Dragon Queen (16 page)

The Watcher shifted. He became air and flesh again in the blink of an eye. With a slice of his bladeless knife the grey dead's head fell from his shoulders. It rolled on the floor, still grinning.

‘I will wait for you in Xibaiya, earth-touched,’ it mouthed.

14

The Dragon Slave

The man chained next to Berren was dead. He'd been dead for days; he stank of rank decay and the rats had gnawed his feet to the bone. Whenever Berren dozed for a few minutes one of the rats would take a nip to see if
he
was ready to be eaten too. They were hungry, these bilge rats, and they were big and there were a lot of them. So far he'd found the strength to kick them into the stinking inches of stale water that slopped back and forth underfoot. Sometimes he even managed to stamp on one and break its back. It would squeal, and the squealing told him where it lay, legs thrashing. There were better things to eat than raw rat, but there were worse things too.

Lazily he rattled his chains. Except when he had visitors come to taunt him, there was no light down here, nothing to see by. The Taiytakei who ran the ship were still taking bets on how much longer he was going to last. One or two who'd gambled long at the start had even smuggled down bread and water at first but that had stopped after the man next to him had died. The Taiytakei bet on everything. They couldn't help themselves. They could have bet on who he really was, if he'd told any of them his story, but it might have come to an unsatisfying end because he didn't know any more. Simply didn't know. Whenever the rats left him alone, whenever he drifted into a fitful sleep, his mind wandered into a past that belonged to someone else. In his waking memories he knew he'd grown up a street urchin in the city of Deephaven. When he closed his eyes he found he lived in a village beside a lake, surrounded by reeds taller than the tallest men. Instead of streets he ran among the tiny channels between them, up to his knees in muddy water. Or sometimes it was the other way round. He'd lost track of everything. Lost track of who he was, lost track of time. Tethis had been months ago. The battle, the pit, Vallas, the Bloody
Judge, they'd faded to one half-remembered dream.

The hatch overhead opened. The sound roused him to lift his head. No one had come for more than a day but now men were lowering the ladder, clambering down the steep narrow steps, boots clumping on hard damp wood, splashing when they reached the bilges.

Taiytakei. Two held candles and lurked in the shadows. Two others came and peered and poked. He'd never seen any of them before but they wore their hair in long braids that fell almost to their waists. The longer the braids, the more important the man. He'd learned that much before they'd thrown him down here. The same went for their clothes and especially their cloaks. They liked their feathers and their bright colours. The bigger and the gaudier they were, the better; but here in the dim flicker of the candles their cloaks looked black. So did everything.

The Taiytakei gibbered to each other in their dialect, too fast for Berren to follow. Now and then he heard words he understood, but for the most part their speech was impossible. Written down though, their letters and language was the same as he'd learned in Aria. In Deephaven with the priests and the monks and Tasahre, years before the Bloody Judge had been born.

He closed his eyes. The Taiytakei chattered away right in front of him as though he was a carcass hung up in a slaughterhouse. Tasahre. His first love. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he watched her die, over and over and over, always the same, the sword opening her throat and the blood, so much blood. But other times, when he screwed up his eyes and tried, he remembered her from before. His hand pressed to her cheek. Her tears on his skin, and gods how he wanted her. How he wanted her now, to hold him and tell him what to do. But she was gone, and every time he remembered that anew, despair tried to drown him. She'd told him once that words were all the same – in Aria, with the Taiytakei, in the Dominion, Tethis, everywhere the same – and it was just the way of saying them that was bent and changed.

The Taiytakei started poking him, still jabbering at one another. As the Bloody Judge, he'd planned to meet a slaver crew some years ago but it had never come to anything. Now one of them was prodding his arms and his ribs, turning his face this way and that,
peering at his teeth and eyes. He wondered if these Taiytakei were slavers too. How would he have seen them, standing as Gaunt had stood on the edge of the sea when he'd been taking their silver and selling his captives? He'd always said he'd sell the queensguard to slavers. Wars cost money and the men of the queensguard had picked the wrong side. Exactly his own words but now he saw how hollow and cold they were.

‘Do you want to live, slave?’ The accent was still thick but the Taiytakei could be understood when they tried. He nodded. He forced himself.
Did
he want to live? He wasn't entirely sure any more. Here was life, come full circle, back to being a skag, only worse.
Did
he want that again?

