‘Yes. Be clear to me now, Quai'Shu’s hsian. Have you come to beg? If so, what does your master offer?’
‘My master hasn't sent me,’ said Jima Hsian. ‘My conclusion is that you would see him fall and we will become vassals to Vespinarr.’
‘Do you seek new employment then, Hsian? How curious. What would you offer?’
‘You know there's only one thing worth either of our considerations.’
‘The dragons, Hsian? Why would I want them?’
‘Not the dragons. The alchemist, Sea Lord. Whoever controls the alchemist controls the dragons. Feyn'Channa, I'm entirely sure, has already told you this.’
‘Yes. So I have. . heard.’ Senxian didn't believe him! Which meant Jima had missed something and all his calculations were wrong or. .
He started to get up, then stopped as Senxian stood up too, shook his head and rang a little bell. ‘Why not meet the man who believes otherwise, Hsian, since you've come such a way.’
A cleverly concealed door opened behind Senxian, one that Jima Hsian hadn't seen. Beyond it stood a slave, a very tall man with skin so pale it looked like moonlight, dressed in grey robes and with tattoos that ran from his cheeks down his neck and vanished into their folds. A slave. Worse — one from a distant realm. The hsian wrinkled his nose.
‘This was once the home of your dragons, Hsian.’ Senxian smiled. ‘They belong to this stone. Perhaps this slave can explain more clearly than I can.’
The slave pulled a weapon from his robe, a cleaver with a gold handle covered in stars. He held it up and bowed. Jima Hsian started to rise from his chair again, quickly this time, pricked with fear. A trick! Betrayed! But the slave was already on his feet and quicker, and the knife came down fast and sharp.
Three little cuts. You. Obey. Me.
But that wasn't what happened, at least not how Jima Hsian remembered it later, and when the slave had explained and made everything perfectly clear, the hsian scoffed at his own childish fright. For Sea Lord Senxian had shown him something he hadn't known before, something that changed a great deal, and he knew now that he'd made the right choice to come here, that he would stay and serve Senxian as he'd once served Quai'Shu. That he'd give him every possible help and, for him at least, everything would end exactly as he desired. At night, as he lay in his new bed with his new life around him, the strangest thought came to him: the white stone walls that glowed, the ones inside the eyrie he now meant to help Senxian to steal, they'd felt under his hands exactly like the stone surface of the Godspike.
46
Tuuran jumped over the side into the churning surf. The water was cold. A wave lifted the boat beside him, bumping him, almost knocking him off his feet. Crazy Mad was beside him. There were a lot of things wrong with Crazy, but how he handled himself in a fight wasn't one of them. Life felt good. It was one of those days for revelling in being alive.
‘I've been here before.’ Crazy Mad's eyes gleamed. They fought through the surf. ‘Not here here. Probably not even this world. But somewhere, leaping out of a boat like this, crashing through the water up onto a sandy beach towards waiting lines of trees. Oh yes. You were there too. You were called Tarn.’
‘Tuuran, slave. Always Tuuran. One name's good enough.’
Crazy Mad ignored him. ‘That was the day the Bloody Judge was born.’
Six months back at sea. Six months away from the choking desert and the mad devices of the Taiytakei and their slaves and the alchemist and his shameful submission. Three months since the grey-robes had come and no one had known why or what they wanted; and no one else had been on the deck after they'd gone and Tuuran had hauled Crazy Mad back up out of the sea, and so no one else had seen him sit bolt upright and stare at Tuuran with eyes that blazed with silver-white fire like the full moon on a cloudless night.
‘I am the Bringer of Endings.’
Three months. The grey dead hadn't been happy not to find what they were looking for but they hadn't come back. Three months and Crazy Mad's eyes had stayed crazy and mad but they hadn't burst into moonlight flames again. Tuuran had quietly decided he must have imagined it. Easier to bury that way.
‘Run, you dogs!’ he roared. ‘Run! Out of the water!’ The sand felt sure beneath his feet. He raced to the beach and stood, naked steel, teeth bared, a roar poised on his tongue. The other sword-slaves were still struggling out of the water. This is what I am. This is what I was made to be. ‘To the trees!’ He ran and Crazy Mad ran beside him, long loping strides. Crazy Mad, still alive. No one had thrown him into the sea or sold him to another ship and now he was a sword, a soldier, and Tuuran was proud of him. Whoever he thought he was, he'd grown into his madness now. He'd made it his.
‘The last time I did this there were soldiers waiting in the trees.’ Crazy grinned. Sometimes he was frightening. His hunger for a fight put even some Adamantine Men to shame.
The second and the third boats were nosing into the shore now. The rest of their little company of sword-slaves and Taiytakei with their bows and their wands and their spiked clubs to keep them all in line. When they'd given Crazy Mad his first sword, Tuuran had seen the wondering in his eyes: how easy might it be to take them down, to cut them apart and seize their ship and be free? But that was what every sword-slave thought when they were given their spear or their blade or whatever weapon they chose.
‘And it happened too — once,’ Tuuran told him, as he'd been told in turn. ‘A whole ship threw off its chains. And the Taiytakei hunted down that ship and every slave who sailed her. They sent a sorcerer who could become the wind and the sea and every one of them died a horrible grisly death, and you may scoff as I once scoffed but I've seen those sorcerous killers with my own eyes now and I've seen what they do. So think it, slave, and then think that you'll have to cross your sword with mine and every other here. Better to take what is freely given.’
And Crazy Mad had thought it, and Tuuran had wondered for the first time in a very long while whether this was a man with whom he might cross swords and lose. But it hadn't come to that, not yet.
He waited for the other sword-slaves and lined them up, pairing them off.
‘Where are we?’ they asked, and Tuuran shrugged. The slave ship sailed where the slave ship sailed. None of them, save perhaps a few of the Taiytakei, knew where they went.
‘None of your concern, slave.’ He shoved a man at Crazy Mad. ‘This is Jris. He's yours.’ He took a step back and looked along the two lines of men. ‘You're slaves. Proud slaves. Slaves with names. You look after each other. What happens to one of you, it happens to the other. If one of you runs, we are all punished. If one of you brings back a new slave, we are all rewarded. We are as one.’ He pointed down the beach. ‘A mile that way, some people are stupid enough to be living. Bad for them, good for us. We want more slaves. Men to work so you don't have to. Women for pleasure, because we get little enough. Or boys, if you prefer, or more men, or girls, or donkeys if you're Amrir here. I don't care. The sick and the old have no place in our ranks. If they fight then take them. We like a fighter. If they fight too hard then put them down. Don't break them unless you have to, but if you do, make sure whatever you break stays broken. Burn, loot, plunder, take whatever you like but you won't get to keep it. What's yours is mine and what's mine is theirs.’ He pointed to the Taiytakei. ‘You fall, you get up. You get hurt, you make like it's nothing, because there's no place here for the wounded and there's two ways back to the sea — on your feet or rolling in the surf to feed the fish. Now run! Run with me, you dogs!’