The Godless

by Ben Peek

  “You are the Healer, are you not?” Heast replied, still controlled. “What does a man fear with you around?”

  “Only death.”

  Reila’s hand settled on the captain’s arm. “We should focus on what has made Illaan sick, first,” she said.

  “If it is a saboteur responsible for the poisoning, there will be more.” The ease with which Bau changed the subject caught Ayae’s attention, though she could not explain why as she walked down the street. “And while your healer does not agree with me in her diagnosis, we both agree that you will need to find the source of it quickly before it infects others.”

  Heast grunted in reply and when he turned, Ayae believed that she could see a hint of cold satisfaction in him.

  Later, outside, Heast—silent after Bau’s words but for nods and grunts—waved away the driver of the carriage who turned on the road and returned to The Pale House without its owner.

  “Did you hear me, girl?”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said, when she realized he was not looking at her.

  “The Keepers have their own game,” he continued. “The heart of it is in Yeflam, but we are a part of it, now.”

  She thought of the caged animals that Fo had kept, the mouse he had fed to the snake. Despite that, she said, “Surely they are concerned with the Leeran Army?”

  “This is not a battle fought on one side alone.”

  She remembered Lady Wagan and Reila and their words to her.

  “The Keepers don’t want us in Yeflam, but that is not surprising,” he continued. “No one wants us on their doorsteps.”

  The Spine of Ger emerged, an empty tower rising to the left. Months ago, a merchant had run a stall out of the building, banners falling colorfully on each side. Now only a narrow spiral of stairs was there to greet them.

  “Mireea has never had an official conflict with Yeflam, nor with any of the other kingdoms, but the loss of our independence would please them more than it would Faaisha. We have been too strong in Yeflam’s eyes since the day the kingdom was established; whereas for Faaisha we are but a trade port on the way to the ocean.” With awkward movements, Heast began to climb the stairs, his metal leg striking harshly with each new step as he lifted it up. “Unfortunately, I do not think that the Enclave wishes to claim Mireea. They are in a struggle for political dominance against the Traders Union and, if it is true that a leadership change has been effected there, then it will no longer be fought in terms of propaganda on the streets.”

  “Then that is not our conflict,” she said. “I don’t see why it would impact on us, not now, of all times.”

  On the wall, the captain paused, his hand drifting down to the part of his leg where steel and flesh met. A thin sheen of perspiration showed on his face, the exertion of the climb impossible to hide though he made no mention of the toll. Heast was not the kind of man to speak of weakness, to give it voice and strength. Neither did he ignore it. His slow walk to the edge of the wall, to the construction material, where the wooden balustrades and cauldrons of oil had yet to be placed, was an acknowledgment of what he was and was not capable of.

  “When we reached out to Yeflam, the first response we received was from the Traders Union,” he said. “They were prepared to offer us aid, to provide refuge for us. Illaan’s father is who responded to us. No doubt, his response had some influence in Fo and Bau coming here, but it was not all. They are naturally curious. Priests are like a red flag. But when the son of a high official is poisoned, the questions it raises are many.”

  She stood next to him, her hands on the stone blocks. “If it is the Keepers—”

  “It may be the Enclave.” The tone of his voice did not change. “It may be that the political fallout in the Traders Union is larger than we think. If the latter, I doubt either Fo or Bau would lament that, or go out of their way to solve it, which means that we must rely upon ourselves to learn that. You will have to be careful: Illaan’s house will be watched and you will as well. I cannot spare you soldiers at the moment. More so, I cannot spare their gossip, not in this matter. You will have to protect yourself, though, perhaps, I can enlist some help.”

  Below, Ayae saw a figure emerge from the trail that led to the funeral pyres. Half naked and with wet hair, she was not sure at first who it was, though Heast’s straightening of his back indicated that he knew. As the figure drew closer and she could see his features, she glanced at Heast and saw that a thin line of dark amusement had creased his lips.

  “To think,” the Captain of the Spine said, more to himself than to her, “he only asked for half of a corporal’s daily pay.”

  6.

  Zaifyr returned to the hotel and washed. Behind the large desk, Ari, a new, thin bandage around the tip of his left finger and a block of wood in his hand, informed him that he smelt worse than ever. After he had washed and dried, Zaifyr picked up the loose trousers he had worn and sniffed. Fit to burn, he told himself, though he feared he would be out of clothes—it was bad enough that he had only one pair of boots and they had holes in both soles. He hadn’t had that pair for long, either: a year at most. But he did a lot more walking, now. He made his way barefoot along the wooden floor to his room, having already found a bin for the trousers.

  Inside, the faint smell of smoke lingered and he doubted it would ever leave. Zaifyr eased himself down on the one chair, spreading his charms and chains on the bed before him. He had begun attaching each to himself in the slow ritual he had learned as a child—the copper vi’a first, his father said; vi’a is a minor protective charm, but it is always the base—when behind him sounded a soft flap, followed by the faint scratch of claws on the window ledge. He hooked the thin clasp of the chain around his wrist into place, the chain that had been blessed by the witch Meihir for luck, and looked at the window.

