The Godless (6 page)

He smiled, a faint, half curve of his lips. “That's quite the work you're standing next to. The masterpiece of an artist.”

The map across the table she gripped was easily three times her width and a foot taller. Kept under glass, it showed the world as it was commonly known, with Orlan's confident, strong lines and use of color as much a signature as the one in the corner. What set this map aside was that the corpses of the gods had been worked into the landscape: the Spine did not follow the spine of Ger, but
was
the spine, with Mireea the connective vertebrae to the neck and shoulders.

“I asked you to leave,” Ayae said, a flicker of annoyance alighting in her stomach. “Don't make me ask again.”

“You're not going to ask again.”

Anger sparked. “Leave now. There are strict penalties for thieves. You don't want to be on the wrong side of Lady—”

“Lady Wagan does not interest me.” Stepping up to the table, the man gazed down at the map. “What is beautiful about this map—other than the craft that is, and we must always admire craftsmanship, child—what is beautiful is the gods. So many maps, so many lives are empty of them now. But not here, not on this mountain, not where Samuel Orlan lives. No, he understands that we sail upon the blood of the Leviathan, as sailors say.”

“You need to leave,” Ayae said, releasing the table, her anger strengthening her resolve as she walked to the door. “I don't appreciate being followed. I don't appreciate you thinking you have a right to come in here uninvited.”

Unconcerned, he ran his hands across the glass.

“I said—”

“I heard you.” He turned to her. “Don't you feel uncomfortable here?”

The table began to smoke, as if deep in its frame there was a flame, a single spark that was struggling to get out. With his hard, gray eyes holding her gaze, the oh so ordinary-looking man who was clearly not so ordinary, left the table.

Ayae whispered, “Who are you?”

“I have no name,” he said softly, his pale hand closing around her arm—

Her free hand slammed heel first into his chest.

It was a desperate blow, but it caught him off guard and caused him to stagger back. Yet he did not release her. Quickly, Ayae drove her foot down onto his. The man made no sound and fear threaded through her unlike any she had felt before. Behind her, the wood in the table ignited, and flames began to rush along the edges, spreading like burning pitch across broken tiles.

The flames jumped, leaping from the table to the wall, and Ayae panicked at the sight. She broke free and turned for the door, grabbing the handle; a hand grasped her hair and wrenched her back. Twisting, she slammed the heel of her hand into the nameless man's arm, hitting the forearm hard. Behind them, the flames found parchment, ink, paint, chemicals, and glass and black smoke ripped out. The man flinched, caught in the blast. Horrified, she tensed to strike out again, but the man turned and threw her against the wall—threw her
into
the flames.

Ayae screamed and slapped at her clothes, at her body—unable to feel pain, but sure, more sure than anything that her flesh was peeling, turning dark, that the fire was devouring the air around her, thrusting its smoke into her throat, and aiming to choke her. The fire leaped and twisted around her, and the nameless man, his hands black, reached for her. Through watering eyes, her body twisting to get out of his way, out of the fire's way, she could do nothing—nothing but scream as, behind him, the fire took form, and a hand reached out and grabbed the head of her attacker, wrenching it back as a smoldering blade ran across his throat.

There was no scream.

No blood.

Nothing.

Flames roared, but Ayae had gone still. She had to move, she had to
get out
, but she could not. Flames cascaded across the ceiling, a mix of orange and black. She heard glass pop. A part of her screamed. A young part, a child's voice.

Then hands were on her roughly, were dragging her like a heavy weight to the door. Smoke hid the sky, and she felt a cloak drop over her, felt it smother her, wrap around her tightly as she sank to the ground, the trembling setting into her deeply before unconsciousness took her.

 

5.

 

When Ayae awoke, she was in flames.

They flickered without heat, hitting glass as if she were trapped inside a bubble, and they were searching, probing, trying to enter her. Fingers curling she grabbed sheets, exposed toes following, her panic subsiding as her consciousness registered the lamp directly above. Rising, Ayae pushed a hand through her hair and gazed around her. She was in a long, wide room, with dozens of empty single beds. The emergency ward of Mireea. There were guards at the door and windows at the top of the wall that showed the night and the moon—
the remains of a dead god
, the thought came unbidden.

