Leviathan's Blood (38 page)

Yet.

Yet not a single soldier saw a new trail.

Not a single soldier saw the sign of an ambush.

And not a single soldier was attacked.

The building beckoned, the stump of a good tooth in a destroyed mouth. It had been made from black stone, but its shape was long gone, the walls having fallen, the beams rotting. The stone roof
remained standing because someone – perhaps Aela Ren, perhaps a bandit – had pushed and pulled the roof back into place on top of the building’s remains.

There was a camp inside, but it was cold. Loosening her sword, Pueral entered.

‘There are no tracks out of here.’ Ae Lanos stepped behind her lightly, his voice soft, but his movements and words echoed to her. ‘If he came here, I do not know how he
left.’

‘He was here,’ she said.

Before her were the marks of boots, the same as those in the tree outside Enalan. The two boots circled the cold pit of fire, the ashes not yet solidified. A single stone lay in the centre.

A stone that held a note.

An old friend of mine has arrived
, it said,
with a friend of new. I regret that our meeting will have to wait.

‘I do not know what this means,’ the tracker said, handing the note back to her. ‘A friend of old, a friend of new? The Innocent does not have friends.’

‘He has gone to Cynama,’ she said, a rawness in her throat. ‘To find Samuel Orlan.’

‘The cartographer?’

She left the camp, the words dying on Lanos’s lips as he, too, realized that there was but one man in Ooila who was as famous as Aela Ren was infamous. Only one man’s name could have
travelled down the roads, to the villages on the coast, quicker than they had ridden.

‘Tanith.’ Pueral held out the letter to the witch, who stood staring over the broken landscape of the moonlit ruins. ‘Is this letter enough?’

Gently, the other woman took it, the old, yellowed paper curling around her fingers. ‘He has written it in his own blood.’ Her voice trembled with excitement. ‘It will be more
than enough.’

Beneath Ayae’s feet, the stone cracked. She did not hear it, but when the fourth speaker – Pyo Sen – left the podium and Zaifyr repeated for the fourth time
that he had no questions, Ayae lowered her head in frustration. There, she saw the cracks, the thin lines spreading out from her feet, from the edges of her boots in an embarrassing web of
lines.

‘They have called their first break,’ Jae’le said.

When she lifted her foot, stone flaked off the sole of the boot.

‘Ayae, did you hear me?’

‘Yes.’ Despair had begun to sink into her the more she heard. Pyo Sen, who was a dark-skinned historian, had been called by Keeper Eira to build on the testimony of Keeper Ialee, who
had spoken in more detail about Asila. A small, olive-skinned woman, she had detailed Fo’s birth in a soft, reluctant voice. She, after Aelyn and Kaqua, was the oldest of the Keepers, and she
had been to Asila both before and after its destruction. Ialee had spent decades, according to her testimony, helping the survivors of Asila’s fall, and the horrors that she described –
suicide, self-mutilation, a list of damages to men and women of all ages that felt endless – had painted a vivid picture in the minds of the men and women around Ayae. Pyo Sen, who had run
dig sites in Kakar – the name Asila was not spoken by anyone but the Keepers – detailed the bones he had found, the sacrificial instruments, and more before he left the podium.
‘Jae’le?’

‘I hope my brother knows what he is doing, but I have begun to fear otherwise,’ he continued quietly. ‘This is not what he should do. He should let you and I
speak—’ Ayae’s hand fell on his arm and he stopped, and turned to her. ‘Why did you hit me?’

It had been the lightest movement she could make. ‘Jae’le.’ She directed his gaze down to her feet. ‘Something has happened.’

The quiet of his voice turned into a whisper. ‘The earth.’

His long, hard fingers wrapped around her arm before Ayae could reply and she found herself pulled through the crowd.

It was difficult for even Jae’le to move quickly. The thin lanes that had existed through the crowd before the break was called had disappeared as people began to make their way to the
street vendors and the curtained bathrooms at the sides of roads. A dim roar had begun to emerge as the cries from men and women selling food and drink was drowned out beneath the conversation of a
thousand-plus people. It was as if, finally, the men and women who held stones had been released from an iron grasp – for during the trial, silence had reigned as they strained to hear what
was spoken. Ayae tried to call out to Jae’le as he pulled her, but it was not until he shouldered through the doors of the Enclave that she could finally be heard.

