Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  The word was a whisper, but he heard. ‘I knew you would not forget me.’ His smile revealed filed teeth. ‘You look different to my own eyes.’

  ‘I can barely sense you,’ Xrie said. ‘It is no wonder I have never felt you in Yeflam.’

  ‘Yet I have been here many times.’

  ‘What do you want, Jae’le?’ Ayae turned the apple over in her hand, gripping it like a stone. ‘Have you come to help me and my friends? I know you heard our conversation.’

  ‘No.’ His smile faded. ‘No, child, I fear I have come to ask for your help. I will see my sister by the end of the day. I do not look forward to the conversation, but it is one that we need to have. We will need to ensure peace is among us if we are to help my brothers.’

  ‘Aelyn is not your problem.’ Her fingers sank into the fruit’s flesh, bruising it. ‘She does not want a trial.’

  ‘Others in the Enclave push for it,’ Xrie said.

  ‘They do so in error.’ As Jae’le spoke, juice began to run down Ayae’s fingers. ‘Zaifyr does not care for your justice – but even that is not important. Not now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of Eidan.’

  ‘He is in Leera,’ she said. ‘You told him that.’

  ‘I told him our brother was with the child,’ he said. ‘And he is. But he is not in Leera. I had meant to tell Zaifyr that, but the knowledge that Eidan was with the child was enough to disturb him in such a way that I held back. That I was afraid. For he has begun to descend into what he was in Asila. He looks just as Samuel Orlan described to me in a letter he wrote before he died. He told me of rooms filled with books and ghosts. Rooms so similar to the one that my brother sits in now, turning pages, and looking for dead men and women to defend him. How do you think he will react when he discovers that Eidan and the child are on their way to Yeflam?’

  ‘She is coming?’ Ayae’s apple cracked in her grasp as she spoke. ‘Why is she coming here?’

  ‘Zaifyr wrote to his brother.’ Jae’le moved his fingers gently as if they flapped. ‘A dead bird searched for him and told both of them of the trial.’

  ‘She would not come for that.’ Ayae dropped the remains on the ground. ‘That is madness. That is—’ Her words failed her.

  ‘Trouble,’ he said. ‘It is trouble.’

  9.

  ‘I have tried to be patient with you,’ Kaqua said, his voice low and tense. It matched the stiffness in his limbs, the rigidity in his walk that, as he entered the room, spoke of fear. At first, Zaifyr was not sure why he would be afraid; for the first few moments that the Pauper spoke to him, he was lost by what was happening. It was not until he saw the long, dark-bladed knife in his hand that it dawned on him that the Keeper had come here to threaten him. To kill him, even. ‘I have sat here for weeks talking to you. I have laced my words with all my power. I have suggested that you cannot have the public stage you want. That Yeflam is not yours to launch a war from. I have tried repeatedly to lead you back to the path of peace.’

  ‘And now you think to threaten me with a knife?’ Zaifyr asked. ‘You and I are much too old for that.’

  ‘It is not how I would prefer things to be done.’

  ‘Then put it down.’

  ‘It should be your sister who is here,’ he said. ‘You are Aelyn’s responsibility. You are your beloved family’s responsibility and it should be she who stands before you now and demands that you leave.’

  ‘Does she know you are here?’

  ‘No, she would tell me it was foolish. She would tell me that to push you is a mistake. But I cannot step away as she does every time the topic is raised.’

  ‘You should do as she does.’ Zaifyr did not feel threatened, not yet. He talked calmly, kept his gaze level with the other man. ‘She is giving you advice,’ he added. ‘You should listen to it.’

  ‘I have listened to her for nearly all of my life.’ The Pauper stopped. Only a chair separated the two of them. ‘Of all your family, she is the best. She has kept her humanity where you have all lost yours. None of the horrors that any of you are responsible for touches her. She has always known what it meant to be a god. In Maewe we had created such a society – one of peace and intellectual debate. There was no discrimination, no hatred, no violence. She was worshipped. She was a god to those people. So was I. But when Maewe fell after Asila, all of it was lost. All that beauty, all that progress, all of it because you could not see in yourself the solution to your problems. Because you could not give the dead the peace that you believed they deserved.’

