Yena turned and left without a word. When she didn't come back he roamed the eyrie aimlessly until dawn.
His hearing slowly came back over the days that followed, though the ringing never quite left. He spent day after day with nothing to do, kicking his heels, sitting on the walls or right at the very edge of the eyrie with the sky under his feet, staring out across the desert. The alchemist had other guards now, Taiytakei soldiers in their glass and gold armour with wands that spat lightning, better protectors than any slave could ever be. On the rare days when Bellepheros emerged from his quarters, he always had two of them at his side and usually the witch too. Tuuran watched them together. They were like old lovers and it made him want to scream, not just because of what the witch had done to the alchemist but because it stabbed him every moment with a reminder of how alone he was. He missed his home. But he missed his ship more, the slaves who sailed it. Men who were like he was.
He tried to tell Yena that he was sorry, that he hadn't meant it, that he missed her too, but she wouldn't speak to him now. One time he slipped out late at night to look for her again, unable to sleep, and found her with another man pressing her against a wall, and it made him think of a different time and a different place where he'd seen much the same, only with a girl who'd been much less willing, and the red mist came down and the next thing he knew there were soldiers hauling him away and all he felt was relief, though he knew perfectly well what the Taiytakei did to slaves who couldn't behave. Shoot him with lightning a few times and then throw him off the edge of the eyrie he supposed; but instead they hauled him to a makeshift cell with a door and a frame that had been forced into the opening and didn't work properly, and in the morning the alchemist and the witch were waiting for him.
‘He should be hung,’ said the witch.
Tuuran shrugged. She was looking at the alchemist anyway, not at him. ‘So hang me,’ he said.
‘He's cost me a slave.’ There wasn't much he could say to that. He didn't remember exactly what he'd done, only that it surely hadn't been pretty. ‘Belli, why shouldn't I? Give me a reason.’
The alchemist looked at Tuuran. He cocked his head but he only seemed sad, and Tuuran didn't have any sort of answer that would make any sense. He shrugged again. He'd saved the alchemist's life once. Either that was enough or it wasn't. ‘If I was you that's probably what I'd do,’ he said.
‘Bloody Adamantine Men.’ The alchemist sniffed and offered Tuuran his hand. ‘Come on.’
‘I did save your life, Lord Grand Master.’ Shouldn't have needed to be said, though.
‘I haven't forgotten. A glasship will leave soon for Vespinarr. You'll be on it. Come with me.’
‘To where, Lord Alchemist? Off to the slave markets again?’
‘Where would you like to go, Tuuran? What is it you want?’
Tuuran flared. ‘What is it that I want? You have to ask me that, Grand Master? Home, of course, I want to go home. To be with my own people again. To be free. What you should want too. To serve your speaker.’
The alchemist shook his head. ‘But I do not serve the speaker, Tuuran. Alchemists never have. We serve the realms. The truth is, we answer only to ourselves, and I've concluded that I may best do this from where I am. There are possibilities that-’
‘Spare me, blood-mage!’
‘Oh, just bring him.’ The witch turned away.
‘Let him stay with me a while,’ said the alchemist. ‘Until the glasship comes.’
The witch threw up her hands. ‘If you absolutely must.’
Four Taiytakei soldiers led Tuuran up into the dragon yard and down the spiralling passage to where the alchemist and the witch kept their rooms. Bellepheros waved them away, and they weren't happy about that one little bit and only went when he almost pushed them out and shut the door. When they were gone, he looked at Tuuran in silence. Tuuran's eyes wandered around the alchemist's room, remembering how he'd laid out the clothes and the books before Bellepheros had arrived, trying to make it the way he thought an alchemist would like it. Trying to make it like home and now that's exactly how it looked. Home. Tuuran clenched his fists.
‘How did you come to be a slave, Tuuran? An Adamantine Man? I know the Taiytakei bought slaves taken by the King of the Crags. Outsiders, mostly. Something of which I greatly disapproved even before I was taken myself, for what little that's worth. But an Adamantine Man? How?’
‘Stupidity, like I told you.’ The same stupidity he'd had last night. Tuuran laughed bitterly. No one had ever asked him how he'd ended up as a slave before, not asked and really meant it. Every man had his own story and every man thought his was the most important, but the essence of them all was the same. Wrong place, wrong time, bad luck. ‘What does the how of it matter?’
‘Humour me. I have to watch over you until the glasship that leaves for Vespinarr is ready.’
‘Very well. Hyram had been made speaker. He had his great tour of the realms. You were there.’
‘I remember.’
‘He took some of us with him. Showing us off. First time any of us were on the backs of dragons — now there was an uneasy thing, I can tell you. But we were his guard and so we did as we were told and followed him to Bloodsalt and to Sand and Outwatch, and then afterwards to the Pinnacles.’ Tuuran stood up and started to pace. A fury still burned at the injustice. ‘It was there. There was a feast. Everyone got drunk, same as always. The lords and ladies had gone to their beds. Middle of the night and I needed a piss but that's not such a simple thing in the Pinnacles. They don't have pots in the corners of their chambers, they have special rooms for it dotted about here and there but never where you want them. Well I went and found one and then after I was done, somehow I walked the wrong way.’ Because he was drunk? No, because he was curious and the Fortress of Watchfulness was supposed to be filled with miracles and there was no one to stop him. ‘I ended up some place I wasn't supposed to be. All filled with a soft silver moonlight that came off the walls, same as the tunnels here.’ He glanced at the alchemist and got a nod of understanding. Bellepheros had seen it too then. ‘I could see a man and a girl, shadows picked out by the light. Lovers, I thought at first, but then I saw I was wrong and they weren't lovers at all. A lord and some poor servant girl. I should have left it alone, knew that even then. But he had her pressed against the wall and she was trying to get away from him, and I was drunk and it was wrong, whoever he was, and there was a thing inside that just snapped right there and then, worn out from sickness at all the things I'd seen in Bloodsalt and Sand and even back before in the City of Dragons, rich men and their ways, thinking they could take whatever they chose, that no one would ever stand up to them. So I went up and threw him to the floor and told him to leave her alone. I saw then I was wrong. She was no servant but some rich little lady just coming to bloom, a real beauty too — not that that made it any different — wrong was still wrong — but there was a moment there when it wasn't what I was expecting and I was drunk and it made me slow, and in that moment the girl had my knife out of my belt and stabbed him. She must have killed him with the first or the second thrust but she kept on stabbing and there was blood everywhere. Flame!’ He sat down again. ‘I tried to stop her and so she tried to stab me too, like she had no idea I wasn't the same person. Strangest thing was, she never cried out, never said a word. Played it all out in silence and then she seemed to come to her senses and dropped the knife and ran away, and I was too stupid to go after her and bring her down and hold her to account for what she did.’ He held his head in his hands. ‘Thing is, I could see from how she was that this wasn't the first time, far from it, and there was a part of me thought Good for you. Because he deserved it even if he was some great lord.’