The Nothing of the storm-dark crept back into his head. He sighed and opened his eyes and looked again at the new world around him. As the ship moved on, it slowed. The stones grew taller and wider and more numerous, scattered around the sea, rising from the waves like the petrified fingers of ancient giants. They were flecked with green and some were marked with holes. Caves or windows but too regular to be wholly natural. As the ship turned he saw more, a coastline of grey saw-toothed cliffs jumbled one upon the other. Black spots covered them like boils of the pox. Buildings jutted out of their sides, wooden platforms and gantries like scars running from side to side and up and down, more still perched on their tops. Closer in he could make out the shapes of men scurrying back and forth along the ones closest to the sea, up ladders and across rope bridges, dangling from the faces of cliffs that rose far higher than any mast, while between the dizzying spires other ships, made small by the towers of stone around them, wallowed in the waves, rolling languidly from side to side. But none of that was what held his eye. As he pressed his face to the wall to see, he saw a palace of bright and shining gold rising over the heaviest thicket of cliffs. It hung in the air, glittering orbs of sparkling silver dangling beneath great discs of glass like golden clouds; while from below more spires of glass and gold rose up behind the cliffs to meet them. Tuuran had spoken of them, seen far off in the distance, but not like this. Here was a creation that dwarfed even the marvels left by the Silver King. A golden palace in the sky. For a moment even the storm-dark was forgotten.
The ship edged closer. The cliffs climbed higher and their bulk gobbled up the palace and the sky both, until all Bellepheros could see was a wall of pale stone and the wooden scaffolds that hung from it. Windows and doors littered the cliff faces, some of them shuttered or closed, but most no more than simple openings into the rock. They were careful things, precise circles and arches. Closer still and the men at work on the scaffolds threw ropes to the ship, hauling it slowly in. A few were black-skinned Taiytakei; most were paler, but they all wore rags like the serfs of Furymouth. As the ship came so close that he could almost reach out from his window and touch them, he saw that some of the men were like Tuuran, with lightning bolts branded on their arms. The ones who wore the brand gave orders to the ones who didn't; and then the ship was so close that the scaffolds were above him and he could see nothing at all except for a wall of dark wet stone mottled with seaweed.
The Taiytakei, when they came to take him, glanced at the broken window. They didn't say anything but Bellepheros saw the sourness on their faces and in the set of their mouths. They took his arms and pushed him, firmly but not harshly, along a passage and up a narrow flight of steps out into the daylight. After the gloom of his cabin the brightness of the sun was overwhelming. He blinked and squinted and screwed up his face. Sailors swarmed around him, dirty white tunics over sun-browned skins. Soldiers in golden armour stood guard. They gleamed and sparkled in the sun so brightly that it took Bellepheros a moment — even after his eyes adjusted to the light — to realise their armour was made of glass tinged with gold and woven with wire. He shielded his eyes against the sun and looked for the floating palace up between the masts but the sky was too bright and blue. There was. . something up above the ship, something round and glittering and golden and huge, as big as the ship itself, but it shone so brightly in the streaming sun that he couldn't look at it for long. He screwed up his eyes and blinked again, looking back at the deck.
‘The sail-slave who was given to this one. Where is he?’ The shout came from beside him, loud and sudden enough to make him flinch. A Taiytakei drew a wand from his belt like the ones Bellepheros had already seen, glass woven with filaments of gold and glowing brightly with an inner light. Across the whole ship everything stopped. The air hummed with sudden tension. Every sailor froze and put down what they were holding and dropped to their knees, all except one who turned slowly to face them. Tuuran. The Taiytakei levelled his wand at the Adamantine Man. ‘You know what you've done, sail-slave. You've broken the law of the sea. The sentence is death.’
The window. The storm-dark.
The Taiytakei's eyes narrowed. Bellepheros shoved him. He was an old man, still half dazzled by the light and bewildered by everything around him, but it was enough. The Taiytakei lurched, the wand wavered and Tuuran was still standing.
Another soldier seized Bellepheros, a rough hand on his shoulder spinning him round, and yet another punched him in the gut. All the air flew out of him. Bellepheros doubled over, gasping. The Taiytakei with the wand ran a finger over it, dimming the light inside. He pointed it at Bellepheros now instead. The alchemist looked up helpless, still trying to breathe. The air between them snapped and flashed. Pain hit him in the shoulder and flared all over. He sagged. If it hadn't been for the soldier holding him up, he would have fallen to the deck.
‘You are still a slave, however much the sea lord wants you.’ The Taiytakei with the wand turned back to Tuuran. As far as Bellepheros could tell, the Adamantine Man hadn't moved. Hadn't even tried to run. He was just standing there, ready to take his fate.
Bellepheros finally sucked in a lungful of air. ‘I need him!’ he shouted. ‘I need him to do my work!’ Tuuran would not die for him, not for showing him a secret. He reached inside himself, into his blood. He'd use what he had, here and now if he had to.
‘Liar.’ The Taiytakei ran his finger along his wand. Its light grew fierce once more.
‘I will not work unless I have him!’
‘You'll do as you're told, slave.’ The Taiytakei levelled the wand.
‘You will give me what I ask for to build an eyrie for you or the dragons you bring to me will roam free and burn your kingdoms to ash!’ Bellepheros was shaking but there were things that needed to be said. ‘I am the keeper of the dragons! I have defied dragon-kings when the need arose. You have taken me against my will from my life and my home but you can not make me do what you wish without my consent. Kill me, hurt me, threaten me and you will get nothing. I require this man! I demand him.’
The look on the Taiytakei's face didn't change. A slave was a slave and there were no exceptions. But then his eyes shifted and he looked past Bellepheros and the soldiers who held him, and Bellepheros saw the wand lower a fraction.