Dragon Queen (14 page)

He woke again when they pulled him off the mule. He tried to see but his eyes were swollen almost shut. His head pounded like a busy blacksmith's hammer. The brightness of the day made him wince. His mouth tasted of his own blood.

The men around him were soldiers.
His
soldiers. Fighting Hawks. They tied him to a post beside the road and left him slumped there, groaning. The air smelled of mud and sweat but the sun was higher than he remembered and at least he was warm now. He rolled his head. Other men were tied to more posts around him. Queensguard by the looks of them, and they were on the edge of a field beside the road. Not in the trees any more. When he twisted to look behind him, he saw a farmhouse, but he couldn't look at it for long before the pain was unbearable. He gasped and cried out but no one even looked his way. He knew where he was, though. He'd been here before. Not far from the battlefield.

A steady stream of wagons and horses moved along the road. His supply train from Galsmouth, following the rest of the Fighting Hawks into Tethis itself.

His
Fighting Hawks.
His
supply train.

Past the road all he could see was another field and then sky. They weren't far from the coast. A mile straight west and he'd reach the cliffs and the sea. Not that he had the strength.

A pair of soldiers moved past him. The Judge's men. He closed his eyes but he heard one of them whisper to another as they passed, ‘Let the Taiytakei have the lot of them. The boy's a murderer. Killed a couple of his house guards as well. Not a man you'd miss, but you know how touchy the Crowntaker is.’

His head sank to his chest. Pain, pain, pain, everything hurt, but nothing as bad as his head. There were holes in his memories. Hundreds of them. Like the rotten wood of an old barn so riddled with wormholes that inside its skin was nothing but dust and what was left crumbled to the slightest touch. Crumbs. Whole from the outside but on the brink of collapse.

The world drifted. He saw ships. He didn't know who he was. He'd had a name once. Maybe two. Sometimes he remembered one, sometimes the other. Sometimes he forgot them both.

The Bloody Judge. Berren Crowntaker. Remember!

Early in the afternoon they cut him down, him and the queens-guard, and dragged them over to a dozen cage-wagons and threw them inside. By then he was too delirious to even walk. He barely knew what was happening. They threw him in like a sack of onions and, if it hurt, he didn't notice. The wagons rolled and bounced over the roads, shaking his bones, adding to the hammer in his head. The rain, when it came, soaked him, and for a while his wandering mind thought he was at sea.

Berren Crowntaker. Remember!

He'd spent two years at sea once. A skag. The lowest of the low, scampering through the rigging, hating every moment of it, but he'd deserved it for what he'd done.

The rain grew heavier. Slowly the cold brought him back. He huddled in the corner of his cage, shivering as the road turned to mud. The wagons began to struggle. The soldiers turned out the prisoners from one of them to push the others. Some ran. He
watched the soldiers chase them and cut them down. If they'd let him out, he'd have run too, except he wouldn't even have been able to stand. He felt sick.

A bit later he threw up. By now the pain in his head was like being crushed under a mountain.

They passed the Dark Queen's castle. His army hadn't yet forced its way past the last few cohorts holding the palisade. Wouldn't be long though. He almost smiled.
He
knew the secret way in and he knew the queensguard didn't watch it. No one else knew it now. No one else left alive. They'd all died in Tethis when the madness of the Thousand Knives came.

All of them except him.

He should have killed the Dark Queen that day. Should have tried. Should have faced the last three men she had left to her and cut them down, even if one was a friend, and put an end to her. But the world had seemed different then. Brighter. He'd had a son. He'd had Tasahre – no, not Tasahre. Tasahre belonged with Deephaven. Fasha – that was the one.

His mind spun in loops. Secret way. Somehow that made him shake with laughing –
that's
how he knew who he was. No one else knew the secret way. He could show them so . . .

He could have killed the queen that day. Should have. Ten years of bitter feud and he could have wiped them all away with a single cut of his sword.

The wagons went round behind the castle, over the High Bridge and down the steep-sided valley into Tethis itself. The rain stopped but rivulets of water still ran between the cobbles, pooling in puddles outside doorsteps. The streets were empty, quiet. People were hiding. Could hardly blame them for that. Just like the day the Thousand Knives had come. Yes, he remembered that. How empty it had been.

