The Godless (42 page)

“Yes,” she replied, thinking of Illaan, of how she felt about him in the hospital, of how little she felt, both before and after she entered his house.

“It is unfortunate, is it not?” The Lady of the Spine stopped them before the throne. The midday's sun fell through the room, illuminating the silver arms. “To experience love and then to lose it, to feel at the same time betrayed by it. For you, it is perhaps worse than for me, because your youth will keep now. Thousands of years from now, the hollowed feeling you have will be gone and other memories will have replaced it. But for myself? I can only watch and wait for the remains of my love to die.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Why?” She laughed good-naturedly. “Because I am going to ask you a favor and this time I do not want to be denied.”

 

4.

 

The Captain of the Spine delayed the start of his meeting for fifteen minutes, a rarity. He delayed it for Zaifyr, waiting for the charm-laced man to open the door across from him, though he knew that he would not. Still, he waited. From the roof of The Pale House he watched the Leeran Army, his first real sight of it, his first chance to see for himself the sprawling, shifting mass of bodies, the nation that had been raised and armed. He had not even begun to suspect its real size, a mistake he had not made for over a decade; still, he had known that it would be large, and did not believe his plans would change greatly. His only true alteration would be once he received word of a solitary mercenary leaving the front gate, walking through the camps that stretched either side of the road to Yeflam.

Walking away.

After fifteen minutes, he began to speak to those around him.

 

5.

 

If a chance to escape was ever to be offered to him, it would be soon.

Bueralan, chained to both Ugly and Handsome, followed Mother Estalia through a series of narrow, overgrown paths in what he believed was a slim road that ended close to the back of the funeral pyres. An illegal road, an unofficial road, a child's road: the saboteur had no idea who had made the path, but it was as old as the villages that the tireless Estalia left behind with her soldier's pace. Beside her were her four priests and a fifth, the odd man out, Lieutenant Dural. The latter had fanned a small regiment of soldiers around all of them, including Bueralan. “My preference with the prisoner,” he had said to Estalia before they set out, “is to cut the tendons in his heels now.”

“How would he swim?” she asked.

“He wouldn't,” he replied. “He would be forced to stay with me, where he would not be a danger.”

“That won't be necessary, Lieutenant.”

She started down the path before he could object, leaving the Leeran Army, the sound of trees being felled, the sight of soldiers in orderly lines being moved across four villages and the newly erected pens of livestock that had just been constructed. Considering himself lucky, Bueralan followed her at a reasonable pace, not wishing to give Dural a chance to cripple him.

Still, the walk was not easy for Bueralan. He struggled to keep up with the pace that was set, the wasted muscles in his legs and back protesting, especially when he went up inclines, of which there was more than one to varying degrees in the Mountains of Ger. Without any other choice, he pushed through the pain, reminding himself that if he fell, he would be taken back to the cage—or simply not get up again. Both would take away his chance to reach Leera, to reach Dark—both of which were in the opposite direction of the wall that rose in front of him and the people within. The images he had seen after the sacrifice of the pale horse had stayed with him, and he had no doubt of the truth of what he had seen. He was running out of time to reach them before they pushed the cathedral doors open, he knew.

He had no choice. Mireea was just a payment, but Dark …
Dark. They will take their time.
He repeated the words like a mantra as the midday's sun began to sink. They would not rush. It was three days' ride to Leera, at a push, and they would not push. He was safe, in as much as anyone in an army was safe, and Dark would know that they had time. They would discover an empty city, a city stripped to make siege engines, to fuel a war. There would be only one part of it with people, one whole, and that would be the church. The very building Orlan wanted them to enter, the building that held the child he wanted them to kill, a murder that none of them wanted to be part of.

They'll wait.

They'll watch.

They must.

