by Ben Peek
‘Heüala,’ he said, feeling a sense of amazement as he said it. ‘They return to the City of the Dead. There they will be reborn.’
‘Have you done this for us?’
‘Not just me.’ He told him the story, then. All of it. He laughed with a sense of relief and ran his hand through his hair every time he thought of the dead returning to Heüala. The charms in his hair brushed his skin heavily and he began to unwind them as he spoke, removing them all by the end. ‘There is a guardian in Heüala, now,’ he finished. ‘A soldier by the name of Queila Meina. She keeps the city open for all of us.’
‘It is an enormous thing that has been done, ancient one.’ The shaman bowed low. ‘The man who wielded this sword will have found peace now, thanks to you,’ he said, after he rose. ‘We hope that his next life will be one without violence.’
After that, Ayae led his family into the Mountains of Ger. Eidan found trails to ride upon, for the mountains looked nothing like Zaifyr remembered, from either the last time he had physically stood there, or when he had seen them with Meina, Anguish and Lor Jix. Around him, the mountain revealed itself in jagged bare lines, trees stripped from whole sides of the mountain range, while trails would suddenly turn into new lakes and streams. It took them two nights to ride from the base of the mountains to the ruins of Mireea, and more than once, the ground ran like a river with tremors, as if the mountains were still busy recreating themselves.
Once at the ruins, Zaifyr watched as the first steps not to rebuild Mireea, but to recreate it, were begun.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ Zaifyr asked, the first night. He sat beside Ayae on a long piece of the Spine of Ger, the starlit sky spread around them. ‘You could find a new home in any part of the world.’
‘I could.’ She shrugged and winced. Her shoulder, despite Jae’le’s care, was not yet fully healed, and Zaifyr suspected she would carry a scar once it finished. ‘Mireea was my home. But more than that, it was my sanctuary,’ she said. ‘It reached across the ocean, to the other side of the world, and offered me safety. I would like to see it represent that again.’
‘Do you need sanctuary?’
Before his memory could replay the answer, he heard a footstep behind him and felt a breeze run through his hair. ‘Aelyn,’ he said without turning.
His sister sat next to him. ‘I see you kept one,’ she said, pointing to the charm around his wrist. ‘I thought you buried most of them.’
The silver disc was attached to a strip of old leather. ‘This one is blank. The rest I did bury. It is a new world, after all.’
‘Is it?’ She pulled one of her legs up to her chest, rested her hands on it. ‘We haven’t really talked about the other world you saw.’
‘What is there to say? Our brothers were dead. Our sister. Ayae. You owned horses.’
That took her by surprise. ‘Really?’
‘They were grey. I saw them in the pen of the small farmhouse you built near the tower. I didn’t see it straight away. The tower had to break apart first. But you would come and talk to me over the years. For a while I was angry, but it didn’t last.’
‘I know that feeling.’ He heard, in her voice, the years of their strained relationship, the end of it above Yeflam. As if she heard it as well, she said, ‘I didn’t mean to kill you.’
‘I know.’ He reached out for her hand on her knee. ‘I’m sorry I made you.’
He kept it there for a while, her fingers curled round his until she lowered her leg. ‘What will we do, Zaifyr? In this new world, I mean.’
‘When I am well, I have a child I must visit.’ But that was not the answer Aelyn wanted to hear. She had lost so much. She had lost the most out of all of them and it was she, he realised, who needed her family the most right now. ‘Ayae is right. We cannot pretend we are not part of this world. We cannot look at it and do nothing for it. We have to ask ourselves what we can do.’
‘I have asked that before.’
‘This is different.’
‘Is it?’
Absently, he flicked the blank charm beneath his wrist. ‘We have to make sure it is,’ he said. ‘If we don’t, no one else will.’
2.
Elan Wagan’s funeral was a small affair. It was, Heast thought, an audience to acknowledge the death of a man that had happened over a year ago, not two days earlier.
