Leviathan's Blood (25 page)

‘It is for my blood brother I return, for him that I ask for my exile to be lifted.’

‘For a slave?’

‘For my brother,’ he corrected.

The gasp in the court was slight, but audible. You did not correct the Queen, not if she was the Fifth, or the Second, not if her court was here, or on the other side of Ooila. You did not stand
in the court of a Queen and tell her she was wrong, not on a subject such as this, but Bueralan did not regret his words. If he was betrayed – and he was, he knew, and he felt that bitterness
deep in his being – he would not betray Zean, or any of the others. Beside him, he heard the rasp of steel being drawn, and readied himself to be struck, to turn with the blow, and did not
understand why the First Queen’s frail hand rose, halting the soldiers on either side of him.

‘Are there any who can vouch for you?’ the Voice asked.

‘No.’

‘I will.’

Samuel Orlan’s voice emerged from the left of the court, from behind a clump of men and women. He walked slowly onto the floor, smiling at the court, at the First Queen, and at Bueralan.
The cartographer was richly dressed, his beard and hair neatly trimmed, and he held in his hand a tall, delicate crystal glass in which a dark-red wine sat untouched.

‘You would vouch for this exiled man?’ the Voice of the First Queen asked, devoid of any of the surprise that the First Queen must have felt. ‘Do you know what this entails,
what this risks?’

‘Of course.’ He raised the glass in toast. ‘I will vouch for him knowingly. I will support him, I will share all punishment, all success.’

The silence of the court stretched, thin, tense, waiting to be broken.

‘Why,’ asked the Voice, ‘would you do that?’

‘I have a debt that cannot be repaid,’ Samuel Orlan replied.

The Eternal Kingdom
implies that Mireea was attacked because it violated the final resting place of the Warden of the Elements, the god Ger, who she calls her father.
One, I might add, of many.

Yet it does not explain why, once the Spine of Ger fell, she turned her army – her Faithful – on the Kingdoms of Faaisha, where the remains of no god lie.

—Tinh Tu,
Private Diary

Aelyn arrived after Zaifyr delivered Kaqua to the Enclave. The two sisters marched him through Nale, their bodies lit with his power, the pair of them a new creature born into
the world, a cold flame that walked along the streets. At the door of the Enclave, Zaifyr drained his power from them and, to the crowd that gathered, to the crowd that watched Aelyn’s
wind-made horses rise to the window of her office later, it appeared as if the two girls ceased to exist. But they walked with the crowd back to the estate. They drifted, cold and alone, two women
among another crowd that could not be seen. At the gate of the estate, they drifted past the six members of Yeflam Guard who had taken up a position alongside the wind-made guards. They walked up
the path, up past the empty carriage that Aelyn had arrived in, walked through the open door and into the house, where Zaifyr stood with his sister.

‘Brother,’ she said. ‘Qian. What have you done?’ She spoke slowly, cautiously, her emotions calm, a centre against the fears around her. ‘You cannot drag Kaqua
through the streets. You cannot line them with the dead. Yeflam is in—’

‘I was attacked,’ he said. ‘Your Pauper attacked me.’

‘He would not . . .’

‘He said that the gods’ child was coming.’

Aelyn’s emotions flickered across her face, a kaleidoscope of resignation, disappointment and fear. ‘She does,’ his sister said finally. ‘And it appears that I must
apologize for Kaqua. He has made a mistake, but he has not done it out of animosity. He understands that Yeflam is already at breaking point. He has been moved by the fear of what will happen when
the two of you meet in our streets.’ The calm in her voice began to strain. ‘Understand, if I had known that he would do this, I would have told him no. But you should understand that
we have known about this child god of yours for nearly a year. Eidan is there beside her. He has been our eyes in Leera.’

‘Is he why you let her priests in here?’

‘They are no threat to us. They allow Eidan to continue at her side. It is a scheme that you have endangered from the moment you arrived at our gates.’

‘The child is not to be negotiated with.’

‘We cannot make those judgements any more,’ she said. ‘We are not gods. We are not yet allowed that privilege.’

He did not reply.

‘Qian.’ The calm broke and defeat entered her voice. ‘Consider what is at stake here. Yeflam is not Asila. The people here are my responsibility. They are
my
world.’

