by Ben Peek
“When?”
He shrugged. “I said you would be there once you were awake.”
“You could have woken me. It’s probably important.”
“It is always important,” he said dryly. “Tell me, can you hear anything unusual?”
She could not and said so.
“I could, earlier. We will hear it again, I am sure, but it is only the sound of the Leeran Army cutting down trees. They want to talk to us about this, I imagine.”
She wanted to rise, to head to the Keep, but instead she remained seated. “The other day, before the Leerans attacked,” she said slowly, picking her words. “Captain Heast told me that he could end this war before it began if he had the powers of Fo, Bau, or you.”
“I do not know about the others.” Zaifyr ran his hand through his hair, shaking the silver and copper charms throughout. “Maybe Fo could.”
“You could, couldn’t you?”
“No.”
“Not…” She realized her mistake, stumbled with it. “If you could—if there was no past.”
“There is never no history.” His smile was faint. “But I understand what you are asking. In Mireea you are emotionally connected: it is your home, your life. Your future was in it, in all ways, and you haven’t left that yet. But last night you rightly spoke to me about the horrors I have done—and yes, I could end this war. But it would be done violently, awfully, with thousands of deaths. I am one of the first, Ayae. There are few who could stand against me. But after—after I would have to live with it, and I live with so much, already.
“It is an experience that Fo and Bau have never encountered. They have never seen the destruction that can be caused by a man or woman, by a “god” who believes he or she has a moral superiority over another. But they will, soon enough. If the Leeran Army has come for Ger, for the power of the gods, it will move onto Yeflam after this, it will follow the refugee train of Mireea, and it will lay siege to a nation where men and women believe they will, one day, be gods. And on that day you will see the awful things your peers can do, and you will be thankful that neither I nor my brothers or sisters rose up to defend your home.”
3.
His words lingered, following her along the cobbled streets and past the activity on the Spine, beneath the arch of the gate to the Spine’s Keep. If the content of Zaifyr’s words surprised her, the effect they had on her did not: part of the reason for her guilt this morning was that she did not shrink from him after he had admitted to the horrors that she knew he had committed. She knew that he was, by turns, arrogant, cynical, and fatalistic, but yet …
Yet, she thought, yet he is a human.
Would she think the same if she ever met Aela Ren, the man who had the temerity to call himself the Innocent?
Beyond the gate of the Spine’s Keep, she experienced a surprise. Where before the gardens had been cleared, the ground reduced to dirt, she now found the Keep’s staff digging with shovel and hoe. It was not half a dozen, or even a dozen who did this, but rather the entire staff, from maids, to cooks, to guards, each stripped down to simple clothes and creating neat, orderly lines for which they would take one of the hundreds of small, potted plants behind them. The plants themselves were succulents, an array of greens and reds and purples, each as hardy as the next, and each being lifted and passed by Lady Wagan, who stood in the middle of it, while behind her sat the blind Lord Wagan.
To Ayae’s knowledge, this was the first she—or anyone outside the Keep—had seen of the Lord since his return, with reason.
Before he rode into Leera, Lord Wagan had been a tall, distinctively featured man who had gained a degree of gravitas about his face as he aged that had not been reflected in his intellect. Generally, the inhabitants of Mireea viewed Lord Elan Wagan as an attractive accessory to his politically minded wife, her trophy in a world where, on either side of Ger’s Spine, women were more often than not there to be seen, not heard. Lord Wagan, after fifteen years of marriage, was not as silent as the youngest and newest of those wives and was generally considered to be a capable horseman and superb host. He was even aware of the place he occupied in the city, taking a great pride in his ability as a host and its importance in a city built on trade. But of all that, there was no longer any indication: Lord Elan was a shrunken man in his wheelchair, his long frame and bones held together by the brown-and-white robe he wore and the white cloth that was bound over his torn eye sockets. His hair, still full, looked as if it threatened to overpower his face, the skin below having sunk into his cheekbones and following with the rest of his body in presenting a diminished appearance.
As Ayae approached Lady Wagan, it was also clear to her that her husband was unaware of where he was. Both he and his chair were surrounded by a faint odor of opiates and when he moved, slowly, it was as if parts of him were reacting to commands conveyed five to ten minutes beforehand.
“Lady Wagan,” she said, stepping through the rows of tiny potted plants. “You asked to see me?”
The Lady of the Spine bent down, lifting a plant that was predominantly red, but with swirls of black running through it. “Yes, though I was given the impression that I would be lucky if I did. Some men are best disabused of their power, quickly.” She smiled and passed the plant to a guard. “The pot is a little broken, Gerard, so be careful with it. With any luck, we will be done before the day is finished—before any of the fighting begins.”
Before she could stop herself, Ayae said, “But why?”
“Why plant?”
“Yes.”
