'MaiChoiro has already confessed. Blood from her neck was running down her shoulder now, turning tacky and starting to itch. She looked about the tiny shelter for something she could use to wrap the wound. 'It is true though: if you have nothing to tell me then I have no use for you, dragon-queen.

Zafir shook with bitter laughter. 'Hear it then.

Lin Feyn listened to Zafirs version with polite patience and found nothing to contradict what the enchantress had said. The rider-slave left bits out but nothing that mattered, simply the things she didnt find interesting enough to remember. The aftermath in Dhar Thosis was there for all to see, those who cared to look. The exact hows and whos were unimportant. Shed never unravel which soldier had done what to whom even if she stayed at it for years, and it simply didnt matter. Slaves werent punished for obedience to their masters orders and soldiers werent punished for what their kwens commanded them to do, and those were the laws by which all Taiytakei lived. She asked anyway. Thoroughness demanded it and sometimes one found the unexpected amid the simple and the mundane.

'Did Tsen try to stop you, after you flew?

Zafir laughed. 'You mean did he send an Elemental Man to kill me? She sounded gleeful but then her voice changed and she became hesitant, a little distant, as if remembering something she preferred to forget. 'Yes. He did.

'Id like to know why he failed. That was the key.

The rider-slave smiled ruefully. With the twitch of a finger Red Lin Feyn called lightning from the shards that crossed her chest. It arced between her fingers. It made a pretty light, she thought.

Zafirs look was scornful. 'Really?

'The Arbiter is not your friend, slave, but nor is she your enemy. Lin Feyn let the lightning fade. 'I will have the truth from every man and woman who comes before me, slave or sea lord. I will treat them all the same and I will not punish a slave who steadfastly obeyed her master, for that is what is expected of a slave. Others might and very probably will, but not the Arbiter of the Dralamut. Do you hear? Thats all the hope I have for you. Why did Baros Tsens killer not stop you?

The rider-slave pursed her lips. Red Lin Feyn saw her weighing up the advantages of keeping her mouth closed no matter what against the trouble she might unleash by speaking of it. 'He tried. She shook her head. 'The detail doesnt matter. The Watcher. He was there. He heard Baros Tsen and MaiChoiro, every word, and he made that much clear to me. But who was I to disobey my master? And the Watcher was not my master. She spoke with a deep and bitter disdain, took a long breath, paused and waited, weighing things again, then snorted contemptuously. 'I dont believe in your hope or your mercy, but heres the thing you want to know: he came to kill me, and so Diamond Eye stamped him into the ground, and as it happened I saw him try to change and I saw him fail. Diamond Eye made his magic not work and the killer knew how it might go before he came for me. I saw that in him. He was afraid of my dragon. They all are. Theyd kill me if they could because of that fear and so I sleep where I do and Diamond Eye watches over me. Thats why your killers couldnt stop me putting a knife to you. They were supposed to, werent they? Thats what theyre for?

Red Lin Feyn kept her face perfectly calm. 'Do you believe Baros Tsen sent him?

The rider-slave shrugged. Lin Feyn watched her face, watched the play of emotion there, the understanding. Yes, she knew that Tsen had never meant her to burn Dhar Thosis. Shed done it anyway. That was what condemned her.

Red Lin Feyn left then and continued her walk until shed trod the length of the eyrie walls and then went back to her gondola to dress the wound that the dragon-slave had given her, shooing away the killers whenever they came close and banning them from her presence. Alone, she looked up at the carved silver dragons over what had once been MaiChoiro Kwens bed and at the jade and emerald lions that frolicked around them, trying to put it all together. The rider-slave was an enigma of self-destruction but her story of the killer . . . And a killer had heard Chay-Liangs claims and yet she had not.

When she found it was dawn and that she was still awake, she dressed as the Arbiter and summoned the alchemist. He had nothing useful to add over the burning of Dhar Thosis but something important had changed in the night. She could read it from him. A suspicion proven true. Evidence uncovered. Something very wrong. Lin Feyn let him talk about Tsen for a while and then asked the questions that actually mattered, about dragons and alchemists and Elemental Men. When she was done with him, she closed the doors to her court and turned to the killers who loitered in the air around her.

'So dragons make you weak then, do they? They make you useless.

They didnt answer, but the tone of their silence gave them away.

