After the Watcher was gone, Baros Tsen T'Varr walked slowly over to the little hatch, always locked from the outside, to where the gondola pilot was when the glasship flew. A golem, a mindless automaton that just did what it was told. Usually.
He opened it. ‘You can come out now, Chay-Liang.’
67
The dragon called Silence waited beside That Which Came Before long after the little one was gone. It toyed with seeing whether it could catch another but soon lost its appetite for such games. Once had been amusing; again was dull. Its attention wandered. It had been here in Xibaiya for a long time now, far longer than its usual passage. The thought came that perhaps it was putting off returning to the realms of the living. Perhaps it was waiting for the silver ones who had sent it here to find other matters to occupy their minds. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. .
Perhaps it was afraid?
Silence wasn't sure why it should wonder such a thing. Dragons had no notion of fear for themselves, nor any reason for one. A dragon was immortal until the end of creation as far as it knew, although the end of creation was fumbling mindlessly right there in front of it. Perhaps immortality was not as stark a thing as it had once seemed.
Afraid?
Dragons understood fear. They understood it perfectly. They devoured it in their prey but dragons were not afraid.
Perhaps there was some need to show this.
The dragon called Silence left the Nothing where it was, creeping and unravelling, and went in search of an egg. There were fewer to be had than before, far fewer but still enough. Most of them were in the places that it remembered. A few were somewhere far away from the rest.
It chose the few.
I am Silence. I come, world of the living, awake and alert and filled with what I know.
And hungry. Always hungry.
The Sea Lord
68
The air shook with the whoosh of rocket after rocket being fired from the carts on the decks. Berren blinked and watched them fly, hunched down, hands over his ears. A boulder crashed into the water a hundred feet to the side of the ship, shooting a plume of water into the air. A few seconds later a fine smear of spray misted his visor. Absently he wiped it away, still watching the rocket trails arcing towards the city. There were more in the air now, a whole skyful of them coming back the other way. Another hurled boulder hit the ship in front of them, shattering its stern in a shower of wood and splinters. Pieces of the vessel drifted away as its mast toppled and crashed into the waves. He hardly noticed. Just stared, hypnotised by the rockets. They seemed to move so slowly and the brightest of them didn't seem to be moving at all, just getting bigger and bigger. .
‘Down.’ Tuuran threw them both to the deck. The rocket slammed into the front of the ship and exploded in a fireball. Slaves and Taiytakei alike rushed forward with buckets of water while flames shot up the ropes and bit into the deck and foresails. The ship turned sharply, grinding past the sinking carcass of one of its companions, and started to lose way. Men thrashing in the water screamed for help as they drifted past. The splintering cracks of snapping oars rose over the shouts and the roar of the fire and the booms and thunderclaps behind them.
Berren drew his sword and sighed for the moonsteel blade he'd once had, a sword that someone else now carried in his name. It was priceless. Only one place in all of the worlds made moonsteel, and that was in Aria. Black as night, yet now and then the steel would shimmer with silvery moonlight and sometimes he even saw the moon itself shining inside the sword. It cut through mundane mail as easily it cut through flesh and bone and it never lost its edge. The enchanted blades of the Ice Witch, an irreplaceable gift from the Sun King for services he'd once rendered and now he had this: a plain ordinary blade, duller than he would have liked, yet another reminder of the life the warlocks had taken away from him. If they were here in this city, somehow he'd find them. He'd make them tell him what they'd done and why, and how to make it back the way it was, and then he'd cut out their sordid black hearts.
Another ship powered past in clear water. Others were coming out of the lightening sky. Dozens more were wallowing, adrift and ablaze. Ships from the armada, ships that had been caught at anchor in the harbour. Distant fire glowed ahead through the mist and the clouds of smoke drifting across the sea; the shore itself was lost now, hidden in the haze. The air reeked of black powder, burning his nose. For a moment the noise of the rockets stopped, the sudden quiet punctured now and then by the splash of a boulder striking the water. They were moving again, picking up speed. Sail-slaves with buckets of seawater ran back and forth putting out the last of the fires and hurling the bodies of the dead over the side. Booms and rumbling thunder echoed across the waves from behind. The smoke grew thicker. They were getting close.
‘Swords! Archers!’ More and more Taiytakei appeared on the deck now, armed and armoured for battle. Slaves too. Suddenly, weapons were everywhere. The ship heeled. ‘Lines and grapples!’ Berren thought he saw a flickering light in the smoke. Then another and maybe an outline. Something tall and dark. A mast. They turned hard again and yes, he was right: out of the smoke came the shape of a second ship. There were shouts across the water as the two glided towards each other. For a moment no one seemed sure whether the other ship was one of their own or an enemy, then a storm of fire arrows rained down on them. Even as the archers were still shooting, the ships came together. He felt it through his feet. Not a crashing blow but a glancing, grinding, oar-snapping impact. An arrow hit his helmet and glanced off, staggering him sideways. Another hit his brigandine coat, winding him. It hung limply from the leather, stopped by the metal underneath. He looked at the sword in his hand again. A short stabbing weapon, the sort he'd learned to use long ago in Deephaven. The sort his thief-taker master had once had. What would you make of me now, Master Sy? All those years you spent hunting after the man who took your kingdom, and now here I am embarked upon the same, far away from home just like you were, chasing after warlocks as you once did. But it's not a kingdom I'm after.
‘Grapples! Lines!’ The enemy were so close he could almost reach out and touch them. Men on both sides screamed as arrows found their marks, as archers fell from the rigging. Berren slid his sword back into its scabbard and crouched behind the fire shield and checked his weapons one last time. Sword on one side, a ravensbeak on the other — a small hammer-and-pick thing for finding the joints in men with too much armour for a blade. There were spears on offer and javelins and crossbows, but crossbows were slow and heavy and spears were no weapon for fighting in city streets. He'd seen other things too, fire globes like the ones the Prince of War had used half a lifetime ago to reclaim his kingdom. Staves made of glass and gold that Tuuran said would shoot lightning like the wands the galley slavers had carried. Black rods that neither of them understood, but such devices worked only for the Taiytakei, not for sword-slaves who might steal them and run away. Or worse, turn them on their masters.
‘Sword-slaves!’ Tuuran raised his axe. Berren had no idea where he had found it, but it was enormous and having it seemed to make the big man happy. The ships were bound together now by a dozen grapples. Fists punched the air. ‘Sail! Fight! Freedom! No quarter!’
Sword-slaves and Taiytakei alike swarmed over the side. As they did, another group of Taiytakei dumped a heavy chest in the middle of the deck and kicked it open. More weapons. ‘All slaves are sword-slaves today,’ shouted a Taiytakei solder. He picked up a couple of spiked cudgels and pressed them into the hands of the two nearest sail-slaves as Berren ran past. ‘You fight!’ he bellowed. ‘Sail! Fight! Freedom! Fight or die!’