by Ben Peek
We have yet to figure out a way for them to vote once everyone has spoken, but assuming we could do that, it is the way we should proceed. Unless, that is, you have a problem with it.’ He promised that next week he would bring over one of the ideas they had for registering guilty and innocent votes.
For his part, Zaifyr was untroubled by any of the delays. He had written to the remaining three members of his family – to Jae’le, Tinh Tu and Eidan – to request their presence. He sent the letters in the claws of small haunts. He gave each of the birds’ spirits enough power to make the journey across Leviathan’s Blood to his siblings’ homes. For Jae’le, that was a house in the dense forested edges of Gogair; for Tinh Tu, it was in the swamps of Faer; but for his last sibling, for Eidan, Zaifyr admitted that he did not know where his brother was. He had placed in the mind of the dead bird an image of him, of his stout body, his plain features, his strength, then sent it off. Eidan’s home, Zaifyr suspected, was Yeflam, but that was when his brother had a home. Eidan liked nothing more than to find ruins, to find pieces of the world that were thought to be lost, and rebuild them. If it took him thirty years, if it took him a hundred, he did not mind. He would live in those ruins until he was finished. If the bird could not find him, Aelyn would know where he was and, once Jae’le and Tinh Tu arrived, she would have little choice but to contact him.
That left Zaifyr with only one thing to do while he waited for his family.
‘The diary belonged to an old pirate,’ he said to Ayae, after she asked. The four of them were inside, then. They had walked through the dusty rooms, to the back room where piles of books had begun to form. ‘Captain Dlar was his name. He lived in the middle era of the Five Kingdoms, but what I remember about him mostly was that he claimed to be descended from priests of the Leviathan. He wanted to be a king of the sea and his lineage was the claim to it. The Leviathan’s priests lived in giant ships as big as small nations. I was hoping – if it was true – that he named some of the priests in the War of the Gods.’
‘Was it true?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Like so many others, he lied about where he had come from.’
‘But you’re searching for dead people to speak for you?’ The idea made Ayae uncomfortable, he knew. ‘Is there no other way?’
‘I could always rely upon my sister, I suppose,’ he said blandly. ‘It’s her law, after all. I’m sure she’ll defend me with it.’
‘Why do you need a name?’ Ayae’s two friends were a couple, Zineer and Faise. It was the former who asked the question. He was flipping through a heavy book, looking at the old black and white drawings. ‘I mean, I thought you could just see the dead.’
‘I don’t want to see all of them,’ Zaifyr said, his hand falling to the charm beneath his left wrist. ‘They stop being distinct if you look at them all. They’re just a huge mass: generations upon generations pushed against each other, fallen in on each other, until you cannot see where it begins and ends. It is not just people, either. Everything that has lived and died since the War of the Gods is still here. Birds, whales, dogs. If it has been alive, it is there, trapped in the afterlife. If I want to navigate that, I need a name to focus on. Less-common names are better. You’d be surprised how many Zineers are out there.’
‘It was my father’s name.’
‘And your father’s father’s name?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘I’m afraid so.’ Zaifyr liked both Faise and Zineer, but it was only later, after Ayae had told him why they were with her, that he had reservations about their presence. ‘They are my friends,’ she said, when Faise and Zineer had gone upstairs to sleep. ‘My oldest friends. It does not matter what they are doing; I would stand by them. I would not let them be hurt.’
‘Muriel Wagan is not a foolish woman,’ he said. ‘She uses them to bind you to her as well. If not them, she’ll find someone else.’
‘Mireea is still my home.’
He did not push it. With a shrug, he said, ‘I am too old for homes.’
‘For new shoes as well.’ She sat across from him, her slim face lit by the candles. When she smiled, he was struck by her youth, by the things she had not seen. ‘Do you think Aelyn will treat me well when I see her tomorrow?’ she asked, as if she sensed his moment of introspection. ‘The people of Mireea don’t deserve to be on Wila.’ He hoped so, he told her.