‘What has Eidan told you?’ There was no sympathy in his voice, no give. ‘What is it that you know about her that frightens you?’

‘It is not
her
.’ A sigh broke through the defeated threads in her voice. ‘It is
you.
You threaten the very thing which you rage against. You will trap us all
in the horror that you see.’

When the afternoon’s sun sank at the end of the day, the Yeflam Guard had been deployed throughout all twenty-three Floating Cities of Yeflam. Jae’le, who arrived at first by storm
petrel after Aelyn left, later came in person once the night had set. He told Zaifyr that a curfew had been put in place. He said that there had been panic in the streets. A group of people on
Neela had tried to storm Wila, believing that the Mireeans were responsible. The Soldier himself had quelled that, Jae’le said. By morning, the Yeflam Guard had dispersed the crowd that had
gathered at the front of Aelyn’s estate. They returned and they were driven away. When Ayae, Faise and Zineer visited, he heard that the papers had begun to call the day the haunts appeared
over Yeflam ‘the Day of a Million Ghosts’. He was shown some of the pictures that were printed of him, and read half of one of the stories, but he had little time for the description of
himself as a madman who needed to be brought to justice. He tore up the papers and used them as bookmarks in his research.

Then, after a fortnight, the trial was announced.

It was Jae’le who told him. His brother returned from the Enclave in the early hours one morning with the news.

‘Six days,’ Zaifyr repeated after he spoke. ‘It is not enough time. I need more time. One of the dead I want is in the caves that lead to the Saan. Six days is not enough to
get him.’

‘It is what you have. In six days the child will be here.’

‘She will have the child attend the trial?’

‘It is what you wanted, is it not?’ Outside the window, the world stretched darkly, filled with the smell of salt and blood. ‘But you should know, there was a condition
attached to that. A condition I agreed with.’

‘Why was I not asked about this?’

‘Because it is about you,’ he said. ‘If at the end of the trial you are found guilty, you will be returned to the tower in Eakar.’

He saw that small space again. Saw it closing around him. ‘I will not return there,’ he said.

‘Not willingly,’ Jae’le agreed. ‘But nonetheless, it will be your punishment. I will stand by Aelyn and her Keepers of the Divine to enact it, if I am required to do
so.’

‘I’ll not fail,’ Zaifyr insisted. ‘You know I won’t. You can feel the child approach as well as I can. You can feel the pull at your skin, as if she could consume
you.’

‘I feel it,’ his brother said. ‘Like the first row of teeth in a giant maw.’

‘She cannot be allowed to exist.’ There was no doubt in his voice. ‘No matter what else is said, she must be destroyed. You must be able to see that, at least.’

The shadows of the night had left his brother gaunt, more so than in reality. The light of the lamps faltered around the edges of him, alternately revealing and hiding his expression.
‘Yes,’ he said, finally, ‘I believe I do.’

With the afternoon’s sun behind his back, Bueralan led the tall grey through the stone entrance to his mother’s estate. The top of it resembled broken teeth and the
rusted gate no longer locked. His boots and the horse’s hooves trod rock, weed and the hollow corpses of butterflies in slow discord to the main house and no one appeared in greeting or
warning. The once well-kept gardens stretched on either side of him, a thick, tangled mess of green shot through with bright wild-flowers muted by ash.

‘Why was it not sold?’

He had asked the question of Ce Pueral two weeks ago. She was no longer a captain, he knew, and her visit to Samuel Orlan’s shop the morning after his appearance in court had not been
unexpected. She appeared in her black-and-red armour, her long sword comfortable at her side, a group of men and women out on the street waiting for her.

‘The Queen was close friends with your mother.’ Pueral was coldly indifferent to him. ‘She spent time out there when she was younger.’

‘She kept it out of sentimentality?’

‘Occasionally, Mister Le, the answer is a simple one.’ His title did not go unnoticed. ‘Since your exile, no one has lived there. Not officially, anyway. No caretakers were
given the land but I imagine there have been squatters. You may find that you have to clean out more than weeds.’

