by Ben Peek
As with Paelor, Kaqua turned to Zaifyr once the judges had finished questioning Faje, and asked him if he had a question.
‘No,’ the charm-laced man said. ‘I have no questions.’
‘What is he doing?’ Ayae whispered to Jae’le. ‘He had an opportunity to press – he needs to do that.’
‘He is searching for his witness,’ he replied. ‘He has been searching for the remains of the man all week – he searches still.’
The heaviness of her body felt as if it grew, and she said, ‘He should not ignore them.’
‘He has no choice.’
4.
After the ruined coastline, Ce Pueral no longer buried the dead.
Lanos led them on a trail that proved, at times, deceptive, and at others, honest. At Enalan, the first village they came to after the coast, the trail told the horror of Aela Ren stalking the edges. Once he had circled it twice, he had sat on the long limb of a branch beneath the afternoon’s sun and watched the people end their day and close their gates. He ate nothing, drank nothing, and left no leavings, but his thick-soled boots scored the tree as he climbed it, and he made lines in the flesh of the tree with his fingernail, a count of the people before him. When he dropped from the branch – in the last of the afternoon’s light, to judge by the final score on the tree – he moved to the pens of animals and the warehouses. His trail was easy to follow, Lanos’s old face in a permanent scowl as the pigs and chickens gathered around his feet, following him into the open barns and silos where food was spilled next to blood. ‘He killed them all in here,’ the tracker murmured. ‘It was not like the beach: they fought him here. They defended themselves. They came into the barns to hold him out. But it did not work. He waited – he released the animals and he waited. You can see by their waste that they stayed behind the doors for a week at the least. Enough time for the smells to get to each of them, for the little fights to begin, for the animals to start calling for them, for the children to hear the animals and want to go to them, for people to start saying that he wasn’t outside, that he wasn’t who they thought he was.’
Their bodies were spread throughout. They had been killed by hand, by pitchfork and rake and axe, but not once by sword, not even the few that the villagers owned.
‘Why didn’t he take the swords?’ Lanos had asked.
‘Because he does not need them.’ She dipped her foot under the blade and flipped it over. It was as if new. ‘He is sending a message to us.’
Pueral was not flattered and neither were her soldiers. The witch, Tanith, who had become – if possible – even more silent, began to collect blood from the villagers. She scraped the samples into a cracked jar from the blade of an old, dull knife. The jar had to be cracked for the spell to work, but Pueral suspected that Tanith would struggle to use it. The Innocent had left nothing personal in either location, and she doubted that he would in any future ones – and Tanith needed a personal item to give the blood something to grip. Pueral had offered her the letter the Fifth Queen had given her, but the witch had shaken her head. ‘He did not write it,’ she muttered, before taking her knife to the wounds on the dead, and Pueral said no more. Just as soldiers sharpened blades and patched armour, a witch had her rituals before battle as well, and she did them beside the soldiers. They all knew that the message left was not a personal one: if it had not been them who had discovered the beach and its crucifixes first, and if it had not been them to enter the village, then it would have been someone else, and the message would have remained the same. Regardless of who found it, it was a message of contempt, delivered by a being who believed that the men and women he killed were so far beneath him that he need not even draw a sword.
After Enalan, the trail continued inland, pushing west, deep and far from the main highway that Pueral and her soldiers had used to travel down to the coast. As if he knew that they were behind him, Aela Ren led them into isolated land, where rocks lined the ground and sparse trees stood in lonely contemplation. Volcanic ash and butterflies rose and fell in the morning and the evening. Yet he did not mark a trail to the volcanoes, and Pueral and her soldiers were never forced to wrap their faces for ease of breath. Instead, he led them to another village, and another, with no sense of deceit until they came upon the first village that had not been destroyed. There, Lanos believed that they had lost him, and that Aela Ren had simply disappeared. So convinced of it was he that the old tracker spent half a day going through the trail that he had followed, sure it held a lie, a falseness that he had missed, but Pueral trusted the skill that had led him here, and when she rode into the village, she was unsurprised to be told of a stranger who had stayed a night.
‘He was a scarred man,’ the village leader, a thick-set woman said, ‘but polite. A coop had broken in the evening, and he brought our chickens back.’
‘No, he did not speak much,’ a young man in a tiny hut said two days later. ‘He drank some water from our well and asked the name of the species of butterflies beneath his feet.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘What I could.’ The man shrugged. ‘He did not stay long.’
Despite what she heard, Pueral did not doubt whose trail she followed, and neither did her soldiers. They knew that a game was being played, and they knew, also, that the rules had changed.
In her quiet moments, Pueral would think of the beach, and the barns in Enalan, but rarely of the villages that followed. It was as if, after the first two, she had turned off the part of her mind that recorded memories to spare herself the recurring images of what she saw. It surprised her, for Pueral had been witness to violent acts all her life, and had been responsible for more than a few. But what she had seen on the beach had been singular, not just in the acts of violence, but in the force of will that delivered them – a will that was, she believed, now demonstrating to her just how easy it was for him not to kill, how little life and death meant to him, a statement made somehow worse by the lives he spared after the deaths he had caused.
