Other slaves came from places around the Dominion. The Bloody Judge had been to a few and heard of a few more. He'd even sacked one once, which made him smile in secret to himself. Others, like Tuuran, came from places with names he'd never heard. On nights when the ship was still and drifting and there was little work to do, they sat around a stove of hot coals and told each other their stories. As each new slave arrived from the oar deck, the older slaves always saw that he had his turn.
‘In my land there are dragons. Flying monsters as big as this ship whose wings would cast the whole world into shadow when they flew.’ Tuuran chewed on a stick of Xizic stolen from their Taiytakei masters. His eyes shone in the glow of the coals, wandering among the sail-slaves, daring any of them to speak. ‘I was born to fight them. Raised to slay them. I am Adamantine. I have stood in walls of dragon-scale shields and turned back their fire. We were masters of the beasts, not their slaves. We were the undrawn sword.’ He said the same thing every time, that and nothing more. He never once told them how he'd been taken.
‘I come from a farm,’ said Berren when it was his turn. In his waking memories he never saw any farm but if he said who he thought he really was, that he was a man well into his third decade who'd led armies, fought wars, killed kings and conquered kingdoms, no one would believe him. The stories the slaves shared were meant to have at least a little truth in their hearts. ‘I grew up far away from the sea. We lived beside a lake and everywhere around us was swamp and reeds.’ He dreamed of that village every night, knew it now as though it had been his home. ‘Men with swords and horses came each year. They took our food and our animals and left us to starve. One year they branded me.’ He tapped his thigh, the great scar that lay half-hidden under his tunic. The other slaves murmured. They'd all seen it.
He changed the truth a little from the way his dreams had it then: ‘One year they came a second time. After they'd taken all we had they came back to destroy us. Man or woman, old or young, it didn't matter; they put us to the sword. I was away among the reeds. It was night. When I came back, the dead were left where they'd fallen, scattered across the ground.’ He could see it, feel it. The loss and the horror and the fear of being suddenly alone were so vivid, and so was the rage that followed. That was how it went in his dreams. Gone out into the swamp to die. Given back his life by the miracle of the one-eyed spectre. Returned to find his home slaughtered in savagery.
He pinched himself. Those were dreams and they didn't belong to him, for he was Berren, child of Deephaven, son of the city through and through. The Bloody Judge, warlord of the Small Kingdoms. The Crowntaker, maker and breaker of kings and queens. He was a lot of things but he'd never lain dying by a lake, and yet he felt it. He ground his teeth and watched the slaves around him carefully as he spoke. ‘I went after them,’ he said. Some of them gently nodded, others shook their heads, and then and there Berren divided the slaves into two in his mind. The Nodders and the Shakers. The ones who'd fight and the ones who wouldn't. The wolves and the sheep.
Tuuran belched. ‘Is that it, Berren Crowntaker, Berren the Bloody Judge? Or is this story going to be a very long one?’
The other slaves laughed and nodded and raised their cups. ‘Berren the Crowntaker?’ said one. ‘I knew him.’ A chorus of jeers and boos and laughing drowned out whatever came next. ‘Well I saw him, then. The Bloody Judge he was calling himself. Had a part in sacking Mor-Dyan. Six years ago that was.’ The sail-slave snorted and looked at Berren. ‘You ain't anything like him.’
Mor-Dyan. He remembered that. Berren chuckled and shook his head. ‘I just have his name.’ Stupid thing, that first day in front of Tuuran, saying who he really was. It had gone around the ship like a disease and none of them ever quite forgot because Tuuran wouldn't let them. Berren spat onto the deck. ‘No, my story's about done. You can dream the rest easy enough. Was the Crowntaker's men who'd done it, and no hope I had of doing anything about it. Got as far as the sea. Soldiers came by, clearing out a tavern, and there I was too far in my cups to even notice. Next thing I knew I was here.’ He shrugged. ‘Let that be the end of the story.’
‘So who's this Skyrie, then?’ asked Tuuran. ‘The one you keep mumbling about in your sleep, keeping the rest of us awake all night. He one of those soldiers you set off to hunt, Berren the Bloody Judge, or was he just a lover?’
The name hit him like a fist. He hadn't heard it outside his dreams for almost a year. He froze, unable to speak.
‘He can call himself what he wants, can't he?’ muttered someone. ‘As long as what he answers to is slave like the rest of us, eh?’ There was a chorus of laughter. Berren screwed his eyes shut. Skyrie was gone, wasn't he? But there was something more than the memories of another man's life. Something else trying to break through in his dreams of the one-eyed man.
Another slave got up, pale-skinned Adasi who'd come from the Small Kingdoms. ‘No, Jorri. He wants to call himself the Bloody Judge, he can answer for him too.’ He walked around the coals and stood over Berren, looking down at him. ‘I had a cousin in the Tethis queensguard. The Bloody Judge killed him. That means that you and I, we got a-’
Berren shot to his feet and wrapped an arm around Adasi's neck. The words ended in a strangled gasp as Berren squeezed. ‘If he served the Dark Queen then he deserved what he got!’ he hissed. He was breathing hard. Rage swarmed through him, rage and revenge, demanding release. ‘So what was his name? Was it Skyrie?’ His arms clenched tighter. Why would he say that? Skyrie? How could it be?
‘Adasi, last month your cousin was a pirate,’ laughed someone else.
‘You going to let him go now?’ asked Tuuran.
‘And a bad one at that.’
Then Tuuran's arms were around Berren like iron bands. Adasi scrabbled away, off into the shadows, staring at him as though he was a monster, a madman, a freak. And at the same time he saw himself walking down into the pit under Tethis castle, four brother warlocks around him as an honour guard. He felt the hatred burning inside him as his village had burned. Revenge. That was what had taken him there. He stumbled away, out of the shelter of the sailors’ awning and into the wind. Cold fresh air crashed though him. He reached the rails at the edge of the deck and heaved the contents of his stomach into the sea. ‘Gods!’ He spat out the taste of bile and gritted his teeth. With the wind in his face and the stars up above, the memories slowly faded until all that was left was the name.
Skyrie. He almost didn't know who that was any more.
‘I don't care who you were or who you think you are,’ murmured Tuuran in his ear. The big man had crept up on him and now he slipped in beside Berren and leaned on the rail too, looking out at the night-black sea. ‘You can be the Sun King himself for all I care but to the rest of us you're still called slave. Do you know the penalty for damaging another slave, slave?’
‘A slow and painful death, I don't doubt.’ Berren spat again.
‘I send you back down for another year at the oars.’
‘Is that all?’
‘In your case I'll make sure it's five.’
‘Then I'd best start with you.’
Tuuran laughed. ‘No one cares, slave. No one gives a drip of piss about who you were or how you got here. You're here. That's the only truth that matters. Everything else is slaves’ tales. You heard Vhalin speak?’