'The rest of them are waiting for doll-woman to come back. Thats when theyll do it. Doll-woman? Yes, doll-woman because Arbiter smacked a little too much of speaker, and because she painted her face and kept it so absurdly still she looked like a doll, and because Zafir hated her for the gold-gla.s.s band around her head, and calling her doll-woman made her seem small and stupid.

She got up and tapped Diamond Eye on the foot. 'Come on. Let me up. He turned his head and looked down at her, and she thought she caught a flicker of resentment. 'I wont be long. I need to check the harnesses.

Diamond Eye shifted and lowered his shoulders and neck. Zafir shinned up the legbreaker rope onto his back. The Elemental Men who flew with her had taken to buckling themselves into the harnesses these days not that they particularly needed to, but now and then she flew Diamond Eye in tight loops and rolls and spins for the sheer fun of it. When they didnt buckle themselves in, she invariably threw them off. She could feel Diamond Eye in her thoughts too, felt his amus.e.m.e.nt and smiled, riding the memories beside him. 'I told them a dragon was a dragon and they could fly you without me if they liked to try. So theyd taken to using the harnesses. It was a quiet and subtle victory. Strapped to Diamond Eyes back, they couldnt shift form, and when the time came shed make the most of that: chasing the hatchling into the Queverra abyss, filled with fury and hunger, shed understood that Diamond Eye could turn and dive and climb and loop with force enough to break her in two. He held back to keep from snapping her bones, that was all.

She finished checking the harnesses. The Elemental Men never bothered. She supposed they didnt mind too much if she sabotaged them because if they fell off so what? But they never would. Each morning she checked with meticulous care. They were perfect and tight and would stay that way.

Zafir slid back down the legbreaker to the eyrie rim and sat against Diamond Eyes claws. She wasnt sure what shed do when the doll-woman returned. Maybe nothing. 'Or maybe well fly together for one last time and bring that gla.s.ship down and burn her to ash, and Ill push you to my limits or yours, whichever we find first. And the killers will be trapped in their perfect harnesses, unable to shift away, and their bones will snap like twigs. She snapped her fingers. She could feel Diamond Eye coursing through her thoughts, adding a savage edge all of his own. 'Then well fly away, far far away where theyll never find us. She sighed. Would she, if she could? She honestly didnt know but it didnt matter anyway. The gold-gla.s.s crown around her head meant she could only dream.

Myst and Onyx came hurrying along the top of the wall, tunics flapping in the wind, clutching their bronze trays. Zafir got up and left Diamond Eye to the G.o.dspike. Yes, shed tear the doll-woman out of the sky, and then the circlet would kill her and Diamond Eye would shatter them all and burn them, everything, all of it, as much as he could before they brought him down. Shed been teaching him that. No plunging after his fallen mistress to sit mute beside her corpse until another rider led him away, not this time. No. Rage. Unfettered rage, the thing dragons did best. Shed die in fire and fury as a dragon-queen should. There would be nothing left of her to dangle by a foot from a rope, for them to mock with their jeering scorn, not like theyd done to Tsen. She almost felt sorry for him for that.

The wind howled across the desert sky. Zafir went to help her slaves but they shied away. She had no idea how they managed to balance themselves and carry their trays and never drop anything in the teeth of all that wind but they always did. They shooed her off as if mortally offended at the suggestion they couldnt manage on their own. Zafir let them. She could understand that. I need no ones help. She crawled back into her shelter instead and sat, waiting, legs crossed. Onyx shuffled in on her knees and bowed and offered a bowl of steamed stuffed dumplings. Zafir had tried a few times to have them all sit and break their night fast together but Onyx simply refused and Myst looked as though shed rather take a running jump off the edge of the eyrie. The way they sat mute and watched her while she ate set her teeth on edge so she simply ate as quickly as she could, stuffing dumplings in one after the other and washing them down with a jug of fresh milk. It left her feeling bloated.

'Mistress, Lord Shonda is out in the dragon yard, whispered Myst.

Zafir pursed her lips. Shonda of Vespinarr. She had to wonder about him, whether there was some way to use him. Whether their interests could somehow align. The doll-woman had trapped him here and he hated it. Zafir had seen him strutting about in his electrum feather robes with his enchanters around him to keep the wind from ruffling them. He hadnt ever come close to Diamond Eye. She wasnt sure whether she thought more or less of him for that. Most men came, sooner or later. Most men had to test themselves against their fear and most were found wanting. Or maybe what had happened the last time had been enough for him, when hed had one of his soldiers throw lightning in Diamond Eyes face and the dragon had swatted the man off the eyrie wall. Diamond Eye certainly hadnt forgotten. Presumably Shonda hadnt forgotten either.

She crawled back out of the shelter, looked over the top of the wall and there he was, walking with a measured purpose around the yard with MaiChoiro Kwen at his side and four enchanters around them holding up their gold-gla.s.s screens. A pair of lesser kwens followed behind. Zafir watched for a while. Every now and then MaiChoiro would point to a spot in the dragon yard and one of the kwens would run, check he had the right place, then make a mark with a piece of charcoal. From up on the wall Zafir couldnt make out what the marks might mean, whether they were numbers or letters or . . .

