The Godless

by Ben Peek

  He opened his eyes.

  She was not tall. She was white, dark-haired and no taller than his chest. In appearance, she was the same age as he and the fleeting thought that he may have lost his mortality when she lost her life occurred to him. But the design of the linen gown was not one that he recognized and he put the thought and the haunt from his mind. With the sound of the river the only noise echoing around him, Zaifyr began walking down the street, in control of his sight once again but for the haunt that stood in the middle of the square, the figure he allowed himself to see to anchor his reality, to push the thoughts of the man he called his brother from his mind.

  Jae’le would worry if he knew what he had done.

  He would say—

  “Cold,” she whispered, and paused, before saying, “hungry.”

  He would say that Zaifyr had to be careful, that he should not answer the dead, that to do so would bring him to madness again.

  It had been a hundred years since he had last talked to the dead. He had reached a peace with them, an understanding that they were part of the world and that he could do nothing for them. The tower in which he had been imprisoned had been small, a tall, narrow construction twice his height and long enough for him to lie in. It had been made by hand, made from the tainted dirt and poisoned river that ran in the valley behind the Eakar Mountains. Linae, the Goddess of Fertility, had done that in her death. The horror of a god’s demise had been revealed as the land, the water, the trees, the animals, and the people all followed her into her dark embrace. So scarred was the land that, even though no trace of Linae remained, no person or community had returned to it.

  For a thousand years, the spirits who had died alongside her had been his companions. For a thousand years, he had their presence to teach him that his power was one of abuse, and that if he wished to leave his narrow, crooked tower, he would have to put it aside.

  “A wise choice, brother,” Jae’le had said when, finally, the crude door opened. He offered his hand. “The living are more important than the dead.”

  Outside, the midday’s sun had lanced painfully into Zaifyr’s eyes. Placing his hand against the wall, he rose slowly, stiffly.

  “Brother?”

  His eyes were weeping now.

  “Brother, do you understand what I am saying?”

  Jae’le stood alone, dark and faceless. Despite all of what Zaifyr had thought and done to arrive at this moment, he thought of the word jailer involuntarily and said, “Yes.”

  “I do not need to close the door, do I?”

  “I would not…” His voice hoarse with disuse and he swallowed dryly. “I would not let you.”

  That was not what his brother wanted to hear.

  Ahead, the river crashed over the ledge, toward the violently lit Temple of Ger and the still water at the bottom. Behind him, though he had not turned once nor indicated for her to follow him, was the haunt from the city.

  3.

  Ayae stood before an empty leather pack and felt hollow.

  The feeling had not come to her until she returned to her own home. In the dark, Ayae could only see the outlines of the damage that had been done to her house, and once she closed the door, she felt a slow crumbling inside her. It was not sudden, not as if the floor beneath her had given away, but rather it was gradual, a brick here, a piece of mortar there, and she thought to stop it by going to bed. But then she had woken, she had reached across the empty expanse of the bed for Illaan and, touching nothing, allowed herself a moment to rationalize his behavior, to approve of his treatment of her. She could understand it just as she could understand the damage done to her property, just as she could understand the cold looks the neighbors gave her. She could. She could … but only for a moment. She felt the walls of herself continue to collapse. She knew that rationalizing Illaan’s behavior was a betrayal of herself, an admission that she was not strong enough, not old enough, to hold the curse that had been dropped on her, but yet …

  Yet she reached out, touching the edge of the empty pack.

  “I have to leave.”

  Orlan had said the words to her after she had woken. He had knocked while there was still dark in the sky, before the morning’s sun had risen.

  “I know you want me to stay.” He stood in front of her, his ink-stained fingers holding her own. “I would like to do so, now. Maps need to be redrawn, contracts need to be met—but first, I must see why our shop was attacked.”

  “Because of me,” she whispered.

  His hand tightened. “No, not because of you. The man who entered the shop was meant for me.”