She was in no pain. Pushing back the blanket, she saw her bare legs and arms beneath the simple shift she had been dressed in. Outside of the taste of smoke in her mouth, there was no indication that she had been in a fire.

The same could not be said about the room's other inhabitant. Wearing clothes stained by smoke and burned by flames, he was a man of medium height, pale-skinned with long auburn hair. On the floor beside him sat a pair of ash-stained boots and a canvas duffel bag, a long, leather cloak resting over it. The strangest thing about him were the thin chains wrapped around his wrists, the bands a mix of silver and copper threaded with tiny charms made from gold, copper, silver, glass and leather. The charms were not isolated to his wrists, for she could see thin chains tied through his hair and one pierced in his right ear.

“So you wake.” His voice had a strange accent, one she could not place. “I think they were going to bring a prince, eventually.”

“Have I been here long?” Her voice sounded smoky and harsh. She coughed to clear it.

“Since this morning.”

“You—you pulled me out of the fire?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

His right hand touched a chain on his wrist. “It was luck. I heard screaming and went in. I found you in need.”

Footsteps emerged outside the door. Ayae hesitated, then said, “Did you—did you kill the man in there?”

“No.” He had dark-green eyes, darker than any she had seen before, and they met hers evenly. “You want to avoid him,” the man littered with charms said. “If you can.”

The door opened and Reila, the small, gray-haired, white healer, entered. “There will be guards coming for you soon, Zaifyr,” she said, though her gaze was not on him. “Pull on your boots.”

“They have holes in them.”

Ignoring him, the healer's small hands pushed aside Ayae's hair, and pressed against her forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“You're warm,” she said softly. “Still warm. Like you're smoldering beneath your skin.”

“Don't say that,” Ayae whispered.

The healer's words were too close to suggesting something that, beneath her skin, in her blood and bones, was a touch of a god, that she was cursed. It was the name that men and women in Mireea used for people with a god's power in them, the name repeated up to Faaisha aloud, but the name that was whispered in the streets of Yeflam behind the Keepers' backs. It was the name that implied countless horrors, stories told of men and women who, since birth, looked normal, acted normal, until one day they split down the chest as arms grew from their body, or their skin began to melt.

To be cursed meant that, inside you, was part of a dead god. Their very beings broke down around you, their blood seeping into the land, into the water, their last breaths polluting the air, each act freeing their divinity, leaving it to remake the world without restraint, leaving tragedy in its wake, creating madmen such as the Innocent and terrible empires such as the Five Kingdoms. The remains of the dead were nothing but pain and suffering that ordinary people had to endure.

Before Ayae could say more, the door opened and Illaan entered, flanked by two guards. At the sight of him, she dared a smile; but if he saw her, he gave no indication. His gaze was focused on Zaifyr as he pulled on his boots.

“Is he able to be questioned now?” Illaan asked.

“The only thing hurt is his clothes,” Reila replied. “Both of them are extremely lucky.”

With a nod, Illaan indicated to the two guards. Standing, Zaifyr stamped both feet, a cloud of ash rising as he did. In the corner of her eye, Ayae was aware of him trying to catch her gaze, but she kept her eyes on Illaan. He had turned to her now, his lips parted in what might have been the start of a smile, or even, she thought for a second time, a frown.

“She needs rest,” Reila told him. “She's going to be here for the night, Sergeant, no matter what she says to you.”

Illaan nodded, just once.

At the door, the healer turned to Ayae, a hint of sympathy in her lined face. Before it had any time to grow, she stepped out of the room, following the guards and the charm-laced man, leaving the two alone. Leaving Ayae to turn to Illaan and smile faintly. “We should be happier,” she said. “I avoided death today.”