Abruptly Shonda stopped and looked straight at her, as if suddenly aware of being watched. Zafir looked back. He held her eye for ten long heartbeats, and with that look she felt he was telling her that they were the same, that neither of them could ever bend or break for another, that it simply wasnt in the way they were made. She thought he almost smiled at her. And then he turned away and raised his arm and tapped it, and she understood exactly what he meant. I am no slave.

'He means to leave, murmured Zafir.

She was good to the killers that morning. She waited until they were strapped in tight, let Diamond Eye climb until the air was so thin it made her gasp, and then dive, wings tucked in so the wind tore into her like a hundred furious fists. Before they took to wearing their harnesses the wind of a dive like this would tear the Elemental Men off Diamond Eyes back and blow them away like leaves. One day shed let Diamond Eye fall like he really could, the way they used to dive together off the Great Cliff and even off the top of the Pinnacles, like a spear straight down at the ground, and the killers on his back, strapped in tight and unable to escape, would be ripped to pieces by the wind. There were tricks to riding a dragon through a dive like that, tricks they couldnt possibly know.

But not today. Today she was gentle. Diamond Eye flared his wings, crushing the breath out of her, and landed in the dunes, blowing a great cloud of sand into the air. Zafir looked at the faces behind her and saw the strain in them. They came every day, not the same killers each time, but every day in every face she saw the same. They were afraid of her dragon and afraid of what it might be, just as they should be.

The Vespinese camp out in the desert lay outside the shadow of the storm-dark. They kept a herd of bison here, all of them withering and dying in the sun. Zafir let Diamond Eye loose to do as he pleased. The bison stampeded, snorting their terror while the dragon gave gleeful chase. He caught them with ease, flipped them onto their backs with a flick of a talon, catapulted them into the air with a twitch of his tail or bowled them over with the wind from a flap of his wings. Once hed scattered the herd, he picked a few to kill. He played with them more than he ate. These last few days hed grown wasteful and vicious, bored and tense, swayed by Zafirs moods while she waited for the doll-woman to return. Her own thoughts wandered as the dragon lunged and danced and dived. She looked long and hard back up at the storm-dark. Gla.s.ships had been gathering before she left, Vespinese gla.s.ships. She wondered what it meant.

When the dragon was sated, she let him rest. 'It makes them bad-tempered to fly after theyve eaten. Shed said that to the Elemental Men once and theyd never told her she was a liar even though she was. Dragons didnt care; it was simply that she liked to be down here for a time, out of the wind, basking in the desert heat and relishing the thick strong air. She sat beside her dragon and dozed a little while as the sun crept higher, and when the warmth became stifling, she flew him in a long gentle circuit of the storm-dark. She came back to the camp to let him feed a second time if he wanted, but he didnt seem interested. He kept staring up at the sky, and so she let him sit and unstrapped herself and lay across his shoulders, dreaming dreams of what shed do to the doll-woman if the circlet around her head were to suddenly fall away, wondering how to fill the long hours of the afternoon. Sometimes she laid her armour aside and simply sat beside him and stared at the same things as he did: at the swirling storm-dark and the G.o.dspike towering to the top of the sky. Once she flew him up to it to see if he could cling to it with his claws, but the stone offered no purchase. Another time, because of something she remembered from long ago, she flew him underneath the storm-dark to the base of the G.o.dspike. Shed dismounted and touched it herself, and it had seemed to her that it was the same stone as the eyrie, the same white stone that ran through and beneath the Pinnacles, riddled with archways, whose soft light reflected the wax and wane of the sun and the moon and the pa.s.sing of the stars, whose gateways supposedly opened to other worlds now and then when no one was there to see.

Maybe that again today. A slight memory of home.

A sharp cry snapped her back to the present. She glanced at the killers and followed their eyes up. A swarm of gla.s.ships was drifting over the edge of the storm-dark and heading west, bright sparks of light in the afternoon sun. There must have been almost fifty of them, and Diamond Eye had gone very still. One of the killers jumped off Diamond Eyes back and turned into the wind before he hit the ground. Interesting, she thought, then turned herself so she could see the gla.s.ships without having to crane her neck. She settled back to watch.

The killer returned a few minutes later and the second Elemental Man jumped to join him on the ground. Zafir yawned. They obviously didnt want her to know what they were saying and equally obviously didnt realise that Diamond Eye, mute and dulled as he was, still picked up the impressions of their thoughts. If she concentrated hard, he could show them to her. Another little secret she kept to herself. She slid down and walked casually towards them, straining to pick up the emotions and images Diamond Eye pulled from their minds. Anxiety. The gla.s.ships. A silver gondola. Shonda, surprise, anger. Uncertainty. An image of gondolas sitting in the dragon yard, ramps open with dead men scattered around them. Vespinese soldiers. By the time she was close enough for them to hear, she knew shed been right. Shonda had decided to leave and he hadnt asked politely.

She paused, wondering. I am no slave. That last little jibe left her with a hunger to make him humble. She raised her visor and shouted at the killers, 'Would you like me to get him back for you?