  She knew he was lying. He had, she thought, always been a terrible liar. Instead, she said—because he was not Olcea, because he did not need her—she said, “Let me come with you.”

  “Ayae.”

  “I don’t want to feel their eyes on me like this.” Her voice was so quiet she barely recognized it, a weakness she hated. “I have tried to get rid of it, I have tried to ignore it, I—”

  “This is your home,” he said, sternly. “Do not let them take it from you.”

  But she would.

  She remembered Olcea’s words, remembered the sight of Samuel walking out her door, she remembered the look on Illaan’s face, and she knew that it had already been taken from her. All that was left was for her to fill the leather pack and leave.

  But where could she go? She wanted to be anonymous again so she crossed off Yeflam: the Keepers lived there. She would have to go beyond the sprawling city, across Leviathan’s Blood, before she felt even vaguely safe to start life anew. The journey would take months and cost a fortune she did not have. She would have to find work along the way.

  Going north was no better. She would have to go past Faaisha, up into the colder countries, toward Leviathan’s End, before she was free. West offered Ooila and perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. Sooia was separated from Ooila by a huge expanse of ocean, but it was her birthplace’s closest neighbor and untouched by war, at least so far. But what would she do while she was there? There would be no work. The moment she left Mireea she would stop being an apprentice cartographer and she would be—she would be—

  “Cursed.”

  Ayae shook her head, touched again the lip of the empty pack, and wondered what she could put in it. What clothes did you pack to start a new life, to begin again with nothing? With no answer coming to her, she was saved by a knock on the door.

  “Hi.” The baker’s apprentice, wearing his brown uniform, scratched the backs of his dirty hands nervously. “Hi,” he repeated.

  “Jaerc, I’m sorry I—”

  “No, no.” He raised his hands. “No, please. I—I came to apologize.”

  Holding the door, unsure what to say, she stepped aside and let him in. Stepping past her, he glanced from the fireplace to the door to the bedroom and the empty pack that lay there. Turning to face her, his hands clasped together tightly.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” she said, preempting him. “The mistake was mine.”

  “No.” His mouth was set firmly, and his gaze never left her. “No, it wasn’t. I shouldn’t have let Keallis talk to you that way.”

  “She was right.” Ayae leaned back against the door. “I mean, everything she said is true. You and I both know that.”

  “No.” Again, his voice was firm, sure. “No, it’s not.”

  “Jaerc—”

  “You’re going to leave, right?” He nodded to the room. “That’s you packing, yes?”

  She hesitated, then shrugged. “Yes.”

  “That’s not right.” His fingers straightened, pressed against his thighs. “I know it’s not right. This is your home. I spent all night trying to sleep and couldn’t because I knew when you left, you didn’t think that. Keallis may have said you weren’t wanted here, but that wasn’t right. She has no power to tell you where you can and can’t stay.”

  “I am cursed,” she said softly. “It’s not about choice.”

 
“It is,” he said, again with that certainty. “I don’t mean to speak out of line. I don’t want to tell you what to think. But this has not stopped being your home just because you’re cursed.”

  “What if it isn’t any more?”

  “I had a brother,” he said, the resolve in his tone never failing. “He was born seven years after me. He was my little brother. When he was five he was half my height, and when he was five, flowers grew wherever he walked. Not many, and not for long, but you could see them. He thought they were funny. He would make patterns, like a kid would. He didn’t understand what was going on and he didn’t know that people would be frightened. My parents thought that everyone would turn on him, so they kept him inside. They locked him up. He was just a little kid and soon he was afraid of everyone and didn’t ask to go outside. The flowers just followed him around the house. Until the flowers started growing on him and he got sick.” Jaerc hesitated for a moment, his flat fingers curling, then straightening, physical signs of his indecision. “The flowers would bulge up under his skin. We tried to cut them out, but they were rooted deep like a wart, like a huge wart that was attached to the bone. It was awful.”

