by Ben Peek
‘I know.’ Heast cleaned his dagger against his leg. ‘We’ll have to prepare for when they are dug up.’
A Bird Preceded Him
No one knows where the first copies of The Eternal Kingdom were printed, but in Gogair there is a story told by the locals in Xanoure. They tell of a small house, which if you were to visit now, you would find barren. They say that once it had been filled with print machines, filled with ink, filled with paper and leather and stitching. Then, one morning, it was empty.
The story goes that a ship left Xanoure that night. A ship, the locals said, that went to a port in Leera, a port that was slowly becoming infamous for its misery and sadness. It is not an uncommon story – it is simply a story of theft and there are other thefts in Xanoure – but it is a story, nonetheless. What commends it to memory is that the locals will tell you that the theft was not of the printing presses, or of the inks, or the papers, but of the ship. And that it was the printer and his family who stole the ship.
—Tinh Tu, Private Diary
1.
On the slick deck of Bounty, Bueralan Le watched the port of Dyanos approach, a rain-dark shape lit by flickering lanterns. The small town stood on the eastern edge of Ooila, protected by jagged rocks and steep ash-stained cliffs, both partly obscured in the drizzling night. The crew of Bounty navigated the choppy black water that led to it by standing at the bow with long poles to gauge the depth. They did so because stone riddled this part of the ocean’s floor and it had torn through the bottom of more than one ship. In fact, a long history of wrecks had ensured that Dyanos remained not just a small port, but a stop for desperate men and women, for merchants who ran contraband, for poor families wanting cheap fares, for runaway slaves, for hard-luck mercenaries and, of course, for exiled barons.
Bueralan was not ready to return home. The reluctance did not surprise him as the wet docks drew closer. He had never considered himself a man of nationalist identification: the hereditary title of baron had stuck to him after his exile as half an insult, and though he had embraced it, he had kept nothing of the Ooilan traditions implied with it. He had not sought out the clothes that he had once worn, nor the meals he had once eaten. He had not contacted old friends, had not tried to re-establish old relationships. Few knew just how much he had distanced himself from his former life in exile, and of those who did appreciate the length, only Zean had known the exact distance. The other man had never made mention of it, however. To do so would have been to discuss how much he himself had left behind. To do so would have been to remind each other of Zean’s blood-bonded slavery, of the long hard road that had delivered him independence, but only after he had left Ooila.
Bueralan had spent most of the journey on Bounty running through what would happen once he stepped ashore in Ooila. He knew that he would not be able to stay hidden. He was too distinct a man for that: with his smooth, shaved head and his white tattoos he would not be able to hide for long. The point had been made to him halfway through the journey, in fact. Bounty had just passed between Gogair and Kakar when the captain asked him if he was the exiled baron his first mate said he was. He had been in his cabin when the young man had asked, the afternoon’s sun illuminating the room as if it were the inside of a jewel.
‘I am,’ Bueralan said.
‘You don’t want no trouble. I know that.’ The captain of Bounty, Po Danal, had inherited his ship from his father, and he was intent on returning it to its glory. ‘And I don’t want no trouble,’ he said bluntly. ‘I have cargo I don’t want looked at too hard.’
‘That’s why we’re going to Dyanos, both of us.’
‘Yeah, but the Eyes of the Queen are known to be there as well. I don’t need them on me when we dock.’
‘Pueral?’ He remembered the last time he had seen her, the ease with which she had found him. ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said.
‘Maybe you’ll be lucky,’ the captain said, before he left. ‘Maybe she’ll be too busy with the Innocent.’
Bueralan did not think he could bank on that, but it was true enough that Aela Ren had stopped the men and women on Bounty talking about him. There was no time for an exiled baron, not when they could be drifting into a nation at war with the feared warlord. Not that what they said was new to Bueralan: he had heard stories of the Innocent regularly when he had lived in Ooila. But the crew spoke as if it was the first time they had heard them, despite being natives themselves. They talked about the Innocent at dinner and at breakfast; they talked about him on the deck and below it; they even talked about him in storms. They speculated about him as a person. About his martial ability. About his swords. And about his army. About the size of it and its capabilities. Bueralan listened with half an ear because there was little else to do. The only consistent thing the crew of Bounty could agree upon was that a man named Aela Ren existed. That the man that existed had an army and a ship – a huge, hulking beast with red sails that could carry all his army, no matter its number. Glafanr, they said.
