by Ben Peek
After a while, Benan Le’ta said, ‘You seem quiet, Captain. Could it be that the extent of your situation is dawning on you?’
‘I was thinking of a young woman I know,’ he said. ‘I thought that the Soldier might know her.’
‘There are many people in Yeflam,’ Xrie replied. ‘But I think I know the one you mean.’
‘Might you pass on a few words for me, then?’
Across from him, the merchant’s smile strained, but he said nothing else, not even after the two had finished talking. He did not even bid Heast farewell once he arrived at the ramp that led down to Wila.
6.
Seventeen years had passed since Ce Pueral had last held an official rank, a captaincy. She had just past two and forty at the time and her body had begun to struggle to carry the weight of the heavy gold-edged armour of the First Queen’s Guard. Two years later, she was one of many to convince the Queen to replace it, to have the gold rims melted down with the steel, and a lighter, but darker plate and chain used. She did not like the weight of it, either, but she bore that uncomfortable fit in stoic silence when she wore it. It was not the fault of the armourer: it was the fault of the body, of the woman who, as she aged, preferred the weight of fabric to leather, leather to chain, and chain to plate, and whose unofficial rank led to an unofficial uniform that supported the first best.
She had been called the Queen’s Justice, the Queen’s Fist and the Queen’s Teeth: there were more, new titles every year – as many flattering as insulting – but she had always thought of herself as the Eyes of the Queen.
The First Queen herself had given her that title after the death of the exiled Hundredth Prince, Jehinar Meih. He had returned to Cynama unexpectedly and Pueral had moved quickly to correct the mistake she had made. After all, it had been she who had delivered him and his followers to the slaver. She had not thought he would escape, but the story of it, when it was told, had drawn a smile from her. A blood slave had rescued the Hundredth Prince. Meih had been immune to that irony – indeed, all irony – which perhaps explained why it had been so easy for Pueral to convince the men loyal to him to turn on the promise of an ill-defined forgiveness for them.
‘You are wasted in your position.’ The First Queen had stood over the bodies of the Prince and his followers, frail even then. ‘You have been told that before, Captain.’
‘Your Highness,’ Pueral had said, ‘I am but a humble woman, of no notable past.’
The Queen’s hand had reached out, brushing the gold edges of her armour. ‘I have need for eyes like yours. In the morning, you will begin to earn a different birth if you wish, one in which this – this will not be ornament.’
She had not lied.
Seventeen years later, in dark red trousers, a shirt of crimson and black, and soft leather boots of the darkest red, Ce Pueral came to the door of the First Queen’s chamber. She knocked twice before entering.
The door opened into a large room, filled with chairs and tables and books. Of the latter, the majority were thick volumes of a leather-bound diary, the recollections of the First Queen over three hundred years, written in a hand that had been reborn. Yet it was always her hand: the shape of it might change, the length of the fingers might alter, but the Queen, just like all of the five Queens, was forever. She would be reborn after her death. As would her children. They would rule until she could do so again. Until she was able to open the books in the room. Pueral had never read any of the volumes: they were for the Queen herself to read, but she had often wondered how the words were, within. Did her hand waver in its prose, going from thick, to thin, to cursive to printed? Did the First Queen look back at her own words and wonder who had written them, or did she remember the circumstances of all that was contained?
The First Queen had not said, but Zeala Fe would not. At five and sixty, she once said that she had long ago learned the cost of intellectual weakness.
She had paid the price of physical weakness, as well, but she had paid that without ease for decades. At the back of the chamber, the First Queen sat in a deep red-cushioned chair, a fire beside her, and a thick blanket across her thin knees. The chamber felt warm the moment Pueral stepped in, uncomfortably so by the time she drew before the Queen. There, the fire highlighted the thinness of her washed-out black skin, revealed the shape of her skull, and the lightness of her hair, white and frail with age.
‘Ce Pueral.’ Her voice was soft, not yet a whisper, but soon. ‘You are late.’
