by Ben Peek
“The Enclave was a long time in birth,” the Animal Lord said. “She disagreed with a lot of what we thought, what we proposed, and others joined her. They all thought it a mistake telling our followers we were not gods. Aelyn argued that since we would be, eventually, there was no need. When her opinion was not shared, the split was inevitable. You had no real influence on that other than to hasten it. But the presence of Fo? I cannot assume it is a coincidence. He may believe that it is—and I have heard her warn him against you, but she cannot have sent him innocently.”
“Which means she still wants to—”
He meant to say, kill me. But instead he lashed out with his arm, slamming Jae’le off the windowsill a moment before an arrow punched into it.
Squawking and turning in mid-air, the raven rose high. As Zaifyr spotted a glint of light through a window off a street, so did the Animal Lord. Stepping out of the window frame for safety and thinking to follow the bird, he did not at first hear the heavy steps to his door. But he heard and saw the kick that splintered the lock.
It revealed a man and a woman, dressed in loose clothes. They had wrapped scarves around their heads, but neither hid the paleness of their skin; nor did the loose dark-blue cloth they wore hide the hard-boiled leather beneath.
“No scream?” said the man. “At very least pleading? I like a man who begs, not a man who fights.”
“Are there even words worth saying?”
“None that I’ve heard.”
In the room where Zaifyr lived, there were two haunts. He had chosen it because they were old. Their deaths had happened so long ago that he could not know the details without pushing deep into the hungry and cold subconscious of each and that suited him fine. He knew only that they were both men and that they had been middle-aged and anything else was quickly lost as Zaifyr flushed his power through them. His attacker screamed as a cold, spectral hand curled through his chest.
A moment later he heard the woman’s knife drop and a low moan escape her.
Zaifyr turned back to the window. He did not need to watch the haunts tear the pair apart, rip into the bodies for warmth and food, take their first comfort with the substance he had given them. He did not need to watch and think about how easy it was for them, and how easy it had been for him to do it. An old life—like putting on an old mask. Or taking an old one off.
Their physical presence in the room was temporary, he would see to that. When they became insubstantial again, there would be four in the room, not two.
Staring at the empty sky, he waited for the raven to return. When he did, his beak was bloody and his claws had scraps of skin.
“Brother,” Jae’le said quietly.
“You can’t stop them,” he replied. “Look elsewhere.”
“How can I?”
“You turn your head.”
“Zaifyr! You cannot be doing this!”
He met the bird’s dark gaze. He imagined the concern in Jae’le’s real eyes, the fear that he knew was there; the fear that was born from the experience of Asila, of the quiet horror he had felt as he walked along the cold roads, knowing that the dead were around him, but unable to see them. “I am not doing anything,” he said. “I acted to protect myself, nothing more. Did you kill your man?”
“No.” The raven’s claw scratched at the shaft of the arrow, as if it were the cause of a wound that none could see. “An eye I might have blinded, but she was prepared—there was no animal around her, nothing I could use to follow her. I lost her a block later in a series of houses.”
“Someone knew you were here.”
“There is something else.”
“Ayae?”
“I do not know, but there have been other attacks,” Jae’le said quietly. “I can hear the noises, the alarms. There is smoke from the keep, soldiers are running to the hospital, and on the roof that Captain Heast has set himself upon, a man has died.”
7.
He lost Zean outside the town as he walked toward his horse, Aerala, Liaya and Kae behind him. It was sudden, a painful clench of his stomach, made worse by a sudden spasm in his legs. Bueralan fell forward onto his knees, his head pressed against the black bars, and hoped that no one around noticed his obvious illness. He wanted to throw up and he felt a sense of delirium in repressing it, as if his consciousness was being hurtled around the border of Leera and the Mountains of Ger. He was startled, momentarily, by a voice, a mother’s voice, who said, “Don’t panic.” But she was not talking to him, he knew. She could not sense him. She said, “The darkness is not your enemy.” He took a deep breath and felt his stomach settle, aware that he was reaching the end of his ability to keep the blood and meat within him. “Soon you will join the others,” the mother’s voice said, before falling silent.
