Leviathan's Blood (36 page)

The hut that Ae Lanos led them to a week after the beach was a mean, malnourished thing, half slumped in the barren land surrounding it. Around it roamed eight goats. A black rooster sat on the
rough thatch roof and it remained still and calm even when the door opened and a thin, old man came out. His skin was a dark brown and his eyes were like flint. He had but a few teeth and leant
heavily on a long cane of cracked black wood.

‘You’re for him, aren’t you?’ he said, stopping before the horses. ‘He said that you would be here.’

‘Him?’ Pueral asked.

‘The man with the scars.’

Her soldiers shifted, spreading out like the feathers of an angry bird.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We are here for him. What did he say to you?’

‘Little.’ The old man spat. ‘He said that I should tell whoever came looking for him that he had gone up into the mountains, to the castle there.’

‘There’s no castle there,’ Pueral said, looking up into the mountains, to the trails of smoke that mixed with the day’s remaining butterflies. ‘Just
ruins.’

‘He said that he had gone up there to pay his respects to the end of an empire.’

On the night of the party, Bueralan placed a large shard from his mother’s mirror on a tree outside and shaved, naked. Next to him he had a bucket of cold water into
which he dipped the long, straight razor. The white tattoos twisted as he ran the blade along his head first, then his face and neck, careful of the leather strap and pouch. Stubble gone, he dyed
his goatee white again, hiding the black roots. He cut his nails after, his left hand first, right second. Then he took a leather sheath from a branch above him and strapped it to the inside of his
left forearm. A thin-bladed knife slid into it. Then, and only then, did he reach up to another branch for the expensive black trousers, black shirt and black jacket and begin to dress without
pleasure.

Not much had given him pleasure in the week since the Queen’s Voice had visited him. He had made a part of his mother’s estate liveable – others would argue otherwise –
but it was too far from Cynama for the tall grey and him to make the trip there and back each day. He had returned earlier in the week to petition witches: as the afternoon’s sun rose and
butterflies fell, he had arrived at Samuel Orlan’s narrow shop. He had not wanted to, but the little coin he had was not enough to buy a meal, much less rent a room in the city. After he
greeted the old man – who said hello without bothering to rise from the large map he worked upon – Bueralan dropped his pack in the room of Orlan’s absent servant and found a
small sack of coins on the table.

‘Ah, I forgot to tell you, the girl sent me a letter.’ He ignored Bueralan’s upraised hand that held the leather pouch and moved to the other side of the table that dominated
the bottom floor of his store. Nearly complete, the work was a detailed map of Ooila, lined with mountains and volcanoes, each built from the husks of dead butterflies. Bueralan had not noticed
that at first: the detailed painting and arrangement hid the materials well, but once the husks caught his eye, he saw only the hollow bodies and empty eyes staring out at him. ‘She was
married after my last visit a year ago, and her husband and she decided to move out of the city. Such a surprise! She is the same age as me and I am simply much too old and much too sane to get
married, much less buy a farm and move to it. Such an awful life. Such an awful choice! Though, given that the farm is located on a plot of land in Gogair, it is entirely possible that she will be
vindicated.’

‘Just another someone looking for something better,’ Bueralan said.

‘My store would have provided for her more than a farm.’

‘Didn’t provide enough to quiet love.’

Orlan dipped a brush into a small green pot of paint that he held. ‘You speak like someone who has never worked for me.’

‘That’s right.’ Bueralan dropped the sack of coins on the edge of the map gently. ‘I don’t work for you.’

The cartographer lowered his brush to the map. ‘Take it.’

‘I’m not for hire.’

‘Which is why you’re broke.’ He moved to his left, leaving the pouch. ‘But you are intent on taking the Mother’s Gift and you will not listen to me until you
have.’

‘I won’t listen to you then, either.’

‘You will.’ For the first time, Orlan’s blue-eyed gaze lifted from the map before him and settled on Bueralan. ‘You will then see what this new god is. You will see the
horror she has placed around your neck. I wish it did not have to be that way, but if that is what it takes, then so be it. Our time here is very limited and I do not wish to increase
it.’

