Leviathan's Blood (21 page)

‘You followed the child to Leera,’ Zaifyr said. ‘She told me that.’

‘I did.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘But I simply thought that she was one like us. I did not suspect what she was. Not once.’

Zaifyr had felt it immediately, a quality like him, yet not. He found it hard to believe that Jae’le could not have known, not even suspected.

‘I will speak to Aelyn before I get here,’ the storm petrel said. ‘It would be respectful to do so, but it will also let me ask about our brother. After Asila, Eidan became a
vagabond of sorts. He would travel to ruins and rebuild them, then leave them empty. But he would always send letters to Aelyn each week. She will know more than she admits.’

Zaifyr touched the charm beneath his wrist. ‘She may not tell you.’

‘She may not.’ A ragged noise – a sigh, perhaps – escaped Jae’le. ‘Our meetings are always difficult. This used to be my land. I do not lay claim to it now,
but it has always been between us that she took it. We were meant to disappear, to slide into history, and let everyone forget what we had done so terribly. She was not meant to build a city as the
surviving ruler of the Five Kingdoms, yet she did.’

‘Why did people not drive her away?’

‘There had been dark years after us, and new tyrants,’ he said. ‘And there were some who wanted to worship us, still. The call was difficult for her to deny.’

‘I do not miss it,’ Zaifyr said. ‘Not at all.’

The storm petrel ruffled its feathers and flicked its wings, but said nothing.

The ride back from Nale to Mesi was long, even longer when Ayae, Faise and Zineer arrived at their small house and found the front yard plastered with caricatures of Muriel
Wagan and Aned Heast. Yet, even after little rest the night before, after the cleaning of the yard, Ayae could only sleep for five hours. Like most nights, her dreams were terrible: images of her
fight along the Spine of Ger lingered on in the visions of men and women she killed. She saw Illaan in his hospital bed, saw Fo and Bau again and again. She dreamed of the fight in the tower. Of
Queila Meina’s frail hand on her shoulder as she died, followed by her rise as a ghost. And she dreamed of the tents on Wila, of how they merged into the rough walls of a nameless camp in
Sooia. Each night she awoke to find herself twisted in her sheets, so hot to the touch when she awoke that she was afraid she would set the bedding alight.

Most nights, she would read by pale candlelight until the morning’s sun rose. Occasionally, she would practise with the warmth in her, trying to draw it out, but without reward. No matter
how much she tried, she was unable to recreate much of what she had done in Mireea. Her dreams may show her swords alight with flames, but she could cause nothing to move along steel. She could
heat herself and boil water and move faster than she would normally be able to do so, but that was all. Ayae had begun to suspect that to do more she needed to give way to her emotions – an
idea that she was not comfortable with.

Caught up in her thoughts, Ayae did not realize that there was a light downstairs until she was in the kitchen. At the table sat Faise. She wore a dark-orange robe, loosely belted. At the sight
of Ayae, she offered a faint, tired smile. ‘I did not mean to wake you,’ she said.

‘You didn’t.’ On the table were the papers and pamphlets that had been in the yard when they returned. ‘And don’t apologize. It is not your fault.’

‘Would you like something to drink?’ Faise asked. ‘I was trying to tell myself it was okay to drink alone. Now you’re here, I don’t have to lie about
that.’

She smiled faintly. ‘Sure.’

A squat amber bottle of waer and two glasses dropped onto the table. The cheap spirit smelt horrible when the wooden lid came off, but Ayae took a glass and settled into the chair across from
her friend.

‘One day I will have to give up this awful drink,’ Faise said. ‘But I’ll start another day.’

‘Regrets?’

‘Once we finish this, yes.’

‘I meant for what you’re doing.’

‘I know.’ Faise lifted the glass. ‘There are more every day, I guess. I don’t know if I’ll have the nerve for it much longer.’

‘You won’t be hurt.’ Ayae swallowed the sour drink of her teenage years. ‘I will make sure of that.’

‘I should have said no to Lady Wagan.’ She poured for both of them again. ‘But we had lost so much. Zineer was right. It was a chance for us to rebuild. We could get everything
back that we had lost. We could help everyone on Wila get back what they lost.’

‘And you could get revenge.’

