Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  It also laid claim to the largest population in Ooila, though Pueral could find no evidence of it as she and her company made their way through the streets. She saw men and women and children, but they were furtive, at the edges of lanes, in the shadows of doorways and windows, silent and sullen. Fear has done what no army could, she thought, crossing the third bridge, unconcerned by the new sway it had. It has broken this city, turned its population into refugees.

  The Fifth Queen’s castle was a high, severe fortress built on the top of the mountain. It ill-suited the young, pretty queen within.

  After arriving at the huge iron gates, Pueral was led through the corridors still armed (a fact, she noted with approval, met with professional disapproval by all her soldiers) and was presented to Queen Dalau Vi before the afternoon’s sun had set, but as the last of the butterflies fell to the ground. As the light began to fade, she was taken from the chamber by the Queen herself, led past narrow windows that watched her, until she reached a door that opened into a private room. Inside were a long and lonely table and a pair of high-backed chairs.

  ‘Please,’ the Fifth Queen said, ‘sit.’

  Pueral unbuckled the belt holding her sword and laid the sheathed blade over the table, next to the silver teapot. She took a seat, grateful for it, and to her surprise, watched as the Queen began to pour tea into two cups. ‘Three generations ago,’ the pretty woman said, holding the steaming pot lightly, ‘I was killed by a friendly envoy from another queen. She is the Third Queen now, but was then the Second to my First. I vowed in the next generation that I would never be so betrayed and so I met with no one. After two lives of talking to no one, I wish for conversation, but find that I have only old generals who order me to hide outside my city and claim it is for my safety.’

  ‘Do you need them?’ Pueral asked, after thanking her for the hot tea.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Kill their children.’

  ‘And if they decide they do not need me?’

  ‘Kill them,’ she said, simply.

  Dalau, the Fifth Queen, smiled faintly and lowered herself elegantly into the chair opposite Pueral. She was a fine-boned figure, a delicate woman of the darkest skin who, though she had left childhood behind, could not abandon her youth. It was easy to view her as a figure in need of direction or control, as if she had not the experience or intelligence necessary to rule. To hear her speak did not dispel the illusion, for her voice was soft and gentle, a confidante’s voice, a lover’s voice, unable to be otherwise.

  ‘You have a man who has seen the Innocent?’ Pueral blew on her tea, then said, ‘That is why my Queen sent me.’

  ‘Of course.’ The Fifth Queen clapped twice, sharply. ‘The First Queen has been the only one to answer my letter. Please tell her that for me.’

  Pueral nodded.

  She had almost finished her tea in silence when, after a knock on the door, two guards, both in grey-and-white-edged armour, entered with a man between them. A middle-aged man, he had been dressed in soft clothes, and had tight manacles around his wrists, though he appeared neither agitated nor violent. Yet Pueral, gazing at his damaged face, knew that such was not always the case: she could see that his fingers had torn his cheeks, his chin and lips, while across his face was a thick scar made by a knife, a knife that had clearly and intentionally gouged out the man’s eyes.

  ‘Ja Nuural cannot see and cannot talk,’ the Fifth Queen said. ‘His tongue has been cut out as well as his eyes. But if he could talk, he would tell you that he was in charge of a community down on the coast. He ran a research team dedicated to the cultivation of healthy fish, a scheme I have helped to fund. It aims to breed out the poison and disease that have contaminated the fish in Leviathan’s Blood.’

  Pueral rose from the table and approached the blind and mute man. Closer, she saw that, in addition to his face, Ja Nuural’s feet had been damaged, and blood from dried scabs ran across his sole and toes. ‘Did he walk from the coast to here?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Fifth Queen stood beside her. ‘We have tried to care for him, but the best work of our witches and warlocks has been of little help, because once he is alone, he digs at his wounds. His feet first, then his face, as if he cannot decide which has failed him more. We have taken to keeping him chained as best we can, but after a few hours, he begins screaming. He stops only when we unchain him so he can dig at his wounds.’

