Leviathan's Blood (52 page)

‘If you don’t do this,’ Taela said calmly, ‘Aela Ren will find you and he will kill you.’

They had to saddle a horse for him. Bueralan chose a skewbald one, whose brown and white patches would show on the trails easily for any of the scouts watching the estate. There would be scouts,
of course: one of the first things the Queen would have done was ensure that all parts of the land were watched. On the off chance that he made it through whatever net was there, he would be
arrested at the first market he went to when Yoala Fe’s brand was spotted. The boy would crack and admit everything to the first person who talked to him, and Bueralan was fairly sure he
would be turned over to the First Queen in a short amount of time.

Hau Dvir could at least ride, Bueralan acknowledged as he watched the Saan Prince canter across the flat land. Taela had pointed him in that direction; after a few miles, the road met the edges
of the property, and he could follow that without having ever to pass the mansion.

Feeling strangely removed from the scene, Bueralan stood at the back of the stables beside Taela until he could no longer see the Saan Prince. It happened gradually, the butterflies lifting and
falling like a wave, until they obscured all sight of him.

When he was finally gone, Aela Ren said, ‘I wondered if you would find him this morning.’

The Innocent sat to their left on an overturned wooden pail, his legs stretched out in front of him. Butterflies drifted lightly to the scars on his hands and head, and settled on his legs, and
on the hilts of his sword and dagger.

‘He’s lucky,’ Bueralan said casually. ‘I wasn’t even looking.’

‘No one was.’

‘Do you plan to chase him?’ Taela asked. She attempted to match Bueralan’s tone, but failed on the final word. ‘To hunt him down?’

‘No.’ Ren rose, scattering the butterflies as he did. ‘But she is right, Bueralan: you should name your horse.’

The abandoned siege tower was clearly a trap.

Heast had first seen it late in the afternoon. The afternoon’s sun was a solitary orb in descent and a cold wind had begun to move through the air, ushering in the night. The tower was
made from wood taken from a Leeran town fence – Dirtwater, or one of the other larger towns – and it had fallen into a ravine where it leant, rather steeply, to the east. He had stopped
before the narrow entrance to the ravine, before turning and riding to a thick set of scrub and trees. There, Heast had tied his horse to a branch and pulled out his narrow spyglass.

The tower was spotted with fire damage, but it had not fallen into the ravine from the stone ledge that it leant slightly over. There were tracks leading alongside it, and broken rope, but the
truth was, if the siege tower had gone over the side, it would have landed differently. Heast’s opinion was that it had been lowered down by horses or oxen, and he said so to Kye Taaira
before he handed the spyglass to him.

‘Myone’s brother, Nsyan,’ the tribesman said, staring through the glass at the length of the tower. ‘Nsyan would take the captured children of his enemies and let them
out in the field of battle. It did not matter when: in the morning, in the afternoon, in the night. He would do it before the battle began. He preferred young girls, no older than five or six, but
not so young as they could not use words. He is quoted as saying, once, that the heart’s death was the creation of language. He fancied himself, I am afraid to say, something of a
philosopher. He would release the children only after he had cut them. Across the abdomen, or chest, anywhere where the blood would flow the best. After that, he would release them onto the field
of battle, to wander and cry and to draw out the soldiers he fought.’

‘I have seen similar things done,’ Heast said. ‘The tower is that kind of ploy, would you not agree?’

‘But it is not Nsyan’s.’ He handed the spyglass to him. ‘I do not sense him here.’

‘Good. That will make it easier.’

‘Do you plan to approach the tower? If I may say so, that does not seem a particularly good idea.’

‘No, but another will come to the tower. We only have to wait.’ Heast began to walk back to where the horses had been tied, the spyglass tapping against his good leg. ‘Maosa is
half a day’s ride from here. The tower is surely a trap for them.’

‘Why would they so willingly enter a trap?’

‘Because they will be ordered to do so by a fool.’

