Leviathan's Blood (48 page)

‘No,’ he said. ‘I will not.’

The First Queen waved away Captain Lehana’s offer of her arm. ‘You will bury my daughter with her soul around her neck, won’t you?’

He nodded, but did not trust himself to reply.

‘She would have killed me, or I would have killed her.’ She released her hold upon the door and began to walk to the palace gate. At his side, she paused. ‘But she was still my
daughter and my fury is a mother’s. You will not forget that, will you?’

‘No.’

When he returned to Yoala Fe’s estate, the lamps to the mansion lit a half-extinguished trail for him to follow.

The Innocent’s silhouette stood on the balcony, but Aela Ren made no move to acknowledge him. Beneath his gaze, Bueralan unhooked the horses and led them into the stables. Once inside, he
rubbed them down, fed and watered them, and then did the same for all fifteen horses in the stables. When he finally emerged, an empty, dark space greeted him on the balcony and Bueralan, his body
unable to stop, unable to rest, walked into the mansion and began to move the corpses outside.

The butterflies rose with the morning’s sun, pulling themselves from the broken dirt beneath Bueralan’s feet. They rose with the warm humidity and drifted around him, landing on the
bare skin of his back and the tattoos on his arms; they touched the cold pouch around his neck; they settled on the knife he had thrown on the ground and on the shirt next to it; they flocked to
the handle of the shovel when he paused in his actions; but mostly, they drifted around the bodies that lay in front of him, where many would settle between moments of flight to obscure the dry
wounds.

Samuel Orlan joined him before the first of the butterflies began to die. He had with him a pair of shovels, both of which he laid on the ground before he took off the jacket he wore, rolled up
the paint-splotched sleeves beneath, and began to dig wordlessly.

It was not until the Queen’s Voice said, ‘Is this to be our morning ritual, then?’ that someone finally spoke.

She stepped out of the mansion without her gold chains, or her beautiful, bloodstained dress. Stripped of her finery, she had changed into brown leather trousers and a dark-orange shirt, though
the latter, Bueralan saw, was a size too big, and cut for a man with square shoulders. On her feet, she wore a pair of old boots, the type that folded over at the top, the type that, he knew, held
a sheath that you could slide a dagger into without it slicing against the side of your foot.

‘There’s a third shovel,’ he said.

She did not move to pick it up. ‘So it is, then?’

He turned from her and thrust his shovel into the ground. ‘What’s your name?’

‘I told you—’

‘The Queen is not here.’ Bueralan bit the words off harshly. ‘It’s just the three of us, waiting to see if I know a name.’

She was silent as he dug and he half expected to hear her turn, for her to return inside, where the Innocent sat in one of the many rooms.

‘Zi Taela,’ she said, finally.

It was not
the
name, but then, how could it be? A god’s name would not announce itself with its family name first, would not follow with its first name, would not allow such a
simple act to ensure that it was distinguished from the wealthy noble families in Ooila. A god would know better than to begin fighting for two letters that it could claim as its own.

‘It is a lovely name,’ Samuel Orlan said when the saboteur’s shovel bit back into the ground. ‘Any one of the women who wanted to marry me would have been lucky to have
such a name.’

‘Is that a proposal?’ she asked archly.

‘I fear the grave I stand in is much too morbid a place.’

‘If the two of you are done,’ Bueralan said, his voice kinder than it had been before, ‘there is still a third shovel.’

She picked it up, but did not approach either of the two graves that were being dug. Instead, she said, ‘Samuel, why did he not die?’

The Innocent.
She did not have to say his name and the cartographer did not need to ask it. ‘He is god-touched,’ he said.

‘He said that both of you were.’

‘He was wrong.’ Bueralan turned to Orlan as he spoke, surprised by his answer. The old man stood in his shallow grave, stained in sweat and dirt, neither of which hid the red marks
of the chain that the Innocent had wrapped around his neck. ‘I am just a fat old fool who has forgotten that the task of cartographers is not to define history, merely bear witness to it. My
name is worth more than I am, worth more to all the lords and ladies and gods than myself. But you cannot test a name, you cannot measure its moral quality. But you can tie it to a strand of fate,
just as the God of Truth did to Aela Ren. You can make it mean something. You can make the people who take it mean something. That is how immortality is given. A god locks your death in a moment of
time that may have already taken place, or will never take place. It locks you there with all you may have once been, or once become. It takes away all the freedom you were born with.’

