The Eternal Kingdom (The Children Trilogy Book 3)

by Ben Peek

  But she did not kill him.

  Tinh Tu’s words were not enough. The whispered descriptions, the probing of his mind, were weak because they were based on his name, and her belief that it was his. But Zaifyr was no longer Qian, and Tinh Tu’s hold on him was fragile.

  The haunts that materialized behind Zaifyr, that caught Aelyn’s hands, were thin and ugly. In their faces, Ayae could see such hunger, such need, that she knew – as they sought to consume Aelyn, to drain her of life – they did so for a brief moment of warmth and fullness.

  Jae’le’s swords drove through Zaifyr’s back with such sureness and accuracy that they broke his spine in two places, forced him into the arms of his brother, who looked at him once and then drew a dagger across Zaifyr’s throat.

  5.

  Heast and Anemone were led through the silent house by Captain Lehana.

  It was not empty, as the silence might have suggested. Women sat or stood in the rooms that they walked past. In some, games were played. Pieces of stone and bone were moved without words. Cards were spread and collected without the slap of the shuffle. In other chambers, books were read, and food eaten, and drinks drunk, all in a silence that was without oppression.

  A narrow staircase took Lehana, Heast and Anemone to the first floor. A pair of armoured soldiers stood at the top of it, and another pair, clad in black-and-red chain and plate, waited for the three at the end of the hall.

  Behind the door were two women.

  The first was a middle-aged black woman. It was clear at a glance that she did not have the martial training of the soldiers he’d seen around the house, and she did not bear armour. Instead, she wore a fine gown of green and yellow, the colour highlighting the brown streaks that ran through her short, black hair. When Heast and Anemone entered the room, the woman rose from her place at the only table in the room, the surface of which was covered in herbs and stones.

  Zeala Fe was the room’s other occupant. She lay propped up in a large bed set against the far wall, a small and sickly thin woman enrobed in browns and reds. Her skin was sunken against her bones, and her hair, no more than white wisps, had been slicked back against her skull, leaving her looking even more gaunt.

  ‘Aned Heast,’ the First Queen of Ooila said. Her eyes were bright and without a hint of confusion in them. ‘It has been some time.’

  ‘We’ve never met.’ Behind him, Captain Lehana closed the door, securing the five of them in the room. She was the only one to bear a sword. ‘But it has been some time since Illate,’ he said. ‘Long years for both us. Have they treated you or me better?’

  She smiled without revealing her teeth. ‘You have already met my captain,’ she said, turning from the question. ‘Allow me to introduce Safeen Re. She cares for me in these final days.’

  ‘Captain.’ The woman left the table and stopped at the end of the bed. ‘My condolences on your recent loss,’ she said to Anemone. ‘Your grandmother was a great woman.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The young witch was silent for a moment. ‘My grandmother,’ she said, finally, ‘wants me to ask why you are not prepared for the Queen’s death.’

  ‘I am prepared,’ Safeen said.

  ‘What she means,’ Zeala Fe said, raising her voice to interrupt the two, ‘is that I do not need my soul caught. I do not need it kept in a bottle.’

  ‘An Ooilan queen does not die,’ Heast said. ‘Is that not the law?’

  ‘Do you obey laws so well now?’ She laughed, but the laugh turned into a cough. ‘Bring me my cup,’ she said to Safeen once she had recovered. Gently, almost reluctantly, the witch lifted a mug from beside the bed and held it out to her. The Queen took a small sip and grimaced. ‘You are right, however,’ she said to Heast. ‘An Ooilan queen is meant to come back. She is to be reborn so that her daughters can raise her to rule so she can raise her daughters to rule. She is to ensure that prosperity and dignity remain, even though the price is terrible for her to return. But there is always a price for resurrection, is there not, Captain?’

  ‘I have never been resurrected,’ he said evenly.

  ‘I disagree. Look at you now.’

  ‘I am as I have always been.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Heast said nothing.