‘You have been listening to all that talk of the Innocent again.’ When he had entered the gate to Cynama, Bueralan had overheard two of the guards discussing a rumour that the Fifth
Queen had in her dungeons a man who had seen Aela Ren on Ooila. ‘I’ve told you before, you don’t need to stay.’

‘
None
of us needs to stay. Take the money. Use it to bribe and to buy whoever you need. But do it quickly.’

He took the pouch.

He had spent much of the week travelling from witch to witch in an attempt to find a woman selling the Mother’s Gift. It wasn’t easy. Despite the proliferation of soul-catchers, the
amount of men and women who were reborn was slim. The cost was prohibitive and it had only become worse in Bueralan’s lifetime for, despite the stories of disabilities and madness in the
reborn, the Mother’s Gift was one of the highest status symbols Ooilan society had.

In the first day he visited two witches and both turned him away with a polite, but firm insistence that he did not have the money. On the second day, he learned that the excuse of his personal
poverty – even when Samuel Orlan’s name was mentioned – was an easy way to turn him towards the door, a polite dismissal for someone who might be in the First Queen’s
favour.

It was not until the fourth day that he met a witch who would talk to him about the Mother’s Gift. Safeen Re, a dark black-skinned middle-aged woman, greeted him at the door of her estate
with the first genuine smile he had seen in a week.

She lived in a large, beautiful building dominating a large tract of flat land to the west of Cynama. The long, tiled hallways of her home had alcoves holding expensive, dark glass jars, at
times beside bones, and at others beside charms of gold and silver. In each jar, however, there was a swirl, a hint of a chill that reached out to him, and Bueralan was pleased to see that the
office of Safeen Re was large and spacious and occupied only with books and bones.

After she had seated herself, the witch said, ‘My brethren have been telling you that you have no fortune, Bueralan Le. What makes you think I will be any different?’

‘I have Samuel Orlan’s fortune.’ It grated on him to say it, and it had become harder since he had first said it. ‘Is that not enough?’

‘For you, no.’

‘The Queen’s pardon means so little?’

Safeen Re let out a loud, healthy laugh. ‘Have you truly been gone so long, or are you just desperate?’ she asked. ‘Bueralan, you may take the Queen’s name so easily in
this conversation, but we both know she does not support you that much. If she did, you would have her money, and she would have brought you here first, and you know it. I have watched the Queen
drink from jars that I made, and I am above reproach. We both know that. It is both our business to know that – and it is the business of the women who come to me to know that as well. After
all, what they want is a very rare and difficult thing.’

‘I know that.’

‘You cannot offer them enough to risk that.’ Bueralan began to speak, but Safeen Re cut him off. ‘You know that as well,’ she continued. ‘You are a man with no
title, no family, and the soul around your neck is of a blood brother.’

Bueralan began to rise. He had not come to be insulted. A simple no would be enough. There were other ways, less desirable ways, he knew—

‘But you do have something quite unique,’ Safeen said. ‘If you but have the patience.’

He remained standing. ‘I have no favours to offer.’

‘It is not the patience of the Queen’s court I speak of, I assure you. Rather, it is the concern that more and more families have with a life outside Ooila.’ To her left, a
door opened, and a young man in robes of mixed streams of yellow and orange and blue entered, a silver tea tray in his hands. ‘I am not a fool. I hear the whispers. So do my clients. As they
grow into a shout, we will all be forced to listen to them, even the Queen. In this situation, what you bring is something unique, for Samuel Orlan’s fortune is not tied to this country, just
as you are not, either. Should you take a step back from the visits you have been making, should you opt for a little patience, people around you will realize that the ability to provide a life of
substance outside the borders of our home is one of rare value. I would imagine that, in a short time, such an awareness will give you your choice of mothers and their gift.’

In old black leather boots, but his other clothes new, Bueralan walked down the overgrown path of his mother’s estate. An extravagant carriage waited at the ruined gate. After he had left
Safeen Re, the child’s words had followed him –
call only when what is at stake is innocence
– and he had come to realize that, despite what he said to Orlan, he too had
begun to believe that there was not much peace left in the country. Soon, Bueralan knew, a man would step upon its shore, and begin a war that he had no desire to be part of, and feared that he
would be unable to escape.

A black-and-red-armoured guard opened the door to the carriage. Inside, two women waited in an incomplete darkness.