‘That’s what happened to Bueralan?’

‘Nothing happened to me.’ He thrust the shovel into the dirt, left it upright. ‘Let’s be clear on that. A dead god used me for one moment. I don’t know how, but
there were no trials, no ties to fate. His mountain fell on him afterwards and it nearly fell on me. I would have died if it had.’

‘You,’ she said, her dark eyes holding his, ‘you don’t react well to change, do you?’

‘I am not your saviour.’

‘I do not need a saviour. I am the Queen’s Voice.’ She turned from him and walked over to an empty piece of grass. With a solid thrust of her shovel, Taela pierced the ground.
‘She will not abandon me.’

Ce Pueral killed two horses returning to Cynama, yet still arrived a week too late.

The city was quiet when she rode through the gate, her soldiers an exhausted line behind her. The streets were empty but for soldiers and butterflies: the latter had settled onto the walls and
roofs of the buildings she rode past. Pueral saw boarded doors and windows painted with symbols of dried animal blood on them. It was an old protection ritual, useless in Pueral’s opinion,
but when one of their horses stepped hard on the paved road, or a sword in her pack jangled oddly, the hard, sharp sound tore through the city, and she understood the need another might have for
the symbols’ comfort.

In the middle of Cynama, the presence of the First Queen’s soldiers began to increase and with it a sense of normality returned to the city. Guards started to appear regularly on the
streets in pairs, their black-and-red-metalled hands on the hilts of their swords. Pueral saw citizens as well, and many worked at constructing barriers and roadblocks, further strengthening the
defensible line that had been created. Yet, by the time she rode through the final two blocks to the palace itself, Pueral had become aware that it was not just her soldiers she led to the gate,
but a wave of anticipation, and when she finally came to the palace, rows and rows of soldiers had turned out to await her.

She dismounted before their gaze. Her first quiet words were to her soldiers, whom she ordered to retire and see to the care of their new horses. Once that had been done, she began to walk
through the lines of soldiers, and stopped only once Captain Lehana emerged from the back of the square, the palace gate a webbed mouth closing behind her.

‘My Lady.’ The lean, middle-aged woman saluted. ‘It is a pleasure to see you.’

The salute surprised Pueral, but she returned it. ‘The First Queen?’

‘She is in the palace,’ the other woman replied. ‘She has left orders for you to be brought to her as soon as you arrive.’

As she walked through the gate to the palace, Pueral was aware of every soldier’s gaze on her.

She was uncomfortable. The First Queen had three generals who oversaw the military and in Pueral’s opinion, each of them was as capable as the other. Each was as loyal to the Queen as they
should be, the Eyes of the Queen knew, but Pueral was also aware of the fact that, in the last half-dozen years, she had gained a reputation among the soldiers as the spine that kept the army
upright. She had overseen a pay increase. She had weeded out a small corrupt element in the higher ranks. She had changed their armour – though she felt its weight keenly as she walked along
the tiled floors – and she had expanded their training to include practices both on and off the black ocean. Many of the decisions had been made with the Queen’s generals, and she had
been sure to acknowledge each of their contributions over her own, but it was clear, as she mounted the stairs, just who the average soldier relied on.

Inside the Queen’s private chamber, Pueral found Zeala Fe alone. The First Queen sat in one of her heavy chairs in front of a large window, the table beside her littered with papers and
letters, an ocean of activity around a single, delicate teacup that trailed steam. Yet, what concerned Pueral most was the Queen’s health: her frail skin had sunk further into her bones and,
as the last of the midday’s light came into the room, it appeared to pierce the skin of her hands.

‘You have heard, no doubt,’ Zeala Fe said in a voice stronger than Pueral had heard in years. ‘He is here.’

‘I thought that I had found him in the Fifth Province.’ She picked up a chair and placed it beside the Queen. ‘Instead, he left a letter telling me he would be here.’

‘He does like to talk.’

Pueral grimaced as she sat. ‘You met him, then?’

‘He killed twenty-three men and my daughter.’ The gaze that turned to her was haunted. ‘He did not take a backward step once.’

She had heard about Yoala. A nobleman’s guard had stopped her on the highway to impart the news. He had seen her and her soldiers riding hard, and had left his charge to stand at the edge
of the road to flag them down. If Pueral had not known him from his decade of service – if she had not fought beside him in those years – she might have ridden past him. ‘I have
also heard that he took your Voice.’