  ‘Did you know that, after the battle, the Illate people brought us a body?’ the Queen asked. ‘A white man’s body. The men who carried it to us, to the Queens, said that it was you. The man’s face had been cut up, but a blue eye remained – so bright, even in death, that I can still remember its colour. It was, of course, quite unlike yours, now that I sit before you. But the man had a tattoo as well. It was the symbol of Refuge. A number of the soldiers had that, however. When I questioned it, the men who carried the body said that it was the rings that identified you. Silver rings on the left hand. Rings you do not wear, clearly.’

  No, Heast almost said. He had never worn rings, just as he had never had the tattoo, either. He knew the man who had.

  ‘It was months before we heard that you were alive. By then you were already in Gogair, beginning your resurrection. For a while, the other Queens feared that you would return and rain terrible destruction on us.’

  ‘Other captains of Refuge have done that, but it has always been a folly,’ he said. ‘Besides, I had lost too much.’

  ‘Yes. Eventually we learned that only eight of you survived. Still, some of the Queens kept their fear. They said that you were young. That was enough.’

  ‘I always expected an assassin.’ He gestured to the chair that sat next to the bed and, after Zeala Fe nodded, sat. ‘Why was there never one?’ he asked.

  ‘I always assumed there were.’ The Queen turned to Anemone. ‘Did your grandmother kill any?’

  ‘No,’ the witch said. ‘She says there were none.’

  ‘How genuinely surprising.’

  ‘Why didn’t you send one?’ Heast asked.

  ‘I considered it. You forced me to invade Illate and I did not want that. For years, I had been pushing at the edges of the generational slavery Ooila had been involved in with the people there. The public were starting to lose their appetite for bonding their children with children they purchased in Illate. We were taking fewer and fewer of their men and women to work in farms and households.’ She indicated to Safeen that she would like another drink from the cup and grimaced again after she had sipped. ‘But it was exactly that that gave Illate the confidence to rebel,’ she continued. ‘Oh, I look back now and realize I should have reached out to the rulers of Illate, but hindsight is a deadly trap for a queen.’ She met Heast’s gaze. ‘At the time,’ she said, ‘let us just say that punishing you for my mistake would not have appeased me.’

  ‘Illate still doesn’t have its independence,’ he said, not turning away. ‘I doubt that either of us will see it in our lifetimes.’

  ‘Mine, certainly, but yours – well, it is possible that Refuge will one day ride back into that country.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes. It is, in fact, a demand of mine once this war is finished. I want to see the people of Illate given freedom with as little bloodshed as possible. That is the other half of the payment for what I will do for you.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Finish your resurrection.’

  6.

  Leviathan’s End appeared from the darkness as two giant, burning eyes and Bueralan’s first thought was that he had come upon a scene of destruction.

  In his memories he stood, not on the deck of Glafanr, but on the deck of the smaller, sleeker Jao, beside his blood brother Zean and the first mercenary captain he had served under, Serra Milai. Like Bueralan, the former had never been to Leviathan’s End, but the latter, who was twice the age of the young men, was returning to what she called home. ‘The only home a mercenary has’ were her exact words. She said them when she first announced the trip and that she expected the two to accompany her. When she said it, Bueralan had shrugged off her words. He had heard Milai say them before: the
banks of Zoum were the only home a mercenary had, a cheap bar in a friendly city was another of the sole friends she had, the kip she rolled out on a piece of grass or dirt a third. But the Captain of Water, her body solid with muscle, her skin a dark brown, had said it more than once about Leviathan’s End during their journey. Each time, she said it without the sly humour Bueralan had grown to expect, the knowing wink meaning she had no real home, and never would.

  Leviathan’s End was built inside the skull of the god who had been a Leviathan. The town itself was the cause of the burning eyes inside the Leviathan’s skull, illuminated by the lamps that lined the paths and ceilings inside. On the night the Jao approached, a frost had covered the deck and ice had collected in the edges of the sails, but Bueralan had been amazed when they entered the skull and found it warm. The heat came from the huge fires that hung from the roof of the skull, the massive pots of oil attached to thick rods bolted into place.