The Elemental Men turned to look as she carried on towards them. Zafir reached for what Diamond Eye saw in their thoughts. They couldnt enter a gondola once it was sealed. Its walls were proof against them. Not her concern. Vespinarr. They couldnt stop a gla.s.ship. Impatience. Concern for the Arbiters return. Failure in their duty. Suspicion. All this as she walked towards them, head c.o.c.ked, glancing back now and then at Diamond Eye, and it amazed her how it took them so long to answer. She leaned towards them and smiled.

'Show me which gondola is his and Diamond Eye will pluck it off its chains as you or I might pluck an apple off a tree.

They vanished, both of them, appeared again far away and conferred. Dislike. Mistrust. But by then shed already made up her mind. She turned back to Diamond Eye without waiting for their answer, walking briskly, carefree. Theyd confer until the gla.s.ships were lost to sight. But however far they went, Diamond Eye would catch them. Brinkmanship with the Elemental Men? The Taiytakei remained largely a mystery but she knew enough about how they worked to admire Shonda for that. Maybe it was his way of facing down a dragon. A different dragon but no less lethal.

She reached Diamond Eye and climbed onto his back. She was Zafir, dragon-queen, speaker of the nine realms, and she would not wait to be told what these killers would or would not permit. They would either stop her or they wouldnt. Two alone might not be able to bring her down but they could go squealing back to the eyrie and come after her in numbers and catch her easily enough another thing learned from chasing that hatchling and they might not be able to touch her up in the sky on Diamond Eyes back but she couldnt sit in the saddle for ever.

But she could do this.

She willed Diamond Eye to the sky. He reared up, stretched and started to run, wings throwing up a storm of sand in his wake. He powered into the air, crushing her with the strength of every beat as he drove after the drifting gla.s.ships. He had a hunger to him here were prey worthy of a hunter and she wondered at how serene they seemed, hanging in the sky, spinning slowly. She had no idea which one was Shondas. They were all silver, all the same. Hed be in the middle somewhere if he had any sense, but maybe he didnt. He hadnt seen Dhar Thosis.

The golden rim of the nearest gla.s.ship began to glow as she closed, dim at first and then brighter and brighter. A lightning cannon readying to fire. Then another and another and another. Diamond Eye saw them too. Hed felt them in Dhar Thosis, how they hurt. Theyd brought him down with one of those. The urge to strike and smash and let them see what happened when they tried to sting washed over her, but in Dhar Thosis shed fought the sea lords gla.s.ships a handful at a time. There were too many here.

We cant win this.

And though a large part of her didnt much care, for it was certainly a far better end than hanging, it turned out there was still a part of her that did.

She turned Diamond Eye away, reluctant and resentful. Maybe the Elemental Men felt it too, that the gla.s.ships were too many for her. Maybe that was why they hadnt stopped her. Or maybe, like her, they were simply watching and waiting to see what would happen.

41.

Bronzehand The road that ran beside the Jokun gorge had been carved out of the sheer cliffs beside the river. In some places it had been cut using enchanter-made fire rods charged by globes of living flame brought back from the Dominion of the Sun King, but for the most part the Vespinese had used the more traditional method of throwing a very great many slaves at the cliffs and shouting at them until they had a road. Since neither Sivan nor his hired swords showed any interest in talking to him, Baros Tsen settled to wondering exactly how many men it had taken and how long and all the other sorts of thoughts that came to a bored tvarr with nothing else to fill his mind. Not that there werent plenty of things that ought to be filling his mind, such as where they were taking him and why and who this Sivan really was and how he might escape, but he found he simply couldnt be bothered with all of that any more. Escaping seemed rather pointless given what awaited him if he ever got back to his eyrie. As for the rest, what difference did it make? Theyd tell him when they were ready, and Sivan waving Tsens black rod about made it obvious he needed him to do something that couldnt be done by anyone else. Then the bargaining would start. And he was good at bargaining. He was a tvarr and so he had to be.

He watched the river. Past the cataracts and falls of its upper gorge, the Jokun was the artery that linked Vespinarr to the sea at Hanjaadi and thus their ships and their fleet and thence to the rest of the world. In late spring, when the Jokun waters were at their highest, even the lower parts of the river became impa.s.sable. Then the Vespinese were forced, for two or three months of each year, to rely on gla.s.ships and the long tedious land route from Shevana-Daro. The Yalun Zarang river to the west was shorter and quicker, but the Yalun Zarang led to Tayuna, and somehow the lords of Vespinarr and the lords of Tayuna had never managed to see eye to eye. Theyd failed, over the last couple of centuries, to see eye to eye on rather a lot of things in fact, but mostly what they failed to agree on was whether Tayuna should follow the example of its Hanjaadi neighbours and allow itself to settle into the comfortable life of a Vespinese va.s.sal state. The Vespinese were very much in favour of the notion, frequently urging the lords of Tayuna to see things their way through encouragements such as sinking their ships, setting fire to their city and occasionally dragging them into unwanted wars in other realms, yet despite these marvellous incentives, the lords of Tayuna remained strangely intransigent, perversely preferring to keep their independence and telling Shonda where to stick it. As a tvarr in distant Xican, Tsen had sometimes wondered why Tayuna didnt take the easy choice and give in. Now, after what hed seen these last few months, he felt like giving them a round of applause. Maybe theyd give him a job once this was all done. There certainly wasnt much of a future for him as a tvarr of Xican any more.

