He took a breath or two now, letting the memory pass a little, surprised at how raw it felt even from so far away. ‘So there I was with a dead man killed by my knife. I took it and ran. There was a little of his blood on me but not much. I rubbed it away as best I could. The knife I licked clean. Didn't have anywhere else to put his blood. I went back and joined my brothers in their cots and in the morning I drank as much wine as I could lay my hands on and tried to pretend it hadn't happened. Thought maybe it would go away. A mystery never solved. But it wasn't just some lord that girl killed. In the dark I hadn't seen but it was Prince Mazam, the queen's consort. Lord of the Pinnacles and the Silver City.’
Bellepheros jerked. ‘What?’
‘Thought you'd have heard of it.’ Tuuran laughed. It all seemed so stupid now. ‘Being a lord high alchemist.’
‘But he choked in some. . accident. .’ The alchemist's words died around him. ‘Yes. It was around that time. When Hyram went to the Pinnacles. Oh my.’
‘They knew it was my knife. I don't know how but they knew. I never told them about the girl.’ He shrugged. ‘They were going to kill me anyway so what difference did it make? From the look on her face he had it coming. Flame knows how many others he'd raped. So I said nothing but I think they knew. Poor girl ran away covered in blood so they must have caught her but I never saw what happened to her if they did. And I thought over what I'd seen and how they'd kill me anyway, just for being there. So I decided. He'd had it coming. Even if they found the girl I'd say it was me. Good for her for murdering that raping bastard.’
He had to stop a moment. Take a deep breath and let his heart slow a beat. ‘They held me there for weeks. Long after Hyram and my brothers were gone back to the City of Dragons. When they did take me out, they took all manner of clubs and knives and other torturers’ things I couldn't name to my skin but I never said a word about the girl. Had to be useful for something, being what I was, that was how I saw it. Never understood why they didn't kill me but they didn't. They took me to Furymouth and they sold me instead.’ He shrugged. ‘I'm buggered if I know why. Had to be a dragon's rage more trouble than simply throwing me off a cliff.’
He blinked. Stared off into space a while, filled with remembering, then sat and cracked out a laugh. ‘Like I said, stupid. If I'd kept my nose out of other people's business I wouldn't be here. Yena could have been that girl last night, whoever she was. The man I kicked bloody, he could have been Prince Mazam. And if there's ever a next time, I'll do the same.’
Bellepheros looked dazed and lost. ‘You almost killed him.’ He shook his head. ‘And the woman? I don't think I've ever seen anyone more terrified.’ He shook his head. ‘What use are you, Tuuran?’
‘What use?’ Tuuran spat. He ripped open his shirt and pointed to the scar on his chest. ‘This! This is what use I am, Lord Grand Alchemist. You don't want me here and I don't want to be here, so just send me back where I came from if you can't send me home. Send me back to my ship. I was happy enough there.’ He started to pace the alchemist's room, an animal in a cage.
‘I don't know if I can. Li is hopping with fury. She wants you hanged.’
Tuuran stopped. A rough circle of dried skin covered in strange writing was on the alchemist's desk. It took him a moment to realise it must be the skin from the assassin the witch had destroyed. He picked it up and looked at it more closely, then grinned and bared his teeth. ‘Well, how about I give you a reason?’ He waved the skin in the alchemist's face. ‘I've seen this writing before.’
The alchemist shook his head. ‘In old books? On the walls deep inside the Pinnacles? I know. I just don't know what it means.’
Tuuran put the skin carefully down. ‘Do I look like I read books? On a man, Lord Grand Master Alchemist. On a living man.’ Crazy Mad. The great big birthmark — or whatever it was — on his leg that he always tried to hide.
34
The Watcher was waiting for Tuuran in Vespinarr, shooing away the oar-slaves and the Vespinese soldiers who crowded around the gondola as it landed. Tuuran tensed and then made himself relax and look away. He knew well enough by now what the Watcher was for and how little point there was trying to stand against him.
‘I'm not here to kill you,’ said the Elemental Man, which made Tuuran laugh because no slave across all the worlds mattered that much, and if the witch wanted him dead she could have done it herself.
‘So why are you here?’
‘Because of the writing on the assassin's skin. I have seen it before. In two places, in fact. Where have you seen it?’ He led Tuuran away from the open space full of gold and glass where the ships-that-flew brought their shining eggs, and towards a bridge of yellow stone over a wide blue rushing river.
‘First time was in my homeland, deep in the bowels of an old palace, but that's not what interests you.’ He frowned, struggling for breath. The air felt thin, as though he was high up in the peaks of the Purple Spur.
‘The mountain air can be strenuous.’ In the middle of the bridge the Elemental Man stopped. Tuuran looked around him at the city sprawled up the slopes on either side, at the Silver Mountain that overlooked everything else with its walls and palaces and old forts dotted across its slopes, at the massive towers of the Kabulingnor Palace on Mazanda's peak on the mountain's crown. The Watcher pointed down along the flow of the river. ‘The Yalun Zarang flows that way for fifty miles to the edge of the plateau. It descends in a series of cataracts towards the coast, to the Lair of Samim and Tayuna. A mere handful of miles east of the city the Jokun river does much the same, but they never meet and through the Lair they wend their separate ways. The Jokun will lead you to Hanjaadi. It's the Jokun you see from the eyrie. Its cataracts are among the most beautiful things in all the world.’
Which was all very interesting if you were an alchemist, Tuuran thought, but not to a slave about to go to sea. He looked out over the frothing water rushing among its rugged boulders, filling his lungs with cold mountain air. ‘Really.’
‘To my eyes the City of Stone is unsurpassed. But they are beautiful. Tell me of this slave you know and the marks he wears.’
So Tuuran told the Watcher of Crazy Mad and his time on the slave galley as the Elemental Man led them away across the bridge and through the crowded city streets. ‘He said it was a brand but I've seen lots of brands and it wasn't. I don't know what it was. Part of it was a scar, a great big one. Seen plenty of those. But not the signs around it. He was a strange one, Crazy Mad. Said all sorts of things but he kept the truth to himself. Very careful when he was awake. Not so much when he was asleep.’ He told the Watcher how Crazy Mad had cried out at night, Skyrie, Skyrie! and of his grumblings of warlocks. ‘Lots of hidden layers to him, that one.’ He stopped.
‘Warlocks?’ The Watcher was listening with a sudden intensity, as though all of this meant something, which was more than it ever had to Tuuran.
‘That's what he said. What do you want with him?’
‘And this man was on your ship? And that's where you wish to go?’
‘No, magician, I want to go home.’ Tuuran shook his head and blew air between his teeth. ‘But I'll take my old ship if that's what's on offer.’
‘It is. You will stay close to him. You will be rewarded if you do.’
‘I will, will I? And what's that reward going to look like? Going to slice off my head with that magic knife of yours when I'm no use to you any more like you did with that man who tried to kill my lord grand master?’