The Godless (5 page)

Inside, the floor was decorated with a sprawling, circular pattern, and at its center was a silver throne. High on the roof, an intricate array of lights shone and, with almost theater-like drama, a white light was centered on the throne whenever the Lord or Lady of the Spine held court. The immense throne was a relic of an older age, recovered from the cities that had been built in the caves throughout the mountains, by a cult who had been outlawed during the Five Kingdoms, but who had been destroyed by the men and women who came to dig for a new life in the ground, for gold; the men and women who would later build Mireea. Heast led Bueralan past it without comment. Through a door on the other side of the room, a narrow corridor turned into a spiraling staircase where, at the end of several levels, a single guard stood. He nodded as Heast emerged and opened the door to reveal another large room.

Inside sat the Lady of the Spine, Muriel Wagan.

Despite her reputation for being strict with an iron will, she looked like a softer woman, verging gently into fat, her dyed red hair that hung like a younger woman's ponytail over a gown of bright yellow and orange reflecting a mind that was anything but sharp and precise.

“Your ladyship, I present to you Captain Bueralan Le,” Heast said, his hands folding before him.

“My Lady.” Bueralan bowed his head. “A pleasure.”

Her smile revealed discolored teeth. “My Lord. Captain, how are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“I'll take that to mean in considerable pain, as always.” Her smile was affectionate, taking no offense at his grunted reply. “Take yourself downstairs. Have that leg looked at.”

The captain glanced at Bueralan.

“Aned,” the Lady of the Spine said, “don't make me dismiss you.”

With a faint inclination of his head, the briefest frown of displeasure slipping across his face, the soldier left the room. When the door shut, the affection left Lady Wagan's face and she turned her gaze on Bueralan. “Dark,” she said, her pale green eyes holding his. “Saboteurs.”

“Yes.”

“For
your
price, I could hire a small army.”

“You already have small armies,” he replied. “What you don't have are soldiers who slip into the ranks of your enemy, who poison rivers and dams, who blow up bridges and collapse tunnels.”

“And assassinate generals.”

He shook his head. “Not often. Once—twice, it has happened, but both were opportunities taken advantage of, rather than planned. First time, the army was so small that it did fall apart without the leader. Second time, another man took the spot and the army kept moving. My advice has always been that you are better to cripple the body than to strike the head of an army.”

“Aned speaks very highly of you, Captain,” she said.

“I'll try not to disappoint him.” He nodded to the chair. “Do you mind?”

“No. I must profess, I don't know much about you. Where did you meet my captain?”

Easing into the cushions, Bueralan replied, “On the western coast of the Wilate in a port called Wisal. Merchants had hired a small army to conquer it after it declared its independence from the Southern League. The Wisal Governor put Heast in charge of fighting what was turning into an ugly little war over trade routes. I think they expected him to hire an army, but instead he took on a group of saboteurs. It was the first squad I worked for, and the job took two weeks and two deaths before the war failed to start properly.” He met the lady's gaze. “He's a fine soldier. In another part of the world, there are books written about him. Important books.”

“I have read them.” Behind her, a large window displayed the cut back canopy of the forest. The morning's sun had risen to its high point and threatened to flood the room. “He told me that Dark numbered eight, not six.”

Stretching his legs out in front of him, he nodded. “Lost two in Ille. The first was Elar—he had been with us for six years. You can't replace a man like that easily.”

“And the other?”

“He was new. This wasn't the kind of work for him.”

“Did he make the right choice?”

The question had never been asked of him and, as the light filtered into the upper half of the room, the saboteur paused. “Any mercenary will tell you, people come and go in this work,” he said, finally. “Sometimes, they have debts to pay. Other times, they're just going from one place to another. Mostly, mercenaries are just soldiers who only know this work and there's either no place at home for them or home has changed. Occasionally, a man or a group gets famous, but most don't last that long. It's different when you're a saboteur. It is not a thing you can pick up and put down. If you know your job, you know too much. You keep professional, because you work for people you like, and people you don't. Sometimes, it is just numbers and maths and theories, and sometimes, you get paid to kill men and women, to poison wells, to kill crops and to steal cattle. At times, it is a hard thing to look in the eye of someone. Other times, you get paid to slip into a war you don't want to be part of, to spend time with people you don't want to spend time with. You've got to close off the enemy like a good soldier does: it is steel on steel, but it's harder when you share drinks with them for a month. You realize no one is born evil, just as no one is born pure, but the job is a lot easier if you keep the morals straight with the people you work with. The boy's first job was one I regret, a choice we made that we ought not to have made, and the price we paid was high. At the end, he thought we were a little too much like assassins and wasn't ready for a life of sleeping on the cold ground, eating last, dying first, and watching warm bits of silver and gold spend quicker than you could kill for.”

“A surprisingly philosophical response,” Lady Wagan replied. “Why then do you continue with it?”

“My poetry sells poorly.”

Lady Wagan laughed. “Would you like a drink, Captain?”

“I rarely say no.”

From beneath her table, the Lady of the Spine produced two glasses and a long, straight bottle of laq, a clear liquor from Faaisha. She poured a generous two fingers into each, and pushed one forward to the edge of the table.

“This war that I am engaged in is a terrible waste,” she said, leaning back into the light. “Mireea is a neutral trade city. A city that runs off mathematics, I have heard it said. Whether you believe that or not, it is a city where only coin is worshipped. Your race, creed and color do not matter—so long as you understand that the market can reward and punish you for both at the same time. This war has damaged my
coin
. No doubt you have seen my empty streets. My closed stores. Before the first force is sighted, it has cost me what is most important and ruined my belief in my neighbors.”

Bueralan's thick fingers closed around the glass. “Your treaties?”

