by Stephen Deas
‘How much do you want to let me go?’ asked Tsen. ‘Right now, right here. I’ll give you everything I have. I’ll get on that ship and no one will ever see me again. No one will ever know.’
The man with the knife banged on the roof. The carriage started to move. ‘But you have nothing to offer, t’varr. Nothing.’
Tsen tried his pleas a while longer as the carriage eased its way from the docks and out through Hanjaadi towards the Vespinarr road. Bargaining, haggling, threatening, cajoling. Begging and pleading when nothing else worked, not that he thought it would make any difference. The two men barely said a word. They didn’t tell him their names when he asked, but it didn’t particularly matter. They’d come with his old friend Vey Rin, t’varr and brother to Sea Lord Shonda of Vespinarr, on the day the great red-gold dragon had broken Vey Rin’s mind. Tsen settled to amusing himself by remembering every detail once it was obvious they wouldn’t be bribed into letting him go.
‘How did you know?’ he asked, but they wouldn’t answer; and though he came at it again and again from all the different ways he could conjure, they never did tell him.
They left the city. As they passed the Bawar Bridge the men opened the blinds, letting in the sunlight. When they stopped and he took a piss, they stood and watched. When he squatted for a shit, they were beside him. Tsen asked them if they might wipe his arse for him; that was when he found they had lightning wands and were happy to use them, now that they were away from the city. He didn’t ask again. The hours dragged to days. They watched him eat and they watched him snore. Always one of them, often both, and their sword-slave mercenaries were never far away. Kalaiya, at least, was with him. They gave him that kindness. Or perhaps kindness wasn’t it, perhaps it was simply less of a burden to watch the two of them at once – but it gave him hope to see her, to talk with her, even if their captors saw every gesture and heard every word. He wondered how he might save her now. What bargain he could possibly strike for her life.
The carriage followed the river road through the Lair of Samim and out the other side. The road began its climb into the Jokun gorge. Tsen stared out of the windows, filled with déjà vu because the skin-shifter Sivan had brought him this exact same way before, captive in a different way but captive nonetheless. The same thoughts came around again; and since the men in the carriage refused to talk, Tsen set about getting on their nerves, chattering away with Kalaiya about how the road here had been carved from the sheer cliffs, wondering how many men it had taken to build it, and how long, and all the other questions that had once come to a bored t’varr with nothing else to fill his mind. He talked on endlessly about that journey, how he’d slipped into Vespinarr itself right under the noses of Shonda’s guards and flown out on a gondola from the Visonda Fields, disguised as a slave. He chuckled every time the carriage slowed, held up by teams of animals towing one barge after another against the river current. He told Kalaiya of all the times, in his mind at least, he’d almost escaped, and of all the new and colourful words he’d learned. From his own mouth the story sounded like some great adventure, an epic journey across a continent to rescue his true love; and sometimes, when he looked at her, that was exactly how it seemed even now, although the truth he remembered was smaller and dirtier, and very much more fearful. But he pushed that aside and wove on with his tales, and in odd times now and then they both forgot what awaited them, and laughed and smiled and held hands and were, in the moment, happy.
They came at last to the head of the gorge where the cliffs fell away around the shore of a familiar lake, where the Jokun paused its plunge from the mountains of the Konsidar to the sea. Hundreds of boats passed back and forth, and the air was cool and damp and fresh, full of life and adventure. When Tsen had come with Sivan a stiff breeze had blown off the mountains to cover the lake with waves; but today the air was still, the waters mirror smooth. The carriage drove past a shanty town of warehouses and sailors and sail-slaves, of mules and the teamsters who drove them through the mountain passes to Vespinarr, of sweat and cheap spirit and even cheaper Xizic. On the far side, where the river started through the upper gorge with its impassable falls and cataracts, a black stone fortress rose from an outcrop of rock. That, his gut said, was where Vey Rin would be waiting.
‘Is it true,’ Tsen asked as the carriage turned and drove through the fortress gates, ‘that there are vaults here filled with a fortune in Vespinese silver?’ When Sivan had brought him along this same road they hadn’t stopped, but he remembered wondering how a fortress like this would fare before a dragon. Badly, he supposed, but with his eyrie lost to the storm-dark, no one would ever know.