  ‘It is not what I think they deserve,’ Zaifyr said, still calm. ‘Or do you not ask why your power – to influence minds, to control intent – does nothing to me?’

  ‘My power.’ His hand tightened on the hilt of the knife and he raised the blade. ‘My power is words. It is justice. It is rarely used to hurt.’ Suddenly, he tossed the knife into the air. ‘Catch,’ he said.

  Zaifyr’s hand snatched out involuntarily.

  ‘I do not stitch my lips together because my words are poison,’ Kaqua said, his voice soft but compelling. ‘I do not use my power like a knife – I do not march into the streets and command as you and your family do. But you, Qian, you have driven me to extremes. You have forced me to raise your arm, to have you rest the knife against your chest. You have forced me to this.’

  The blade had sunk through Zaifyr’s shirt, had come to rest against his chest. ‘You do not want to do this,’ he said, raising his gaze from the steel. ‘You do not want to begin this with me, Kaqua.’

  ‘She comes here.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Your child god,’ he said. ‘This being you wish to go to war with. But you will not do so in this nation.’

  ‘Kaqua—’

  ‘Push the blade,’ he hissed. ‘If you will not leave Yeflam, push it into your chest, push it into what you have left of a heart!’

  The dagger did not move.

  As if she stepped out of a shadow, a young woman appeared, her cold hands wrapped around Zaifyr’s arm; she was joined by another, a woman who looked just like her, whose hands had closed around the hilt, stopping it from moving.

  ‘You will not deny me,’ Kaqua hissed. ‘You will push that knife into you. You will bleed out like a mortal man, you will—’

  A haunt grabbed him by the throat.

  ‘A mortal man,’ Zaifyr repeated. ‘The mortal man who holds you now killed both those two women. He was obsessed with them. He could not bear the idea of another having them. After he killed them, he killed himself. He wanted to be with them for ever.’ Slowly, the two sisters drew the dagger away from his chest, and as it left him, his hands released it to them. ‘He did not know that he would be, of course. He was just obsessed.’

  Around him, haunts began to appear, the faint outlines of the dead who had been his company as he read, as he moved from room to room. Their awful, hollow voices began to sound, the whispers of hunger and cold joining the crash of waves against the foundations of Yeflam, not one singular, not one isolated. Like a tide, their words filled the room; his power, his will, flushed through them, awakening the dead throughout the house of Aelyn Meah, awakening the dead down the long path to the gate and past the two guards and out into the streets of Nale, out into the people there.

  ‘But he shares them with all the others who have died.’ Zaifyr stepped through the haunts, parting their insubstantial bodies, feeling the faintest hint of their touches against him. ‘Now, you want me to leave, is that right?’

  The dead lined the northern bridge to Burata, the eastern bridge to Rje, the western to Fiys, and the southern that led into Quo’Theme.

  They appeared in pieces, a hand first, a leg, a torso, clothed and naked, the palest outline of a person long and recently dead.

  They appeared beside men in broad daylight, beside women in shadows, beside children in bed.

  They appeared beside the white-branched trees of the Keepers’ Enclave, in the occupied and empty
houses, in the factories, in the offices, in the tiniest and largest confines.

  ‘But I think it is you who should leave. You who should take your knife and go back to my sister. You who should tell her that the gods’ child is here.’

  They appeared with their mouths open in anguish, as if they would scream.

  ‘Tell her that she is here for the trial.’

  And then they were gone.

  10.

  As the morning’s sun rose above Cynama, the exiled baron, Bueralan Le, presented himself at the First Queen’s palace unarmed.

  It lay in the centre of the city, the Pareeth and Battar Canals on either side. Built from heavy blocks of ash-coloured stone, the design of the palace was dominated by two wings that stretched out like the arms of a giant, leaving a huge courtyard of paved stone for any visitor to cross before he reached the gate of the palace. Awash with the morning’s butterflies, the square was populated by merchants setting up their stalls, their titles and wares half obscured by coloured wings, the cleaners already present to sweep the wet stone, to scoop the three fountains that were filled with the brightly coloured corpses.

