Leviathan's Blood (23 page)

‘Ce Pueral.’ Her voice was soft, not yet a whisper, but soon. ‘You are late.’

‘Forgive me, Highness. There was a matter that required my attention. Would you like to hear of it, or shall we begin as usual?’

‘As usual.’ In her lap, the First Queen held a collection of jewels. As a young woman, she had loved heavy works of silver and gold, but the weight was now too much, and she had
taken to holding them instead. ‘How have my daughters plotted against me today?’

Pueral eased into the chair across from her, embarrassed still by her use of it. For most of her time as the Eyes of the First Queen, she had delivered her reports while standing, but in the
last few years, her ability to do so for three, four hours straight had begun to fail her. She had been forced to ask the Queen if she could sit, to which the woman across from her had nodded, and
said, ‘If you had made it another year standing for three hours, I might have had you executed.’

‘Your daughters continue with their preparations,’ Pueral said. ‘The captain of a ship by the name of
Mercy
has been to see your eldest, Geena. I have yet to locate
the ship itself, but I suspect it is in one of the bays off the coast, and will sit there for as long as your daughter pays the captain and his crew to do so. Given the captain’s reputed port
of home, I believe she is planning to flee to Zoum soon.’ She paused for a moment, but when the Queen did not speak, she continued. ‘Hiala continues to try and treat with the Second and
Third Queens, but as yet, neither has seen fit to hear her.’

‘They do not think she will survive succession,’ the Queen said sadly. ‘They are not wrong, but a mother should not think it. What of my youngest?’

‘She plans a party.’

‘Will I be invited?’

‘No,’ Pueral said evenly. ‘But Usa Dvir, war scout for the Saan family Dvir, will.’

‘She is as ambitious as she has always been.’ On her lap, the First Queen twisted a dark-blue butterfly between her thin fingers. ‘What do you think she is offering after they
kill me and her sisters? Marriage, land, money?’

‘All of that, and slaves.’

‘It would not be surprising,’ she conceded. ‘Now, to important matters: what do you hear of Aela Ren?’

‘More rumours that he has arrived, of course.’ There had been stories for years. As a child, she had heard her father’s friends, from morning to evening, sober and drunk, claim
that it was only a matter of days before he arrived. ‘Very few have any credibility, but there is a letter from the Fifth Queen, Dalau Vi, that may interest you. She talks of an attack on the
coast, of a village that was destroyed. It is notable only from the point that it was a village that worked the black ocean across from where the Innocent’s ships had been sighted.’

The Queen took the letter, gently unrolling the seal Pueral had broken. ‘She sent these to all the Queens,’ she murmured.

‘Do you wish to ignore it?’

‘No.’ She placed a silver locket at one end, to weigh the fold down. ‘You will go to the coast and see these ships. Dalau reports having a man here who saw the Innocent, and if
that is true, then the time will be well spent. If he is lying, then you will have seen how the Fifth Province is doing. Already we have seen a marked increase in the number of people crossing the
border from there to here, and the men and women who are leaving here for various docks have also increased. Dalau’s generals have been reluctant to listen to her, which is no doubt helping
that. She is young, and shows very little of herself in her office so far, but it will be good to know for certain how much control she has over her kingdom.’

Pueral tilted her head. ‘Of course, Highness.’

‘Do not thank me,’ the First Queen said. ‘We are both too old for such a long time in the saddle. Now, what of this last piece of news?’

‘Bueralan Le has returned.’ Even now, she could not believe that she was saying the words. ‘He is in the company of Samuel Orlan.’

The First Queen’s laugh was a whisper of sound. ‘Now that is truly interesting. Do you think Samuel has brought him for me?’

Despite the fact that Sir Deran Caloise’s
Against Darkness
was written in the final years of Caloise’s life, a life that ended well after the War of the
Gods, Zaifyr was drawn to it because of the years the author had spent as the squire of Sir Alric Caloise, also known as the Beloved. In its entirety, the book was a drawn-out final letter of
loyalty to a knight who died weeks before Jae’le conquered Kuinia, the name his brother would give to the land that stretched across Gogair, the Saan and the continents that Yeflam
spanned.

