The Godless (30 page)

Weakly, the saboteur tried to brush it off. “They're not assassins.”

The general's smile was fleeting and humorless. With a nod, he signaled for Bueralan to be taken away.

 

3.

 

As the carriage rattled over the cobbled stones to the hospital, Ayae was quiet.

In her mind's eyes, she saw Illaan lying on a stained sheet, his skin burned black and cracking with his every movement. Blood—boiling blood—seeped through the worst of the wounds, the indents around her palm on his chest. She wanted desperately to push the image from her mind, but Heast's silence offered no support. His metal leg acted like a bar before the door, though she could not decide if it was intentional or not. Not that it mattered: with her hands like lumps of ice in her lap she was moments away from an admission of guilt.

When the carriage stopped and the door opened, Heast's leg moved stiffly, and he gave a short nod for her to follow.

Outside, there were no guards or chains, nothing but the sound of the birds in the cut-back branches, their lurid green bodies suddenly exposed when presented against the empty sky.

Wordlessly, she followed Heast and the Mireean Guard up the warm path to the hospital and inside. A middle-aged man sat at the front desk, but he did not speak. There was no sound until the three of them had passed through another door and Heast's leg began to stamp loudly down the hall, as if to announce his arrival to those who stood at the end of it, Reila and Bau.

Both stood outside the final, closed door, their voices rising and falling in conversation. The handsome, ageless man said, “No,” repeating the word again before he said, “There's very little that I can do.” He intended to say more, but was interrupted by Heast.

“Keeper,” he said evenly. “I'm surprised to see you here.”

“I am sure very little shocks you, Captain,” Bau replied easily. “My visits have no doubt been well documented by your men. I hope, of course, that they detail—”

“Your occupation of a hallway?”

“—my work here,” he finished.

Ayae tried to hide her reaction at Heast's dry disregard for the Keeper, though she need not have bothered. Bau was neither surprised nor bothered: his casual, left-shouldered shrug was clear in its opinion of the Captain of the Spine.

“If it would please the two of you,” Reila said tiredly, “we might discuss our patient before we bicker.”

“What has happened?” Heast asked.

“We haven't decided, yet.”

Beyond the door was a long dormitory of beds divided by narrow paths, similar to the one that Ayae had been in earlier. As it had been then, the majority of the white-linen beds were empty, except for one by the wall. Illaan lay covered in a single, light sheet. As she drew closer, Ayae could see that the cloth was weighed down by a dampness that showed his tall outline. He was sleeping, but fitfully, his lips twitching. At the foot of the bed lay a silver bowl. Around it were stains of blood.

No one spoke and it was not until their silence dragged out to become noticeable that Ayae realized they were waiting for her.

“Did
I
do this?”

“No, child,” Reila replied.

“I hit him.”

His armor lay behind the bed, a collection of burned leather.

“While I sympathize with the desire,” Bau said, “unless your touch now has the ability to cause a fever that also results in vomit laced with blood, you have nothing to worry about.”

Heast stepped past her and approached Illaan's side. With a surprisingly gentle touch from his calloused hands, he rearranged the edge of the blanket. “You're not going to tell me it is natural, either, are you?”

“No,” Reila replied.

“Saboteurs?”

“We know that they're in the city.” Gently, the elderly woman eased herself onto the bed opposite her patient, a sigh escaping her as she settled into place. “When the sergeant first arrived he was fine, but for the damage to his armor and his pride. I examined him myself, and there was nothing to note of ill will. He took a drink of water and then, a minute later, he was vomiting with such force that I was forced to sedate him. The water he drank was fine—I had some myself, as did Bau, and neither of us could taste anything different.”

“You don't look well,” he said bluntly.

Reila smiled wanly. “I am afraid I am getting too old for war, Captain—”

“She is merely exhausted from using her own blood for simple spells,” Bau interrupted. “If she used it as most others did, if she killed even the smallest creature, she would be fine. But rest will cure her. It is quite different with your sergeant. I believe this is the first sign that your guards are not as honest as you think.”