If Bueralan could reach Zean again, he might be able to talk to him, might be able to advise him … to what? Even captured, he would not suggest that Dark come to the Leeran Army and rescue him. Bueralan did not believe a ransom would work—that, if nothing else, Orlan was right about—and neither did he think a desperate act of violence and liberation was likely to succeed. Both were futile. Nor would he tell Zean to go to Ranan, either: whatever loyalty Samuel Orlan’s neutrality kept, the killing that he wanted was one the old man would have to do himself, and one he would have to bear the burden of afterward. Dead children bore their own weight, heavier than dead friends. No, if he could reach out to Zean and speak to him as the mother did to the Leeran soldiers, he would tell Zean to stop his horse, to pull hard on the reins, to pull the horse’s head back, to stop the ride he and the others were taking, to not pass the grisly fence of the border, to go quiet and to wait for him.
“You must not panic,” the mother’s voice said, suddenly.
Bueralan saw darkness.
A deep, impenetrable darkness, a darkness that felt as if it were smothering him.
He opened his eyes and saw the black bars of his cage, the broad back of the cart driver, and the mounted soldiers around him.
Closing his eyes, Bueralan tried to focus on Zean, again. He had almost reconnected to Zean, had been able to see him, hunched low in his saddle, his face set in a grim mask of determination. Bueralan knew that look. He had seen it the first night that the two of them, as children, had been introduced. Zean had stood beside a low, stone table, beside an ugly, short-bladed knife that his father would use to cut deep into the palm of the boy he had purchased, followed by his only son. It was a look that Bueralan mirrored as he focused on the bond he had with Dark, on the bond he had with Zean in particular, to use what little of the blood magic was in him in a way similar to how the mother was using it to talk to the Leeran soldiers.
Zean would be using the back roads, Bueralan assumed. Orlan had known the bandit trails, hunter traps and switchbacks down the mountain and into Leera, and had taken delight in showing them to Dark as a way to win their trust. If they wanted to skirt the army first, to see exactly where Bueralan was, where the general was, then they would have to use them. The risk was that the Leeran soldiers, the Faithful, would not bring Zean and the others in as they had with Bueralan and Orlan, and the saboteur was not sure what choice his blood brother would make in regard to that.
He could see Zean now, riding point, Liaya and Kae following, Aerala at the rear. The sight of them gave him no answer to the question of how they’d approach, and in truth, Bueralan did not know if they had crossed the border yet. They would be close to it, either way. He still had time—enough time, he believed, until the cart slid across dirt and rock in the road and caused his cage to slide, his stomach lurching with it, a heavy lump of bile rising in his throat.
His fingers dug into the bars and he used his weight to steady it, but without luck. After the lurch, the road rose, the start of an incline up to Mireea and Bueralan overcompensated for the way he wanted to lean and the cage, finally, tipped.
His stomach fell with it.
When he hit the ground, the blood and meat came up, painfu
lly, out to the side of the cage, and over himself.
8.
After, the cage was lifted, water thrust at him. He ignored it and spat bile and vomit out of the cage, further disgracing himself, though in the eyes of the Leeran soldiers and himself, the reasons were different. Bueralan had been close: he had needed but another hour, perhaps not even that, to speak to Zean, he was sure of it. That he had no idea how he would speak—that he might have drawn the attention of the mother to him by doing so, and if she had been responsible for the ritual and the power, he would be in trouble—occurred only to him later, as the day’s heat wore on, and the saboteur settled in to wait for news of Zean and the others.
