Tuuran was already at sea with them by the time he learned all that. Going to exactly where he wasn't quite sure, but at least it was the right realm. He thought maybe they were heading for Dhar Thosis. The glass sliver given to him by the Elemental Man had seen to that.
‘Ah well.’ He stood at the stern with Crazy Mad beside him, watching the waves churn below. The salt wind across his face felt good. Free, even if they were back as they'd been six months earlier. No one had said anything, but they had their swords, their stolen leathers and boots, and they were the swords, armour and boots of Taiytakei sword-slaves and so that's what they were. ‘You know what they do to slaves who run away, right?’ he said. ‘They send Elemental Men to hunt them down.’ Although now he'd seen one it seemed a bit of a waste, and there didn't seem to be all that many Elemental Men about, and he'd heard an awful lot of stories of slaves running away.
‘Yeh? The men who turn into wind and water and fire?’ Crazy Mad shook his head. He didn't believe a word of it, but then Crazy had gone all suspicious ever since Tuuran had sorted out their ship. All How did you do that? and it didn't help that the Taiytakei were being friendly as anything.
‘I've seen it.’
Crazy leaned over the edge of the ship and spat. Gulls circled over their wake. Crazy Mad hated gulls and he always had. ‘Just don't like them,’ he said when Tuuran asked, but it still seemed strange for a sailor to have such a thing about gulls. Crazy had shrugged at that too. ‘Not so strange when you know they're the eyes of the devil who cut a piece out of your soul.’
He was eyeing them now. Tuuran yawned. ‘Your warlocks sound strange. All this nonsense. Our old blood-mages were a much more straightforward lot. Just wanted to take a few virgins and bleed them dry, make themselves the odd monster or two and rip a few good-hearted nobles apart. Not that we've had any blood-mages, not for a very long time, not real ones.’ He stretched, frowning for a moment inside, remembering the alchemist Bellepheros and suddenly not as sure of that as he might have been. But those days were gone and he'd never be going back and so there wasn't much point dwelling on it, was there? ‘You can throw in the good-hearted nobles while you're at it. Probably the virgins too.’ He sniggered at his own joke and then slapped Crazy Mad on the back. ‘Got some sailor's gossip for you, my friend: the real Bloody Judge, they say he's in the Dominion now. The Sun King's. . I don't know what. The night-skins would call him a kwen. General, I suppose. Done well for himself by the sound of it.’
‘I'm the real Bloody Judge.’ Crazy Mad didn't look at him or raise his voice. He sounded more as if he was trying to convince himself than Tuuran.
‘You should find him. Have it out between you.’
‘No. Not now, not yet.’ Crazy Mad drew his arm back and threw a stone at one of the gulls. It flew out of his hand like a bolt from a ballista, straight and true. Tuuran had never met anyone who could down a seagull with a stone like Crazy could. Didn't think he ever would either. ‘It's the warlocks I want. The ones who came out to the middle of the ocean. They were looking for me. I want to know why. I want to know what they did.’ Being on the move was making Crazy Mad pickier with his questions. The further they sailed, the more he scratched at his memories like an old scab. ‘I told you — I met him once just after it happened. I went looking for the warlock who did it and I found the other me. And that's what he was. When I looked him in the eye, it was me in there. And I think he knew it too before he sent me off to be a slave.’ Berren let out a heavy sigh. ‘So no. I need to know what they did. I need to know how it can be undone.’
The wind was picking up. Tuuran pitched backwards as the ship ploughed into a particularly big wave. The sea was getting choppy. They'd been out for days and the storm-dark was close. Tuuran wasn't sure how he knew. He couldn't see it on the grey horizon yet, but maybe after enough times you got a feel for these things. Maybe the Taiytakei sailors knew and so he knew too. A sailor's instinct.
‘The one who came looking. The one called Vallas. The one with the knife with a handle made of gold and filled with stars. He's the one I want and his knife too. Whatever he did, that knife can undo it.’
Tuuran looked Crazy up and down. ‘They say your Bloody Judge carries a knife like that.’ Maybe it would just be easier to tell Crazy Mad about the Watcher's glass sliver and being sent to keep an eye on him and a lookout for the grey dead too while he was at it. It wasn't like he was supposed to be doing anything that he hadn't been going to do anyway.
‘I did — I mean he does. Now. They're twins.’
‘I like your stories, Crazy.’ Tuuran hacked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the deck. ‘They get more grand and more ridiculous every day but they never quite fall apart. You'll tell me you're a lost prince next.’
‘I was mistaken for one once. Will that do you? And what's wrong with spitting over the side like the rest of us? The deck-swabbing slaves upset you?’
Tuuran laughed. ‘Because I'm a slave, Crazy Mad, and so are you.’ He turned and swept his hand over the ship. ‘This is our prison. That out there,’ he jerked his thumb at the sea, ‘that's freedom. That's where I want to be. This? This I just want to see burn. A dragon would be nice.’
‘You could have stayed in Deephaven. You didn't have to come.’
‘Could have.’ Tuuran shrugged. ‘Didn't want to. Never been much of one for my own company night after night.’ He shoved Crazy Mad, almost knocking him over the rail and into the sea, then grabbed him at the last minute and slapped him on the arm. ‘Need someone to push about, you see.’
‘Arsehole!’
‘Ach!’ Tuuran let go. ‘You can do so much better than that.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Dhar Thosis, I think. Wherever the Taiytakei choose to take us. Or Xican, maybe?’
‘Vallas Kuy, big man. He in Xican?’
Tuuran threw back his head. ‘And how would I know that? How many worlds will you search before you find him? You, the ignorant sail-slave. Dhar Thosis is the place to start. We can get a ship there from Xican if we must.’ He shrugged. ‘That much I can manage for you, but if I were you I'd go looking for the man who's strutting about with my name.’
Crazy Mad looked at him balefully. ‘How many worlds are there? How many do I have to search? Because I will, Tuuran. All of them. Until I find him.’ And Tuuran had no doubt that he meant it.
That night the ship turned towards a line in the distance that was the storm-dark. The air grew thick and the wind howled and swirled, unsure of its own direction. Lightning raked the horizon. Night-black clouds roiled as far as Tuuran could see, thicker and thicker as the ship aimed for their heart. Always the same. And as the sky grew so dark that the moon and the stars were lost, the Taiytakei banished everyone below, as they always did.
‘I've seen it,’ he said to Crazy Mad and the other slaves as they sat in the darkness with just a few lamps to light their faces while the ship pitched. ‘The lightning turns purple. The stars and the sun and the moon go out.’ The storm grew worse. Wood creaked and popped. Slaves wailed and moaned, but not Tuuran and not Crazy Mad either.
‘I've crossed it before too, you know.’
No one else was listening. The other sail-slaves in the hold clung to one another, clutched at whatever they could reach as the ship lurched and heaved. The lamps fell over. One by one they rolled across the wooden planks and snuffed themselves out. Tuuran grabbed the last before it died. The ship crashed up and down, lashed and ripped by the wind and the waves. Tuuran and Crazy Mad wedged themselves against a wall, side by side against the pitch and roll of the ship. Tuuran clutched Crazy's arm. Crazy Mad's eyes gleamed. Almost glowed. ‘And then, when you think the ship is about to fall apart. .’