharp axe on the end of a good strong arm, but the gold-gla.s.s had taken the sting out of his swing. Well, that and the first mans 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 Tuurans head wondered whether hed 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 mans gold-gla.s.s. It bit at Tuurans 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 s.h.i.+eld, stooped and kicked at one of the sleds theyd used to carry the barrels and sent it gliding back the way hed 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+eld. 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 wasnt 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 wasnt even much surprised. You didnt let loose a horde of slaves and then expect them to walk meekly back into their chains when it was done. And you certainly didnt 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 gla.s.s 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 didnt 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 Tuurans floating sled and dived into the dirt beside him. 'And how far did you think youd get without me, big man?

'As far as I b.l.o.o.d.y 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 s.h.i.+ps to take me back to Aria here. Crazy shuffled closer, watching the bridge and peering at the Taiytakei on the far side. 'No s.h.i.+ps to take us anywhere at all, by the looks of it.

'Told you so.

'Smug piece of s.h.i.+t. Crazy crawled to the sled and poked at it. 'Whats this then?

'Cargo sled. The night-skins use them to move stuff about when they cant use slaves. Must have carried the powder up from the s.h.i.+ps.

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 dont answer that, big man. So, you planning on waiting here for them soldiers up at the palace to come and find they havent 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 theyre all still busy. Because Im 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 hadnt exploded.

'You should have thrown more fire, Tuuran said.

Crazy Mad shrugged. 'I threw enough. He chuckled. 'You wait, big man. Just when youre 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 TVarr, first tvarr to the mad Sea Lord QuaiShu of Xican, blinked. For a moment the incongruity of his circ.u.mstances 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 couldnt hear its calls. He was naked, alone in the near-scalding water with a woman whom a great many men desired. Hed 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 unadorned. Beneath the bath was a plinth, a slab of white stone that struck Tsen as uncomfortably like a sacrificial altar. They hadnt been able to move it and so hed had the bath placed on top of it and not given it another moments thought. Until now. Now the idea of being naked with that altar beneath him made him s.h.i.+ver. He felt very much like a sacrifice. Very much indeed.

Shed killed the Elemental Man hed sent to stop her, which was laughably unbelievable except shed come back with his knife to prove it. Shed burned a city to ash and shattered its towers into a desert of splintered gla.s.s. Shed done it in their Sea Lords name and by doing so had ruined them all.

Beside the bath sat a bra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+mmered, 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 QuaiShus soldiers. Hed never seen a vitriol quite as pure as that between the dragon-queen and QuaiShus 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 hed 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 gla.s.s. When she saw that Tsens was empty, she leaned across and tipped him some wine from her own. There were drops of blood in it from when shed smashed the empty bottle and pointedly cut herself in case hed 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 gla.s.s. The smile on her face stayed exactly as it was, fixed in place.

'Im glad Shrin Chrias Kwen wasnt 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 gla.s.s 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 couldnt begin to fathom it. As he touched his gla.s.s 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 didnt move, didnt even flinch, just sat in the water, paralysed as they stared at one another, each apparently as surprised as the other. A moment pa.s.sed between them and then the dragon-queen climbed from the bath, her movements sharp and fast. Throwing on her s.h.i.+ft, she stooped and picked up the bladeless knife of the Elemental Man shed killed. 'The Adamantine Man who served our alchemist, she said, her voice twisted and choked. 'By whatever G.o.ds you believe in, you find him. Bring him here! And when you do, you fall on your knees before him, Baros Tsen TVarr, 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 hed been when shed moved. She was fast, but that wasnt it. Shed taken him completely by surprise. And he still couldnt move because even now it was so d.a.m.ned unexpected. Why had she . . .

May the slugs in my orchards pity me. It dawned on him then, far too late, what shed almost done to him. He looked in horror at the wine spilled across the rim of the bath and the shattered gla.s.s somewhere on the floor below and saw again Shrin Chrias Kwen as hed been a moment before, s.h.i.+mmering 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 shed 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 shed shared, that shed put into his gla.s.s. Hed taken it for madness when shed smashed his decanter and cut herself, but no, shed known exactly what she was doing. Shed 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 hadnt slapped the gla.s.s 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. Shes gone. You dont get to see her. And perhaps thats as well, given what shes 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. QuaiShus intent when hed 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, theyd 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 didnt 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 QuaiShu 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 s.h.i.+p 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 wouldnt 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 Tsens water vanished at once.

Goodbye. Shrin Chrias Kwens last word and Tsen supposed that was the last theyd ever see of each other. If he was honest with himself, he couldnt 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 shed changed her mind. Why?

He put his own ring back on and looked at his hands. There werent that many left of the cabal that QuaiShu had thought would take over the world. Jima Hsian and ZifanShu were dead. QuaiShu himself was alive but mad and mumbling nonsense to himself a few doors up the pa.s.sageway. Baran Meido, QuaiShus second son, had threatened to cut off every one of his own fingers rather than allow the slivers of binding gold-gla.s.s 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. Hed come down here with her, too bewildered by the horror of what shed done to think properly. She could have burned them all from the back of her dragon if that was what shed wanted, and for what shed done they were both as good as dead. Shed ruined everyone and hed 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 couldnt, not today. His bath was tainted, maybe for ever. Zafirs blood was in the water. Maybe now instead of Kalaiyas dark skin, the ghost hed see here would always be pale and bruised and bloodied and carry the vicious face of a dragon.