Leviathan's Blood (27 page)

Zaifyr folded the note carefully into squares, the curled ends resisting at first, until they were firmly creased.

The letter stung, especially with the growing sense of teeth digging against his skin. He did not believe the words were entirely fair – his sister clearly did not know that Eidan was with
the child, did not know the agreement that Jae’le and the Enclave had entered into – but yet, he had to admit that they stung also because there was truth in her words. There was
always
truth to Tinh Tu’s words. In them, he heard the echo of Aelyn’s accusations that he did not care for her own desires, her wants, and knew that she was not wrong. He did
not plan to let the child leave Yeflam. When he relaxed his control, he saw the dense layers of haunts around him, the generations upon generations of dead men and women who whispered for warmth
and food and he believed himself right, where Aelyn was not.

At the window, the white raven shook, stretched it wings, and drifted to the copy of
Fallen Pyrates
, its thick beak nudging the cover. The book was the first slim history written by
Bele Ferna, an elderly scholar whose academic history had become mixed with the popular style of fiction used in various mercenary novels. Ferna had, Zaifyr knew, done serious work in his youth,
but the ugly yellow cover of grand pirate books and quotes from a retired mercenary captain on the cover lent it very little weight. But the author had died in Yeflam, and his body remained in the
stone crypts, and Zaifyr had hoped that he would prove useful. Unfortunately, Ferna, who retold his story through the explorations of a young woman who dived for treasure in Leviathan’s
Blood, wrote mainly about the wrecks around the Eakar, about the fortunes still there, and viewed the stories of a siren who lured vessels to the coast to be nothing but a metaphor for greed.

For a moment, Zaifyr saw Aelyn, caught in the desire of her brother, being pulled to a jagged shoreline that promised only wreckage . . .

Ayae went out of the window.

A trampled garden lay below. Heavy boots had left tracks through the mud, leading to a broken fence and a narrow lane behind Faise and Zineer and their neighbour. From there, heavy boots led out
to the empty street, the morning’s sun falling through the shadows, illuminating the dirt on the path.
Left.
Ayae moved quickly, her bare feet barely hitting the stones as she ran,
her mind throwing up the images of the bedroom: the torn sheets, the broken table, and the blood across floorboards to the window sill.

Ayae ran on the edge of her control, her limbs warm and loose. She did not feel the morning cold and she knew that she could move faster, but fought the urge, afraid of what would happen if she
did. Her earlier recognition that her power would manifest only when she lost control lay in the back of her mind, but she pushed it away. She had to stay in control. She had to keep her mind
clear. She could not afford to make a mistake, not now. Faise and Zineer were not broken apples she could replace, juice on her fingers that she could wash away, pulp across the ground she could
clean. She had to stay in control, had to trust that the speed she moved at was faster than any individual could run, that it was fast enough to catch a group with two prisoners.

As the morning’s sun rose higher, Ayae could make out the shapes of carriages ahead.

They were at the bottom of the curved road and she heard the cries as the dark-blue-armoured guards saw her.

She could count fifteen, sixteen. Ten horses, but six of them were not attached to the two carriages.

The sword in her hand straightened and along the steel flames flickered to life. Shouts from the soldiers reached her ears.
Go!
Followed by
She’s here!
None wore the
pale-blue armour of the Yeflam Guard who enforced the curfew that had kept the streets quiet since the Million Ghosts. Their voices became indistinct, the cries a mix of panic and shouts as she
closed in on them. A long whip rose and the crack of it ripped through the morning’s quiet, the largest of the carriages shuddering into a run just as four men and two women quickly pulled
themselves onto their horses.

Ayae ran through them.

A short charge with her burning sword caused the horses to baulk, but they were too well-trained to throw their riders, too disciplined to flee, and the narrow gap between them that she aimed
for was filled with cuts and slashes and she was forced to parry, dodge and drop beneath the attacks while not slowing her run. Her bare feet twisted, the concrete tearing at her skin as she slid
beneath the last swing, that of a heavy axe.

Then she came face to face with a line of the unmounted soldiers.

The line crumpled as she hit it, her burning sword battering aside the heavy weapon she met first, slashing deep across the face of the man as she tried to force her way through the soldiers.
Her momentum took her up onto the chest of the soldier, using it to rise into the air, to launch herself over the men and women. She blocked a second cut, made a wild slash with her sword and
almost – the road leading to the carriage beckoned emptily as she landed – made her way through, but the mounted soldiers came charging and she felt a blade cut into her shoulders.

Her blade swept around impossibly fast and cut the following soldier from his horse. The animal rose on its legs and she dodged back. More riders came and Ayae felt her control slip as she met
the thrust of another woman. She twisted the weapon out of the woman’s grasp and grabbed her arm to pull her from the horse. She could feel the warmth in her own body, close, so very close to
overwhelming her, and saw the woman recoil from the heat in Ayae’s hand. The mail sleeve began to melt, burning it into the skin of the soldier as the horse, feeling its coat smoulder,
recoiled in fear and reared, throwing the woman across the stone road. Ayae took the woman’s fallen blade, longer than her first, and watched as fire immediately ran along its steel.

