by Ben Peek
‘The only person happy to go to Yeflam is Zaifyr.’
Heast had not disagreed and, in the carriage that took him into the Floating Cities, Benan Le’ta echoed the Lady of the Spine’s words.
He had shrugged off the merchant’s comment. The charm-laced man had made it clear that he had little concern with what was unfolding around him. He had shown the same lack of interest to the Mireean people who had thrown insults and spat at him after they left Mireea and the streets full of ghosts. The girl, Ayae, who had stood against Fo and Bau, had not fared as well beneath the insults: Heast had watched her move between patience and anger and, fearing that she might justifiably lash out, he had quietly told guards to shadow her. He hadn’t ordered Caeli to do it – she had other duties – but he had been pleased to see the former with her. He had ordered guards to shadow Zaifyr as well, but Zaifyr had seen them within an hour and, in a move that terrified his soldiers, Zaifyr approached the guards and told them that it wasn’t necessary. Heast related that to Le’ta in the carriage, while it took them over the bridge into Neela, as the morning’s sun began to etch across the black ocean, into Mesi.
‘They say he is a powerful man,’ the merchant said, ‘more powerful perhaps than the Breath of Yeflam.’
‘Aelyn Meah?’ He hadn’t heard that title in a long time. ‘Who can say? If he is her brother, then he ruled beside her long ago with three others.’
‘With a brother, a sister, and – ’ Le’ta smiled unpleasantly – ‘a lover.’
‘A lot was burned back then,’ Heast said with a hint of distaste at the other man’s comment. ‘A lot to hide who was who and what was what.’
The smile slithered away. ‘Yes,’ Le’ta replied. ‘It makes it difficult to know anything for certain.’
Shortly after, the merchant dropped him off before a small two-storey inn made from stone and wood. It was called The Minotaur’s Lost Eyes and the sign showed, beneath the words, a pair of eyes spiked through the centre. Le’ta said that it was a good establishment, a fine building of sturdy beds and discreet staff, and Heast assumed that he owned them. Just before he tapped the roof of his carriage to signal that it should leave, Le’ta said that he would come and visit him when everyone was safely on Wila. ‘We will discuss what we can do for the Mireean people,’ he said. ‘What kindness can be given to them in their time of need.’
The next day, after the Mireeans had been led to Wila, Le’ta found Heast in the common room of the inn. Heast had a collection of newspapers and pamphlets laid before him, having flipped through most of them already.
‘You were there, I trust?’ Le’ta asked as he bobbed through the tables in the mostly empty room. He did not wait for the Captain of the Spine’s response before he began to claim how well it had gone, how he had seen fear in Aelyn Meah’s face, how the crowds showed that she did not have their support. Heast, for his part, had seen the Keeper’s face in the carriage as it drove by. From that brief glimpse, fear was not the word he would have used. Resigned, perhaps. But the horses made from wind had drawn the carriage away and, by then, his attention was on the other Keepers and the Yeflam Guard. They had barely contained a riot as the Mireeans were led to the island with Muriel Wagan at their head. The pamphlets and papers before him had been given out in that crowd by men and women for free. Le’ta, upon seeing them, said, ‘Ah those disgusting rags. Printed by presses not on Neela, I assure you.’
‘Is that right?’ Heast said, leaning back in his chair. ‘You’re all innocence, are you?’
‘Captain, now is not the time to question our trust.’ The merchant sat and, in doing so, revealed the man a handful of paces behind him. ‘May I introduce you to Commander Bnid Gaerl of the Empty Sky?’ he said.
‘We’ve met before.’
He was a tall white man a handful of years younger than Heast. Yet he appeared older, the lines in his long face leaving him with a craggy, liver-stained visage in which dark eyes sat deeply. He wore expensive armour that was mostly a light chain mail, and over his shoulder, beneath the cloak of dark blue, he bore a heavy two-handed sword.
‘Well,’ Le’ta said, turning back to Heast. ‘I trust that it was in favourable conditions.’
‘He was the Captain of Refuge then,’ Gaerl said, his voice deep and heavy. ‘But he shed that title like a snake sheds a skin. He’ll shed the title he has now the same way.’