In the morning, with Faise and Zineer, he walked with Ayae to the Enclave, but did not go in with her. She had protested at his company, but after he had pulled on his burnt-soled boots, he told her that no one noticed him in the streets. The Enclave had done its best to keep information about him out of the public eye. He was not sure that she believed him, but not a single person stopped and stared at him, or asked him a question as they walked through the streets. Nor did they when he, Faise and Zineer continued on afterwards. He did, however, see two men in dark-blue cloaks obviously shadowing their steps. He was thinking about pointing them out to Faise, when he saw his first Leeran priest.
She was a young white woman, tall and long-limbed, with dark hair and dark, serious eyes that searched across the faces of the people who passed her. She held a book in her left hand and she used it like a pointer when she indicated to the crowd, when she asked if ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ had any desire to see the world fixed. She had little luck with either sex, but that did not stop her from preaching to the people around her.
‘The Faithful,’ Faise said, standing beside him. ‘It’s the name of the Leeran army, the name of the Leeran priests.’
‘This is allowed?’ he asked.
‘You hear of some being picked up by the Yeflam Guard, but most are polite. They move when you ask them to do so. I don’t think the Keepers are too happy about it, but rumour has it that this was a deal struck with the Leerans after the Mireeans were offered sanctuary.’
Zaifyr was genuinely surprised. He could not imagine Aelyn agreeing to that. ‘The book in her hand?’
‘It’s called The Eternal Kingdom,’ Zineer said. ‘At least that’s what they say.’
‘No one has read it?’
He shook his head. ‘Each one of them says that they would rather die than let a faithless man or woman read it. If you ask, they will read out excerpts, however.’
Zaifyr had another question, but it was then that the Faithful saw him. She stared at him for a moment, then scooped up her stool and quickly disappeared into the crowd.
‘I think she likes you,’ Faise said.
4.
From the window in Aelyn Meah’s office, Ayae watched Faje lead a small group of workers into the garden beside the Enclave, where long-branched white trees grew. The workers carried shovels, axes and long-bladed saws, and behind them, as if aware of the weight it would soon carry out, a brown ox pulled an empty cart at a slow, steady pace.
‘There are twenty-five trees in the garden,’ Aelyn Meah said. After she had greeted Ayae at the door, she had led her to the window in silence, much as Faje led the men below. ‘They grow from the bones of the Leviathan. Most grow in Leviathan’s End, but there are others throughout the world. If you have ever heard sailors talking about islands of bone, that is where they come from. Some sailors will tell you that they move, but they don’t. When a man or woman like you and me becomes a Keeper of the Divine, they are required to travel to one of these islands and bring back a tree for themselves. It is a test of endurance, more than anything else. To stand on a part of the Leviathan is to feel a pain you have never felt before.’ She was silent for a moment, then: ‘Today Faje is having the two that belonged to Fo and Bau dug up.’
The workers and ox continued into the heart of the garden. ‘Do they ever have leaves?’ Ayae asked. ‘Do they ever have flowers?’
‘They will bloom when we are gods.’
No, then.
Since her release from Wila, Ayae had requested to see Aelyn and the Enclave, but until now, her requests had been denied. Xrie had told her, when she asked him, that she simp
ly had to wait. ‘Fo and Bau were family,’ he said. ‘You will have to respect the time it takes for our grief to wane.’
A part of her did not believe that there was any real grief. She had heard no love for either Fo or Bau from the people she spoke with. Indeed, the funeral for the two had been a private affair. But no matter what Ayae thought, it remained true that she could not gain an audience with Aelyn Meah, not until today. Today she had been led through the twisting halls of the Enclave and given a private audience. It did not surprise her that on the same day Fo and Bau’s barren trees were to be torn out of the ground. Over the last two months, she had come to believe that every act of the Enclave was one that also had to be an act of symbolism. The scene she was witness to now was like the pillar of white stone that Nale rested upon. Eight times the size of any of the pillars that descended into the black ocean, it was a singular, unnatural presence, and the Keepers said that, should the pillar begin to crack, then the end of the nation would begin.