  The night before, Bueralan and Orlan had arrived to find his shop door chained shut. The building, a slim, two-storey creature made from stone and indistinguishable in a series of narrow streets similarly filled, had boarded-up windows and a lock showing rust. Muttering to himself about the failure of paid employees, Orlan had pulled out lock picks and worked it open, only to enter to a building of stale air and mouldering maps. There were mice droppings on the floor, long strands of grey webs from shelf to shelf, and a huge table covered in a discoloured drop cloth. More cloths had been used to protect the tables, chairs and desks that were further into the building, each hard with age and heavy to lift.

  ‘Are you sure it’s been eight years?’ Bueralan asked. ‘It feels as if it has been a century since this place was opened.’

  ‘I had a well-paid woman living here.’ The elderly man was pulling maps from shelves, dropping most to the floor. ‘She put in an order for new material every four months.’

  ‘Not to sell here.’

  Upstairs revealed three rooms, the largest one a workshop dominated by a long table covered in a sheet. Of the two bedrooms, one held a bed made of linen and dust and a wardrobe of moth-eaten clothes. The second had an empty bed and wardrobe and no sign of the woman whom Orlan had paid to work his shop. The thought brought a sad smile to Bueralan’s face: at least someone had betrayed the cartographer.

  In the morning, Orlan was absent from the shop. Bueralan had heard him moving from shelf to shelf, muttering to himself, opening cupboards, creeping up the stairs, the steps and words fading as the saboteur drifted to sleep in the early hours of the morning, and had been concerned when he had awoken to silence. That anxiety had continued, slowly building, ignoring the parts of him that said that the old man had headed out to replace what had been lost, to learn what had happened to the woman who worked here: arguments that all but died away when he reached the end of the butterfly-filled courtyard and the dozen guards in black-and-red armour that lined the entrance to the palace.

  From the centre, a man stepped forward. His face – like all the faces around him – was hidden beneath the flat face plate he wore.

  ‘You are expected, Bueralan Le.’

  He almost laughed bitterly.

  Instead, he nodded and was led along a series of empty hallways beautifully tiled with black quartz. Shortly, a door of heavy onyx appeared, flanked by two guards.

  It opened into a large, tiled room. The black quartz was laid out in a huge expanse, with the speckles through it like the night’s deepest sky. Around the room, in the silent corners, between the armoured guards, was the First Queen’s full court, or so it appeared to Bueralan. Always a busy chamber, it was one that flowed with the entrance of men and women, reaching a peak during the middle of the day. It was rare for it to be filled earlier; that was only the case when the First Queen had summoned the court, a thought that made him close his eyes briefly.

  When he opened them, the court was still silent, and the First Queen awaited him in her large throne of dark stone. In it, she was a frail figure, more so than when he had last seen her, but he did not feel sympathy for her. To feel sorry for the Queen was a mistake, he knew. Pity led to the belief that she was, somehow, not fit to rule, that she could not do so properly, and it was from there that others had begun a descent into rebellion and revolt, though he himself had not done so, no. He had begun from a much uglier place.

  On either side of her stood two women. To her left, but just behind the First Queen, was Captain Pueral. She stood tall and straight in the black armour of the guards around him, and had changed little from when he had last seen her. She remained upright and muscular, her skin dark and lined from the sun, and her grey hair cut close to her skull.

  ‘The last of the Hundredth Prince’s men returns.’ It was the second woman who spoke, the one to the First Queen’s right. A young, beautiful woman with skin darker than his own, she stood on a lowered step so that the First Queen could whisper into her ear, and she wore a gown of orange and red, with gold jewels about her wrists and ankles. The Voice of the First Queen said, ‘What brings the last traitor of those men to me?’

  Aware of the eyes of the court on him, of the eyes of guards, he fell to his knees, his head bowed. ‘I arrive to beg forgiveness.’ The rehearsed words tasted like ash in his mouth. He knew now that they were pointless, but he spoke them anyhow. ‘I arrive to beg that my exile be lifted, that my name, my titles and my lands, be restored at your will.’

  The First Queen whispered.

  ‘Such favours you ask for. Tell me, why should I grant you such a boon?’ the Voice said.