“Is it not obvious?” Lady Wagan indicated the already half-filled garden before her. “No? The truth is, I have always liked my gardens. I have taken great pride in them, though they are not the finest in any land and the time I devote to them makes me an easy target of mockery for those who are my detractors. But still. It fills me with joy. It is life, creation, nurturing. A garden is not similar to childbirth, or even being a parent—something I can attest to, I assure you, but there is a pleasurable work in it. It does not have the darkness or the intellectual terror that being a parent can, especially in this world we find ourselves in. It is about growth. About life. And that is why we are planting—and planting a world that is difficult to kill, a world that will live in anything, even debris.”
The look on Ayae’s face caused the other woman to chuckle. “Look around. Are they not happy because of it?”
She admitted that they were and, with that, Ayae realized, the Lady of the Spine was also sending a second message, one coded through to the people around her, through the large amount of staff that worked the field.
“I do have things I wish to discuss with you, but not here.” She turned to the Mireean Guard who stood behind Lord Wagan, a tall, young woman whose startling blue eyes gazed at the work in front of her flatly. “Caeli, bring him in within the hour, please. The drugs will have begun to wear off by then.”
The guard made no reply, but Wagan had already stepped through the line of pots before her, and called out to those working. She offered her apologies and left the guard she had spoken to in charge of the pot arrangement, before turning and motioning for Ayae to follow her up to the entrance of the Keep.
Neither spoke until they had begun to walk down the long hall, toward the unused throne room. Then, quietly, Lady Wagan said, “He is gone. The man I loved, that is. He has been gone since they tore his eyes out, since whatever happened to him in Leera. When not drugged, he remembers what they did, and screams.” Ayae remained silent. “Some days, I have the deepest sympathy for him. On others, I resent him for it,” she went on. “They are the only emotions I have, now—love and arousal are gone. Do you know that feeling?”
“Yes,” she replied, thinking of Illaan, of how she felt about him in the hospital, of how little she felt, both before and after she entered his house.
“It is unfortunate, is it not?” The Lady of the Spine stopped them before the throne. The midday’s sun fell through the room, illuminat
ing the silver arms. “To experience love and then to lose it, to feel at the same time betrayed by it. For you, it is perhaps worse than for me, because your youth will keep now. Thousands of years from now, the hollowed feeling you have will be gone and other memories will have replaced it. But for myself? I can only watch and wait for the remains of my love to die.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Why?” She laughed good-naturedly. “Because I am going to ask you a favor and this time I do not want to be denied.”
4.
The Captain of the Spine delayed the start of his meeting for fifteen minutes, a rarity. He delayed it for Zaifyr, waiting for the charm-laced man to open the door across from him, though he knew that he would not. Still, he waited. From the roof of The Pale House he watched the Leeran Army, his first real sight of it, his first chance to see for himself the sprawling, shifting mass of bodies, the nation that had been raised and armed. He had not even begun to suspect its real size, a mistake he had not made for over a decade; still, he had known that it would be large, and did not believe his plans would change greatly. His only true alteration would be once he received word of a solitary mercenary leaving the front gate, walking through the camps that stretched either side of the road to Yeflam.
Walking away.
After fifteen minutes, he began to speak to those around him.
5.
If a chance to escape was ever to be offered to him, it would be soon.
Bueralan, chained to both Ugly and Handsome, followed Mother Estalia through a series of narrow, overgrown paths in what he believed was a slim road that ended close to the back of the funeral pyres. An illegal road, an unofficial road, a child’s road: the saboteur had no idea who had made the path, but it was as old as the villages that the tireless Estalia left behind with her soldier’s pace. Beside her were her four priests and a fifth, the odd man out, Lieutenant Dural. The latter had fanned a small regiment of soldiers around all of them, including Bueralan. “My preference with the prisoner,” he had said to Estalia before they set out, “is to cut the tendons in his heels now.”
“How would he swim?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t,” he replied. “He would be forced to stay with me, where he would not be a danger.”
“That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant.”
She started down the path before he could object, leaving the Leeran Army, the sound of trees being felled, the sight of soldiers in orderly lines being moved across four villages and the newly erected pens of livestock that had just been constructed. Considering himself lucky, Bueralan followed her at a reasonable pace, not wishing to give Dural a chance to cripple him.
Still, the walk was not easy for Bueralan. He struggled to keep up with the pace that was set, the wasted muscles in his legs and back protesting, especially when he went up inclines, of which there was more than one to varying degrees in the Mountains of Ger. Without any other choice, he pushed through the pain, reminding himself that if he fell, he would be taken back to the cage—or simply not get up again. Both would take away his chance to reach Leera, to reach Dark—both of which were in the opposite direction of the wall that rose in front of him and the people within. The images he had seen after the sacrifice of the pale horse had stayed with him, and he had no doubt of the truth of what he had seen. He was running out of time to reach them before they pushed the cathedral doors open, he knew.
He had no choice. Mireea was just a payment, but Dark … Dark. They will take their time. He repeated the words like a mantra as the midday’s sun began to sink. They would not rush. It was three days’ ride to Leera, at a push, and they would not push. He was safe, in as much as anyone in an army was safe, and Dark would know that they had time. They would discover an empty city, a city stripped to make siege engines, to fuel a war. There would be only one part of it with people, one whole, and that would be the church. The very building Orlan wanted them to enter, the building that held the child he wanted them to kill, a murder that none of them wanted to be part of.
