Maybe the alchemist could do something; and that was when he realised he had no idea whether the alchemist was even still alive and how badly he was hurt. He'd seen blood fly, that was for sure, so it hadn't just been a scratch.
The tunnel to the alchemist and the witch and all the Taiytakei that mattered had the usual pair of soldiers standing in front of it. When he got close they drew out their wands. ‘No further, slave.’ They were edgy. He frowned and cocked his head — they knew who he was, after all — and then could have slapped himself. Of course they were bloody edgy after what had happened! He held up his hands and kept his distance. One lightning bolt was enough for one day.
‘I'm Tuuran. You know me.’
They called back, something that sounded unfriendly. He cocked his head.
‘You'll have to shout! Lightning made me deaf!’
One of them took a step closer and waved his wand. He looked angry. ‘Keep away! Go back! You cannot enter.’
‘And why the bloody Flame not? I'm supposed to be his bodyguard.’ Although a fat lot of use he'd been this time. ‘How bad was he hurt?’
The question unsettled them. The one waving his wand stepped back again and shook his head. The soldiers exchanged a glance and they both seemed to shiver. ‘Alive, slave. And that's all you need to know. Go back now! You shouldn't be out here.’
He left them and walked back. He should have been relieved, surely, but he found he wasn't. Yes, a part of him was but there was another part too, a nasty angry little piece that wished the alchemist had died.
He stopped at the entrance to the slave tunnels. Why? Why would he wish such a thing? But the answer was right there waiting for him: because then it would be finished. The Taiytakei wouldn't get their eyrie. For once they wouldn't get everything they wanted simply by reaching out and taking it. He wouldn't have to watch the alchemist lie to himself every day. Wouldn't have to watch him making himself into a perfect slave for them with his foolish dreams. Wouldn't have to watch his own dreams of going home have the life bled out of them with every glance from that cursed witch.
He took a deep breath and crept away down the tunnels and found a place to sit in the soft moonlight glow of the walls for a while to think, then slipped further to where the witch's slave women slept. He crept among them, quiet as a panther until he found Yena and silently woke her.
Her eyes went wide when she saw him. ‘Tuuran! What are you doing here?’ At least that was probably what she said. It looked like it. He leaned in close.
‘My hearing's still not right. Come with me!’
She pulled his ear to her lips and hissed, ‘You can't be here, Tuuran! If they catch you, you know what they'll do!’
Yes, he knew. They'd flog him and there were enough slaves who didn't like him to see that word got out if any of them saw him here. But still. He took her wrist and pulled. ‘Come.’
She held back a moment, looking around at the sleeping women in their cots, then giggled and slipped back her sheets and followed him out. They ran down the passage deeper into the tunnels. There were still lots of empty rooms, bare, lit by their moonlight walls. More slaves would be coming to fill the eyrie when the dragon eggs arrived he'd heard, but not yet.
‘Where are we going?’
He led her into one of the rooms and pulled her to him and kissed her. Sod being a slave. Sod being an Adamantine Man. Sod duty and screw honour. A finger to all of it. The alchemist had all but forgotten him, the witch had barely even noticed him in the first place. He had no place here, none. He ran his fingers through Yena's hair, pressed his tongue into her mouth and felt her teeth nip him. Ran his hands down her shoulders, down her back. He could feel every shape of her through her silk.
She broke the kiss, gasping for breath. Her face was flushed with excitement and right there and then he wanted her more than anything else. Run away with me. The words were on the tip of his tongue.
‘His back was burned black.’ She shivered. ‘But he had writing on him. Tattoos all across his belly.’ She put a hand on Tuuran's chest.
‘What?’ Tuuran blinked. ‘What did? I mean who? What?’
‘The man you were fighting! The one who tried to kill your master.’
She'd smashed his thoughts with a hammer. He half turned away, trying to put them back together again. And he hadn't really thought this through, had he? How, exactly, was he going to run away from an eyrie floating in the air half a mile over the desert? ‘What did it say?’ Not that he cared but it gave him some time to gather himself.
‘Mistress doesn't know.’ Yena's fingers moved over his shirt, soft and delicious. ‘Nor your master. It must be a language from one of the other worlds. She's been asking all the other slaves to look, but no one else knows it either.’
That stopped him cold. ‘What? How? Have they hung him up in the sun for everyone to come and have a look?’
‘No.’ The fingers stopped for a moment. ‘Your master. . he took the skin off the dead man.’
‘Ah.’ Yes, an alchemist would do that.
The thought caught in his throat. Bellepheros had done that? After he'd had his neck ripped open? Since when did alchemists get their throats cut and then act like nothing had happened? That wasn't alchemy, that was blood-magic, the second time Bellepheros had shown he possessed it. Adamantine Men knew all about blood-magic. Do not suffer a blood-mage to live. Yet another reason to go, as if he needed one. He took Yena's hands in his own and pressed them together and then put them to his lips. A blood-mage uses the blood of others, not his own. So Bellepheros had said but that didn't change how wrong it felt. He cupped Yena's face in his hands and made himself look at her. Adamantine Men didn't take wives and never raised sons. They weren't even supposed to have lovers, though all of them did. We are swords. We sate ourselves in flesh and move on. Stupid saying but there were plenty enough who were like that.
Ah Flame! He let her go. Taking her with him had seemed right, exactly the thing to do. Instinct said so. And he liked her and it wasn't just for her willing skin either, but she was a palace slave, delicate and fragile and smooth while he was a sailor and a soldier, all hard leather and rough edges. He stepped back. ‘If I ran, would you come with me?’
‘What? Why would you run?’
‘Never mind the why — would you come? That's all. Never mind the how or the where either, never mind any of that. Would you come with me or not?’
Her face wrinkled up. ‘But I do mind, Tuuran.’ She turned away and then turned back. ‘Why would you want to leave? You're almost a sword-slave. They treat you like one already! Where would we go? What would we do?’ She shook her head. ‘No, Tuuran. No. Don't ask me that.’
He took a deep breath. ‘With you or without you I'm going to ask my master to let me go.’ And he watched her carefully and caught her, right there, that look in her eye calculating what his leaving would mean. Not feeling his loss but assessing the change in her status. It burned his heart.
‘Why?’ Her fingers brushed his cheek. He let her, forcing back the urge to grab her and snap her wrist.
‘Because he's making this eyrie. Because he thinks he's the master here and he's happy but he isn't; he's a slave and a fool and your mistress is a witch who's put a spell on him. He's forgotten he's not free, but I haven't. He makes me sick. So do you, all of you. Slaves content to serve. You're pathetic.’
That was the bitterness talking but it was out before he could stop it. And though it might have been true, there were other truths too. Kinder ones not spoken. It was just that, right there and then, he couldn't seem to find them.