Leviathan's Blood (45 page)

‘When the second offer was made, it was those people who said yes. They did not believe it, so I do not know why they did agree, but I believe there was some sort of compelling notion
within them, something that forced them to raise their voice.

‘The Faithful cooked them alive. They sat the rest of us around the fires they lit and made us watch as they pulled the flesh off the men and women we had known and devoured
them.’

—Tinh Tu,
Private Diary

Aela Ren was not a tall man. He was five and a half foot and was neither thick-necked or muscular in frame, and at first glance, that lent him an air of innocence. A second
glance revealed a leanness that spoke of a soldier who had spent years on campaign. But it was the third glance, the glance that turned into a stare, that allowed the terrible nature of the man to
unfold. From beneath the shorn black stubble of his hair to the ends of his fingers, Bueralan saw a man whose body was mapped by scars, tattooed by extreme acts of violence. They were old wounds,
dried and puckered and faded into his skin until they would fade no more. There was no uniformity to them: the injuries had not been caused by a single blade, mace or arrow; they corrugated across
his arms and neck like bites and ran in cuts both thick and thin between. Both the number and the age of them left no doubt that the Innocent had come as close to a violent death as any man or
woman could, and that only by sheer force of will had he overcome it. Yet, when Aela Ren turned, his gaze running over the people before him in a curiosity before it settled on Bueralan, he
revealed a face that was neither defined by pain or stubbornness, nor a face that by the story of his body had a right to be taciturn and abrupt. No, he revealed a face that was alert, intelligent
and – despite its scars – approachable.

‘Mister Le,’ he said. ‘Just who I came to see.’

Call only –
Bueralan’s hands tightened on the railing at the top of the stairs as he remembered the child’s words –
when what is at stake is
innocence
.

‘Samuel did not want to bring me here.’ Aela Ren released the chain he had wrapped around Orlan’s neck and let it clatter to the floor. ‘I arrived at his shop this
afternoon and he began to argue once the door opened. My first time seeing him in over two hundred years and his first word to me is no. He tells me he has done enough to you, Bueralan, and enough
has been done to you. If I were to be truthful with you, I expected as much. Samuel Orlan has always argued with me. It is the name, naturally. The first Samuel Orlan sounded like the fifty-eighth,
and the eighty-second is no different. They are all the same.’

In the silence that followed Ren’s words, Bueralan heard the old cartographer unwinding the heavy chain around his neck in painful grunts and gasps. The rest of the mansion was caught in
the words of the Innocent and, a handful of steps away from him, Yoala’s young groom, Hua Dvir, best exemplified the fear of those around them. He appeared as if he had been caught in amber.
He was unable to move from where he had been when the celebration of his marriage announcement began. The same, however, could not be said of Yoala, whose terror was giving way to indignation at
Aela Ren’s intrusion. She took a step forward without hesitation and said, ‘You do not—’

Her body slumped to the floor, her throat torn out.

‘I did not invite conversation.’ Aela Ren shook his right hand, spraying blood across the tiled floor. ‘But that is the problem with people of pride and ambition.’

The Innocent’s movements had been swift and sudden, the ends of his fingers tearing through Yoala’s neck with a callous disregard that Bueralan had never seen before.
Call only
when what is at stake is innocence.
The child’s words repeated as Aela Ren began to walk up the stairs.
Call –
the terrified crowd parted before him as his worn boots
marked a path to the saboteur –
call only when –
across the smooth stone floor, blood dripping from his hand –
call only when what is at stake –
each step
a beat to the child’s words –
call only when what is at stake is innocence
– words that Bueralan knew with certainty were intended for the man who approached, words that
demanded he speak a name he did not know.

‘I am the oldest person here.’ The Innocent stopped before the Queen’s Voice, his right hand still wet with blood. ‘Even so, I can still acknowledge great beauty. Does
that flatter you?’

‘No,’ she whispered.

Aela Ren reached for her dress, gathering it from up high around her thighs, and wiped the blood off his hand.

