Authors: Stephen Deas
‘Well,’ said Tuuran, ‘you can kebab me and finish me off if you like but you're going to look very stupid when I ram your own knife in your face before I die.’
The assassin was looking past him and Tuuran realised he hadn't heard the thundercrack of the witch firing her wand. His heart raced, because that meant the first one was still there and he certainly couldn't hold off two; and then a figure appeared behind the assassin who'd thrown the knives. Literally appeared as if he'd been standing there all along but had been invisible until now. He wore a black robe edged with strands of colour that all washed out to a silvery grey in the moonlight. As he appeared, he made
a slight movement and the assassin's hand fell off and landed on the street with a wet thud. Blood sprayed from the stump over the wide stones. The assassin just stood, dumbfounded, and let himself bleed. Black-robe flicked something from his empty hand. Tuuran didn't see what it was, but the assassin screamed as though he'd had his testicles crushed and finally clutched the stump of his arm. The stream of blood over the road petered out and then stopped. The assassin's whole arm, Tuuran saw, had withered and turned black. He felt light-headed. The lights further down the street had blurred a little.
Black-robe leaned close and whispered in the assassin's ear, ‘Go and tell your regrettable masters that this one is out of their reach. Whoever asked you to do this will be obliged to seek a return of their jade. Now go, and stay gone.’
The now one-armed assassin bowed and backed away. His face was a rictus of pain and he spoke through gritted teeth. ‘We are but poor mirrors. We know this. But when, may I ask, did you become guardsmen? We are knives, not shields.’
Black-robe shook his head. ‘The Regrettable Men of Vespinarr, of all the people in the world, should know better. We have always been shields. That was our first and only purpose.’
Tuuran looked behind him. The alchemist was standing exactly as he had when the fight began – bemused and without a clue. The witch looked stricken and the two Taiytakei soldiers lay dead on the street, as did the man who'd killed them, the first assassin, who'd now become somehow separated from his head.
When he looked back again, the second assassin was gone too, vanished into the night. Tuuran looked at the severed hand on the street. A hand and half a forearm. Black-robe's blade, whatever it was, had cut through the bones as though they were butter.
He was breathing hard. There was a rattle in his throat. He felt dizzy and he couldn't stop looking at the hand. What kind of blade could do that? ‘You're just going to let the other one go?’ he gasped.
Black-robe looked down the street. ‘Regrettable Men,’ he said when the killer was gone. ‘From Vespinarr.’
The alchemist seemed to wake up. ‘I thought you said this Vespinarr was your friend!’
‘Vespinarr is the city where the Regrettable Men make their home. Any may buy them as any may come to Mount Solence and ask us for our blades. Such friendship is traded for jade, nothing else.’
‘Are you hurt?’ The witch was all over Bellepheros now, holding on to him, poking and prodding. Something had changed between them since the Palace of Leaves. An affection that hadn't been there before, her for him. It made Tuuran smile. Things came at the most unexpected times. He looked down. His shirt was soaked with blood and he still had a knife stuck in his chest. If he pulled it out, he had a bad feeling about what would happen next.
‘Yes, yes, I'm not hurt. Did he . . . Did they . . . Did they mean to
kill
me?’
Tuuran tried taking long deep breaths to keep the dizziness at bay. He couldn't really just stand here with two knives sticking out of him . . . What was it that an Adamantine Man did? Obeyed orders, first and last and always. But obeyed
whose
orders? The Night Watchman. The speaker, but when there was no Night Watchman here and no speaker either? Well, he'd sworn himself to the alchemist, the next best thing, so he supposed he could die content.
The witch still only had eyes for the alchemist. ‘I'm so sorry, Belli. I thought we'd reach the eyrie before anyone even knew you were here.’ Tuuran blinked. He'd been in the middle of wondering whether his ancestors from the legion would manage to find him this far from home, caught up in another world, but Belli?
Belli?
All that he'd been thinking, all that stuff about duty and honour and how being knifed in the street to save the grand master of the Order of the Scales was as a good and noble a way to die as any . . . and now the witch had gone and . . .
Belli?
He started to laugh. Great heaving guffaws.
Belly
laughs, which only made him bleed all the more. His knees were shaking. He could barely stand.
‘What's wrong with you, man?’ snapped the alchemist.
