The Godless

by Ben Peek

  With a faint inclination of his head, the briefest frown of displeasure slipping across his face, the soldier left the room. When the door shut, the affection left Lady Wagan’s face and she turned her gaze on Bueralan. “Dark,” she said, her pale green eyes holding his. “Saboteurs.”

  “Yes.”

  “For your price, I could hire a small army.”

  “You already have small armies,” he replied. “What you don’t have are soldiers who slip into the ranks of your enemy, who poison rivers and dams, who blow up bridges and collapse tunnels.”

  “And assassinate generals.”

  He shook his head. “Not often. Once—twice, it has happened, but both were opportunities taken advantage of, rather than planned. First time, the army was so small that it did fall apart without the leader. Second time, another man took the spot and the army kept moving. My advice has always been that you are better to cripple the body than to strike the head of an army.”

  “Aned speaks very highly of you, Captain,” she said.

  “I’ll try not to disappoint him.” He nodded to the chair. “Do you mind?”

  “No. I must profess, I don’t know much about you. Where did you meet my captain?”

  Easing into the cushions, Bueralan replied, “On the western coast of the Wilate in a port called Wisal. Merchants had hired a small army to conquer it after it declared its independence from the Southern League. The Wisal Governor put Heast in charge of fighting what was turning into an ugly little war over trade routes. I think they expected him to hire an army, but instead he took on a group of saboteurs. It was the first squad I worked for, and the job took two weeks and two deaths before the war failed to start properly.” He met the lady’s gaze. “He’s a fine soldier. In another part of the world, there are books written about him. Important books.”

  “I have read them.” Behind her, a large window displayed the cut back canopy of the forest. The morning’s sun had risen to its high point and threatened to flood the room. “He told me that Dark numbered eight, not six.”

  Stretching his legs out in front of him, he nodded. “Lost two in Ille. The first was Elar—he had been with us for six years. You can’t replace a man like that easily.”

  “And the other?”

  “He was new. This wasn’t the kind of work for him.”

  “Did he make the right choice?”

  The question had never been asked of him and, as the light filtered into the upper half of the room, the saboteur paused. “Any mercenary will tell you, people come and go in this work,” he said, finally. “Sometimes, they have debts to pay. Other times, they’re just going from one place to another. Mostly, mercenaries are just soldiers who only know this work and there’s either no place at home for them or home has changed. Occasionally, a man or a group gets famous, but most don’t last that long. It’s different when you’re a saboteur. It is not a thing you can pick up and put down. If you know your job, you know too much. You keep professional, because you work for people you like, and people you don’t. Sometimes, it is just numbers and maths and theories, and sometimes, you get paid to kill men and women, to poison wells, to kill crops and to steal cattle. At times, it is a hard thing to look in the eye of someone. Other times, you get paid to slip into a war you don’t want to be part of, to spend time with people you don’t want to spend time with. You’ve got to close off the enemy like a good soldier does: it is steel on steel, but it’s harder when you share drinks with them for a month. You realize no one is born evil, just as no one is born pure, but the job is a lot easier if you keep the morals straight with the people you work with. The boy’s first job was one I regret, a choice we made that we ought not to have made, and the price we paid was high. At the end, he thought we were a little too much like assassins and wasn’t ready for a life of sleeping on the cold ground, eating last, dying first, and watching warm bits of silver and gold spend quicker than you could kill for.”

  “A surprisingly philosophical response,” Lady Wagan replied. “Why then do you continue with it?”

  “My poetry sells poorly.”

  Lady Wagan laughed. “Would you like a drink, Captain?”

  “I rarely say no.”

  From beneath her table, the Lady of the Spine produced two glasses and a long, straight bottle of laq, a clear liquor from Faaisha. She poured a generous two fingers into each, and pushed one forward to the edge of the table.

  “This war that I am engaged in is a terrible waste,” she said, leaning back into the light. “Mireea is a neutral trade city. A city that runs off mathematics, I have heard it said. Whether you believe that or not, it is a city where only coin is worshipped. Your race, creed and color do not matter—so long as you understand that the market can reward and punish you for both at the same time. This war has damaged my coin. No doubt you have seen my empty streets. My closed stores. Before the first force is sighted, it has cost me what is most important and ruined my belief in my neighbors.”

  Bueralan’s thick fingers closed around the glass. “Your treaties?”

  “Have ensured that all legal trade has been cut off from Leera. Anything else will require me to renegotiate at the cost of my financial independence.”

  The candid response surprised him. “You’ve not heard anything from Rakun, then?”

  “The King of Leera has made no demands and sent no diplomats. No one has heard from him in close to a year.”

  “A long time.”

  “A long time for a lot of rumors, but let’s assume he is dead.” Lady Wagan lifted her drink in salute, finished it in one motion. “The last envoy I had from Leera claimed to work for a general by the name of Waalstan. Rumors—whispers, really—suggest that he is a warlock. I have no information as to whether that is true or not; what he wanted was to begin digging into the Mountain of Ger. He offered a token amount for the rights, but the land he wanted to take was so large that he cannot have thought I would be anything but offended. He didn’t even offer a reason for wanting the land. I pointed out that the gold was mostly tapped, and the envoy told me that there were other precious things in the ground. You can use your imagination. Anyhow, after I told this envoy no, I heard nothing. It had been three seasons since we saw crops from Leera and five since there was any trade in fish or meat, and I figured that they would have to return soon enough, but then the attacks began, and the cannibalism followed.”

