‘You cannot escape us, sorcerer. We were made for the likes of you.’
‘I know what you are better than you know yourself, earth-touched. I will not fight you. A storm is coming that even you cannot stop.’ He stood still and quiet. ‘I will become one with Xibaiya and await the great transformation.’
‘You're making something, warlock. What is it?’
The grey dead gave away his surprise. ‘Making something?’ He chuckled bitterly, tinged with a weariness he didn't try to hide. ‘If that's what you came for, you're too late. It's already made, killer.’
‘And what have you made?’
The grey dead shook his head and half a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘Are we done?’
‘Those who know of these things say that the writings of the Rava are incomplete. Is that why you came here, warlock? Did you think the priests of the Vul Storna had another volume finished in secret when we fell upon them? One that we never found?’
‘Oh yes.’ The grey dead smiled. He drew back his hood and closed his eyes. ‘I don't think it, I know it, earth brother. The Book of Endings. Filled with more secrets, mundane and deadly, than you or I will ever know. It would have made their Rava complete. It's hidden behind one of these archways. Behind one of these gates to another world.’
‘Where it remains.’
The grey dead tapped the blank archway beside the Watcher's stony face. ‘Perhaps it's this one. But how to open them, eh? And where do they lead? And what will you do if the Ice Witch of Aria has found it first? For that is the world in which it was finally hidden, after all.’ He laughed. ‘Oh, there are far worse things than you and I, brother of the earth.’
The Watcher shifted. He became air and flesh again in the blink of an eye. With a slice of his bladeless knife the grey dead's head fell from his shoulders. It rolled on the floor, still grinning.
‘I will wait for you in Xibaiya, earth-touched,’ it mouthed.
14
The man chained next to Berren was dead. He'd been dead for days; he stank of rank decay and the rats had gnawed his feet to the bone. Whenever Berren dozed for a few minutes one of the rats would take a nip to see if he was ready to be eaten too. They were hungry, these bilge rats, and they were big and there were a lot of them. So far he'd found the strength to kick them into the stinking inches of stale water that slopped back and forth underfoot. Sometimes he even managed to stamp on one and break its back. It would squeal, and the squealing told him where it lay, legs thrashing. There were better things to eat than raw rat, but there were worse things too.
Lazily he rattled his chains. Except when he had visitors come to taunt him, there was no light down here, nothing to see by. The Taiytakei who ran the ship were still taking bets on how much longer he was going to last. One or two who'd gambled long at the start had even smuggled down bread and water at first but that had stopped after the man next to him had died. The Taiytakei bet on everything. They couldn't help themselves. They could have bet on who he really was, if he'd told any of them his story, but it might have come to an unsatisfying end because he didn't know any more. Simply didn't know. Whenever the rats left him alone, whenever he drifted into a fitful sleep, his mind wandered into a past that belonged to someone else. In his waking memories he knew he'd grown up a street urchin in the city of Deephaven. When he closed his eyes he found he lived in a village beside a lake, surrounded by reeds taller than the tallest men. Instead of streets he ran among the tiny channels between them, up to his knees in muddy water. Or sometimes it was the other way round. He'd lost track of everything. Lost track of who he was, lost track of time. Tethis had been months ago. The battle, the pit, Vallas, the Bloody Judge, they'd faded to one half-remembered dream.
The hatch overhead opened. The sound roused him to lift his head. No one had come for more than a day but now men were lowering the ladder, clambering down the steep narrow steps, boots clumping on hard damp wood, splashing when they reached the bilges.
Taiytakei. Two held candles and lurked in the shadows. Two others came and peered and poked. He'd never seen any of them before but they wore their hair in long braids that fell almost to their waists. The longer the braids, the more important the man. He'd learned that much before they'd thrown him down here. The same went for their clothes and especially their cloaks. They liked their feathers and their bright colours. The bigger and the gaudier they were, the better; but here in the dim flicker of the candles their cloaks looked black. So did everything.
The Taiytakei gibbered to each other in their dialect, too fast for Berren to follow. Now and then he heard words he understood, but for the most part their speech was impossible. Written down though, their letters and language was the same as he'd learned in Aria. In Deephaven with the priests and the monks and Tasahre, years before the Bloody Judge had been born.
He closed his eyes. The Taiytakei chattered away right in front of him as though he was a carcass hung up in a slaughterhouse. Tasahre. His first love. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he watched her die, over and over and over, always the same, the sword opening her throat and the blood, so much blood. But other times, when he screwed up his eyes and tried, he remembered her from before. His hand pressed to her cheek. Her tears on his skin, and gods how he wanted her. How he wanted her now, to hold him and tell him what to do. But she was gone, and every time he remembered that anew, despair tried to drown him. She'd told him once that words were all the same — in Aria, with the Taiytakei, in the Dominion, Tethis, everywhere the same — and it was just the way of saying them that was bent and changed.
The Taiytakei started poking him, still jabbering at one another. As the Bloody Judge, he'd planned to meet a slaver crew some years ago but it had never come to anything. Now one of them was prodding his arms and his ribs, turning his face this way and that, peering at his teeth and eyes. He wondered if these Taiytakei were slavers too. How would he have seen them, standing as Gaunt had stood on the edge of the sea when he'd been taking their silver and selling his captives? He'd always said he'd sell the queensguard to slavers. Wars cost money and the men of the queensguard had picked the wrong side. Exactly his own words but now he saw how hollow and cold they were.
‘Do you want to live, slave?’ The accent was still thick but the Taiytakei could be understood when they tried. He nodded. He forced himself. Did he want to live? He wasn't entirely sure any more. Here was life, come full circle, back to being a skag, only worse. Did he want that again?
Better than death though. Wasn't it?
The slaver frowned. ‘Why? Why do you want to live?’
‘I. . want. .’ What sort of question was that? So I can wring your necks, all of you, one by one. What did he want? He wanted his life back, his own skin. My sword, my army, my missing piece that I once wore around my neck that makes me whole. But swords came and went and the Fighting Hawks only existed to break the warlocks and their queen. The other him had already done that.
Then so I can wrap my hands around my own throat and strangle the life out of whatever bastard has stolen my body and my name. That's why. That was more like it. Revenge? He understood revenge. From the day he'd left Deephaven his life had been made of it. The Bloody Judge had had his way now, and all that was left was a sordid hunt through the back alleys of the world, cutting up the last few warlocks that still survived, but that's what he'd do. Revenge was what he had left to him. Revenge on the friends who'd sold him as a slave. Revenge for a son taken by disease before he could hold a sword. Revenge for a lover whose fire for him had died. Revenge against the gods themselves, though he knew well that revenge was a whore and not a lover.