by Ben Peek
‘We will be competing with the Spires of Alati,’ Eilona said. ‘They have the reputation in the region.’
‘They do. But if we have lecturers and teachers from the University of Zanebien, we can challenge that.’
The offer sat in the air.
It still sat, over a week later, after the funeral of Eilona’s father. In the room she shared with Laena, she leant her head back against the wall. ‘You would have to give up digs. Give up the statues of Ain that you found.’
‘I do love digs,’ Laena admitted. ‘But I love other things as well.’
‘Like Aned Heast?’
‘Girl, were you just born looking for compliments, or did you learn it?’ She laughed. ‘I did not even go back to those digs. I was offered. I stood in the trail. I had my bags packed in our little house. But I chose to ride a pony all the way here, instead.’ She got on her knees and kissed the top of Eilona’s head. ‘It doesn’t have to be forever. Maybe in a year we won’t like it. Maybe Neela will be Mireea. But Pitak isn’t going anywhere, and the university isn’t, either. In a year, it’ll all be right where we left it, if want.’
‘Well,’ she said, meeting Laena’s dark eyes. ‘Maybe we should get a couch.’
4.
‘What are we doing, Bueralan?’
‘You’re the one who agreed to a biographer, not me.’ In the nearly empty bar, he pointed at Heast with a pint of watered-down beer. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’ve decided to adopt a child.’
‘Did you get notes from Muriel?’ With a shake of his head, the Captain of Refuge glanced around the bar. Bueralan knew what he saw: a small, rundown box on the edge of Neela, near the closed bridge to Mesi. The tables were mismatched, items scavenged from the city and the shore, and often stolen. Tables were propped up with small barrels, chairs were casks of home-brewed wine, and if there was a clean mug or glass, it was clean only because the previous drinker had wiped it out. Two men sat at the front eating food they had got from the wake – the noise of it was a dull roar inside – while the woman who stood behind the bar had an eyepatch over one eye. ‘What are you doing in here?’ Heast asked, turning back to him. ‘You’re using my coin, you could be where Refuge is.’
‘I like it here.’ He didn’t, not really. ‘I thought it would be a place to drink seriously in.’
‘This is more water than beer.’
‘Yeah.’ Bueralan looked at his pint, put it on the table and shrugged. ‘I feel run out,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t even know how I got here.’
‘By boat,’ Heast said drily.
Bueralan had ridden to Jeil with the survivors of the Battle of Ranan. Most took him to be a soldier with Refuge because Heast had given him the order to mount up. The Brotherhood, the Saan and the Faaishans made him a space in the lines, thinking that he had suffered a trauma, that he was gone emotionally. Maybe he was. Zean was dead. Taela, Orlan, Kae, Ruk, Liaya and Aerala. Pueral, the First Queen. Even Aela Ren was dead. Bueralan had seen more than enough death. By the time he reached the port, he realized his entire world had been reduced to two grey horses, one of which, he was fairly sure, was beginning to view him as a liability. By the time Heast had booked a ship to Yeflam, Bueralan was considering giving the horses to him and moving on.
But he had come to Yeflam instead. He had come to Neela, to where the Lady of the Ghosts made her new home, to where her husband was dying, and he found the worst inn he could find and took a room.
‘Did I tell you someone tried to steal my horse the other day?’ he said, the noise of the wake rising behind him, like a swell, before subsiding. ‘It was this thin pale guy. He came up to complain that he had been bitten. The horse had torn his ear off. He just had this bloody mess where it had been. Kept telling me that I had to help him, that it was my fault for having such a bad horse.’
‘Bueralan,’ Heast began.
‘I told him, I said: Did you touch him—?’
‘Bueralan.’
The saboteur sighed. ‘What do you want to hear?’ he asked. ‘There’s nothing left. I feel that. I can’t even find it in me to get drunk.’
‘I have a job.’
‘There are no more jobs.’
‘There’s always more,’ Heast said. ‘Or there’s a short walk into Leviathan’s Blood.’
