The Godless (50 page)

Outside, she said, “You ever done anything like this?”

“First time,” the mercenary replied.

“It'll probably hurt the first time.”

“It always does.”

“There was less pain the second time. That was my experience.”

“For me, it was the third. Maybe the fourth.”

“We're lucky there's another twenty-five in Yeflam. I'm sure we'll be able to enjoy it by the end.”

Meina's laugh was short. “You don't have to come for this,” she said. “Those two will fight before they surrender. And we're—”

“Going to hurt for it,” she finished. “If anyone should go alone, it should be me.”

“I'd never hear the end of it.” The mercenary began walking toward the Spine. “It might be that the Mireeans would agree to it, but Steel never would. They don't abandon their own.”

Ayae did not reply. She had not been given the rotten straw as Meina had, she had drawn it. Yet, she could not lie to herself and say that she wanted to face Fo and Bau alone, and did not, in truth, want to face them at all. Oh, she knew why she had to, and she knew that even if she did not have her power and Meina and Steel had been ordered to enter the Keep, she would have followed regardless. As the captain had said: you did not abandon your own. But that she was part of the mercenary band without having joined was a strange sensation. Yet, as she drew closer to the Spine and the faces of those she had fought beside came into focus, she acknowledged that it was not entirely untrue. She had fought beside the men and women before her, watched others die, and she had saved more than once. She was bonded by friendship, blood and experience, bonded in the same way that she was to her home, here, in Mireea.

As she reflected on that, Ayae watched Queila Meina gather ten mercenaries to her. The tall woman pulled herself up onto the wall of the Spine, walking among the battlements that had already been patched and repaired. She looked at home there: a dark-haired, pale-skinned, lean figure raised on war, on its violence, its devastation and terror. She was more comfortable in its company than in the suite she had just left.

The mercenaries she chose numbered four women and six men. Each was a scarred and even-gazed veteran who nodded and rose with a sword and shield.

“Are you sure you won't take more?” Bael asked as the two returned.

“The Spine still needs to be defended. If we cleared the wall it would be a signal to the Leerans to swarm, and rightly so. Besides—and I want this to be clear—if we don't come back, I don't want you or Steel going up there. Take them out of this city.” Then she added quietly, “There will be nothing to be gained if we fall.”

“Queila, think about this, please. The Innocent has slain—”

“The Keepers are not Aela Ren,” she interrupted. “And we do not go alone.”

Ayae met Bael's gaze and smiled, feeling none of the confidence that she should. He began to respond—to point out, she thought, the inadequacy of Meina's statement—but stopped when twelve members of the Mireean Guard arrived. They were reporting, the large, lean man who led them said, on the orders of Captain Heast. They had the look of veterans, professional soldiers in well-kept and well-worn boiled leather and chain with heavy swords by their sides.

“What's your name, soldier?” Meina asked.

“Vasj.” He offered no rank, no introductions to those behind him.

The Captain of Steel did not expect either. “You seen these shields we have before, Vasj?”

“We have.”

“Do you know how to fight beside them?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Shortly after, they set out for the Spine's Keep.

It was the silence of the building that struck Ayae deeply as she passed beneath the gate. The only reminder of Lady Wagan's staff—and of the Lady herself—was in the recently planted gardens, the moist and mulched soil around the new life. But there was no sign of who had carried the watering can from the well or left the deep prints in the dirt. There was only absence. Stillness. A mixture of loss that mirrored Ayae's own feelings from earlier, and grew as they entered the Keep, as they walked the long halls, the walls unlit, their quiet footsteps echoing loudly, interspersed with the clink of chain mail and the low breaths of each.

And then they were before the door.

Meina moved ahead, but Ayae's warm hand fell to her shoulder. “I should go first,” she said, the words threatening to catch in her throat.

“It will be cramped inside,” the other woman said. “There will be no fighting room with all of us there, but that's okay. We'll pen them in. We'll use our numbers like a weight. Let the shields stay close to you. Don't step out of them.”

She nodded and pushed against the door.

It opened easily.