The Beloved was a minor figure in history, if truth be told. Indeed, Sir Alric Caloise was not the first, nor the last to bear the title. It had been worn by at least seven men and two women and
it still waited, Zaifyr believed, for someone to own it in a fashion that no one else could. But that did not matter to him. As the morning’s sun rose, he scanned for a section of
Against
Darkness
where Alric Caloise rode into the Broken Mountains. The story of his expedition was detailed well by Sir Deran, but it was a story of death, of a force unprepared for the poisoned
land that they would travel on. Yet Sir Alric – as Zaifyr had read in another book, Batiano’s
Lost Knights
– was one of the few men to have claimed to have spoken to the
last of the goddess Linae’s priests. It was well after the War of the Gods, but the conversation, as recorded by Deran Caloise, had little to recommend it. Deran retold the tale secondhand,
repeating Alric’s words: he described an old woman riddled with disease, a hut that was barely big enough for her, and a promise she made to him. His squire did not know exactly what that
promise was, but it was clear that after the meeting Alric was in the grip of an obsession. On more than one occasion, he was said to have claimed that it was a divine command that drove him.
Whatever that command was, it saw the knight waste the remains of his considerable wealth in a campaign against those he called False Gods.

That campaign brought him into conflict with Zaifyr and his family, but only momentarily. Within a year, the armies that Alric had been part of – as either a leader or a companion –
had been broken. The remains of them were pushed into the mountains that divided the Saan from Gogair and there, in rugged, wormed-out tunnels, Alric Caloise had tried to take the remnants of his
army to the Saan. He told his squire that he could begin an extended campaign of rebellion from there.

Zaifyr remembered that well, but not because of anything the Beloved had done. A fatigue had started to creep into his brothers and sisters then, a fatigue that would eventually lead to a larger
weariness that would result in the end of their wars before they conquered all the continents of the world. For the Beloved, however, the tiredness of Jae’le and Eidan, who had chased the
knight’s small force, resulted only in an ugly death that Deran Caloise’s book recounted:

We did not face an opponent of flesh and blood in those tunnels. Such a man would have been met by the straight steel that Sir Alric wielded. The finest swordsman of us, he would have stridden
into the tunnels and he would have wrought a horrible toll on them from the dark corners and the hidden passages. He was one of the few men to know the paths that led up the awful mountains, to the
daylight of the Saan, and the culmination of his superior knowledge and skill would have been the death of ordinary men. But we did not face such mortality. Instead, we faced a continual shuddering
of the earth, as if it were being broken by fists around us. The ground split, the walls cracked, the roof fell. I could not count the number of times we were forced to move due to death, to leave
tunnels we knew for those we did not.

There was no respite, ever. We could not sleep, could not find water, or food. We starved. We were forced into behaviour unfitting men of our stature. We drank our own wastes, we ate the flesh
of those who fell. After a week, the ground awoke creatures – those that you know to live deep within a cave and those that you do not – and they threatened to swarm us. We stomped and
swatted, but against such enemies, no sword could cleave, no armour protect. We could not light fires. We consumed our ill-gotten fare raw, standing. To sit, or to lie down, was to be attacked, to
be bitten. In my own weakness, this is how my arm became swollen, how the delirium that separated me from Sir Alric and the others came upon me, and how I do not remember my escape from the
mountains.

According to his own maths, Sir Deran Caloise had lived into his late seventies, his swollen arm cut off and the rest of his body the inheritor of the pitiful unsold estates that bore Sir
Alric’s name.

Still, the book had provided Zaifyr with Alric’s final resting place, even if it was in the tunnels that led to the Saan. Jae’le would not thank him for that, when Zaifyr told him.
Once Zaifyr found the haunt, his brother would have to enter the tunnels to bring Alric’s bones to Yeflam. But the tunnels that led to the Saan were the first problem. Many ended in dead ends
and strange creatures. A lost man or woman could spend decades in the tunnels before they stepped out into the light of one of the suns again. Finding Alric’s haunt first would cut the time
down considerably, but he could almost hear his brother’s curse, his disgust at the idea—

‘Qian,’ Kaqua said from behind him. ‘It is time for you to leave Yeflam.’

