The Godless (31 page)

“If
this city is overrun, I would march through those hallowed gates regardless of what you or your kind
want
.” The Captain of the Spine's voice did not rise, but behind him Illaan's body flinched, as if the words pierced him in his delirium.

“I believe you would.” The Keeper's smile faded. “But before you got there, the roads you carefully cleared and the bridges you quietly mended and reinforced would be returned to their previous state and you would fight a long rearguard action without reinforcement. You would do well to remember that our assistance might not be what you want, but we have not stopped your retreat. And though the following concession is small on my part, you should be pleased Fo is not here to look over your sergeant. The methods he would have used would likely have killed him.”

“You are the Healer, are you not?” Heast replied, still controlled. “What does a man fear with you around?”

“Only death.”

Reila's hand settled on the captain's arm. “We should focus on what has made Illaan sick, first,” she said.

“If it is a saboteur responsible for the poisoning, there will be more.” The ease with which Bau changed the subject caught Ayae's attention, though she could not explain why as she walked down the street. “And while your healer does not agree with me in her diagnosis, we both agree that you will need to find the source of it quickly before it infects others.”

Heast grunted in reply and when he turned, Ayae believed that she could see a hint of cold satisfaction in him.

Later, outside, Heast—silent after Bau's words but for nods and grunts—waved away the driver of the carriage who turned on the road and returned to
The Pale House
without its owner.

“Did you hear me, girl?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said, when she realized he was not looking at her.

“The Keepers have their own game,” he continued. “The heart of it is in Yeflam, but we are a part of it, now.”

She thought of the caged animals that Fo had kept, the mouse he had fed to the snake. Despite that, she said, “Surely they are concerned with the Leeran Army?”

“This is not a battle fought on one side alone.”

She remembered Lady Wagan and Reila and their words to her.

“The Keepers don't want us in Yeflam, but that is not surprising,” he continued. “No one wants us on their doorsteps.”

The Spine of Ger emerged, an empty tower rising to the left. Months ago, a merchant had run a stall out of the building, banners falling colorfully on each side. Now only a narrow spiral of stairs was there to greet them.

“Mireea has never had an official conflict with Yeflam, nor with any of the other kingdoms, but the loss of our independence would please them more than it would Faaisha. We have been too strong in Yeflam's eyes since the day the kingdom was established; whereas for Faaisha we are but a trade port on the way to the ocean.” With awkward movements, Heast began to climb the stairs, his metal leg striking harshly with each new step as he lifted it up. “Unfortunately, I do not think that the Enclave wishes to claim Mireea. They are in a struggle for political dominance against the Traders Union and, if it is true that a leadership change has been effected there, then it will no longer be fought in terms of propaganda on the streets.”

“Then that is not our conflict,” she said. “I don't see why it would impact on us, not now, of all times.”

On the wall, the captain paused, his hand drifting down to the part of his leg where steel and flesh met. A thin sheen of perspiration showed on his face, the exertion of the climb impossible to hide though he made no mention of the toll. Heast was not the kind of man to speak of weakness, to give it voice and strength. Neither did he ignore it. His slow walk to the edge of the wall, to the construction material, where the wooden balustrades and cauldrons of oil had yet to be placed, was an acknowledgment of what he was and was not capable of.

“When we reached out to Yeflam, the first response we received was from the Traders Union,” he said. “They were prepared to offer us aid, to provide refuge for us. Illaan's father is who responded to us. No doubt, his response had some influence in Fo and Bau coming here, but it was not all. They are naturally curious. Priests are like a red flag. But when the son of a high official is poisoned, the questions it raises are many.”

She stood next to him, her hands on the stone blocks. “If it is the Keepers—”

“It may be the Enclave.” The tone of his voice did not change. “It may be that the political fallout in the Traders Union is larger than we think. If the latter, I doubt either Fo or Bau would lament that, or go out of their way to solve it, which means that we must rely upon ourselves to learn that. You will have to be careful: Illaan's house will be watched and you will as well. I cannot spare you soldiers at the moment. More so, I cannot spare their gossip, not in this matter. You will have to protect yourself, though, perhaps, I can enlist some help.”