‘What did you mean, the earth?’ She lowered her voice suddenly, aware of the small clumps of people at the ends of the hall. ‘What is happening to me, Jae’le?’

‘Ger was the Warden of the Elements,’ he replied softly. ‘Of fire, Ayae, of water, of air, and of earth. He could control them
all
.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Touch your skin.’ He held up his hand, palm first. There, in the deep lines, she saw grains of dirt and scrapes that threatened to bleed. ‘You are turning yourself to
stone.’

‘I can only do—’ She knew that it was not true and her voice faltered. ‘I just have fire,’ she said.

‘Grief is a powerful thing,’ Jae’le said. ‘It can consume you if you are not careful.’

Numbly, she touched her arms, but could feel nothing, not even her skin. She pressed down harder, feeling for bone, but found that her skin did not yield. ‘Do you remember Tsi?’ she
asked. ‘Zaifyr mentioned him briefly. He was someone like me – but I can find no mention of him in the library here.’

‘You will find none.’

‘But you remember him?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ he said, a note of weariness in his voice. ‘I do not remember exactly when Tsi was born, but I met him during the first years of the first war Zaifyr
and I made. We had not yet met Tinh Tu, or Aelyn, or Eidan. They would come many years later. As for Tsi, he came to us as a soldier, but the power was upon him at the start – you could sense
him when he walked into our camp, for beneath his skin he burned.’

‘He was consumed by the fire.’ Zaifyr had remembered little more: he had sat outside in the garden of the hotel he was living in and told her his name, and admitted he had only known
Tsi for a short time. ‘He said that Tsi had no discipline.’

‘He was not like you. Fire was all he had.’

Ayae wanted to close her eyes, wanted to put her hands over her ears, wanted to walk away from Jae’le, but she could not. Further up the hall, the clumps of people she had first noticed
had now become focused and she saw Lady Muriel Wagan and Aelyn Meah in conversation. A few steps away from them stood Caeli.

‘Tsi had no balance in him, nothing to stop the fire from consuming him. There was no sense of earth, water or air within him. To say he had no discipline is not fair, for he was
incomplete from the start.’

She heard Caeli call out her name.

‘You need to temper your grief,’ Jae’le continued, his voice dropping to an even softer tone as the guard came closer. ‘If you do not, it may be that you will be nothing
but stone.’

The guard appeared next to the tall, thin man and his cloak of green feathers and she took in the situation in a quick glance. ‘Is everything fine, Ayae?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘This is Jae’le—’

‘Qian’s brother, I know.’

‘My reputation.’ His smile revealed filed teeth. ‘If you will excuse me, I can see that my sister wishes to speak to me, as well.’

After he had left, Caeli said drily, ‘You have horrible taste in older men.’

Caught off-guard, the younger woman did not know what to say, and struggled with a quick quip. With a smile, Caeli turned to her – but the smile faded when she saw Ayae’s face and
her hand reached out for her shoulder. ‘What happened?’ Caeli asked.

‘Faise and Zineer.’ Saying her name, not just thinking it, caused her throat to close. ‘I’m – I am sorry.’

Caeli’s hand tightened on Ayae’s shoulder.

‘I hear a name and it is not spoken in happiness.’ Muriel Wagan did not smile; nor did she reach out for Ayae. Instead, she nodded, once. ‘I knew. When the fire burst into the
sky and I heard your voice, I knew. The loss is all of ours, Ayae.’

She had no response.

‘Walk with me a little.’ Lady Wagan pushed open the door of the Enclave. The midday’s sun was high in the sky and its heat seeped off the ground strongly, but Ayae could not
feel it. ‘Aelyn Meah confirmed for me that I will be called as a witness after this break,’ Muriel Wagan said. ‘I do believe I have made a mistake by agreeing to be part of this
mortal and immortal trial.’

She was taken aback by the other woman’s tone. ‘What did she say?’ Ayae asked.

‘It was what she did not say.’ After a dozen steps, Lady Wagan stopped. Ahead of her, the men and women who held stones in their hands moved like a large, slow animal. Above them,
the ends of the glass tubes rose like spears that had pierced through the crowd’s body. ‘You will need to be careful, Ayae. We all will, for that matter, but you more than others will
need to watch yourself.’

Zaifyr knew that the trial was unfolding poorly for him, but that only strengthened his search for Lor Jix.