In the garden, the cart stopped and the men with the axes and saws began to circle a pair of trees. ‘When do you plan to allow the Mireeans to leave Wila?’ Ayae asked.
‘For the moment,’ Aelyn Meah said, ‘I have no plans.’
‘For the moment?’
She smiled, but there was no friendship in it. ‘I hear you talk to my brother,’ she said. ‘My guards tell me you are a regular visitor.’
‘No one has said that I shouldn’t be,’ Ayae said.
‘Nor will anyone.’ The sound of an axe hitting a tree trunk reached them dully. ‘You know what he did in Asila, don’t you?’
‘He has told me. He has also told me that he is not the man he once was.’
‘He is not that man, at least.’ Aelyn turned from the garden to her crowded office. It was not a large room. Ayae suspected that it was the smallest room in the Enclave. It nestled in the highest, but shortest spiral of the building and the roof and walls of the room curved steeply inwards. The majority of the space was taken up by books and papers, filling the walls in double and triple stacks, leaving only two doors unblocked. The first was the dark wooden door through which Ayae had entered. The second – lighter than the first – led to a sleeping chamber. ‘But he reveals an important fact about the nature of atrocities.’
‘Which is?’
‘The further you are from them, the easier they are to forgive and forget. Take a seat.’ Aelyn indicated a cushioned chair, barely visible between books. ‘You have killed, haven’t you?’
Ayae left the window. ‘In the siege.’
‘When your blood was up.’ The other woman smoothed her gown, eased into her own chair. ‘That is how I killed my first man. I was young then. No different from so many others at that time. I had a job in an inn pouring drinks. I was learning to read. I had to work for the money to go to school because not everyone was taught, then. The man I killed came into the bar with four others. They thought that they could rob the inn. They thought that they could take what they wanted. They were not very imaginative, so what they wanted was money and flesh. I drove a knife into the first man’s stomach when he came close. I spent days afterwards washing my hands.’
Ayae thought of the first man she had killed. She remembered the filed teeth and the ruined eye socket. ‘Do you still remember what he looked like?’
‘Not now,’ Aelyn replied. ‘Once, I did, quite vividly. I stopped dreaming of him months after I had killed him, but I only stopped looking for him when years had passed. I have not even thought of him until now for . . . it must be two thousand years, at least.’
‘I’ll not forget,’ Ayae said. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to.’
‘You will.’ She was matter of fact. ‘You will be glad to, soon enough. If you do not, you will be like Qian. You’ll hear the voice of every man and woman and child who has died and it will distort the world for you. I do not think any of us fully comprehended that until Asila. We had heard him talk about what he saw, but it was not until the Five Kingdoms had to be destroyed that we understood it, I think. I was wary that he would still have that view when he was released, but he has mostly preached a form of inaction much like what Yeflam is built on – or he did, until very recently.’
‘He has a reason,’ Ayae said. ‘You yourself just said that you understood it.’
‘I do. But you and I are not like him. Neither are the people of Yeflam. It is not difficult to forget. It just takes time. In truth, we overlook deaths every day. We must, for our sanity. Our minds cannot comprehend the fact that hundreds and thousands of people die in war, poverty and disease. They die every day from these things. It is for our own survival that we have such callous disregard. Some of that needs to come to Yeflam in respect of the Mireeans. They need to forget Fo and Bau’s deaths. At the moment, with the presses printing what they are, it is difficult.’
‘You own those presses,’ Ayae said. ‘You could stop them writing about Captain Heast and Lady Wagan. You could stop them reporting on Leera’s threat – which is not tied to Fo and Bau.’
‘I do not own all of them,’ Aelyn said. ‘In fact, I do not personally own any. Other Keepers own them – as do wealthy individuals throughout the cities. Not all of them are happy and they are letting it be known. For myself, I do not want the Mireeans to be on Wila. The sooner I have them out of there, the sooner I can get rid of the priests who are in my streets. I’m hoping that you will help with this. Indeed, I have made sure that there is an office on the lower levels for you.’