They saw him now. Until then he'd been invisible. Invisible in the way that slaves always were. Now the witch was looking at him, horrified as though she hadn't either the first idea what to do nor any inclination to come closer. The black-robe was gentle though. He looked at each of the wounds, murmuring to himself,
dismissed the one in the arm, said something about stitches over the one in the shoulder and then shook his head at the last.
‘Well,’ grunted Tuuran, ‘
I
could have told you that.’
‘When the knife comes out there will be a great deal of blood. You may die or you may not. Pray to your gods, slave, if you think that will help.’
‘I don't have any,’ Tuuran spat.
Black-robe nodded. He seemed to approve, not that
that
helped either. He looked at the witch. ‘What would you have me do?’
The witch flustered. ‘Can he walk?’ She froze, mouth open, looking back and forth as though an answer would come up to her through the night and shake her hand. The alchemist fiddled at his pouch. He drew out a dried leaf and stepped up to Tuuran, pushed black-robe gently away and eased his leaf a little way into the chest wound, beside the blade. Tuuran growled and gritted his teeth. It stung like fire.
The alchemist looked him in the eye. ‘I'm sorry, my friend. This will hurt. But better than dying, I imagine.’
‘What are you—’
‘Scream. I'm told it helps.’ Bellepheros whipped out the knife from Tuuran's chest and pushed the leaf deep in its place.
He screamed. It was like breathing liquid fire.
Loud enough to break mountains, the screams of an Adamantine Man. They learned it, practised it, honed it. A roar to crumble the spirits of lesser men, a howl to send pain and fear to another place so that they could go on, no matter what the damage, and do what must be done. But this pain the alchemist had given him was something else. Stronger even than him. Tuuran fell to the road. For an instant he thought he must be dead but to his surprise he was still breathing.
‘What in the name of the Righteous Ones did you do to him?’ The white witch.
‘Saved his life, that's what,’ said Bellepheros sharply. ‘Your man will have to carry him somewhere he can be cared for.’
The witch spluttered. ‘The Watcher? You're talking about an Elemental Man! If the Elemental Men say the sea lords must jump, they will jump. You're so keen to learn our ways, learn that one!’
Bellepheros snorted like a horse. ‘From what I've seen, they're hired hands like any other.’ He cocked his head at the Watcher. ‘Is that not so?’
‘The arrangement with Quai'Shu is . . . unusual.’ The Watcher shrugged. Lying on the road, twisting in pain, Tuuran watched the two squaring up. It would have been funny if he wasn't in such blistering agony. He paused to refill his lungs and screamed again. The Witch stepped between them.
‘Whatever it is, he is not
my man
!’ She looked at Tuuran. He couldn't read her face in the gloom, couldn't tell whether he was seeing pity and compassion or whether she just wanted to leave him to die in the street and get away.
The alchemist shrugged. ‘Well
I
can't lift him and neither can you, and your other men appear to be dead. Should we just stand here and shout for help then?’ Tuuran watched, blurry-eyed, as
the alchemist peered over his nose at the black-robe. ‘And I
have
met your kind before, you know. It was one of you who took me. He had all sorts of strange questions that, under the circumstances, I was less than inclined to answer. Do
you
have questions? If you do, and I answer them, will you carry this man for me?’
Tuuran tried to move. An Adamantine Man was not
carried
! If an Adamantine Man couldn't walk it was because he had no legs. But the pain ran through his chest like flames, like a dragon that had him pinned to the earth. He managed to curl his fingers.
Great Flame, alchemist, what have you done to me?
The witch looked at the Elemental Man. ‘I am sorry,’ she said, but by then the Watcher had Tuuran and was hoisting him over his shoulders. Tuuran heard him grunt at the effort of it.
Yes, I'm heavy! So put me down! I can walk!
‘The blades were meant for your alchemist.’ The Elemental Man staggered under Tuuran's weight. ‘I was not quick enough and I would not have stopped them. Your friend owes you his life, sail-slave, but you have saved me a humiliation. I am in your debt, and those are rare words from my kind.’
In their hours together on the ship out of Furymouth the alchemist had told Tuuran how he'd been taken and Tuuran had wondered what it would be like to turn into the wind and simply blow through the air. He wondered now why the Elemental Man didn't just do that and take them both somewhere safe, but he didn't. He walked, slow, heavy steps, breathing hard under Tuuran's weight. He was warm and he smelled of sweat and seemed just like any other man.
