Leviathan's Blood

by Ben Peek

  10.

  The abandoned siege tower was clearly a trap.

  Heast had first seen it late in the afternoon. The afternoon’s sun was a solitary orb in descent and a cold wind had begun to move through the air, ushering in the night. The tower was made from wood taken from a Leeran town fence – Dirtwater, or one of the other larger towns – and it had fallen into a ravine where it leant, rather steeply, to the east. He had stopped before the narrow entrance to the ravine, before turning and riding to a thick set of scrub and trees. There, Heast had tied his horse to a branch and pulled out his narrow spyglass.

  The tower was spotted with fire damage, but it had not fallen into the ravine from the stone ledge that it leant slightly over. There were tracks leading alongside it, and broken rope, but the truth was, if the siege tower had gone over the side, it would have landed differently. Heast’s opinion was that it had been lowered down by horses or oxen, and he said so to Kye Taaira before he handed the spyglass to him.

  ‘Myone’s brother, Nsyan,’ the tribesman said, staring through the glass at the length of the tower. ‘Nsyan would take the captured children of his enemies and let them out in the field of battle. It did not matter when: in the morning, in the afternoon, in the night. He would do it before the battle began. He preferred young girls, no older than five or six, but not so young as they could not use words. He is quoted as saying, once, that the heart’s death was the creation of language. He fancied himself, I am afraid to say, something of a philosopher. He would release the children only after he had cut them. Across the abdomen, or chest, anywhere where the blood would flow the best. After that, he would release them onto the field of battle, to wander and cry and to draw out the soldiers he fought.’

  ‘I have seen similar things done,’ Heast said. ‘The tower is that kind of ploy, would you not agree?’

  ‘But it is not Nsyan’s.’ He handed the spyglass to him. ‘I do not sense him here.’

  ‘Good. That will make it easier.’

  ‘Do you plan to approach the tower? If I may say so, that does not seem a particularly good idea.’

  ‘No, but another will come to the tower. We only have to wait.’ Heast began to walk back to where the horses had been tied, the spyglass tapping against his good leg. ‘Maosa is half a day’s ride from here. The tower is surely a trap for them.’

  ‘Why would they so willingly enter a trap?’

  ‘Because they will be ordered to do so by a fool.’

  After the border, the pair had intermittently passed crucified soldiers. They had passed sixteen before they came to the entrance of the ravine and the siege tower. Each of them had died on the wood, the last of them only days ago, Heast believed. The Leerans had stripped each soldier of their armour and their weapons but left, around the waist of each, a crimson sash. Heast had looked at the bodies of the men and women, but all but two were too young for him to have known them. Of the two who were not, Heast had known one, but only briefly.

  ‘You’ve been to Maosa,’ he said now to the tribesman, ‘so you must have met Kotan Iata. You must have seen that he is an incredibly vain man who, for years, has wanted to style himself Warden of Faaisha. He has a fantasy of being a man who keeps the peace through his military skill. In truth, it is not a difficult ambition: most of the wars in the Kingdoms of Faaisha are against each other, and Iata’s first attempt at being a Warden began by intervening in a series of small domestic battles with his neighbours. He won them because he had more money and more soldiers.’

  ‘Yes, I know of the man. I have not met with him, but I know of him. He was stripped of all but his hereditary land ten years ago,’ Taaira said. ‘It was said that only the respect his father had been held in allowed him to keep that much.’

  ‘He was a lucky man, but it will have burned him. He will see this as a way to regain what he lost.’

  ‘I am afraid that I do not quite see what it has to do with us.’

  Heast reached for the sword on the back of his horse. ‘Iata will send soldiers to take the tower.’

  ‘You plan to rescue them?’

  ‘We plan to rescue them. Unless you have a desire to step away?’

  ‘No.’ A smile flickered on his face. ‘No, but I am curious why you would help Kotan Iata? It does not appear that you think well of him.’

  ‘I do not.’ He began to buckle the sword around his waist. ‘But we will need soldiers, and I am afraid that they will not come without risk.’