‘I like her.’ He said the words to Bueralan, but he remained in front of the Queen’s Voice for a moment longer, still holding her burnt-orange gown in his hands. Gently, he
released the dress and turned to the saboteur. He approached the railing where he stood. ‘She is genuinely terrified,’ he continued. ‘It took a lot of courage for her to tell me
no. Many others would not find it. Most are simply afraid to speak when they meet me. Afraid that if they draw attention to themselves they will die like that woman on the floor. Their fear is a
truth deep inside them. It is caused by my name, by my presence and by my actions. I enhance it, naturally. My master gave me that gift long ago – to let the truth inside someone be that
which guides them around me. Samuel’s mistress gave him the gift of the world’s borders. But your master – what did your master give you?’ A scarred hand reached for the
leather tie around his neck, for the pouch—

Bueralan’s hand snapped around the Innocent’s wrist. ‘That’s not for you,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it?’ He pulled his arm away. ‘Your master did not give that to you, did he?’

‘I do not have a master.’

‘That is not true.’ The First Queen’s interruption was a harsh whisper. ‘And unlike others in this room, Aela Ren, I am not terrified of you.’

The Innocent turned his attention away from Bueralan, turned to the old woman. ‘But you are dying,’ he said simply.

‘I have been dying for many years.’

‘Yet you believe it has made you strong, immune to the fears and indecision of others.’ The Innocent’s hand waved across the crowd, waved to where Saan warriors emerged, their
copper bracelets catching the light sharply. ‘But it has made you weak. That is why men of conquest are on your shores, Zeala Fe. Tell me, how long do you think your daughter would have
allowed you to live once she was married?’

‘That is for mothers and daughters to decide, not men from across the ocean.’ The First Queen slowly rose from her wheelchair, her arms shaking with the effort. Upright, she was a
thin woman, her shoulders hunched under a weight that no one watching could truly have appreciated. ‘Why don’t you let these people go home?’

‘No.’

‘Then kill them now.’

Around the First Queen a gasp escaped the crowd.

Aela Ren’s scarred lips smiled faintly. Instead of answering her, he turned to Bueralan, turning his back to both the First Queen and the Saan warriors who drew closer to him. Yet the
saboteur did not look at them. Instead, he followed the Innocent’s gaze down to the floor where Yoala’s body lay alone, her blood forming a tranquil pool around her. At the far edge of
the crowd, Usa Dvir had taken the arm of the Saan prince and led him into the crowd, leaving Samuel Orlan alone in the centre of the room.

The cartographer had regained his feet and, free of the chain that had dragged him, walked past Yoala Fe’s body to the long table of ice sculptures.

‘My master was the god Wehwe,’ Ren said to Bueralan, his voice conversational. ‘He was the God of Truth, and he died in the middle of the War of the Gods, struck down by
Uditos, the God of Necessity. The loss was great to me, but the irony of it did not escape me, even at the time.
For war to continue, truth must die.
Wehwe was the first to say that. He
had made me write it. It was one of the few pieces of writing that he did not make me destroy after I had completed it. Over the thousands of years that my master spoke to me, he would have me
transcribe whole books and then burn them. He believed that once words became print, they were no longer true, but it was my duty to search for those that were not.’

At the ice sculpture of the broken-bladed warrior, Samuel Orlan dipped his hands into the bowls of water, bringing the liquid to his face.

‘I was a monk when Wehwe first found me,’ Ren continued. Bueralan risked a glance behind the Innocent, and saw that the Saan warriors were drawing closer, but with great caution.
‘I know that it is not true now, but for the first few decades of my life, I was dedicated to the pursuit of peace and harmony. I had not seen a sword or raised my hands in anger. I lived in
a monastery on a mountain that no longer exists and I owned nothing but the robes and boots that I wore, clothing that I made with my own hands. The trail to the monastery was a long and twisting
one, made from bridges of rope and wood, and secured into the smooth rock of the mountain by monks like myself. To travel to it was such a danger that few did, and the monks there were forced to
grow their own food and sink their own wells for water. The monks would leave twice a year. On both those times, we would travel along our dangerous trails until we reached the base of the
mountain, where we would trade for cloth and seeds, and we would help with the ill and take in abandoned children. I was one such child, left by parents too young and too poor to care for me, and I
was carried to the monastery on the back of another monk at six months of age. For thirty-four years I lived in the grounds. I did chores, I studied and I lived an unremarkable life until the
winter Wehwe noticed me.