The next attack that came to her was slow and clumsy, and she side-stepped it, her blades cutting through the unmounted man’s face with shocking ease. The following attack felt slower, the
charge of a pair of horses at nothing more than a walk; she avoided both and her blades cut quickly, violently through those who had become no more than lethargic, ugly actors around her. Their
mouths opened to cough blood. Their gazes betrayed fear, anger. Their arms rose to become stumps. Fire caught on the hems of their cloaks and flickered poorly as if it were deciding whether to
burn, now that it was separated from her. She felt a touch of her old fear, that the fire would cover her, a cold shock that sped up the flames on the cloaks, brought the smell of smoke and burning
flesh to her nose. A cry for mercy from the desperate rider cradling her twisted arm – the last soldier,
the last
– finally brought Ayae to a stop and she turned to the bridge
that had taken Faise and Zineer.

A single figure waited there.

Leaving the weeping woman, she approached the familiar man. It was not until she reached the foot of the bridge that she realized it was the false priest. ‘Stop right there.’ He had
thrown off the robe and wore the same dark-blue mail as the other soldiers. On his right arm was the insignia of an overturned sky. ‘You will not cross this bridge,’ he said, the fury
in his voice overriding his very real fear, fear that showed each time his eyes glanced at the dead and dying behind Ayae. ‘You will stay here in Mesi, Cursed. Should you leave it, the wife
of Zineer Kanar will be killed.’

‘Where is she?’ Ayae demanded.

‘I provide you with proof of our intentions.’ He ground the words out and raised his hand, revealing a bloody cloth in his clenched hand. ‘Commander Gaerl wants you to know
that if you do not cross this bridge, no more will be taken from her.’

A flame flickered on his clothes, a single, isolated note on the hem of his trousers.

‘Zineer Kanar will be held accountable for his crimes,’ the man continued. ‘He will be punished by sword or by rope for what he has done, and if his wife is found innocent,
then she will be returned—’

The words turned into a scream.

The flame, multiplying with sudden angry speed, raced up his trousers, up his chest and to his hair. He made to run, but found that he could not, the fire having set into the skin of his legs,
the skin peeling, bubbling, bursting and turning black. He cried out, but Ayae ignored him and picked up the bloody cloth he had dropped, a cloth that the fire had not even singed.

Inside was a finger.

Ayae made her way to the lone, sobbing survivor of the soldiers who had taken Faise and Zineer.

She had questions.

‘You must understand,’ said Kye Taaira, ‘on the Plateau, to be without violence is strength.’ He sat across from Heast at the large table in Lady
Wagan’s tent, the morning’s sun soaking the taut cloth walls, leaving them warm to touch. ‘We are taught to live in harmony with the grass of the plains, with the trees, the birds
and the insects. We are taught to protect and herd the horses and the buffalo. We are taught that no blood must be spilt. Our women bear the burdens that they are born with and our men carry them
on litters during times of bleeding. Our children are born above the ground, delivered in high wooden beds that we must burn after. We grow gardens from dirt that we purchase in the markets of
Mireea, the vegetables and fruit planted in the back of carts. We drink from water we catch in towers. We wrap ourselves in cloths made by careful hands. We drain the blood of our dead into jars,
our shamans watching that no drop spills. All of this and more we do without violence. Our ancestors demand it of us.’

‘We are not on the Plateau.’ Heast’s steel leg was stretched out before him, the other curled under his chair. On the table between them lay a sparse breakfast. ‘Your
ancestors have no voice here.’

The tribesman began to pull the old leather gloves he wore off his hands, one finger at a time. ‘Yours speak enough for them.’

‘Do you mean the ghosts in Mireea?’ Muriel Wagan sat beside Heast, her exhaustion clearly evident to him. On the other side of her sat Reila, the healer, quiet and grey-haired. At
the door, the lean figure of Caeli stood guard, one ear and eye on what was taking place behind her, the other on the sandy, tent-riddled landscape of Wila. ‘I cannot imagine that they would
interest the tribes or their ancestors.’

‘What happens to you, happens to us, Lady Wagan.’ Kye picked up a thin piece of day-old bread. ‘The Leeran Army has come to us.’

‘How so?’

‘A small tribe by the name of Entia first encountered them,’ the man said, tearing the bread with his thick fingers. ‘They welcomed the soldiers with offers of food and water,
but the men and women who arrived were only interested in chattels. They took the Entia captive, though the tribe outnumbered the soldiers three to one. But the tribe responded as they should: they
became weights to be dragged, they reacted without violence. In response, the Leerans took the carts that held their food and loaded the prisoners on to the back. It was this that drew the
attention of all the tribes, and I do not doubt that the Leerans knew that they were being watched.’

‘They did not come looking for slaves, did they?’ Muriel Wagan asked. ‘They did not come to take prisoners when they marched up the Mountain of Ger.’

‘No, they did not,’ Kye Taaira agreed. ‘However, they did take the Entia with them after they left. We believe they were taken to be sold, an opportunity that presented itself,
not design. The design of the Leerans was quite different, their intent dictated by the young woman at their head. From a distance, it was clear that the soldiers followed her in a fashion akin to
worship, for though beautiful, she wore no armour and carried no sword.’ He dipped the torn bread into salted water and ate a piece. Once he had swallowed, he said, ‘Of the forty
soldiers with her, only one was but worthy of note, and that was the man who stood by her side, always. In appearance, he was no older than I, but he was much stronger. Across his back he carried
iron spears of such a weight that no ordinary man could hold them all as he did. Our shamans said that he was a powerful ancient being, a man our oldest ancestors knew and feared.

‘Soon, the man staked forty members of the Entia to the ground with his spears. He did it with ease, even when, in panic, members of the tribe forgot their vows and fought him. But no blow
they struck caused the breaking of skin, or the stopping of his actions. He drove spears into the chests of the Entia, plunged the iron through their bodies and into the ground, to carry their life
to the spirits of our ancestors.’