‘Yes.’ The strength in the Queen’s voice faded with the admission. ‘My generals tell me that I should flee, that I should seek safety in another province or another
country.’

Pueral did not reply.

‘But I am the First Queen. I will not run. I will not desert my land, I will not abandon my people, and I will not allow him to silence me.’ She indicated the papers at her side.
‘My Voice is kept on Yoala’s estate with Bueralan Le and Samuel Orlan. He has not touched her. He talks a little with her and Samuel Orlan, but mostly, he converses with Bueralan. He
tells stories. He talks of the gods and of the future and the past. Sometimes, what he speaks of is nothing but horrors. At others, it is nought but triviality. I will have her returned when we
kill him.’

Pueral did not reach for the papers. ‘What you ask for may well be impossible.’

‘It may well be,’ she replied. ‘But would my Eyes be as foolish as my generals to ask me to turn away?’

The Eyes of the Queen would not.

Pueral remained with the First Queen until the afternoon’s sun began to set. It was then that the weight of her armour began to fall painfully onto her bones. She found herself constantly
trying to rearrange the weight of the leather straps and was eventually dismissed by the Queen, who told her to return in the morning after she had bathed and eaten and slept. In her own chamber,
Pueral sank into a hot bath with the words of the report in her mind, with the images of the generals – two women and one man – once again lobbying for the Queen to leave. They had
appeared within the hour of Pueral’s arrival, but while she could understand their point, she knew also that the First Queen simply could not flee. It was not about the Queen’s Voice:
the three generals had seen that as a point of weakness to exploit, but in doing so, they had failed to acknowledge the demands of a Queen’s power. It was her duty, her responsibility, and
the cruel acknowledgement that all the First Queen had done – all the changes she had brought to Ooilan society – would be no more if she ran from the Innocent.

After her bath, Ce Pueral did not pull on the soft bedclothes that had been laid out for her, nor did she slip into the bed that had been turned down by servants she had not seen.

Instead, she dressed in her leathers and tightened the belt holding her sword on her waist. As darkness began to set around the palace, she walked across the courtyard. She returned the salutes
she received and entered the barracks of the Queen’s soldiers. Inside, she walked down the long hallways until she found the witch, Tanith.

‘Tell me.’ Pueral picked up the jar that held the letter written in the Innocent’s blood. ‘How will this work?’

Before the morning’s sun rose, Heast sat wrapped in his cloak beside a dead fire and stared at the Mountains of Ger. He would leave the last of the mountains today: the
narrow path that he and Kye Taaira followed would lead them into the Kingdoms of Faaisha before the midday’s sun had set. From there the land ran into a vast scrubland.

The journey over the mountain had been without incident after they had discovered the body of Taaira’s ancestor. That had been the cause of greatest concern for the pair of them and, on
the night after finding the body, the tribesman had explained it to the Captain of the Ghosts. ‘I could find no trace of him,’ the tribesman said. ‘No sign of his blood or his
soul.’

‘It could be that the ghosts took him.’ Heast had laid his saddle on the ground and sat against it, his steel leg stretched out before him. ‘If a ghost can do such a thing,
that is.’

‘In truth, such knowledge is beyond me.’ His gloved hand dropped to the large sword beside him. ‘But I have a duty.’

‘There are still others.’

‘I must return with them
all
, Captain.’

Heast sipped his water. He had not liked the tone in the other man’s voice, but he made no comment about it.

‘But we have a more immediate problem.’ Taaira began to pull off his gloves to eat. ‘The name of the ancestor we found was Myone, I believe. Certain older wounds on his body
were reminiscent of scarification and he had been one of four or five who had done this to their body. It was a part of culture on the Plateau during the War of the Gods, but lasted no more than
two generations. The others the child raised who would have made similar changes to their own skin were not men and women who would hunt alone. Myone, however . . . shamans would tell a story of
how he enjoyed torturing enemy warriors. In it, Myone released those he captured on the Plateau painted with pig’s blood. He would use enough to draw the predators of the land to the men he
had captured. For two weeks the animals would hunt the soldiers, and once they fell, once the strongest in their packs devoured the enemy warrior, then Myone would hunt and devour the
packs.’