Liang sagged. She shrugged. ‘Months.’
‘Good. No need to turn the slaves right away. I shall begin by teaching them all the basics they'll need to know. We can separate them later when Tuuran is more reconciled to the idea. Give me time to bring him round, Li.’
‘I don't think you'll ever do that, Belli. I'm sorry, but it might be best if he were to go. Perhaps the sooner the better.’
Tuuran had finished sorting the slaves. Bellepheros pushed Liang a little towards them. ‘We'll see. Come, let me at least pretend to inspect them.’
They walked along the line of slaves not from the dragon realms. Pale-skinned men from the edges of the Dominion. Smaller darker-skinned men from the Dominion's heartland or more likely from the southern coast of Aria. The dark-faced muscular men of the savage Southern Realm. Men who could barely do more than grunt, sometimes.
‘Alchemist Bellepheros?’ asked one of the southerners in an accent of perfect Vespinese.
Bellepheros looked confused. ‘Yes?’
Chay-Liang's hand was already on her wand. Tuuran was quicker, launching himself through the air. But neither of them was as quick as the assassin. His arm came up and punched the alchemist in the throat. A spray of blood went everywhere. The assassin reached to pull Bellepheros close, to finish him and listen to the alchemist's heart stop but Tuuran smashed into him, knocking him back. Bellepheros staggered away, hand to his throat, blood everywhere. Liang looked from one to the other, agape. They've killed him! They did it. They got one in. And I thought I was so careful. O Charin, no!
Tuuran and the killer were grappling with each other. Everywhere slaves were screaming and scattering and where was the Watcher when he was needed? Soldiers up on the battlements were already running but they were too far away to make any difference. The damage had been done with the very first blow.
Liang levelled her wand and let fly. The thunderclap stunned her, the shock of air staggered her and the killer was suddenly gone, a broken blackened sprawl of limbs hurled fifty feet from where he'd been. Tuuran flew across the dragon yard too but Liang had no eyes for him. She ran to the alchemist. So much blood said the killer had struck true. Bellepheros would be dead in moments if he wasn't already. There was nothing she could do.
Yet he wasn't. He knelt, blinking, mouth open, hand pressed to his neck, looking bemused as if he had no idea what had happened. Blood covered him, soaked him. He was dripping with it. She knelt beside him, wrapped her arms around his body and hugged him. ‘Belli! Belli! I'm sorry!’ So very wrong for a Taiytakei to hold a slave in such a way but what did it matter now? He might as well pass on with some warmth around him, in the hands of someone who truly cared for him. She held his head and whispered in his ear, ‘I'm so sorry. So sorry.’
‘Was that. . a regrettable incident?’ he croaked and she let go of him and reeled back in astonishment. What must be almost his last breath and he was trying to make a joke of his own murder?
His eyes followed her, though, and they weren't the eyes of a man about to die. He took her hand and showed her his neck where the knife had struck. Beneath blood that was still wet and warm on her fingers there was no wound at all. He pulled her close so they were eye to eye. ‘I can teach these slaves to make a simple potion. I can teach someone like you to make almost anything at all. But true alchemy lives in the blood, Li, and that is a thing that cannot be taught. There is one place in the world where a true alchemist can be made, an alchemist who can dull a dragon. An alchemist who is truly a master of his own blood, and that place is deep within my homeland. Fortunate for both of us that it's not so easy to be rid of a blood-mage.’ He stood up, an old man who'd just had his throat ripped open and yet showed no sign of it, and she looked at him with new eyes. For a moment he even made her afraid.
Then he stumbled and put a hand on her shoulder to keep himself from falling, and the moment was gone. ‘Now I think I need to lie down for a while,’ he said. ‘One last thing. Dragon blood. I'll need dragon blood before the eggs come. If you could manage that sooner rather than later, I'd much appreciate it.’
She let him lean on her. The relief she felt that he was alive was more than it should have been for any slave, however precious.
33
Tuuran was wrestling the man who'd just killed the alchemist, setting free all that burning frustration in a frenzy of bone and sinew when the world exploded. The witch's lightning shattered everything and he was flat and floating, blind and deaf and dumb. Paralysed. Dead maybe, but then his eyes came slowly back. Not much else but he could see the sky. Its brilliant blue burned into his skull until a face blotted half of it out. Yena. She was wringing her hands. From the way her lips moved she might have been calling his name but all he could hear was a ringing. He tried to move, to take her hand, to tell her that he wasn't hurt, not really, but he couldn't. Eventually someone picked him up. They left Yena behind and carried him to a dim place lit by the glowing white stone walls and laid him on his back and left him.
The assassin slave had had marks on him. Tuuran had caught a glimpse as they'd fought. The alchemist needed to know. It seemed important and so he tried his hardest to move. His muscles screamed in pain, all of them, but he made them do it, one by one. Except all he managed to do was roll off his dormitory bed and land like a helpless sack of potatoes on the floor. He floundered there like a landed fish and didn't hear Yena come in because about the only thing he could hear at all was the screeching whine in his ears. He could hardly even hear his own voice. The first he knew she was there was her touch on his shoulder and he could barely move to turn and look at her.
‘Go away!’ He hated that she saw him like this. Helpless. He gritted his teeth and tried to pretend the pain wasn't there as he hauled himself, one flopping limb at a time, back onto his bed. Then lay there, exhausted. Even breathing hurt. Even every heartbeat. He screwed up his face. His eyes were watering and Yena was still there, hadn't gone away like he'd told her. He turned away from her but he could still feel the warmth of her hand on his shoulder, gently stroking him. ‘Go away,’ he whimpered. ‘Go away. Leave me be!’ This wasn't how an Adamantine Man should be, not ever.
She didn't go. He felt her kiss his cheek and her hand stroking his hair, and he felt the breath of her voice over his ear but any words she said were lost in the ringing. And despite it all there was a part of him that was glad she'd stayed.
Eventually he must have fallen asleep. When he woke she was gone and the glow of the walls had changed enough to tell him it was the middle of the night. The pain in his muscles had turned into a dull heavy ache but at least now they moved when he told them to. He sat on the edge of his bed, hands clamped over his ears. All the other slaves were sleeping, packed in around him. The air was stuffy and stale, though nothing like as bad as the stifling holes he was used to from the galleys. Any other night he'd have heard a chorus of snores but now they were barely there, half drowned under the ever-present whine left by the thunderbolt.
He stood up, paced the room and then went outside — there were still no doors almost anywhere except where the Taiytakei had their rooms. He walked up to the huge circular dragon yard. In the moonlight the white stone shone a ghostly silver. No one stopped him. He climbed to the top of the wall — couldn't really call it battlements — and walked around it, looking out across the night at the desert and the stars. The soldiers in the watchtowers challenged him as he passed but they all knew him and didn't shout and send him back under the ground, not tonight. Sometimes he felt as though he was floating, not walking. The ringing in his ears was disorientating. Distracting. It unbalanced him.