Another thunderbolt, another blinding light, this from the other surviving tower. Diamond Eye shrieked and went down yet again. Zafir clutched her hands to her head. He was colossal inside her, crushing everything else, pain and rage and rage and pain drenching every corner of every thought.
In the locked room, in the dark, with the fear and the dread and the pain to come. .
The dragon lurched to his feet once more. Three giant strides. He had his head down this time, mantling his wings to cover himself. The first tower fired again. More screaming pain and furious rage. Zafir fell to her knees. A desire burst inside her. A hunger. An understanding. Diamond Eye moved suddenly this time. Not straight for the tower of the lightning cannon but behind it, with a surge of speed that made Zafir gasp. Yes! The second cannon fired and missed and then Diamond Eye fell upon the first, ripping it apart, savaging the metal tubes that pointed to the sky. He tore one loose, held it in his foreclaws, reared up and hurled it at the last tower, smashing it into dazzling crackling sparking shards. The burning white of the growing lightning flickered and died. Sparks ran across the stones. Now Diamond Eye launched himself into the air and fire flooded from his mouth to douse the first tower. Bright flashes popped and crackled inside it. Zafir sat and watched, stricken with awe. Burn them! Burn them!’
Diamond Eye left the first tower a molten heap of slag and moved to the second. From somewhere close a barrage of rockets streaked towards him. A dozen of them struck, bathing him in fire. Zafir laughed and she felt the dragon laugh too. Fire? You think to touch me with fire?
When the second tower was red and molten and dripping, Diamond Eye flew free, up and down the fortress and all around it, burning and burning, drenching it all with a fire that never stopped. He flew across the island and burned the houses and the streets and the trees and the people, and what wouldn't burn he smashed with claw and tail. When the island was nothing but flames he flew out to sea and burned the ships, all of them, every single one, with no thought to whether they were friend or foe, for now everything was the enemy. Zafir watched it all, too weak to move. A sense of completeness filled her as if the dragon had shown her, finally, something she'd been struggling to see for half her life.
The last ship burned and Diamond Eye vanished under the sea, and the waves churned and boiled and steam rose from the water. When he finally came back to her, he was still blistering. She wondered perhaps if he'd been saving her for last, but he landed before her and bowed his head to let her climb onto his back once more. Half the mounting ladder was gone, the ropes burned away. She paused for a moment, wondering what to do, but he lowered himself to the ground and lay flat. Pieces of harness hung loose, scorched ends dangling in the air, but they made their saddles well in the eyries of the Silver City. She found a hanging rope, the leg-breaker she'd refused to use this time, and hauled herself onto his back. With slow deliberate motions she found the buckles and the straps, the ones that had survived, and fastened herself to him.
‘We'll need a new harness for you,’ she whispered when she was done. Half of it was ruined but there was still enough to hold. They were whole again, both of them, and Diamond Eye felt it too. He lifted himself up and began to run, slow loping strides as though this time, at last, there was no hurry. We are one. Was that her thought? His? Both of them? She didn't know and didn't care. The dragon stretched out his wings and took to the air, circling leisurely over the island. It was burning, all of it, the sea aflame with blazing ships. Everything looked blurred and it took her a moment to realise why. She was crying. Weeping with relief and weeping for joy.
You make me whole.
The dragon had changed something inside her — the old wound — and for the first time she could remember, she wasn't afraid any more.
76
A clutch of sword-slaves spilled into the street ahead, running as though they were on fire, scattering this way and that. Tuuran skittered to a stop as two men in glass and gold on fast glass sleds chased after them. The riders headed for the bridge. Lightning flashed from their wands and tiny claps of thunder followed; men screamed and fell, one after another. More sword-slaves burst out of hiding and ran the other way, straight at Tuuran and Crazy Mad and then past them. They were screaming in fear. Tuuran spat. ‘Outsiders.’
Crazy grabbed him and pulled him into the shadows of a smashed-in doorway. The riders had turned their sleds. They were coming back. ‘Let them pass.’
It was almost too tempting when there were some Taiytakei to kill at last, but Crazy Mad held him firm and Tuuran just growled. They sped past, standing on their discs of gold-glass, leaning into to the wind. It would have been so easy to run out and haul one of them down. ‘Come on then, you slaving bastards.’ But the riders didn't see them in the shadows. They raced on after the fleeing slaves, their wands full of white-hot glow. Tuuran watched them go. Probably best. The last slave he'd seen hit by wand lightning had been hurled like a doll. He hadn't just been dead, he'd looked like he'd been burned by a dragon. ‘Just a little thing,’ he muttered as Crazy Mad let him go. ‘But I'm just wondering whose side they were on.’
Crazy Mad shrugged as if it was obvious. ‘Well, clearly not ours.’
‘Thing is, I don't think we've got one any more.’
A snort of derision came back at him. ‘Thing is, big man, I never thought we did.’ Crazy had his fierce face again, all resolute and faraway like he was when his eyes went funny. Tuuran backed away. The street was empty again.
‘Right. Night-skins are gone.’ He ran quickly for the bridge. Couldn't be thinking about Crazy Mad and what he was or wasn't. Thoughts like that were too difficult. Had no place on a battlefield. No, no, no. . because Flame be damned but for a moment back there in that alley he'd been afraid. An Adamantine Man and he'd been afraid and that simply wasn't good enough.
He cast a wary eye over his shoulder. The sea titans were still wading through the water towards the bridge.
The Silver King? A half-god who'd been dead for half a thousand years? And anyway the Silver King hadn't had silver eyes. Everything else but not his eyes, if Tuuran had got the stories right. Blood-red, they said.
So, what then? What have you got inside you? Do I really want to know?
Another gang of sword-slaves came running from the end of the street. Something else to think about — that was good. Then a series of whistling screams overhead. Tuuran grabbed Crazy Mad and smashed in a door. The building shook as they vanished inside, walls quivering, clouds of dust rattling out of them. The flat crump of an explosion rolled through.
‘Rockets again.’ Crazy squatted in a corner. ‘Getting sick of them, I am.’
‘And there I was, starting to miss them.’ Tuuran pressed himself against a wall. As his ears stopped ringing he heard other sounds, sword-slaves calling to each other and then running and screaming and cracks of lightning. He waited until they were all gone and then peered back through the shattered door. The bridge was quiet now, silent and still. Distant shouts of burning and looting echoed across the water. A haze of smoke drifted over the sea, making the Eye of the Sea Goddess blur at the edges. He poked his foot at the dust on the floor. Hadn't quite been true what he'd said about everything smelling of burned flesh. Just in the alley, amid the haze of greasy black ash.