  “Did he die?” Ayae asked, thinking of her own burning skin.

  “Yes.” The apprentice baker took a deep breath, a steadying breath. “But that’s not why I’m telling you this. I’m telling you because Mum and Dad had to go to someone because they couldn’t help him alone. I don’t know who they talked to first, but I remember that there were people coming to see him every day, some who were scared, but all who wanted to help. People who said that it wasn’t his fault. Lady Wagan said—”

  “Lady Wagan?”

  He nodded. “She came at the end of the first week. She came at night and had the old healer Reila with her. She sat with Mum and Dad while her healer examined my brother and told them that she would do all that she could, that whatever we needed she would try and provide. She said that they should not have hidden it in the first place.”

  It will not be long until a kindness is said. Lady Wagan’s words. Quietly, Ayae said, “Why would she say that?”

  “We live on a dead god,” Jaerc said. “She said that. I remember it so clearly. She said that Ger’s remains tell us what happens when you stand alone, when you forget that you are part of a larger community. We mustn’t ever do that, she said. She was so sure when she said it, I remember thinking how comforting it was, how right she was. She could have said a lot of things, like Keallis. She could have said that my brother was strange and unnatural. That the best thing would be for him to die. But she didn’t. Instead, she paid for medicine for my brother, sent witches and healers and, after he died, came to the funeral and stood in the back. Afterward, she hugged me and said I should help my parents.”

  As he finished speaking, Jaerc approached Ayae. It was only then she realized that she had sunk down the door, that she had collapsed against it. That silent tears ran down her face. It will not be long until a kindness is said. With a gravity that she had not thought that a baker’s apprentice would have had, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.

  “That’s why you can’t leave,” he said.

  4.

  The stone length of the Spine was a smudge on the horizon when Samuel Orlan’s oral retelling of history began to remind Bueralan of the Lord of Ille.

  Lord Alden had greeted him at the border of his small kingdom, a force of elderly knights at his side. He had gone ahead alone, as he often did on jobs that were inside a kingdom. Alden, as if age and position gave him the right, orated as he led Bueralan through the dusty streets of his small kingdom and past the old gallows that were the center of his justice. His sense of pride grew with every word.

  It had been built by two men, a father and a son, Lord Alden explained from the back of his fine horse. A tall, elderly white man with wisps of gray hair and new, but outdated clothing, he rode with an easy sway as he told how the father had made a living for forty-one years building gallows, guillotines and breaking wheels before he moved to Ille. Looking to retire, he had agreed to provide the gallows for the local government of his new home, on the condition that he himself was given a seat on the council. With such a small payment agreed upon, the father organized the pale timber to be delivered from the Yeala Forest at his own cost. He paid the cost of ferrying it over Leviathan’s Blood and along the dusty roads leading to the city by wagon and bull. His son, who was slowly inheriting his father’s business, was responsible for much of the physical labor once the wood arrived. It was he who ensured that multiple trap doors opened, he who oversaw the placing of the wide deck and the beam that fell across it like the arm of a god. It was not, both men knew, an ambitious design. It would not hold forty-five bodies as the infamous gallows of Tinalan did; nor would it be as cruel as the nine-bladed guillotine that a Lord of Saan had once owned. But it was built with expertise and on expensive material and as the suns rose and fell on the day the lumber arrived, the father measured and cut, the son sank bolts and the pair laid floorboards and coated the joints with black tar.

  After five days they were done, and within five years there was no council. The elderly Lord of Ille walked up on the gallows in front of Bueralan and indicated where the last of the council had dropped through the trapdoor, following the others, leaving the father and son as the new leaders of the small kingdom.

  “It is not new.”

  The words were from Elar, a small, graying man who sat in the center of the seven members of Dark, each having taken up an awkward perch on the old furniture in the inn they had stayed in nearby the kingdom. Two days had passed since Lord Alden had explained to Bueralan the job, but even as he had, Elar and the rest of Dark had slipped out into the town, its inns and its people.

