The Godless

by Ben Peek

  Footsteps emerged outside the door. Ayae hesitated, then said, “Did you—did you kill the man in there?”

  “No.” He had dark-green eyes, darker than any she had seen before, and they met hers evenly. “You want to avoid him,” the man littered with charms said. “If you can.”

  The door opened and Reila, the small, gray-haired, white healer, entered. “There will be guards coming for you soon, Zaifyr,” she said, though her gaze was not on him. “Pull on your boots.”

  “They have holes in them.”

  Ignoring him, the healer’s small hands pushed aside Ayae’s hair, and pressed against her forehead. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re warm,” she said softly. “Still warm. Like you’re smoldering beneath your skin.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ayae whispered.

  The healer’s words were too close to suggesting something that, beneath her skin, in her blood and bones, was a touch of a god, that she was cursed. It was the name that men and women in Mireea used for people with a god’s power in them, the name repeated up to Faaisha aloud, but the name that was whispered in the streets of Yeflam behind the Keepers’ backs. It was the name that implied countless horrors, stories told of men and women who, since birth, looked normal, acted normal, until one day they split down the chest as arms grew from their body, or their skin began to melt.

  To be cursed meant that, inside you, was part of a dead god. Their very beings broke down around you, their blood seeping into the land, into the water, their last breaths polluting the air, each act freeing their divinity, leaving it to remake the world without restraint, leaving tragedy in its wake, creating madmen such as the Innocent and terrible empires such as the Five Kingdoms. The remains of the dead were nothing but pain and suffering that ordinary people had to endure.

  Before Ayae could say more, the door opened and Illaan entered, flanked by two guards. At the sight of him, she dared a smile; but if he saw her, he gave no indication. His gaze was focused on Zaifyr as he pulled on his boots.

  “Is he able to be questioned now?” Illaan asked.

  “The only thing hurt is his clothes,” Reila replied. “Both of them are extremely lucky.”

  With a nod, Illaan indicated to the two guards. Standing, Zaifyr stamped both feet, a cloud of ash rising as he did. In the corner of her eye, Ayae was aware of him trying to catch her gaze, but she kept her eyes on Illaan. He had turned to her now, his lips parted in what might have been the start of a smile, or even, she thought for a second time, a frown.

  “She needs rest,” Reila told him. “She’s going to be here for the night, Sergeant, no matter what she says to you.”

  Illaan nodded, just once.

  At the door, the healer turned to Ayae, a hint of sympathy in her lined face. Before it had any time to grow, she stepped out of the room, following the guards and the charm-laced man, leaving the two alone. Leaving Ayae to turn to Illaan and smile faintly. “We should be happier,” she said. “I avoided death today.”

  “I know. You were in a fire.” In the awkward silence that followed his words, Illaan moved to the bed next to her. “The shop looked awful,” he said, finally. “It was gutted on the inside. All those maps just lit up.”

  “The other shops?”

  “A little damage.” He rubbed the top of his thigh gently. “Orlan’s shop is a total loss, though. We couldn’t save that.”

  “Do you know why it was started?”

  “It’s strange,” he continued, ignoring her. “The fire was all around you in there. You were thrown into it. Your clothes—Reila was afraid to cut away the clothes, thinking they had melted so badly into your skin, but when she did, it was as if you had just been born.”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s true.”

  “It’s good, yes? Lucky.” She reached out for him, but he drew back. “Please, Illaan, I do not know why any of this happened. The man who came into the shop making threats—he made the fire, not me.” There was a hint of hysteria in her voice and she quelled it. “What do you want me to say?”

  “What if I had not woken you up last night?”

  Ayae’s eyes closed.

  “I thought it was a dream,” he said quietly, the words twisting inside her. “But it was not a dream. Your eyes did burn and you stood in a room full of flames and emerged without a scar on you. You’re cursed, Ayae.”