  It was awful and Pueral felt sympathy for the man. ‘What makes you think that the Innocent did this to him?’

  ‘He had a letter.’

  Pueral had it now, as she led her horse along the ruined coastline.

  For the last two days, she and her soldiers had not passed a living creature. The oldest of her group, a man a few years older than her, a tracker by the name of Ae Lanos, had been the first to tie a black stone around his neck. The stone was flecked with glass, a cheap piece. As if compelled, the others, even the witch who rode silently with them, followed his lead, and by morning, when awoken by the smell of blood and salt and the sound of the ocean, Pueral found herself the only one in her party without a stone hung around her neck to catch her soul.

  She did not blame them. Against her breast, between the padded cloth and the black steel of her armour, was the stained, tattered letter that the Fifth Queen had given her. It was written in a firm hand, in ink, and it was unsigned. Yet the letter that the man who had lost both his eyes and his tongue had carried lodged in her a very real, very deep fear.

  I am far from innocent, it said.

  2.

  ‘Tell me,’ Heast said, ‘how did Lok die?’

  ‘Of course.’ The tribesman had finished the bread and water and, as he spoke, began to pull his gloves back on. He said, ‘I was not originally given the task of delivering you this message. For the most part, I was kept from the discussions of war in Faaisha. I told the story of the beautiful girl twice in the presence of Lord Tuael. The first time, it was before him and his staff. The second time, it was before the Lords of Faaisha, their marshals and Baeh Lok. I thought it strange that he was there, for he was no more than an old sergeant in Lord Tuael’s guard, responsible for the training of young lords and ladies in the art of violence. Yet, it became clear in the middle of my story that I was not speaking to the Lords, but to him. It was to him that a message was being delivered. At the end of it, he told Lord Tuael that he would carry a letter to you. They were the only words he spoke.’ The tribesman flexed his left hand, the leather making no sound as he did. ‘When Lok began his journey, he was given half a dozen men as an escort. Truthfully, I think most served as a guard to ensure that he did deliver Lord Tuael’s message – I overheard one of the soldiers say that Baeh Lok was not the most loyal of men to Faaisha. Still, that was after I had asked to accompany him. I hoped that I would find further evidence of my ancestors and could begin the task I had been set, though of course I did not say that when I made the request. I simply offered to be a guide through the battle zones and Lord Tuael agreed. Baeh Lok saw through the deception, which is why I relate it now, but we reached an agreement that at the border of Faaisha and Mireea we would part and finish our respective duties.’

  Everything Taaira said rang with truth to Heast. Baeh Lok would have been close to seventy now, if not already that, and would have known what Kye Taaira was immediately. He would have heard the story and known, like Heast, how rare it was for a Hollow to leave the Plateau. He would have known that the situation was serious.

  ‘It went wrong from the start,’ Kye Taaira continued. ‘On our fourth night, we were found.’

  ‘You were betrayed?’ Muriel Wagan asked.

  ‘No, just unfortunate. We did not leave much of a trail, but Baeh Lok insisted that we take a wide track up through the east, to skirt the ruins of Celp, and then go down through a few of the towns and cities that still stood. He was particularly interested in Maosa, and though I told him that there was an easier route to the border, he would not be swayed. Still, I thought I had found a
way through the Leeran forces that were scattered across the land there. But it was not safe. A simple mistake on my part, I am afraid. We were discovered.’

  ‘Were the girl and her companion there?’

  ‘No, it was just soldiers. Her Faithful.’

  ‘Faithful?’ It was Reila who spoke, the elderly healer’s voice sharp with her sudden intensity. ‘To the girl you described?’

  The tribesman nodded. ‘The name was in common use by the time I arrived in Faaisha. The Leerans claimed she was their god.’

  ‘We had been told,’ Muriel Wagan said carefully, ‘that she was younger. A child.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You could not be mistaken?’