By the time the afternoon’s sun had risen, Bueralan had accepted a second offer of water from a soldier near the cart, enough to wash his mouth of the taste, to clean away the remnants of the vomit on him. He had begun to gather himself as well, letting the logic of what he saw come to him—the ritual, its implication for communication, the jubilant mood of the soldiers as their own voices returned to them fully—and he began to move around in his cell as much as he could. It had not been damaged in the fall, and he had gained no new room in it, yet he still tried to stretch his back. The muscles of his stomach ached, but it was the muscles on the lower half of his back that were protesting with more regularity, just as the muscles along his shoulder blades were beginning to do. There was little he could do to relieve the pain of either, he knew, but he tried the little he could. Falling into a crouch—the pressure on his calves was coming quicker and he knew that they would soon begin to complain as regularly as his back—the captive saboteur stared ahead of him, trying to catch sight of General Waalstan.
Instead, he saw Dural.
The lieutenant was walking toward him, chains and shackles thrown over his right shoulder. The long, winding length of the Leeran force had begun to stop, and Bueralan’s cart was just doing that when he arrived, nodding to the soldiers on either side. Neither were the ones who had picked him up, or shared water with him later. Waalstan was very careful to ensure that Bueralan did not have an individual guard who took responsibility for his food and care. He knew the danger in giving him a single individual, a man or woman to talk to regularly who was not him, or the lieutenant.
“I thought you said there would be no walks?” Bueralan said to Dural as the cage door swung open. “But you found your leash, I see.”
“You’ve been sick. You’re not walking anywhere.” He tossed the shackles onto the floor. “Put them on.”
Ignoring the open door, ignoring the urge to grab the iron and swing it, ignoring the dozens of eyes that watched him, Bueralan clamped the pieces around his ankles and wrists. Once he had, Dural closed the door and dragged the chains out through the bars, hooking them onto the edge of the cart. He pulled on them and stepped up next to the driver, where he ordered him down the hard-packed main road that led further up the mountain.
Bueralan crouched down as the cart moved and quelled a rising panic. He was not surprised when the cart broke through a ring of soldiers toward the front of the force to reveal not just General Waalstan, but Zean.
His blood brother leaned casually against the side of his mount, the brown mare pawing at the ground and breaking up dirt beneath her hooves. He was unarmed and unconcerned by the soldiers who stood around him, watching only the cart, watching only him. Bueralan saw a flicker of concern and anger in the other man’s eyes, emotions drawn from the flecks of vomit, the confines of the cage, and whatever else the saboteur had not noticed about himself. Finally, after a long, drawn-out silence, Zean straightened and turned to the general. “Now we can talk,” he said.
“Captain Le.” Ekar Waalstan was as he had first seen him: the brown civilian trousers and white shirt, and unarmed. “I was impressed when I met you, but I am doubly impressed by your man. I want you to know that. Half an hour ago, he caught one of my scouts and informed her that he had poisoned the rivers ahead of us, but was willing to discuss the treatment of those same waters if I met him to talk about your fate.”
“I am here to pay his ransom,” Zean said. “There are no other conversations to be had.”
“Did Samuel not tell you? I do not ransom.”
“He said that.”
“You did not believe him?”
“No.”
“Believe him.” Waalstan turned and indicated to the cage. “Your captain belongs to me now. He is my spoil of the war, though a slightly ill one, as you can see. In many ways, it should make you think of the poisons you have been laying down for my men, for he will drink the water before any of mine. He will not die, of course, for he is my assurance that you and the rest of Dark, who I assume are spread out around me and are hearing these words just as you are, do as Samuel Orlan has requested of you. That you take him to the cathedral in Ranan.”
“Do you know what he promised us?”
“That he would free your man.”
In his cage, Bueralan pulled on his chains, trying to catch the eye of his blood brother. Don’t listen to him, Zean. Just step back and go. You can’t stay.
“Do you know what he wants us to do?” the other man asked.
“I believe so.”
“He wants us to kill a girl.”
Waalstan smiled.
“A child, in fact,” he added. “Does that not bother you?”