Not that the wagons cared for what he remembered. They rolled steadily down through the town, past dirty grey stone walls and peeled-paint doors whose colours had faded years ago. Grime streaked everything, all the way to the sea and the docks and the old warehouse where Vallas had lived, back when Vallas had called himself a soap maker. Years later the Dark Queen had built it into a prison.

His own soldiers dragged him out of the cage-wagon. He staggered and tried to pull away but he was as weak as a child and one good cuff knocked him down. He lay there in the puddles, too empty to move, while they manacled him to a line of six queens-guard, and it was they who helped him to his feet. One of them let him lean on his shoulder and he almost cried. A piece of kindness, and yet he still hated them. They were the enemy, after all.

In the prison they left him for days with no food, just a bucket of river water brought in each morning.
His
soldiers, men he'd fought beside for years, and now they simply didn't know him. When his head finally stopped pounding, he tried to tell them who he was but no one wanted to listen. They just laughed and kicked him until he was quiet, but he felt their contempt and disdain worse than any beating. They despised him. Good men. Strong, brave, he even knew a few of them by name, but when he called out they spat in his face And each day more ragged prisoners were dragged into the warehouse. Queensguard, mostly.

He slept a lot. In his dreams he was someone else. In his dreams he lay beside a lake in the dark and he couldn't move and something was terribly horribly wrong and the stranger with the one eye and the half-ruined face stood over him as his life ebbed away. Fingers traced symbols, and where the fingers passed the air split open like swollen flesh under a sharpened blade. Black shadow oozed out of the gashes left behind.

What will you give to live?
the stranger asked, tracing ever more symbols, slowly filling the sky.

Anything
, he replied.

He woke up weeping. The tears flowed freely. He hung his head. Words faded into the depths of his thoughts.
Xibaiya save me
. As the sun rose on that last morning the doors burst open and there was the Bloody Judge himself with all the faces Berren had known for years: Tallis One-Eye. Gaunt the knife man. Lia the Mountain Fox who loved him and hated him all at once. The false Judge pulled out a knife. Its hilt was gold and carved with a pattern of a thousand stars. Its blade shimmered. The Starknife, old as the world, peerless, imbued with a fragment of something vast yet sleeping. One of a pair and Berren had seen them both. One in a
box on the thief-taker's desk in Deephaven, the other in the hands of Saffran Kuy the warlock on the day Kuy had cut out a piece of his soul. He'd never known which was which but he'd carried one of them at his own side ever since that day in Tethis, ten years past.

The false Judge held up the knife and looked about. ‘Who knows what this is?’ His eyes roamed from face to face. Slowly, from one to the next to the next. He stopped at Berren and stared long and hard and then moved on. When he was done, he pointed to two who had once been warlocks. ‘Him. And him. They've seen it before. Take them outside and hang them.’

Tallis pointed at Berren. ‘And him. He knows too. I saw it in his eyes.’

Too much. Berren lunged in his chains. ‘Tallis One-Eye,
I
am Berren! Not him. That's some usurper! He's a trick the warlocks are playing on you. Can't you see?’

One-Eye and the Bloody Judge looked at each other. They both started to laugh. Berren's voice rose shrilly over them: ‘I can prove it, One-Eye. I know things only I could know. I know about the secret passageway from the ravine into the pit under the castle. Has he showed you that? Or did he let good men die for no good purpose battering at that palisade? No one knows that passage exists any more, no one except me. You can't even find it unless you know exactly what to look for. It's hidden by a—’

‘By a sump.’ The Bloody Judge looked at him hard. ‘And you're right: I
didn't
think any of you warlocks would find it again. It seems you did.’

‘What?’

One-Eye was still laughing. ‘We took the castle through that passage days ago, warlock.’ He turned away.

‘Wait!’ Berren pulled at his chains again. ‘I'm no warlock! I
am
Berren! I don't know how they did what they did but don't you remember the sigil, One-Eye? You were right beside me. Six men and a warlock broke out of the trees and came at us. We stuck two of them and I ran the warlock through but he put a strip of paper on me before he died. A sigil. You remember? It was the sigil that did this.’

One-Eye froze mid-turn. The Bloody Judge cocked his head.
‘Go on, warlock. Play your game. You were there, were you? Watched it, did you?’