‘Refuge no longer exists,’ Heast said evenly. ‘The rank no longer has meaning when there are no soldiers.’
‘Your witch still wears the title.’
‘By all means, tell Anemone to stop.’
‘Commander. Captain.’ Le’ta appeared surprised by the animosity, but he must have known of it before he entered the inn. Over a decade ago, Gaerl – Heast refused to use the self-appointed rank of commander – had tried to use the name Refuge for his own mercenaries. ‘We are not here to talk about old difficulties or, indeed, the men and women that you have known in your service to the world of coin. Instead, we are here to ensure that all that can be done is done for the Mireean people.’ He tapped one of the papers on the table. On the cover was a picture of Muriel Wagan and, around her, an ocean of bones. ‘It is a difficult task when stories like the ones here are being printed. We can all agree on that, I’m sure. It will be difficult to do anything for Lady Wagan and her people if they are linked to this monster.’
‘They need blankets and food,’ Heast said, turning back to the merchant. ‘Lady Wagan has given me access to Mireea’s finances to provide for them on Wila. I would like to begin with that as soon as I can.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Le’ta frowned slightly as he said the words. ‘But I warn you, it may not be as easy as simply buying and shipping goods. We will be required to petition the Keepers to allow us access.’
‘I will speak to Xrie,’ he said. ‘We should be able to avoid that.’
‘The Soldier?’ Gaerl frowned. ‘The Captain of the Yeflam Guard is not an easy man to get an audience with.’
‘It can be done.’ He did not look away from Le’ta. ‘I’d also like to request a personal favour, if I could?’
‘Of course,’ Le’ta said, just once, this time. ‘What is it?’
‘I’d like to meet with Lian Alahn – privately.’
‘He has fallen considerably from favour with the Traders’ Union,’ the merchant replied. ‘He is not even currently in the country. I am afraid he will be able to do little for you.’
‘It is a personal matter concerning his son,’ the Captain of the Spine said. ‘That is all.’
6.
Bueralan Le sat in the shell of a building, the moon’s light seeping through trees to fall through a broken roof, where it offered little solace to a man in grief.
He had been unable to save Dark. Kae. Liaya. Ruk. Aerala. Zean. He repeated the names to himself each night, an act of punishment in his suffering. He saw them again, each of them fallen in the cathedral. Saw the candles flicker along the walls, the light wavering over the dead. He heard the sound, a shifting mass, in the rafters. Then he saw Kae first. Saw Liaya and Ruk together. And after them, Aerala. Next, he saw the blonde-haired child at the end of the cathedral. She stood at the top of a small dais in a simple dress of white. She was but a handful of steps from Zean’s body, as if his oldest friend, his blood brother, did not matter. Bueralan could close his eyes and remember the green eyes of the child. He had been ready to die. Then the child had stepped towards him and said, ‘I have a gift for you.’
A soul.
Zean’s soul.
After, the child had called him god-touched, had said that he could call on her – only when what is at stake is innocence, she said – and she released Samuel Orlan into his care, but those words, those actions, were like shadows around him. She spoke but he felt only the crystal she had given him. A chill had begun to settle into the black skin of his hand as he held it, had begun to numb it to where his white ink tattoos began on his wrist. Outside the cathedral, he placed it in a dark leathe
r pouch, but he could still feel the cold. Even so, he threaded a piece of leather through the end of the pouch and tied it around his neck and let the chill settle against his chest. It would lie there until he returned home.
He knew instantly that he would be returning to Ooila, to where the witches of his childhood blew dark expensive glass bottles from which pieces of glass were taken for the living to wear around their necks. To where the bottle was whole once again after the death of the man or woman who had worn that piece. To where the family took the unearthly remains of their loved ones and entered into a long-established network of barter and purchase to ensure that the bottle would sit on the nightstand of a pregnant woman in a good family. The soul would be leached into her womb with every sip she took from the bottle, drawn down into the foetus, to search for a perch in the newly created child, to find life again.
The Mother’s Gift, they called it.
‘Break the damn thing.’ The rough voice belonged to Samuel Orlan. The old white-haired cartographer had almost had his throat crushed by a creature made from shadows in the cathedral and it had not yet healed. ‘Don’t sit there with it in your hands all night again,’ Orlan muttered from where he lay. ‘Break it. Smash it. I’ll get a stone from outside for you to do it. Better than what she has planned.’