  No, she wanted to yell. No. She wanted to deny the word, deny everything that came with it, but the words stuck in her throat. She reached for Illaan. Her fingers found air and, opening her eyes, she saw him standing away from her, his face cold. “There will be a Keeper here soon,” he said quietly. “That’s why the room is empty. He wanted to speak to you, privately.”

  “Could you—” She swallowed. “Could you stay?”

  But he was already walking toward the door.

  6.

  The shallow spit of oil in the dimly burning lamp of Captain Heast’s office had been the only sound to greet Bueralan upon his arrival. Heast was there, sitting behind his wide, clean table, but he had few words to say and so the saboteur took the middle of the three empty chairs. Within minutes two other mercenary captains were led in, taking the remaining pair. The first, Queila Meina, was a tall, dark-haired, fair-skinned woman not yet thirty but who had taken command the six-hundred-strong Steel after her father’s death. Bueralan had met her twice briefly, and had been impressed by the discipline of her army. The result, no doubt, of a child raised among mercenaries and where loyalty to anyone outside Steel was bought in coin and trusted as far as it spent. The second captain, Kal Essa, was a squat, bald man, heavily scarred around the left side of his face, reportedly by a mace. He commanded the Brotherhood, an army four hundred strong that had arisen out of the remains of Qaaina after it had been conquered by his homeland of Ooila, three months across Leviathan’s Blood. Bueralan had never met him, but he had heard that his men were fierce in battle, an army of refugee soldiers who had been driven from their homes and had no desire to find a new one.

  The saboteur liked the choices that Lady Wagan had made: loyal, disciplined, capable, her gold well spent. His only criticism was that neither Steel nor the Brotherhood had much experience in laying siege to another kingdom and were too small for such a task. They were big enough to defend Mireea and hold the city range that the Spine ran across, but neither were conquerors. By hiring them, the Lady was making a statement of her intent—defense rather than attack.

  When he had returned from his first meeting with Lady Wagan to the barracks earlier, Zean had been awake. It was clear that he had not slept—he still wore the same clothes he had when he entered Mireea. “What,” the other man asked as the door opened, “are we being paid for first?”

  “A ride,” Bueralan replied. “See the countryside, find a pet crocodile.”

  Whetstone running across his dagger, the other man grinned and said, “We can skip the war then?”

  “I’ve almost forgotten how.”

  The tall man glanced up the stairs. Up the narrow steps was a warm dark and there, stretched across the doorway, was a thin tripwire.

  Bueralan chuckled dryly. “This one will be civilized.”

  “Then I’ll prepare my pie trays for the faire, sir.”

  He had found an empty bunk near the door and, with the sound of Zean’s whetstone working along the edge of his knife, drifted off to sleep. His dreams had been fragmented, images of houses with straw roofs, of cattle little more than bones wrapped in hide, of farmers whose children succumbed to disease and famine, of the weapons the peasants made by melting down hoes and shovels and picks, and of Elar.

  Of late, it was always Elar.

  He dreamed of the man lying flat beneath a sheet, stains seeping through, and Heast’s voice: “Did he die well?”

  It had been a relief when Zean had shaken him and, crouching next to his ear, whispered that Captain Heast requested his presence.

  “There wa
s a fire today,” the same man said, his voice breaking the silence of his office, ten minutes later. “In Samuel Orlan’s shop.”

  Kal Essa’s thick arms shifted across his chest. “You woke us to discuss a fire?”

  “The fire was enough to raise the interest of the Keepers.”

  “They show up and put it out?” Bueralan asked.

  No smile cracked Heast’s straight lips. “They let the guard do that, but they did clear a wing in the hospital for Orlan’s apprentice and the man that pulled her out of the fire.”

  “What have the Keepers said?” Queila Meina asked.

  “Very little.”

  That didn’t surprise Bueralan.

  “Reading between the lines, though, I think we can all agree that something interesting has happened.” The captain’s pale blue eyes met them all steadily. “Part of it is explained by the girl, who appears to be cursed.”

  The saboteur leaned forward. “The Sooianese girl I met earlier?”

  “Yes. She emerged from the fire completely unscathed.”