  “Hello, brother.”

  The raven stared at him, its head tilted. “And to you,” the Animal Lord, Jae’le said in its thin, hard voice. “I saw you return. Smelt, too.”

  “I’ve been told.” His smile was faint. “What else did you smell?”

  “Meat.” His wings ruffled and he glided from the ledge to the bed. “I also smelt oil, steel, sweat and a city preparing itself.”

  “When was the last time you were in a siege, brother?”

  The raven watched as he picked up a piece of leather threaded with silver, tiny orbs laden with old symbols of life and fertility. “A long time,” Jae’le’s bird voice croaked. “In Seomar, on the Eastern Coast, I believe.”

  Nine hundred years ago. Zaifyr began to wind the charm into his damp hair. “The last of the Animal Kingdoms,” he murmured.

  “I wept when men swept in.”

  Jae’le had given five animals a voice and a kingdom originally. It had been in the heart of Kuinia, a tiny world near his capital, a decree from a man who saw himself as a god. For every following decade—and there had been many decades in the Five Kingdoms—Jae’le had given another animal the power of speech, of an upright stance. No longer animals, but never men or women despite their ability to communicate, the chosen ones of the Animal Lord had been feared throughout the Five Kingdoms.

  In Jae’le’s home, in the elaborate building that curled like fingers around tree branches, there was a leopard who, Zaifyr was sure, the dark hand of the Jae’le had dropped to. A leopard whose head he stroked with more than a casual touch.

  “I saw Ger,” he said, finally.

  “And?”

  “Dying.” He tightened the charm in his hair. “He has no protector, no defenses and time has almost caught up to him.”

  “So soon he will be dead?”

  “And aware of the fact.” The raven’s gaze no longer followed the silver pieces as he lifted them from the bed.

  “Do you think he has drawn the Leerans here?”

  Zaifyr shook his head. “He is different to the other gods, that’s for sure. There is not the hate and the anger—”

  “And the pain,” Jae’le said. “I
feel the lack of that, as well.”

  “He doesn’t like us here,” the other said. “You can still feel that, but it’s instinct, I believe, a reaction to what is in us. But he accepts us—something, I think, that the Keepers might not be fully aware of.”

  “They are not that young.”

  “Perhaps.” He reached for a new charm, this one a mix of silver and copper, symbols to turn away swords and arrows. “But he is looking for someone.”

  “He has seen something in the final moments of his death?”

  “I do not want to argue for fate, but—” He shrugged. “But in this case, it appears he has seen something in the future.”

  The raven moved, claws picking at the cover. “I do not like this line of argument.”

  “I do not either.” Lifting his right foot, he wound it around his ankle. “But you and I have learned that there are no truths, not in our world. The truly worrying idea is that he is looking for someone in the Leerans. I was shown a child, though I do not wish to trust the sight.”

  “The sight, brother?”

  Zaifyr’s smile was faint. “The sight of memory. Of the haunt’s memory.”

  “You rode the mind of the dead?”

  “It was necessary,” he insisted.

  “The others will not be happy to hear.”

  He shrugged.

  “Do not shrug, brother.” The raven’s thin voice struggled with Jae’le’s emotion. “We must be careful. You must be careful.”

  “You’re ignoring what I told you.”

  “Yes, I am.” The bird drifted to the edge of the bed, where the midday’s sun cut across the faded frame. “If Ger has a presentiment, then it will emerge, and it will be something that we are either forced to deal with or not. But you—you brother, this is how it began, with the visions given to you by the dead.”

  Instead of replying Zaifyr wound another silver and copper strap into his hair, this one with a simple prayer for safety written on it from when he was a child. He said nothing to the bird. He was right, of course; but whereas before he had been struck by his own fear on the top of the temple, he did not feel that now. Instead, he felt the desire to argue, to tell Jae’le that it was nothing, that it had simply been what was required. If he had not done it, he would not have seen the girl, he would not have felt her power—power, he was sure, that rivaled their own. Besides which, if Jae’le had not wanted him to speak with the dead, why had he asked Zaifyr to return to the temple itself, where the largest, most troubling of corpses lay?

  He said, “I think—” before three knocks on his door interrupted him, and it was pushed open to reveal Ayae.

  7.

  “Your bird is talking,” she said.

  “No matter how hard I try to stop him,” Zaifyr replied, closing the door behind her. “May I present to you Jae’le, my brother.”

  She had heard them speaking in the warm hallway, the voices muffled but with enough clarity that she could distinguish both. The second voice—Jae’le’s voice—had chilled her, struck a nerve within her for its harshness, for the torture of broken vocal cords. The chill continued as she stepped through the door and into the stare of the raven.

  “Hello,” she said.

  The raven’s head inclined shallowly.

  “Don’t make friends all at once.” Zaifyr’s fingers ran across the silver and copper charm in his grip. “We were discussing Ger.”

  “I heard some of it.”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  She leaned against the wall opposite him. “You will know more than me.”