  “They’re starving?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. No one I have sent has come back with information. Not spies, diplomats or mercenaries.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t, but the border of Leera tells many tales. The only rumor we have heard relates to two years of stories about priests.”

  “Priests?”

  “Yes.”

  Bueralan placed his empty glass on the table. “Any particular god they worship?”

  “They want to dig up the mountain, Captain” she said, the sun dipping further into the room. “There has been nothing officially said, and this close to Yeflam, I can understand why. But the rumor is that they have put priests in positions of power, though they are probably nothing more than witches and warlocks. There have been a few signs of rituals in campsites, and my husband’s torture was not the work of a simple man. I assume that the general is nothing more than the man with the largest bag of blood by his side for use in their blood magic, but regardless the information suggests I am caught in a holy war—or the appearance of one. I need to know for sure, however, and that is why I have hired you and your soldiers. I need to know who is running Leera’s war. I also need to know what kind of feeling is in the country, whether food and water is low, how big an army it is, and how deep the chains of command run. I need to know if they can be stopped before a siege is laid, or if it will be a longer, more drawn out path to victory.”

  “But you would win?”

  Her smile was easy, confident. “Mi
reea is a small nation, but not a poor one. I will use my resources wisely.”

  “Indeed you will, ma’am. Dark could do with a few days’ rest before you send us out, if that’s possible.”

  “The wet season ended a week ago in Leera. Take a day or two, but don’t wait too long. The roads will start to fill up soon.”

  He nodded, pushed himself up, ready to leave.

  “Captain?” The Lady’s gaze was intent, unwavering. “Speed and accuracy is important. There are already spies in my city.”

  4.

  The inside of Orlan’s Cartography smelt faintly of incense. A decidedly religious odor for a man who, Ayae knew, viewed himself as anything but that.

  She let the door close, the chimes sounding as it did, and did not bother with the lock. Ayae crossed the warm wooden floor, the maps on the walls around her a recollection of past and current events. Each was a finely detailed study of roads, borders and names, both current and obsolete, all of which fetched tidy sums. Ayae had still not gotten used to the money involved, especially for the older maps, and she doubted that she ever would. It was the oddities in these prices that struck her: how the slanting script of an Orlan two hundred years ago was worth far more than the initialled maps six hundred years old. She had been told—lectured, she remembered with a smile—that the younger Orlan’s maps had been mostly lost in a fire a century and a half ago and their scarcity therefore increased their value.

  Samuel Orlan was an important symbol. To say that there had always been one was not quite right, for the original Orlan had lived and died before the War of the Gods. He had been famous, but had become more so after the war, when the world had been so different. But a second Samuel Orlan did not emerge until early in the Five Kingdoms, where in the huge libraries of Samar, a slim man had stumbled across the original maps and taken it upon himself to make new ones. Since then, there had always been a Samuel Orlan—male and female, with the cartographer’s final apprentice taking over the name, the legacy and the work of ensuring that the world remained mapped. Ayae was still constantly amazed at the stream of men and women, wealthy and famous, who came from afar to the shop to look for a particular map, or to contract the current Samuel Orlan for a specific job for fees of such amounts that she could scarcely judge them real.

  The first time such a customer had come and left, Samuel had laughed at her expression. “You can make a fortune with the name, if you take it on after me. If not, well, you’ll still likely make a fortune, just without the necessity to grow a beard. It is tradition, you understand.”

  A part of her felt guilty when he said that, for both of them knew that she would not be the next Samuel Orlan, but the guilt was not long lived. She did not have the dedication that Orlan had, did not have the sheer skill he displayed. But she loved the work, deeply appreciated the time that Orlan took to teach her his skills, the growing skill her own hand had, and the joy that came in seeing a piece of land or a continent come together on the parchment she worked upon. Both she and he knew that he had given her a skill that would enable her to live comfortably for the rest of her life, to fund her while she followed the other paths of her art, to the portraits and illustrations that were her first love.

  Behind her, the door chimes sounded.

  Ayae turned from the parchment she was examining, her hand resting on the large table that dominated the room. A man of medium height stood in the doorway. For a moment she did not recognize him, until the sheer ordinariness of him, the plainness of his white skin, close-cut brown hair and loose white shirt and trousers, sparked a recognition:

  This morning. The Spine.

  “We’re not open yet,” she said, her voice so soft that she was forced to repeat herself. “You’ll have to wait half an hour.”

  “The door wasn’t locked.” The man’s voice was polite, easygoing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to just walk in.”

  Yet, her hand gripped the table tight. “The sign was on the door.”

  He smiled, a faint, half curve of his lips. “That’s quite the work you’re standing next to. The masterpiece of an artist.”

