Berren's fingers tightened around the warlock's throat. ‘Didn't work? You liar! How is it undone?’
Vallas Kuy howled with glee. ‘There is no undone. It failed. The Bloody Judge stayed exactly where he was. He remains still stamping his swords up and down the Dominion, bringing our brothers to their ends one by one, filled with the Sun King's favour.’
‘No! It did not fail. I am Berren Crowntaker! I am the Bloody Judge!’
‘I don't know what you are but you still carry what Skyrie carried. What's left of him is in you and I am glad to have found you again.’ He held out a hand. ‘Come, brother. I've spent years seeking you out. Come, and we'll see what's to be done.’
‘Don't lie to me!’ Berren couldn't stop himself from screaming and something changed in the warlock's face. The laughing faded. Vallas was looking at Berren eye to eye now, a slow fear filling him, and in the warlock's eyes Berren could see the reflection of his own. They were silver. Bright burning silver. Vallas tried to pull away.
‘See! See! We brought you back! We did!’
‘Brought who back? Who am I, warlock? Who am I? What thing is it that I carry?’
Vallas struggled some more, his face sucking in on itself. ‘You are Skyrie!’
‘No, warlock, I am not. No riddles, or I swear I'll cut you to pieces.’
‘You already have, Skyrie.’
Berren drove the knife into Vallas again. Now when he saw the web of the warlock's soul, he saw that the strands were unravelling, snapping and falling slowly apart, whole chunks splitting away and fading to nothing. ‘What are you doing, warlock? What's happening.’
‘I'm dying, Skyrie. You have killed me.’
‘No! Not this knife. This knife doesn't cut flesh and I haven't even started on your soul. Stop it!’ And he was sure it was true, nothing more than he'd once done to himself. ‘Stop it! I command you!’
‘I don't even know how,’ Vallas sneered, and then his eyes rolled back. ‘Goodbye, Skyrie.’
‘Don't you dare die! Not before you tell me!’ Berren dived inside the warlock's memories and found them filled with a small bitter man from the marshes that Kuy had found nursing a grudge — Skyrie, so easily turned with a few sweet lies against the Bloody Judge. Flashes of the Dark Queen Gelisya, of Tethis, of spells and incantations, of potions. Desperation as the Bloody Judge drew closer. Kuy's last grand scheme. Skyrie for the Bloody Judge in their last stand, and yes, it was all as Kuy said and he truly believed they'd failed.
‘You ask me who you are, Skyrie, but that's not the question. The question is what?’ The last strands slipped through each other.
He dug deeper. There was another. A man with one eye. . Gleefully Berren seized on that one fleeting memory. No, not Kuy’s grand scheme. Someone else! The man with the half-ruined face. And then with the web of the warlock's soul laid before him and the golden knife to guide him, Berren slowly began to see the cuts and the stitches, the delicate reshaping that had been done, even as it unravelled again before him, and it turned out that Kuy was just a puppet after all, strings pulled without him even knowing it. A masterwork of slavery to make even the most jaded Taiytakei coo with envy. Owned mind and soul by the man with the ruined face and the one blind eye. ‘Him! Who is he?’ Cutting and cutting, ripping Kuy apart as he searched for answers amid the collapsing memories before they were gone. Tearing them from the dying warlock's thoughts.
Saffran Kuy's last apprentice. The one his eyes would never see.
‘Where is he? How do I find him? What's his name?’
Aria, Skyrie, where the Ice Witch keeps him in a gilded cage but doesn't know what he is or what he can do, what he brings and what he hides. He gave you a gift, Skyrie, one that not even she knows.
‘Gift? What gift?’
Vallas faded. His eyes closed. When Berren let him go he fell limp to the street. Tuuran was looking from Berren to the warlock and back. He shifted uneasily. ‘You're doing that eye thing again,’ he grumbled, and then he lifted his axe and cut off the warlock's head.
‘He was already dead,’ murmured Berren. What am I? What gift?
‘Well then, now he's even more dead.’ Tuuran poked at the warlock with his foot. He kept glancing up at the ruined palace.
Something inside me? Was that Kuy playing with him, taunting him to the end? Berren turned and stared back down the street towards the glass and gold bridge and the island of castles and the city of Dhar Thosis beyond, filled with flames and wrapped in smoke. Vallas hadn't lied. He'd seen it in his dreams right from the very start. At the water's edge, eyes filled with tears and the stars winking out one by one. Dying but he wanted to live, wanted it so badly he'd do anything at all; and there he was, the man in the hooded robes the colour of moonlight, with the silver-white face, one half ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire, and one blind milky-white eye.
‘Are you death?’
‘I am the Bringer of Endings. Let me in.’
And he had.
Berren staggered away from the dead warlock, from Tuuran, from the wrecked and burning towers of the palace. That was someone else. Not me! I'm Berren! The Bloody Judge. That's who I am!
‘Hey.’ Tuuran put a hand on his shoulder, slowly turning him back towards the shattered palace. ‘You found your warlock and there's a rampaging dragon smashing and burning and doing what dragons do. Can we go now?’
Berren shook his head and stared at his feet. Go? Go where? He'd come for answers and despite everything he'd actually found Vallas, and after all that the warlock had given him almost nothing. ‘I have to go back to Deephaven. I have to go home.’
‘Good for you!’ Tuuran clapped a hand on Berren's back and started off up the road towards the palace. ‘I might come too. Still reckon there's a great big fight brewing back there.’
The flood of fleeing slaves had become a trickle. Berren stared at the warlock lying on the stones. ‘Well, where are you going now then?’
Tuuran turned and grinned. ‘The dragon's come down. Shame to come all this way not to see who's on the back of it, eh?’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, there is that small matter of a palace full of night-skin lords and all their treasure. Might be some fun to be had there, I'd say.’
Berren followed him because he couldn't think of anything better to do with himself. Sure. Stand in front of a dragon. Why not?
82
Diamond Eye circled the stumps of the two broken towers. The third still stood, a great chunk smashed out of one corner, a maw of jagged glass teeth tinged with gold. The ground was a litter of glittering pieces like a sea of diamonds, and among them lay the bodies of men and women, slaves and soldiers, Taiytakei and others fleeing as the towers came down on them. Zafir felt the dragon's satisfaction. She felt her own. No remorse, not a shred of it, not even the idea of it. Slavers. You brought this on yourselves.
There were Taiytakei soldiers still alive. She saw them hiding in the shadows, cowering behind piles of rubble, watching the dragon to see what it would do. Soldiers from the ships to cheer and wave their swords at what she'd done perhaps, or soldiers from the palace, the last few defenders, too afraid to run. She didn't care. She was done. Whoever they were, they'd take away what they'd seen and spread it like fire through dry summer grass.