Other fireships struck home. The water filled with men from the burning ships and galleys splashing and struggling. Those who could swim were making for the shore. The rest waved and shouted and screamed and disappeared under the water, appeared and waved and screamed again and then vanished once and for all. Patches of smoke blotted them out then wafted away again to reveal just waves. They'd drown, all of them, and Tuuran cursed himself for never learning to swim. Not that swimming would do any good in so much armour.
The ship turned again, steering so close through the burning wreckage wrought by the fireships that they grazed the side of one burning galley, then hard the other way. For a moment they lost their wind and the sails fell slack. Someone bellowed frantic orders while the heat of the flames from the galley washed over them. The ship turned again. Without thinking, Tuuran ran across the decks and started pulling on ropes that some sail-slave should have worked. His head was full of songs, of dragons and of fire. This was what an Adamantine Man was for!
‘What the bloody moon are we doing?’ shouted someone. The ship heeled as the wind caught the sails again. Below him the oars were straining. A fireship floated past, one of their own, crippled and adrift and close enough for Tuuran to feel the heat from it even through his visor. He couldn't help but stare. There were crew on the fireship. In the midst of the flames he could see them, bulky black creatures. The heat must have been enough to melt flesh, yet they worked calmly, steering the burning ships towards their targets.
Golems. Stoneguard from Xican.
Someone was yelling. At him, he realised. ‘Never mind them, slave! Get us turned!’ Then they were past and in open water again and Tuuran laughed. He felt dizzy with the madness of the fire, the thrill and the fury of the fight, even if this was only the start where all a man could do was stand his ground and hope not to die. Far ahead the first fireships were already ploughing into the docks.
‘This isn't Bom Tark!’ Laughter surged out of him. Those spires? That bridge? Distant stars of glasships in the air? ‘Renegade slaves my arse! This isn't Bom Tark at all!’
The dragon slave left. The gondola sealed behind her. Mai'Choiro Kwen stepped carefully away from Baros Tsen's throne.
‘Will she do what is asked of her, T'Varr?’
‘She will relish it.’ Tsen closed his eyes and shook his head.
‘She'd better, T'Varr, after what your dragon has cost us. Lord Shonda will find a place for you after this. You know of course that your house is ruined.’ He snorted. ‘Not that it wasn't already.’
Tsen kept on shaking his head. He laughed the broken laugh of the beaten. ‘I know that one of our houses is ruined. Perhaps we both are. I certainly know that you understand exactly what we've done this hour.’
‘What you have done, Tsen T'Varr. I was never here.’ Mai'Choiro Kwen left, striding away so full of himself and sure that he was right, the way kwens always were. When he was gone and the gondola was sealed once more, Baros Tsen T'Varr slowly went back to the window and watched the dragon fly away. The slave was taking her time. It surprised him. He'd thought she'd be more eager.
‘Well. You heard all that, didn't you?’ he said as the dragon dwindled in the sky.
The Watcher appeared beside him and bowed. ‘Of course.’
‘I'd quite like to have Mai'Choiro cut into bits and fed to the little dragons. But better you do it in the Kabulingnor. Let his blood touch Shonda's feet and then make it clear. All debts are paid between us and this will go no further. A renegade kwen who would have seen Vespinarr itself destroyed has been removed. We thank Lord Shonda for his generous gift. Go and find Chrias first, however. Mai'Choiro reached him through Elesxian. Stop him before he throws what's left of our fleet against Senxian. I don't say kill him, but please do stop him.’
The Watcher bowed. ‘And the dragon?’
Tsen took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh. The dragon was a dot in the distance now. He watched it until it was gone. ‘Well, you can't stop the dragon, can you? So you'll have to stop the rider. She's a slave and she will do as she is told and if she doesn't then we'll just have to find another one.’ He sighed. ‘Come back to me when it's done. And you'd better send the alchemist to me first. If you have to leave a dragon to wander alone with no rider, let us hope he knows what to do.’
‘Rockets!’ Bright streaks arced from inside the city, exploding in brilliant light high overhead. Tuuran watched them. He couldn't stop laughing, even when a moment later more followed, and then more, raining into the ships and the sea around him. Boulders crashed into the water ahead as the ship turned to face the land. One hit a fireship. The decks exploded, the keel snapped in two and the ship broke apart, scattering flaming debris across the water. Burning splinters rained across the decks of Tuuran's ship. Someone screamed. Tuuran caught a blur of flames and rushing movement out of the corner of his eye but when he turned to look, whoever it was had already gone over the side and into the water. Patches of the sea around them were burning as though the water itself was aflame. No ordinary fire. The ship had speed again now, racing at a shallow angle to the wind behind them. Over the noise of the fighting and the fire he heard the oar master below, screaming at his slaves.
‘Ready rockets!’
‘Hoy! Crazy Mad! Berren! Skyrie! Bloody Judge or whatever you are today! Where are you?’
Lights flashed on the island behind them followed by the distant thunder of lightning cannon; and then the sky lit up as more rockets came, hundreds and hundreds streaking from the shore towards the half of the fleet that had turned towards the island and hundreds more streaking back. As they landed the whole sea seemed to catch fire and Tuuran was glad his own ship had gone a different way. He found Crazy Mad at last, doing the sensible thing and hiding behind the fire shield. Tuuran shook him and pulled him out, pointing at the islands around them. ‘See! Look!’
‘What?’ Crazy Mad was hopping up and down in front of him, cringing at the sky as more rockets flew overhead. ‘See what?’ A thunderclap split the air. Tuuran jumped and turned to look but there was nothing. Then it came again, a jagged bolt of lightning from the island. It struck a ship, lighting it up in a blinding moment of white. Its decks shattered, the ship vanished back into the murk.
‘That.’ He pointed to the islands and to the black stone monolith rising out of the sea and the golden towers that topped it. ‘I heard the dark-skins talking! That's the Kraitu's Bones!’ It towered over them, taller by far than the cliffs of Xican, right up to the sky, reaching for the clouds. Beneath it fire swept over the water, driven by the wind. Glorious.
‘What about it?’ Another barrage of boulders and fireballs flew out from the city. They were well within range of the rockets now.
‘The Palace of Roses.’ Tuuran cringed and then laughed again as a rocket flew across the deck above his head.
‘So?’ Crazy Mad almost dragged him down. ‘Khrozus! And you say I'm the crazy one.’
Tuuran just laughed and laughed. ‘Do you realise where we are? No, you don't!’ He could see the shoreline clearly now, lit up by all the fires. They were still too far away to see if there were men out on the dockside to defend it, but there would be. They'd be Taiytakei.
‘So how about you tell me!’ Crazy Mad winced as something too fast to see zipped through the air between them.
‘Dhar Thosis, Crazy. This is Dhar Thosis. Where you wanted to be. I told you I'd get us here! Didn't I tell you that?’
Crazy Mad's smile was as wide as the sea. His eyes lit up a brilliant gleaming silver.