‘
And
I could get revenge.’ Her smile was stained orange in the candlelight. ‘That was icing. To think that I could show that fat bastard what I thought of him. That I
could hurt him like he hurt Zineer and me.’

‘Is Zineer not concerned?’

‘Only when I’m awake.’ Wearing loose trousers, Zineer reached for the chair beside Faise, his hand lingering on her arm. ‘When I am asleep, my dreams think for
me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ayae said softly.

‘For what?’ He leant across for the drink. ‘For Benan Le’ta? He was born long before any of us, and the Traders movement before him.’

‘I’m sorry for all of it.’

‘We’re not children,’ Faise said. ‘Sometimes, I wish I was. I could claim that I did not know what would happen when we agreed to Lady Wagan’s plan. I could say
that you convinced me to do something that I did not want to do. I could say that Zineer did not know, either. That we were completely innocent. But we’re not children. We have to take
responsibility for everything we have done. We made choices. Adult choices. We can’t come home and pretend that we did not.’

‘I wish I could go home and pretend.’ The remains of Ayae’s drink caught the dim light as she swirled the glass. ‘I miss my home. I knew who I was inside that house. I
could close the doors and shut everything out. Now, it feels so far away. In the morning, I look up and see—’

‘—the mountain crumbling,’ the other woman finished. ‘Do you draw any more?’

‘No.’ She placed the empty glass on the table. ‘I have tried a few times, both here and in the Enclave. I sit down with a pencil and paper, but I do not have the patience for
it. I barely have the patience to read the books I have found – when I open them, I think of everyone on Wila and how I haven’t been able to help them. It doesn’t help that all
that has survived of Ger’s words are poetry and fiction, all of it allegorical, all of it about how he asserted control over the elements to stop their destruction.’

‘Being here doesn’t help,’ Zineer said.

‘It’s not that.’

‘You have so much to do,’ Faise said, continuing, giving voice to concerns that the two must have shared with each other when they were alone. ‘You shouldn’t have to
worry about us.’

‘I would worry wherever I was. Maybe we should go somewhere else.’

‘Somewhere safe?’

‘Leviathan’s End.’ Zineer refilled their drinks. ‘I would feel safe there.’

Faise took her glass back. ‘I suppose we have become mercenaries,’ she said. ‘Accountants for hire. Maybe we need swords.’

‘Sinae Al’tor would help,’ Ayae said.

‘I doubt that.’

‘Captain Heast said he would. He said he could get you out of Yeflam.’

‘Out?’ Faise repeated. ‘Out to where?’

‘He didn’t say.’ Ayae lifted her glass. ‘I can’t believe we still drink this.’

‘We started because it was cheap and got you drunk quick.’

‘Well, there’s that. At least we learned something in our childhood.’

Approached from the coast’s road, Cynama appeared fractured, as if it had been shattered across the land. Built to sprawl over the flat plain beneath, it was cut by five
thick stone-lined canals that ran throughout. Laid to funnel rain water into a large low-tided lake, the canals fulfilled that purpose while also – inevitably – dividing the city
symbolically.

The long muddy road on which Bueralan and Orlan approached Cynama held few travellers. The first they had passed had been as the morning’s sun reached its peak and the humidity left lines
of sweat down their backs. An elderly man, seemingly unaffected by the oppressive conditions, walked past with a large backpack. Shortly after, two women with a loaded mule and cart followed. They
had said nothing, and after that, Bueralan and Orlan had watched the butterflies that fluttered across tall grass and trees before falling into the muddy ground. At midday, they passed a father and
a son at the front of a wagon, the back filled with men and women and animals. Again, none of the people had spoken, or made eye contact with them. As the afternoon’s sun began to rise, and
the humidity started to wane, the largest group of men and women they had seen walked past, their belongings bagged and strung between the shafts of wood they carried.

‘They’re fleeing,’ Bueralan said, once they had past. The final six men and women had had chains around their ankles. ‘The rich and the poor.’

‘That they do,’ Samuel Orlan agreed. ‘Not many countries will recognize their right to the ownership of slaves, however. Assuming they survive the journey, or are not sold at
Dyanos, the prospects of those men and women will improve greatly. Much better, perhaps, than ours.’

‘The road goes back, if you want to leave.’

