The Silver Kings (13 page)

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 riding 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.

He noticed then how the air had a slightly odd taste. Apart from blood –
everything
tasted of blood at the moment. But there was something else. He tried to sniff and wished he hadn’t. Pain streaked across his face, a blaze of it. He felt a fresh trickle of warm iron at the back of his throat and swallowed hard, quickly, no matter how much it hurt, because Xibaiya help him if he had to cough. Coughing would probably burst his whole face apart.

The dragon moved closer.
You will find a way to cross the storm-dark, Baros Tsen T’Varr. That is where the Black Moon has gone. That is where he will be, looking for his other half.
It came closer still, close enough to touch him. Its jaw closed around the rope that pinned his right arm. He felt its teeth brush his skin. It moved to his other arm, and then bit the ropes that bound his ankles. Tsen gasped in relief. He twisted, tried to stand up, fell over, whimpered and curled up into a little ball, naked on the cold stone floor.

Get up.
The dragon nudged him.

‘Leave me alone.’ He wanted to drift now, that was all. Drift alone into a peaceful daze. Or maybe quietly to die.

Get up, little one.
The dragon nudged him a second time. Its scales felt warm.

It hit him, at last, that hallucinations and dream-dragons didn’t bite through ropes.

He screamed.

A dragon!

He screamed again.

Really
a dragon?

He screamed over and over, but of course no one came, not here where screams were furniture. The dragon simply sat, still as a statue, and looked at him. Eventually Tsen gave up screaming because it hurt too much. He moaned and whimpered instead, and shuffled away and refused to look. Vey Rin had sent a dragon to torture him. Somehow. It was going to kill him and eat him, possibly not in that order, because that’s what dragons did.

Is that so bad, all things considered?

Wait! Vey Rin had sent a dragon? How did that possibly make sense?

At least it’s quick.

Shut up!
Stupid t’varr! Rin doesn’t have any dragons.
He practically shat himself at the first thought of one …

Run, then? Running was about the only thing that
did
make any sense. He almost laughed. Run, though? Could he possibly think of some suggestion more uselessly stupid? He couldn’t even get up! And even if he could, a dragon could fly, and even if there
was
a place to hide, it would find him because it could read his thoughts and he was still in …