by Ben Peek
The roads of Nale were swollen with congestion and, beneath the gaze of the Enclave, the carriage made its way past the tall, thick buildings that struggled to match the elegance of the white tower. By the time the carriage came to stop at a huge depot on the edge of the city, the afternoon’s sun had set and Heast had spent a whole day travelling. He had left Mesi just as the morning’s sun had begun to rise without warmth. Throughout the day, he had seen fellow passengers come and go, and bits and pieces of their conversation had sifted around him. Some of it had been about the Mireeans: ‘They bring the Leerans here,’ one old man had said. ‘But we should not be afraid of that,’ another old man had said in reply. ‘The Yeflam Guard—’ ‘Gogair is unhappy,’ a young woman said. She held up a paper. ‘It says right here: “The ambassador met with the Enclave to discuss what could be a violation of important agreements.”’ He heard a young man, not realizing that Heast was there, refer to him as the Captain of the Ghosts, even. But mostly, he heard men and women arguing whether it was their fight or not. Some said that they had heard that there were priests in the Leeran army, in the Faithful, and that made it Yeflam’s fight. Very few people mentioned Zaifyr, or the deaths of Fo and Bau; beneath the multi-eyed gaze of the Enclave, it did not surprise Heast.
The Keeper of the Divine, Xrie, had greeted Heast at the front door of the barracks. The building was a huge four-storey complex, and the Captain of the Yeflam Guard had led him up the floors without a hint of pride in the building itself. He was a handsome brown-skinned man, and his handshake was firm and confident, but when he paused to point something out to Heast, he seemed to be a soldier at practice, a soldier in training. Xrie looked no older than twenty-two or -three, but Heast knew that he had been the Captain of the Yeflam Guard for over forty years, and when he stopped to point out the men and women around him, to speak to them by name and rank, they responded to him crisply and loyally, as to a figure clearly beloved by his soldiers.
Heast had met Xrie only a handful of times since he himself had become the Captain of the Spine. He had sent a prisoner, and picked up two, and they had met when the last treaty between the two states had been signed. Still, they had an easy formality that, once the two were in Xrie’s office on the top floor, allowed for an agreement to be reached that new tents, new clothes and food and water had to be taken down to Wila. ‘In its current state, the island is entirely unacceptable,’ Xrie had said, at the end. ‘You have my apologies. I was told by Faje that the Traders’ Union was going to supply the shelter. What is down there is what they provided.’
‘The politics of kindness,’ Heast had said drily. ‘We’ll have a warehouse soon that we’ll send items from.’
‘I’ll be honest, Captain, I am not a fan of the current pacifism that is in vogue with my kin,’ the other man continued. ‘It is hardly surprising, given who I am, but what happened in Mireea was a message for all of us. That was its point. We were to pay attention to it. The stalemate that you reached between Mireea and Leera diluted the message a little, but it still remains true that one day Leera’s General Waalstan will bring his army to Yeflam. His new god will demand that.’ Or, Heast thought, your old gods will demand that. ‘But on a personal level, it greatly disappoints me that I cannot tell the Captain of Refuge that we will stand beside him on the field.’
‘Refuge appears to be a popular topic,’ Heast had answered. ‘I expected it from Bnid Gaerl, but from you? My duty is not to Refuge any more.’
‘You will have to forgive me, Captain. I am well aware of your duty to Lady Wagan.’ In the narrow windows behind him, the last of the afternoon’s sun had begun to fade. ‘But I am not a man who forgets war’s loyal servants. I would be a poor man if I did. However, I should say, it is not just myself who remembers. Your history was raised with me this morning by a writer from one of the papers in the city. Despite my reluctance, I am afraid that you will soon be well known in Yeflam.’
‘Unlike Zaifyr.’
‘We call him Qian, but your point is taken,’ Xrie had said. ‘My kin have kept him out of most of the print shops. It is part of the politics of pacifism.’