  “It is an old familiar story: taxes and rights and death,” Elar continued. “Crops have been bad for close to five years now, but the taxes have not altered to acknowledge that. Some people have moved, but no one will purchase the land, and Alden simply takes the rights if it is abandoned—including any cattle that is being grazed by neighbors on it. A lot of the younger people feel they’re stuck and have diminishing avenues and have to decide between family and future. For a few years, the younger families petitioned to have the taxes lowered, to try to bridge the gap, but their suit fell on deaf ears, and they turned to asking for elections, democracy. Alden arrested and tortured those who raised those voices before dumping them back into the community.”

  “This was supposed to be a small job,” Aerala said from her seat. “Ille barely appears on a map.”

  “It appears enough,” Zean murmured from beside her.

  “What about the Alden’s fear of revolution?” Bueralan asked, steering the conversation back to the topic. “How does that look?”

  “There is not much talk of it, naturally.” Elar shrugged. “The signs of it are there, though. You would need to be blind to miss it. If you take a horse in to be given a new shoe, the blacksmith will take off the current one, melt it down, and make you a new one from scrap. He will tell you the town is tapped for base materials, but he won’t explain where the scrap came from. You will have the same experience when you buy a meal here. According to Liaya, the reports you bought from Alden say that the land outside the town has had a full twenty-five percent drop in crops this year, but there hasn’t been a corresponding drop in land ownership.”

  “There has been a rise in stock, actually,” the dark-haired woman added, sitting across from him, the reports in a strewn-out pile before her. “The last two years show a five percent growth.”

  Bueralan was not surprised. Alden’s guards—well fed and paid—kept a tight leash on the town and its inhabitants, their forces bolstered, from what he understood, after the first protests that had broken out. “That leaves us with the question,” he said, “of where we will find the leaders of this group?”

  “Not inside Ille,” Kae offered. “People there are just pieces, cogs for the large work outside.
After the first protest, it is clearly professional work, run by someone like us.”

  “Someone who took the better side of the job,” Zean said.

  “Someone invested,” the other man corrected.

  “We wear it regardless,” Bueralan said with quiet authority. “We made the choice. We thought it would be an easy job and we took it up without the right questions. We should have listened to Sel’na when he said we needed more information, but we did not. So we wear it. We don’t like it, I know that, but we’ve worked for crueller men and women before and we will work for worse later, one day. It is the nature of our business.”

  None disagreed with him. The new recruit, Deanic, a thin white kid who read and spoke more languages at the age of six and ten than he had years of age, looked uncomfortable, the rude awakening to the reality of the work he had probably, as they all had once, once romanticized. That was always the hardest of the truths to learn, that saboteur work was digging up information for people you don’t like, on people you might like, on movements you sympathized with. For men and women with enough money you learned trade routes, personal connections; at other times, you broke down armies and killed men and women they did not know. The jobs were your own responsibility, your own choice, but it always paid, as Serra Milai had said, to remember who you were, to take the jobs you could believe in more than those you did not. And if, as had happened to Sky more than once, you ended up employed to a man or woman you did not like, then you were to remember that you were not being paid to have a moral objection to a man, a woman, a religion, a culture. “Dislike who pays you if you must,” she said; “but dislike them quietly, because to do so publicly is to ensure that you never work again.”

  “We’ll pay our penance when we retire,” Bueralan said to Dark, meeting their gazes. “Before that, there are mountains, and that is where we will find our revolutionaries. They will need an encampment that will allow for stockpiling, a forge, and training if they mean to remove Alden by force. That doesn’t mean that they will be easy to find. If they were, we would not have been hired. But they’re out there, and they’re embedded in the estate, so when the majority of us ride in tomorrow, you need to keep your eye open to learn who we can trust and who we cannot. We want to finish this before it turns sour.”