Leviathan's Blood (40 page)

‘Yet he did,’ Kaqua said. ‘Shortly before he raised the dead as ghosts in your very own city, very similarly to what he did in Asila.’

‘But unlike what happened in Asila, his actions saved the people of Mireea,’ Lady Wagan replied. ‘At no point should anyone forget that. Afterwards, he offered to come to
Yeflam in chains, to ensure that a place of safety was provided for the Mireean people. I was surprised by that, but I agreed. The Leeran Army was still in place. The mountain itself had begun to
crumble. My people were afraid and confused. I had little option, and I still believed that Yeflam would be the best place for myself and my people. Had I known that we would be treated as
prisoners, I might have turned down Qian’s offer.’

‘You are safe here, Lady Wagan,’ the Keeper said. ‘All the Mireean people are safe here. It pains me to hear that you doubt that.’

‘I doubt it because my enemy walks the streets and I do not.’

The silence that greeted Lady Wagan’s words was, Ayae thought, worse than the shouts that had arisen before. She turned to the judges, but could not find the discomfort of the crowd
reflected upon their faces. Rather, her gaze found the Keeper known as the Cold Witch, and discovered that the woman whose anger had been so focused on Zaifyr, now regarded her with the same
intensity.

‘Thank you, Lady Wagan,’ Lian Alahn said. ‘You may step down, unless Qian has questions for you.’

‘No,’ Zaifyr replied, his voice sounding strangely hollow, as if it spoke from a great distance. ‘I have no questions. However,’ he continued, and as he did, his voice
seemed to return to him, as if it had travelled a line to speak to the crowd, ‘I do believe I will speak now.’

‘You are given three chances to embrace the Leeran God,’ Jiqana said to me. When I found her, she was owned by a rich Gogair family in Xanourne who had put her to
work as a cleaner and cook for a private residency for diplomatic visitors. Before she had been blinded, Jiqana had been a chef, and it was because of these skills, in combination with her injury,
that she was purchased for a good price. The owner promised his visitors that no face would be remembered in the new home he did not live in. It had turned out to be a popular promise, but on the
evening that I met Jiqana, no one was in residence, and we talked long into the night while I made her tea in the kitchen. ‘The first time you are asked to embrace their god,’ she
continued, ‘is when you are first brought into the camp, but no one agrees. Everyone knows that if you agree the first time you are seen as a liar. The Faithful kill those who do agree and
then feed their flesh to their animals.’

Jiqana saw other horrors before she was blinded. She saw men and women who were horribly distorted, and whose bodies were being modified by other Leeran soldiers upon their request.
‘Spikes, bones, furs, they asked for it all to be fixed to them permanently,’ she said. ‘There were not many of these men and women though: I saw only two, for example, but I
heard others talked about. They all had two names, one for the past, and one for the future. The past names they spoke in a tone of reverence, while the present names were spoken in
fear.’

—Tinh Tu,
Private Diary

‘They talk, Mister Le,’ the First Queen said in her whisper-thin voice. ‘Behind our backs, in the corners, and with the dark to help hide their raised hands.
They talk about me. They talk about you. Occasionally, they talk about us together. They talk about how you did not show enough remorse when you asked for forgiveness, and they talk about how I
forgave you too easily.’

Bueralan pushed her chair to the edge of the balcony, the sound of Yoala Fe’s party muted behind glass doors. The First Queen rested in her heavy intricate wheelchair, a dark red blanket
across her frail legs, the image of a woman in her final years, in her decline of power, an image that she had maintained before the men and women inside her daughter’s mansion. She had spent
her first hours silent, offering smiles and nods to those who greeted her, before, seemingly reluctant, drawn into conversation. The people who spoke to her were Ooilan for the larger part, but a
few brown-skinned Saan offered greetings, including Usa Dvir. The tall, thin man had bowed slightly, and his gaze had lingered on Bueralan uncomfortably, but he had not greeted the saboteur. Dvir,
like most in the room, turned his attention to the Queen’s Voice, who stood beside the older woman. As they walked up the stairway to the mezzanine that overlooked the main floor, the
Queen’s Voice replied to all the questions given to her with gentle humour, a simple warmth and, occasionally, coldness. She was still in the party, holding court just before the glass door
Bueralan had closed.