Heast was, by his nature, rarely surprised by what happened in the corridors of power, be it by a crown, a sword, or an immortal hand. A good soldier, he once heard it said, accepted what was laid before him. He thought of the thousands of eyes from the Enclave and added to himself that a good captain learned to anticipate.
Holding the tin cup in his hand, Heast took another sip of the not quite cold coffee.
‘This is really awful,’ he said to Kal Essa. ‘Did you pay for this?’
‘It was better before the ice melted,’ the other man replied sourly, before he tipped it on the ground. ‘There’s a bar around here. I’ll stand you a drink there.’
8.
On the fifth morning Ayae spent on Wila, the morning’s sun rose in a dull, flat light, but the smell of blood and salt rose strongly off the ocean. She sat in the opening of her small tent. Unable to sleep well – she felt stifled and restless in the fabric – she had eased herself quietly into position to watch the first sun rise. With one foot pushed out of the flap of the tent and the other drawn up against her chest, Ayae gazed at the grainy edge of the island, at the black ocean that soaked the light and the stone ramp that led up to the flat base of Neela. There, a line of sky blue cloaks revealed the guards. Usually, half of them faced the island, and the other half out into the city, but this morning all were facing away from the island. Ayae could not make out why they were turned but, she admitted to herself, it did not matter. Yesterday, before the third sun sank, the guards had stopped children who had arrived. They had been loaded with papers to throw over the edge, and the boxes had sat there beneath a lamp all night. This morning was probably no different, she thought – until the guards parted. They moved apart to reveal a single man leading a horse and cart down to Wila.
A man whom she knew.
‘Caeli.’ The guard lay behind her, wrapped in her cloak. ‘Caeli,’ Ayae said again and squeezed the guard’s naked foot. ‘The Soldier is here.’
‘Is he alone?’ She did not sound asleep, even though she had been. ‘Is he armed?’
‘No, but he leads a cart.’ Ayae pushed herself up. ‘I’ll get Lieutenant Mills.’
‘He’s here for you.’ There was a rustle as Caeli pulled on her trousers and grabbed a shirt. ‘You go and meet him. I’ll get Lady Wagan and the Lieutenant.’
At the edge of the camp, in the thin folds of fabric nearest Leviathan’s Blood, Ayae could hear whispers from men and women woken by the steady step of the horse and the rattle of the cart. In the snippets she heard, the Captain of the Yeflam Guard was not referred to by name, or even by title, and Ayae suspected that none of the people she passed had realized that it was him. It did not surprise her. At the sight of him, she had felt keenly a sensation of steel, a balanced, tempered sword that lay not against her skin, but beneath it. She had finally begun to recognize people like herself, just as Fo and Bau had said she would, but what she did not yet understand was why she had known immediately that it was the Soldier.
‘Ayae.’ Xrie greeted her from the bottom of the ramp. ‘Lady Aelyn Meah bids you a kind welcome to our nation.’
He was taller than Ayae, but she was not a tall woman by any standard, and to another, the Captain of the Yeflam Guard would have been only average in height. His skin was brown, lighter than hers, as if it had been mixed with desert sand and diluted. He had dyed the tips of his hair blue, and wore a blue sash around his waist. He took her hand, and she was surprised when he made no remark on the warmth of her touch and did not seek to withdraw from her grasp quickly. Instead, he held her hand, and inclined his head slightly in further greeting.
‘The Lady of the Spine,’ Ayae said awkwardly, ‘welcomes you to Wila.’
‘Her captain has organized tents and clothes and food.’ He released her hand to indicate the horse-drawn cart on the ramp. ‘But my business is mostly here with y
ou.’
Behind her, people began to gather. Some, she knew, would be those who did not like her. Even though she did not believe them to be a majority, she had begun to be acutely aware of their presence after Zaifyr had left – after the sensation of eternal patience and calm she had associated with him had been withdrawn – and the focus of those who hated ‘cursed’ people was no longer split between the two of them. In the last few days, she had felt their animosity building towards her, fuelled not just by bigotry, but by their grief, their frustration and their boredom. Thus far, nothing had come to a head, and Ayae had not had to defend herself, but she knew that it would not be long before she was forced to do so.