  ‘I saw her again,’ he said. ‘During our escape, I was separated from Sergeant Lok and the six accompanying him. With some difficulty, I reached the border of Faaisha and Mireea. That was where my agreement with the sergeant ended, but I found myself faced with the moral choice of finding the men who had briefly been my companions or abandoning them. I must admit that I felt some obligation to Baeh Lok and his men, but I also knew that I could combine the search for my ancestors with a search for them and so I set out into the lines and camps of the Leeran Army. I found five of the sergeant’s guards without much trouble. They had been killed with arrow and sword and their bodies had been nailed to trees, their blood drained cleanly from their bodies. They had borne no insignia and no uniform, but the message was clear, and I feared that I would find the sergeant in a similar state. When I did discover him, however, he was by a river crossing, a two-man patrol dead beside him. He was alive, but his own stomach was a bloody mess, and he knew that he would not survive. He asked me to bring you the letter that you hold. I thought to deny him – what did I care about his task? I did not believe I would get much help from it. The thought must have shown on my face, for he laughed. It was in the face of that laughter that I agreed. It shamed me that I had considered ignoring a final request, despite my duty. I offered to bear him as far as I could as well, but he asked for mercy instead.’

  ‘You killed him?’ Lady Wagan asked. ‘I thought such a thing would be forbidden?’

  ‘Even were I not Hollow,’ he replied, ‘you must not mistake pacifism with cruelty. Baeh Lok was in such pain there was only a single cure available.’

  ‘What of the last soldier?’ Heast asked.

  ‘I found him on a trail that led to her.’ Taaira’s voice turned soft, ominous. ‘He had been hanged from a tree and his blood drained, as the others had, but it had been done half a day’s walk from her camp. It was a mobile outpost, like much of the rest of the Leeran Army, and it was dominated by a series of well-disguised tents. I was lucky that I had not walked into it by mistake. But it was there that I found my ancestors, as well as the girl and the man who had walked across the Plateau. There were other soldiers too, and men and women whom I would later come to identify as priests. Over the two days that I watched, I saw the latter two mingle, and leave the camp in pairs, heading into the Mountains of Ger and, I assume, Yeflam after.’ He held his gloved right hand up, much as he had his left, and flexed it. ‘It was this path that she herself took days later, in the company of that same man and many of her priests.’

  ‘Your ancestors?’

  ‘They did not follow.’ He looked up at the warm roof of the tent. ‘If you listen carefully, you can hear them approach now.’

  Silence fell around the room. At first, Heast could hear nothing but the sound of the waves, and beneath that, the movement of life outside the tent, the men and women who spoke and moved on the dirty sand of Wila. But then, as if it were a heartbeat slowly emerging from the womb of a pregnant woman, he began to make out voices. He could not understand the words as they grew louder, and that confused him until he realized that it was a language he did not know. Worse, the language was one that Heast had never heard, and it slowly dawned on him that the words were completely alien, and that the volume in which they were spoken was one that grew and grew until it filled the tent as it wished to do to the world.

  3.

  The woman screamed for mercy, but Ayae had none.

  She had never considered herself a violent person, either in desire, or intention, but she was aware, as she left the soldier of the Empty Sky trying desperately to pull melted armour from her body, her voice caught in the shrill, awful panic of someone in pain, that she had become capable of shockingly violent acts. The realization felt small as she crossed the bridge, the wet length of Faise’s finger in her hand, as if the acknowledgement from her conscience was unnecessary, a concession after the fact. The rest of her had already accepted it, condoned it, moved by the knowledge that she was unable to withstand another loss to a deep, integral part of herself that had been damaged when she had lost Mireea.

  Lost her home.

  But not yet her family.

  She had met Faise the night she had arrived in Mireea. Huddled in the back of a cart, she had been one of fifteen children to leave Yeflam, where the aid boat from Sooia had come into port shipping water.