It would kill him, he was sure of that. He could throw himself off the edge and sink into the darkness, in water tainted by blood.
Instead, he took a drink of his beer.
‘You want this job,’ the Captain of Refuge said, picking up his pint. ‘It is in Illate. Before the First Queen of Ooila died, she had me make two promises. One was to see Aela Ren dead, the other was to finish what Refuge started in Illate. She told me that she had been working towards Illate’s independence and she wanted us to finish it.’
Despite himself, Bueralan was surprised. He hadn’t heard any rumours of anything remotely tied to Illate despite the weeks he had ridden with Refuge. He had heard about Ayae’s duel with Aela Ren, about the dead returning to Heüala, the City of the Dead, and he had heard that the Saan had been led by the rulers of the Five Kingdoms. Jye Tuael was, reportedly, claiming that the entire assault on Ranan was his idea. He even heard that Heast planned to offer Kal Essa and the remains of the Brotherhood positions within Refuge if his new lieutenant agreed.
But he had heard nothing about Illate.
‘I need someone to represent Refuge in the courts of the Queens of Ooila,’ Heast continued. ‘I can’t send Lehana. I can’t send anyone from the Queen’s Guard. The other day they were given a letter, branding them as traitors. They each have bounties on their heads for not returning with their Queen. Rumour has it that they’re being blamed for her death. But even if that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t send them in. Lehana is a soldier. The court is no place for her. It’s not for me, either.’
‘You think it’s a place for me?’
‘I think the Baron of Kein will thrive there.’
Bueralan took another drink of watered beer. He let it run through him, let Heast’s statement run through him. ‘You’re serious?’ he said, after a moment.
‘Yes. But it won’t happen tomorrow, or next week. Refuge needs to rebuild. We’re taking in Essa and his soldiers, but we need more. We’re going to sail to Leviathan’s End at the end of the week.’
‘You are serious.’
‘It’s what Refuge does.’
Bueralan did not lie to himself: the offer did appeal. A part of him responded to it. The part of him, he knew, that had stopped him from drinking himself blind, from walking off the edge of Neela, from staying in Ranan. It was the part of him that Zean, Taela and the rest of Dark sat in. It was maybe even the part that Orlan and Ren sat in. In the near-empty bar, he closed his eyes and saw the dark, winged child Taela had given birth to, the creature that had known it was Zean, even as it rejected the knowledge. ‘It’s what Refuge does,’ he said, quoting the man before him. ‘But is that what Aned Heast does, now?’
‘Yes.’ The Captain of Refuge looked into the mug before him and then pushed it away. ‘You and I, we have both worked for people we don’t like. We try not to, but sometimes you need what is being offered, and you do the work, regardless. It’s no different from what a lot of people do. But the difference for you and me is that when we do something we don’t like, someone dies. Mostly they die wrongly. They die because they don’t have the coin to pay us. They don’t have the status. They don’t have the privilege. Well, Refuge is for those people. The Captain of Refuge represents the people who cannot represent themselves. Maybe I forgot about that while I wasn’t the captain, but I won’t forget now.’
‘You didn’t forget,’ Bueralan said. ‘You never chipped away at your soul, selling bits and pieces of it.’
‘But you did.’ Heast didn’t say it politely. ‘You did it long before you came to Mireea, though you tried not to.’
‘I was never part of Refuge. I was a saboteur. I never had that option.’
&
nbsp; ‘It’s here for you now.’
Was it?
It was his choice, and his alone. Bueralan could say no. Heast would finish his drink, stand, and walk out. He’d never see him again. He could sell his two horses, buy a ride somewhere out of Yeflam, find a job that meant little to him and wear away the hours, days, and weeks until he walked into Leviathan’s Blood, or died of old age. Bueralan was sure his body would get old, sure that it would begin to fail: sure, but not positive. He didn’t know if being god-touched meant that he could no longer die quietly in his sixties or eighties, full of regrets and haunted by memories.
‘This beer is awful,’ Bueralan said, finally. He put it back on the table. ‘I think it might be the worst beer I’ve ever had.’