‘You hear more than me,’ he told the First Queen.

‘Most of it I don’t hear at all, but they move their lips so clearly.’ A raspy laugh escaped her. ‘How quickly do you think they would hang you after my daughter kills
me?’

Earlier, when the carriage had drawn up to the entrance of Yoala Fe’s massive estate, they had been greeted by the First Queen’s youngest daughter. The Third Princess, Yoala Fe, had
opened the carriage door with her own hands – hands that were bare of all jewellery, as were her wrists and arms. Only her hair held any adornment: the long darkness of it had been wound
around the crown of her head and threaded with gold and copper. Following such simple fashion, Yoala wore a plain but elegant gown of yellow and orange that, despite its flattering cut, did not
hide the age that had crept onto her since Bueralan had last seen her. The years had stripped away much of her youthful beauty, leaving a hardness about her as she approached middle age – a
hardness that greeted him not just when her dark eyes met his as he emerged from the darkness of the carriage, but when two brown-skinned men who stood behind her crossed their arms, their thick
copper bracelets sounding like swords clashing.

‘They might let me live,’ Bueralan said, ‘once I said I had some remorse.’

‘Saan warriors with that many bracelets do not recognize remorse.’

‘With that many bracelets, they are not usually guards. They’re soldiers, veterans of the wars of the Saan. You only get a piece of copper after you’ve proved yourself against
another Saan. For most, it comes after you kill another in single combat. With their small populations, the Saan do not go to war like us. They choose representatives and those representatives are
here.’ Over the wooden railing of the balcony, he could see the long poles that punctuated the estate, and the flames that pushed back the dark. ‘I enjoyed our carriage ride. It is a
better memory than any I have of the Hundredth Prince.’

‘Such flattery.’

He smiled.

‘I remember him only vaguely, but I like to think that I am very much different to Jehinar Meih.’ The First Queen’s light hands lay in her lap apart, as if between her fingers
was the memory of a shape she had once loved. ‘I did not, for one, change my last name to mirror Aelyn Meah’s. He was such a fool, he believed that it gave him some claim to power. I
told him once that a name did not give one the right to rule, but the womb did. The right womb.’

‘He often quoted that.’

‘I said it in jest, but it has proven true.’

‘I have found it so.’ Further out, Bueralan saw one of the flames go out. ‘It has made poorer rulers than better ones in my experience, but Jehinar would not have been better
than you. Perhaps in my youth, I would have been better if I had seen the world before I met him, and not after.’

‘You were like so many of the young,’ the First Queen said quietly. ‘You wanted your change then, not later. You could not wait for the glacial slowness of our people to reach
the corner you had already turned. Had you been older, you probably would have died in Illate. But you were not, and so you had the Prince.’

‘I do not think now that Jehinar would have ended the trade.’ Zean had always said that, but it was not until after he had saved Bueralan and the Hundredth Prince that Bueralan had
seen the truth in his words. ‘At least you are turning.’

‘Your mother would enjoy your cynicism.’ A man’s shadow emerged on the road, making his way towards the dead light. ‘I would like to tell you that I forgave you because
of her, but that is not entirely true. If Samuel Orlan had not stepped out to speak for you, I would have used her memory to justify your return, but the truth is, Bueralan, what you have returned
to do is of great help to me in turning that corner. It was not what I expected, and I hope for your sake it is not a lie that has been chained around your neck, but even should it be, your blood
brother would be proud of what it will accomplish.’

Zean would think it foolishness
. He said, ‘Do you not believe that a soul can be reborn?’

The First Queen, the reborn Queen of the original five who had refashioned Ooila with steel and blood three centuries ago, chuckled drily. ‘Oh, it is true enough. If you have read the
books I have read, you would not doubt it,’ she said. ‘But I do not feel as if I am hundreds of years old, and I do not remember the intricate details of those lives. I remember merely
flashes, and those are of revolutions and changes, of sweeping away old, stagnant power that had been so much like a cage. Occasionally, it causes me to think that the cage still exists, and it
holds me and my daughters so very tightly.’