  ‘Can you imagine,’ Zean said quietly, as Jao nudged the dock, ‘what kind of person would dare build a town here?’

  The town itself was suspended high above the black water inside the dead god’s head. Below it, white trees lined the water’s edge, growing from the bone. They reached up with thick and barren limbs but, for all their height, the lowest point of the town, the curving hull of a great ship that had been pulled out of the ocean to fill the centre, was still well out of reach of the trees. From the hull, thick wooden platforms stretched, joined together by heavy rope bridges that left the strong impression that the town was a huge tree house.

  ‘I do not need to imagine,’ Serra Milai said. ‘Soon enough, nor will you. Onaedo meets all the new mercenaries who come here.’

  ‘Is that why you had us come?’ Bueralan asked.

  ‘It is one of the duties that a captain must perform.’

  He would not understand until later that there were officials who would not hire you if you were not endorsed by Leviathan’s End.

  Before Water ended, before Serra Milai disappeared into a secret retirement, Bueralan would be promoted to her second. He would sit in the meetings where the lords and ladies and government officials would ask about their standing in Leviathan’s Blood. Where the question would be asked of all the soldiers in the small unit Milai led. Once, when they were denied a job because they had a new member who had not yet been vetted by Onaedo, Bueralan asked Milai why she had not lied. She had simply shaken her head and said, ‘Onaedo will know if you lie.’

  A cage took Bueralan and the other two from the dock to the floor of Leviathan’s End.

  The sight that greeted them when they stepped out of the cage was equal to the strangeness of his entry. The ship’s sail-free masts reached up so high that the top of the Leviathan’s smooth skull was within its reach. It sat in the centre of the town so much like a tower, or a castle, that the suspended torches cast the ship’s shadow in multiple directions across the streets and buildings below it. It gave the town the only uniform look it had, for the platforms that held the rest of Leviathan’s End were filled with mismatched buildings, where no single design ethos, or culture, was dominant. On them, unpainted white wood was shaped in squares and rectangles, while painted wood had been formed into circles. Roofs that were straight, ridged and circular appeared without care of their neighbours, and the windows were of such a wide variety that Bueralan could not even begin to count the many shapes they took.

  This lack of cohesion was matched by the men and women Bueralan and Zean passed. Bueralan saw women from Nmia, whose skin was darker than his, and who had long spears and swords. He saw men from Ooila with axes and others serving in a bar. And he saw people with the dusty brown colouring that was close to Zean’s being served. There were women wearing matched pairs of swords dressed in dark, red-stained leather with skin and hair so pale he thought them ill. It was not until later that he learned they were from the Wastes in the south, well past any continent he had seen. He saw a man from the Saan, his copper bracelets on the lower half of his right arm, his left missing. He saw a woman from Sooia, and another from the Kingdoms of Faaisha. As Milai led him and Zean deeper into the suspended town, more people appeared before him, so many that he soon lost the ability to describe where they had each come from, and when they stopped before a great, open area with long tables and clerks, he no longer tried.

  ‘This is the heart of Leviathan’s End,’ Milai said. ‘Here is where you sign with a crew. Here is where your job is recorded. Here is where your reputation is kept.’

  ‘On scraps of paper brought by birds?’ Zean asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Birds – hundreds and hundreds – sat on white-stained stands behind the clerks. Yet, despite the variety in all the species, not one fought with another.

  ‘How much do you pay?’

  The Captain of Water chuckled. ‘You’re a cynical man,’ she told Bueralan’s blood brother. ‘I like that about you, but it is misplaced here. You do not bribe anyone in Leviathan’s End. You will be remembered if you do. Your misconduct will be marked, and it will be marked next to who you have worked for, and how much you were paid, and if you distinguished yourself.’ As she spoke, a clerk rose from his table and approached one of the newly landed birds. ‘The two of you will need to list yourselves here.’

  ‘If we don’t?’ Bueralan asked.

  ‘You will. Because if you are not recorded here,’ Milai said, ‘you are not worth anything.’

  7.

  ‘I told you,’ Heast said, ‘I was not dead.’

