Leviathan's Blood (15 page)

‘One of the papers we printed today,’ said Eira, her pronunciation clipped and precise. ‘It is called the
Ghaam Daily
. Quite popular.’

She descended the stairs from the first floor, the palest person Ayae had ever seen. It was not just her skin, which was smooth, but the long, simple white dress she wore. She had pale-blonde
hair, almost white, and she wore no jewellery but a simple silver bracelet that sat loosely around her left wrist. She was, to Ayae’s eye, a beautiful woman, her body a collection of slim
long limbs and, for a moment, as Eira left the stairs, as she drew closer to her, Ayae was conscious of her own leather trousers, her black shirt, her scuffed leather boots and, of course, her
sword.

‘Ayae, I presume?’ Eira smiled, but there was no warmth in it. ‘I had heard your name before you arrived here. You were Samuel Orlan’s apprentice, not so long ago. It was
quite an honour for someone with no last name.’

That’s how it would be, then. ‘You don’t have one either,’ she said without pause.

‘Santano. My family originated from Nmia. They are still there, actually. But I stopped using it when I became a Keeper of the Divine four hundred years ago.’

Ayae turned, reached for the door.

‘You’re leaving already?’ Eira asked.

‘Maybe you mistook me for someone else,’ Ayae said, her hand on the handle. ‘But I did not come here for this.’

‘No, you came to petition for the Mireean people.’

She released the door handle and, despite herself, turned back. ‘I did.’

‘Tsk. You should have walked out,’ Eira said. She stood next to a glass case a handful of steps from the door. ‘I might have respected you for that.’

‘They don’t deserve to be there,’ she said, saying the words, but knowing—

‘Of course they do.’

—that they would be ignored.

‘What I would like to hear from you,’ Eira said, ‘is what my beloved’s final moments were like. I hear you were there. In fact, I hear that you were the reason he died.
He and Bau.’

‘Why don’t you ask Zaifyr?’ Ayae said. ‘He was the reason they died, not me.’

‘I am forbidden to talk to Qian. We all are.’ Her pale hand fell to the top of the case she stood beside. In it were two large books, lying open. Between them lay heavy curved wooden
blocks with handles on one end and holes for typeface on the other. The typeface, made from big pieces of metal, was set out before them. ‘He is a little like this press here. A relic that is
being kept beneath glass. But he will be broken out soon. He will stand trial.’

‘He wants to,’ she said. ‘But the Mireean people aren’t on trial.’

‘They will stay on Wila or they will swim to shore,’ the other woman said. ‘They have said a number of things about Fo that simply are not true. He was not so foolish that he
would let a plague out that he had designed. And he would not ignore the Enclave’s orders, not now. Not when we had so much to learn.’

‘Yet he did.’

Eira stared at her, the room growing colder as she did.

‘You want to know how he died?’ Ayae said. ‘The dead tore him open.’ The glass beneath Eira’s hand cracked. ‘The dead are everywhere, do you know that?
Generations upon generations packed upon each other. Each day you and I walk through a thousand, unawares. Everyone does. Everyone except Zaifyr. He sees them. And all he did was give them enough
life so that they could appear before Fo and Bau and rip open their skin. Enough life so that they could devour what was there. Be sure to print that in one of your papers so everyone can read
it.’

A moment later, she was out of the door, and halfway across the street, her hands feeling as if they might ignite in anger.

Faise and Zineer were there immediately, but it was not until later, when she had gained control of her anger, that she could tell them coherently what had happened. By then, they had returned
to Mesi, to the small house, and the afternoon’s sun had set. ‘There’s a meeting of the Enclave next month that I’m invited to,’ Ayae said, once she had finished.
‘I had hoped – I thought that I might be able to make some headway into getting them off that island.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Faise said, sitting opposite her.

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘Not, but – you know what I miss?’ she said. ‘I miss being a witch’s apprentice. I had no stomach for that blood magic, but no one said anything bad to me when I
worked for Olcea. If I’d been like that war witch, I could have done what she would have and walked into that shop with you. I could have told that cold bitch what was what.’

Despite herself, Ayae laughed. ‘It wouldn’t have made a difference.’

‘Then I could have slapped Benan Le’ta and his paid soldiers around.’