‘Forgive me, Highness. There was a matter that required my attention. Would you like to hear of it, or shall we begin as usual?’
‘As usual.’ In her lap, the First Queen held a collection of jewels. As a young woman, she had loved heavy works of silver and gold, but the weight was now too much, and she had taken to holding them instead. ‘How have my daughters plotted against me today?’
Pueral eased into the chair across from her, embarrassed still by her use of it. For most of her time as the Eyes of the First Queen, she had delivered her reports while standing, but in the last few years, her ability to do so for three, four hours straight had begun to fail her. She had been forced to ask the Queen if she could sit, to which the woman across from her had nodded, and said, ‘If you had made it another year standing for three hours, I might have had you executed.’
‘Your daughters continue with their preparations,’ Pueral said. ‘The captain of a ship by the name of Mercy has been to see your eldest, Geena. I have yet to locate the ship itself, but I suspect it is in one of the bays off the coast, and will sit there for as long as your daughter pays the captain and his crew to do so. Given the captain’s reputed port of home, I believe she is planning to flee to Zoum soon.’ She paused for a moment, but when the Queen did not speak, she continued. ‘Hiala continues to try and treat with the Second and Third Queens, but as yet, neither has seen fit to hear her.’
‘They do not think she will survive succession,’ the Queen said sadly. ‘They are not wrong, but a mother should not think it. What of my youngest?’
‘She plans a party.’
‘Will I be invited?’
‘No,’ Pueral said evenly. ‘But Usa Dvir, war scout for the Saan family Dvir, will.’
‘She is as ambitious as she has always been.’ On her lap, the First Queen twisted a dark-blue butterfly between her thin fingers. ‘What do you think she is offering after they kill me and her sisters? Marriage, land, money?’
‘All of that, and slaves.’
‘It would not be surprising,’ she conceded. ‘Now, to important matters: what do you hear of Aela Ren?’
‘More rumours that he has arrived, of course.’ There had been stories for years. As a child, she had heard her father’s friends, from morning to evening, sober and drunk, claim that it was only a matter of days before he arrived. ‘Very few have any credibility, but there is a letter from the Fifth Queen, Dalau Vi, that may interest you. She talks of an attack on the coast, of a village that was destroyed. It is notable only from the point that it was a village that worked the black ocean across from where the Innocent’s ships had been sighted.’
The Queen took the letter, gently unrolling the seal Pueral had broken. ‘She sent these to all the Queens,’ she murmured.
‘Do you wish to ignore it?’
‘No.’ She placed a silver locket at one end, to weigh the fold down. ‘You will go to the coast and see these ships. Dalau reports having a man here who saw the Innocent, and if that is true, then the time will be well spent. If he is lying, then you will have seen how the Fifth Province is doing. Already we have seen a marked increase in the number of people crossing the border from there to here, and the men and women who are leaving here for various docks have also increased. Dalau’s generals have been reluctant to listen to her, which is no doubt helping that. She is young, and shows very little of herself in her office so far, but it will be good to know for certain how much control she has over her kingdom.’
Pueral tilted her he
ad. ‘Of course, Highness.’
‘Do not thank me,’ the First Queen said. ‘We are both too old for such a long time in the saddle. Now, what of this last piece of news?’
‘Bueralan Le has returned.’ Even now, she could not believe that she was saying the words. ‘He is in the company of Samuel Orlan.’
The First Queen’s laugh was a whisper of sound. ‘Now that is truly interesting. Do you think Samuel has brought him for me?’
7.
Despite the fact that Sir Deran Caloise’s Against Darkness was written in the final years of Caloise’s life, a life that ended well after the War of the Gods, Zaifyr was drawn to it because of the years the author had spent as the squire of Sir Alric Caloise, also known as the Beloved. In its entirety, the book was a drawn-out final letter of loyalty to a knight who died weeks before Jae’le conquered Kuinia, the name his brother would give to the land that stretched across Gogair, the Saan and the continents that Yeflam spanned.