‘There’s better beer where Refuge is staying. Grab your stuff. Get your two mean horses. We can go through the wake on the way there, get some food, then get something real to drink.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, before he thought otherwise about it, before he talked himself into staying on the cask of wine he was using as a seat. ‘Yeah, let’s do that, then.’
5.
Ayae walked through the streets of Neela, the wake for Elan Wagan spilling out around her, a city alive with people, with the smells of cooked meats, potatoes, vegetables and breads, drinks in bottles and casks, and fires lighting the night sky.
She held a half-drunk bottle of beer in her hand. It had been pressed on her by a large black woman who promised that it was the best beer Ayae had ever tasted. She wasn’t sure about that, but it wasn’t bad, and it was a bottle she could raise when another vendor tried to press their wares upon her. There was nothing special about the offers to her: the beer and wine, like the food, was free tonight. Rumour had it that Sinae Al’tor had paid for everything. It was not just to honour Elan Wagan, but to honour all the dead, all of the men, women and children who had died since the War of the Gods. It was a wake for all the dead who were now free. A celebration of life and death. When she heard about it, Ayae had been doubtful, but it was hard to argue with the goodwill she saw around her, the pleasure in people’s faces.
Depending on who you asked, the freedom that the dead had was either a gift of the gods, of Se’Saera in particular, or of those who had fought at Ranan. She heard the name Qian mentioned in conversation more than once. Aelyn Meah, Eidan, Captain Heast, and even herself: Ayae had heard enough tales about Ranan that she did not know where to begin unravelling the story for anyone who asked. She hoped the shamans who had come down from the Plateau found it easier – she passed one on the street near her, a bowl of cooked spiced potatoes in his hands, a captive audience around him – but Ayae had seen brown-robed members of Se’Saera’s Faithful in Neela and heard self-appointed prophets who told stories about nothing that had happened in Ranan. It would be a long time before the truth began to emerge clearly, she knew.
Yet, despite that, Ayae felt good. Since Ranan, she had felt strangely at peace, as if a balance had found her. Part of it, she knew, was simply survival. She had survived not just Ranan, but Aela Ren. There were still mornings when she woke up sweating, the image of his sword, the sword she carried, coming towards her, his scarred face emerging from the darkness behind it. In fuller dreams, dreams that had narrative, she was on the cathedral, the wind whipping around her. Aela Ren stood before her. But she could live with the dreams. She could see there would be a point in her future where they would fade. She could even live with the moments when sadness weighed her down – when she thought of Faise, of Zineer and of Samuel Orlan. It helped that Zaifyr was back, that his strength was returning. She was surprised that it helped, but it did. For his part, he appeared to be mostly bemused by her plans to rebuild Mireea, but he supported her, as did the rest of his family. Perhaps, she admitted, lifting up her bottle to wave away another offer of free beer, it was her family as well. She was not quite comfortable with that, not yet. But her sense of peace was independent of these factors. It came from inside her, from the balance she had found from the four elements, from the parts of Ger that nestled in her being.
‘A room is no longer warm when you’re in it,’ Muriel Wagan said to her, earlier. The two of them stood beneath the afternoon’s sun in the small backyard of the Lady of the Ghosts’ home. Potted plants spread around them, a collection of green, purple, red, brown and yellow. ‘It was the first thing I noticed when you came in. You’re different in other ways, of course. You are more reserved. More confident. The war has changed you, but it has changed everyone, I think.’ It had left Wagan thinner and older. ‘But for you, I think it has left you with a better understanding of what is inside you.’
‘I hope I would have found that without the war,’ she said.
‘Perhaps.’ The other woman picked up a watering can, carried it to a barrel of rain water. ‘In another fate, you might have stayed in Mireea as Samuel Orlan’s apprentice, might have continued your relationship with Illaan Alahn, and I would have done my best to help you.’ She lifted the full can out and offered her half a smile. ‘I might have even been able to.’
‘Maybe.’ She hesitated. ‘I came here to talk about Mireea, actually.’
‘I know. You came to ask if you could have it.’
