He walked to the Temple of the Moon. The priest Garrent had been a friend once. Perhaps a priest might understand what the warlocks of Tethis had done to him, but when he went in and asked he found Garrent was dead five years, and when the priests of the moon looked at him closely a horror spread across their faces and moonlight began to shimmer around them and their fingers pointed at Berren's heart and he backed away while they flung words like stones at him: Monster! Abomination! Anathema! The words Tasahre had hurled long ago at the warlock Saffran Kuy. He ran, scared again, and it was only when he was halfway down the Godsway to the river docks that he realised the moon priests had been scared too. They'd been terrified. Of him, and he had no idea why.
Even as he thought that, he saw the one-eyed man in grey in the night with the stars winking out around him. Skyrie's memories, haunting him.
At the bottom of the Godsway he went looking for the old house of Cats and Gulls to see if it was still there, for the relics of his old enemy Saffran Kuy, but the rickety wooden riverfront warehouse was gone. It had been torn down and a stone one built in its place, and the cats and the gulls and the stink of fish were gone too. He stopped there for a long time, looking, but Saffran Kuy was dead. Berren Crowntaker had killed him on a ship in Tethis long ago. The warlock of Deephaven was gone. And yes, there had been others, but they were somewhere else now.
He found Tuuran exactly where he'd left him, hours later, and it looked like he hadn't even moved. The big man didn't look up. Just grunted. ‘Well?’
‘First chance I get, I go.’
Tuuran muttered something under his breath. He nodded. ‘War's a year or two away yet. It'll keep. I can always come back for it later, right?’ He grimaced and pointed towards the docks and the sea. ‘There's your ship.’
Berren peered down the slope across the maze and the docks to the sea and smiled. How many times had he done this? He remembered looking out over the bay almost every day, counting ships, seeing which ones were new and where they were moored so he could go and check the flags they flew in case the one that Master Sy was waiting for was there.
The smile faltered and turned into a lump in his throat. Tuuran groaned and got up. ‘I hear they don't come here as much as they used to. Don't get on with this Ice Witch. Well we've seen how that goes, I suppose. But they still have their little palace up among the rich folk.’ He gestured over his shoulder towards the towers and spires of the Peak.
‘Deephaven Square,’ said Berren.
They walked down the darkness of the stairs and along the passage with its closed doors and boarded-up windows to keep the dead at bay. An invisible wall divided one Deephaven from the other. The Barrow of Beer, old Kasmin's haunt, was only a few streets away on the other side of it but it might as well have been across the sea. Berren led Tuuran away, through the market and up into Weavers’ Row, past the little street to the Upside-Down Temple and then down the other side, through the heaving crowds until Weavers’ Row became Moon Street and Berren could see the corner of Godsway again and the Temple of the Moon with its tower which looked out over half the city. He kept away this time and cut through the side streets to Four Winds Square, right past the yard and the little house where he'd once lived, a thief-taker's apprentice who'd only cared about learning swords. They crossed the endless parade of carts and wagons that rolled between the river and the sea and then they climbed the Avenue of the Sun to the beating heart of the city, to Deephaven Square. It was all as he remembered it. The guild house. The Golden Cup beside it. The Overlord's palace at the far end and beside that the Temple of the Sun. For a moment Berren felt again as though someone had ripped his heart in half right there. Memories burst in another downpour, enough to drown. Swords. Priests. Monks. Tasahre. Master Sy. All torn away. The pain made his eyes water and the square started to swim. This was where his life had been cut clean apart by Kuy and his kind.
Why me? Why me? But that didn't matter. Him because he was there, because he'd been in the way, because he'd fallen in with the thief-taker and no other reason than that. Sometimes the why didn't matter any more, sometimes the what and the how and everything they'd done to him, sometimes even that didn't matter. What mattered was that he would find them, all of them, one by one, one after the other, and when he did they'd pay in blood and pain and suffering, because they had done this to him.
I am the Bringer of Endings? So be it.
Tuuran nudged him. ‘You still here?’ He was pointing too. ‘See? There's the night-skins’ palace. Now as to getting them to take us where you want to go, you leave that to me.’
He cracked his knuckles and strode towards it.
61
Bellepheros understood the prickling in the air for what it was. The Adamantine Palace had felt this way after Queen Aliphera had died, when Speaker Hyram had set himself against Prince Jehal. He barely understood what had passed in the dragon realms since the Taiytakei had made him their slave; what little Zafir let slip spoke of a war, and that she had been on the losing end of it, and beyond that he couldn't see past the half-truths and lies. Maybe Zafir was mad. They'd said that about her in the Palace of Alchemy, quietly where no one would hear. All the queens of the Silver City, hidden away in their fortress of treasures, surrounded by the relics of the Silver King which they could never understand. One by one they all lost their minds.
Yes, he remembered how the palace had felt before he'd left that last time, and Baros Tsen's eyrie felt the same now, full of unheard whispers of war. The Taiytakei told him nothing, of course, but there were no new riders, no new alchemists, not a word. When he asked Li, it was obvious she felt the same, and obvious too that she knew little more than he did. She tried to hide it, but he could see how much it bothered her.
‘I've done it. It's made.’ She stood in the door of his study now. ‘Would you like to see?’ He turned and saw the twitch of a self-satisfied smile on her face and couldn't help smiling back. The dragon-rider armour. She'd been working on it for weeks. It had sucked her into its novelty and complexity, however much she despised Zafir. Tsen had been nagging her to finish. Another little sign of war.
‘Will I be impressed?’
‘She liked the helm, didn't she?’
She. Hissed out with sour distaste as if someone had force-fed her lemons all morning. ‘You don't fool me, Li. You're pleased with yourself. Smug, and I like you smug.’
The smile came back. ‘Yes, perhaps I am. I've surpassed myself for the rest, even if I say so myself.’ She gave a little bow and Bellepheros's own smile widened. He couldn't help but admire her. Dedicated, devoted, talented. You should be running this eyrie. But then he'd been thinking that for months. We should be running this eyrie.
‘You, who could build a glasship. But I like that look on your face. Show me then.’ He put down the book he'd been reading on the flora of the Konsidar and let her lead him. He walked behind her, not at her side. He was supposed to be a slave and she was supposed to be his mistress after all, even if no one else in the eyrie gave any weight to that now. Outside her workshop he waited for her to call him in. There was always a sense of anticipation and he liked to draw it out, wondering what marvel she might have for him. The enchanters’ works filled every corner of the Taiytakei system of the world. They made it tick. Their constructs were everywhere; their engines drove and powered almost everything more complex than a horse or a mule and yet it seemed to Bellepheros that the enchanters themselves were treated little better than slaves, poor relatives to the revered navigators and the terrible Elemental Men. Always the fate of those who are builders. They were like alchemists, perhaps, servants to the dragon-lords of the nine realms, but every alchemist knew that that wasn't really true. Alchemists were slaves to their dragons, not to men.