The Beloved was a minor figure in history, if truth be told. Indeed, Sir Alric Caloise was not the first, nor the last to bear the title. It had been worn by at least seven men and two women and it still waited, Zaifyr believed, for someone to own it in a fashion that no one else could. But that did not matter to him. As the morning’s sun rose, he scanned for a section of Against Darkness where Alric Caloise rode into the Broken Mountains. The story of his expedition was detailed well by Sir Deran, but it was a story of death, of a force unprepared for the poisoned land that they would travel on. Yet Sir Alric – as Zaifyr had read in another book, Batiano’s Lost Knights – was one of the few men to have claimed to have spoken to the last of the goddess Linae’s priests. It was well after the War of the Gods, but the conversation, as recorded by Deran Caloise, had little to recommend it. Deran retold the tale secondhand, repeating Alric’s words: he described an old woman riddled with disease, a hut that was barely big enough for her, and a promise she made to him. His squire did not know exactly what that promise was, but it was clear that after the meeting Alric was in the grip of an obsession. On more than one occasion, he was said to have claimed that it was a divine command that drove him. Whatever that command was, it saw the knight waste the remains of his considerable wealth in a campaign against those he called False Gods.
That campaign brought him into conflict with Zaifyr and his family, but only momentarily. Within a year, the armies that Alric had been part of – as either a leader or a companion – had been broken. The remains of them were pushed into the mountains that divided the Saan from Gogair and there, in rugged, wormed-out tunnels, Alric Caloise had tried to take the remnants of his army to the Saan. He told his squire that he could begin an extended campaign of rebellion from there.
Zaifyr remembered that well, but not because of anything the Beloved had done. A fatigue had started to creep into his brothers and sisters then, a fatigue that would eventually lead to a larger weariness that would result in the end of their wars before they conquered all the continents of the world. For the Beloved, however, the tiredness of Jae’le and Eidan, who had chased the knight’s small force, resulted only in an ugly death that Deran Caloise’s book recounted:
We did not face an opponent of flesh and blood in those tunnels. Such a man would have been met by the straight steel that Sir Alric wielded. The finest swordsman of us, he would have stridden into the tunnels and he would have wrought a horrible toll on them from the dark corners and the hidden passages. He was one of the few men to know the paths that led up the awful mountains, to the daylight of the Saan, and the culmination of his superior knowledge and skill would have been the death of ordinary men. But we did not face such mortality. Instead, we faced a continual shuddering of the earth, as if it were being broken by fists around us. The ground split, the walls cracked, the roof fell. I could not count the number of times we were forced to move due to death, to leave tunnels we knew for those we did not.
There was no respite, ever. We could not sleep, could not find water, or food. We starved. We were forced into behaviour unfitting men of our stature. We drank our own wastes, we ate the flesh of those who fell. After a week, the ground awoke creatures – those that you know to live deep within a cave and those that you do not – and they threatened to swarm us. We stomped and swatted, but against such enemies, no sword could cleave, no armour protect. We could not light fires. We consumed our ill-gotten fare raw, standing. To sit, or to lie down, was to be attacked, to be bitten. In my own weakness, this is how my arm became swollen, how the delirium that separated me from Sir Alric and the others came upon me, and how I do not remember my escape from the mountains.
According to his own maths, Sir Deran Caloise had lived into his late seventies, his swollen arm cut off and the rest of his body the inheritor of the pitiful unsold estates that bore Sir Alric’s name.
Still, the book had provided Zaifyr with Alric’s final resting place, even if it was in the tunnels that led to the Saan. Jae’le would not thank him for that, when Zaifyr told him. Once Zaifyr found the haunt, his brother would have to enter the tunnels to bring Alric’s bones to Yeflam. But the tunnels that led to the Saan were the first problem. Many ended in dead ends and strange creatures. A lost man or woman could spend decades in the tunnels before they stepped out into the light of one of the suns again. Finding Alric’s haunt first would cut the time down considerably, but he could almost hear his brother’s curse, his disgust at the idea—
‘Qian,’ Kaqua said from behind him. ‘It is time for you to leave Yeflam.’