“There have been seven saboteurs in Mireea for three weeks,” Heast said, with his back to them. “We have watched them very carefully to know where they have been, and I have had no new reports. Obviously, this is evidence that suggests otherwise and I will look into that, Keeper. Why don't you tell me what will happen to the sergeant?”

“We don't know,” Reila said. “As of this moment, we do not know what afflicts him. Illaan looks like he has been infected by a poison known as semodyle, which is rare in this part of the world, but not fatal. On the other hand, there are diseases—”

“It is semodyle,” Bau interrupted. “I told you that.”

“And I
told you
,” she replied, “that it is a common poison with an antidote that has had no effect on him. If you keep insisting it is something that you
clearly
know it isn't, I will have you removed.”

The Keeper's smile was light, but strained.

“I see.” Heast straightened, turning awkwardly on his metal leg to face them. “Do you know how it was contracted, at the least?”

“Nothing, as yet.”

“You'll find none, if it is semodyle as I have said,” the Keeper answered. “It is easy to use a dosage of the poison that is not fatal in one sitting. Its effect can be cumulative, having been digested over lengthy periods of time from, say, a water source.”

The captain glanced at Reila, and the small woman nodded. “He's right, but ignoring all the other evidence.”

They continued to talk, but Ayae had nothing to offer, either in relation to the question of poison or those who might have used it. She found herself staring at the still form of Illaan, watching him shift and twitch, watching pain flit across his face for but a moment. A part of her wished that she felt more responsive to it. That would be proper, she thought. Despite everything that had happened, he had been a part of her life for over two years and she had loved him. But she felt only the sadness she would feel toward anyone in his situation, to anyone who was in such pain.

“Bau.”

The conversation stopped, and the Keeper met her gaze. “Yes?”

“Could you not just help him?”

“To do what I do requires a very extensive knowledge,” he said. “To know exactly how things react in the human body, to know what it does to blood, to organs, to all that is in the body. On the day you met me, I knitted a man's throat together, but that was a very simple thing, for it was just tissue damage. If the diagnosis here is wrong…”

He let the sentence hang, but, wearily, Reila finished it. “If he is wrong, he will do more damage to Illaan than the poison itself. That is why it is important to know that it is semodyle first, before we do more harm than good.”

“Is that right?” she asked the Keeper.

Bau's smile was faint, but without humor. “Sadly, even I have limitations,” he said.

 

4.

 

The cage was not new: made from old, black iron, it was tall enough for him to stand if he hunched and square enough for him to sit if he did not stretch his legs.

He had seen other men and women in cells like this before, had in fact used a pair when he was not yet the
exiled
Baron of Kein. It was an easy form of torture, a slow way to cramp and waste muscle, to weaken the body and erode the sharpness of the mind with exhaustion.

General Waalstan did not want to be far from him as that happened. As if the idea were new and Bueralan the first man he had the chance to witness it on, the general kept the saboteur's cage in the same slow, bumpy cart as his map table, a podium and leather-bound booklets. All but one of the latter were empty, the marred one half filled to judge by the leather marker down the middle. The twenty books did not look like the treasured tombs of warlocks and witches, where spells and potions were noted alongside experiments, but rather like personal diaries. That slotted neatly into Bueralan's emerging knowledge of the man ahead of him, however, building into an analysis of both innocence and arrogance, similar to that of a young unbeaten swordsman.

Bueralan believed that Waalstan was not a soldier who had risen through the ranks. Neither did he believe that Waalstan had earned the loyalty of his soldiers through acts of bravery or skill on the battlefield.

What, then, could he say about the man that rode easily on a dark-brown horse next to the old pony that carried Samuel Orlan?

Was he a man who had entered the ranks of the military late in life?

A reluctant, yet genius general, drawn from the civilian population of Leera?

Or had he been a priest, educated and raised for this one purpose?