If youre honest with yourself, there isnt much future for you as anything at all, except perhaps as sustenance to the vulture population in some remote part of the desert for a day until they pick you clean. Or perhaps the fish off some distant sh.o.r.e . . .

He rolled his eyes and laughed at himself and wondered if perhaps he was finally going mad, and was grateful when a hold-up in the road distracted his thoughts. There was some shouting and milling about as Sivan and his men squeezed between the overhanging cliff wall on one side and a sullen team of broad-backed bison towing a barge against the current on the other. Men cursed and did their best to get out of the way while Tsen mentally checked off how many new words he was learning. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he turned his horse and tried to bolt back down the road, but the chances seemed good that even if he could muster the skill to make his horse do something other than follow the one in front, trying to escape would simply end with him being dumped in the river, followed either by a quick death from drowning or maybe a slightly slower one from freezing. Doubtless either outcome would irritate Sivan no end after all the trouble hed gone to, but being dead and washed into the Samim to be gnawed on by crocodiles seemed a poor way to appreciate such frustration.

As the sun sank low, the gorge widened. The cliffs fell away and spread out around the sh.o.r.e of a wide lake where the Jokun paused in its eager plunge towards the sea. Hundreds of boats bobbed, rocked by the brisk cold winds that blew off the mountains, everything from little skiffs with barely a shred of sail to ma.s.sive Vespinese river barges. Upstream of the lake the Jokun came down from the mountains around Vespinarr through a series of gorges and cataracts, and so the lakeside had grown a shanty town of warehouses and sailors and sail-slaves, of mules and the teamsters who drove them up through the mountain pa.s.ses, of rough edges and straightforward words. It stank of sweat, cheap spirits and even cheaper Xizic, and of men and women who filled their lives with hard back-breaking work and came at you with all you might expect.

Sivan stopped at a house on the fringes and Tsen meekly ate his supper and went to bed. He pretended to sleep while he stared at the ceiling for much of the night, listening to the snores of the sword-slave who was supposed to be watching him. He supposed he ought to slip out from under the sheets and climb through the window or something equally dramatic. Run away as fast as he could and get on one of those boats and stay on it to Hanjaadi and cross the sea and never come back. But he didnt, and when he looked to see if any of those nasty little voices were going to taunt him for being scared, he found them silent. They knew better. He wasnt scared, not any more. Staying with Sivan had become the cold hard calculation of a tvarr. Question was, what did the shifter actually want?

A black stone fortress full of Vespinese soldiers looked across the lake from an outcrop of rock on the far side full, it was said, with a fortune in Vespinese silver. By the middle of the next afternoon they were riding under the shadow of its walls. Tsen examined it as they pa.s.sed and found himself wondering how it would fare if a dragon came. Badly, he supposed. And then they reached a bridge across a narrow gorge, and after crossing it Sivan led them off along a winding track into the hills until the evening, stopping where a waterfall crashed over the lip of a cliff. The sword-slaves dismounted. By now Tsen could barely move, exhausted and in agony from all the riding, and they practically had to lift him off his horse, which none of them appreciated because he was heavy. As they did though, he took the chance to look at the brands on their arms. Vespinese, all of them. Its not my fault, he wanted to tell them. Some djinn crept past your snoring watchman in the night and swapped my back for a pain-soaked plank of wood . . . or maybe gla.s.s. Cracked and broken gla.s.s that made horrible grinding sounds every time he moved but was still as stiff as a beam. That sounds about right . . .

A path slipped around the back of the falls to a cave behind the roaring water. The sword-slaves pushed him inside through a thick curtain of metal chains, the sort used to keep Elemental Men at bay, and then through a heavy iron door fitted carefully into the rock. Sivan was already there, flitting from wall to wall, lighting lamps while the sword-slaves poked and prodded Tsen as far as a soft couch. There were chairs carved from Zinzarran rosewood, a silver and gla.s.s table and a cabinet well stocked with crystal bottles, even a shelf of books. It felt like a home, cared for and lived in with plenty of comfort and not what Tsen had imagined at all. Sivan poured himself a gla.s.s of wine. When he didnt offer to share it, Tsen lay back and sank into the couch. It really was deliciously soft, quite big enough to make a bed, and he couldnt see himself getting up again in a hurry. The roar of the waterfall was muted, though he could feel the vibration through the floor.

'So what do you want from me? he asked. He supposed some sort of enchanters device must be hidden somewhere, keeping the air as fresh as it was. It was certainly the most unexpected cave hed ever seen.

As Tsen watched, Sivans face changed. Sivan slowly vanished and another man took his place, a man Tsen knew well. Bronzehand, although Tsen knew perfectly well that Bronzehand was on a ship and had sailed to Qeled to find an answer to all their problems, or possibly just to run away from them all. Hed seen it through QuaiShus rings, and the rings didnt lie. He snorted.