8.
‘Your hands move too fast,’ Xrie said. ‘That’s your problem.’
‘I have been told that before.’ Ayae caught the three bruised apples she had been attempting to juggle. A fourth and fifth lay in soggy remains on the ground, while another two waited on the small stool behind her. She had been given them when the three had returned silently from the Mesi Market, after Zineer had closed the door behind them and said, ‘We could go to Wila.’
‘Become refugees?’ Faise asked. ‘In our own home?’
‘It would be safe.’
‘Zin—’
‘It would,’ he insisted. ‘What could Sinae Al’tor offer us? Nothing. Nothing. Heast is on Wila. He knows it is safe.’
‘Honey.’
‘This has – is – Faise, they’re in the streets.’
‘Honey.’ Faise took Zineer in her arms, drew him against her. ‘Honey, we would just endanger them. The people there are unarmed. Gaerl lied. The Captain isn’t going there.’
Ayae stepped outside. She eased herself into the chair, the weight of what she had just witnessed – in both the market and the house – settling onto her heavily. She did not know what she would do next, or how she should react; the threat had been clear, and she did not want to wait for it to be fulfilled – but before her mind could unravel what choices she had, she was startled by Faise, who placed the bag of apples in her lap. ‘We need just a moment,’ she whispered and Ayae had nodded. The door closed and she heard them talking, heard their movements, and she heard the pair of them slowly rebuild themselves, their strength and tenacity. Knowing that she could do nothing for that, Ayae had opened the bag and began, unsuccessfully, to juggle.
She had been doing that when the Soldier arrived.
He stood with his hand on the gate that led to the house. His other hand rested on the hilt of his sword.
‘I am trying to control them,’ she said. ‘I want to control the air around the fruit and use that to move them. Aelyn told me that I had to trust the currents, that I had to feel their texture, much as I did the fruit itself, and I am trying to use my hands for that, but always compensate by movement and they get faster and faster. It is as if I cannot stop myself.’
‘Aelyn told you that?’
‘Yes.’
‘She rarely speaks about what is inside her.’
‘It was just something she said in passing, nothing more. But I need to be more . . . disciplined, I think,’ she
said. ‘What brings you here, Xrie?’
‘Captain Heast, I am afraid.’
She felt her stomach tighten. ‘Is he—?’
‘He is on Wila.’ He nudged the gate open. ‘He sent me a message in the evening, telling me that Bnid Gaerl would soon be attacking him. Shortly after that, one of my men told me that Gaerl was awakening his forces, that he had heard that Captain Heast had murdered a number of Gaerl’s men. It wasn’t too much longer before Le’ta was at my door, promising that he had stopped Gaerl’s bloodshed, but we had best both take Heast to Wila for his own safety.’ Xrie grimaced. ‘I did not like it. Heast did not either when I showed up at Sin’s Hand without Gaerl. He asked that I come and see you – in fact, that I come and warn you and your friends that you are in considerable danger from that man.’
‘I met Gaerl in the market today,’ she said.
‘Delightful, isn’t he? Your friends would be best served if they left Yeflam. Do they have any plans?’
He stopped, his attention drawn, like her own, to the man who made his way across the road. At first, she did not understand why he had caught her attention. Men and women passed her often, and only those who lingered, or wore the brown robes of the priests – an increasingly vocal presence in Yeflam – caught her attention. None were like this man: there was a roughness to him, a sense that his thin frame had emerged from the ground, his dark skin so heavily sunk against his bones that he appeared emaciated, with only the long, twisting beard he had giving shape to his face. He was without wealth, that was obvious, but the leather he wore had once been purchased by a man who had been otherwise. If she had not thought that about the well-cared-for leather, then the simple but well-made sword he wore and the cloak of thick green feathers the like of which she had never seen on any animal, would have suggested it was so.
She had never seen the man before, but she knew him, knew—
‘Jae’le.’