‘You are not required to stay on Wila,’ the Captain of the Yeflam Guard continued. ‘You are a person of unique qualities and the Keepers of Yeflam do not believe that it is right for you to be constrained by the negotiations that Lady Wagan made on behalf of her subjects.’
‘I’m no different to any of the people here,’ she said, a hint of reproach in her voice. ‘None of us should be here.’
‘But you are different. You are not a mortal woman, Ayae. You have left that behind. You are a god – or you will, one day, be a god.’ He said the words in a simple, matter-of-fact tone. ‘One day soon you will understand that and the Keepers will aid you in that education. All of Yeflam will. An entire nation waits for you to explore the power that is in you.’
‘She knows that and she will go with you.’ Muriel Wagan stepped from the crowd behind her, her feet bare. ‘The offer is greatly appreciated by all of us.’
Despite herself, Ayae wanted to tell her no. She wanted to tell him no, as well. She wanted to deny the authority of the Keepers, to reject the words that echoed so closely the ones that Fo had said to her after she survived the fire in Samuel Orlan’s shop. She was not a god. She would not be a god. Nor did she want to be a god, not if Zaifyr was right. If a god was a being that kept the dead in cages and bled their souls for her own power, then she did not think that anyone should be a god. Another part of her knew that the Lady Wagan was right, that what she had said to her on the first day on Wila was still true: she did have to accept the offer. She did have to leave Wila.
After she agreed, after the horse was unhitched from the cart, after Xrie pulled it out onto the sand with one hand, the Captain of the Yeflam Guard said, ‘They are taking careful note of you.’
They were halfway up the ramp when he said that. ‘They want to leave as well,’ she said.
‘I do not mean the Mireeans. I mean the men and women and children who stand on the edge of Neela and look down.’
She looked up and, this close to them, she noticed them properly for the first time. She thought that most looked poor.
The two left the ramp and stepped through the small ring of soldiers. Beyond them, streets ran in straight lines towards square buildings of discoloured stone. ‘The Yeflam Guard is mine,’ Xrie said, in relation to his earlier comment. ‘But we are a large nation and the twenty thousand soldiers who serve beneath me are sometimes not enough to keep everyone safe.’
He was leading her to a pair of horses hitched to a small carriage that had been painted blue.
‘Some of those people watching you will be employed by papers, some by politicians, and some will not be employed at all. They will try and sell what they have seen today.’ On a seat near the top sat the carriage driver, an elderly grey-haired man in a blue cloak. ‘The ones whom you should be concerned about mainly belong to the Empty Sky. They are led by Bnid Gaerl and he is primarily employed by the Traders’ Union. By Benan Le’ta, in fact. The Empty Sky,’ Xrie said, as if it were an afterthought, ‘is a reference to atheism.’
He opened the door, but Ayae did not step into the carriage. ‘I’ve no interest in the politics,’ she said. ‘I just want to help everyone get off Wila.’
‘That is politics,’ he said.
Inside the carriage, a sword waited for her.
9.
The first person to visit Zaifyr was Kaqua, the Pauper.
The charm-laced man had not left Aelyn’s house. He knew that he was being watched, but he was content to wait, to think about his arguments, and to rest. In the dusty rooms, he had laid his boots with burnt soles on the table near the doorway. He pulled out his clothes from his pack – a man made from wind had brought it on the second day – and cleaned his rank-smelling clothes. On the day that Kaqua arrived, Zaifyr had taken his charms off, one by one, and set them on the table in front of his boots. He checked each for scratches and dents, aware as he did so that not one of the pieces had the spells and prayers that his family had put into his charms, so long ago. Those pieces had been taken from him and he supposed that, even if they had survived the rough treatment of the soldiers who had taken them, then time would have destroyed them anyway. No, it did not matter if the new charms he wore had scratches or dents: nothing would change if they had them. But for Zaifyr, the charms – made from copper and bronze and brass and silver – were about his connection to the man he had once been, the man who had been born in a small village in the mountains and who, at a young age, had been told he would die young.