‘Your conscience has no place beside me, old man.’ Above him, the swamp crows that lined the rafters shifted, awoken by the sound of his voice. ‘Zean is dead because of you. They’re all dead because of you.’
‘You would be too, if you’d come with them.’
‘But not you.’
The cartographer grunted sourly as he pushed himself into a sitting position.
‘Why didn’t she kill you?’ Bueralan asked. ‘You’re not worth a thing compared to the people who died.’
‘She didn’t kill you, either.’ He coughed, rubbed at his throat. ‘She’s not a god yet.’
The answer offered little. In truth, little made much sense after the cathedral. Outside, Ranan had been empty, and though Bueralan had felt as if he was being watched, he had not seen a single person on the streets, or in the broken buildings. Both his horses were gone too. The tracks led off down the main street, and then disappeared into the thick sweltering marshes of Leera, but only for a step or two. The tracks stopped suddenly and neither Bueralan nor Orlan had been able to pick them up again. With one sword between them, they had been left to walk through the marshes and swamps, their direction mostly eastwards. The nearest port was Jeil in the Kingdoms of Faaisha, though Bueralan knew that it was not truly near. It would take weeks to walk there. Weeks, he had told himself, without food or water.
On the first night out of Ranan, they had been found by eight Leeran raiders. Both men had slunk into a line of trees that offered some protection, and they had collapsed, exhausted. Bueralan had meant to split a night’s watch with Orlan, but the old man had stumbled into a deep sleep, and his own grief had swamped him and kept him awake. He had not heard the raiders approaching until all eight were around him.
He did not reach for his sword, did not stand. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I should never have walked out of that cathedral anyway.’
A man stepped forward. His teeth had been filed down and his white skin was sunk against his bones, as if he was being consumed by a disease. ‘She sent this for you.’ The raider dropped a heavy sack on the ground. ‘To reach Jeil.’
He didn’t reach for it. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘You’ll starve before you reach the border,’ he said. ‘The old man before you. She has seen it.’
‘Then why would I take it?’
‘Because she has seen it.’
He asked another question, an angry question, because on those nights his grief gave way to anger, but the Leeran raider did not respond. A moment later, he and the seven men and women who had stood around Bueralan disappeared.
Beneath the green-tinted light of the morning’s sun, Bueralan and Orlan had tipped the sack open, scattering fruit, bread, and water across the ground. It had been the meat that had given them pause. It was a square, cured, and as the cartographer picked it up, Bueralan said, ‘I don’t think we should eat that.’ Despite having not eaten for two days, he felt repulsed by the shape of it. ‘No telling what it is. Could be human.’
‘Smells like pig,’ Orlan said.
They had left it there without further conversation.
It had been the only time that the two of them had agreed on anything. Since then, they had niggled at each other, prodded and probed. Bueralan’s anger had been the source of his antagonism. Orlan’s was guilt, he assumed. The old man had not apologized for what he had done – not that it would have meant much if he had. Orlan hadn’t given much away, either. He hadn’t explained why the child had called him god-touched. Why she had not killed him. Or why, in his words, she was not quite a god yet.
7.
Kal Essa was a man easily remembered. In the final days of Qaaina, in the days when the Oolian Queens were burning not just lives, but an entire nation, a heavy, spiked mace had struck Essa across the left side of his head, tearing open his skin. It had been a glancing blow and the skin had been stitched back together in the field, but as often with such makeshift work, it left scars. In the Captain of the Brotherhood’s case, it left a series of heavy, spider-webbed lines that ran from eye to ear in white scar tissue.
‘By the time the paperwork was done, two men were waiting for me outside the office,’ Essa said, after Heast had stepped through the back door of the building he had bought. The expanse of empty floor waited to be filled with produce, with blankets, with whatever Heast could buy to fill it. ‘They followed me across Neela and into Maala. It was nearly a whole day’s ride in those carriages. They’ve set up a rotation outside the hostel we rented – about eight of them – but they’re easy enough to lose and find again when we need them.’