  “We must not forget that economy is always a part of war,” the raven said, moving from the bed frame to Zaifyr’s shoulder. “You have to feed soldiers, establish treaties, maintain alliances. We must assume that this army will want to do that, especially if it wishes to build an empire. My first army was one built without any currency: we made our treasury out of what we sacked, leaving little behind. It fueled us for a while, but it strung us out in the end, left us hungry and fatigued. Our final battle was with a garrison a quarter our size, but well fed and well rested. We shattered against their small walls.”

  “A good thing you were a bird.”

  “Then, I was not.” His feathers ruffled. “I survived, but just.”

  “Did Heast see me come in?” Zaifyr asked, reaching for his smoke-stained boots. When Ayae nodded, he said, “Did he know where I was?”

  “No, but—” She reached into her trousers, drew out a letter. “He has orders for you.”

  He took the short note. “Should I salute?” he asked, folding it again after he read it.

  “If you would.”

  He smiled. “He doesn’t mention what you are doing.”

  “Illaan has been poisoned.” It felt strange to say the words, to say his name like that of a stranger. “Heast wants us to look in his house.”

  “For saboteurs?”

  “Or an indication of the Keepers’ involvement.”

  Zaifyr’s smile deepened, but she felt that the raven on his shoulder was not as pleased. The bird said nothing, lifting itself off its perch to drift to the ledge of the window as Zaifyr rose and stomped his feet, settling them into the boots he wore. He looked much as he had the first time she had seen him, dressed in blacks and reds and seemingly unarmed, but with holes in his boots and the odor of smoke about him.

  It was a sight that comforted her, strangely, as they left the room and walked downstairs, past the large man who was winding a new cloth around his finger.

  Despite that, Ayae did not speak much as she and Zaifyr made their way to Illaan’s house, the midday’s sun beginning to set while the afternoon’s sun rose. She was unsure of what she would find, though there would not be much of hers there. Having her own house after the orphanage had been important to her; and Illaan, in the early stages of their relationship when he had given more of himself, had understood. He understood that she had something, finally—a tangible, physical piece of property that was her own, even if the money had come from another. But the deeds were in her name, the responsibility to furnish and repair was hers, and after growing up in a narrow dorm with a bed that three other girls had slept on—their names carved on the headboard—and with blankets shared and handed down, that had been terribly important to her.

  Illaan’s house was different. It was his third since she had known him, each a new purchase moved into after a pay raise, the last in a rich neighborhood defined by narrow lanes that limited the sprawl of Mireea’s markets. All the buildings were on two levels, with each having roof terraces that were hidden by ancient, elderly trees with roots sunk deep into Ger’s Spine. She remembered him complaining, with a touch of irony, about the Mireean Guards who had climbed into the trees to cut them back. He had joked about writing a letter to Captain Heast and Lady Wagan about the injustice.

  At the polished wooden door, Ayae pulled the key from her pocket. She had not asked for one from Heast, and he had not offered.

  “Will we find terrible secrets inside?” Zaifyr asked lightly beside her. “Invitations to underground markets, perhaps?”

  She turned the key, pushed on the door. “Just—”

  “—birds,” he finished.

  Inside, two large cages lay on the floor, the bars bent and broken, as if trampled on. There were no birds.

  “He had about a dozen,” Ayae said, approaching the fallen cages. “He would let them out when he was home and they would fly between both levels.”

  “What kind were they?”

  He had told her, but she couldn’t remember. “Green colored,” she said lamely. Slowly, she crouched down over the remains, pulling the bars away and revealing the crushed feeders beneath. A few green feathers lay on the rug, but there was no other sign of the creatures.

  The rest of the floor did not look as if it had been touched. The fireplace had a small pile of wood, threaded with gray lines over the black. The pale-gray couch sat away from it, a torn-up book on its left s
ide. The book did not look as if it had suffered like the cages, but rather that someone had torn long strips down the middle. Zaifyr was already there, leaning over to pick it up, but she knew that Illaan had destroyed it. After the mercenary companies began to arrive, he had purchased a popular military series to learn about them, or so he had told her. With the yellow cover and the hint of swords that she could see, Ayae guessed that was what it was. Upstairs were different books, military studies, serious pieces that he would not have kept beside the other. Downstairs, there only remained the kitchen table, and behind it cupboards and drawers, as well as a series of rolled-up pictures.

  Her pictures.

  Pictures she had drawn for him, taken down.

  She turned, facing Zaifyr, who was looking up at the ceiling.

  “What—”

  He held up his hand for silence.

  She began to speak again, then stopped, hearing a faint movement.

  Zaifyr was moving up the stairs before her; she followed, the knife in her hand, though she did not know what she would do with it.

  Not that it mattered. As Zaifyr pushed open the door, revealing Illaan’s bedroom and office, Ayae realized what the faint noise was that she had heard: a window opening. At the far end of the room, a rope fell from it. The charm-laced man in front of her made his way to the window, picking his steps carefully, making his way around the small, frail forms of the dead birds.

  They had flown up here when whoever had broken in opened the cages. Frightened, they had gone straight for safety, but there was none. Indents on the bed, and the pillow case that was stained with blood, showed how the intruder had killed them. She bent down slowly, intent on picking them up.