Far out on the estate, a flame flickered and rose. ‘The Saan that stood behind Yoala,’ he said, ‘are bridal gifts.’

‘To ensure that a Dvir son sits on a throne beside my daughter,’ she said. ‘It will be announced tonight.’

‘She is too old to have a child, by Saan standards.’

‘She is too old to be a princess.’

Bueralan did not reply.

‘You should have married her,’ the First Queen said sadly. ‘Like your mother and I wanted, so long ago.’

As the afternoon’s sun began to rise, Kye Taaira said, ‘We are being followed, Captain.’

‘We are also being watched,’ Heast replied. As he spoke, he pulled on the reins of his horse: ahead of him, the road that he and the tribesman followed, the road that led out of the
Mountains of Ger, broke down into jagged rips of soil and rock. It was different to the damage that had been caused by the earthquakes, much straighter and consistent. Ropes and ox had done most of
it, but amid the rope-burnt tree trunks that had been pulled to the ground and the rough edges of ploughed ground were the marks of axes and the remains of fires. It was destruction that had been
caused by the Leeran Army as they retreated down the mountain. Retreat was probably too strong a word for the path they took, Heast knew. General Waalstan and the Leerans had been bloodied in
Mireea but they had not suffered defeat – a fact as clear as the exposed roots of the large, broken limbs that had been torn from the ground. ‘It started in Mireea.’

‘It is an interesting distinction that you make. I would have thought to be followed was to be watched,’ the tribesman said. ‘This damage continues for some distance, by the
way. There is a new trail after the trees, but we will have to climb over the remains here.’

Awkwardly, Heast lifted his right leg over the back of his horse, trying his best to ignore the pain that ran in a line down his left leg as he did. He knew that the scar tissue where the steel
and flesh met had broken open – the sharp pain was what he felt when it was particularly bad. On the ground, his left hand fell to where the two met, while he held the horse’s reins in
his right. ‘Is the person following us one of your ancestors?’

‘I believe so,’ Kye Taaira replied. ‘He is at a great distance and he is careful, but I sense him well enough.’

‘Will he attack alone?’

‘Perhaps.’ High over the tribesman’s shoulder, the heavy hilt of his two-handed sword caught the sun’s light; but it did not reflect the brightness, or glint beneath it.
Rather, it looked like a darkly tarnished, brittle piece of metal. ‘I do not know which one it is, and how he or she acts will depend greatly on who it is. Who do you believe watches us,
Captain?’

‘I am not sure.’ Heast turned away from the other man, away from his sword. A long, broken limb led up to the fallen trees, where he could see the vague suggestion of a path made by
sword or axe. His good leg guided him up it, and the horse followed without reluctance. ‘Does it surprise you that the Leerans destroyed the road like this?’

‘I thought it strange when I first came through here,’ Taaira admitted. ‘It seemed to me that the road to an enemy had been cut off. But I told myself that it was cutting off
an enemy’s road as well.’

‘It is not what I would have expected from General Waalstan.’

‘I was not under the impression that the two of you had met.’

‘We haven’t.’

Heast slowly made his way along the thick trunk. The cutting of smaller branches and leaves had not been done to ease the path of horses, and twice, before he reached the huge rounded knot that
joined it to an even larger log, he was forced to stop and snap off sharp broken ends that would have dug into the horses’ flesh. Yet, as he continued, walking carefully over the uneven lane
of tree trunks, Heast’s memory returned to the night that he had led the retreat out of Mireea. He had expected the Leerans to follow them, to use the lightly armoured raiders to trail them
down the mountain, attacking their flanks. Each morning for the first week, he expected to awake to the report of men and women with filed teeth attacking, but no such report came. He had
eventually explained it by the presence of the ghosts in the city: any general would have a hard time pushing his or her soldiers through the broken streets, even more so with the earthquakes.
Waalstan had made a few mistakes assaulting the Spine of Ger, and while Waalstan had revealed himself to be a well-planned and thorough general, Heast had thought that he reacted slowly and poorly
to changes on the battlefield. Eventually, that characteristic had bled into his assessment of Waalstan and he had reasoned that the lack of pursuit had been unsurprising, but this . . .