In a blistering fury Zafir dressed for war. She clutched at the circlet around her head. Rage had been building from the day shed come back from Dhar Thosis and now it needed release. Something. Anything. The sun was setting and dragons didnt like to fly at night and shed already taken Diamond Eye to hunt today but it wasnt enough and she needed to fly again. Needed it. The infernal enchanted gla.s.s around her head gnawed at her. The witch-Arbiter had caged her and she couldnt stand it. When there was no hope any more then she would take the Arbiter in Diamond Eyes claws, their lives wrapped together tight as wet silk. But not yet.

Find the dragon. The one that is far. Go!

Diamond Eye understood. She felt him surge with glee as he launched himself from the eyrie rim. He was fast in this realm, faster than hed ever been in the world from which theyd come.

Tuuran gaped as the hatchling stared at him across the darkness and opened its mouth. b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous, this was. With his axes and his shield and the dragon-scale armour of an Adamantine Man, he might have had a go at a hatchling. Oh, and also not being in a cage would have helped. As things were, there wasnt much he could do. He lurched to grab one of the other slaves and use him as a shield against the flames and then stopped. That wouldnt do him any good either.

The dragon had stopped too. Its mouth hung open, fire still gathered in its throat.

'Come on then, dragon! Do it!

Other slaves were waking. Screaming. Shouting. For another long second the hatchling didnt move, then it turned suddenly away and spread its wings and no fire came after all.

You are lucky, little one. She comes for you.

Diamond Eye was burning hot. The heat of him reached through the saddle. It scorched the air Zafir breathed and warmed her even through the dragon-scale of her armour. How the Elemental Men behind her werent being cooked alive she didnt know and didnt care. The hatchling was close, that was what mattered. The sun had set behind them, the moon and darkness had risen, but Bellepheross dragon was near.

Other things were near too. Diamond Eye sensed them but he had no idea what they were. Strange colossal things. Old things that tried to reach through the fog of alchemy that ruined every thought to touch some ancient memory. Shed felt him like this in Dhar Thosis when the Adamantine Man and his strange little friend had come and stood before her. The other one. In flashes now and then, Diamond Eye thought he knew him.

The hatchling. She had to keep reminding him why he was here. Find it and kill it.

Obediently Diamond Eye sharpened his eyes. He tucked in his wings and arrowed for the ground.

There was no warning when the second dragon came. Tuuran was still staring at the s.p.a.ce where the hatchling had been when the monster dropped out of the sky like a fallen star and hit the ground with a crash that shook the earth, wings stretched out. Instinct made Tuuran throw himself flat because every Adamantine Man knew what came next from those flared-out wings. As the dragon shrieked and the ground quivered, the wind picked up man and beast alike and threw them aside. Those slaves still lying down rolled and tumbled, but the ones whod stood up to scream at the sight of the little dragon now flew like dolls, smashed into the bars of their cages, shattering man and wood alike. Tuuran lay still, listening to his bones and his bruises before he even tried to move, waiting to see what was broken and what the dragon would do. Feed, he supposed, but it didnt. It jumped to the edge of the abyss and dived, shrieking challenges into the depthless darkness.

A lot of bruises. No broken bones. And just for a bit, no dragons.

Best be getting on then, because at least one of them would surely come back. He picked up one of the shattered wooden staves that had once been part of his cage and looked at it. Sheared off nice and sharp. A good enough spear in a pinch.

Zafir glimpsed the hatchling. Its flesh wasnt the same as the hatchling shed seen on the slave ship that had taken her from Fury-mouth but Diamond Eye knew its soul. You.

The hatchling knew her too. It filled with an eager hunger, the thrill of the chase.

You gave me the Statue Plague. I will kill you.

She felt the hatchling laugh at her challenge and then caught the flash of a face as Diamond Eye smashed into the ground and the hatchling darted away. The Adamantine Man. The one from Dhar Thosis. He was here. The hatchlings thoughts surged with anger. Diamond Eye powered into the air again, hurling himself after the other dragon. He revelled in her glee, her hunger. The hatchling had given itself away.

And yet . . . a moment of hesitation. Only a moment, but as she thought of the Adamantine Man and what hed meant, of the one great thing hed done for her, she wondered: should she let the hatchling go? Should she find the Adamantine Man instead? He was a slave here. A favour returned . . .

The hatchling threw itself into the abyss. Zafir swore and threw the Adamantine Man aside, forgotten for now but not for ever. The hatchling had tried to ruin her and then it had tried to kill her, and she would have a price in blood for that. The Adamantine Man could look after his own skin a while longer. She could come back another time.