The funeral was held not on Neela, but on the bare, dirty island below it, Wila. A single, steel-framed funeral pyre was built in the centre a day before and Wagan’s body was laid on top of it, wrapped in multicoloured cloth, before Heast and the others arrived. Unlike the funeral pyres outside Mireea, the new pyre had no image of the gods on the framework. It was not the shortness of preparation time that had kept it off: the night before, Muriel had told him that she intentionally ordered it to be left blank. ‘People have already complained about it,’ she said. ‘They hear that the dead are leaving, that they are no longer trapped in our world, and they think that it is the work of the gods. Or a god.’ Heast thought of that again as she lit the pyre of her husband. He thought of the speech that she could have given to the small group of people who stood on the dirty sand. How she could have said that the gods had kept the dead here, how their war had raged for thousands of years with souls as weapons. How the dead could only return to Heüala now because the gods were gone. It was a story that the shamans out of the Plateau were telling and Muriel Wagan could have repeated it, but she didn’t. Instead, she greeted all sixteen men and women as the fire burned her husband and thanked them for their presence.
Heast accompanied her back to her house after they left Wila. People were scattered through the streets that they walked through, some carrying long trestle tables and chairs. Many put down their loads and came to offer their condolences to Muriel and her daughter, Eilona, who was half a dozen steps behind her with her partner. Her daughter looked mostly exhausted, but that was not terribly surprising, Heast thought.
Muriel bid her daughter goodbye at her house, left Caeli at the door to stand guard, and led Heast inside. With the door shut, it was quiet and still, the front room empty but for a few stubborn bloodstains on the ground. A flight of stairs upwards, a narrow hallway and a small back room revealed an old leather couch facing the open window. Against the wall were glasses and two bottles of laq.
‘Later today,’ Muriel said, as she handed him a glass, ‘I have a meeting with Ayae. I am told that she will be asking for the land Mireea was on.’
‘Asking?’ He took the glass, took a seat on the couch and stretched his steel leg out in front of him. ‘You might say no to her, but not to the rest of them.’
She sat beside him, a glass in her hand. ‘I don’t plan to say no. It will be years before anyone can live in Mireea and it will be longer without her influence.’ She took a drink and sighed. For the first time since he had returned to Neela, he saw her relax. ‘Besides, I hear she killed the Innocent and carries his sword, now.’
‘She carries that burden.’ The news had been in Jeil before Heast and Refuge reached the port to catch a ship down to Yeflam. ‘She does it to tell people he is dead.’
‘Then Mireea is a price she can name,’ Muriel Wagan, the former Lady of the Spine, said. ‘But what of you, Aned? What is next?’
‘Refuge needs to rebuild.’ He took a sip of the laq. ‘We’ll go to Leviathan’s End for that, I think. Once that is done, we have work in Illate.’
‘Illate?’ He saw her surprise. ‘You never struck me as the kind of man who kept unfinished business.’
‘It is the second half of Zeala Fe’s contract.’ He offered her half a smile. ‘Maybe I’m getting old, but it doesn’t hurt that it is Illate.’
‘Next you’ll be adopting children.’
He laughed, despite himself. ‘I have mercenaries instead.’
She made a noise, part disagreement, part agreement. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but since you are in the mood for change, my daughter’s partner made a request of me the ot
her night. Laena wants me to ask you if you’d consider an authorized biography.’
‘The war didn’t change me, Muriel,’ Heast said. ‘That is about the last thing I want.’
‘No, the last thing you want is a hack following you and your mercenaries around to write The Adventures of Refuge. This would be a very different thing.’
‘You can’t think this is a good idea.’
‘At first, I simply thought you wouldn’t be part of it, so I didn’t think about it. But the idea has stuck. I’ve rescued thousands of books from Nale in the last two weeks. I’ve been in contact with the other lords and ladies of Yeflam – that is what they call themselves now, you know.’ Heast had heard. Yeflam, it appeared, was drifting towards being a council of city states. ‘They defined the world, Aned,’ Muriel continued. ‘These books, these histories – they define what has gone before us. But what has been missed? What person, what man or woman, was lost, because he or she was too humble? It shouldn’t happen to the Captain of Refuge.’