As the afternoon's sun rose, Mother Estalia called a stop. Of herself and the four priests, only she spoke, though he was sure that all five communicated with each other. The small force came to a halt in a small clearing, a shallow stream to the side that ran downhill, a flow well enough now to drink from, but which would evaporate as the dry season set in. From it, the priests took water in silent turns and took it around to the soldiers, though not Bueralan. After a moment, the saboteur sighed and, despite the chains, sank to the ground and lay on his back, staring at the fragmented orb that passed above him as he rested his muscles.

Shortly, he saw Dural approach, holding a canteen of water.

“How is he?” asked the soldier.

“We'll probably be carrying him by the end of the day, sir,” Handsome said to him. “I doubt that he has the strength for much more.”

“There isn't much more,” Dural replied. “Just watch him.”

He drank what the lieutenant left for him and, soon after he had finished, Estalia rose and set the pace again.

How long would they watch the church? The building would be large, difficult to map from the outside, impossible to know every corner and room and hard to know how many people it held. A week, he answered. They would watch it for a week. A week would allow them to understand the daily routine of the building. Kae would argue for a second week, would argue more caution, but it would not be given. Zean would argue that there were other considerations and the others would agree with him, even the older swordsman. But if there was enough variation …

There would not be.

Ahead, up a steep incline, the pyres appeared, their metal structures barely visible. Looking at it now, Bueralan wondered how it was that he had survived the chase off the ledge: not only did it drop more sharply than he had thought, but the tall green grass looked more dangerous than it had when he had followed, hiding the shape of the land, the holes and the trees and the creatures that lived in both. But he had survived to follow a Quor'lo down the mountain, to where it stretched out gently and men and women had dug shafts to find a fortune to last generations, the openings of which were now peppered with wooden covers.

One of them was open.

Without being asked, the saboteur approached it, Ugly and Handsome behind him. He was aware, as his naked foot pushed at the cover to reveal the inky darkness beneath, that others had gathered around him, that they watched him and followed his gaze down the broken ladder into the darkness, where—

“There is no water,” Mother Estalia said. “You said the mines were flooded.”

The ladder continued, broken in places, but more intact than Bueralan had previously thought. “It was,” he said. “But look at the wall. There is a crack running through it. Something has caused the wall to fracture.”

“The explosion, I would imagine.” She peered down at the wooden covering. “The lock has clearly been broken.”

Bueralan did not reply. Instead, he watched as Estalia turned to those around her and began issuing orders for ropes to be set, for a path down the shaft to be made. She wanted it to be strong enough to take herself, her four priests, Ugly and Handsome and himself.

“Won't you please reconsider,” Dural said, as the men around him began to move, to prepare what she asked. “Any of our men would gladly take his place.”

“They are needed up here,” she replied. “Lieutenant, he has been given to us for a reason. Do not doubt that.”

One week
, Bueralan thought.
I have a week to reach Dark before they enter the church. They reached Ranan this morning.

 

6.

 

If Lady Wagan's office was a measure of her intelligence, her strengths and her weaknesses, then it was an office that presented a woman with a mind that held both disarray and order within it equally. Paper was strewn across her table, scrawled notes and an array of knick-knacks. Yet each of the items on her desk had an order, a place: that much was clear. Through it all was a thread of control, of an underlining structure that was known to the woman who sat behind the table, who held all before her in a glance that did not require a rigid structure, but who was happy to allow overlaps and meshes.

And then there was the drink.

“Good laq is the work of an artist.” The near-finished bottle sat before the Lady of the Spine, while she passed one to Ayae and poured one for herself. “All liquor is, truly, but it is laq that I find has the most variety in its creation, the most room between the good, the excellent, and the brilliant. In part, it is the difference in how it is made. Take this, for example: this expensive bottle was made in ice. It is the work of a brewer in Faaisha. Once a year, he and a crew of fifty sail up into the cold north, to where the ground is made from ice, where, if there was no ice, there would be no ground, and where your exposed skin dies from cold if you are not careful. He stays there for three months and he and his men—they are all men, incidentally—freeze the start of the liquor, and spend the remaining three months removing the ice from it.”

“Why would they do that?” she asked.