  ‘The Captain of Refuge was.’ Zeala Fe took the cup of bitter mixture from Safeen and settled it on the blankets that covered her frail lap. ‘Instead, there was a man who looked much like him,’ she continued. ‘But he denied the title that was his and worked many jobs, where he remained poor because he kept little of the money he earned. Most of his coin went to the families of those soldiers who had died in Illate under his command. Oh, the actions were well hidden. Debts cleared, educations paid for – no banker in Zoum would easily give up the man’s information. Not this man, especially. But in the port of Wisal the man was brought to the attention of the Eyes of the Queen, and very little was hidden from her.’ A faint steam rose from the top of her drink. The First Queen of Ooila looked at Heast. ‘Did you know the Eyes of the Queen, by any chance? Her name was Ce Pueral.’

  ‘I never met her. Not in Wisal. Not anywhere else.’ He felt a flatness in himself, a coldness he did not bother to hide. ‘I did hear of her later. She was said to be your right hand.’

  ‘I preferred to call her my Eyes,’ she said softly. ‘A conceit as I grew more and more ill. My body became a series of titles that others inhabited. But that was later, long after Wisal. She was but a captain, then, and it was purely by chance that you became of interest to her. She had travelled to Wisal for other reasons.’

  ‘Bueralan Le.’ The saboteur had been a young soldier in Water, then. Heast had hired that force. ‘Surely you had other exiles who became mercenaries?’

  ‘But few like the Baron of Kein. He was the son of a friend, and my Eyes thought he was a blind spot of mine. She convinced me that he needed to be killed when she heard that he was working for you. I was quite surprised when she returned and told me that she had left him alive.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Ce Pueral was a great friend, but a greater woman, I think. She had instincts that a nation could trust. I wish she were here today to speak with you.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Heast said, his voice still cold. ‘I do not appreciate my private affairs being peeled open like a boiled egg.’

  ‘Few of us do.’ Her smile, or so it seemed to Heast, was strangely indulgent. ‘Tell me, Captain, did so many years of penance for your soldiers make you happy?’

  ‘I am not a man given to penance,’ he said.

  ‘No? Then what was it for?’

  ‘Loyalty.’

  Behind him, at the door, Captain Lehana shifted slightly and spoke, ‘You sent your wages for twenty-six years
to the families of your soldiers because they were loyal to you?’

  The Captain of Refuge did not turn to the soldier. ‘You have a Queen,’ he said, ‘so perhaps you do not understand this, but when you sell your sword, you are not paid in the fallow times. You are paid only when blood is shed. When your sword is drawn. When it is you or another. A soldier of Refuge can be unpaid, even then. That is the nature of what we do. But a soldier of Refuge is like any other soldier. He has parents, she has a partner, he has a child. Perhaps she has neither and it is simply debts that she carries. Whatever the burden, it is the captain’s burden, once they have died.’

  ‘But after Illate, you must have been crippled with debt,’ the guard said, a hint of horror in her voice. ‘You must—’

  ‘Have had to work,’ Heast finished.

  ‘When Pueral told me, I was impressed,’ the Queen said. When she spoke, she revealed missing teeth on the right side of her mouth. ‘If politics had been different, I would have offered you a job. Instead, I will be content with being part of Refuge’s return in my final days. No, say nothing, Captain. Listen to me: I do this not because of you, or for our shared history. I do this because my loyalty ensures that I do. But unlike you, my loyalty is not just to the women and men who held swords for me. It is for the people who owned shops. Who sold books. Who made bedsheets. Who looked to me to protect them and to bring them prosperity. My loyalty is to the men and women that the Innocent and his god killed when they came to Cynama.’

  ‘The Innocent?’

  ‘Is it too much that I ask?’

  Am I afraid, do you mean? That was the unspoken implication, but Heast was not, not now. If he was to be afraid – and he admitted that he might be – it would be much later. It would be well after he left this room. ‘There are rumours that he has left Sooia,’ he said. ‘You can hear them in the streets of Vaeasa – but I have heard those words said before in other cities.’