He did not agree, but the thought stayed with him after he left, after he climbed into the small carriage that took him away from the Lady of Neela, who had not entirely lost her title as the Lady of the Ghosts, not yet. He sat in the empty carriage, his steel leg thrust out before him, and tried to push the thought from his mind. Authors had written about him before, he knew. There had been a pair of books about his tactics, dry works for which academics had sent him letters with questions he never bothered to answer. He had not stopped those books being published, but he had stopped a handful of others, cheap fictions that promised little truth. But a biography? An authorized biography? No, he told himself as the carriage stopped outside The Collapsed City, the inn Refuge were lodged at. No, he did not need anyone to write about him.
Inside, the spacious bar was dotted with soldiers from both Refuge and the Brotherhood. He saw Oya and Qiyala next to Jaerc, the former baker’s apprentice who had petitioned him for a place. Kal Essa had vouched for him – ‘The boy,’ he had said, ‘has a good hand with a pot of food and a steady hand on a sword’ – and Heast had taken him on as a cook and soldier. The scout Fenna nodded at him as he pressed deeper into the inn. She was practising on a flute, but paused to answer his question, to point towards the back, where a series of long tables looked out over Leviathan’s Blood. At the furthest, he found Lehana and Anemone, drawn together by both the chains of command and the dead that were still part of the Witch of Refuge.
‘Captain,’ the former said, as he approached. ‘How was the funeral?’
‘Fitting.’ He took a seat on the other side of Lehana, placing her in the middle. ‘Are most still sleeping?’
‘There’s not much to do on Neela, but there’s enough to drink.’
‘We’ll start tightening the company purse strings in a few days.’ Zeala Fe’s gold would go a long, long way, Heast knew, if he used it right. He’d probably have to employ an accountant to help him with that. Before, or after Leviathan’s End, he thought, he would visit Tjevi Minala again. ‘Have you given thought to what I said?’
‘You could have asked Anemone first,’ Lehana said. ‘She might say no.’
‘I said yes,’ the witch replied. ‘You know that.’
The Lieutenant of Refuge sighed. ‘I asked around,’ she said. ‘No one who served in the First Queen’s Guard has any objection to Kal Essa or the Brotherhood. But – well, here’s my concern: if we are really going to go to Illate, ex-soldiers from Qaaina are not going to make that easy for us. It’s already going to look bad when the Queen’s old guard shows up under the Captain of Refuge. If the Queens don’t immediately march on us it’ll be a miracle.’
‘How much worse do you really think soldiers from Qaaina are going to make it? I don’t think it’ll matter after they see the badge that you’re wearing,’ Heast said. ‘Even if they do march, there’s not a thing we can do to make it easier. It’s going to be hard, and it isn’t going to be won in a day or two, maybe not even in a whole year. We’re going to need good soldiers and Essa is a good soldier. But if he joins with us, you’ll be sharing rank with him. It won’t happen if you don’t want it to happen.’
‘I know.’ She let out a breath, turned to Anemone, then back to Heast. ‘Okay, make him an offer. But tonight, sir, we’d like for you to meet with a young woman who came in here yesterday. Her name is Laena.’
Eilona’s partner. ‘She came to speak to you as well?’
‘Actually,’ Anemone said, ‘she came looking for you, but you weren’t here. Grandmother had us talk to her.’
‘I don’t need a biographer.’
‘The witch and the soldier disagree.’
‘Soldiers, actually,’ Lehana added casually. ‘The girl got quite the audience.’
‘Grandmother says you should meet with her,’ the witch said. ‘You can do it before you meet with Bueralan Le tonight.’
The soldier frowned slightly at that. ‘You still going to make him an offer?’
The Lieutenant of Refuge did not agree, at least on his matter. ‘As I said, he’s a friend, and I think he needs a friend, now.’
‘I don’t disagree with that,’ she said. ‘But, Captain, I think he might be broken.’
3.
After her stepfather’s funeral, Eilona returned to her home and slept. The last three weeks of waiting for Elan Wagan to die had left her exhausted, but she didn’t realize that until she saw her mother light the wrappings around him, until the flames took hold. She was grateful that Captain Heast accompanied her mother back home.