The Spine of Ger was in ruins.

For the man who had been the Captain of the Spine, the extent of the destruction unfolded over days and nights, a jigsaw puzzle he assembled slowly in his mind to replace the image he had
previously had. Heast’s arrival at Mireea was late in the week, for neither he nor Kye Taaira had wanted to use the main road, believing that the risk of encountering Leeran soldiers and
priests was high. As they approached the Spine, Heast would often lose track of it behind trees that lined the obscure back trails he rode, and when the long stone wall reappeared, his vision of
its injuries was always more detailed than the one he had seen before. Cracks appeared in the parts of the wall that were not yet broken. The crude wooden walls he had ordered built stood in
splintered isolation. Buildings sank while birds stood on the roofs that were at times nothing more than wooden spines. But for Heast, the devastation was only complete when, beneath the
morning’s sun, he arrived at the fallen gate of Mireea and stepped onto the empty, fractured cobbled roads that led deep into it.

Heast had left Wila in the middle of the night, just over a week ago. Wading out until he was waist deep in the cold black ocean, he had been pulled into the dinghy by Kal Essa, the
mercenary’s thick arms lifting both him and the tribesman into the boat. Once they were seated, Essa gently dipped the oars into the water and began to row. They had left as close to the low
tide as they could, but the first half hour had been a struggle against the last of the high tide, not because it was powerful, but because the sound of the oars in the water threatened to grab the
attention of the remaining guards on the bridge. Yet they made it to the shore before the morning’s sun threatened to rise, and were helped onto land by half a dozen mercenaries from the
Brotherhood. Once the three of them were on land, a pair of large men loaded the dinghy into the back of a wagon and threw a tarpaulin over it before the ox began to pull it up the hills.

‘You sure you don’t want a few of my boys?’ Kal Essa asked. He was sitting beside Heast in the wagon. ‘Lot of bad land between here and Faaisha.’

‘Just some supplies, horses.’ The captain’s steel leg was wedged painfully against the wet boat, but even so, he did not relish the idea of trading the wagon for a mount.
‘You and your men have your orders.’

‘You’re making farmers out of them.’

‘The land cannot look abandoned.’

In the months since Heast had begun purchasing the land, Essa and his soldiers had proved to be more than dependable on the land. Other soldiers – soldiers Heast had both commanded and
served beside – would have chafed at the idea of picking up ploughs, of setting aside swords for scythes, and of long, hard days harvesting food they had not planted. But the Brotherhood had
done it with no sign of disgust, no hint that they had been given a job that was beneath them, and Heast had been more than satisfied.

The ox came to a halt outside the large farmstead that the mercenary unit had made their home. The scarred mercenary captain dropped from the back of the cart before Heast or Taaira and began
giving out orders for supplies to be prepared and for two mounts to be found. Once he had done that, he disappeared into the house and reappeared with two travel-stained leather packs and two
swords, one of them a heavy two-handed blade with worn leather around the hilt.

He gave the latter to Kye Taaira.

‘I did not think that even Hollow used swords,’ Heast said.

A worn, thick leather strap held the sword over his back. ‘It is not forbidden,’ the tribesman said. ‘In this case, the weapon belonged to one of my ancestors.’

‘One who left the Plateau?’

‘No, one who ensured they stayed.’

‘Our warlock wanted to bury the sword,’ Essa said. He passed the second, a plain longsword in a leather sheath, to Heast. ‘I’m told he forbade anyone to go near it while
we were gone.’

‘A wise choice,’ Taaira admitted.

No more was said of the sword as the two packs were filled and horses led out and saddled and supplied.

The tribesman would have made quicker time without him, Heast knew. In his youth, he had been a capable rider, though he had never owned a horse. In those lean years, the beasts had always been
the property of the men and women he worked for, and their deaths had been paid for out of his own pocket. It was a way, he learned early, that some employers used debt to bind you to their
service. He had owned horses eventually, but after the loss of his leg, riding had become a chore, and though he had kept the skill, he had not kept the animals. Kye Taaira, in contrast, was a fine
rider who enjoyed being in the saddle, and who could have taken a day from the journey if he had ridden at his natural pace – and perhaps another day if he had not suggested that they should
wait until the morning to ride through Mireea.