  ‘I believe I understand.’

  No, Heast thought as he adjusted to the weight of his sword, I do not think you do.

  Ahead, the tower sat like a dark finger pointing away from Faaisha.

  11.

  Ce Pueral had never had a family of her own. There had been a man when she had been in her early twenties who had proposed, and another in her mid-thirties, but eventually those two men had been no more than the men before and after. Her parents had died a decade earlier, separated by a pair of years, and her brother, who had been born with a severe intellectual disability, had died before the age of seven. She could still remember the slow tragedy of that unfolding before her young gaze.

  Her room in the palace was filled with unused space, and she kept no mementos of her family or the two men. They were indulgences, and she believed such things had to be cut out of a soldier’s life, which she had done for all but two pieces of furniture. They were the largest pieces in her room and would not, at first glance, have appeared to be an indulgence. They were two human-sized wooden stands that held her armour. On the right stand sat the lightweight black-and-red suit: half of it had already been removed as she strapped it into place. On the left sat the heavy gold-rimmed armour she had worn nearly two decades ago. She had not put it on since it had been decommissioned and wondered what would be made of it after she failed to return one day. No doubt, whoever opened the door to her room, whoever the First Queen assigned the task to, would believe it to be a memento of her life in the military, similar to the broken swords soldiers kept, the horseshoes, the knives, the boots that had more meaning to them than the medals that they were given. Perhaps whoever stood there would think that the armour had saved her life, had taken on a value to her because of a single act that had nearly seen her die.

  It had saved her life, of course, but that was not why she kept it.

  The day before last, the Saan Prince, Hau Dvir, had been brought to the palace. One of the scouts around Yoala Fe’s mansion had caught him bursting out of the property and had picked him up after it was apparent that no one was following. The scout had brought him back and presented him to Captain Lehana, who locked him in a cell at the bottom of the palace before word was sent to the First Queen and Pueral.

  Pueral took an immediate dislike to Hau Dvir. He was weak, and that weakness, she believed, was derived from a mixture of parental indulgence and class arrogance. He stood in the middle of the cell as she and the Queen made their way down to the end of the empty jail. The latter was in her heavy wheelchair, pushed by Captain Lehana, who had taken the duty from a silent young man when the Queen had appeared.

  At the cell, however, Zeala Fe rose from the chair and stood before the bars. ‘I will be honest,’ she said, her voice not yet cold, but cool. ‘If I decide to kill you, there will be nothing to distinguish your death from those of the men you arrived with.’

  ‘Please, I beg for mercy.’ Hau took a step forward, but stopped as both Pueral and Lehana reached for their swords. ‘Please,’ he said again. ‘I was to be married to your daughter.’

  The Queen’s smile was thin. ‘Would I have lived to see the wedding?’ she asked.

  He faltered and took a step backward. ‘I don’t – why would – I was never told anything like that.’

  ‘So you know nothing?’

  ‘I’m innocent!’ The Saan Prince blurted the words out, then took a second step backwards. ‘I didn’t, I’m sorry!’

  ‘Let us see if you know something,’ the First Queen said,
the cold in her voice growing. ‘Did you know that there were soldiers around the estate?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly, the words falling over themselves. ‘No, I ran. I was lost, I didn’t see anything until I saw the stables.’

  ‘Who found you?’

  ‘The—’ He wanted to say black, Pueral saw, but bit back the word. ‘The big man. The one with the tattoos. The girl was with him.’

  ‘The Queen’s Voice?’

  ‘He called her something else when they saddled the horse, I don’t remember.’

  The First Queen fell silent. Across from her, the Saan Prince shifted on his feet, unaware of the importance of what he had said, unaware of the concern he had lodged in the old woman before him, the symbolic value that was contained in the words. ‘Did either the woman,’ she said, finally, ‘or even the man, tell you that you would be found by soldiers?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Hau Dvir replied quickly, ‘the man with the tattoos told me to sell the horse.’