'Another face youve learned to steal? Can you do Shonda of Vespinarr too so I can punch both of you at once? Although youll have to come closer because I dont think I can get up. Again, what do you want from me?

Sivan held up Tsens black rod. 'I already told you.

'Dragon eggs? Tsen shrugged. 'Youre mad, but I can hardly stop you. I dont see how I can help you either. Nor why I should. Maybe he should run away just for the sake of it, even if he didnt have anywhere to go, but given the state of his back, Sivan could have taken his sword-slaves out for a riotous night at the lakeside wh.o.r.ehouses and it wouldnt have made a blind bit of difference. Old, fat and crippled, tvarr. Could you be more useless? He looked around some more. Pictures hung on the walls, odd paintings in a style he didnt recognise: they werent of people or even of places but streaks and splatches of dull slate and tan and deep greens and reds all run together. If someone had decided to make an art out of painting mud, he thought, this was what it would look like.

'If youre going to be Bronzehand, his tastes run more to lewd nudes. Gold and silver frames too. Ostentatiously expensive. The more he looked around, the more the cave struck him as slightly off.

Sivan tapped Tsens black rod. 'I saved you from the Vespinese, Baros Tsen TVarr. I left a body for them. I killed a sword-slave and changed his shape and face to be yours. You saw it. So you know its true when I tell you that the world believes Baros Tsen TVarr is dead. You are free. Thats my gift to you. Freedom. Freedom to vanish far away across the storm-dark if you wish, or into the desert or the Samim swamps if you prefer, but vanish you must. Sivan sucked in his cheeks as if tasting something sour. 'Im offering you both your freedom and your life.

'Is that all? Pity. Tsen shrugged. 'Everything back the way it was would be nicer, but failing that Ill take Kalaiya and a quiet pa.s.sage across the storm-dark to a comfortable retirement on the fringes of the Dominion. Somewhere across the mountains from Merizikat. I have a villa waiting for me there with a bath house and an apple orchard. Free? His heart leaped at the idea. Free to fly away and grow old and even fatter in peace and quiet, but the voices in his head were shouting at him, full of warning. Much too easy. Much too pretty. 'But you wrap me in rope and sword-slaves, skin-shifter. I do not feel free at all. Again and for the last time, what do you want?

'I want you to help me steal a dragons egg.

Tsen laughed, and then for some reason he couldnt stop and kept on, so much it hurt, until there were tears rolling down his cheeks and his back knotted in agony. It had been funny the first time too, but here the irony struck him like a hammer between the eyes. 'You bring me all this way only to take me back? Why didnt you steal your eggs that night instead of stealing me? Its not as if theyre kept under lock and key. Anyone can take one if they can carry it. The tears kept coming. 'What? You need me to carry one end of it for you? Because there arent any other strong-armed men available? He hooted.

Sivan came and crouched beside him. He tapped Tsens black rod. 'The gla.s.ships, TVarr. You can still control the gla.s.ships that tether your eyrie.

'So? Shall we steal everything at once then? Do you think the Elemental Men perhaps wouldnt notice?

The shifter grinned as he stood again. 'The beauty of my gift to you, TVarr, is that no one will ever know. Youre dead. No enchanter, no Elemental Man, no navigator, has the gift to unravel my deception. Its perfect. Well go to your eyrie. My men will take my eggs and your Kalaiya too if thats what you want, and you will have your gla.s.ships pull the eyrie and everything inside it down into the storm-dark so its gone for ever. Sivan was almost giggling. 'You will have your life and I will have my eggs, and no one will ever know what either of us has done!

'Youre mad.

'We can both have what we want, TVarr, without anyone knowing. Anyone! You and your slave can vanish together. Somewhere far away to grow old in peace. Think on that. He went away and left Tsen to his thoughts.

In the morning Sivan was gone, and for the next five grinding days the shifters sword-slaves led Tsen onward, climbing past the Jokun cataracts until they reached open country again at last, a wide flatness of water meadows and fields with the Silver Mountain looming in the distance. There Sivan was waiting for them again, with slave tunics for all of them and a pair of heavy wagons. The sword-slaves changed their clothes and crowded with Tsen into a wagon, and they all rolled along a rutted road between neatly planted paddies glistening with water from the Jokun. Rows of slaves waded through the mud up to their knees. Thinning crops, Tsen decided. Somewhere was a tvarr who would know these things, who knew exactly what was in every field and probably accounted for every single plant if he was at all like Tsen. One group of slaves close to the road stopped work and waved, and Tsen saw the brands on their arms. Sail-slaves, trusted to work on simple things without supervision. The men around him in the wagon didnt wave back. Their tension was like spring ice, sharp as cut gla.s.s.

When they stopped for a break, Tsen walked a few dozen yards into someones paddy, squatted and relieved himself. Sivan didnt look up but Tsen felt the shifters eyes on him. When he was done, he paused a moment, slipped the ring off his middle finger, dropped it and then dipped his hand into the muddy water. That was the thing about paddies always plenty of water. And the thing about the slivers of gla.s.s under his skin was that any water would do. A few seconds was enough. Well then, Shrin Chrias Kwen. Once you know Im not dead after all, will you bite?