Better than death though. Wasn't it?

The slaver frowned. ‘Why? Why do you want to live?’

‘I . . . want . . .’ What sort of question was that?
So I can wring your necks, all of you, one by one
. What did he want? He wanted his life back, his own skin.
My sword, my army, my missing piece that I once wore around my neck that makes me whole
. But swords came and went and the Fighting Hawks only existed to break the warlocks and their queen. The other him had already done that.

Then so I can wrap my hands around my own throat and strangle the life out of whatever bastard has stolen my body and my name. That's why
. That was more like it. Revenge? He understood revenge. From the day he'd left Deephaven his life had been made of it. The Bloody Judge had had his way now, and all that was left was a sordid hunt through the back alleys of the world, cutting up the last few warlocks that still survived, but that's what he'd do. Revenge was what he had left to him. Revenge on the friends who'd sold him as a slave. Revenge for a son taken by disease before he could hold a sword. Revenge for a lover whose fire for him had died. Revenge against the gods themselves, though he knew well that revenge was a whore and not a lover.

Deep inside him something stirred.
Revenge against the gods themselves
. A strength surged through him, a will to exist and yes, a will to wreak that revenge, all of it. He lifted his head and bared his teeth and glared at the Taiytakei in front of him.

‘Because I'm not ready to die.’

The Taiytakei exchanged more words. One called a candle
bearer closer and pointed at Berren's thigh, at the scarring on his leg. The other looked him up and down. ‘You know ships?’

He nodded. Two years as a skag; but they must have known, because knowing his way around a ship was what had landed him down here in the first place. Normal disobedience was met with floggings or simply being thrown overboard to drown. It took a special crime for a Taiytakei slave captain to put one of his precious cargo to death so slowly; but then it took a special understanding of sails and ropes and how they worked together to fray the right few so they'd snap when they should hold and sails that should be reefed would stay aloft untouched until the wind in them snapped the masts that held them high. If he'd thought of a way to send the ship to the bottom of the sea, he'd have done it.

‘Sail, fight, gold,’ said the Taiytakei. To him it seemed to mean something.

They left him chained in the dark for another two days but at least he got food and water now. The dead man beside him was taken out and thrown into the sea. When they let him out, up onto the decks, Berren screwed up his eyes and stretched and cast his arms to the sky, feeling the sunlight and the fresh air and the wind on his skin for the first time in . . . days? Weeks? He didn't know. When they prodded him into a boat along with a dozen more slaves, he did as he was asked, meek and docile while the fire inside smouldered on. A time and a place. One day . . .

Revenge on the gods themselves
. The thought haunted him yet gave him its strength. Inside him, now and then, he still felt the remnant of the warlock whose body he'd taken, crushed and squashed, forced away into some deep dark corner, jumbled and slowly fading to nothing, a husk to be devoured by alien thoughts and foreign memories, drenched with despair, although these days even the despair was a dull thing, muted and driven away.

He'd not let that happen. Not to him.
Not
to the Bloody Judge.

The boat pulled alongside a galley, a fast shallow-draughted coastal corsair, the sort of ship the Bloody Judge might once have used for fast sharp raids along the Tethis coast. Its decks were busy, filled with bright-coloured Taiytakei and unchained white-shirted slaves. Some of the slaves even carried short cutting knives. The Taiytakei carried them too, but they carried something else: golden
glass sticks that glowed with their own light. He was herded with the other newcomers to the back. Several Taiytakei pointed their glowing sticks at him. White light held in glass. He thought he'd seen something like that once before. Trapped fire that Prince Talon, the Prince of Swords, had once used.

He stopped. He suddenly didn't know who it was they'd fought that day. The king he'd killed for the Prince of Swords. How he'd earned his other name: Crowntaker. A moment ago he'd known who it was but now the name was gone like the snap of a man's fingers.

He stood with the other new slaves, cowed and pressed together, surrounded by armed men while the two ships finished their business. The galley raised a sail and began to move. A slave with a knife on his belt and two Taiytakei soldiers came forward. The slave wore the same white as the others, but around his wrist hung half a dozen strings of brightly coloured stones. He looked at Berren and the others, laughed and spat at their feet.