The hut that Ae Lanos led them to a week after the beach was a mean, malnourished thing, half slumped in the barren land surrounding it. Around it roamed eight goats. A black rooster sat on the rough thatch roof and it remained still and calm even when the door opened and a thin, old man came out. His skin was a dark brown and his eyes were like flint. He had but a few teeth and leant heavily on a long cane of cracked black wood.
‘You’re for him, aren’t you?’ he said, stopping before the horses. ‘He said that you would be here.’
‘Him?’ Pueral asked.
‘The man with the scars.’
Her soldiers shifted, spreading out like the feathers of an angry bird.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We are here for him. What did he say to you?’
‘Little.’ The old man spat. ‘He said that I should tell whoever came looking for him that he had gone up into the mountains, to the castle there.’
‘There’s no castle there,’ Pueral said, looking up into the mountains, to the trails of smoke that mixed with the day’s remaining butterflies. ‘Just ruins.’
‘He said that he had gone up there to pay his respects to the end of an empire.’
5.
On the night of the party, Bueralan placed a large shard from his mother’s mirror on a tree outside and shaved, naked. Next to him he had a bucket of cold water into which he dipped the long, straight razor. The white tattoos twisted as he ran the blade along his head first, then his face and neck, careful of the leather strap and pouch. Stubble gone, he dyed his goatee white again, hiding the black roots. He cut his nails after, his left hand first, right second. Then he took a leather sheath from a branch above him and strapped it to the inside of his left forearm. A thin-bladed knife slid into it. Then, and only then, did he reach up to another branch for the expensive black trousers, black shirt and black jacket and begin to dress without pleasure.
Not much had given him pleasure in the week since the Queen’s Voice had visited him. He had ma
de a part of his mother’s estate liveable – others would argue otherwise – but it was too far from Cynama for the tall grey and him to make the trip there and back each day. He had returned earlier in the week to petition witches: as the afternoon’s sun rose and butterflies fell, he had arrived at Samuel Orlan’s narrow shop. He had not wanted to, but the little coin he had was not enough to buy a meal, much less rent a room in the city. After he greeted the old man – who said hello without bothering to rise from the large map he worked upon – Bueralan dropped his pack in the room of Orlan’s absent servant and found a small sack of coins on the table.
‘Ah, I forgot to tell you, the girl sent me a letter.’ He ignored Bueralan’s upraised hand that held the leather pouch and moved to the other side of the table that dominated the bottom floor of his store. Nearly complete, the work was a detailed map of Ooila, lined with mountains and volcanoes, each built from the husks of dead butterflies. Bueralan had not noticed that at first: the detailed painting and arrangement hid the materials well, but once the husks caught his eye, he saw only the hollow bodies and empty eyes staring out at him. ‘She was married after my last visit a year ago, and her husband and she decided to move out of the city. Such a surprise! She is the same age as me and I am simply much too old and much too sane to get married, much less buy a farm and move to it. Such an awful life. Such an awful choice! Though, given that the farm is located on a plot of land in Gogair, it is entirely possible that she will be vindicated.’
‘Just another someone looking for something better,’ Bueralan said.
‘My store would have provided for her more than a farm.’
‘Didn’t provide enough to quiet love.’
Orlan dipped a brush into a small green pot of paint that he held. ‘You speak like someone who has never worked for me.’
‘That’s right.’ Bueralan dropped the sack of coins on the edge of the map gently. ‘I don’t work for you.’
The cartographer lowered his brush to the map. ‘Take it.’
‘I’m not for hire.’
‘Which is why you’re broke.’ He moved to his left, leaving the pouch. ‘But you are intent on taking the Mother’s Gift and you will not listen to me until you have.’
‘I won’t listen to you then, either.’
‘You will.’ For the first time, Orlan’s blue-eyed gaze lifted from the map before him and settled on Bueralan. ‘You will then see what this new god is. You will see the horror she has placed around your neck. I wish it did not have to be that way, but if that is what it takes, then so be it. Our time here is very limited and I do not wish to increase it.’
‘You have been listening to all that talk of the Innocent again.’ When he had entered the gate to Cynama, Bueralan had overheard two of the guards discussing a rumour that the Fifth Queen had in her dungeons a man who had seen Aela Ren on Ooila. ‘I’ve told you before, you don’t need to stay.’
‘None of us needs to stay. Take the money. Use it to bribe and to buy whoever you need. But do it quickly.’
He took the pouch.
He had spent much of the week travelling from witch to witch in an attempt to find a woman selling the Mother’s Gift. It wasn’t easy. Despite the proliferation of soul-catchers, the amount of men and women who were reborn was slim. The cost was prohibitive and it had only become worse in Bueralan’s lifetime for, despite the stories of disabilities and madness in the reborn, the Mother’s Gift was one of the highest status symbols Ooilan society had.