Below, Ayae saw a figure emerge from the trail that led to the funeral pyres. Half naked and with wet hair, she was not sure at first who it was, though Heast's straightening of his back indicated that he knew. As the figure drew closer and she could see his features, she glanced at Heast and saw that a thin line of dark amusement had creased his lips.

“To think,” the Captain of the Spine said, more to himself than to her, “he only asked for half of a corporal's daily pay.”

 

6.

 

Zaifyr returned to the hotel and washed. Behind the large desk, Ari, a new, thin bandage around the tip of his left finger and a block of wood in his hand, informed him that he smelt worse than ever. After he had washed and dried, Zaifyr picked up the loose trousers he had worn and sniffed. Fit to burn, he told himself, though he feared he would be out of clothes—it was bad enough that he had only one pair of boots and they had holes in both soles. He hadn't had that pair for long, either: a year at most. But he did a lot more walking, now. He made his way barefoot along the wooden floor to his room, having already found a bin for the trousers.

Inside, the faint smell of smoke lingered and he doubted it would ever leave. Zaifyr eased himself down on the one chair, spreading his charms and chains on the bed before him. He had begun attaching each to himself in the slow ritual he had learned as a child—
the copper vi'a first,
his father said;
vi'a is a minor protective charm, but it is always the base
—when behind him sounded a soft flap, followed by the faint scratch of claws on the window ledge. He hooked the thin clasp of the chain around his wrist into place, the chain that had been blessed by the witch Meihir for luck, and looked at the window.

“Hello, brother.”

The raven stared at him, its head tilted. “And to you,” the Animal Lord, Jae'le said in its thin, hard voice. “I saw you return. Smelt, too.”

“I've been told.” His smile was faint. “What else did you smell?”

“Meat.” His wings ruffled and he glided from the ledge to the bed. “I also smelt oil, steel, sweat and a city preparing itself.”

“When was the last time you were in a siege, brother?”

The raven watched as he picked up a piece of leather threaded with silver, tiny orbs laden with old symbols of life and fertility. “A long time,” Jae'le's bird voice croaked. “In Seomar, on the Eastern Coast, I believe.”

Nine hundred years ago.
Zaifyr began to wind the charm into his damp hair. “The last of the Animal Kingdoms,” he murmured.

“I wept when men swept in.”

Jae'le had given five animals a voice and a kingdom originally. It had been in the heart of Kuinia, a tiny world near his capital, a decree from a man who saw himself as a god. For every following decade—and there had been many decades in the Five Kingdoms—Jae'le had given another animal the power of speech, of an upright stance. No longer animals, but never men or women despite their ability to communicate, the chosen ones of the Animal Lord had been feared throughout the Five Kingdoms.

In Jae'le's home, in the elaborate building that curled like fingers around tree branches, there was a leopard who, Zaifyr was sure, the dark hand of the Jae'le had dropped to. A leopard whose head he stroked with more than a casual touch.

“I saw Ger,” he said, finally.

“And?”

“Dying.” He tightened the charm in his hair. “He has no protector, no defenses and time has almost caught up to him.”

“So soon he will be dead?”

“And aware of the fact.” The raven's gaze no longer followed the silver pieces as he lifted them from the bed.

“Do you think he has drawn the Leerans here?”

Zaifyr shook his head. “He is different to the other gods, that's for sure. There is not the hate and the anger—”

“And the pain,” Jae'le said. “I feel the lack of that, as well.”

“He doesn't like us here,” the other said. “You can still feel that, but it's instinct, I believe, a reaction to what is in us. But he accepts us—something, I think, that the Keepers might not be fully aware of.”