That
caught Ayae’s attention. ‘I’m glad that you’ve noticed that they’re there.’

‘There were at least five today.’ Faise shrugged. ‘It doesn’t bother me. We’re pretty safe, I know that. But it’d be nice to . . . well, to be
powerful,’ she said, after a small hesitation. ‘To be safe because everyone was afraid of you.’

On the morning that Bueralan boarded a ship to Ooila, he had not seen Samuel Orlan for over two weeks. He had changed inns twice after the time in his first room expired, and
once again, a day before he walked up
Bounty
’s wooden plank.

It had taken just under three weeks to organize a passage to Ooila. It had been hard to find a direct passage to the country, partly because of the fighting in the east, and partly because of
the rumours that were beginning to emerge from Ooila. Aela Ren’s ship,
Glafanr
, had been seen in the waters, it was said. The Innocent had landed. His army was preparing to follow
him. The rumours were not new, but combined with the child, with Waalstan, and with some of the stories about ghosts in the Spine of Ger that had begun to emerge, it became another one of the
world’s problems. He was told by a number of captains that he could book a passage to Gogair or Nmia, but Bueralan did not want to pay for half a voyage. Financially, he needed to make the
trip in one booking. Eventually, after a week, the Ooilan spice trader
Bounty
pulled into harbour, and the young captain on it took Bueralan’s coin without a second question. He
would have to wait nine days before the ship set sail, but that did not bother him. He used that time to pull himself further and further from Samuel Orlan. Indeed, the old man appeared to have
made the same decision: after a few nights he stopped knocking on Bueralan’s door and when he changed inns, Orlan seemed not to know and not to care.

It was with some surprise, then, that Bueralan found the cartographer on the deck of the ship, waiting for him.

‘You’re not welcome here,’ said Bueralan bluntly. ‘I have had more than enough of your company.’

‘I sympathize with that, truly I do.’ The marks around Orlan’s throat were faint and he spoke in the voice he had had when Bueralan first met him. In fact, the weeks in Jeil
had been kinder to Orlan than him, and the old man appeared before him with a neatly trimmed beard, cut hair and new clothes. Expensive, black-dyed wool trousers, a black vest over a red silk shirt
and brand-new boots gave him the appearance of what he was: a rich man of considerable fame. ‘But it is a mistake to return home,’ he said.

‘It’s not your home.’

‘Neither is it yours. Do you think Zean would truly appreciate this?’

‘Don’t speak as if you know him,’ Bueralan said softly.
Bounty
shuddered as it pushed away from the quay. ‘You don’t know a thing.’

‘I know what a blood brother is,’ the cartographer replied. ‘I know what it means to own another man.’

‘Nobody owned Zean.’

‘It is not so dissimilar to the situation in which you find yourself.’

‘Nobody owns me.’ He took a step closer to the other man. ‘You certainly don’t.’

‘I don’t mean me.’ Orlan did not move back. ‘I mean what you are now. What it means to be god-touched.’

‘Ger helped me to help save himself, that was all.’ It would take but one push, one swift movement to force the old man into Leviathan’s Blood, to be free of him. ‘You
and the child can say it all you want but it doesn’t mean a thing.’

‘It does.’
Bounty
began to turn in the water, the smooth blackness broken by the dip and pull of oars. ‘You have heard the word, I’m sure. It is used in Yeflam.
In Gogair. It used to be a popular term for those who we now call cursed. But the child did not say it to you as if you were one of those men and women. She used it as it was originally intended,
as it was spoken by the gods so long ago. She used it with respect.’

‘She had no respect for either of us in Ranan.’

‘And then she sent you to another god-touched man,’ Orlan finished.

Bueralan frowned. ‘She didn’t—’

‘
When innocence is at stake.
’

His skin crawled suddenly. ‘Aela Ren,’ he whispered.

‘The Innocent.’

‘She said the same thing to you.’

‘She would,’ Samuel Orlan said, ‘but it is not true. She says it because she knows that the very first Samuel Orlan declined the offer of immortality when the goddess Aeisha
offered it to him.’

‘Why?’