“Have ensured that all legal trade has been cut off from Leera. Anything else will require me to renegotiate at the cost of my financial independence.”

The candid response surprised him. “You've not heard anything from Rakun, then?”

“The King of Leera has made no demands and sent no diplomats. No one has heard from him in close to a year.”

“A long time.”

“A long time for a lot of rumors, but let's assume he is dead.” Lady Wagan lifted her drink in salute, finished it in one motion. “The last envoy I had from Leera claimed to work for a general by the name of Waalstan. Rumors—whispers, really—suggest that he is a warlock. I have no information as to whether that is true or not; what he wanted was to begin digging into the Mountain of Ger. He offered a token amount for the rights, but the land he wanted to take was so large that he cannot have thought I would be anything but offended. He didn't even offer a reason for wanting the land. I pointed out that the gold was mostly tapped, and the envoy told me that there were other precious things in the ground. You can use your imagination. Anyhow, after I told this envoy no, I heard nothing. It had been three seasons since we saw crops from Leera and five since there was any trade in fish or meat, and I figured that they would have to return soon enough, but then the attacks began, and the cannibalism followed.”

“They're starving?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. No one I have sent has come back with information. Not spies, diplomats or mercenaries.”

“Dead?”

“Yes.”

“How did you hear that?”

“I didn't, but the border of Leera tells many tales. The only rumor we have heard relates to two years of stories about priests.”

“Priests?”

“Yes.”

Bueralan placed his empty glass on the table. “Any particular god they worship?”

“They want to dig up the mountain, Captain” she said, the sun dipping further into the room. “There has been nothing officially said, and this close to Yeflam, I can understand why. But the rumor is that they have put priests in positions of power, though they are probably nothing more than witches and warlocks. There have been a few signs of rituals in campsites, and my husband's torture was not the work of a simple man. I assume that the general is nothing more than the man with the largest bag of blood by his side for use in their blood magic, but regardless the information suggests I am caught in a holy war—or the appearance of one. I need to know for sure, however, and that is why I have hired you and your soldiers. I need to know who is running Leera's war. I also need to know what kind of feeling is in the country, whether food and water is low, how big an army it is, and how deep the chains of command run. I need to know if they can be stopped before a siege is laid, or if it will be a longer, more drawn out path to victory.”

“But you would win?”

Her smile was easy, confident. “Mireea is a small nation, but not a poor one. I will use my resources wisely.”

“Indeed you will, ma'am. Dark could do with a few days' rest before you send us out, if that's possible.”

“The wet season ended a week ago in Leera. Take a day or two, but don't wait too long. The roads will start to fill up soon.”

He nodded, pushed himself up, ready to leave.

“Captain?” The Lady's gaze was intent, unwavering. “Speed and accuracy is important. There are already spies in my city.”

 

4.

 

The inside of Orlan's Cartography smelt faintly of incense. A decidedly religious odor for a man who, Ayae knew, viewed himself as anything but that.

She let the door close, the chimes sounding as it did, and did not bother with the lock. Ayae crossed the warm wooden floor, the maps on the walls around her a recollection of past and current events. Each was a finely detailed study of roads, borders and names, both current and obsolete, all of which fetched tidy sums. Ayae had still not gotten used to the money involved, especially for the older maps, and she doubted that she ever would. It was the oddities in these prices that struck her: how the slanting script of an Orlan two hundred years ago was worth far more than the initialled maps six hundred years old. She had been told—lectured, she remembered with a smile—that the younger Orlan's maps had been mostly lost in a fire a century and a half ago and their scarcity therefore increased their value.

Samuel Orlan was an important symbol. To say that there had always been one was not quite right, for the original Orlan had lived and died before the War of the Gods. He had been famous, but had become more so after the war, when the world had been so different. But a second Samuel Orlan did not emerge until early in the Five Kingdoms, where in the huge libraries of Samar, a slim man had stumbled across the original maps and taken it upon himself to make new ones. Since then, there had always been a Samuel Orlan—male and female, with the cartographer's final apprentice taking over the name, the legacy and the work of ensuring that the world remained mapped. Ayae was still constantly amazed at the stream of men and women, wealthy and famous, who came from afar to the shop to look for a particular map, or to contract the current Samuel Orlan for a specific job for fees of such amounts that she could scarcely judge them real.

The first time such a customer had come and left, Samuel had laughed at her expression. “You can make a fortune with the name, if you take it on after me. If not, well, you'll still likely make a fortune, just without the necessity to grow a beard. It is tradition, you understand.”

A part of her felt guilty when he said that, for both of them knew that she would not be the next Samuel Orlan, but the guilt was not long lived. She did not have the dedication that Orlan had, did not have the sheer skill he displayed. But she loved the work, deeply appreciated the time that Orlan took to teach her his skills, the growing skill her own hand had, and the joy that came in seeing a piece of land or a continent come together on the parchment she worked upon. Both she and he knew that he had given her a skill that would enable her to live comfortably for the rest of her life, to fund her while she followed the other paths of her art, to the portraits and illustrations that were her first love.

Behind her, the door chimes sounded.

Ayae turned from the parchment she was examining, her hand resting on the large table that dominated the room. A man of medium height stood in the doorway. For a moment she did not recognize him, until the sheer ordinariness of him, the plainness of his white skin, close-cut brown hair and loose white shirt and trousers, sparked a recognition:

This morning. The Spine.

“We're not open yet,” she said, her voice so soft that she was forced to repeat herself. “You'll have to wait half an hour.”

“The door wasn't locked.” The man's voice was polite, easygoing. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to just walk in.”

Yet, her hand gripped the table tight. “The sign was on the door.”