‘He came to me first as a small rodent, and he followed me around the gardens for a month. He would lead me to hurt birds, hungry rodents, struggling insect colonies, and I would help all
of them. I did not know he was a god then, though I knew something was strange about the rodent, and when it died, I wept. Later, he appeared as a woman heavy with child who needed my help. I saw
her in a dream, and found her on the mountain, beautiful and alone and vulnerable. He tested me with her in a number of ways, and I resisted them all. After her, he appeared as an old man with no
legs. He sent a letter to the monastery by bird, requesting that I make the journey along our paths to reach him and bring him up, in the middle of winter. I carried him on my back for nearly a
month as I brought him to the monastery steps.

‘And it was there, after I had completed the last of these tasks, that Wehwe informed me that I was his. I had no say in the matter.’

Samuel Orlan straightened. Slowly, he reached for one of the blades on the sculpture, one held by the melting attackers of the Saan Blade Prince, and with a twist, he snapped off a fist-sized
length.

Bueralan pointed to the cartographer. ‘He said the original Orlan denied his god.’

‘It is true, but the same Samuel Orlan could neither deny nor accept the desire of Aeisha.’ The Innocent raised his voice. ‘Am I not right?’

The old man ignored the shout, sinking instead to the ground, where he pressed the ice up against his neck to soothe the welts caused by the chain.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Bueralan asked.

‘There has not been a god-touched man or woman for over ten thousand years,’ Aela Ren replied. ‘I know where each and every one in this world is, Bueralan Le. Even the sad and
pathetic one who lives in swamps and mutters pieces of madness as if it were truth. But now there is you. You, a mercenary, a saboteur, a man but a step from being an assassin, a betrayer of Queen
and country. A man who was given no trials by a god, no tasks to complete, and no constraints. A man who was simply given a power that does not describe itself and left to the world as the last act
of a dying god. If I were a religious man, I would say that it was ordained.’

‘I did not ask for it.’

‘None of us does.’ He settled both his hands onto the railing lightly. ‘When I asked if Ger had given you the soul around your neck, I already knew he had not. A different god
gave it to you. A new god. Can you imagine what this has meant to me?’

‘No.’ The word felt as if it were strangled from his throat.

‘Tell me the name of this god, Bueralan.’

‘I don’t—’ He hesitated, stopped.

‘That,’ Aela Ren said. ‘That is interesting.’

‘I do
not
know it,’ Bueralan insisted. ‘She never told me it.’

‘No, she would not have.’

Then, before the saboteur could react, the small man vaulted over the railing, and dropped lightly to the floor.

‘Warriors of the Saan!’ He turned to the men who had been closing in on him, the men who had rushed the railing the moment he leapt. ‘You want to be able to claim that you were
responsible for the death of the Innocent! You want fame! You want fortune! I offer you the opportunity. Draw your swords. Come down the stairs. In this room is a man who has been god-touched and
who does not know what it means.

‘Let us show him.’

‘How long has your name terrorized people, Aela Ren?’ Usa Dvir was the first to speak after the Innocent’s voice fell silent. He stepped from the crowd on the
side of the ice sculptures. Beside him the Blade Prince of the Saan wept, but he was otherwise alone. The young prince was nowhere to be seen, and the hand that had pulled the boy to safety now
held the hilt of a long straight-bladed sword. ‘I read about you as a child, just as my father had read about you, and his father before him. Your deeds are written on some of the oldest
scrolls that we have, scrolls so old that the ink purchased by my father’s fathers is but barely visible.’

‘Oh, Usa,’ the First Queen whispered, ‘do not lie to him.’

‘Lie?’ the Queen’s Voice asked.

‘The men of the Saan cannot read,’ Bueralan answered quietly. Beside him, the Queen leant heavily on his arm as she moved to the edge of the balcony, to gaze down at the Innocent. He
was silent in response to Dvir, and Bueralan could feel a tremor in the Queen’s hand, as if that silence was worse than any words he could have said.