Kaqua had surprised him. The rest – from the Keepers to the mortals – had said and done much of what he thought they would do, but the Pauper had caught him off-guard. He had not
expected Fo and Bau to be presented as victims. Despite his surprise, he could afford to give only a small amount of attention to the trial as it unfolded around him. It was becoming more and more
difficult to speak, and he thought that the next time he was addressed, he might not answer. By that time, he knew, he had to have found Lor Jix.

His awareness pushed through Nale’s stone ground and to the haunt of a drowned child near the surface of Leviathan’s Blood. She was startled by his touch, and he felt her panic wash
against him like the waves against the stone pillar of Nale. She was young, so young that she had not the ability to form words or desire and he felt a deep sympathy for her wordless fear. Yet he
did not stay. He could have offered her a little comfort, but it would not have lasted, and from her, Zaifyr moved to the haunt of a young woman further beneath the waves. A middle-aged man
followed. An old woman after. Each of their pale, flickering bodies formed a thread that allowed his awareness to stretch further and further from him, until he reached the floor of the ocean where
he believed Lor Jix waited.

He had found little reference to the man since Anguish had spoken to him. He had searched in books, searched because he wanted to know as much about the ancient dead as he could, but he had
found little. That had given him some pause and, he admitted, some trepidation, but it had been mitigated somewhat by the fact that he had found a great deal in relation to the ship,
Wayfair
. It was listed in a number of books as one of the great shipwrecks of the War of the Gods. It had been lost in one of the worst storms to rampage through Leviathan’s Throat,
its hull low with the weight of gold and silver from sixteen nations. According to the majority of the writers,
Wayfair
had been contracted to make an offer to the gods to stop their war,
and while the exact amount of what it held differed wildly, the lost contents had become one of the great wrecks. It was made even more tantalizing by the fact that it was captained by one of
Leviathan’s holy order.

Periodically through his research, Zaifyr had thought of Meihir, the witch who had greeted him on the morning his parents had died. She had been the first ancient dead he had met – and, in
the years that followed her punishment by the god Hienka, he had watched a madness creep over her, but it was not until centuries had passed that Zaifyr truly understood the horror of what the god
had done to her.

In the black ocean, he drifted to the haunt of a young cabin boy, his haunt so old that he had become numb to the cold and hunger that drove him.

When Zaifyr had finally returned to Kakar after he and his siblings had finished their war, when he returned to begin the construction of his kingdom, Asila, he had seen so much more of the dead
that he was, at times, overwhelmed by a deep sorrow. He had seen friends and enemies die, both by his own hand, and no matter who they had been in life, they had decayed before his eyes in death:
they lost their sense of self and become a shell of what they had once been, forever trapped. Even in the depths of his depression, he knew that Meihir had not suffered exactly like that.

He could still recall the old trail that led to his village, the narrowness of it that had once seemed so wide, and the melted snow that left some steps more dangerous than others. Each step he
had taken on that return to Kakar had been heavy with the memories of his early life. The charms being wrapped around him by family members. The sword his father gave him, the straight, new blade,
and the hilt wound tightly in leather. The stone bears that moved in the forest. He had become so lost in his memories that when he finally came to the clearing of his village, defined now by a
handful of broken stone kilns, he did not see the ruins, but the living, breathing site of his childhood with the old witch standing in its centre.

Then she had turned to him and the light had broken through her frail body.
Zaifyr
.
Hello
, he had replied.
You are my shame, Zaifyr, you are the other half of my curse, my
failure
. Her voice gained a fury with each word, and then suddenly, it stopped.
Zaifyr
, she whispered, again, and began to walk away.

Hours later, she returned to him, to speak to him, though her conversation was not easy. Her difference from the other haunts became clearer with each day he spent around her, and with each day
he saw a clearer picture of her fragmented mind, broken not just by her god’s betrayal of her, but by her own betrayal through her loss of faith. At times, she was lucid, and aware of how she
suffered; at others, violent, and in the worst of her anger, she would be able to touch him, but only very rarely. Most of the time, she was as he knew her, a broken woman. He longed to provide her
a final rest, and it was there, he realized as he drifted through the black ocean to another haunt, there in the ruins of his childhood home that the desire to provide rest to all the dead came to
him – a desire that would ultimately manifest in his building of the city Asila, and the nation by that name, where, even in the final days of it, he had thought only to release the dead from
their pain.