Leviathan's Blood (55 page)

‘It is—’

‘—true,’ Jae’le finished. ‘We are dictated by power. It is how we navigate our relationships. It is why Tinh Tu has not come. It is why Aelyn does not stand here
with us tonight. And it is why you were able to befriend Ayae so easily.’

‘Ayae?’ Zaifyr frowned. ‘I don’t see what she has to do with this.’

‘She was in need when you met her, was she not?’ He shrugged. ‘You will always be at arm’s length while she sees you as her mentor.’

‘I do not see where you are going with this.’

‘No?’ Jae’le shrugged again, but this time he smiled, as if he did not believe Zaifyr. He picked up the whetstone. ‘Will you at least admit that what you have done to
your sister is to push her into a corner? That you used your authority over her to do this?’

‘What other choice did I have?’

‘That was not my question.’

The lamp above the red-painted hand was not lit. Instead, the sign was like a dark, bloody print outside the brothel, a warning not to enter the large building. Ayae thought
its advice well given.

She stood silently beside Lady Wagan while Caeli talked quietly to the driver. She had asked more questions after it had been revealed that Benan Le’ta would be inside, but little more
could be said by either. The Lady of the Ghosts had spent the aftermath of the trial organizing the freedom of the Mireean people from Wila and, though Muriel had not said so, Ayae believed that
Lady Wagan had made a large concession to ensure that the deal was reached swiftly.
She has sent a letter to Eilona in Zoum
, she thought as she gazed up at the dark shape of the building.
Lady Wagan would only do that if what she asked of the bankers was so unusual that it required a family representative. Even an estranged one.

Caeli’s return stopped Ayae’s thoughts. Behind her, the carriage had begun to move and, after it had gone down the street, the guard directed them to a narrow alley. As the three
entered, a cold wind blew, and Ayae felt the first hint of it – but not as much, she noted, as both Caeli and Lady Wagan, who pulled their cloaks tight.

At the back of Sin’s Hand there was an empty stable and from it, a stillness swept over the well-trodden yard, a quiet that was broken only when Caeli knocked heavily on the back door.

Inside, a large black man led them down a narrow hallway. A pair of lamps had been tied to the ceiling, and from them, light shone; but the lack of movement that Ayae had felt from the stables
was also present here, displayed in the unlit candles that lined the sides of the hall, the solid drippings of wax caught in cruel representations of sexual desire. At the end of the hall, a large
floor opened up, most of it in darkness, though it was not dim enough to hide the stage or tables that filled it. A long bar that Ayae walked past was, likewise, a series of still shadows, and she
could not help but think of it as a prop in an elaborate stage show, one that was performed with a stale regularity each night for men who struggled with reality.

The stairs creaked dangerously under her step – a reminder that, for all she had felt the hint of a chill, her skin was still heavy – but the man who led them to the floor did not
stop until he reached the open-curtained doorway.

Inside were five people: four men and one woman. The woman had long, pale blonde hair and sat alone on one of the long black sofas at the back of the room, her leather-clad legs stretched out in
front of her, and a long red jacket wrapped around her body. She gave the briefest of glances to Ayae and the other two women when they entered, then folded her legs beneath her, ensuring that her
lack of interest was made clear. The four men, however, turned to Lady Wagan, and a young and attractive man approached her first. She greeted him by the name of Sinae, but Ayae did not linger on
the two, for she saw Lian Alahn rise from the couch where he had been sitting. After greeting Lady Wagan, he made his way towards her. Behind him, Benan Le’ta wedged himself into the corner
of the couch he sat on, beyond him, a young white guard remained in place.

‘Ayae.’ Illaan’s father took her numb hands into his. ‘Finally. I have tried to gain a meeting with you since your arrival.’

‘You know where I have been.’ She pulled her hands back. ‘You could have knocked on that door.’

His face took on a frozen politeness and Ayae continued past him, to where Le’ta sat.

The fat merchant shifted uncomfortably beneath her gaze and Ayae was aware of the silence and stillness that was rising behind her, as if what she had felt outside had crept up the stairs and
into the room. Chains had been fastened around Le’ta’s wrists and Ayae could see red marks from where he had tried without success to pull his hands free. That was not the only place
where he had suffered: his face and neck had a series of ugly yellow bruises down the right side and he had lost weight, leaving his skin to sag in a sick, ugly pull down his neck.