Eilona did not even try to put off sleep when she returned home. In her clothes, she curled up on the blankets that made the bed she and Laena shared. She lay there, and thought for a moment that she was still awake, that sleep would not come. Laena pulled a blanket over her and closed the window, then settled in a place against the wall to read. But there were no words on the book she held, and soon, Laena’s dark skin began to darken, swell and turn into the witch, Olcea. She had come to Wila for Elan Wagan’s funeral. She had stood beside the healer, Reila, her hands wrapped in clean white cloth. She had offered both Eilona and her mother condolences afterwards. ‘Is Hien still with you?’ Eilona asked, a question she had asked days earlier, after she heard the news that the shamans from the Plateau were spreading. But in her dream, she asked it in her room, from her bed where she lay. ‘Yes,’ Olcea said. ‘The dead will not so easily give up those they are bonded to. To be reincarnated is to be reborn without yourself. But to be dead and given blood is to remain yourself. Blood is the drug of the dead, Eilona.’ The witch held a blank book in her hand, but there was blood on the cover. It came from her bandaged hands—
‘Hey.’ Laena’s hand pressed against her. ‘You having a bad dream?’
She was tangled and sweat-stained in the blanket. ‘I guess,’ she murmured as she unwrapped herself. ‘Sorry.’
‘You had to wake up soon, anyhow.’ Her partner’s hand pushed back her messy hair and she smiled. ‘Your mother’s dinner is in an hour.’
Dinner wasn’t quite the right word for it. Originally, her mother had invited the two of them and a handful of her friends over for a meal in her father’s memory, but as news of her father’s death moved around Neela, a larger dinner was born. A party, she had at first thought. A wake, Laena had corrected her. That is what Sinae is calling it. Her first response had been to sigh. The thought of it now made Eilona want to roll back into the blankets of her makeshift bed and sleep until next week. A wake was an old ritual, one in which the living sat beside the dead, and beside the grieving. It wasn’t a party. It wasn’t a celebration. Her mother, she was sure, felt the same, or even worse, but she still planned to go, and that was why Eilona would, as well. She could only imagine how exhausting it must have been to care for her father since his return from Leera. A part of her had thought that her mother had become inured to the state of Elan during that time, that she had, in fact, stopped seeing him as a person. It was not a criticism o
f her, but rather an acknowledgement of what would have been a very natural coping mechanism. A lot of Mireeans shared her opinion, Eilona thought, and she believed that part of the wake was motivated by a desire to support the Lady of the Ghosts, who had done so much to support them.
We should have done more, she said to Laena, later. We should have stayed after he returned from Leera.
Her partner had simply said, Yes.
‘I have been thinking,’ Laena said now, pushing her over, pushing onto the blankets. ‘Maybe we ought to tell Sinae we do want furniture. I know he runs prostitutes. I know he runs Neela’s black market economy. I also know he has no respect for history. But I like him and I bet he could get us a bed.’
‘If we get a bed, you’ll want a couch.’ Eilona wrapped her arm around her partner’s waist. ‘There’ll be no end if we get a couch.’
‘Maybe that’s okay.’
‘What?’ She looked out of the window, at the last of the afternoon’s light. ‘Did I sleep a week? Did you meet Aned Heast already?’
Laena laughed. ‘No, that’s later tonight, after your mother’s dinner. But I was just thinking about what you said earlier. About how we weren’t here.’
‘Yeah, me too.’
‘We’re not kids any more,’ she continued. ‘We can’t pretend we don’t have responsibilities for what little family we have. Besides, I think your mother wants us here. She made us that offer. That might be worth leaving the university for.’
As she rebuilt Neela, Muriel Wagan recreated the economy of her part of Yeflam. Through bribes, scavenging and hard work, she had brought over most of the library of the Keepers from Nale. In addition to that, Sinae had located a printing press in Gogair that was being shipped over. ‘Education, researchers, libraries, printing,’ her mother said to her, after she told Eilona. ‘We can build an economy here with that. We can’t rely on markets and trade as we did in Mireea. We’re too isolated for that now. Maybe once the roads through the Mountains of Ger are open we can start to rebuild that with Faaisha, but unless we have a miracle, that’s decades away. We need to have something else to trade and we need it soon.’