His guardians didn’t answer. They never did. The carriage stopped in the castle yard, and the sword-slaves opened the doors and pulled Tsen out. They kicked him in the back of his knees to buckle his legs and pressed his head to the weathered stones, forcing him to kowtow, and then held him there until he felt the air change around him and someone come close. A waft of exquisitely expensive Xizic lanced through the stones’ vague odour of stale manure. A shadow loomed, stealing the sun and its warmth. Tsen heard Kalaiya cry out. He tried to look, to see what they’d done to her, but he couldn’t turn his head.
‘Hello, Tsen,’ said the shadow. The voice was so familiar, and yet with a high-pitched squeal he’d never heard before. But the voice didn’t matter. The Xizic had been enough.
‘Hello, Rin, old friend.’
Vey Rin kicked him in the face. The sword-slaves let go and Tsen rolled onto his side, clutching his head. Blood poured out of his nose. Rin kicked him again and then again, and then he was swearing and cursing like a sailor, laying in with blow after blow as though he meant to kick Tsen to death right there in the yard, and Tsen could see Kalaiya now, held fast between two soldiers and forced to watch, and all he could think of was that at least it wasn’t her.
‘You kick,’ he gasped, ‘like an old woman.’
Vey Rin T’Varr, sea lord of Vespinarr, stamped Tsen down. He howled with hateful venom, stumbled and would have fallen if his own guards hadn’t caught him. ‘Take him!’ Rin sounded more like a monster than a man, warped and wrenched. ‘Take him to the pen! You know what to do with him. Gut him! Flay him!’ The sword-slaves dragged Tsen away while Tsen tried to see what they did with Kalaiya, but he didn’t dare call her name, not now. Didn’t dare even let Vey Rin see him look at her for fear that Rin would murder her on the spot out of spite. Even through the pain and the anguish, he wondered what had happened to his old friend. If friend had ever been what he was.
The sword-slaves dragged him into the fortress, down into stinking bowels of stone never touched by the sun, slick with damp. They ripped his clothes from his skin, beat him with short sticks and then shackled him to a wall, wrists and ankles, spreadeagled, as helpless and as undignified as a man could be. Tsen was fairly sure he knew what happened next – Rin came and gloated and tormented him for a while, and then they tortured him for a bit to make him confess to whatever it was that Rin wanted to hear. Then, probably, they dragged his half-dead carcass back to Vespinarr and hanged him. Or maybe they’d do it in Khalishtor. Look! Look what we found! Baros Tsen, murderer of Dhar Thosis, alive after all to receive his sentence. And Red Lin Feyn, once the Arbiter of the Dralamut, who’d been all ready to let him slip into some anonymous new life, would say nothing. They’d hang what was left of him by the ankles, to be mocked and jeered.
That was if he was lucky. If he was unlucky then they did everything the same, but first they murdered Kalaiya in front of him.
He wept when they left him alone. Couldn’t help himself, even if it was just pathetic worthless self-pity. He had nothing to offer and no bargain left to make. For some reason which made no sense at all, he suddenly found himself immensely angry with Red Lin Feyn for letting him go. A quick death. You could have given that to me. Pushed me off your sled or strangled me with your glass collar or even handed me to the Element
al Men to be hanged. At least Kalaiya would live. But no. You had to give me hope.
He didn’t know how long it was before Rin finally came. Hours, and it must have been dark outside. Rin stank of wine and smelled of Xizic and grease. The first thing he did was walk up to Tsen and belch in his face.
‘Hungry?’
‘We were friends once,’ croaked Tsen. There really wasn’t anything else he could try. ‘Do you remember? Do you remember Cashax? Riding our sleds out into the sands, running scout for those slavers? The House of the Burning Womb? You and me and Shonda and the rest? You do remember?’
Rin backed away, giggling. He looked terrible, now Tsen had a chance to see him up close. Harrowed. His face was pale, his cheeks gaunt and hollow. He’d lost a lot of weight. His skin sagged, and his eyes were red and puffy, the look of a man who wasn’t getting much sleep. His voice, when he spoke, carried a shrill edge of viciousness and of a fear that Tsen had never heard until today. ‘Do you know what she did? That dragon-whore of yours? Do you? She tore my brother Shonda out of the sky. She branded him with his own slave mark. Her dragon held him upside down, dangling him by one leg.’ Rin twitched. ‘Things that should have been done to you, not to him!’
‘Too close to your own memories, Rin?’ asked Tsen softly. ‘The last time I saw you, you were a gibbering dull-eyed wreck. After my dragon had you in its claws and was about to eat you. For your monumental stupidity that day, if not this, I wish it had.’
‘Shut up!’
‘Look at you, Rin. Did my dragon snap your mind?’