For all that Bueralan gave the words no credence, it was one of the few topics that Samuel Orlan felt he had to discuss with him. At first, Bueralan had shrugged him off, had told him that he did not care, but the child’s words – call only when what is at stake is innocence – kept returning to him. It could mean anything, he knew. It could refer to a threatened person. A child, even. It did not have to refer to Aela Ren.
‘He calls himself the Innocent,’ Orlan said, after Bueralan finally asked, after the fever that gripped Bounty finally rubbed off on him. ‘He calls himself that because there are no gods. He says that there is nothing to judge him, no rules for him to obey. In this world we live in, he believes that he cannot be guilty of any sin.’
He had said this when the two of them were standing on the deck, weeks before the sight of rain-slicked Dyanos appeared before Bueralan. Yet the words and the empty, dark night mingled in the saboteur’s mind as Bounty made its slow way through the dangerous waters.
‘His army is the same,’ the cartographer had continued, a memory’s ghost beside him. ‘They don’t wear the name that he does, but they might as well. They are all like him. They are all god-touched. They all stood beside a god, once. They heard the words of their god and it was bliss, I imagine. After all, of all the mortals in the world, they were the most beloved. They were the mortal hand of their god, even if their mortality was a thousand years away. I cannot imagine how they felt after the War of the Gods, when all of that was taken away.’
‘You said that each god had a servant,’ Bueralan said. ‘That they were each only allowed one. That would mean that the Innocent’s army has only seventy-eight soldiers.’
‘Seventy-four, including him.’
‘Are some dead?’
‘No.’
‘Then where are the others?’
‘Not with him.’
‘Does that include you, old man?’
Orlan sighed. ‘I keep telling you,’ he said, ‘I am not god-touched. I die like most people in our world die.’
Painfully, stupidly, quickly and, upon occasion, happily. Bueralan finished the line internally. His mother had first said it to him, when he had been a child. He had not known it then, but she had been quoting from a famous play that criticized the Mother’s Gift. When he saw it performed, years later in Yeflam, he had not laughed, as most of the audience did; he had nodded. In his life he had seen more than his share of people die, and they had, in one way or another, died as the playwright said.
‘Glafanr was once the ship of the dead,’ Samuel Orlan continued. ‘It was said that it drifted on the rivers of fate, that it took men and women to the City of the Dead. After the Wanderer died, Ai Sela, his servant, found the ship in the ocean. She was in nearly a wreck herself. Great cyclones and tsunamis had been throughout the ocean during the War of the Gods and Ai Sela was caught in one. She thought that her time to die had come, but instead, Glafanr appeared before her. She did not know why. She had never stepped on it. Some said it wa
s sentient, but no one knows for sure. All that is known is that Ai found herself the captain of it. She found in it a new home and offered it to all who were like her. For thousands of years, the servants of the gods lived in it. They let Glafanr drift in the oceans with them. They did not care where it went. They did not believe they had a place, or a purpose, until Aela Ren found them. That was seven hundred years ago, before they began their horror in Sooia.’
‘You sure know a lot about them,’ Bueralan said. ‘For a man who is not one of them, that is.’
‘I read, baron.’
Since then the cartographer had never been far from him. It was as if, in the words that the two had said, an unspoken truce had been called. Bueralan had not agreed to it and did not like the assumption that had been made by the other man, but if he was god-touched – if Ger had done something to him beneath Mireea – it was better to have the old man around than to leave him and his words as a niggling doubt in his mind. Besides, and this Bueralan admitted to himself as the rain-slicked docks drew closer, he could do nothing to stop Orlan. The cartographer had proved that to him since he had first met him. Better instead to keep the old man close and focus on what he had come to do.