  ‘A private matter.’ He hesitated. ‘A death in the family.’

  ‘Did you have children in exile, Mister Le? Or take a wife?’

  ‘I have neither, Your Highness.’

  Silence.

  ‘Rise,’ the Voice said.

  Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet, the court silent around him.

  ‘You have neither parents, nor wife, nor child,’ the Voice said. ‘The only family to remain is the family that is not a family.’

  ‘It is for my blood brother I return, for him that I ask for my exile to be lifted.’

  ‘For a slave?’

  ‘For my brother,’ he corrected.

  The gasp in the court was slight, but audible. You did not correct the Queen, not if she was the Fifth, or the Second, not if her court was here, or on the other side of Ooila. You did not stand in the court of a Queen and tell her she was wrong, not on a subject such as this, but Bueralan did not regret his words. If he was betrayed – and he was, he knew, and he felt that bitterness deep in his being – he would not betray Zean, or any of the others. Beside him, he heard the rasp of steel being drawn, and readied himself to be struck, to turn with the blow, and did not understand why the First Queen’s frail hand rose, halting the soldiers on either side of him.

  ‘Are there any who can vouch for you?’ the Voice asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I will.’

  Samuel Orlan’s voice emerged from the left of the court, from behind a clump of men and women. He walked slowly onto the floor, smiling at the court, at the First Queen, and at Bueralan. The cartographer was richly dressed, his beard and hair neatly trimmed, and he held in his hand a tall, delicate crystal glass in which a dark-red wine sat untouched.

  ‘You would vouch for this exiled man?’ the Voice of the First Queen asked, devoid of any of the surprise that the First Queen must have felt. ‘Do you know what this entails, what this risks?’

  ‘Of course.’ He raised the glass in toast. ‘I will vouch for him knowingly. I will support him, I will share all punishment, all success.’

  The silence of the court stretched, thin, tense, waiting to be broken.

  ‘Why,’ asked the Voice, ‘would you do that?’

&nbs
p; ‘I have a debt that cannot be repaid,’ Samuel Orlan replied.

  Your Brother, Your Sister

  The Eternal Kingdom implies that Mireea was attacked because it violated the final resting place of the Warden of the Elements, the god Ger, who she calls her father. One, I might add, of many.

  Yet it does not explain why, once the Spine of Ger fell, she turned her army – her Faithful – on the Kingdoms of Faaisha, where the remains of no god lie.

  —Tinh Tu, Private Diary

  1.

  Aelyn arrived after Zaifyr delivered Kaqua to the Enclave. The two sisters marched him through Nale, their bodies lit with his power, the pair of them a new creature born into the world, a cold flame that walked along the streets. At the door of the Enclave, Zaifyr drained his power from them and, to the crowd that gathered, to the crowd that watched Aelyn’s wind-made horses rise to the window of her office later, it appeared as if the two girls ceased to exist. But they walked with the crowd back to the estate. They drifted, cold and alone, two women among another crowd that could not be seen. At the gate of the estate, they drifted past the six members of Yeflam Guard who had taken up a position alongside the wind-made guards. They walked up the path, up past the empty carriage that Aelyn had arrived in, walked through the open door and into the house, where Zaifyr stood with his sister.

  ‘Brother,’ she said. ‘Qian. What have you done?’ She spoke slowly, cautiously, her emotions calm, a centre against the fears around her. ‘You cannot drag Kaqua through the streets. You cannot line them with the dead. Yeflam is in—’

  ‘I was attacked,’ he said. ‘Your Pauper attacked me.’

  ‘He would not . . .’

  ‘He said that the gods’ child was coming.’

  Aelyn’s emotions flickered across her face, a kaleidoscope of resignation, disappointment and fear. ‘She does,’ his sister said finally. ‘And it appears that I must apologize for Kaqua. He has made a mistake, but he has not done it out of animosity. He understands that Yeflam is already at breaking point. He has been moved by the fear of what will happen when the two of you meet in our streets.’ The calm in her voice began to strain. ‘Understand, if I had known that he would do this, I would have told him no. But you should understand that we have known about this child god of yours for nearly a year. Eidan is there beside her. He has been our eyes in Leera.’