‘Shut up!’ Rin hammered a fist into Tsen’s chest. ‘Shut up! Shut up shut up!’ He pounded Tsen and then reeled away.
Careful, tongue. Please, for once. ‘They’re gone, old friend. The dragon. The rider. They’re all go—’
Rin snapped about and levelled an accusing finger. ‘Yes! Gone! All except you! You! You and everything you’ve done to us!’ His fists clenched and unclenched. He came close again now, clutched Tsen’s face between his fingers, and Tsen saw how Rin’s eyes were bloodshot. ‘You!’ Rin breathed. ‘But I am sea lord now, thanks to your dragon-whore. And whatever you say, you will never leave this prison. I don’t want anything from you. Not a word. All I want is to hear you scream, old friend. Scream for me. Will you do that?’ He came right up close, eyeball to eyeball, and put on a mocking nasal voice. ‘Are you getting enough sleep, Rin? Did my dragon snap your mind, Rin?’ He spat in Tsen’s face. ‘I see it every night. Everywhere I look. Your dragon staring at me. Everywhere, and every morning I wake up screaming. That’s what you gave me, old friend, and so that’s what I will give you in return. Torment and agony for as long as I can make you last. Don’t think I mean to let them hang you, oh no. No easy way for you, old friend, not after the ruin you brought, not after what your dragon-whore did to my brother. We’ll start with your woman, shall we?’ He let go and beckoned at the shadows. Tsen heard footsteps.
‘Rin, please! Remember who you—’
Rin whirled and lashed him with a backhand slap so hard it knocked loose a tooth. Tsen spat a mouthful of blood. Rin drew out a knife. ‘I’ll cut her throat for you, Tsen. I’ll do it and do it now. I’ll have her brought here and do it in front of you so you know I’m not lying. Beg me to, Tsen. Beg me to save her everything else I have in mind. Beg me to do it. I will, if you ask nicely enough.’
‘What has she ever done to hurt you?’ Tsen heard the quiver in his voice. ‘You’re better than this, Rin. She’s nothing to you.’
‘But she’s not nothing to you, Tsen!’ Rin lashed out with the knife. Blood sprayed as the blade slashed Tsen’s skin, slicing him across the chest. Tsen screamed.
‘You gutless, spineless, vicious little bastard!’ Might as well vent some spleen, since he couldn’t possibly make it any worse, but Rin only laughed. He tossed the bloody knife to the floor at Tsen’s feet.
‘Cut off his nose,’ he hissed. ‘I want to watch. Then strap him to the bench. Spread that fat arse of his nice and wide and tell the world there’s a virgin shit hole waiting for anyone who wants it. About time you gave someone a little pleasure, you worthless gelding.’ He bared his teeth at Tsen and then came in close and whispered in his ear. ‘I’m off to have my dinner now. When I come back I’m going to put your nose on a string and make her wear it. Give it a few days and you can wear hers too. A matching set. How very touching that will be. And after that, perhaps ears, and then fingers. You’ll never see her again, Tsen, but you’ll always have a part of each other for comfort. Won’t that be nice?’
The slave-swords unshackled Tsen. He struggled with every ounce of futile strength. He screamed and cursed and howled, bit at them and punched and kicked, but they held him fast. One took Rin’s knife and hacked off Tsen’s nose. They strapped him and spread his legs and pushed his face down into stone, burning in pain, half drowning in a spreading pool of his own blood. They beat him half to death, and then they left him there, waiting. He tried to listen out after they were gone, to hear the ominous click of approaching footsteps. Give himself warning. He wondered how to make it as painless as he could, being raped. How much did it hurt? He didn’t know.
At some point, despite himself, he passed out. When he came to, alone in the stagnant gloom of a last guttering stub of a candle, a dragon stared back at him. A hallucination. A dream dragon, the same one he’d conjured in Red Lin Feyn’s gondola. It sat on the stone floor, watching him, while Tsen lay sprawled on his belly, too weak even to turn his head, watching back, his face one long smear of sticky blood-soaked mucus. It wasn’t a big one, but it was a dragon. Was it the same dragon that Vey Rin saw in his nightmares?
An urge hit him to scream, but really what was the point? What was a dragon going to do? Eat him? It would be a mercy. Besides, there weren’t any dragons any more. They’d fallen into the storm-dark. It was a dream-dragon then; although if he was dreaming then it seemed hardly fair that everything hurt so much.
‘Go on, dream-dragon. Eat me.’
I am not here to eat you, little one.