  Her arrival in Mireea had signified a new part of her life. Behind her were men and women who were thin, strained and humourless. Her skyline was dominated by the solid wall that had been the edge of her world, the boundary she was forbidden to step beyond. She had, of course, and she had feared that she would be taken, that she would be killed or, worse, that she would draw him, Aela Ren, the Innocent, from the empty, scarred land. Her life behind the wall was one without parents, a life of vulnerability that she would only fully appreciate later. The men and women who had led her and the others onto the ship floating low in the water had appeared so straight, so pure, that a part of her childish self had thought all white people were saviours, even when they gave new names to the children whose names they could not pronounce. The orphanage at the end of that journey had appeared before her like a mansion, huge and extravagant, as a sign for a new life.

  Inside, the large, red-faced matron who would come to dislike Ayae had led the aid workers and their found children through the big, high-roofed dormitories in an imposing silence. She spoke only when she separated them by gender, the first floor for boys, the third for the girls. The second was the home of the matron and her staff, physically and morally guarding the virtue of the two groups. It was late when the matron finished assigning beds for them all, and in the big window of the girls’ dorm, the stars were laid out so clearly that she could see the wide alien spread of them for miles upon miles. Their strange emptiness was a sudden violence and she stood staring at it, while the other children introduced themselves.

  It was only when a hand touched her from behind that she realized she had been ignoring all attempts at conversation. The hand was pudgy and brown, and it belonged to a girl who had the bed next to her.

  Beneath Ayae’s bare feet, the hard ground began to pass quickly, her speed increasing, the bridge and the dead soldiers falling further behind her.

  Xeq, the woman had told her. The Commander is on Xeq.

  Around her, the streets of Yeflam were beginning to fill, men and women wandering, some in pale-blue armour, others in the robes of priests, their voices seeking to spark (‘Today! She will—’ ‘—our Heavens and Hells will return—’) but finding little tinder in most of those stepping out. The houses loomed and dipped and the flags of the approaching bridge slipped into view. She would have to cross through Ghaam to reach Xeq, but the path would take her away from Zaifyr. The morning’s sun sat high in the sky and the heat from it began to settle into the stones, but for Ayae, there was no chill to be warmed away.

  The carriages she chased had left tracks, from the faeces of the horses, to the hard skid of the wheels as they hit the bridge, but Ayae knew that she would not have to search hard for where Faise and Zineer had been taken. The Empty Sky were not secretive. They were proud. They were open. Ayae would be looking for a compound large enough to house private soldiers and carriages, a compound large enough for a man who, in the
absence of true military rank, called himself Commander Bnid Gaerl.

  ‘My name,’ the girl had said, long ago at breakfast the first morning, ‘is Faise.’

  They had sat at long tables in the dining room, everything around Ayae so large it was cavernous. In front of her were rows and rows of food, and all of it looked and smelt strange, from soft, white bread, spreads in jars with labels she could not understand, and fruits of colour and taste that she had never seen or eaten before. She did not know the name of anything that was before her and she had trouble understanding the conversation taking place around her. Most of the girls and boys in the room spoke the traders’ tongue too quickly for her, proficient with it in ways that she and the others who had learned it in Sooia were not.

  Yet, for all the strangeness, and not knowing that soon the matron would single her out and speak so threateningly to her, Ayae felt safe.

  She had been given new clothes and the girl who sat beside her, who had spoken her name – Faise, she remembered repeating to herself – was now explaining to her slowly what was good to eat and what was not.

  Soon, the streets of Xeq began to unravel around Ayae. She had run faster than she thought she could, run harder than she knew she should have, and pain began to creep into her feet, but she did not stop.

  Neither did the men and women of the Empty Sky who appeared on the street.

  4.

  ‘She has come to watch you fail,’ the inky black figure said. ‘That is her only goal, her only desire in Yeflam.’

  Zaifyr watched the being’s movements across the stone edges of the tower. Before each half-jumped step, the creature cocked and turned his head in the direction of the Northern Gate, the gate that the child would enter through. Then the long, four-fingered hands would press onto the hard surface in caution before he moved, taking two steps before turning around to take another, pacing as if trying to shake and dry himself. Yet, he could not have moved so carefully and slowly when he made his way up the tower to stand before Zaifyr, for that climb required a sure and dexterous grip. ‘Are you a deceit?’ Zaifyr asked, finally.