‘Yes,’ he said, finally meeting her gaze. ‘Get a good look. I am a murderer’s reward.’

Ayae did not turn from him, but directed her question to Lian Alahn. ‘Why is he here?’

‘Justice is found in many places, even a brothel.’ The Traders’ Union leader stood beside her, but not close. ‘Tonight’s meeting is about organizing the transport
of the Mireean people across Yeflam, but it is also about the final pieces of the puzzles: the books that were printed, the hotels that priests lived in, and the deal that was made to return the
sale of flesh to our city. It took me a long time and a lot of money to dig this man up so that I could have all the answers. He had made it all the way to Wilate on his stubby little legs. But the
answers are here and I thought we could hear them now.’

Le’ta raised his manacled hands up and pointed at him. ‘Only luck saved you,’ he said.

‘Before we discuss luck,’ Sinae Al’tor said, interrupting the conversation and clapping his hands together as he did. ‘Why don’t I first do something about the cold
in this room?’

‘That,’ a woman’s voice said from outside the room, from the dark of the hallway, ‘will not be necessary.’

‘It is not an attractive picture of me that you paint.’

‘Should it be?’ Jae’le’s whetstone ran down the edge of his sword in an easy stroke. ‘The exercise of power has many faces. At times, it is subtle, at times it is
elegant, but more often than not, it is ugly. It has been ugly here, but it has not been Asila.’

Zaifyr heard the whisper of a haunt, and he saw the faint hint of another as it walked around his brother. Jae’le could not see it, any more than anyone else could, but Zaifyr used it to
anchor his thoughts, to remind him of why he had come to Yeflam. His brother’s words had surprised him, though they were not atypical for him: he was not a man given to speaking of
sentimentality, though he could be found to act on it regularly, especially in relation to his family. After all, he had not left his home to take up arms against the child. But Zaifyr thought that
the plight of the dead – of the young man who stood near his chair, watching the whetstone run along the blade – and the very real importance it had to him had been what convinced
Jae’le that the trial was correct, that the child was a threat unlike any other they had seen.

‘I do not doubt that, but it is not the sum of what I have done,’ Zaifyr said finally. ‘Aelyn has made her choices as well, and there are other concerns at stake with the
child. Very real concerns.’

‘I am not trying to claim that you do not have reason,’ he said. ‘I am only using it to show how we have not changed completely over the years—’

A shudder ran through the ground.

‘Eidan,’ Jae’le whispered.

A second followed, and this one, longer than the first, felt as if the stone ground of Nale had begun to break apart.

Jae’le vaulted over the back of his chair, but he was two steps behind Zaifyr, who had raced through the doorway unarmed. When he reached the door, another shudder ran through the rock,
and the door twisted open to his touch, the hinges breaking to reveal the long dark outside.

For a moment, Zaifyr saw nothing unusual. The sky had cleared of its clouds, and a cold wind had picked up, as if drawn out of the naked scatter of stars and moon; the gate of the estate
remained closed, and the road beyond it was empty. Then, in a faint echo that grew louder, he heard the drums of the Yeflam Navy begin to sound. Voices followed. He could not make out the words,
but they were sharp, loud, as if orders were being shouted to soldiers, to sailors, and then the ground again shook, but this time it was weaker than the first two.

A dark shadow began to appear on the horizon. It was huge, as if the night sky had twinned to a darker sky, but as it drew closer, the ground shook again, even louder than the previous shocks.
It broke the gate in half and, in that wreckage, Eidan emerged. He took a handful of steps before he stumbled and fell to the ground.

As Zaifyr and Jae’le drew closer they could see that Eidan was severely injured but not dead. The side of his face was caked with blood, caused by a trio of hard slashes from the cheek to
his ear, and which had torn most of the lobe away. Likewise, the leather shirt he had worn had been shredded on his left side, and blood ran freely from wounds across his stout chest. As Zaifyr
reached him, Eidan tried to stand, pushing himself up with his right hand, which in turn revealed that his left was bent at an odd angle, his fingers broken badly, as if he had thought to catch a
spiked object. He stumbled as he rose and it was then, as the charm-laced man caught him, that he saw the damage done to Eidan’s left leg, and the bone that poked through the leather and
flesh.

