The Godless (29 page)

The three mercenaries led Ayae alongside the Spine, the work on top forcing each to raise and lower their voices accordingly. As they passed a steel barrier being bolted into the wall, Meina had raised her voice and asked Ayae how long she had lived in Mireea. When they had walked around a group of men and women hauling barrels of oil up by rope, the captain had asked quietly how long she and Illaan had been together.

“I wouldn't listen to my niece if I were you.” Behind them, the large man with the axe spoke; his name was Bael. “She hasn't met a man she hasn't paid for in over a decade.”

“You make it sound like a terrible thing, Uncle.”

“Your father would be horrified.”

“My father?” Meina turned to face him, her dark, leather boots moving backward without a hint of doubt. “My father did the exact same thing with men, as you well know.”

“He didn't try to carry out meaningful relationships with them.”

“Neither do I.”

Her second uncle—Maalen—chuckled. “The entire company waits for the day you meet a fine man. We bet on it.”

“That never happened to my father.”

“No, he met a woman.”

“And did that make him happy?”

Maalen made a face. “It was a poor choice.”

“But a choice still.” Meina spread her hands. “If he had kept to his rules and simply paid for her, he would have been much happier.”

Laughter stole into the air with an ease that surprised and shamed Ayae. She had left Illaan lying on the ground, the elderly corporal bending over him. He had been hurt, by
her
, but not ten minutes later she was laughing as she walked down the street, aware that the words of Queila Meina were for her benefit. She—even she, who knew nothing of mercenaries—knew the reputation of the former Captain of Steel, Wayan Meina. He had built the mercenary unit up from the remains of others, a young man with a vision that saw the group gain fame as quickly as they had contracts. He had been one of the first mercenary captains to really embrace the use of cheap fictions, which until then had been used mostly by retired soldiers to supplement their income. Wayan Meina had been the first captain to bring bards and authors into his unit, with the express desire that they produce the fictions that would make heroes out of his soldiers. He had wrapped the truth of a mercenary's life in a lie and, when news of his death on a small farm emerged, it was followed by a slim novel detailing his exploits of defending it for four days against a band of twenty-three raiders, the woman he stood beside the mother of his only daughter.

Meina and her two uncles stopped outside
The Pale House.
One of the tallest buildings in the city, it was constructed from large, white bricks that the original owner had brought in at great expense from across the Leviathan's Throat. When Captain Heast had taken its roof as his command post, Ayae had heard that the current owner had closed down the rest of the hotel and told his staff that they were now, in an unofficial capacity, the servants of the city.

“You'll find Heast on the roof with his table,” Meina said. “He's expecting you. He has been expecting you for days, but don't let him push you around. Once you are done there, come by Steel and share a meal.”

Ayae grasped the other woman's hand, her palms warm. “Thank you.”

Then she was alone.

She had been inside
The Pale House
twice before. The hotel—despite its current use by Captain Heast—was an establishment for the wealthy. The first time she had entered with Faise, and the two of them had promptly learned that a pair of girls from an orphanage neither had the money nor the contacts to be treated properly in the open, ashwood bar that dominated the ground floor after reception. On the following occasion, she had accompanied Illaan, and met two of his brothers and their wives in the elaborate, second-floor dining room, where she had sat quietly and awkwardly throughout the evening. On her third visit, she crossed the empty, pale-stained floor and approached one of the staff, asking for Captain Heast. She was directed to one of the narrow, spiraling staircases that were like tubes throughout the building, and climbed four flights of stairs with only the echo of her steps for company.

At the end of the stairs, a guard held the door open for her. The light that followed was so bright that she squinted at the empty sky first, before noticing the cut-back branches and trunks that ringed the roof of
The Pale House
. It was at the far end of the roof that she saw Captain Heast, standing with a small, heavily scarred man before a large, heavy table. On the top of it she could make out a detailed, miniature model of Mireea, the Spine of Ger and the surrounding land.

“I have company,” she heard Heast say, “but I think that should cover us for the time being.”

The other man nodded and said, “I'll make sure that it's done,” but it was not until his heavy steps had faded from the stairwell that Heast spoke to her.

“Drink?”

“No,” she replied. “But thank you.”

“I asked for you two days ago.” His voice was even, controlled, with no hint of emotion. “I am to take it that my sergeant did not pass on that information?”

She started to apologize, but the Captain of the Spine held up his hand. “Please, it isn't necessary. I was hoping for a different response from him.”

“He is a good soldier.”

“In peace, yes.” Heast's hand touched the table before him. “Now? He is like brittle metal, continually cracking beneath the surface. It is not just the situation that he finds difficult, but the news that comes from Yeflam and his father. It appears that a power shift in the Traders Union has left him uncertain of his father's future. But the question I am faced with is one that any smith faces in the same situation.”

“To reforge or to abandon,” she said softly. “What did you want to see me for?”

“To discuss what I am to do with
you
.”

On the table before her, the Spine of Ger ran from end to end of the map, the cartographer using the form of a giant to give shape and depth to the mountains around it. She was not surprised to see Orlan's signature at the bottom, as the brushwork and modeling were without doubt his—but what did surprise her was how the signature repeated, echoing an earlier one, suggesting that the table she stood before was much, much older than she would otherwise have thought.

“I don't believe in calling it a curse,” Heast continued. “Maybe here in the heat, on the Spine, it can only be that—but not with me.”

There was nothing friendly or unfriendly in Heast's gaze. It felt calculated. There was an honesty in that, she realized.