“To make a fine drink.” Behind her, the midday's sun had begun to set, the afternoon's rising in the empty sky. “Is that not reason enough?”

“I have had laq before,” Ayae said. “This isn't that different.”

“But it
is
different.” The Lady finished her drink, poured a second. “Sometimes, a big act only results in a small difference, but it can be the difference between greatness and success.”

“Is that what is happening here?” She was only halfway through her own, but did not intend to drink a second; she had never overly enjoyed laq. “What you and Heast have planned with the gates is a big act that will only make a small difference at the end? We will still be driven out of our home.”

“There are large differences. Sadly, I might add. Perhaps it would be as you said if we could leave before the fighting started. If Yeflam would open its gate to refugees who were not bloodied, both you and I would be on the road now. But the Keepers will not help us unless we are in dire need. The social pressure of seeing men and women in terror is the only thing that will move them into real action and see them break their shallow neutrality and publicly align themselves against the Leerans. If I could, I would negotiate a peace with the Leerans that I could undermine and erode, but they are interested only in what is beneath us. That leaves few options in either direction. The truth is, we are an empire of finance and if we fall, there will be people lined up to pick our carcass clean—so when you say that our act is big, yes, you are right; but when you say the difference is small, you are wrong.”

“Our homes will be lost.”

“Our homes will still be here. I will give up nothing.”

“And your favor?” Ayae placed the half-empty glass on the table. “Do you plan to explain it to me yet?”

“When Reila—” A knock on the door interrupted the Lady of the Spine, but she smiled when it was pushed open. “Who is here.”

The elderly healer smiled, fatigue straining the edges of her lips. With a greeting to the Lady and Ayae, she pulled a chair from the side of the room and seated herself before the table, taking the glass of laq that was poured for her. “You'll have to accept my apologies. I had to attend a meeting with Heast at the last minute.”

“Any problems?”

“None you have not already heard. An army is in front of us, Steel is half its strength and the saboteurs have been a complete failure.” She hesitated. “However, Qian was not there.”

The Lady shifted her gaze to Ayae who responded, uncomfortably. “He said that he might not go,” she said.

No more was required from her, for which she was thankful. Instead, Muriel Wagan nodded to Reila, who pulled out a wrapped bundle from the satchel she carried. Small, the size of a bird, it was wrapped in green cloth, and was followed by a notebook, half of the pages used.

“You recognize the bird that was found in Sergeant Illaan Alahn's house, no doubt,” Lady Wagan began. “With it are the notes comparing what was found in the bird with what has been found in Illaan, a compound that caused a scandal two hundred and seventy-two years ago when the recipe was sold to a black-market apothecary in Yeflam by the Keeper Fo.”

“It caused a scandal,” Reila continued, “because it was seen as an attempt by Fo to move into the underworld, to take not just a financial stake but to claim all who worked in it as his own, as his province. It was the first time that any of the Keepers had tried anything like that and the scandal that came from it was not about the poison itself, but rather the idea that anyone would seek to lay claim to a group of people, to start appearing before them as a divinity. The result was a loss of power for the Keepers. As a result, the poison became known as Divinities Facade.”

“Will it—is there an antidote?” Ayae asked.

“In a day, maybe two,” she said. “Hopefully it will be in time for Illaan.”

She said nothing.

“The book and the bird are our evidence against Yeflam,” Lady Wagan said quietly. “It is leverage that shows the Keepers were not sent here to help us, but to stop us from retreating. It is not much leverage for us against them, but it is leverage for the Traders Union. That conflict I would prefer to avoid, but it is from the Union that we are receiving what little help we are, and not the Enclave. Furthermore, the change in leadership in the Union has meant that we have to offer more now than we did before. To the previous leader, Lian Alahn, a battered and bruised brave band of refugees who have fled their destroyed city was an event that he believed he could use to erode the power of the Enclave. Under his leadership, the Union were not interested in destroying the men and women who ruled over them, but rather about sharing. Their new leader, Benan Le'ta, is a much more radical man. He does not believe that battered refugees are worth much.”