  Pueral felt a ripple of relief pass through her. She had been waiting to hear that, to hear that their plans were not known to those on the estate. If they had been, Bueralan would have sent the boy out with different words. Oh, she did not doubt that the saboteur knew that people were watching the estate. She assumed all of them – especially Aela Ren – knew that. It was merely the extent that Pueral was concerned with, but the Eyes of the Queen was confident that, had he or the Queen’s Voice known, and had Ren also known, then Bueralan would have told Hau a different lie.

  The First Queen asked a dozen other questions, each of them probing for information about the force she had around her daughter’s estate, and Pueral’s initial relief held true. The boy knew nothing. Bueralan had said nothing. The only concern, then, was the fatalism of the Queen’s Voice, which, in Pueral’s estimation, was a reasonable response to the situation.

  Finally, the First Queen returned to her wheelchair and, without a word of goodbye, left the prison. Each cell passed her, dark and empty, and the Saan Prince’s voice followed, pleading for them to come back, begging for mercy.

  ‘Put him on a boat to the Saan,’ the First Queen said, after they had left. ‘Give him a letter and let him explain it all to his father.’

  ‘And then?’ Captain Lehana asked.

  ‘We begin,’ the Eyes of the Queen said.

  Fully dressed now, Ce Pueral gazed at the old armour.

  She would not serve another Queen. Pueral had known that from the day she had become a member of the First Queen’s private guard. On the day the Queen died, she would be retired. She had accepted the fate when she accepted the position. The only question was how she would be retired: a sword or a quill. It depended on which daughter succeeded and the manner of her succession. But the knowledge had never brought bitterness to her. She could not have asked for more in her life.

  Ce Pueral inclined her head gently to the armour, then left the room.

  The Eyes of the Queen

  She drew the creature for me, but it was nothing that I had seen before. If it is real, if it is not the work of the poor girl’s mind trying to hide the horror of a knife descending into her eyes, then the creature is like its god: it is unnamed.

  —Tinh Tu, Private Diary

  1.

  The cart held two hundred and six steel boxes, one for each bone in Aela Ren’s body.

  It followed Pueral along the road to Yoala Fe’s mansion, drawn by a single brown horse and driven by Ae Lanos. Beside him sat the witch Tanith, her satchel heavy at her feet. The pair looked as if they were characters from a fable, where an elderly father rode beside his grown daughter on an awful delivery that they fulfilled only because it was required of them. At the front, Pueral believed that she was the guard captain, the loyal servant who knew too much . . . but the indulgence was short-lived. She saw it as a sign that the weight of the situation had begun to overwhelm her, and that in defence, her mind had begun to shy from reality, into a world of fables and myths, where for much of her childhood the Innocent had been such a character.

  Before she had left, before Pueral had walked out through the palace gate alone, she had met briefly with the First Queen. Against the morning’s light, Zeala Fe appeared to be a frail figure, one whom a stronger light would break apart. Yet, as Pueral closed the door, the Queen rose from the chair under her own strength and spoke in a voice that, a month ago, the Eyes of the Queen would not have recognized as Zeala Fe’s own.

  ‘A historian might write that we spoke of ordinary things,’ the First Queen said, her hand on Pueral’s. ‘Strategies and alliances, and the weaknesses and strengths of both.’

  ‘A conversation already had,’ she replied.

  ‘I would rather history record that we spoke of our anger.’

  It was the fury within the First Queen, not the illness she had battled for so many years, that would consume the last of her body, Pueral knew. ‘It will be announced,’ she said, placing her hand over the Queen’s. ‘Soon enough, with swords and fire, and no historian will need doubt our response to Aela Ren.’

  ‘Thank you, my friend.’

  In the courtyard, the steel boxes had been stacked onto the back of the cart in order of size. The longest – those that would hold parts of legs and arms – were on the bottom, while boxes that would hold hands, pieces of spine, and fingers, sat on top. Each was uniform in design, made by the chief armourer on specific orders from Pueral, and there was no ornament on any. They were smooth and heavy and, once locked, would be taken into different parts of Ooila, where deep holes would be dug to bury them. Soldiers would stand on the lips of dormant volcanoes before releasing their weight; they would be carried under guard to the ports, where ships would head out into the wide, empty space of Leviathan’s Blood; they would travel beyond the edges of Samuel Orlan’s maps. All the parts of the Innocent, all but the skull, the crown of his body, would be taken far away from Cynama.