The leather pouch that held the crystal against his skin was cold. For his whole life he had stood outside the Mother’s Gift, but he would not turn away now. He would hold the dark cold bottle that the witches created and he would feel the thick blood move sluggishly inside. His mother had called it a barbaric practice and he did not doubt her. What concerned him now was how he would achieve it.
When Bounty touched the docks and the ropes were uncoiled, Bueralan Le prepared himself to step onto shore, unable to do otherwise.
2.
The Keepers met in a large curved room in the middle of the Enclave’s twisting shape. Dark, heavy oak doors enclosed the long room from west to east and between those doors, beneath white walls and their narrow windows, lay a long table. It was held aloft by six pairs of stout legs larger than Ayae. It had been crafted from a wood darker than the doors, and the polish added another layer of darkness to it, leaving it a deep mix of black and brown, the combination of which bordered on red when the afternoon’s sun came through the windows, as it did now. Around the table were twenty-five high-backed chairs, similar in their colouring.
Ayae had arrived early in the company of Xrie. The last had been accidental: she had met him as she walked to the Enclave. He had asked her how Faise and Zineer were, told her that a new shipment was due to go to Wila at the end of the week and, before they entered the Enclave, told her that she was being followed by two Empty Sky soldiers. She told him politely that she knew. The two soldiers had not bothered to hide themselves. None of them did, any more. They appeared on streets next to her, passed her and Faise and Zineer in markets, and rode in carriages when one or all three of them were in them. In fact, it had become so prominent that Faise and Zineer no longer went anywhere without her.
She did not tell Xrie that, however. It was likely that the Soldier already knew – he knew about her meeting with Eira, for example – and after they entered the meeting room, Ayae put the thoughts of her friends aside. The Empty Sky were not important for her right now. Now, she had to see if there were others who would support her in having the Mireeans released. The Cold Witch clearly would not. With that in mind, she watched the Keepers who entered.
For their part, the Keepers did not spare her much of a glance. Instead, each of them stared at the vacant chair beside her. It looked much like the others in shape and design, from the high back to the grey cushion on it, but it was not until Xrie leant over and told her that it was intended for another new arrival to Yeflam that she understood the curiosity. Her immediate thought was that the chair was for Zaifyr, but by the time Aelyn Meah and the remaining Keepers had filed into the room and Zaifyr had not appeared, Ayae had reached the conclusion that it wasn’t.
‘We have a full schedule today.’ Aelyn sat at the head of the table. Beside her was Kaqua, the Pauper, a tall, dark-skinned man. Ayae had not met him, but she knew he was the one who was organizing Zaifyr’s trial. ‘There is a lot of news and a lot of information to cover,’ she continued. ‘The month has been busy.’
‘I want to discuss Qian.’ It was Eira who spoke. She sat four or five seats away from Ayae, but had not looked at her since she entered the room. ‘His trial should be first on our agenda.’
‘We will discuss my brother in time.’
‘Why must we wait? It is the only topic that we have to discuss.’
‘Eira,’ Kaqua said, his voice soft and calm. ‘It will be done. But you know as well as I do that there are other interests to address first. Paelor, if you would please begin.’
A white man in trapper’s leathers who smelt of forest damp rose from beside Eira. He had dark hair and a beard streaked with grey. His hand, as he spoke, never left it. ‘General Waalstan has had success in the Kingdoms of Faaisha,’ he began reluctantly. ‘His Faithful have torn through the eastern side of the kingdoms. Their most emphatic victory was in Celp, the largest city in that part of the kingdoms. It was protected by Marshal Faet Cohn. I would have thought that he would give Waalstan more of a fight, but he lasted no more than five days. By the time I arrived, the battle was over and little remained of the city. The insides of Celp were awful. The stories we have heard about cannibalism and slavery are very evident, I am afraid.’
‘The priests here deny that,’ Kaqua said. ‘They say that they are Mireean lies.’