“Does it not bother you?” Turning, the general approached Bueralan’s cell. “He will not listen to you, Captain. Do you think he will listen to me?” He spoke softly, raising his voice to readdress Zean. “Have you ever had faith, soldier? Real faith, I mean? I suspect not. A lot of men and women haven’t, and in this day and age, who is surprised by that? But the men and women in front of you have faith. They know what it means for there to exist something better than you, for there to be a being, a deity who is more powerful, more knowing, more moral than themselves. Through their faith they acknowledge the care of another, they believe in fate, in a path that has been inscribed on the soul of each and every one of us.”
He reached the cell and, wrapping a hand around the bars, pulled himself onto the back of the cart. He was within easy reach of Bueralan’s chained hands.
“I do not fear the man beside me, nor you, nor Samuel Orlan, because I have faith in the fate my god has given.” He leaned on the top of the cage as he spoke while, beneath him, Bueralan tried to catch Zean’s gaze. “But fear drives Samuel to Ranan, to a pair of large doors at the front of a cathedral and the child that is behind them. What awaits him there is the same fate that awaits Captain Le, I promise you.”
“Without us, Orlan would not go to Ranan. Have you considered that?”
“He will go, regardless. He must,” Waalstan said. “So must you. It is the only chance that you have to save your dear captain’s life.”
Don’t go to Ranan. Bueralan caught Zean’s gaze and held it, trying desperately to impart his words to him. I will find a way out of here. None of you have to take risks. Following Orlan is a bad choice. Whatever waits in that cathedral will be blood gorged—it doesn’t matter if it is a “child” or a “mother”—the risk is one you shouldn’t take. It is too dark a gamble on our set of weary souls. Don’t take that risk. Not now. Not here. Take the others, take them away—
Zean shrugged. With a swift movement, he pulled himself onto his horse. “None of us wins in this, General. I will tell you about Ranan when I see you next.”
After he had gone, Waalstan bent his head, met Bueralan’s gaze through the bars. “He may be just as dangerous as you.”
“He’ll kill you before your war is done.”
It was bravado, a hint of defiance, a reaction to the situation that saw him caged and ill and knowing that Dark would, once they returned to the town where they had left Orlan and Ruk, begin to ride to Ranan. They would not like it; they would know instinctively to cut the head off the army would not stop it, not even if the head was figurative.
Yet he could offer them no alterna
tive but to leave him.
Outside the cage, General Waalstan smiled sadly. “I know I will not see the end of this war. In that regard, however, I will not be alone.”
9.
By the time the afternoon’s sun had begun to set, Ayae knew she was being watched.
After leaving Zaifyr, she had not returned to her home. At first her steps had been without direction. Fo’s words replayed in her mind, the horror she felt was strong; but when the sense of being followed emerged she realized that she did not want to bring whoever it was into her home. The thought was a surprising and sad one. As she passed along the Spine, lined with men and women who had not spoken to her since the fire in Orlan’s shop and who now sought to catch sight of the approaching army, she knew the thought was untenable. The wooden walls around her had begun to look more and more like the walls of the camp in Sooia and she knew that the war would come to her home no matter what she wished; but she told herself that it could wait.
Two blocks to her left, where The Pale House rose like a thick, white gravestone, there was the sound of a horn and the Mireean Guard began moving quickly to the building, passing her with grim faces. She did not follow. No matter what drew them—and she believed that it was nothing more than a training exercise—it did not have anything to do with her, but the sudden appearance of the guard did put a thought in her mind, and she began the slow circuit that took her looping around Mireea to where Steel were encamped.
The mercenary army was camped on the western edge of the city, in a timber yard that had been closed shortly after their arrival. The wood from the company had been used for the gates that stood in rough attention around the city, while what remained in offcuts had been taken by Steel and turned into barricades throughout the western part of the city. The camp was located near the Spine, but to reach it Ayae had to pass through three guard checkpoints and at the second, with two lean mercenaries nodding her through, she heard a woman calling her name out.