‘She . . .’ Eidan muttered thickly, falling into his arms. ‘She has brought them here.’

‘Them?’ Jae’le repeated.

But Zaifyr had not needed to ask who he meant.

He felt the first before it came through the ruined gate, felt the cold burning hatred that, for a moment, reminded him of Lor Jix, before it landed on the top of the broken rubble.

It was not right to call it a man, though Zaifyr knew that it had once been such. It had been a large man, close to six foot three, and he could still see the shape of that man in his haunt, a
haunt splayed out in the muscle and bone of the creature that dropped from the wall and entered the yard. He looked very much like a butterfly that had been laid out in a case, but rather than
being pinned to wood in a collection, here the collector had fastened the haunt into flesh, into arms and legs. Zaifyr could still see that he had been a young man, that he had been a Leeran
soldier, despite the horrific lengths that his arms now stretched and the hideous swelling of his legs, and the hump of his back – and he could also see, on the haunt’s face, a frozen
horror. Yet, for all the horror, the emotion that washed over Zaifyr was one of a burning hatred, and he could see the second presence, not a haunt like the soldier, but an ancient dead, much like
Lor Jix, wrapped through the creature of the Leeran’s spirit so that it could wear the flesh of the dead soldier as he might have worn armour in life.

In its hands, the creature held a huge spiked mace. It was the weapon that had torn through Eidan, but the creature had not done that without suffering itself. Its arm – the right arm
– hung uselessly from its socket.

When it saw Zaifyr and Jae’le, it let a roar tear from its throat and through the night sky. In a matter of moments, two new creatures leapt onto the rubble of the fence. One was long and
lean with bone spikes piercing its skin, the other appeared to be a huge, distorted beast.

Neither was what the first creature had called to, however. The darkness in the sky, the darkness that was so very much like a second skin to the world, began to flow like an ocean towards the
three. It was not until it had cleared the gate that Zaifyr glimpsed the blunted face, the misshapen form, but as he saw it, he knew also that it was not quite of this world, that it existed truly
as a shadow, just outside the one he stood in.

As he realized that, the child walked through the broken gate.

Bueralan boosted Samuel Orlan to the window before he pulled himself up. In the small frame, he gazed down at a narrow ledge wide enough for the toes of his boots and the ends
of his fingers. The drop after that was large, but not dangerous, and he watched Orlan release his grip as he dangled from the ledge and land hard, but otherwise fine. Bueralan was on the edge of
beginning his descent when a part of the tree-lined horizon cracked and shifted, as if a part of a mirror had suddenly broken off to reveal smoke behind.

‘Orlan,’ he shouted.

‘Ignore it!’ The cartographer was crouched on the ground, examining it intently. He turned and cried, ‘I found her tracks!’

Another piece of the night sky cracked and, on instinct, the saboteur glanced back. The narrow room had begun to fill with smoke, the thin fingers that had reached ahead of him and Orlan now
dragging a misshapen body, and the building’s frame groaned, as if the passage of it was too much weight.

Taela’s tracks were not difficult to find when he reached the ground. She had landed near where he had, and the heels of her boots had dug deep into the ground. However, unlike his, her
boots were surrounded by half a dozen heavier steps that began to multiply into a rushed trail towards the stables. The entire skyline behind the building had taken on a shattered appearance and
the reflection of flames began to show on it as the smoke discoloured the night sky higher.

Bueralan did not need to follow the tracks. It was clear that, as the catapults had released the stones and fire that had crashed through Yoala Fe’s mansion, the First Queen had organized
Taela’s rescue, and it was obvious that she had not bothered with him or Samuel Orlan. The two of them could head in a different direction, take their own chances. They had no obligation to
pursue because they had no responsibility for anyone but themselves and their own safety. Yet Bueralan continued across the yard with Orlan beside him.

Halfway to the stables, he turned to look behind him and came to a halt.