  “I saw a dog do that, once,” muttered Essa beside him.

  “Perhaps the Keepers will find it next,” Bueralan replied.

  “She is not important,” Heast said, cutting in before the squat mercenary commander could reply. “What is, however, is that someone burned down Samuel Orlan’s shop, destroying generations of maps, and that that man has disappeared.”

  “Spies are not uncommon.” Bueralan glanced at Queila as she spoke. “And there are plenty of maps of Leera.”

  “There’s a lot special in what Orlan does.” Heast leaned back, the faint light of his lamp casting him in shadows. “The Orlan Maps, for generations, have been known as the most accurate of any kingdom. They go beyond street names and dominion lords. They follow sewers, trade routes, dams, crop growths, weather patterns, bolt-holes, escape routes, back doors and more.”

  The captain’s lips parted in a faint smile. “My point still stands. It’s not as if there was one map. Orlan’s apprentices have drawn and redrawn his maps throughout the world.”

  “She does have a point,” Bueralan said, looking at Heast.

  “She does,” he conceded.

  “Then what did this person want, if not the girl?”

  “Orlan?” Queila asked.

  “He hasn’t been seen for about a week, but that’s not unusual. His work often takes him out of Mireea.”

  “Is he as neutral as they say?”

  “Every Orlan has been,” Heast said. “I think that’s why so many of them have lived here. No need to worry about being pressured to change the lines in estates or conscripted into a war to advise on routes and supplying needs. Here, he offers no allegiance to anyone and his services bring all to him.”

  “Strange to burn such a man’s work,” Essa mused. “Are you sure that this attacker was not after the girl?”

  “No.”

  Bueralan turned, hearing the door to Heast’s office open. Four figures stood there, three of them guards under Heast. Solid men, though the sergeant had a nervous look about him, a twitch in his brown eyes that the saboteur found himself cold toward. It appeared that he was not the only one possessed of such a reaction for the fourth man, who did not wear a guard’s dark-green cloak, regarded the sergeant flatly. The soldier looked capable with the longsword at his side, but the saboteur had the distinct impression that, for all the charms the other wore, he was not a man to take lightly.

  “Thank you, Illaan,” Heast said, standing as the others did. “Did you speak with Ayae?”

  The sergeant hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Is she—”

  “Fine, sir.”

  The start of a frown tugged at Heast’s lips. “If you would rather return to the hospital, I understand.”

  “I will stay here, sir.”

  With the briefest of nods the Captain of the Spine dropped the subject and motioned for the man adorned in charms to be brought forward. The shadows of the room clung to him as he did, the burns and stains in his clothes lending him the impression of a figure not yet fully formed, of a man being created before Bueralan’s eyes.

  “This is Zaifyr,” Heast said. “A man in my employ from Kakar.”

  “Kakar,” Queila Meina said. “That’s little more than ruins now.”

  “People still live there,” he said, accent sharpening his use of the letter p. “Some of the older men and women still call it Asila, but it has been a long time since I lived there. I spend a year here, a year there. My home becomes more distant every day.”

  Stepping from behind his desk, Heast’s steel leg hit the ground solidly. “You saved someone today.”

  Zaifyr’s right hand drifted to the chain around his left. “Luck, really.”

  “I was told you slashed open the throat of the man who started the fire, but there was no body to be found.”

  “Slashing that throat did very little,” he said.

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I heard Ayae scream.” At the use of her name, Illaan frowned. “I could see fire coming out of the door of Orlan’s store, so I ran in, mostly on instinct. I thought it was simply someone trapped, or panicking—I certainly didn’t think I would enter just in time to see a man throw a girl across the room as if she were a doll. She was unhurt, but the man’s skin was blackened, especially around the hands. When he took a step through the flames to reach her, I came up behind him, grabbed his hair and slashed his throat. It didn’t stop him, though. It didn’t even make him bleed.”

  “Wrong angle?”