“I know. You were in a fire.” In the awkward silence that followed his words, Illaan moved to the bed next to her. “The shop looked awful,” he said, finally. “It was gutted on the inside. All those maps just lit up.”

“The other shops?”

“A little damage.” He rubbed the top of his thigh gently. “Orlan's shop is a total loss, though. We couldn't save that.”

“Do you know why it was started?”

“It's strange,” he continued, ignoring her. “The fire was all around you in there. You were thrown into it. Your clothes—Reila was afraid to cut away the clothes, thinking they had melted so badly into your skin, but when she did, it was as if you had just been born.”

She shook her head.

“It's true.”

“It's good, yes? Lucky.” She reached out for him, but he drew back. “Please, Illaan, I do not know why any of this happened. The man who came into the shop making threats—he made the fire, not me.” There was a hint of hysteria in her voice and she quelled it. “What do you want me to say?”

“What if I had not woken you up last night?”

Ayae's eyes closed.

“I thought it was a dream,” he said quietly, the words twisting inside her. “But it was not a dream. Your eyes did burn and you stood in a room full of flames and emerged without a scar on you. You're
cursed
, Ayae.”

No
,
she wanted to yell.
No.
She wanted to deny the word, deny everything that came with it, but the words stuck in her throat. She reached for Illaan. Her fingers found air and, opening her eyes, she saw him standing away from her, his face cold. “There will be a Keeper here soon,” he said quietly. “That's why the room is empty. He wanted to speak to you, privately.”

“Could you—” She swallowed. “Could you stay?”

But he was already walking toward the door.

 

6.

 

The shallow spit of oil in the dimly burning lamp of Captain Heast's office had been the only sound to greet Bueralan upon his arrival. Heast was there, sitting behind his wide, clean table, but he had few words to say and so the saboteur took the middle of the three empty chairs. Within minutes two other mercenary captains were led in, taking the remaining pair. The first, Queila Meina, was a tall, dark-haired, fair-skinned woman not yet thirty but who had taken command the six-hundred-strong Steel after her father's death. Bueralan had met her twice briefly, and had been impressed by the discipline of her army. The result, no doubt, of a child raised among mercenaries and where loyalty to anyone outside Steel was bought in coin and trusted as far as it spent. The second captain, Kal Essa, was a squat, bald man, heavily scarred around the left side of his face, reportedly by a mace. He commanded the Brotherhood, an army four hundred strong that had arisen out of the remains of Qaaina after it had been conquered by his homeland of Ooila, three months across Leviathan's Blood. Bueralan had never met him, but he had heard that his men were fierce in battle, an army of refugee soldiers who had been driven from their homes and had no desire to find a new one.

The saboteur liked the choices that Lady Wagan had made: loyal, disciplined, capable, her gold well spent. His only criticism was that neither Steel nor the Brotherhood had much experience in laying siege to another kingdom and were too small for such a task. They were big enough to defend Mireea and hold the city range that the Spine ran across, but neither were conquerors. By hiring them, the Lady was making a statement of her intent—defense rather than attack.

When he had returned from his first meeting with Lady Wagan to the barracks earlier, Zean had been awake. It was clear that he had not slept—he still wore the same clothes he had when he entered Mireea. “What,” the other man asked as the door opened, “are we being paid for first?”

“A ride,” Bueralan replied. “See the countryside, find a pet crocodile.”

Whetstone running across his dagger, the other man grinned and said, “We can skip the war then?”

“I've almost forgotten how.”

The tall man glanced up the stairs. Up the narrow steps was a warm dark and there, stretched across the doorway, was a thin tripwire.

Bueralan chuckled dryly. “This one will be civilized.”

“Then I'll prepare my pie trays for the faire, sir.”

He had found an empty bunk near the door and, with the sound of Zean's whetstone working along the edge of his knife, drifted off to sleep. His dreams had been fragmented, images of houses with straw roofs, of cattle little more than bones wrapped in hide, of farmers whose children succumbed to disease and famine, of the weapons the peasants made by melting down hoes and shovels and picks, and of Elar.