Kill my flesh and I will return again.

Then I will find you again and I will force the potions of my alchemists down your throat!

The hatchling dived deeper into the crack in the earth. Zafir felt its rage, how it burned to turn on her and tear her to shreds and scatter her far and wide, and she threw its fury straight back, tenfold stronger. Diamond Eye screamed in its wake, pouring flame to light their way. Fire streamed over her, scorching the harness, washing over the gold-gla.s.s of her visor, her helm, her armour, the heat held back by the dragon-scale underneath. The abyss went on, bottomless, all the way to Xibaiya, and Diamond Eye heard the distant ghosts of the dead deep beneath the earth yet strangely close and so Zafir heard them too. Steps and terraces flashed past, etched into the chasms sides, some lit by cl.u.s.ters of torches, others barren and empty. The air grew thick. Zafirs ears popped and clicked.

We all come back. One after another, we awaken.

The chasm narrowed. She had no idea how deep they were. Three miles? Four? The air was as thick as treacle, far beneath the sands of the desert and close to something old and terrible, but Diamond Eye was a dragon as Zafir was a dragon-queen, slaves to hunger and fury, strangers to caution and fear. A stone arch whistled past. The hatchling flared its wings to check its fall and shot sideways. Zafir felt her bones bend as Diamond Eye followed. Another arch and then another, and then they were in a maze of them where the chasm walls narrowed further still. Diamond Eyes wing clipped one. His lashing tail smashed against another, using it to lever himself into a turn, shattering the stone so it fell in colossal pieces the size of the dragon itself. The hatchling darted and wove between them. Slower than the monster war-dragon she rode but nimble.

Little one, I am not for you today.

The force of the wind pulled and tugged at her. The roar of it screamed in her ears. They were all she knew amid the hunger and the fury and the inexhaustible raging need. Diamond Eye was holding back. She felt it. Holding back to spare her own fragile bones. And then the dragon abruptly slowed and the hatchling pulled away and vanished into the darkness, and Zafir found the tugging and pulling and the roar in her ears was more than the wind. An Elemental Man was wrapped around her, one arm locked about her chest, the other tearing at her head, screaming at her to stop.

'Enough, slave! Enough!

They were afraid. Truly, properly afraid.

Confusion and chaos were always an escaping slaves best friends, Tuuran reckoned, and there was certainly plenty of that. Many in the camp had seen the dragon, and those who hadnt only hadnt because theyd been sleeping. The whole place had been knocked flat by the storm wind of its landing. Men reeled everywhere, lying on the ground, running this way and that, the way men always did when a dragon came.

But not him. He ran a few paces and stopped. The dragon had gone over the edge of the abyss. Dull glimmers of flame lit up the far cliff, quickly diminishing. And last hed heard, that was where Crazy had gone and so that was where he was going too but not before he had a few things to take with him, and so he ran first into the heart of the camp, not far away. The first slaver he saw looked at him blankly, all the wits driven from him. Tuuran punched him in the gut. As the slaver doubled over, Tuuran took his spear and pinned him with it into the dirt. It wasnt much of a camp and it didnt take him long to find the baggage the slavers had carried on their humpbacked horses from Dhar Thosis. It was all piled together, everything theyd looted. His axe was right there in front of him, and the gold-gla.s.s shield too. With those back in his hands, he felt whole again.

Right then. He turned back to the abyss. Crazy Mad was down there, so they said, and so that was where he was going because Crazy, whoever he was, whatever he was, was his friend, and here and now the only one he had; but before he did that there were a couple of other little scores he fancied he might settle. As chaos gripped them all, he ran through the ruin of the camp like a whirlwind, smashing the slave pens that werent already broken, screamed in the faces of terrified slavers. They all ran. They knew what was good for them. He let them. All of them but one.

'h.e.l.lo, Skinny, he said, when he found him. Skinny turned to run, but that wasnt going to do him any good. Tuuran threw him down, and he begged and pleaded and wept but not for long because Tuuran was past any forgiveness. 'Told you youd be the first, you piece of camel s.h.i.t. Even if strictly he wasnt because of the slaver hed stuck with his makeshift spear. First in thought. Something like that. Flame, did it matter?

Tuuran left Skinny in the sand, blood dripping off his axe just the way it should. Slaves and slavers were scattering like leaves in a storm. Theyd seen a dragon. Not the little one theyd seen before but a proper monster of nightmare stories, the real thing. They werent men any more, any of them, just prey. Small screaming prey and they knew it.