‘Your hands move too fast,’ Xrie said. ‘That’s your problem.’

‘I have been told that before.’ Ayae caught the three bruised apples she had been attempting to juggle. A fourth and fifth lay in soggy remains on the ground, while another two
waited on the small stool behind her. She had been given them when the three had returned silently from the Mesi Market, after Zineer had closed the door behind them and said, ‘We could go to
Wila.’

‘Become refugees?’ Faise asked. ‘In our own home?’

‘It would be safe.’

‘Zin—’

‘It
would
,’ he insisted. ‘What could Sinae Al’tor offer us? Nothing.
Nothing.
Heast is on Wila. He knows it is safe.’

‘Honey.’

‘This has – is – Faise, they’re in the
streets
.’

‘Honey.’ Faise took Zineer in her arms, drew him against her. ‘Honey, we would just endanger them. The people there are unarmed. Gaerl lied. The Captain isn’t going
there.’

Ayae stepped outside. She eased herself into the chair, the weight of what she had just witnessed – in both the market and the house – settling onto her heavily. She did not know
what she would do next, or how she should react; the threat had been clear, and she did not want to wait for it to be fulfilled – but before her mind could unravel what choices she had, she
was startled by Faise, who placed the bag of apples in her lap. ‘We need just a moment,’ she whispered and Ayae had nodded. The door closed and she heard them talking, heard their
movements, and she heard the pair of them slowly rebuild themselves, their strength and tenacity. Knowing that she could do nothing for that, Ayae had opened the bag and began, unsuccessfully, to
juggle.

She had been doing that when the Soldier arrived.

He stood with his hand on the gate that led to the house. His other hand rested on the hilt of his sword.

‘I am trying to control them,’ she said. ‘I want to control the air around the fruit and use that to move them. Aelyn told me that I had to trust the currents, that I had to
feel their texture, much as I did the fruit itself, and I am trying to use my hands for that, but always compensate by movement and they get faster and faster. It is as if I cannot stop
myself.’

‘Aelyn told you that?’

‘Yes.’

‘She rarely speaks about what is inside her.’

‘It was just something she said in passing, nothing more. But I need to be more . . . disciplined, I think,’ she said. ‘What brings you here, Xrie?’

‘Captain Heast, I am afraid.’

She felt her stomach tighten. ‘Is he—?’

‘He is on Wila.’ He nudged the gate open. ‘He sent me a message in the evening, telling me that Bnid Gaerl would soon be attacking him. Shortly after that, one of my men told
me that Gaerl was awakening his forces, that he had heard that Captain Heast had murdered a number of Gaerl’s men. It wasn’t too much longer before Le’ta was at my door, promising
that he had stopped Gaerl’s bloodshed, but we had best both take Heast to Wila for his own safety.’ Xrie grimaced. ‘I did not like it. Heast did not either when I showed up at
Sin’s Hand without Gaerl. He asked that I come and see you – in fact, that I come and warn you and your friends that you are in considerable danger from that man.’

‘I met Gaerl in the market today,’ she said.

‘Delightful, isn’t he? Your friends would be best served if they left Yeflam. Do they have any plans?’

He stopped, his attention drawn, like her own, to the man who made his way across the road. At first, she did not understand why he had caught her attention. Men and women passed her often, and
only those who lingered, or wore the brown robes of the priests – an increasingly vocal presence in Yeflam – caught her attention. None were like this man: there was a roughness to him,
a sense that his thin frame had emerged from the ground, his dark skin so heavily sunk against his bones that he appeared emaciated, with only the long, twisting beard he had giving shape to his
face. He was without wealth, that was obvious, but the leather he wore had once been purchased by a man who had been otherwise. If she had not thought that about the well-cared-for leather, then
the simple but well-made sword he wore and the cloak of thick green feathers the like of which she had never seen on any animal, would have suggested it was so.

She had never seen the man before, but she knew him,
knew
—

‘Jae’le.’

The word was a whisper, but he heard. ‘I knew you would not forget me.’ His smile revealed filed teeth. ‘You look different to my own eyes.’

‘I can barely sense you,’ Xrie said. ‘It is no wonder I have never felt you in Yeflam.’