When she was on the ground, Diamond Eye lazily lifted his head. The Adamantine Man stood still and impassive, towering over her, patient and not afraid at all, the way an Adamantine Man should be. The other had something about him, something that had caught Diamond Eye's interest. Not another guardsman — his skin was too dark, he was too short and he didn't carry an axe, and yet. . It was the sensation she'd had before, a scent of something. What is it, my deathbringer? What is it about him?
The Adamantine Man wasn't moving. He waited patiently. Are there any more of you? Her heart beat a little faster. She took off her gauntlet and held out her hand, the one that still wore the Speaker's Ring.
‘I am Zafir,’ she said. ‘Queen of the Silver City. Speaker of the nine realms. Come closer.’
The dragon was watching him. Not Tuuran, not anything else, but him. He could feel it and he could barely move. Its rider whispered something. The dragon lifted its head but its eyes never left him. And, sun and moon, it struck him to the heart, the most fearful thing he'd ever seen or would ever see again, vast and made of death, and most of him wanted to quiver and empty his bladder and his bowels and fall sobbing to his shaking knees and beg and sob for a mercy that simply didn't exist. And yet he didn't. And he ought to be terrified but he wasn't. He felt almost. . proud, and it was a pride that didn't belong to him, but came from the thing he carried inside. Fearless and fiery. Like seeing a long-lost son grown strong and powerful and master of the world around him.
That was what scared him far more than this monster.
The rider climbed down, stiff and awkward, and Berren could see how much pain she was in. But she was proud too, and she had a strength in her face. Her short hair was plastered to her pale skin. There were cuts on her face and streaks of blood but she wore them well. Her armour was battered and cracked and broken. A proper soldier. The Bloody Judge in him approved. And when she stood in front of Tuuran, no matter how the big man dwarfed her, she looked him in the eye without hesitation and held out her hand.
‘Come closer!’ The rider spoke with the same accent as Tuuran.
Tuuran stared at her hand and then he fell to his knees, bowed and pressed both his head and the shaft of his axe to the ground. He was shaking. All his poise was suddenly gone.
‘Speaker of the nine what?’ Berren muttered. ‘I know we don't see many women, but-’
The big man was on him in a snarling blur of speed: ‘You come from Aria? Well, slave, this is my empress, and you will still your tongue or I will cut it out, despite all that has passed between us!’ The rider watched them both, unmoved. Amused perhaps. She certainly wasn't afraid, but then why would anyone be afraid who had a monster like that at their back? Berren held up his hands. Old words came back to haunt him, knocking him off balance. Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress!
The rider ignored Berren and kept her eyes on Tuuran. ‘I've heard your name, Tuuran of the Adamantine Guard. You served the alchemist Bellepheros. You served him well, with your blood and your heart, and perhaps better than he in his turn served you.’ Her voice was strong and proud. ‘Will you serve me, your speaker, in this land?’
Tuuran dropped to his knees again and pressed his head against the broken flagstones. ‘From birth to death, Holiness. Nothing more, nothing less.’
She was a slave. The understanding hit Berren like a rock between the eyes. A slave from the same land as Tuuran, with the same accent and the same pale skin. But a slave on the back of a dragon. A slave who'd thrown down the palace of a sea lord!
Her eyes shifted. She was looking at him now. ‘And you? What is your name, sword-slave?’
‘Berren,’ he said without a moment of doubt. ‘I'm Berren Crowntaker. Berren the Bloody Judge of Tethis.’
83
The holy queen of the Silver City asked him questions about places and people and realms and armies which felt like they belonged to another life, and Tuuran answered them. Beside him, Crazy Mad stared at the rider and the dragon stared back. At Crazy Mad and only him and nowhere else, and its eyes were intense and intelligent and filled with questions. The queen never said, but Tuuran understood. Despite what she was, despite the dragon she rode, she was a slave. A prisoner of the Taiytakei like all the rest of them, and he was but one man, and there was no great army come for her.
It took most of the time they talked before Tuuran realised that they'd met once before. She was the girl from the Pinnacles, the one who'd stabbed a man to death, the one for whom he'd kept silent and had been sold as a slave. He wondered if she remembered him. Probably not, he supposed. After all, we soldiers all look the same, don't we? He found it didn't much bother him. Here she was, proud and a queen and on the back of a dragon and furiously alive. It made him smile. He'd done something good then, once long ago.
When they were done she did the strangest thing. The speaker of the nine realms took his hand, the one that held his axe, and touched it to her lips.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘Find your way back to me.’
She turned away and climbed into the dragon's harness and Tuuran retreated into the rubble, pulling Crazy with him. The dragon spread its wings. It stared at Crazy Mad one last time and then began to run, and the wind of its ascent showered them with stones and broken shards as big as a man's fist. Tuuran watched them fly, staring long after the dragon was gone, a distant speck vanished into the horizon over the burning city and the desert beyond.
‘I understand,’ he said when he finally tore his eyes away. He nodded to himself. ‘I understand why I'm here. Why my fate sold me into slavery. It's for her. I have served my speaker. I will serve her again.’
‘Well, you do that,’ snapped Crazy Mad. ‘I have to go back and find the man who made Vallas do what he did. I have to find out who he is and what I am.’ He seemed out of sorts now the dragon was gone, but at least his eyes were his own. Normal and human. ‘How? How am I supposed to do that?’
‘Every man has his own destiny.’ Tuuran could almost read Crazy's thoughts. Whatever he said, a part of Crazy wanted to follow the dragon and the woman who rode it as well. To find out who she was and why dragons filled his dreams. Wasn't hard to see. After all, didn't everyone?
Crazy Mad stared out into the sky where the dragon had gone. ‘Thanks for that, big man. Something a bit more helpful next time, eh?’
Out around the towers Taiytakei soldiers were stirring again. The dragon was gone but the invaders still had business, finishing this city and its lord. Some were already picking their way into the stumps of the ruined towers. There was no fighting any more, just a smashed-up palace full of. . stuff.
Tuuran offered Crazy Mad his hand. ‘Come on, slave! You can ponder your existence later when your pockets are stuffed with some rich bastard's silver.’ When Crazy Mad waved him away, Tuuran shrugged. ‘Well, I'll be sure to loot something nice for you, eh? Don't get left with nothing, Crazy.’ He picked up his shield and trotted away to disappear among the ruins.
When he was gone, Berren Crowntaker, the Bloody Judge of Tethis, sat alone together with the last little voice of someone who had once been called Skyrie, listening to the far-off crash of the waves and the crying of the gulls. Listening but not watching, because his eyes were staring into their own reflection in the blade of a gold-hilted knife. The knife that severed souls. The knife that could cut pieces of people away. And he was wondering what it was that he carried inside him.