Bracelets reached down and glared, eyes a-glitter. ‘You. Scarred Leg. You're not as weak as these others so now they're yours. Down among the oars they'll take their punishments from you. Whatever wrong they do, you'll be the one to pay. Any of you survive to be a sail-slave, it'll be the same but worse, because then I'll be the one taking it out of your skin. Now give me back my knife, slave. Pick it up and give it to me.’
I. . am. . He'd had another name once. He reached for it but it slipped between his fingers, wriggled from his grasp. He reached across the deck and picked up the knife and handed it back. Bracelets hauled him up and then his face jumped forward and they were eye to eye. ‘Do not think that I fear anything, slave, for I have taken back my name. I am Tuuran. I am Adamantine, and I kill dragons.’
Berren Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge of Tethis, bared his teeth and smiled.
15
A year at the oars killed a good few. Some died from exhaustion. A few annoyed their Taiytakei masters once too often and were thrown overboard. A couple were sold. But mostly they died in the bouts of sickness that swept the rowing deck every few months. Not Berren, though. He never got sick. He never argued with the oar masters, the Taiytakei soldiers who walked the oar decks with their whips and their ashgars, their spiked clubs. He grew stronger. The endless hours filled out his muscles, broadened his shoulders and his chest. His flesh became his own again. He no longer looked at his hands and wondered whose they were. It was only when he glanced down and saw the scar on his leg that he remembered the warlock Skyrie.
When his year was done they let him loose from his place among the oars. He stood up on the open decks with the wind in his hair and the sun on his face and grinned.
‘I haven't forgotten you, Berren the Crowntaker, Berren the Bloody Judge of Tethis,’ whispered Tuuran behind him. ‘I told the Taiytakei not to throw you over the side then. I told them you'd be worth it. They said not but they let me have my way. Now prove that I was right and they were wrong.’
Berren had seen Tuuran perhaps twice since that first day. He didn't turn around. He could smell the brand in Tuuran's hand, the hot metal scorching the air. ‘Another year and they give me a knife, is it?’
‘A year, two, maybe three. Who knows? Stay alive and one day you'll be a fighting slave. I think you'll like that. Face me.’ Now Berren turned. Tuuran tipped his head up to the wind, to the spray of salt. ‘You kept it in. Well done. Mostly the oars break a man one way or the other. Some shout and fight and get themselves killed. Others? A little light inside them snuffs out. Not you, though. You have a touch of the dragon-killer in you. You have patience.’ For a moment Berren caught a gleam in Tuuran's eye. A fierce madness, a knowing of a shared longing.
‘No. Not me.’ A touch of the dragon-killer? A touch of something. The other was still inside whenever Berren thought to look. The husk and dust of the warlock, still screaming in the dark.
Tuuran showed him the brand, six inches of lightning bolt still glowing a deep dull red. ‘Easy now. They're watching you. It's going to happen one way or another and you know that. That's how this works. And it's good — it makes you more than you were. So no struggling now. Bite on this.’ Tuuran offered a strip of thick leather. Berren hesitated, then took it and pushed it deep inside his mouth and bit down hard.
‘Good. Now. Most people don't get this choice, but you do. You can hold out your arm on your own and keep it there, and keep it still while I do this. Or I can get some men to hold you down. Most people, it's best if they're held down.’
Berren took the leather out of his mouth for a moment. ‘Did you need to be held down?’
Tuuran grinned. ‘You think there are any slaves here who could do that? Hold out your arm. Left one. Nice and straight.’
Berren stared at the brand. He clenched his fists. Then he pushed the strip of leather back between his teeth and held out his arm. He was breathing hard now.
‘Turn it over. Open your fist and bend back your hand.’ Tuuran ran rough fingers over the inside of Berren's arm, back and forth, then held Berren's hand, bending it back until it hurt, holding his arm locked straight. He had the brand in his other hand, poised. ‘Now close your eyes. Go on, close them. And no matter what, keep that arm still or I'll have to do this again. Ready now?’
Berren nodded. He was panting as though he was running for his life, every muscle clenched tight, tense and ready to explode into life.
‘Good. Now there's. . Great Flame, what's that?’
Berren opened his eyes and started to turn his head and as he did, Tuuran whipped the brand over and pressed it into Berren's arm. Blazing agony punched him in the back of his eyes and then grabbed them and squeezed. Berren screamed. His face screwed up tight. His teeth clamped on the leather. The brand hissed as Tuuran placed it into a bucket of waiting water but the big man still held his hand, gripped it tight as he poured cold seawater over the wound. He smeared it with something and then wrapped it in a bandage. He might have spoken, but if he did then Berren didn't hear. The pain consumed everything. He snarled like an animal, deaf to the world.
When he was done, Tuuran left him there, clenching and unclenching his fist, rocking back and forth, tight as a drum, breathing hard and deep until a numbness took over and the pain slowly ebbed. Then Tuuran came back. He crouched beside Berren and gave him a cup of clear fresh water and a bowl of rice with a lime cut in two perched on top.
‘You're no longer an oar-slave,’ he said solemnly. ‘You're no longer an animal. You're no longer property. You're a sail-slave and your voice has worth again.’ He slapped Berren on the back. ‘In Takei'Tarr they'd give you half a loaf of bread fresh from the baker's oven and a bowl of olives. At sea we have to make do with what we can get. You have half a glass and then I expect you to work.’ He got up and left.
The slaves who worked the ropes and the sails moved freely around the ship and over the days and weeks that followed, Berren found his way into every nook and cranny. Down among the oars he'd come to know the men who sat around him but he'd never bothered to learn the names of the rest. Now he paid attention. To be up here they were survivors like him and they came from all over the known worlds. In his waking memories he'd grown up in the city-port of Deephaven, the second greatest city of the empire of Aria, and he found other slaves from there, most from the coast a hundred miles further south but they'd all heard of Deephaven. They told him of a war that had come since he'd left, of sorcerers dressed in silver, of ice raining in knives from the sky, the city put to the sword and then rising from the dead. Afterwards, the coast to the south had become a hunting ground for the Taiytakei slavers. Deephaven had survived but now there was a necropolis at its heart, populated by the risen dead and guarded by sorcerers who were masters of fire. And from those ashes the empire had a mistress now, beautiful and terrible to behold. They spoke of her in hushed whispers, as though even here she might hear them. The Ice Queen. Berren listened to their stories but he didn't much believe them. Most of these slaves, whatever they claimed, had never strayed more than a day's walk from where they'd been born until they were taken and stories had a way of changing, of growing wilder the further they travelled.