She had not met Heast before in any personal capacity. He did not attend the functions that the soldiers organized. She had heard stories of him when he arrived—even young as she had been, then—but the hope that he would be of as much interest as the stories of Meina's father had fled within weeks. What books there were about him were about strategies, about the details of battles that, Ayae had heard, were dry and humorless. He was a man, the Mireean Guard said, who only worked—and though this single-mindedness had more than won their loyalty, it had not won him the adoration of the city.

“In a tower above the Keep, there are two men who are a curse to me,” he continued. “If asked, they will say that laws keep them bound, that their neutrality is fundamental to them, but it is not to be believed. With them, I could heal an army, poison another. I could end the war before it began. Instead, I am left to fight—to watch not just my soldiers die, but those of a nation I have traded with and fought before. Fo and Bau think nothing of that, which is why their neutrality is but lip service.”

“I have little skill to fight either, if that is what you're asking me,” she said. “All I can offer is the talents I do have. I can tell you your map is off.”

He turned, slightly. “Where?”

“The western edge.” She ran her finger down the hard edge of the mountain. “Here. That was cleared of bush for six new settlements over a year ago. Miners, if I remember right.”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

A loud knocking broke their conversation, followed by a sweating, young guard.

“Sir—Sergeant Illaan!” He caught his breath in gasps. “The healer wants you to know that you're needed, that you should come and see the sergeant immediately!”

 

2.

 

He had introduced himself as Ekar Waalstan, any title unspoken, his authority unquestioned. “If I had been asked what I thought of you, Baron Le, I believe I would have said that you were a man moments away from panic.” He spoke conversationally, friendly, as if an army did not lie behind him. “But now I have the unpleasant experience of feeling the opposite: that you are exactly where you want to be, that you planned this and knew Samuel would betray you. I commend you on that.”

“That's very civilized of you.” The saboteur raised his chained wrists in a salute. “Thank you.”

The general's brown eyes held a faint amusement. He sat across from Bueralan, right foot folded gently across his left knee, a gentleman in his chair with his long fingers laced before him. He was calm and relaxed, his body language one of control. Despite the general's words, Bueralan
was
caught flat-footed. He had not suspected Orlan's betrayal: he had believed in the fire of his shop, had not considered that Samuel Orlan—the famously neutral Samuel Orlan—might have been involved. Not that he had much time to ponder the betrayal. The saboteur knew keenly that his life could end before he rose from the hard wooden chair he sat on, that his body could be left on the dark green grass to be trampled over by thousands of soldiers, his wrists still chained tightly. Lieutenant Dural stood on the edge of the conversation, attentive and still, his hand never far from his sword. Waiting for the moment that he could provide this service.

“I have heard of you, of course,” General Waalstan continued. “There is one particular story that interests me, a most recent one where you were hired by a man known as Lord Alden. From what I understand, you and Dark were hired to root out civil war beginning in his own yard. It is said that you spent six months eating his stale bread to compile a list of one hundred and twenty-three men that you did not even send to the gallows.”

“You know more of me than I you,” Bueralan said, feigning ease. “I believed that King Rakun led his armies. If the king remained in Leera, then his son led the army.”

“True.”

“But no more?”

“Yes, I do believe you are exactly where you wish to be.” He turned toward the elderly man beside him. “He reminds me of you, Samuel.”

The cartographer sat on the third chair provided and though he had been subdued since his arrival, his bright blue eyes told the lie of his body. “Am I to be complimented?” Orlan asked. “Or is it to him that you are paying the compliment?”

“To both of you?” the general asked.

“It is a dangerous game,” the cartographer replied. “You should decide either to kill him or buy him now and be done with it.”

Waalstan's long fingers pointed to Bueralan. “Can I buy you?”

“I have a price,” he said. “I don't know if you would meet it, though. It might be high for a soldier whose army feeds itself through cannibalism.”

“A regrettable task that some of my soldiers have been forced into.” His fingers were without callus or scar; this was not the hand of a man who wielded a sword. “There are times I thought we went too far, that the illusions we created have been largely unnecessary and will come back to haunt us in the following years.”

“Your soldiers aren't eating other people?” Bueralan asked.

“No, they are.” The humor in his eyes was gone, now. “They have orders and they have belief.”

“Belief?” he began.

“We believe.” He glanced to his left, to the force that sprawled around him, to the silent soldiers who stood in a perimeter around where the three talked, watching, waiting. “There is a purpose to all that we do.”

“Your war is holy?”

“That is what others will call it, yes.”

“And yourself?”

“Enough.” The man's right hand rose. “This is not an interview.”

“It is if you want to employ me.”

“We both know that is a lie,” Ekar Waalstan replied. “You cannot afford to, either morally or professionally. Many will understand why you turned on the Lord of Ille once he killed your man, but the question will hang over you and the rest of Dark if you now betray Lady Wagan. Not that you plan to do so, of course—the money that you are being paid is nothing in comparison to the moral need that you all have to prove yourselves to the family of one of your own you feel you let down.”

Bueralan made no reply. He did all that he could to keep his face still, to not let the surprise he felt show in any way, but he felt—

“Now that,” said the man of whom he knew nothing, “caught you off guard.”

—that he failed.

“Who are you?” Bueralan whispered.

“Merely a humble servant.” Waalstan stood slowly. “Samuel, what do you think my chances are of finding the rest of Dark before every well of drinking water is sabotaged from here to Mireea?”

“I would say none.” From his chair, the cartographer had become still, as if he were surprised by the sudden reveal of knowledge that the general had displayed. “A group of raiders stumbled over them when we entered Leera and they were most efficient.”

“Lieutenant Dural, please inform the men that they are to drink only from what is rationed by their superiors.” He moved before Bueralan, an unarmed man who radiated confidence and surety and was all the more dangerous because of the natural way it fit him. “If I killed you,” he said quietly, “I would have five assassins to deal with, would I not?”