He pa.s.sed them by, laughing at their fear until he found the steps carved into the cliffs that would take him into the abyss of the Queverra, and down he went.

28.

Dark Little Secrets The setting sun blazed through the windows of MaiChoiros gondola, washing the etched silver walls the colour of burnished copper. Red Lin Feyn sat in the Arbiters throne. The Elemental Men were waiting for her, hovering in the air as light or wind or shadows. The one theyd chosen to speak for them today knelt at her feet, a symbolic pretence of servitude though they all knew it didnt work that way. With a little sigh, Lin Feyn folded her hands across her lap.

'MaiChoiro Kwen confesses and both the rider-slave and the enchantress tell much the same story. She wished she could pace up and down and walk around the backs of the killers. 'Baros Tsen is dead and unable to defend himself. It seems very easy, doesnt it? Her glance flickered up and shifted between the Elemental Men wafting around her. She couldnt see them but she could feel they were there. Another day to be filled with questions, and she was beginning to think that the answers she wanted werent here to be found. She let out a second little sigh. Pacing helped her think didnt it help everyone do that? but she was what she was and so she forced herself to be still. Let the killers around her squirm. 'Where is Shrin Chrias Kwen?

The kneeling Elemental Man bowed his head. 'We continue our search, lady. He has hidden himself well.

'And Shonda? Do I have to send you looking for him too?

'Gla.s.ships left Vespinarr two days ago, lady. He will be here in the morning.

Red Lin Feyn leaned forward in her throne. She stretched down and touched the killers hair. 'Why do you fear these dragons so?

The killer bowed again. There were at least seven other Elemental Men around her, and it crossed her mind that if they ever had a secret they all wished to hide, theyd have no difficulty.

'They are monsters, the killer said. 'Look at what even one has done.

She made sure not to let her exasperation show. 'Baros Tsen TVarr sent one of you to stop the dragon-rider. He did not have to kill the monster, only the rider. Why did he fail, killer?

The Elemental Man bowed his head further. 'I have heard the testimony of the rider-slave as you related it, lady. I know no more.

A lie. She had him. She lifted one arm from her chair and crooked a finger, beckoning him closer. Closer and closer, shuffling on his knees until he knelt right at her feet. She cupped his cheek with her hand. He would not lie to her now. 'Killer, what do you know that you have not told me? Why do you fear them so? Why did you bring them here?

'They are monsters . . . he began, but they were long past that answer. Her hand didnt move but a tiny puff of dark smoke rose from each of her fingers. A whiff of the storm-dark. They all had it inside them.

'I will unmake you, killer, if you lie to me again, she said.

He held her eyes then rose and stepped back, silent, breaking the pretence, exposing the lie of that false obedience. A dark scar blemished his cheek where her hand had touched him. It would never heal. For a moment she thought hed turn and walk away, and if he did then shed do the same. Shed return to the Dralamut and the killers could clean up their own mess as they saw fit without her. It seemed an inextricable part of this that the killers had brought the dragons to TakeiTarr in the first place.

'I exist for a reason, she whispered. 'Your kind demand that I exist. You cannot walk away from that, killer.

He bowed his head and then met her eye again. 'The dragons devour the essence of the world, lady.

She waited for more.

'There are no sorcerers in the dragon-realms. Its magic is almost gone. The dragons have consumed it. They will do the same here. In time there will be no more Elemental Men, no enchanters, no sorceresses, no navigators. Lady, the great dragon drains the thread and weave of the world around it. We cannot stand before it except as ordinary men.

'Then why did you bring them here in the first place? A horrified part of Lin Feyns mind began to digest what the killer had told her and all that it implied. The rest of her kept the killer pinned where he was while she had him.

'Sea Lord QuaiShu brought the dragons to TakeiTarr, lady. Not us.

'You helped him.

'And that is not your concern, lady.

Lin Feyn blinked. Talking back to an Arbiter? Well if they wouldnt obey the rules then neither would she. She stood up and began to pace. 'It seems unwise, killer, to keep a creature that devours arcane energies aboard a device that depends upon such energies to exist while inexplicably levitating above a storm that destroys everything it touches. But you didnt think it mattered? You didnt think it was significant enough to mention?

'It was not important to your purpose, lady.