The wagon rumbled on, hour after hour. The Silver Mountain grew and Tsen could make out the smudge of green that was the garden on its peak and then the glint of Shondas giant gold-gla.s.s screens which captured the sun. Closer in, he picked out the black spires of the enchanter monoliths around the Visonda landing fields; and then, in what seemed no time at all, they were on the landing fields themselves and Sivan was hissing in his ear as they lined up with other gangs of slaves to walk into the gondolas of three great gla.s.ships. They were packed together inside like fish in a fishermans barrel, standing room only, and flew for a day out over the foothills of the mountains and down to the desert, though Tsen was too far from any window to see much of it. Some of the slaves chattered, others stood silent and sullen. The ones Sivan had brought cl.u.s.tered around Tsen. Sivan himself stood beside him and said nothing at all.

Why a dragons egg but not an alchemist? To hatch a wild dragon of course. What other reason could there be? But why? Did he want the end of the world? But what if he did? What if Sivan was simply barking mad? Did it change anything? Presumably Tsens eyrie was still occupied by the Vespinese, and even if it wasnt, did that make a difference? Thank you very much, Baros Tsen TVarr. Now please step up to this noose . . .

Ive become a p.a.w.n in a game I no longer understand. Kalaiya. Focus on Kalaiya. Just her. But when he tried, he found that he couldnt, simply because that was what Sivan wanted.

The gla.s.ships landed as the sun set, disgorging their slaves into a makeshift camp where the Konsidar and the desert and the Lair of Samim came together, an ugly land of arid stone and earth punctured by poisonous tepid lakes. The heat was dry and stifling, a shock after the cold mountain air. There were cattle here, more than there ought to be, herded out of the Lair of Samim and the fringe of the Konsidar, starving mangy animals with a few already lying dead among them. No one had bothered to move the corpses and flies covered them like a second coat of fur. A handful of ma.s.sive cargo sleds spun slowly and hovered at the fringes of the camp. They were largely useless over crags and hills but marvellously cheap and efficient over open expanses of water or, say, sand. Tsen watched as a hundred animals were crammed onto the back of one, a huge white sail thrown over the top to cover them and tied down around the edges. A gla.s.ship hauled the sled a hundred feet into the air and then let it go. Tsen watched it drift off across the desert until it was gone and wondered how many of the cattle would get to where they were going and still be alive and whether it mattered. He had no doubt what they were for: to feed his eyrie. To feed his dragons.

A pair of Taiytakei slave masters in gla.s.s and gold armed with lightning wands started shouting, pushing their new slaves away from the gondolas and yelling at them to get to work. It was a dirty, dusty place and you could see at once who had been here a while they were the ones with scarves across their faces. Tsen found himself rolling barrels of water onto a second great sled and heaving them upright. Hed been streaked with aches and pains to start with; by the time they were half done, he hurt in places hed never hurt before, in muscles he hadnt even known he had. He coughed and choked and his nose ran with thick dark snot. He stopped, gasping.

Sivan growled at him, 'When was the last time you did any work, Baros Tsen? Real work? Thats why you hurt. You have no idea what it is to be a slave. The last words came out bitter, as though the shifter had spent most of his life pulling oars on a galley.

'And you do, shifter? Tsen laughed in his face. 'A shifter a slave, Sivan Bronzehand Kalaiya face-changer whoever you are? How long exactly since any man had you in chains?

'You know nothing! Sivans hand flashed to Tsens throat; a whip cracked the air over their heads and Sivan let go and went back to rolling barrels. Tsen did the same. When they were done, the slavers herded him and the other men onto the sled among their barrels. A gla.s.ship settled overhead, lowered its chains and lifted the sled into the air; and as they rose Tsen looked through the gold-tinted gla.s.s at the fires scattered across the edge of the desert, at the sprinkle of little shelters. Even now, in the small hours of the night, everywhere was movement, slaves and Taiytakei shifting crates and sacks and barrels and animals from one place to another. Some of them looked up as the sled rose over their heads, but it was dark and Tsen was too high to see their faces.

A Taiytakei soldier released the chains and swung back to the gla.s.ship, holding on to the last of them, and the sled floated off into the desert alone, straight and steady and unswerving, adrift with hundreds of barrels of water and two dozen slaves, no soldiers to watch over them, only the vast empty skies. Below, more slaves were already loading the next one. The tvarr in Tsen did the calculations: a sled was cheaper than a gla.s.ship and faster too. Not greatly but a little. From the Lair of Samim to the G.o.dspike was a distance of about seven hundred miles. Four days then. Four days out in the desert sun. They didnt have enough food. They barely had shelter.

When he was sure no one was looking, he opened a barrel of water and wetted his middle finger. Are you listening, Chrias? Or have the killers found you at last?

