Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  ‘Perhaps.’ That curled smile presented itself again. ‘She has never known it, if so.’

  ‘You can keep your mind from her?’

  ‘She has no interest in what I think.’ He dropped into a crouch. ‘I am her eyes, but I have more independence than the others she has made, according to your brother.’

  ‘Eidan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jae’le should hear this.’

  ‘Tell your older brother in your own time.’ The creature’s blind gaze settled on Zaifyr, his expression still, like a statue. ‘Already she draws near the gate. Soon, she will force me to open my eyes and see where I am. We will both be in trouble if I am still here.’

  ‘How does she not already know?’

  ‘I have fallen into Leviathan’s Blood. She believes it only because her attention is elsewhere and she does not like the ocean. I am not that clumsy.’

  ‘She did not make you clumsy,’ he said.

  ‘No, she did not.’

  ‘What else does Eidan say?’

  ‘He has not sided with her,’ the creature replied. ‘It may be hard to see at first. Many will say that he could walk away if he so desired, but it is not true. He is a powerful man, your brother, and all her creations fear him, but she does not.’

  It was difficult to imagine his brother was captive. Zaifyr said, ‘I will speak with him when he arrives.’

  ‘He will not be able to speak with you. Neither of us will be able to speak once she is here.’

  ‘Then how do you two conspire in Ranan?’

  The inky smile twisted sourly. ‘She is still a child.’

  The child was not omniscient, then. She could see through the eyes of whoever she had made and could exert her will over those living creatures, but after that, she would struggle. In Leera, there would be corners for his brother to hide in, tunnels he had dug, hidden beneath trap doors, surrounded by hard earth. Eidan was not a man given to fancy: he was methodical, exacting in his thoughts, and by slow process he would have found all the parts of Leera he could rest quietly in away from the sensation of being devoured. It was not impossible for Zaifyr to imagine the large man and the small creature in a cave of stone, deep beneath the sweltering marshland. ‘What do the two of you plan?’

  ‘She cannot continue,’ the creature replied. ‘The pain she inflicts cannot continue. No more like me can be made.’

  ‘I thought she had destroyed you,’ the charm-laced man said. ‘There was nothing of you left after she had used you.’

  ‘She kept me.’ The creature’s long arms wrapped around itself, the limbs lost against the smooth black skin. ‘I cannot explain it, beyond that. I remember a feeling of being caved in, as if my very own being was being crushed. I saw you, but you were not the cause of it – the cause of that suffocating pain I saw later, when I awoke in a cathedral. I came to awareness on a hard floor, with her face above me, looking much as I did as a child. Beneath her eyes I could not move. It was as if I was pinned to the ground by spikes. As she witnessed my anguish, she told me that that was what she would name me, and try as I might to resist it, I answer to it. But I did not suffer the worst. There was one who killed her favourite. For him, she fashioned a charm of a loved one.’

  ‘Where is this charm?’

  Anguish shook his head. ‘Gone with the man who killed her favourite, but she is here now because of what he did. She did not wish to come here, but after her favourite died, there was no one to take her place, no one to guide her Faithful. She had no choice. It is why you must not waste this opportunity – for if you do, all of us will suffer.’

  ‘I am trying,’ Zaifyr said, a touch of frustration in his voice. ‘It is difficult, though. I have too many dead who are close to us now.’

  ‘Your brother gave me a name to pass on to you,’ the creature said. ‘He said that you would not like it, that you would resist it. It is a name that belongs to the ancient dead.’

  Zaifyr blanched, grateful that the expression was lost on Anguish, who had begun to fidget on the stone ledge. He could feel the child, stronger than before, which meant that she had reached the outskirts of Yeflam. She would soon step onto the Northern Bridge and the small being’s eyes would open. ‘The ancient dead are not like you. They are punished by the gods. Where would Eidan get the name of one?’

  ‘He did not say.’ Anguish turned on the ledge of the tower, his fingers spread across the stone, ready to launch himself. ‘What your brother did say was that beneath Yeflam there was one of the ancient dead. He said that his name was Lor Jix. He was the Captain of Wayfair. That is what he said.’

  Then he was gone.

  5.

  Heast pushed aside the cloth door of the tent and stepped out.

  The chanting from the bridge was louder. It drifted over the edges of the stone bridge above Wila and washed ashore between the low waves and cold wind from the black ocean. It had roused the Mireeans and they gathered around their canvas homes, in pairs at the furthest point from the bridge, and then in groups of four and five, growing larger and larger until, at the dirty edge of the island, they stood like half a stained ring. ‘Caeli,’ he said, not turning to face the woman behind him. ‘Find Lieutenant Mills. Tell her to make sure the guard is spread throughout the island as a precaution.’

  ‘Sir.’

  After she had left, the Captain of the Ghosts turned to the stone bridge above him.

  It had filled so that he could see men and women standing around the thick edges at the end furthest from the gate. As the chant rose and fell, he saw a young boy climb onto the wall of the bridge. He had dark, olive skin and was thin and without a shirt. Timidly, he rose once he was sure of his perch, and stared further up the bridge. As he did so, another boy followed him, this one white. A tall, olive-skinned third followed and then, lastly, a black girl climbed up. Once all four were up, they began to move along the ledge. Heast imagined that they had seen lines of brown-robed men and women on their knees at the gate of the bridge and, drawn by the chant, had decided to make their way there, unaware that beneath the robes, hands clutched knives and swords.

