by Ben Peek
The Captain of Steel—Queila Meina, shadowed by her two uncles—lifted her hand in greeting when she turned.
“You missed all the fun,” the dark-haired woman said, drawing closer. When Ayae made no response, she added, “Heast was attacked on the top of his building. Well, attacked is too strong a word: he killed an assassin who had slipped in at the back of a meeting. I was there and I still can barely believe he walked up to an unassuming looking man, grabbed the back of his head, and slit his throat all while talking about supplies. Before the man hit the ground, Heast had reached for his horn to call the guard to send them to the hospital and the Keep.”
“How did he know?”
“He had never seen the man before. I would not have had the confidence to do it myself, but by the time we were leaving, reports of men and women breaking into both the Keep and hospital were being carried to him. No one was hurt, by all accounts.” Meina shook her head and laughed, a quiet sense of disbelief in both. “If that’s the opening gambit of the Leerans, it’s going to be a short war, I tell you that. Now, what brings you here?”
Ayae hesitated, then said, “I’m being followed.”
“Still?”
She nodded, though she could not have explained how she knew, other than the warmth that had begun to spread throughout her body, a sensation so different to what she had felt before that she could only explain it as a warning.
“It would make sense,” Bael murmured quietly. “Heast, the Lady Wagan, that Healer and the Keepers. They’re the power in this city.”
And Zaifyr?
“We’ll have to trust that the Keepers can take care of themselves.” To Ayae, she said, “Let’s head in and see if we can’t draw whoever this is out.”
Ayae doubted that whoever was following her would do so as all four walked deeper into Steel’s camp, but the sensation of being followed did not leave her.
Steel’s camp was the timber mill itself, located deep in the poor working-class district of the city. Past a thick wooden wall and gate, the mill nestled against the Spine, dominating the expanse of land it owned with a large building that had housed the timber that had been brought in, not by river, but by human and animal muscle. Ayae had been told by Orlan it was a business that defied the usual practice, forcing loggers to pay the price of hauling their merchandise up the mountain rather than using a river as was traditional. But even located at the edge of Mireea as it was, it was a mill that was in the center of numerous trade routes, a mill that the owners took pride in having a variety of wood available for those who came to it—wood now, Ayae knew, that dominated the city’s skyline, taken at a quarter of the going price under the order of Captain Heast.
The large warehouse was being used as Steel’s sleeping quarters. As she walked past the mercenaries with Meina greeting most she passed, Ayae was told that the other two buildings in the yard—both large offices—were used by herself and her officers for meetings and as a storage facility for their food and water, rations that she said would be important if the siege began to drag on, or if they were forced into retreat.
At the door to her new office, Meina—free from her uncles—sat herself down on the stairs, leaving room for Ayae. “You don’t appear that impressed.”
She took the offered place next to her. “Memories,” she admitted.
“You’ve been in sieges before?”
“I was born in a village called Iqua, in Sooia.”
“We’re competing against the memory of Aela Ren? I will be happy to come in second.”
“I never saw him.”
“Few have,” Meina said. “One of the advantages of genocide, I imagine.”
She nodded.
“There are rumors that he has left Sooia,” Meina continued. “A lot of gold has started to come out of Ooila, and with it the rumors that he is there.”
“It was said that the armies of Sooia rose up against him, at first. That they were huge, nearly equal to the armies of the Five Kingdoms, but they did nothing. In the camps they would talk about those old battlefields, and men and women would dig in them for weapons.” She spread her warm hands out in front of her. “It is not the same, but—”
“This is all too familiar,” Meina finished.
Ayae nodded.
“It’s home to me,” the mercenary said. “My family is here, the memories of my family and the business I was raised to inherit.”
And she would die for it as well, but neither she nor Ayae said the words.
Instead Ayae let her gaze drift over the paved ground, the afternoon’s sun having risen to start baking the stone. The mercenaries of Steel came and went beneath her gaze, half a dozen entering the provisions building and emerging with freshly slaughtered meat.
The mercenary began to speak again, but her voice was stolen by a sudden explosion that shook the ground and the Spine, that caused the base of the wall to fall inward. A cloud of debris rose and it fell like a curtain across the mill.
And from it emerged armed men and women.
THE WOMAN MADE FROM FIRE
It was agreed that we would make our own kingdoms. We had conquered enough. We had fought long enough. We had to lead, to teach, to love. We had half the world and we needed rest. We needed to consolidate. We needed to show our armies that their faith was not misplaced.
In the heart of the Five Kingdoms, Jae’le built his domain, and gave voice to the creatures that had none. To the west, Aelyn’s intricate, beautiful cities rose over forests and rivers, and her gaze, now, as then, was ever upward. In the east, Eidan dug beneath for iron, for gold, for gems, for wealth. He dug for what is locked beneath us. In the south, Tinh Tu took in those with crippled hands and built libraries of such wealth, such knowledge, that she now begins to deny the opening of her gates, while in the north …
In the north, there were cities dedicated to those who spoke, but could not be heard.
—Qian, The Godless
1.
At first, Ayae did not react.