'Deemed so by whom? She waited for an answer. When she received only silence, Lin Feyn sat back in her crystal throne, opened her arms wide and cast her eyes around the gondola. 'Youre afraid. All of you, and of something beyond these dragons. You cant hide that. No answer. 'I require Shrin Chrias Kwen and the hatchling dragon that escaped.

The Elemental Man with the scarred cheek bowed. 'We are looking, lady.

'Do better. She leaned towards them all. 'Go to your masters. I require an answer as to why they saw fit to allow Sea Lord QuaiShu to purchase two of their disciples when such a thing is without precedent. Her eyes shone with ire. 'There was a slave from the dragon-lands who worked a while with the alchemist. He was in Dhar Thosis when it burned. He spoke with the rider-slave there. Find him. There a next-to-impossible task. She waved them away. They wouldnt leave her entirely, but she waited until the gondola was empty and quiet, awash with evening light. It was late and she should retire and consider what shed heard through the day and maybe even sleep for once, but she couldnt, not now.

Lin Feyn yawned and blinked a few times, putting on a show for the two Elemental Men who lurked as wisps of air nearby, then opened the gondolas ramp and let the wind buffet her. She looked for the dragon but it had gone and hadnt yet returned, so she looked at the s.p.a.ce where it habitually perched anyway and paused. Just in that moment she thought she understood why no one had found the courage to put the dragon and its rider down. I might need an ally. I no longer trust the killers who claim to serve me. That must be how it is for a sea lord, always. And so I keep close that which I might use against my enemies and never throw it away. Was that it? She smiled to herself. Perhaps. But am I falling into that same trap?

She crossed the dragon yard. The killers were nearby. One would waft ahead of her and one behind. To keep her safe from lesser a.s.sa.s.sins, or so they said, but lately shed started to wonder. At the alchemists study she stopped abruptly and opened the iron door, walked through and shut it behind her in a moment. Iron. A bar to the killers. A place where they couldnt reach her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling for any wisp of wind that might have crept in behind her and sensing none, finding only the stale smell of old fire, of a hundred burned things she didnt know and, overpowering all else, the strong scent of cloves and of something dead.

Lin Feyn waited a moment, pressed against the door until she felt it quiver. Shed taken them by surprise and stranded her killers outside. She let out the tiniest groan of relief. She would stay here, exactly here.

'Enchantress Chay-Liang, you wished to show me something?

In the depths of the Queverra the dragon Silence felt the great dragon that hunted it recede. It waited a long time and, while it did, felt at the other things that existed around it. A rift in the earth, depths still far beneath it that touched the lands of the dead in Xibaiya. The other little one, the one who carried the Black Moon within him, circling with single-minded purpose downward. The hatchling watched them all, dragon and little one and the distant paths to other worlds, its attention flitting from one to the other to the next, wondering. Each one tempting it to follow to see where they would lead.

It chose the dragon-queen. And the little ones who shifted their forms, touched with a splinter of the dead G.o.ddess they were something new. And the little one above, the Adamantine Man Tuuran, who wasnt afraid, one of those splinter-touched Elemental Men had once sent him to watch over the echo of the Black Moon. Why?

It was too tempting to resist. When the dragon Diamond Eye was long gone, Silence turned its thoughts from the echo of the Black Moon toiling towards Xibaiya and flew in the great dragons wake, back towards the G.o.dspike.

Red Lin Feyn watched the alchemist and the enchantress drag a corpse across the room and prop it in front of her. This was, so they said, the slave who had poisoned Chay-Liang and gone after the dragon-rider with a bladeless knife. The alchemist tipped back the dead mans head and forced open his mouth. Chay-Liang tipped a thimble of something like tar into the corpses mouth. The smell of cloves grew stronger.

'What are you doing, enchantress? she asked, before something happened that made it too late for all of them. Chay-Liang shot her a fearful look but it was the alchemist who answered.

'He will talk now. Ask him your questions, Lady Arbiter.

'Hes dead, alchemist.

'And yet he will still talk.

For a long time Lin Feyn said nothing. They were offering her sorcery, the forbidden magics of Abraxi and the Crimson Sunburst. The Elemental Men existed to hunt down the people who practised such abominations and end them, and two of her killers were standing right outside the door. 'Chay-Liang, do you understand the consequences of what you are doing? Truly? Do you?

'Its my blood, whispered the alchemist.

Lin Feyn shook her head. 'Enchantress, I asked you a question. If you do this, do you understand what the consequences may be?