The main house was huge. It had been made from heavy blocks dug out of the ground years before the Five Queens came to rule. His mother had extended the house carefully, drawing up plans,
consulting with builders and expending a fortune to have similar stone dug out of the ground. Much of his childhood had been spent listening to her plans for the house, which was the main reason
why he considered the sprawling building his mother’s, and not his parents’.

‘Why am I being offered this?’ he asked Pueral.

‘It is a gift from the First Queen.’ Her gloved hand finally left her sword, her fingers flexing. ‘Another one. What you won yesterday is something few have.’

‘I am grateful.’

‘No, you are not,’ she said, no trace of malice or bitterness apparent in her voice. ‘You were a rash man in your youth, Bueralan. You wielded your blade with considerable
skill, held your own in politics and took risks. In the case of the Hundredth Prince, you made a poor choice. Others had previously done you well and I always viewed that as a mistake of youth, I
believe. You must have understood that on a certain level as well. After your exile, you kept your confidence, your ability to take risks, your flair. I haven’t paid too much attention to
what you have done in the last decade, but for a while I watched you closely. You wore your exiled title openly and you worked for rich and connected men and women – so of course I watched
you. I even admire some of what you have done.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Don’t thank me.’ She had turned to the door, to the soldiers waiting for her outside, and her hand closed into a fist. ‘I am not flattering you. I am warning you. The
man I remember and the man in my reports is not standing before me. Instead, there is a man without confidence, a man for whom risk is played out. You have the eyes of a dead man, yet you come here
to play politics, to stand in the First Queen’s court and talk about the Mother’s Gift for a dead slave. You will not get what you want with eyes like that. Instead, you will make a
mistake. A mistake that will cost you your life – and that of your blood brother as well.’

The lock on the door of his mother’s house was broken, the inside littered with the husks of butterflies, glass and animal remains.

Bueralan made his way through the entrance, the afternoon’s sun a splotched pattern across the walls showing destruction by shadow and light. In the main room, he found shattered furniture
and the ashes of a fire against the far wall. Bueralan’s boot nudged the solid cinders, scattered a handful of spiders and animal bones. Nothing suggested that it had been used recently. No
tracks had crushed the dead butterflies spread across the tiles. From the main room, the halls were scattered with them and other bugs, with ashes lingering in the corners, while the walls were
bare of family paintings. Burnt on the fire, no doubt.

‘I like her,’ Samuel Orlan had said, after Pueral left.

‘You would.’ The cartographer had come downstairs, dressed in old paint- and ink-stained clothes, a large magnifying glass in his hands. He had spent much of the morning at his work
table since they had returned from the court and had not bothered to come down until Pueral had left. Bueralan did not doubt that he had heard every word, though. He asked, ‘Did you have
anything to do with the estate?’

‘I had not even considered it.’ Orlan shrugged. ‘Was the First Queen that good a friend of your mother?’

‘They were childhood friends.’

‘I had wondered why she did not ask for more of me.’

Bueralan did not reply. Pueral’s words returned to him: her judgement and summation of his life. He had not smiled in response, as he might have once. He had not thought that she had made
a mistake in relation to him. Wordlessly, he had watched her ride down the road. Around her, Cynama was awakening, and butterflies scattered in colours while people moved out of her way. He
remembered the child’s words –
call only when what is at stake is innocence
– and thought, once again, of her name, the name that he did not know.

‘Do you plan to go out there today?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You shouldn’t delay too long,’ the cartographer said, walking back upstairs. ‘We must all return to the homes of our childhood eventually.’

Before the morning’s sun rose, Lord Elan Wagan began to scream.

Heast lay in the tent he shared with the young baker’s apprentice, Jaerc, and awaited the start of it. He had been awoken by the shrieks on the first nights – loud, piercing sounds
that had come down the mountain with them – but his body soon remembered the pattern and, like the others on Wila, he awoke before Lord Wagan began to scream. He would lie in the salted dark
until the noise turned into a whimper, the ending brought by the healer, Reila. Then, he would listen to the silence that followed with a certain pride in the men and women around him. Not once had
he heard any complaint, not once had he stepped from his tent to find anger, or resentment, though he could well have understood it if it did appear. But those around him had nothing but patience
for a man driven mad and for whom not even death would provide a release.