There was more evidence for the last: after Bueralan had been pushed into the cage, after the lock sealing him had closed with a heavy thunk, the army had remained in camp for another twenty minutes, finishing meals and performing a short prayer before they broke. He had not heard the words—the prayer had been silent, the bowed heads the only indication—but the general had led them, that was sure.

Allowing his mind to turn over the question, Bueralan stretched the cramps in his legs and rose. As he did that, Waalstan leaned over his saddle and shook the hand of Samuel Orlan. Words passed between the two and then the cartographer turned and disappeared into the ring of soldiers around them. Soon, the small, elderly form of both him and his pony were lost in the leather and chain and the drooping, leaning, dark-green-leafed branches that tinted the midday's sunlight.

Having noticed his attention, the general halted and waited for the cart and cage to draw alongside him. “I could spare you the curiosity,” he said without malice. “If you would like?”

The saboteur nodded.

“He is off to find Dark.” His hand dropped to the side of the horse's neck. “Though he told me he was off to the city, to the capital of Leera, which I also don't doubt. He has a strong interest in the cathedral there. But first he will try to convince Dark to follow him to it, in exchange for your freedom later.”

Bueralan reached out with his left hand, steadying himself as the cage jolted.

“If he plans what I think he does, then he will die, and Dark will die with him. I won't lose much in such an inevitability, but—” Ekar Waalstan's gaze met his. “Only a fool would trust Samuel Orlan: he has his own agenda, and sees us all as pawns to be played.”

“But you play him?”

“Within my limits.” The admission was easy. “It is difficult to understand what Samuel truly desires, until you begin to consider him a man like those who claim to be the children of gods. A mortal he may well be, but he is a moral man who wants for very little and owes no loyalty but to himself, a man for whom the affairs of those like you and me are an indulgence.”

The saboteur remembered Heast's words. With hindsight, he realized that the Captain of the Spine had woven his doubts about Orlan into his conversation, one that Bueralan had not paid enough attention to. The realization hurt. He should have noticed it, would have if he had been clear headed and was not as tired as the rest of Dark; if the fatigue of Ille and Elar's death had not set into his bones. And as much as he wanted to believe that the others would not believe Orlan, he knew otherwise: the cartographer had already won them over.

“How do you think,” the general asked quietly, as if reading his mind, “your soldiers will fare without you, Captain?”

The saboteur offered no reply and the general nudged his horse forward, leaving him to fall into a hunched crouch, one hand curled tightly around the dark bar, the other curled in on itself. If the man leaving noticed and was concerned by the violence it suggested, he gave no evidence of it.

 

5.

 

“I have a task for you, now.”

Ayae did not reply to Heast. Instead, she walked beside him, her agreement given through her silent company as the Captain of the Spine limped heavily over the cobbled ground. Behind them, the hospital was lost beneath the glare of the midday's sun, as if the light itself were trying to obscure their trail and hide from what happened in the room where Illaan lay.

“Where is Fo?” Before they left, Heast had turned to Bau. “He would be able to tell you what this was, yes?”

The Keeper's shrug was easy, nonchalant. “He comes to the hospital only when required.”

“He is required.”

“I will tell him that he has been ordered then.”

“Do so,” the Captain of the Spine said, a hint of steel entering his tone. “I have no place for either of you if you will not work for me.”

“Captain.” Reila pushed herself hurriedly up from the white linen she sat upon. “We don't need this right now.”

“I believe what she is trying to tell you,” Bau said, his smile as easy and as confident as his shrug, “is that you do not want to pursue this line if you wish to maintain Yeflam's support.”

“Yeflam is not supporting me.”

“Not in the way you want, no,” he admitted. “You want Keeper intervention, but you and I both know that will not happen. Yeflam does not go to war. The rules that stop immortal men and women from fighting each other keep the country neutral. Yet we are both interested in the Leeran Army. We have both heard the rumors of priests, and that is why we are here, and why we are sympathetic to your plight. However, if you send Fo and me back because we will not intervene on your behalf with violence, I assure you that you will not have a welcome for your refugees when this city is overrun.”