His eyes flicked to Crazy Mad. Took a long hard look. Crazy looked like he'd been struck by lightning, and whatever he did now, all of them would answer for it. Even before the grey-robes finished climbing aboard, Tuuran was alongside him, one arm wrapped tight around him, too tight, turning him away from the ship and towards the distant shore, away from these unwanted strangers. Whoever they were they weren't night-skins, so that made them slaves, and slaves had no place coming aboard a slaving galley unless it was to be put in chains and sold.
‘I see that look and I know what it is because sometimes I have it too. One dissents, all are punished. You know this, Crazy Mad.’
‘I have a name.’
‘Yes. I keep hearing that. People ask about one slave or another, I tell them they're wasting their time. Slaves don't have names. But that's not really true. Turns out some slaves do have names after all. They keep them inside but they keep them nevertheless. They hold them tight and sometimes they let them out when they shouldn't. I have a name. I am Tuuran. And I'll hear yours too if you can make up your mind which one it is. But not now!’ He let his arm loosen and risked a glance over his shoulder. The grey-robes were standing quietly on the deck behind the Taiytakei who'd brought them while he argued with the galley captain. ‘So tell me, slave who has too many names and a mark on his leg, who are these men in grey and what do they want? Because it's you they're here for, isn't it?’
Crazy Mad struggled but Tuuran was by far the stronger and his grip was good and tight. ‘One dissents, all are punished. Never quite got that through your thick head. What are these men in grey?’
Crazy hissed at him, ‘Warlocks. Death-mages. Witch doctors. Necromancers! What other name do you need?’
‘Where I come from there are alchemists and there are blood-mages. Alchemists are good. Blood-mages are evil and wicked and villainous. Or that's what I thought. I take it these are your blood-mages then?’ Tuuran let him go.
Crazy Mad shoved him away. ‘Stick it, Tuuran. You vanish for half a year; you come back; you bring them with you? I'll kill you! But not until I've done for them first!’
The grey-robes were filing into the cabins at the back of the galley. Somehow Crazy Mad had the knife out of Tuuran's belt. It was slickly done. Tuuran had to acknowledge that, even as he caught Crazy's arm, spun him around and slammed his elbow into the back of his head, dazing him enough to grab him and drag him away, kicking and swearing.
‘This one's forgotten his manners,’ he shouted at the Taiytakei guards on the deck. ‘A couple of days in the bilges and a month back on the oars.’ He took back his knife and hauled Crazy Mad to his feet. A couple of days in the bilges or as long as it took for the grey-robes to go away. But as he turned, there they were, the three of them with their hoods drawn back so Tuuran could see their shaven heads and their faces as pale as moonlight and the tattoos that started on their cheeks and ran down their necks and vanished under their robes. Symbols. Sigils. Meaningless to him, but as sure as he knew anything the same writing he'd seen on the pillar in Vespinarr, the same as on the dead slave from the eyrie, the same as on Crazy Mad's leg.
Soldiers stood beside them as well as the Taiytakei galley master in his coloured cloak, tattered and stained by so many months at sea. Tuuran saw the grey-robes and saw their smiles and then Crazy Mad thrashed his arms, wild-eyed, and Tuuran knew that look because it was the same look he'd had only just a few moments ago. A knife! Give me a knife! This time Tuuran was ready. As Crazy pulled the knife free again, Tuuran seized his wrist. They wrestled together, Crazy Mad screaming, Tuuran bawling in his face, ‘We'll not all suffer just for you, you mad bastard!’ And every shout drew more attention to them both and he needed to get this idiot out of sight, out of the way, because he knew they were here for Crazy, and Crazy Mad knew it too, only what he didn't know were all the things Tuuran had seen in his six months away. Run at them with a knife, will you? Flame-addled idiot! And it had to matter, didn't it, because this was what the Watcher had sent him to do, and if they took Crazy away to a place where he couldn't follow, he would never go home. Never!
The tallest of the three grey-robes swept towards them with contempt. His fingers curled around the hilt of his own knife, clutched with a religious reverence. Crazy Mad screamed. He and Tuuran lurched toward the side of the galley and whatever Crazy howled, Tuuran roared louder so no one would hear: ‘Stupid slave! Take us all with you, will you?’ The Taiytakei slavers had their wands drawn, tense and ready. ‘One slave turns, all slaves die!’ Crazy Mad's eyes did a frenzied dance around the galley, a wild animal looking for a way out, but Tuuran offered him none. ‘And I. . am not dying. . for you!’
They hit the rail as the galley rolled and it was the easiest thing in the world to lower his hip and dump Crazy Mad over the side and watch him fall into the sea. He sank, and for a few seconds Tuuran stared after him but he didn't come back up again. When Tuuran turned, there was the grey-robe, the tall one, standing right in front of him with his knife. A strange blade, more of a cleaver than a dagger, with a golden hilt and patterns in the sharpened steel that swirled before Tuuran's eyes.
They stared each other down and then Tuuran pushed the grey-robe harshly aside. ‘Piss off.’ They were only slaves, after all.
He wondered what else he could have done. And whether Crazy Mad could swim.
35
‘Grand Master Alchemist. A private word, if you please?’
Nastria gave him a spherical glass bottle, stoppered and sealed with wax. It fitted nicely into the palm of his hand and it was filled with liquid silver. The knight-marshal had no idea, of course. There was nothing curious about what the bottle contained, but what was intriguing was how it had come to be in the knight-marshal's hands. It was a long journey home though and there would be plenty of time to ponder and plenty of comfortable inns and fine wine to help him think and deadQueen Aliphera would be there, watching over his shoulder, keeping him company.
He left the Veid Palace the next morning. He borrowed a carriage from the Viper and took a handful of soldiers for an escort while he was at it because last he'd heard there were snakes on the road to Farakkan, and so he'd need them. He tucked the knight-marshal's bottle under his seat, carefully packed in sand.
In the middle of nowhere the carriage stopped. A man made of rushing air tore open the door. He had a knife and blood glistened on its blade. There were bodies on the ground outside. Thousands of them, all blackened and burned. He opened his mouth to scream, but before he could, the knife flashed across his throat and his blood poured out of him and for some reason it wouldn't stop but just kept coming, more and more and more, and when he looked up the sky was filled with dragons. ‘All but one are small. Freshly hatched from the egg, or so the alchemist says. There were three full grown beasts. The sorcerers took two, one for each of them. The third is ours.’