He dozed through the first night. The sled drifted on, relentless and oblivious, and when the sun rose, Tsen spent the morning lazing in whatever corner of shade he could find, doing what he could to keep out of the heat, watching the broken barren yellow stone drift beneath them, spires and canyons, mesas and gorges, a landscape cut apart by water once long ago but now dry and dead. The heat grew. The sun pa.s.sed its zenith. The air became thick and stifling until all the slaves simply lay still among the barrels, panting, eyes nearly closed; and then, in the middle of that afternoon when the heat was at its worst, Sivan and his sword-slaves killed the others. They didnt make any fuss about it. They whispered among themselves, picked the two slaves who looked the strongest and simply heaved them over the side. The first Tsen knew of it was when their screams, short and sharp and cut off as they hit the ground some fifty feet below, jerked him out of his snoozing. For a moment Tsen stared like a startled rabbit, not understanding what was happening as three more slaves went wailing and pleading over the edge. He heard screams, shrieks and then a howl as the sled drifted on. Even after the screams stopped, he still didnt understand, still thought he might be next, until Sivan grinned in his face and patted him on the shoulder.

'Whos to say what happened? Whos to say how many slaves were sent on this barge or why? He bared his teeth in the most horrible smile Tsen had ever seen. The smile of a madman. 'When we reach the G.o.dspike, there will only be us. A handful of slaves who know nothing. What did you see, TVarr?

Tsen shrugged. 'I saw nothing. If hed had any doubts before, they were gone. Sivans freedom was a lie. The shifter would murder him and dump him in the desert as soon as they were done. Or maybe just leave you to fall into the storm-dark with everyone else.

'Thats right. Sivan let his face slip. His eyes darkened, his nose sharpened, his cheeks narrowed and he became Kalaiya again. 'I could change you, TVarr. I could leave you as an oar-slave and sell you to a galley with little fractures and weaknesses in your bones and sinews so they break and snap. I could take your face and take your Kalaiya and give her to . . . He peered at Tsen. 'Who hates you the most? MaiChoiro Kwen? The heirs of Sea Lord Senxian, the sea lord left hanging dead by his ankle from his own ruined palace? His eyes glittered. His features melted and he became Sivan again. He reached out but Tsen jumped away.

'Youre a monster!

'Remember why youre doing this. The shifter walked away and sat among the barrels, laughing with his sword-slaves as they re-enacted the terrified faces and strangled cries of the men theyd murdered; and the most terrible thing to Tsen was how he wanted so much to be with her again, how much hed wanted Sivan-Kalaiya to take his hands and look into his eyes and whisper sweet lies about how things would be once this was done, how the two of them would slip away to another world and no one would come after them because everyone would think he was dead, how theyd lounge together in baths laced with Xizic oil and grow apples in their orchard and make wine and drink it together in the steam and be happy for as long as they were alive. Even if it was all a lie, even if he knew it was all a lie, he still wanted it.

After the murders there was more food to go around, so that was something. More shelter too, even if he lay and stared unblinking at the canvas over his head while Sivans slaves snored. He wondered briefly whether he might push some of them off the edge, but he was too afraid to try. He wondered about jumping and found he was too afraid for that too. Sometimes hard things had to be done, or so he used to tell himself, and that had been fine when he could simply hire a few men to do whatever dirty work it was. Yes, wash his hands of it. Have a bath and a gla.s.s of apple wine and tell precious Kalaiya all about it and then never let it trouble him again. Not so fine when the hands to be dirtied were his own. No, not fine at all. Useless fat tvarr. He was afraid, dear G.o.ds, but how he was afraid. And yes, useless. Shamefully, pathetically useless.

They wafted above dead dry valleys and crossed the Tzwayg escarpment. The ground fell away beneath them and the Empty Sands stretched ahead, a thousand feet below. The sled drifted on, blind and dumb, always in the same direction, day after day over the endless rise and fall of the dunes, a great red and yellow sea frozen stiff, until in the distance on the fourth day Tsen saw the smear on the horizon that was the storm-dark of the G.o.dspike and the unmistakable flashes of lightning in the sky. Every night he dipped his middle finger into one of the barrels of water and tried to see through the eyes of Shrin Chrias Kwen; and every day that finger tingled back at him as he sat in the sun looking out over the desert. For better or for worse, QuaiShus kwen knew where he was. Chrias wasnt stupid either, so he could probably guess where Tsen was going whatever good that might do him.

High overhead, off in the distance, a swarm of gla.s.ships drifted, sparkling as they caught the sun. Tsen squinted. They were far too far away for him to make out whose they were, but only one person had so many. Shonda. Tsen watched until he saw that they were heading away.

Pity.

42.

The White-Faced Men Climbing out from the abyss of the Queverra was every bit as long and hard and tedious as Tuuran had imagined. His legs didnt thank him at all. There would be a reckoning, they told him, in aches and pains that simply wouldnt go away. One day hed want something of them and they wouldnt budge and hed have to manage without. Walk on his hands or something. Maybe on his head. Let the bit that made all the ridiculous decisions see how it felt. Tuuran tried pointing out how it could have been worse, how he could have been on his own with no food and no water. Could have done the stupid thing and gone back up the way hed come, not knowing any better. Could have come all this way and not found Crazy and his naked men with their white-painted faces who thought Crazy was some sort of G.o.d. But his legs were having none of it. Food and water were all well and good for other bits and pieces, they said, and the same went for company, but climbing the however many thousands of steps it was back up to the top was still down to them.