‘I was
you
!’

‘I remember that sigil. I fell to my knees and blacked out. And it did feel like something sucking at my soul. Yet here I still am, warlock. I guess it didn't work, did it?’

‘You were there, One-Eye! You saw me. You tried to help me. I couldn't pull it away.’

The Bloody Judge's eyes narrowed. ‘What did you do, warlock? What did you do to me with that sigil? Or was it just a trick and this is your great plan.’ He laughed again. ‘You trying to tell Tallis here that Vallas cast a spell on me and now I'm one of
you
? Go on then. This sounds fun.’

‘Tallis, he
is
one of them! He
is
a warlock. His name is Skyrie. They . . . they switched us somehow. I'm the real Berren. I grew up in Deephaven. I was with Prince Syannis. He was a thief-taker then. I told you about him. Do you remember? The tavern in Brons? The Falling Dagger. I told you about him and the warlock Saffran Kuy. I showed you that knife he's carrying, the golden one with the eyes in the hilt. I told you how Kuy had another one and what he did with it. I told you about Radek of Kalda, how Syannis lured him to Deephaven and how he died and about Tasahre and how I ended up a skag and . . .’

The Bloody Judge took a step closer to Berren. ‘And how I came to Kalda and saw Master Sy again by chance, went after him and found his brother, Prince Talon, joined his company and so joined his war against King Meridian to help Syannis sit on his throne again.’ He glanced over his shoulder at One-Eye. ‘Do you remember that, Tallis? Do you remember me telling you about Fasha, the bondsmaid, and how I didn't kill the Dark Queen when I should have, and what happened after I took my Fasha and my son back again? Do you remember the tears I wept when I told you that. Falling-down drunk we were. What did they call that brew we were drinking? Devil's finger?’

‘Devil's foot,’ said Berren hopelessly. He shook his head, lost, then lifted his eyes and met the Bloody Judge's gaze. ‘I
am
Berren. I
am
the Bloody Judge, however much you don't want to believe it. Maybe we both are. Do you remember that night in the Maze with
Lilissa? After we went with Master Sy into the Captain's Rest and the harbour master set his snuffers on us all? If you really are me, you know where we hid.’

The Bloody Judge nodded. ‘The Sheaf of Arrows. The old cellar. You could slip into it off the backstreet if you knew how.’ He smiled. ‘I remember Lilissa, yes. And if you're me, you'll remember who was waiting for us when we came out.’

‘One-Thumb.’

‘Yeh, but it was Hair who saw us first.’ For a moment Berren and the Bloody Judge looked into one another, each trying to fathom the other out. Then the Judge shook his head. ‘I know who I am, warlock.’ He turned away.

Berren lunged against the chains again. ‘One-Eye! Ask him how he lost his finger, One-Eye. Ask him how he
really
lost it.’

The Bloody Judge roared with laugher. He looked back to glare at Berren and his eyes blazed. ‘Which story should I tell him, warlock. Should I tell him the one I told him when we first met, how it was cut off in my first battle as a Fighting Hawk, or shall I tell tell him the one he's never heard where it was cut off by the warlock Saffran Kuy on the day he cut a piece out of my soul with this cursed knife.’ He turned back, shaking his head, baring his teeth and chuckling to himself, and as he came closer he drew out the golden-hafted knife again. ‘Three little cuts, warlock. You. Obey. Me. I see it now.
That's
how you know so much about me, is it?’ He touched the stone that Berren had worn around his neck every day for the last dozen years, the stone that Gelisya had given back to him when they'd been friends. The stone that made him whole again, or so it had always seemed. ‘Saffran's little piece of me. That's how you know. I always thought it was too good to be true that he'd give it back.’ He held the Starknife in front of Berren's face. ‘I should cut you and make you my slave, warlock.’

‘Cut me with that and you'll see everything I say is true! Cut me, then! Do it! I'm begging you!’ But The Bloody Judge was already backing away and shaking his head.

‘I don't make men into slaves, warlock. I'm not like you.’

Tallis One-Eye spat at Berren's feet. ‘So do we hang him, Judge? He's a warlock after all.’

The Judge stared a long time, off into the distance, then shook
his head. ‘Maybe so, One-Eye, but he can go with the rest. You never know.’ He turned and walked away.