They’ll wait.
They’ll watch.
They must.
As the afternoon’s sun rose, Mother Estalia called a stop. Of herself and the four priests, only she spoke, though he was sure that all five communicated with each other. The small force came to a halt in a small clearing, a shallow stream to the side that ran downhill, a flow well enough now to drink from, but which would evaporate as the dry season set in. From it, the priests took water in silent turns and took it around to the soldiers, though not Bueralan. After a moment, the saboteur sighed and, despite the chains, sank to the ground and lay on his back, staring at the fragmented orb that passed above him as he rested his muscles.
Shortly, he saw Dural approach, holding a canteen of water.
“How is he?” asked the soldier.
“We’ll probably be carrying him by the end of the day, sir,” Handsome said to him. “I doubt that he has the strength for much more.”
“There isn’t much more,” Dural replied. “Just watch him.”
He drank what the lieutenant left for him and, soon after he had finished, Estalia rose and set the pace again.
How long would they watch the church? The building would be large, difficult to map from the outside, impossible to know every corner and room and hard to know how many people it held. A week, he answered. They would watch it for a week. A week would allow them to understand the daily routine of the building. Kae would argue for a second week, would argue more caution, but it would not be given. Zean would argue that there were other considerations and the others would agree with him, even the older swordsman. But if there was enough variation …
There would not be.
Ahead, up a steep incline, the pyres appeared, their metal structures barely visible. Looking at it now, Bueralan wondered how it was that he had survived the chase off the ledge: not only did it drop more sharply than he had thought, but the tall green grass looked more dangerous than it had when he had followed, hiding the shape of the land, the holes and the trees and the creatures that lived in both. But he had survived to follow a Quor’lo down the mountain, to where it stretched out gently and men and women had dug shafts to find a fortune to last generations, the openings of which were now peppered with wooden covers.
One of them was open.
Without being asked, the saboteur approached it, Ugly and Handsome behind him. He was aware, as his naked foot pushed at the cover to reveal the inky darkness beneath, that others had gathered around him, that they watched him and followed his gaze down the broken ladder into the darkness, where—
“There is no water,” Mother Estalia said. “You said the mines were flooded.”
The ladder continued, broken in places, but more intact than Bueralan had previously thought. “It was,” he said. “But look at the wall. There is a crack running through it. Something has caused the wall to fracture.”
“The explosion, I would imagine.” She peered down at the wooden covering. “The lock has clearly been broken.”
Bueralan did not reply. Instead, he watched as Estalia turned to those around her and began issuing orders for ropes to be set, for a path down the shaft to be made. She wanted it to be strong enough to take herself, her four priests, Ugly and Handsome and himself.
“Won’t you please reconsider,” Dural said, as the men around him began to move, to prepare what she asked. “Any of our men would gladly take his place.”
“They are needed up here,” she replied. “Lieutenant, he has been given to us for a reason. Do not doubt that.”
One week, Bueralan thought. I have a week to reach Dark before they enter the church. They reached Ranan this morning.
6.
If Lady Wagan’s office was a measure of her intelligence, her strengths and her weaknesses, then it was an office that presented a woman with a mind that held both disarray and order within it equally. Paper was strewn across her table, scrawled notes and an array of knick-knac
ks. Yet each of the items on her desk had an order, a place: that much was clear. Through it all was a thread of control, of an underlining structure that was known to the woman who sat behind the table, who held all before her in a glance that did not require a rigid structure, but who was happy to allow overlaps and meshes.
And then there was the drink.
“Good laq is the work of an artist.” The near-finished bottle sat before the Lady of the Spine, while she passed one to Ayae and poured one for herself. “All liquor is, truly, but it is laq that I find has the most variety in its creation, the most room between the good, the excellent, and the brilliant. In part, it is the difference in how it is made. Take this, for example: this expensive bottle was made in ice. It is the work of a brewer in Faaisha. Once a year, he and a crew of fifty sail up into the cold north, to where the ground is made from ice, where, if there was no ice, there would be no ground, and where your exposed skin dies from cold if you are not careful. He stays there for three months and he and his men—they are all men, incidentally—freeze the start of the liquor, and spend the remaining three months removing the ice from it.”
“Why would they do that?” she asked.
“To make a fine drink.” Behind her, the midday’s sun had begun to set, the afternoon’s rising in the empty sky. “Is that not reason enough?”
“I have had laq before,” Ayae said. “This isn’t that different.”
“But it is different.” The Lady finished her drink, poured a second. “Sometimes, a big act only results in a small difference, but it can be the difference between greatness and success.”
“Is that what is happening here?” She was only halfway through her own, but did not intend to drink a second; she had never overly enjoyed laq. “What you and Heast have planned with the gates is a big act that will only make a small difference at the end? We will still be driven out of our home.”