‘If you speak the Sun King's tongue, nod your head.’ The words were loud and slow as though he was talking to idiots. He looked them over one more time and then walked in among them, cuffing them into answering. ‘We are all slaves.
Slaves
. Do you know what that means?’ He tore one of the strings off his wrist and threw it into the sea. ‘I didn't like that one any more. That's what happens to things I don't like.’ He waved his fist. ‘I care more about every one of these stones than I care about any of you. This lot.’ He nodded at the guards. ‘As far as they're concerned, they like the bilge rats better than us.’ He went from one to another, unlocking their chains then held them up. ‘You think these make you slaves? You're wrong. It's the colour of your skin. Look at yourselves. Look at the colour of your skin. Look at the colour of
my
skin. Slaves is what we are, chains or no chains. Or do you wish to be free?’ He gestured over the side of the ship. The coastline was maybe a mile away, maybe less. The air was warm, the sea calm. Berren stared at it. Couldn't help it. A strong man could . . .

The slave with the bracelets stood in front of Berren and snapped his fingers. ‘You. Scrawny one with the scar on your leg.’ Bracelets glared down at him. ‘A strong man could swim. That's what you're thinking.’ He turned away, addressed them once again. ‘And he's
right. A strong man
could
swim to the shore from here, if he could swim at all. But you're slaves and slaves are weak.’ He laughed. ‘Prove me wrong. Go and jump. Run! I won't stop you.’

No one ran. Bracelets glared at them. He raised his left arm to show the lightning brand that ran from his elbow halfway to his fist. ‘I'm a slave like you. One brand makes you worth something to these bastards.
You
have no brands. That makes you worth nothing.’ He came forward again, nose to nose with the biggest slave from Berren's ship. ‘I have a name but you're not worth it yet, so you can call me master, or bastard, or anything you like as long as you do what I say when I say it. What's your name, slave?’

The big man murmured something. Bracelets slapped him. ‘
Wrong!
Your name is
slave
. Big man like you, why aren't you swimming?’ Again the big man murmured and again Bracelets slapped him and shouted in his face, ‘Because you're a
slave
and because you're
weak
.’ One by one he went among them. Whatever they said, he slapped them. If they gave a name, he screamed at them that they were slaves. If they said they were slaves, he screamed at them that they were weak.

Now he was standing in front of Berren. ‘And
you
, Scarred Leg, I know
you
were thinking of taking a jump. Saw your eyes look at the sea. I know what you were thinking. Freedom, eh? Land. So close. So tempting. Yet here you are. Still here. What's your name, slave? Are you a sheep or a wolf?’

Berren lowered his head and didn't reply. Bracelets slapped him. ‘Are you deaf then? Are you mute? Stupid? Are you all three?’ Berren said nothing. Bracelets slapped him again. ‘Slave! You're a slave. Say it! Say
I am a slave!’
Another slap. ‘Say—’

A tide of fury washed though Berren. He caught Bracelets’ wrist, twisted, had one arm locked around the man's neck in a flash. The other hand whipped the knife out of Bracelets’ belt.

‘My name is slave,’ Berren hissed. ‘But my other name is Berren. Berren Crowntaker, Berren the Bloody Judge of Tethis.’ The Taiytakei soldiers were pointing their wands at him. The light inside them blazed bright. And he didn't care. Not one bit.

Bracelets snarled and waved them back. ‘You stay here, you're just slave to me,’ he said. ‘You want a name? You earn it.’

Berren forced Bracelets’ head up. ‘I see the archers there. You
might not kill me but they will.’ He felt a dizziness coming over him. Weakness. Weeks of being starved.

‘You
earn
it!’ Bracelets grabbed Berren's wrist and pulled the knife away from his throat. He twisted Berren's arm until the knife fell to the deck and then kicked him down and roared at the other cowering slaves, ‘By fighting! This is a fighting ship.
You
man the oars. If you live a year, you man the ropes and the sails. If you live another year, you fight. You'll be slaves, you'll always be slaves, but you can be
proud
slaves.’ He held up his hand and waved his strings of stones. ‘Every year you live, you get one of these. If you live long enough to fight, you can leave if you want but you won't. You'll have a taste for it by then. Either that or you'll be dead.’