  He shook his head and Bueralan glanced at the two mercenary commanders beside him. Kal Essa’s arms were folded across his chest, the look of doubt clear, and Queila, though not as obvious, still seemed dubious.

  “I dragged him outside,” Zaifyr continued. “It was hard to see or breathe in there, but I had enough of him to drag him onto the road. There was a crowd starting to show, but as the man hit the ground, they scattered. It wasn’t until he turned around that I could see why they did that: he looked awful, a mix of burned flesh and aged bone. He stared at me, and ran with a growl. I was left with a choice of following him or rescuing Ayae—I chose the latter.”

  “You don’t sound particularly bothered by that,” Essa muttered.

  The Captain of the Spine shook his head. “It was the right thing. The smart thing. A man like that fights with no pain.”

  “What do you mean?” Bueralan asked.

  “Our friend here can explain.”

  Beneath the gaze of everyone in the room, Zaifyr smiled faintly, and shrugged. “It was a Quor’lo,” he said easily; “a dead man possessed.”

  7.

  Ayae considered running. The windows in the hospital were not big, but she was small enough to slip through and, even in the gown she wore, she believed that she could make her way down the warm cobbled road to her house and be gone before the first of the sun began to soak through the canopies of the mountains’ forest.

  But she had nowhere to go. If she went back to her house, once she’d pulled on old trousers and new shirt, found her boots and filled her pack, hiding what gold she had at the bottom, she would step to the doorway and simply stop. The dark shadow of the tree before her would offer no hint of direction, other than to point back into her house with its cut branches. It would urge her to stay. To stay in the place that was the only security she knew. A small spark of anger ignited in her stomach with the thought. She had not been born in Mireea, but it was her home.

  Her home.

  The door to the ward opened, revealing the two guards who stood straight and still as a large, hairless man stepped between them. Dressed in expensive red leather trousers and gray silk shirt, and wearing boots made from soft, supple leather, it was his hands that drew her attention. They were littered with scars. The succession of tiny white marks looked as if they had been made by a plague thousands of years old. His eyes, when they turned to her, were similarly affl
icted, faint, white specks drifting over the pale gray iris, as if once a milky blindness had threatened him.

  “My name is Fo,” he said, approaching her, his scarred hand held out to her. “I’m a Keeper from the Enclave in Yeflam.”

  Fo, the Disease. He looked neither sick nor afraid. Ayae shook his clammy hand and introduced herself hesitantly.

  She was aware that she was in the presence of a man who did not age, a man whose life was meshed in myth and rumor, but whose grip was firm. He was a Keeper of the Divine, a man who had been cursed—or blessed, depending on who spoke—with immortality. Fo also had the power to infect a living creature with illness, design and create new diseases, but offer no cure. He was one part of the Enclave, the organization that ruled Yeflam, drawing men and women into their city on the promise of utopia on the day they ascended.

  Still holding her hand, he sat opposite. “I hope you’re feeling better. The healer here tells me that you’re fine, but—well, let us just say, I like to see things myself.”

  “I’m fine.” Ayae attempted to pull her hand back, but could not. “Reila knows what she is talking about.”

  “Reila is a fanatic: a ‘healer’ who would rather work with herbs and alchemy than magic, but who draws from her own blood when she must.” His voice was cool. “A year ago, a young healer came to Mireea to set up shop. He had a touch of the gods in him. A tiny curse, you could say, enough that he could mend a wound and intuitively pick up an illness. He was a rarity—a young man who wanted to help, and sought neither riches nor fame doing so. The Lord Wagan sent him back to Yeflam in chains two months after his arrival, as your same healer had him arrested and roundly denounced him in front of the Lord and Lady.”

  “He killed two people.”

  Fo gazed at her, his gray eyes unblinking.

  Unwilling to be put off, Ayae continued, “One had a broken leg, the other a cancer in the stomach. Reila said he treated neither.”

  “And you believed her?”

  She had. With a quick tug, she pulled back her hand and rubbed the sweat from it. “I’d never heard of anyone dying from a broken leg before that.”