‘Then go away,’ Tsen groaned.
Why? The dragon bared its teeth. Why go when I relish such horror and despair? Prey that screams is always better. Prey that is afraid.
There had certainly been plenty enough screaming, and would doubtless be plenty more. Tsen stared at the dragon, wondering what it wanted and why his addled head had conjured it. Perhaps it would eat him once it got bored. That would be nice.
‘You came … to watch, is that it? Well then I’m surely very glad … to oblige you.’ He groaned without much feeling. ‘So nice to know that … that someone other than Vey Rin takes … some pleasure from this. Anything else I might do for you? Do my screams … sufficiently please you?’ Talking to a hallucination probably meant he was as mad as Vey Rin, but right now madness would be a blessing. He closed his eyes. Talking was too much effort. ‘You look like … the dragon … from the Queverra.’
Silence stretched between them. The dragon didn’t answer, but Tsen could feel it rummaging through his thoughts, his memories, his hungers, his wants. Yes, I would do anything for my Kalaiya. Yes, if you threaten her, I will give my life. Yes, yes, yes … But Vey Rin …
There is a place you wish to go – the dragon was looking at, of all things, the old memories of his villa in Dahat on the mountain coast of the Dominion, halfway between Brons and Merizikat – in the realm of the Sun King.
Yes. There is. Fat lot of good it’s going to do me now, but thank you so much for reminding me. Just cruel, that was, torturing him with thoughts of the future they almost might have had.
Why only might have had?
Because Vey Rin is going to murder me exquisitely slowly. Before he does that, he’s going to murder Kalaiya the same way. And who’s going to save you, t’varr? The Arbiter? Who else even knows you’re alive? And if she discovered you were here, do you think she’d come ri
ding out of the sky in her gold-glass chariot to set you free? Do you think she has a secret sympathy for mass murderers? Or do you think it’s perhaps a bit more likely that she’ll do absolutely nothing at all if she ever learns where you are. Face it, Tsen – after everything that’s happened, even if the whole world knew you were here, is there one person who would lift a finger to stop what Rin plans to do to you?
I do not know, little one. Is there?
No … Tsen blinked and frowned at his hallucination dragon. Perhaps Chay-Liang, but she’s gone. He groaned again. ‘Would you mind terribly not … joining in with my … inner dialogue? It’s confusing enough … hearing voices … without there being one that isn’t even mine.’
A piece of the half-god who broke the world has returned, said the dragon after some more staring. He has taken your eyrie, Baros Tsen T’Varr. He is not whole. He means to find his other half. It is in the Dominion of the Sun King. He must fail. The dragon’s tail flicked back and forth.
Swish.
Swish.
Well. That was an odd thought. Tsen watched and waited. Quite bizarre really. His mind was wandering, was it? Making up nonsense. Hardly a surprise, all things considered. He’d conjured a dragon to talk to after all, so why not some babbling gibberish? But still, what? Half-gods and broken worlds? Exactly what sort of madness was this that he’d caught? He couldn’t imagine himself, even daft as a bag of spiders, coming up with such things.
Swish.
Maybe this was Rin’s plan all along. Make them both as mad as each other. Crack him in half and then leave him to burble nightmares into some dank forgotten corner of darkness and uncaring stone.
A change is coming, Baros Tsen T’Varr. The unravelling of everything. The half-god will remake the world in his image. For better or for worse.
Tsen waited a moment to see if there was any more, or something that would make sense of it, but there wasn’t, and now his dream-dragon seemed to expect some sort of answer. More worryingly, he rather feared it might be wanting some sort of intelligent answer. Is this my way of working through what Sivan wanted? What he was trying to do? Did he say something that makes this anything more than derangement and gabble? ‘I quite liked the … world as it was,’ Tsen said to the dragon at last. ‘And it’s a bit bloody late now, frankly, don’t you think? So it would be nice … whatever you are … if you’d ramble about something that makes a little more sense … if you please.’ There. Much more of this talking and he’d pass out again at the effort of it. He closed his eyes. The pain was easing, or perhaps he was simply getting used to it. Maybe I’m dying. That would be nice. Over with. So could you just go away, little dream-dragon, and leave me be? A little rest. That would be nice, too. Rin was hardly likely to have a change of heart come the morning, so all his stupid hallucinations could leave him alone now, please. Didn’t know what he was thinking, anyway. He was a good Taiytakei. He’d never had much time or thought for gods, old or new or half, and he couldn’t imagine any such having much time for him either. Especially not now.