‘It was an offer of chains. He killed himself a day later, believing that it was the only way he could be free.’ Orlan reached up and touched the pouch around Bueralan’s neck.
‘All the other god-touched men and women were made that offer, but you weren’t. You and your blood brother have more in common now than you think. You have no freedom. Your mortality is
pinned to a moment ten years from now, maybe fifty, maybe a thousand – to where Ger has decided that your death will be meaningful.’

‘Ger is dead,’ Bueralan said. ‘He has been dead for over ten thousand years. What happened beneath Mireea – I can’t explain that, but it isn’t what you just
said. There was no time for that.’

‘The world of a god is not our world,’ he said, taking a step away from the saboteur. ‘The first Samuel Orlan knew that. He has made sure that every Orlan has known that since.
Whatever they think, whatever they want, they think and want. To them, we are just cattle to that end. The very thought of one returning . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Why do you think I
gambled on going into Ranan to kill one that was half made?’

‘What makes you think you should go to Ooila instead?’ he asked. ‘That god you tried to kill is back the other way.’

‘But you are here,’ he said. ‘Soon enough, it will be clear what happened to you. Perhaps it will start to make sense, then.’

He walked away then, walked beneath the deck, to his cabin. He left Bueralan on the deck, Leviathan’s Blood growing around him.

The midday’s sun rose over five hundred acres of recently ploughed land. Heast, his pale blue gaze on the dirt road, watched the riders approach.

He stood on the deck of a small farmhouse, alone. Behind him, through the doorway, past the rectangular table, beyond a second door, his sword lay on a narrow single bed. Yet, as the riders drew
closer and closer, he made no move towards it: it would not help him against the flashes of blue that he saw, against the two score of the Empty Sky that Bnid Gaerl had sent. He knew that by the
time the head of the column thundered into the yard before the farmhouse, the leader pulling heavily on the reins of his black horse.

He was young, probably a little over thirty, and he had thick brown hair cut short around a tanned, handsome and dishonest face.

‘Captain of the Ghosts.’ If he expected Heast to react to his new unofficial title, he gave no indication of disappointment when he did not. ‘It was some work to find
you.’

‘I have been here for a month, Sergeant—’

‘Menan.’ He dismounted; the rest of the guards in dark-blue armour followed him in unison. ‘Is there no one here to help my men?’ Menan held the reins of his horse in his
left hand; his right held the sword he had slung from the saddle. ‘You surely haven’t been out here by yourself, Captain?’

‘I am afraid,’ Heast lied, ‘there’s just me.’

The other man’s humourless smile revealed straight white teeth. He handed the reins to one of his men and walked slowly up the stairs, the spurs in his boots clicking with each step.
‘I do not want to get off to the wrong start,’ he said, ‘but you don’t seem particularly disturbed that forty well-trained and well-armed soldiers are before you.’

‘That’s not how I would describe anyone who served under Gaerl,’ Heast said.

The response stopped Menan, two steps before him. ‘Captain, there is no need to be anything but civil. Let us both talk.’ He pointed to the open door to a room with a long wooden
table. ‘Surely we can act like professionals?’

‘You’re the one with forty soldiers.’

‘Exactly.’ Confidence returned, he brushed past Heast. Inside, the sergeant waited for Heast to enter, his hand on the chair closest to the door. ‘Please, take a seat.’
Menan laid the sword across the table. ‘It must hurt to stand for long periods of time.’

You’ve never been to Leviathan’s End.
Wordlessly, Heast made his way to the chair at the end of the room. The sword blade pointed to him.

‘Aned Heast. Captain of the Ghosts, Captain of the Spine, Captain of the Wisal Guard and the Behani Guard. But most famously, the last Captain of Refuge. I must admit, when I was young, my
father told me endless stories of Refuge and its soldiers. He had been a soldier himself and, I think, if he had not had a family, would have served in Refuge. If he could, that is. But after all
his stories, I used to imagine myself in Refuge’s battles. In yours, actually. I would always imagine that I was one of the sacrificing tragic heroes.’ He seated himself in the chair in
a swift, fluid motion, a contrast to Heast. ‘Youth. Nowadays, few even know the name Refuge, and even fewer know the names of the men and women who served in it. Only men like my father, who
sit in bars and drink away what pittance they have, remember.’

‘It can be a cruel life for a man who seeks fame,’ Heast said. ‘Indeed, it can. Still, in your final years, you must be content that you have seen nearly all the
world.’