“They are not that young.”

“Perhaps.” He reached for a new charm, this one a mix of silver and copper, symbols to turn away swords and arrows. “But he is looking for someone.”

“He has seen something in the final moments of his death?”

“I do not want to argue for fate, but—” He shrugged. “But in this case, it appears he has seen something in the future.”

The raven moved, claws picking at the cover. “I do not like this line of argument.”

“I do not either.” Lifting his right foot, he wound it around his ankle. “But you and I have learned that there are no truths, not in our world. The truly worrying idea is that he is looking for someone in the Leerans. I was shown a child, though I do not wish to trust the sight.”

“The sight, brother?”

Zaifyr's smile was faint. “The sight of memory. Of the haunt's memory.”

“You rode the mind of the dead?”

“It was necessary,” he insisted.

“The others will not be happy to hear.”

He shrugged.

“Do not shrug, brother.” The raven's thin voice struggled with Jae'le's emotion. “We must be careful.
You
must be careful.”

“You're ignoring what I told you.”

“Yes, I am.” The bird drifted to the edge of the bed, where the midday's sun cut across the faded frame. “If Ger has a presentiment, then it will emerge, and it will be something that we are either forced to deal with or not. But you—you brother, this is how it began, with the visions given to you by the dead.”

Instead of replying Zaifyr wound another silver and copper strap into his hair, this one with a simple prayer for safety written on it from when he was a child. He said nothing to the bird. He was right, of course; but whereas before he had been struck by his own fear on the top of the temple, he did not feel that now. Instead, he felt the desire to argue, to tell Jae'le that it was nothing, that it had simply been what was required. If he had not done it, he would not have seen the girl, he would not have felt her power—power, he was sure, that rivaled their own. Besides which, if Jae'le had not wanted him to speak with the dead, why had he asked Zaifyr to return to the temple itself, where the largest, most troubling of corpses lay?

He said, “I think—” before three knocks on his door interrupted him, and it was pushed open to reveal Ayae.

 

7.

 

“Your bird is talking,” she said.

“No matter how hard I try to stop him,” Zaifyr replied, closing the door behind her. “May I present to you Jae'le, my brother.”

She had heard them speaking in the warm hallway, the voices muffled but with enough clarity that she could distinguish both. The second voice—Jae'le's voice—had chilled her, struck a nerve within her for its harshness, for the torture of broken vocal cords. The chill continued as she stepped through the door and into the stare of the raven.

“Hello,” she said.

The raven's head inclined shallowly.

“Don't make friends all at once.” Zaifyr's fingers ran across the silver and copper charm in his grip. “We were discussing Ger.”

“I heard some of it.”

“What's your opinion?”

She leaned against the wall opposite him. “You will know more than me.”

“We must not forget that economy is always a part of war,” the raven said, moving from the bed frame to Zaifyr's shoulder. “You have to feed soldiers, establish treaties, maintain alliances. We must assume that this army will want to do that, especially if it wishes to build an empire. My first army was one built without any currency: we made our treasury out of what we sacked, leaving little behind. It fueled us for a while, but it strung us out in the end, left us hungry and fatigued. Our final battle was with a garrison a quarter our size, but well fed and well rested. We shattered against their small walls.”

“A good thing you were a bird.”

“Then, I was not.” His feathers ruffled. “I survived, but just.”

“Did Heast see me come in?” Zaifyr asked, reaching for his smoke-stained boots. When Ayae nodded, he said, “Did he know where I was?”

“No, but—” She reached into her trousers, drew out a letter. “He has orders for you.”

He took the short note. “Should I salute?” he asked, folding it again after he read it.

“If you would.”

He smiled. “He doesn't mention what you are doing.”

“Illaan has been poisoned.” It felt strange to say the words, to say his name like that of a stranger. “Heast wants us to look in his house.”

“For saboteurs?”

“Or an indication of the Keepers' involvement.”