After the border, the pair had intermittently passed crucified soldiers. They had passed sixteen before they came to the entrance of the ravine and the siege tower. Each of them had died on the
wood, the last of them only days ago, Heast believed. The Leerans had stripped each soldier of their armour and their weapons but left, around the waist of each, a crimson sash. Heast had looked at
the bodies of the men and women, but all but two were too young for him to have known them. Of the two who were not, Heast had known one, but only briefly.

‘You’ve been to Maosa,’ he said now to the tribesman, ‘so you must have met Kotan Iata. You must have seen that he is an incredibly vain man who, for years, has wanted to
style himself Warden of Faaisha. He has a fantasy of being a man who keeps the peace through his military skill. In truth, it is not a difficult ambition: most of the wars in the Kingdoms of
Faaisha are against each other, and Iata’s first attempt at being a Warden began by intervening in a series of small domestic battles with his neighbours. He won them because he had more
money and more soldiers.’

‘Yes, I know of the man. I have not met with him, but I know of him. He was stripped of all but his hereditary land ten years ago,’ Taaira said. ‘It was said that only the
respect his father had been held in allowed him to keep that much.’

‘He was a lucky man, but it will have burned him. He will see this as a way to regain what he lost.’

‘I am afraid that I do not quite see what it has to do with us.’

Heast reached for the sword on the back of his horse. ‘Iata will send soldiers to take the tower.’

‘You plan to rescue them?’

‘
We
plan to rescue them. Unless you have a desire to step away?’

‘No.’ A smile flickered on his face. ‘No, but I am curious why you would help Kotan Iata? It does not appear that you think well of him.’

‘I do not.’ He began to buckle the sword around his waist. ‘But we will need soldiers, and I am afraid that they will not come without risk.’

‘I believe I understand.’

No
, Heast thought as he adjusted to the weight of his sword,
I do not think you do
.

Ahead, the tower sat like a dark finger pointing away from Faaisha.

Ce Pueral had never had a family of her own. There had been a man when she had been in her early twenties who had proposed, and another in her mid-thirties, but eventually
those two men had been no more than the men before and after. Her parents had died a decade earlier, separated by a pair of years, and her brother, who had been born with a severe intellectual
disability, had died before the age of seven. She could still remember the slow tragedy of that unfolding before her young gaze.

Her room in the palace was filled with unused space, and she kept no mementos of her family or the two men. They were indulgences, and she believed such things had to be cut out of a
soldier’s life, which she had done for all but two pieces of furniture. They were the largest pieces in her room and would not, at first glance, have appeared to be an indulgence. They were
two human-sized wooden stands that held her armour. On the right stand sat the lightweight black-and-red suit: half of it had already been removed as she strapped it into place. On the left sat the
heavy gold-rimmed armour she had worn nearly two decades ago. She had not put it on since it had been decommissioned and wondered what would be made of it after she failed to return one day. No
doubt, whoever opened the door to her room, whoever the First Queen assigned the task to, would believe it to be a memento of her life in the military, similar to the broken swords soldiers kept,
the horseshoes, the knives, the boots that had more meaning to them than the medals that they were given. Perhaps whoever stood there would think that the armour had saved her life, had taken on a
value to her because of a single act that had nearly seen her die.

It had saved her life, of course, but that was not why she kept it.

The day before last, the Saan Prince, Hau Dvir, had been brought to the palace. One of the scouts around Yoala Fe’s mansion had caught him bursting out of the property and had picked him
up after it was apparent that no one was following. The scout had brought him back and presented him to Captain Lehana, who locked him in a cell at the bottom of the palace before word was sent to
the First Queen and Pueral.

Pueral took an immediate dislike to Hau Dvir. He was weak, and that weakness, she believed, was derived from a mixture of parental indulgence and class arrogance. He stood in the middle of the
cell as she and the Queen made their way down to the end of the empty jail. The latter was in her heavy wheelchair, pushed by Captain Lehana, who had taken the duty from a silent young man when the
Queen had appeared.

At the cell, however, Zeala Fe rose from the chair and stood before the bars. ‘I will be honest,’ she said, her voice not yet cold, but cool. ‘If I decide to kill you, there
will be nothing to distinguish your death from those of the men you arrived with.’