‘I had two following me before I came here, as well.’ At the far end of the room were two people, a man and a woman, who were doing a lap of the emptiness. ‘Did any follow those two?’
‘No.’ Essa turned to Heast. ‘I told them to be careful with Gaerl, though.’
‘But they ignored you,’ he said.
‘They shrugged it off.’ The mercenary spat on the floor. ‘They don’t know him the way we do, Captain.’
Faise and Zineer drew closer. They carried leather satchels full of paper, full of orders and statements and purchasing plans. Already, in the week since the two had met Muriel on the mountain, they had begun to set up a series of false names and long paper trails to hide the details of the majority of what they bought. They had helped Essa with his purchase and, Heast knew, it had been reported to Benan Le’ta, but the act, much like the purchase of the factory they stood in, was one of misdirection. He wanted the merchant to be watching Essa and him. That way, the majority of what Faise and Zineer would soon be buying would be kept from view, the paper trail lost while the Mireeans gained their leverage over the Traders’ Union.
‘We’ll start buying farmland next week,’ Faise said, after they had greeted Heast and then crossed the stone floor to stand next to him and Essa. ‘We’re going to start on the northern side, on farms that are near to Mireea. Some of that is already owned by Muriel Wagan, and the loss of Mireea will make the sellers a little easier to shift.’
Heast took the map she handed him. She had circled the lots of land. ‘Who do you plan to use as a buyer?’ he asked.
‘A Zoum banker,’ Zineer said. ‘A lot of the world’s coin routes through there and the bankers are often used to represent buyers. We were lucky that one was in Yeflam when we needed her.’
‘How long until it becomes public, do you think?’ He passed the map back to Faise. ‘Before the Traders’ Union and the Keepers realize?’
‘A pattern will start to emerge after a month or two,’ Faise said. ‘Lady Wagan wanted us to run an aggressive purchasing campaign, so they’ll be alerted to the loss of their asset
s reasonably quickly.’
‘Then it’ll be the money they follow.’ Zineer gave a slight shrug. ‘That could stretch on for years.’
‘Don’t plan on that,’ Heast said. ‘Captain Essa and I have soldiers tailing us. If you aren’t being followed already, it won’t be long until you are.’
‘We understand that.’
‘Get a guard,’ Essa said bluntly. ‘Some of my boys and girls will do well by you.’
‘That will draw attention to us straight away.’ Zineer pushed his glasses up his nose, smiling ruefully. ‘The work we did for you here is very easily explained by anyone watching. My wife is Mireean. She has friends who are being kept on Wila. We’re helping with the clothing and food. But if we are seen to do more than that, I am afraid something will look wrong very quickly. Benan Le’ta is well aware that we are completely broke and in a lot of debt.’
‘He was the one who ruined us, after all,’ Faise said.
After they had gone, Essa called them foolish children. Heast responded by telling the other man that they had a point.
‘And when things get up and running?’ the mercenary captain asked. ‘In a couple of months, my boys and girls are going to be spread out across these farms that those two will be buying, ready for the crop season. There’s not going to be much we can do to help Faise and Zineer then.’ He made his way to the edge of the factory floor, where a leather backpack lay. There, he pulled out a long silver container. ‘Cold coffee.’ He shook it. ‘You tried it?’
‘No,’ Heast replied. ‘I saw the Soldier yesterday, by the way.’
Essa held out a tin cup to him. ‘How did that go?’
‘He agreed to send the tents and food down to Wila. He wants to look through what we send first, but we can start buying now.’
Yet, as he tasted the not-quite-chilled coffee, Heast admitted to himself that the meeting had been a strange one. He had ridden one of the large, sixteen-horse carriages to Nale two days earlier. He had not seen one that size before – it was essentially two carriages joined together – but the driver managed it much like the carriages that were of one piece and pulled by four or eight horses. From the latter half of the day, after the carriages left Ghaam, the Keepers’ Enclave had become the lodestone by which the journey was made. It sat on the horizon like an artificial mountain on an artificial land, a building formed from long white tunnels of stone, built to mirror a large spiral that rose into the sky. The walls were lined with windows and, even from a distance, it gave the appearance of a thousand glass eyes that watched you.