  ‘Do you think the girl is our enemy?’ Muriel Wagan said, standing at his side in the door of the tent. ‘That she is the child Zaifyr spoke of?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  Heast turned to her, but she did not meet his gaze. Instead, she watched the bridge, watched the children who were moving slowly but surely along it.

  ‘Since we left Mireea, I have had dreams where I kill a child,’ she said quietly. ‘It is not every night. Just once a week, maybe twice. I see her playing in an empty room. She has hair like spun gold and is a very pretty child. Each time I see her, I approach with a knife in one hand and a cloth in the other. As I get near, the room she is in falls away, revealing the ruins of Mireea. The ground shakes with earthquakes and giant bones appear suddenly. Through it all, she does not acknowledge me, not until I step on gravel. When that happens, she turns to me and smiles. I reach for her, but my hands are old and bent and it is too late.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Beautiful young women have never been in my dreams, Aned.’

  He smiled, but his humour was short-lived. ‘You know what has been asked of me, don’t you?’ he said, after a moment.

  ‘Lord Tuael is in a state of desperation and has reached out for you,’ she said. ‘He wants you to fight for him, even though you have no soldiers.’

  ‘Baeh Lok agreed with him.’

  ‘That is why you will go.’ The Lady of the Ghosts stepped out of the doorway. Her feet were pale and bare and the crumpled edge of her red dress trailed in the dirty sand behind her, obscuring the prints that she left. ‘You would stay if I asked, I imagine, but it would sit sourly inside you. Soon enough you would hold it against me, and rightly so. That is not who we are,’ she said, as he followed her. ‘You have done more than enough for Mireea in Yeflam. You have been more than the Captain of the Spine. But what happens now
is my responsibility. The trial of Zaifyr is going ahead and Lian Alahn has begun to push for my release for that. He has assured me that within the week I could find myself in the Floating Cities.’

  ‘Le’ta will not easily stand for that. Nor will Gaerl,’ Heast said. ‘If they find out I am no longer here, they might—’

  ‘—do the same thing they would do if you were here,’ she finished. ‘I have Caeli to deal with those moments. You have said that more than once to me. But I suspect that our friend Benan Le’ta will be more interested in what Lian Alahn is doing than in what I am. In fact, I am planning on it. While those two push and pull on each other, I plan to see how well aligned Aelyn Meah and I are in terms of the Leerans and their political foothold in the area.’

  ‘You think to turn her to war?’ he asked.

  ‘No, that is beyond me.’ At the edge of the beach, she stopped. Above her was the length of the stone bridge, solid and immovable, the four children in the middle of it. ‘There is no reason for you to stay, Aned,’ she said. ‘Not after a soldier of Refuge has made a request to his captain. Not after he has died to make it.’

  Above, the chant continued without interruption. The first child halted on the bridge, his arms outstretched as he turned his head into the crowd. A voice had called out to him. Heast had not heard it, but the body language of the boy, and of those behind him, was that of guilt, of being caught in the middle of an act that they knew to be dangerous and forbidden.

  ‘The Lords of Faaisha will be reluctant to listen to me,’ he said. ‘I will have nothing to offer them but myself.’

  ‘You are not there to be a marshal,’ Muriel replied.

  On the bridge, a pair of blue-armoured guards were emerging from the crowd. They were hidden behind the children and Heast could not make out their features, could not see if they were male or female, but the morning’s sun glinted off their armour as they reached up for the children, to lift them down onto the safe path of the bridge.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ she asked.

  The chanting had begun to fade, the words disappearing into a silence that was soon across Wila as well.

  ‘She is here,’ Heast said.

  6.

  She grabbed the bridle of the first horse to reach her, its rider already raised in the saddle to slash down—

  Ayae’s weight dropped heavily and, dragging down on the leather reins, she skidded under the horse. Unprepared, the beast rolled and the rider crashed down behind her, the following men and women and horses colliding with the pair. Ayae twisted through the failing legs, her hands and feet finding brief purchase in each turn and tumble, using pieces of metal, skin and fur to push herself through, to fall out into the empty space at the end of the tangle of flesh, her left foot twisting as she landed. The leg of her trousers tore open against the stone before she came to a stop, before she could rise.

  Ahead of her was the open gate of a large estate: the carriage that she had seen leaving Mesi with Faise and Zineer was within, its doors open.

  Behind her—

  ‘You.’

  The word was a hard spit of a curse behind her. With flames spluttering to life on her stolen blade, she turned.

  She supposed that ten riders had charged her from the gate, though it was hard to be sure by the mess of horse and dark-blue armour that had collapsed into each other and was still pulling itself apart. The man who stood before her was the rider of the first horse, a tall white-skinned man with short brown hair and a heavy gash down his forehead from where he had landed on the road. He spat out ‘You’ again and again, as if by each utterance the word became an insult and an indictment, rather than the violent announcement of his rage.