The other man pulled at his beard uncomfortably. ‘The bones tell no lies about the first. As for the fact that they’re selling their prisoners as slaves, well, I saw one chain being led down to Leera myself. It’s possible that they could be used for something else, but from what I heard being said by the soldiers and prisoners, I’d easily believe that they were being sold. It is true that the Faithful are not slavers in their blood, not like the people of Ooila or Gogair, but they need the coin. Their army is made from what they had. They have no trade to fall back on, no resources. They have spoils – spoils to pay for supplies for their soldiers’ food and weapons and supplies for the priests who travel, but the spoils will not be enough. I think we will also begin to hear soon that they have gone into the Plateau to take Tribesmen to sell as well. That’s why Waalstan struck so hard at the east before he broke up his force.’ He shook his head and pulled his hand free. ‘General Waalstan is not a fool. We shouldn’t underestimate him. He knows that if he keeps a single force, the marshals will force him into a siege and starve him out. He has already divided up his forces—’
‘That is enough, Paelor.’ Eira laid her hand on his arm. ‘I will not sit here and listen to what is a farce of news. We have reached our truce with Leera. We have allowed their priests and their propaganda into our streets. We have all agreed on that, so there is no point in debating whether or not the Leerans have our morals. Especially not when we could be discussing a man who threatens all of us.’
‘The world around us is our concern,’ Kaqua said evenly. ‘We are all aware of your loss, Eira, but it does not mean we can ignore the rest of the world and our place in it.’
‘What is to say he will not do the same to us?’
‘He will not.’
‘I do not believe you. More than that, I have heard how my love died!’ She rose from her seat angrily. ‘Have you? Have you asked this tiny flame what he did?’
‘I know what he did. Have you forgotten that I speak with him every week?’
‘Have you forgotten who you are?’
‘Eira,’ Kaqua said. ‘Surely you do not question my loyalty?’
‘Why is there no trial?’ She almost shouted the words across the table. It caused the other Keepers to flinch back, as if her fury was a physical force. ‘Why do we delay his execution?’
‘Eira.’ Aelyn, now. ‘You do not know what you ask.’
‘I ask for justice and I think I deserve it. We all do. We have all been patien
t while you and Kaqua have asked Qian what kind of trial he would like. We have watched you bow and scrape to him so that he is not upset. We have been patient but our patience is at an end. He is guilty of murder. He must be punished for what he has done.’
‘Don’t be foolish, child.’ For all that Aelyn claimed she did not rule the Enclave, Ayae could not help but note that her words left Eira chastised. ‘My brother will not allow you to kill him,’ she continued. ‘I know you want justice for Fo and Bau and I know it frustrates you not to have it. But you must understand that he is not here to be tried. He, in fact, cannot be tried. Perhaps Kaqua and I have made a mistake in not letting you all meet him, not letting you see what he is. Perhaps it is my own fault for how I conduct myself. You have all decided that he is your equal, but he is not. He is beyond your rule.’
‘You once imprisoned him,’ Eira said.
‘I did not do that alone.’
‘You could do it again,’ Eira insisted. ‘We could do that. For his crimes, we could at the very least return him to his crooked tower.’
‘He’ll not go there,’ Ayae said. She did not know why she spoke. She should have remained silent and let the argument between the two finish, if it could. ‘He’ll never go back there. But why don’t you just listen to what he has to say? He is only interested in telling you about the child. That is why he wants his trial. He wants you to hear what she is. He wants you to stand with him against her. He has even written to the rest of his family.’
‘Which brings us to the chair you have all been staring at,’ Aelyn said. ‘You talk about Qian as if he is a single being, but he is not. He has brothers and sisters. I am one, but you will find I am the only one who will support you. The others – well, the others will not, no matter their relationship to me. The one who has arrived today will definitely not. In truth, he has been here for days already, listening to each of you, drawing his own conclusions, making his own plans. His little birds have fluttered around the Enclave. A dog has walked into the Yeflam Guard’s barracks. An ox-drawn cart sat alone on a road near here for hours. Yes, I can see that you are all suddenly aware who has arrived.’