‘Yes.’
Muriel Wagan began to water the first of her plants. ‘But you’re not really asking,’ she said mildly. ‘You came to tell me that you took it.’
From the day she left the Mountains of Ger, Ayae had thought about this exact moment, had run it through her head. Tinh Tu, perhaps sensing that before she left, had offered to come with her, but Ayae had waved her off. It’ll be fine, she had said. It shouldn’t be a problem. Her confidence had not lasted. In Neela, people gave her space, treated her with a mixture of fear and respect, and fell silent when she entered rooms. Now standing here, watching the Lady of the Ghosts water her garden, Ayae admitted that it might be a problem. ‘Yes,’ she said, a breath of nervousness escaping her. ‘I have taken it.’
‘Because you can.’
‘Because I can,’ she admitted. ‘But I’d rather have your blessing.’
‘That is not the nature of power,’ Muriel Wagan told her, shifting her can to new plants. ‘If you will, take that as a small piece of advice, Ayae. The moment you seek the permission of another, you cede your authority to them. You give your power to them. The great trick of governance is to keep that truth an illusion, to let people think that they have power, when they have none.’
Ayae did not reply. Did not know how to reply.
With a wave of her hand, the Lady of the Ghosts took her can back to the water barrel. ‘You are more than welcome to the land Mireea was on,’ she said. ‘I could do nothing with it. No one but you and your kin could, in its current state. If you plan to make it safe and liveable, then we will all benefit from that.’
‘I plan to make it a sanctuary,’ she said, trying to hide the relief she felt, relief that later, when she left Lady Wagan’s house, she would laugh ruefully at. Who had the power there? she would ask herself. ‘A place for people without homes, and people like me, who have some divinity in them. A place where people can learn about themselves, if they want. Or just be treated well. Not everyone is well treated by that power. I want to make Mireea a place that will help people, again. A place where they can learn who they are, and learn about the world.’
‘You are going to make it a school?’ She rested the watering can on the edge of the barrel and looked at Ayae keenly. ‘Is that right?’
‘No, not really. It’ll have part of that, but.’ She glanced up at the broken sun. ‘Se’Saera kept telling us that she could repair our world. That she could fix what the gods broke in their war.’
‘It was one of her best arguments, I thought.’
‘Exactly. She would look at what we all saw, what we all lived with, and she would promise to fix it, because she was a god. We only had to be faithful. We only had to believe that she would do it. But there are no gods. No one who can fix what was done w
ith our world. If we want the sun whole, or the ocean to be free of poison, then we have to do that. We have to take responsibility for it.’
‘So, not a school, but rather a place of research?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
Muriel Wagan lifted her can off the barrel. ‘That’s very interesting,’ she said.
They talked for a while longer, until the Lady of the Ghosts finished watering her garden, but Ayae’s plans were not far along enough for in-depth discussion. She told Lady Wagan that Aelyn would help her build upon the research. Tinh Tu would guide the kind of books they needed and the researchers with whom they should be in touch. Eidan would build Mireea. He had already said it would take years to complete, simply because of the instability of the mountains. Ayae suspected that he would also be returning to Yeflam, to finish his work rebuilding the Floating Cities, but she did not say that in case it was not true. Jae’le had already begun to talk of travel, of searching for those with divinity in them, and she half expected him to be gone by the time she returned. She did not yet know what Zaifyr would do, but his world had changed so much in the last three weeks that the only thing she expected from him was for him to take time to reconnect with it.
‘That’s a nice sword you have there.’ Caeli’s voice broke through her thoughts. ‘You know what they say about it?’
‘That I found it in battle?’ Ayae said, turning to her. ‘That it came from no one of any real importance?’
‘That’s what I tell people, but they refuse to believe. They say the girl who has it killed the monster that owned it.’
She hugged the blonde guard, felt the other woman’s arms around her hard, and for the first time since she had ridden into Neela, felt that she had found a part of her home again.
‘I’m sorry about today,’ Caeli said, letting her go. ‘I had the duty. Did your conversation go well?’