She remained on the stairs as Queila Meina rose, her voice ripping out through the dust and silence, her response immediate, seasoned, commanding. Her orders cut out the shapes of the men and women rising from the debris and drew the eye of those under her command to the leather they wore, the steel they carried. But beneath Meina’s voice—“Archers! Defensive positions!”– Ayae could hear a dull, repetitious thudding, the sound of something solid hitting a wooden ramp at a great speed and weight and her breath caught when she realized what it was—
“Horses!” Queila Meina cried. “Steel! Fall back to the streets! Fall back, Steel!”
The first horse burst from the dust as her final words tore across the mill’s now broken lot, its rider crouched low, a short, hard blade held at his side. Ayae could make out little else, for he was a shadow wreathed in dirt, a dark and terrifying figure followed by a second and third, each unfolding like a fan around the first.
“Archers!”
Ayae was wrenched to her feet as the mercenary grabbed her, dragged her off the stairs as she ran toward the entrance of the yard.
A small group of men and women from Steel were running toward them, armed with heavy crossbows. Releasing her, Meina pushed Ayae forward, pushed her past the mercenaries to take one of the weapons. Stumbling, Ayae turned to see her and the mercenaries drop into position as more riders swept through the yard. Emerging from the dust, she could see their mouths split into vicious, sharp-toothed grins as they cut off small groups of mercenaries, rode down those who did not move fast enough and hacked down with their swords.
“Fire!”
The first volley of crossbow bolts punched into riders and horses, but drew the attention of a group to Ayae and those around her.
This time, she moved of her own accord, sprinting to the left as the riders thundered toward her. She saw Meina hurl her unloaded crossbow at one, saw the other members of Steel drop the heavy weapons and pull out swords; then a rider bore down on her. More out of instinc
t than any conscious choice, the cartographer’s apprentice ducked beneath the wild swing aimed at her head, trying desperately to grab her attacker—
Who screamed suddenly.
His sword hit the ground before he did, and Ayae snatched it from the dirt. His screaming had not stopped when she turned on him, his sword-wielding hand clutched at his face. Blood was seeping from the ruined right eye his fingers were desperately trying to keep in the socket.
She heard shouts and screams and horses around her, but there was no indication of what had attacked him; but, with no time, Ayae gritted her teeth and slammed the sharp end of the sword into her attacker’s neck. The blade cut deep, but not all the way through, and she left it there in the man as she turned back to where she had last seen Meina.
The mercenary captain was pushing herself up from beneath the rider who had attacked her, the other man’s stomach a bloody mess from the dagger that Meina had thrust into him. She stumbled as she straightened and Ayae, moving quickly now, ran to her side.
“I’m fine,” she said, but leaned on the other woman’s shoulder. “Really, I’m fine. Better than most.”
The charge had broken against the small group, but half of the twenty members of Steel that had stood against the attack lay on the ground, injured or dead, surrounded by the remains of the small charge. Of the mercenaries, a middle-aged man had the worst wound, his hands holding his stomach together as he muttered to himself and tried to move backward with his legs. His killer was bloody from where she had driven her sword into him, her leather armor untouched but held together in strips, while through her hair were twists of twine and feather. The mercenary had crushed her face with the stock of a crossbow, but Ayae could still make out a tattoo that went from her left eye to her cheek.
“Raiders,” she whispered.
“Leeran raiders.” Meina limped over to the middle-aged mercenary, dropping down next to him. “You were a good man, Rel.”
The fallen man did not respond, and a second later could not.
“Gather up those you can.” The Captain of Steel rose. “We need to be at the gate, and we need to be there, now. Is your protector going to come with us?”
Ayae glanced to her right, following Meina’s gaze, and found a raven perched on the body of a horse.
“He’ll go where he wants to go,” she said, finally. “But—thank you.”
The bird’s head tilted slightly and then lifted into the air with an easy jump and glided to her shoulder.
“I should be so lucky,” the mercenary captain said beside her.
Ayae did not reply. For a moment, she doubted that she could. The memories—the distorted memories of her childhood—were rushing in against the reality before her. At the wall, the dirt had settled, and she could see the barracks surrounded, the closed doors holding, but under threat. Mounted raiders and others on foot moved through the lot in small groups, riding down soldiers and using the remaining two buildings to provide cover from archers who shot arrows and bolts toward them. In the middle of the yard, where there was no cover and where the men and women of Steel had been standing for the start of dinner, lay the bodies of three dozen men and women, not all dead. Their screams would not be easily forgotten.
Not by her.
2.
From his place on top of The Pale House, the Captain of the Spine gazed intently through his eyepiece, counting horses, raiders and the hole they had emerged from. “Move the Fifth to the gate, and the Eighth to the wall,” he said quietly. “Then cauterize it.”
From his roof, a mournful note rose over the city.
3.