Ayae began to speak, to reject the offer.
‘You should take it,’ Aelyn said. ‘I am not your enemy, Ayae,’ she added, tiredly. ‘I am not my brother’s enemy, either. I just want to maintain peace.’
Had there ever really been peace? Ayae thought it was a naive thing for Aelyn to have said, much less believe. The thought remained, long after she had left the Enclave, after she had returned to the streets of Nale. There, the ox plodded past her, the cart full of white wood. None of the men who had cut it down spared her much of a glance, but Faje, who came last, offered her a polite, if impersonal nod.
Later, when she had returned to Zaifyr’s lonely estate, when she had told him what Aelyn had said, he dismissed her words. ‘War has already come to Yeflam,’ he said. ‘She knows that. That is why the priests are here. They’re the scouts, the first wave, like the raiders in Mireea. But the child knows that she cannot send cannibals here. You don’t ride into Yeflam with steel and flesh and bend it to your will. You do it by attacking the Keepers’ right to godhood. You talk about the things they cannot fix.’
Ayae had heard the priests speak on the streets. ‘The sun and the ocean,’ she said. ‘But Faise tells me that that is what the Keepers say they will do all the time.’
‘That was always Aelyn’s goal,’ he agreed. ‘But she will not share it with them, I assure you.’
5.
At the gates, one of the guards made from wind turned to Zaifyr. ‘Lady Aelyn requests that you do not leave.’ Its voice sounded like a thousand whispers spoken upon each other. ‘There is nothing in the night for you, she says.’
‘There are priests,’ he said, walking past the guard. ‘You can tell her, but she knows that already.’
The night-lit streets of Nale ran ahead of him. On the corners and intersections stood the cold and frail figures of haunts to direct him towards the priest. Unseen by others, they led him through late-night crowds; they ushered him into streets that passed dull bars and nearly empty restaurants; they took him to the sound of waves, to the edge of Nale and the sight of the bridge that crossed into the Spires of Alati, where the tall universities and schools lay. The haunts did not lead him across the bridge. The woman he was searching for had not left Nale. She had turned down a narrow alley, just as he did. She had gone to the small hotel that sat at the end, the hotel that was lit by two lamps; the third, high up on the building, had gone out.
The priest stood outside the front, but she was not alone. A male
priest was beside her, but what surprised Zaifyr was that the two were in the company of three other men, who did not wear the brown priestly robes of the priests.
All five were in deep conversation and Zaifyr could hear their voices, the sound carried by the night-silence of the city and the narrowness of the alley, but magnified in such a way that the voices overlapped and cut across each other:
‘No, we’re not here for—’
‘—we hate to see people in pain.’
‘It will be winter soon—’
‘—hard to find work—’
‘—years in Gogair sleeping in snow—’
‘No, just campaigns of dead men and frostbite—’
‘—you shouldn’t have to carry the shame of amputation—’
‘—a small bit of magic, a gift from our god—’
‘—for our friends.’
Zaifyr had still not identified all the speakers when a haunt beside the female priest cried out in a voice that only Zaifyr could hear. With a small knife in her hand, the priest cut into her thumb, and used her blood to draw power from the dead, to take from it so she could regrow the fingers of one of the men before her.
His power answered without thought: suddenly the haunt appeared among the five, the image of a young woman sketched into shape by broken white lines. She might have once been pretty, but her face was distorted by streaks of pain and by the piercing scream that came from her throat. She snatched the man’s hand and tore his new, half-grown fingers from it. His scream matched hers and his two friends grabbed him by the shirt in an attempt to pull him away. One even cried out to the two priests to help.
But they had run into the hotel.
Zaifyr sprinted past the haunt, whose scream turned into a horrible high-pitched wail as the man was pulled from her by his two friends, but she was on the three of them again moments later, just as Zaifyr shouldered the hotel door open.
He moved quickly across the dull wooden floors to the stairs.