  Pueral did not believe it would be simple to kill the Innocent. She had listened to the First Queen’s description of the battle with the Saan more than once and, though she did not agree with Bueralan Le’s assessment of the Saan and Ooilan soldiers, she nonetheless understood that any one man who cut his way through so many soldiers was not mortal. That Aela Ren had delivered onto himself a mortal wound after he had fought the men, to prove that he could not die, was to Pueral an unnecessary act.

  Still, he was one man.

  One man, no matter his skill with a blade, no matter his personal strength, and no matter the strange nature of his mortality, could be weighed down by a much larger force.

  Around Pueral, Ooilan soldiers began to appear. They did so in fragments, as if being assembled before her, as if they had been made from the sunlight. They were figures from the fable she had imagined earlier, creations given to guard the daughter and her father as they made their journey to the castle of the monster. But of course, it was nothing of the sort: they appeared because the camouflage spells that the witches had laid could not hide them as Pueral rode past so close, as she broke through the shell constructed of sunlight and moonlight.

  Pueral rode past black-and-red-armoured soldiers who stood before bedrolls and cold campfires, who pulled off the helms they wore to wipe sweat from their faces, who stood before tents and carts, and before lines of picketed horses. Ahead of her they formed, and kept forming, as over five thousand men and women were revealed around Yoala Fe’s mansion. That number was not the whole of the First Queen’s military, but it drew from the most seasoned, the most disciplined, from those who had experience fighting on horseback, and fighting with siege machines – machines such as the pair of catapults that she saw now, one already assembled, and one in the final stages of being so. They would be pulled into range of the mansion from here, but the witches would not go any closer to the mansion to work the large spell, and so the last of the distance would be made by flesh.

  In Sooia, the Eyes of the Queen told herself, surely such a thing had been tried. S
urely such huge forces had met Ren, and surely, they had crumbled. But there, he had been part of an army, a force that was – depending on which books she read – either huge and sprawling and disciplined, or made of such horror that it was clear no human rode at its head. That force had stood beside Aela Ren from the day he had begun his war, but it was not on Ooila. Had she herself not seen the beach on which the Innocent had come ashore, and had she not seen much of his early violence, she might not have believed so easily the reports of her spies that they could find no sign of Ren’s army on Ooila. Nor might she have believed the bloodstained assurances of the witches who said that he had walked from the coast to Cynama alone.

  Pueral no longer believed that the Innocent had intended to bring his war to Ooila. He had arrived on Glafanr, and he had done so with the intention of finding Samuel Orlan and Bueralan Le. He had not brought his army with him. Whoever had helped pilot the giant ship off the shore had stayed upon it and left Ren to his personal quest.

  By the morning, Aela Ren would realize that mistake.

  2.

  The torches marked the arrival of the Maosans long before they came close to the ravine.

  Taaira’s gloved hand had awoken Heast from a light sleep. ‘You will not believe what is to be seen,’ he said quietly.

  Stiffly, the Captain of the Ghosts pushed himself up, his right hand lifting the sheathed blade that lay beside him as he did so. In the few moments that he had had to process the tribesman’s words, Heast reasoned that they had missed their chance. Over the afternoon and evening’s observation, he and Taaira had found half a dozen Leeran soldiers hidden in the scrub around the siege tower, and Heast believed that at least two or three were within the tower itself. It was more than enough men and women to close the trap on the Maosans who entered, and when the night had darkened and the clouds had covered the moon and stars, Heast had reasoned that there was an even chance that he and Taaira would not notice the approach of the soldiers into the trap until it was too late. But when he reached the edge of their small camp and saw the torches, he realized that what he was seeing was much worse.