Ayae had eased herself to the floor when she heard the alarm sound, the dull horn rolling through the streets. She and the half of Steel that were neither trapped in the barracks nor lying on the dirty ground of the mill had filtered into the streets and separated, slipping into the narrowest lanes they could find, which the raiders were not keen to follow them down. It was in one of those, a handful of Steel around her and Jae’le silently sitting in the empty, stripped branch of a tree above, that she heard the horn blast. She believed that it was a sign that Heast was moving his soldiers into position, but the mercenaries’ reaction—swearing and laughing bitterly—caused her to turn to Queila Meina.
“What did you expect he would do?” She addressed her soldiers from the top of an overturned crate, her injured left leg pushed out before her. “They dug through the Spine.”
That Ayae understood: the Spine sank deep into the ground, deep enough that many believed that it was fused to the vertebrae of Ger himself. The sheer enormity of the task for a force to push through centuries of stone and dirt packed into the ground was not lost on her.
“And they did it,” the Captain of Steel continued, “quietly, with none of us—not to mention the Captain or Lady of the Spine—knowing it was taking place. If you stop and think about the fact that we’ve been there for over two months now, the implications are not pleasant.”
“The mill was bought out a year ago.” Ayae pushed herself up from where she was sitting and approached the mercenary. “Everyone in the city knew. Heast is going to close one of the gates, isn’t he?”
Behind her, a loud shuddering, wooden creaking began to emerge.
“He’ll do more than that,” Meina said.
“More?”
Her smile was sour as her good foot tapped the ground. “He’ll collapse part of the city. This part. He’ll crash it into the tunnels below.”
Ayae could not respond.
“That’s what the gates are for,” the other woman continued. “You were all told that they form catchments, that they let Heast box in soldiers in parts of Mireea when they are overrun, and it’s true. What you weren’t told was that he has spent months restructuring and lining the underground passages so that he could collapse each part of the city safely without causing a chain reaction. He had the idea years ago when he realized portions of Mireea were built over empty caverns, but it wasn’t until this threat that he was given reason to do it.”
“How long?” Her voice failed her. “How long do we have?”
“Until the morning. We have some time, though whether it will be enough to regroup and pull half of Steel out of the mill, I don’t know.”
She stepped back behind the mercenaries as Meina talked to them and organized them despite their protests. She had two concerns, Ayae heard: those they had left behind and the split of their forces. To free those in the mill would require all of them, more than the dozen listening to her now; they would need a small force to draw the attention of the raiders and another to go in; and then they would have to fight a rearguard action to the gate. Ayae was not sure that they would be allowed through the shut gate if they arrived with a force, but she did not question it. Captain Heast had laid much of his plans in advance and told the people of Mireea very little of it, but she did not doubt that he and those under him had contingencies to ensure that their own soldiers would be evacuated safely.
It was clearer now than ever before that neither the Captain of the Spine nor those who knew the full extent of his plan expected to win once the siege began against Mireea. Until that moment she had nursed the belief that they had a chance, that Heast and the others she spoke to were pessimists and pragmatists, paid to plan for the worst. But that was not true, and the weight of that realization settled heavily on her, coupled with the knowledge that Heast planned to demolish all of Mireea as it was overrun, leaving nothing but rubble and debris for those who claimed it. Partly, she knew that he was doing it to ensure that he would not have to fight a retreat in the form of a long, bloody chain, spending the lives of mercenaries and soldiers and civilians as he made his way to Yeflam …
But.
But her home.
Her home would be gone.
Not lost, not stolen but gone.
Devastated, she walked down the narrow lane, closing her eyes to center herself.
“You have nothing to fear.”
> She felt the raven’s claws pierce the fabric of her shirt.
“Head to the gate now,” Jae’le continued. “None here will stop you. You’re not a soldier. Once you are past it, find my brother. Find him and the two of you can be gone before the fighting starts. Before you are both forced to take part in this conflict.”
“Before we’re forced to take responsibility?” She spoke quickly, bitterly. “That’s what you really mean, isn’t it?”
She brushed the raven from her shoulder before he could reply and returned to where Meina was giving out orders. Her uncle—Bael, to judge by the axe he wore—had begun to argue, and as she drew closer, Ayae heard his voice: “—in no condition to lead anything that requires speed, and you know it,” and saw Meina shake her head. It became clear that she was alone in her opinion, for much of Steel were in agreement with the large man. Soon, she capitulated to their demands.
“Fine, uncle. Start gathering as many as we can, and prepare to move. We can’t stay in this alley much longer.” She turned to Ayae. “I can have someone take you to the gate, if you want?”
“Have them take the bird,” Ayae, who had once been a cartographer’s apprentice, replied. “I’ll go where I can help the most.”
4.
As Zaifyr approached the third village, the afternoon’s sun began to truly set, leaving hand-printed smudges of orange and red on the horizon, a child’s painted sky.
He had been outside Mireea for over an hour, having dropped down the Spine and into the cooling brush while the sun still remained. Before the light had begun to fade, he passed through two villages, finding them empty. No more than two dozen cheaply made buildings accounted for the two towns, but they were all bigger and better kept than those in the third settlement. This was smaller than the two before it, and he suspected it was the oldest, but from the silence that greeted him it did not promise to be any different than those he had already searched.