In the first day he visited two witches and both turned him away with a polite, but firm insistence that he did not have the money. On the second day, he learned that the excuse of his personal poverty – even when Samuel Orlan’s name was mentioned – was an easy way to turn him towards the door, a polite dismissal for someone who might be in the First Queen’s favour.
It was not until the fourth day that he met a witch who would talk to him about the Mother’s Gift. Safeen Re, a dark black-skinned middle-aged woman, greeted him at the door of her estate with the first genuine smile he had seen in a week.
She lived in a large, beautiful building dominating a large tract of flat land to the west of Cynama. The long, tiled hallways of her home had alcoves holding expensive, dark glass jars, at times beside bones, and at others beside charms of gold and silver. In each jar, however, there was a swirl, a hint of a chill that reached out to him, and Bueralan was pleased to see that the office of Safeen Re was large and spacious and occupied only with books and bones.
After she had seated herself, the witch said, ‘My brethren have been telling you that you have no fortune, Bueralan Le. What makes you think I will be any different?’
‘I have Samuel Orlan’s fortune.’ It grated on him to say it, and it had become harder since he had first said it. ‘Is that not enough?’
‘For you, no.’
‘The Queen’s pardon means so little?’
Safeen Re let out a loud, healthy laugh. ‘Have you truly been gone so long, or are you just desperate?’ she asked. ‘Bueralan, you may take the Queen’s name so easily in this conversation, but we both know she does not support you that much. If she did, you would have her money, and she would have brought you here first, and you know it. I have watched the Queen drink from jars that I made, and I am above reproach. We both know that. It is both our business to know that – and it is the business of the women who come to me to know that as well. After all, what they want is a very rare and difficult thing.’
‘I know that.’
‘You cannot offer them enough to risk that.’ Bueralan began to speak, but Safeen Re cut him off. ‘You know that as well,’ she continued. ‘You are a man with no title, no family, and the soul around your neck is of a blood brother.’
Bueralan began to rise. He had not come to be insulted. A simple no would be enough. There were other ways, less desirable ways, he knew—
‘But you do have something quite unique,’ Safeen said. ‘If you but have the patience.’
He remained standing. ‘I have no favours to offer.’
‘It is not the patience of the Queen’s court I speak of, I assure you. Rather, it is the concern that more and more families have with a life outside Ooila.’ To her left, a door opened, and a young man in robes of mixed streams of yellow and orange and blue entered, a silver tea tray in his hands. ‘I am not a fool. I hear the whispers. So do my clients. As they grow into a shout, we will all be forced to listen to them, even the Queen. In this situation, what you bring is something unique, for Samuel Orlan’s fortune is not tied to this country, just as you are not, either. Should you take a step back from the visits you have been making, should you opt for a little patience, people around you will realize that the ability to provide a life of substance outside the borders of our home is one of rare value. I would imagine that, in a short time, such an awareness will give you your choice of mothers and their gift.’
In old black leather boots, but his other clothes new, Bueralan walked down the overgrown path of his mother’s estate. An extravagant carriage waited at the ruined gate. After he had left Safeen Re, the child’s words had followed him – call only when what is at stake is innocence – and he had come to realize that, despite what he said to Orlan, he too had begun to believe that there was not much peace left in the country. Soon, Bueralan knew, a man would step upon its shore, and begin a war that he had no desire to be part of, and feared that he would be unable to escape.
A black-and-red-armoured guard opened the door to the carriage. Inside, two women waited in an incomplete darkness.
6.
The Spine of Ger was in ruins.
For the man who had been the Captain of the Spine, the extent of the destruction unfolded over days and nights, a jigsaw puzzle he assembled slowly in his mind to replace the image he had previously had. Heast’s arrival at Mireea was late in the week, for neither he nor Kye Taaira had wanted to use the main road, believing that the risk of encountering Leeran soldiers and priests was high.
As they approached the Spine, Heast would often lose track of it behind trees that lined the obscure back trails he rode, and when the long stone wall reappeared, his vision of its injuries was always more detailed than the one he had seen before. Cracks appeared in the parts of the wall that were not yet broken. The crude wooden walls he had ordered built stood in splintered isolation. Buildings sank while birds stood on the roofs that were at times nothing more than wooden spines. But for Heast, the devastation was only complete when, beneath the morning’s sun, he arrived at the fallen gate of Mireea and stepped onto the empty, fractured cobbled roads that led deep into it.
Heast had left Wila in the middle of the night, just over a week ago. Wading out until he was waist deep in the cold black ocean, he had been pulled into the dinghy by Kal Essa, the mercenary’s thick arms lifting both him and the tribesman into the boat. Once they were seated, Essa gently dipped the oars into the water and began to row. They had left as close to the low tide as they could, but the first half hour had been a struggle against the last of the high tide, not because it was powerful, but because the sound of the oars in the water threatened to grab the attention of the remaining guards on the bridge. Yet they made it to the shore before the morning’s sun threatened to rise, and were helped onto land by half a dozen mercenaries from the Brotherhood. Once the three of them were on land, a pair of large men loaded the dinghy into the back of a wagon and threw a tarpaulin over it before the ox began to pull it up the hills.