‘I . . .’ The pain was ebbing fast now, a great weight wrapping itself around his thoughts in its place, a smothering blanket of fatigue and it took him, or maybe the Elemental Man did turn them both to wind after all because the next thing he knew they were back where they'd started, in a courtyard outside an open golden gondola. He recognised the smell of stale sweat. When he forced his eyes open, everything was blurred.
‘He still needs my help,’ said the alchemist shortly.
‘Belli . . .’ But Tuuran had come to know that edge to the alchemist's voice while they'd been at sea and the witch must have learned it too. The one that said he wouldn't take an argument. ‘Very well. Watcher, seal us in.’
The Elemental Man set him down on a table. Tuuran's eyes swam reluctantly into focus at last. Yes, a gondola, but not the one that had flown him here. This one felt bigger. The Watcher stood over him and then vanished, dissolving into the air. A few seconds later Tuuran heard him speak again, this time at the gondola door. ‘There are no others of my nature here.’
‘One of you must be close, though,’ said the witch. Bellepheros was busy cutting at Tuuran's clothes.
‘Why?’
‘The alchemist came to Xican three days ago. We were one day in the palace. No glasships left the Palace of Leaves – they were not permitted – and the jade ravens were kept caged. It was too important. Yet the Regrettable Men were waiting and they nearly took him.’ The witch sounded close to tears. ‘Stupid, both of us. I thought he'd be safe a while longer, I really did. I hoped—’
The Watcher's voice betrayed nothing. ‘Not all jade ravens are held in the palace nor do they all belong to Sea Lord Quai'Shu. But do not assume they knew your destination, Lady Chay. The Regrettable Men number enough to await you up and down the western coast in every city you might pass if they had been warned you were coming. You've brought slaves. It would be easy enough to turn one of them. Nor would it be so hard to guess where you would come and to pay eyes to watch the skies.’
The witch stamped her foot. ‘No one has Regrettable Men standing around waiting in every city from here to Vespinarr! That would be a sea lord's fortune of jade!’
‘Yet less than our lord paid for me, lady.’
‘Quai'Shu must know, if he hasn't already left again. Please tell him!’
‘I will. And I will go to Shevana-Daro and see if the Regrettable Men await us there too. Zinzarra allies itself with Cashax and thus with Dhar Thosis and all who stand opposed to Vespinarr, while Sea Lord Quai'Shu kisses the mountain lord's ring. Our lord has few friends here. Shevana-Daro remains aloof from these squabbles. If there are Regrettable Men awaiting you there, it will be informative.’
He was a poor liar for an assassin and the Elemental Man clearly had something entirely else on his mind, but Tuuran was in no
place to give that much thought. The witch either couldn't tell or didn't care.
‘As you will, Watcher.
My
concern has become to deliver Bellepheros to Baros Tsen T'Varr and his flying eyrie without him dying on the way. There will be no more stops.’ Her voice changed as she turned to the alchemist. ‘I'm sorry, Belli. It will be a long journey and there was a great deal I'd hoped to show you . . . the Crown of the Sea Lords in Khalishtor. But we can see that from the air, the Lighthouse at Negarrai too. Perhaps Vespinarr will be safe. We could have stayed there for days. You would have found much to your liking.’
‘Never mind that.’ The alchemist was poking at Tuuran's chest, at the hole in it that ought to have killed him. Tuuran tried to lift his head to see what the alchemist was doing and found that he could, just about, but the alchemist put a finger between his eyes and pushed gently back, forcing him to lie still. ‘Be quiet, Sword of Narammed. You came close to dying today.’ He was poking at the shoulder wound now. ‘This won't hurt as much as the last, but it will sti—’ Whatever he said, a blur of agony swallowed it. Tuuran convulsed.
‘What are you doing to him?’
‘The leaf of the spiderwort stops the bleeding in its tracks. The ones I have here are soaked in Dreamleaf to take away the worst of the pain. Things I happened to have with me when you took me.’ There was a bite to the alchemist's words but Tuuran was in no state to appreciate it. Right now he felt as though the alchemist had ripped his arm right out of its socket and if there was any Dreamleaf in there then it was certainly taking its time to be noticed.