‘
We
have more than enough reason to turn around.’

He grunted sourly. ‘You speak as if you know how it will end.’

‘There are enough refugees from Sooia to tell that story to both of us.’

Bueralan nudged the tall grey forwards but did not reply. He had heard the stories. At their core was a man and his army laying waste to a continent and its people. There were atrocities,
always. There were seven hundred years of horror stories, but he never felt as if they particularly affected him. By Aela Ren’s own inarticulate reasons, and by the distance between Sooia and
him, he had been unmoved by what he heard. As a child, it had been a violent fable that his parents had threatened him with. He had maintained that state of disinterest, through no real intention
of his own, well into adulthood. Regardless of which story was told to him about the Innocent – either by refugees or by those who worked the charity ships out of Sooia – the words were
elusive and intangible, a child’s horror.

‘Do you feel as if you have come home yet?’ Samuel Orlan asked.

‘No.’ He did not hesitate. ‘I do not know that I have a home anywhere these days, but if I do, this is not it. We’ll have to find a place to stay.’

‘I have a shop in there, across from Pereeth Canal.’

An expensive part of the city. ‘How many shops do you have?’ Bueralan asked.

‘A number.’ Orlan shifted on the smaller of the two horses, stroking its neck as he did. ‘Did you have somewhere else planned?’

He had not. His mother’s estate had been claimed by the First Queen, part of the price of his exile. Even if he had still owned it, he was not sure that he would have gone there. Ignoring
the neglect that it would have come to over seventeen years, it was located an hour’s ride outside the city, one of the many estates that populated the flat plains before the rocky, jagged,
excavated land that led to Karaanas opened up.

‘How far is your shop from the palace?’ he asked.

‘Three or four blocks, if I remember right.’ Orlan regarded him curiously. ‘Do you still plan to present yourself at first light?’

‘You saw the blood in the stables.’

‘I did, yes,’ he agreed. ‘Do you hope for mercy?’

‘I’ll get none if I am caught in the city.’ He shifted the tall grey’s reins from his right to left hand. He had replayed the fight in his head as he rode. It was the
first fight he had had since he had stood above Ger, and the god had used him. He would not say he felt stronger, or faster, not as he had in the submerged temple, but he would not say, either,
that he felt the same. He had briefly thought about bringing it up with Orlan, and thought of it again now, but he dismissed the thought. He did not need to encourage the cartographer to talk about
gods. He said, ‘Besides, a man in exile has no chance of receiving the Mother’s Gift.’

‘Neither does a dead man. We can still turn around and put this folly away.’

‘As I said, the road goes back if you need it.’

The last of the day’s butterflies lay on the ground before him. Ahead, the afternoon’s sun had fallen and, slowly, one at a time, Cynama’s lights began to emerge, as if the
city had seen them and stirred awake.

Beneath the early light of the morning’s sun, Ayae, Faise and Zineer walked through the crowded lanes of Mesi’s Farmers’ Market.

It reminded Ayae of Mireea, though she knew there was very little to compare the two. The number of stalls in Mesi was only a fraction of those that had lined the cobbled roads of Mireea, the
total probably further reduced by the deepening cold of winter and the ocean’s brittle winds. Most of what the market sold came from across the ocean, from the trade lanes that Yeflam owned,
and it halved as the produce they brought from Gogair and Faer fell quiet with the winter. The Mesi market sold only food: there were no toys to tempt children, no games of any kind, and no card,
palm, or psychic readings by men and women with no power. In addition, while music could be heard from Mesi, it was at the midday mark, and was characterized by the simple, stripped-back
instruments of musicians at an early stage of their career. In general, the Mesi market also lacked the hard hustle and long barter that had been an integral part of the Mireean markets. Ayae
supposed that this was because the stalls were constrained by prices set by the Traders’ Union, prices that increased the further away from Burata your stall was.

‘One day, you won’t have to come here,’ Faise said as they made their way along one of the wide lanes, wooden crates of green, yellow and orange fruits and vegetables on either
side of them. She was the only one of the three who held a canvas bag, the bottom of it already sagging with fruit. ‘One day we’ll be able to come here without you.’

She shrugged. ‘I won’t get apples that day.’

‘They’re sour, awful things – and you’ll thank me that day.’