Tuuran did his best to ignore them and watched Crazy Mads new friends instead. They were weird little men but they knew a path out of the Queverra that wound back and forth past the river that cascaded into it, one that pa.s.sed little pools full of beautiful cold clear water that tasted divine, and they carried food on their backs and never complained even if they watched Tuuran with a strange mix of awe and envy and fear while grovelling in the dirt whenever Crazy so much as looked at them. Weird, but hard not to like, all things considered.

They acquired more as they climbed. Crazy Mad started at the bottom with seven following him. After the first day there were still seven but in the morning there were a dozen. Tuuran never saw them arrive. They were simply there when before they werent. By the next morning there were twenty.

'Why? he asked no one in particular. Not that any of them were much for talking with the strain of the climb, and Crazy Mad was setting a pace as though his were the legs of an Adamantine Man. For a while Tuuran thought he didnt know. But eventually Crazy spun some ridiculous story about a great tunnel of white stone that ran off under the ground for ever, and how the painted men had found him staggering out of it without the first clue who he was. Didnt remember much about how he was in there in the first place, he said, though he had that funny look in his eye that made Tuuran think maybe Crazy remembered more than he cared to say. It was a funny enough look for him to think better of asking, but eventually his not asking was so loud that Crazy huffed and sighed and said that as far as the painted men were concerned, it meant that hed walked out of Xibaiya, and apparently that made him special. And obviously no, he had no idea what they were talking about and it was a pile of utter c.r.a.p and nonsense, and yes, he might have been a bit delirious by the time he reached the bottom of the abyss, and yes, his wits were a touch addled, but he was pretty sure hed remember if hed happened to take a little excursion into the realm of the dead thanks very much.

And there was that funny look again, and Tuuran took a deep breath and let it slowly out and rolled his eyes and let it go because by now, after all hed seen with Crazy, it was just one more thing. Water off a ducks back. Best not to think about it.

The climb took five days. By the time they got to the top, Crazys band of white-faced men had grown to a horde. There were . . . Tuuran didnt know. A thousand? Two thousand? They spilled over the lip of the Queverra and swarmed through the camps of the desert men scattered around its rim. The painted men were naked, armed with nothing more than stones and whatever else they could pick up, but they came like a sandstorm, rushing through one camp and killing everyone in their path and not even stopping for plunder except maybe to pick up a sword or a spear before they charged on to the next.

The desert men had no idea what hit them. The first camp didnt even see them coming. The next made the mistake of trying to put up a fight. In his time Tuuran had seen how a few dozen well armed soldiers could put a mob to flight if they knew what they were doing and held their nerve, but not this mob. The painted men were as crazy as Crazy. Dying didnt bother them. A few dozen were cut down and so what? The rest didnt even seem to notice as they swarmed over the Taiytakei and tore them to shreds with their bare hands. After that, the rest of the slavers had the sense to flee, grabbing what they could and jumping on the first horse or camellike thing they saw and putting as big a cloud of dust between them and the Queverra as they could. When it was over, Tuuran put up his feet and dozed about time they had a bit of that, said his feet but hed barely closed his eyes when Crazy was poking him up again, dragging one of the bad-tempered humpbacked camel-things after him. It was called a linxia, or something like that, but theyd always looked like hump-backed horses to Tuuran.

'Get up, said Crazy. 'Were leaving, big man.

'Where? Though Why? might have been a better question, but Crazy had that look in him again, the one that said best not to argue in case his eyes did their silver thing and people started disintegrating.

'Where the dragons are. Some place called the G.o.dspike.

Tuuran looked at his boots. 'Sorry, feet. He got up.

They didnt leave until the next morning on account of Crazy not having thought of anything much more than where he wanted to go and grabbing an animal to carry him there. The small matter of it being a ten-day trek across what was as close as made no difference to desert didnt seem to have entered his thinking. And maybe he could just go all silver-eyed and disintegrate being thirsty, but Tuuran certainly couldnt and neither could the painted men well, probably and so Tuuran spent half the night shouting at Crazy Mad not to be crazy and the other half yelling at the white-faced men to find someone who actually knew where they were going and to sort out the things commonly used to stave off the various irritating ways to die that deserts tended to throw about in their thoughtless way. Took a while but he did it. He was good at that sort of thing. When they did leave, they left with a couple of thousand men trailing after them. Trailing after Crazy Mad, anyway, Tuuran reminded himself.

They rode on their humpbacked horse-camel-things through day after day of broken cliffs and stone spires and scrubby dusty earth. The white-faced men led them to a shallow river running through a deep canyon, where the sun rarely touched the surface and where they drank and refilled their stolen water skins. After that, they climbed for three days until they emerged on the top of a great cliff looking out over a sea of sand, and there it was, fifty miles to the west, a dark smudge in the distant sky: the G.o.dspike with the storm-dark wrapped around it. Tuuran and Crazy Mad walked to the cliffs edge and sat together with their legs dangling over the drop while the maelstrom turned a livid purple and the sea of sand gleamed like burnished copper.

'What is it, Crazy? asked Tuuran. 'Where did it come from?

'A big dark cloud on the horizon, Crazy said after a bit. 'Thats what it is.