He had nearly died in Mireea. The thought returned to him as he checked the links of chain, as he cleaned blemishes on a charm. It had been recurring to him for weeks, in truth. In moments of quiet. When he was alone. He would think, I almost died. Fo had nearly killed him. Zaifyr could not remember another time when he had come that close to joining the haunts that were trapped around him. For a while, he had asked himself if he had died. Over his long, long life, he had been attacked by living and the dead, by mortals and immortals, but he had never been detached from his body in the way he had been in Mireea. Not even when he reached out to the dead as a massive whole – as he had done to bring the ghosts into view – had he felt like that. He was always aware of his body, of himself. So, the question remained, had he died? Had there been no cord to lead him back, would he have found his way back? Was this his death?
He had no answer.
He polished and cleaned his charms. They had no answers, either.
Around him, the haunts whispered to him of their cold and their hunger. They knew as much as the guards made from wind at the gate knew.
‘They are not to keep you safe, but to keep the people of Yeflam safe,’ Aelyn said to him. On either side of her, swirling, squat figures waited patiently. It was the day that she had delivered him to the house – he had not seen her since. ‘I cannot force you to leave,’ she continued. ‘But I can stop people visiting you. I can stop the newspapers, the Traders’ Union, and whoever else will seek to find you. The Enclave will meet to discuss what is to be done with you tomorrow. We have been meeting all week, and I am afraid I cannot dissuade them from a trial. Just as I cannot convince you to leave.’
‘You truly want me to leave?’ he asked. ‘It is your law I broke when I killed Fo and Bau.’
‘Take your war elsewhere, brother.’
My war.
The bitterness in her voice gave him pause, even now. He picked up a long copper chain and began to run his fingers along each link. He had wanted to tell her that there would be no war, but even to say the words would be foolish. The child would not fall easily. She would not step out from behind the shield of her army for him to strike at her. He would have to go through it. Lives would be lost when he attacked her.
‘The girl you came with?’ Aelyn said, in her final conversation with him. ‘The one from Mireea?’
‘Ayae.’
‘Do you lay claim to her?’
‘Is that what you do here to ensure loyalty?’ His tone was mild, but he could not hide the reproach. ‘She is her own person.’
‘She is—’
‘—my friend.’
Aelyn’s smile was cool, humourless. ‘You do not have friends, brother.’
I have family, instead, he had begun to say, but bit back the reply. Instead, he had watched her leave, watched the carriage
and horses made from wind rise into the sky.
He did not have the right to ask his family to go to war for him. He knew that. In Aelyn’s house – in her replica of the house she had once lived in – he could not escape the sense of loss that she held for Maewe. It surprised him that she still had the wound. Yet that had defined her reaction to him here, in Yeflam. Aelyn feared that she would lose Yeflam.
Would Zaifyr’s other siblings be any different? Eidan had lost the twisting mines of Mahga. The wealth and beauty he had drawn from the ground had been melted and buried by the volcanoes and earthquakes he had caused to destroy his own empire. After his release, Zaifyr had spoken to Eidan on two different occasions and both had been defined by their brevity. But Yeflam was Eidan’s construction. Anything Zaifyr could say about Aelyn could be just as easily said about Eidan.
There was no trace of Tinh Tu in Yeflam, however. She had retreated to the lost library of Salar after Asila and, from all that Zaifyr understood, rarely left it. The library lay in the marshes of Faer, in an area where the trees and swamps moved, where a person could go mad trying to navigate to the centre. But, whereas Aelyn and Eidan had chosen a new piece of land for their country, Tinh Tu had built her library in the land that had held her empire. She even used the same name, leading Zaifyr to believe that she, like Aelyn, still carried the wound of what she had lost.