  The map across the table she gripped was easily three times her width and a foot taller. Kept under glass, it showed the world as it was commonly known, with Orlan’s confident, strong lines and use of color as much a signature as the one in the corner. What set this map aside was that the corpses of the gods had been worked into the landscape: the Spine did not follow the spine of Ger, but was the spine, with Mireea the connective vertebrae to the neck and shoulders.

  “I asked you to leave,” Ayae said, a flicker of annoyance alighting in her stomach. “Don’t make me ask again.”

  “You’re not going to ask again.”

  Anger sparked. “Leave now. There are strict penalties for thieves. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of Lady—”

  “Lady Wagan does not interest me.” Stepping up to the table, the man gazed down at the map. “What is beautiful about this map—other than the craft that is, and we must always admire craftsmanship, child—what is beautiful is the gods. So many maps, so many lives are empty of them now. But not here, not on this mountain, not where Samuel Orlan lives. No, he understands that we sail upon the blood of the Leviathan, as sailors say.”

  “You need to leave,” Ayae said, releasing the table, her anger strengthening her resolve as she walked to the door. “I don’t appreciate being followed. I don’t appreciate you thinking you have a right to come in here uninvited.”

  Unconcerned, he ran his hands across the glass.

  “I said—”

  “I heard you.” He turned to her. “Don’t you feel uncomfortable here?”

  The table began to smoke, as if deep in its frame there was a flame, a single spark that was struggling to get out. With his hard, gray eyes holding her gaze, the oh so ordinary-looking man who was clearly not so ordinary, left the table.

  Ayae whispered, “Who are you?”

  “I have no name,” he said softly, his pale hand closing around her arm—

  Her free hand slammed heel first into his chest.

  It was a desperate blow, but it caught him off guard and caused him to stagger back. Yet he did not release her. Quickly, Ayae drove her foot down onto his. The man made no sound and fear threaded through her unlike any she had felt before. Behind her, the wood in the table ignited, and flames began to rush along the edges, spreading like burning pitch across broken tiles.

  The flames jumped, leaping from the table to the wall, and Ayae panicked at the sight. She broke free and turned for the door, grabbing the handle; a hand grasped her hair and wrenched her back. Twisting, she slammed the heel of her hand into the nameless man’s arm, hitting the forearm hard. Behind them, the flames found parchment, ink, paint, chemicals, and glass and black smoke ripped out. The man flinched, caught in the blast. Horrified, she tensed to strike out again, but the man turned and threw her against the wall—threw her into the flames.

  Ayae screamed and slapped at her clothes, at her body—unable to feel pain, but sure, more sure than anything that her flesh was peeling, turning dark, that the fire was devouring the air around her, thrusting its smoke into her throat, and aiming to choke her. The fire leaped and twisted around her, and the nameless man, his hands black, reached for her. Through watering eyes, her body twisting to get out of his way, out of the fire’s way, she could do nothing—nothing but scream as, behind him, the fire took form, and a hand reached out and grabbed the head of her attacker, wrenching it back as a smoldering blade ran across his throat.

  There was no scream.

  No blood.

  Nothing.

  Flames roared, but Ayae had gone still. She had to move, she had to get out, but she could not. Flames cascaded across the ceiling, a mix of orange and black. She heard glass pop. A part of her screamed. A young part, a child’s voice.

  Then hands were on her roughly, were dragging her like a heavy weight to the door. Smoke hid the sky, and she felt a cloak drop
over her, felt it smother her, wrap around her tightly as she sank to the ground, the trembling setting into her deeply before unconsciousness took her.

  5.

  When Ayae awoke, she was in flames.

  They flickered without heat, hitting glass as if she were trapped inside a bubble, and they were searching, probing, trying to enter her. Fingers curling she grabbed sheets, exposed toes following, her panic subsiding as her consciousness registered the lamp directly above. Rising, Ayae pushed a hand through her hair and gazed around her. She was in a long, wide room, with dozens of empty single beds. The emergency ward of Mireea. There were guards at the door and windows at the top of the wall that showed the night and the moon—the remains of a dead god, the thought came unbidden.

  She was in no pain. Pushing back the blanket, she saw her bare legs and arms beneath the simple shift she had been dressed in. Outside of the taste of smoke in her mouth, there was no indication that she had been in a fire.

  The same could not be said about the room’s other inhabitant. Wearing clothes stained by smoke and burned by flames, he was a man of medium height, pale-skinned with long auburn hair. On the floor beside him sat a pair of ash-stained boots and a canvas duffel bag, a long, leather cloak resting over it. The strangest thing about him were the thin chains wrapped around his wrists, the bands a mix of silver and copper threaded with tiny charms made from gold, copper, silver, glass and leather. The charms were not isolated to his wrists, for she could see thin chains tied through his hair and one pierced in his right ear.

  “So you wake.” His voice had a strange accent, one she could not place. “I think they were going to bring a prince, eventually.”

  “Have I been here long?” Her voice sounded smoky and harsh. She coughed to clear it.

  “Since this morning.”

  “You—you pulled me out of the fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  His right hand touched a chain on his wrist. “It was luck. I heard screaming and went in. I found you in need.”