‘
Please
, I beg for mercy.’ Hau took a step forward, but stopped as both Pueral and Lehana reached for their swords. ‘Please,’ he said again. ‘I was to be
married to your daughter.’

The Queen’s smile was thin. ‘Would I have lived to see the wedding?’ she asked.

He faltered and took a step backward. ‘I don’t – why would – I was never told
anything
like that.’

‘So you know nothing?’

‘I’m innocent!’ The Saan Prince blurted the words out, then took a second step backwards. ‘I didn’t, I’m sorry!’

‘Let us see if you know something,’ the First Queen said, the cold in her voice growing. ‘Did you know that there were soldiers around the estate?’

‘No,’ he said quickly, the words falling over themselves. ‘No, I ran. I was lost, I didn’t see anything until I saw the stables.’

‘Who found you?’

‘The—’ He wanted to say black, Pueral saw, but bit back the word. ‘The big man. The one with the tattoos. The girl was with him.’

‘The Queen’s Voice?’

‘He called her something else when they saddled the horse, I don’t remember.’

The First Queen fell silent. Across from her, the Saan Prince shifted on his feet, unaware of the importance of what he had said, unaware of the concern he had lodged in the old woman before
him, the symbolic value that was contained in the words. ‘Did either the woman,’ she said, finally, ‘or even the man, tell you that you would be found by soldiers?’ she
asked.

‘No,’ Hau Dvir replied quickly, ‘the man with the tattoos told me to sell the horse.’

Pueral felt a ripple of relief pass through her. She had been waiting to hear that, to hear that their plans were not known to those on the estate. If they had been, Bueralan would have sent the
boy out with different words. Oh, she did not doubt that the saboteur knew that people were watching the estate. She assumed all of them – especially Aela Ren – knew that. It was merely
the extent that Pueral was concerned with, but the Eyes of the Queen was confident that, had he or the Queen’s Voice known, and had Ren also known, then Bueralan would have told Hau a
different lie.

The First Queen asked a dozen other questions, each of them probing for information about the force she had around her daughter’s estate, and Pueral’s initial relief held true. The
boy knew nothing. Bueralan had said nothing. The only concern, then, was the fatalism of the Queen’s Voice, which, in Pueral’s estimation, was a reasonable response to the
situation.

Finally, the First Queen returned to her wheelchair and, without a word of goodbye, left the prison. Each cell passed her, dark and empty, and the Saan Prince’s voice followed, pleading
for them to come back, begging for mercy.

‘Put him on a boat to the Saan,’ the First Queen said, after they had left. ‘Give him a letter and let him explain it all to his father.’

‘And then?’ Captain Lehana asked.

‘We begin,’ the Eyes of the Queen said.

Fully dressed now, Ce Pueral gazed at the old armour.

She would not serve another Queen. Pueral had known that from the day she had become a member of the First Queen’s private guard. On the day the Queen died, she would be retired. She had
accepted the fate when she accepted the position. The only question was how she would be retired: a sword or a quill. It depended on which daughter succeeded and the manner of her succession. But
the knowledge had never brought bitterness to her. She could not have asked for more in her life.

Ce Pueral inclined her head gently to the armour, then left the room.

She drew the creature for me, but it was nothing that I had seen before. If it is real, if it is not the work of the poor girl’s mind trying to hide the horror of a knife
descending into her eyes, then the creature is like its god: it is unnamed.

—Tinh Tu,
Private Diary

The cart held two hundred and six steel boxes, one for each bone in Aela Ren’s body.

It followed Pueral along the road to Yoala Fe’s mansion, drawn by a single brown horse and driven by Ae Lanos. Beside him sat the witch Tanith, her satchel heavy at her feet. The pair
looked as if they were characters from a fable, where an elderly father rode beside his grown daughter on an awful delivery that they fulfilled only because it was required of them. At the front,
Pueral believed that she was the guard captain, the loyal servant who knew too much . . . but the indulgence was short-lived. She saw it as a sign that the weight of the situation had begun to
overwhelm her, and that in defence, her mind had begun to shy from reality, into a world of fables and myths, where for much of her childhood the Innocent had been such a character.