  His heavy sword crashed forward. Easily, Ayae stepped to her right and the soldier swung his blade back in a hard cut that she was forced to catch in a block. He followed, pushing against her, using his weight and anger. She took another step back and flicked her gaze over his shoulder to where the others were rising with swords drawn.

  The pressure on her lessened and the soldier drew back his sword in a heavy arc – but Ayae pushed forward, pushed past him, and thrust her sword down through the back of his calf to crack leather and skin and shatter bone.

  The others charged as the man screamed. She let them push her back, let the fallen man find protection in his comrades while her burning sword quickly blocked and parried their attacks. The ease with which she fell backwards caught them by surprise. Whether they thought it a ploy, or hurt, or without confidence, it gave them heart and they spread out, thinking to herd her, to push her to the compound.

  She offered a faint smile to the one directly before her and then turned her back to them.

  Her feet protested against the suddenness of the move, the strain on her ankles resonating up her legs as she sprinted to the compound.

  She heard the solid twang of a crossbow from high on the stone, steel-capped walls after she saw the bolt. Her body angled to let it slide past, the trajectory of it slow, a fat length of steel faster only than the dark-blue-armoured soldiers who followed it. For them, however, Ayae did pause. She met the soldiers, her joints burning as she thrust her sword, afraid that her forearms would break on contact, the bones splitting to reveal a hollow, liquid centre; but her sword sank through steel chain and flesh and when she drew her swords back, the aches in her bones had disappeared. She could no longer sense any part of her mortal flesh. She felt as if she had been turned into liquid, as if oil inside her had broken out and ignited beneath her skin. ‘When I want to change the air, when I want to alter its currents,’ Aelyn had said, before the Million Ghosts, before she had seen her that last time, standing next to Zaifyr, ‘I reach for it, I take hold of it.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘No, you are different. You are Ger’s child.’ Above her, the ash-white limbs of a tree twisted, thick and ancient and bare. ‘For you, it is internal. Since you have walked into my office, there has been a fire inside you, a sense of warmth that emanates from inside you. It rises and falls as a heartbeat does, overwhelming all other elements.’

  Her warm fingers had curled against her palm. ‘I cannot feel anything else.’

  ‘All four are there,’ Aelyn said. ‘Perhaps they are not as strong, perhaps the balance inside you is imperfect, but I do not think so. We should not hope that such is the case, at any rate. Without balance, you will be consumed, eaten by the fire inside you, for it was the task for the Warden of the Elements to maintain harmony, not offer allegiances.’

  The air around her began to burn now.

  It was as if the oil beneath her skin had soaked into the sky and lodged in pockets, secreting itself in hideaways to wait for her fury, to await the fire inside her to flicker not just off her sword, but her clothes, her hair, her skin. Flames popped and burst into the air, living creatures. From her, they found the invisible purchases, the hidden reserves. It was not oil. As she stepped forward, her sword blocking, then thrusting, Ayae admitted that it was she who allowed the fire to leap into the sky. It was she who found purchase in the air for her fire to climb high beneath the morning’s sun without any physical purchase. She could feel the air cupping flames, nursing it, feeding it to scale higher and higher, until the small flames bursting from her skin had turned into a huge dome that covered, for a brief moment, the entire compound of Commander Bnid Gaerl.

  It hung there, a perfect creation of such pure terror that in its wake, only silence remained.

  Then it fell.

  In tiny slivered droplets, in droplets that fattened and plumped, the fire began to rain from the air as her burning sword led her through it.

  The burning rain seared the dirt of the compound, leaving behind pitted holes. It fell onto the wood of the wagon, splattering off the lacquered roof and onto the horses that reared up in fear. It fell on the men and women in dark-blue armour, their screams at times cut short by her sword, at times left to announce their long, inarticulate cries of pain, their hair caught
alight, their skin burned, and their armour melted. Beneath it, the line of men and women who had sought to stop her from gaining entry could not remain, and their defence shattered as the soldiers fled and left the door to the estate empty.

  The door that would lead Ayae to Commander Bnid Gaerl.

  7.

  She approached quietly, as if Bueralan had not heard her and her horse, as if the water that spilled from the broken gutters to the ground hid not just her approach, but her as well.

  It had been the tall grey who had warned him, the horse’s hooves stamping hard on the stone floor of the shelter where he was stabled: once, twice, then silent. In the echo, Bueralan had risen from his place by the fire, his memories the smouldering wood, a fading set of scenes leaving him cold. For that alone, he was glad of the grey’s sound and for the approach of the rider. At the door, he looked along the path down the overgrown gardens – bowing beneath the heavy rain – and watched the approach of the two, horse and owner. For a moment, he thought it was Samuel Orlan. The cartographer must have grown tired of his office and set out into the evening to discuss gods and their touch, to once again push Bueralan on the topic, but as the rider drew closer, the saboteur realized that the horse was too tall, too dark and, ultimately, the rider too female.

  He remained in the shadows of the doorway as she led her horse beneath the roof where the grey stood, then made her way to the door.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said as she reached him, ‘you pay rent.’