Inside, the room was still, quiet. The boxes remained pushed against the empty benches, the furniture isolated comforts. Yet there was a quality about it, about the pronounced nature of it that she thought, as she stepped further into the room, spoke of the two men who had taken residence in the tower. A quality that spoke of their emotional state, of an absence dissimilar to the one she felt; of a singular notion and a selfish need.

“Upstairs.” She heard Bau's voice. “Don't be shy now.”

The Keepers stood by the window of the second floor. Two chairs had been moved to the window, but the remaining furniture was untouched. “Ayae,” the Healer said, as soldiers and mercenaries followed her. “Little flame. You are going to make us break the rule.”

 

6.

 

When he was sure that she was no longer there, when he knew that he was—for as much as he ever was—alone, Zaifyr took hold of the tether that would return him to his life. It was not physical, yet he could feel it. It was not real, yet it guided him away from the haunt he had hidden in, away from her pain and the dim sense of loss in her. He was careful, his steps that were not steps slow, fearing the calm that had followed Ger's death would break—as it must.
As it must
, he repeated to himself, drawn by a truth in the words, though he did not fully understand it. As with the steps that he took, the cord that he held, it was a realization of truth with no easy definition and no physical counterpart. It was not like the tents that emerged around him, forming like huge white waves that threatened to fall over him as he drew closer to his body. For the first time he wondered just what he would do when he reached—

His eyes opened, his breath a startled draw that turned into a cough, that drew the attention of all to him.

It was the elderly healer, Reila, that reached him first.

 

7.

 

“We have come to take you into custody,” Ayae said. “You have—”

“Ger has died.” Bau spoke, ignoring her, while Fo's scarred eyes drifted lazily over the men and women around her. “A god is dead. Do you feel the difference? It is as if a wound was drained and you can suddenly move that limb freely, again.”

She tried again. “You—”

“You can feel it, can't you?”

Around her, soldiers and mercenaries began to encircle the room, Queila Meina falling in beside her. “I did not know it was that,” she said finally.

“The men and women beside you won't understand what you felt. To them, Ger is already dead; he has been dead for longer than history records. But you and I know that is not right. He has been dying. Dying for thousands and thousands of years until he is gone. Just like that. In less time than the words itself take to speak. And we—you and I and Fo—are left with the absence. We, and only we, are the ones who can feel it. Only we can question it. We must ask ourselves what we will feel when one of us dies. Will we have that sensation of loss? Will our awareness of each other, so much smaller than our awareness of Ger, point to a similarity between us and him?”

She felt a flatness in herself, an emptiness in her stomach, and her hands—her warm hands—fell to the hilt of her swords. “There are rules,” she said. “You said so yourself. No immortal can attack another.”

“Little flame.” His smile was a knife's cut in his handsome face. “No one even knows for sure if you are a god.”

“And besides,” Fo said, finally speaking, “who said you could judge us?”

Her reply was lost in the sudden push.

Meina's command was a hand signal, a movement in the corner of Ayae's gaze, her palm flat, her spread fingers tightening. The heavy shields in the hands of the soldiers from Steel led the way, the Mireean Guard following. In seconds, the room shrank, the walls no longer defined by brick, but by metal. Ayae watched as Bau took a single step backward, while the scarred, bald Keeper slid his gaze to those around him. His lips puckered as if he were going to speak … but with no apparent hesitation, he spat.

Onto the shield before him.

The shield that webbed with fractures, that began to crumble—

That the Keeper's fists broke through, plunging through the suddenly exposed guard of the mercenary behind, and into the man's face.

Meina's order was sharp—“
Face!
”—but Ayae, unable to tear her eyes from what happened before her in drawn-out seconds, saw the man's face begin to crumble, following the pattern of destruction that had afflicted the shield. It was not the force of Fo's punch that did it, no; the impact after he broke through the shield was hard, but not enough to do what she saw. He screamed, falling back with one mercenary grabbing him as others swarmed Fo, shields smashing into him, the shape of each falling apart as he curled into himself, refusing to submit.

She started to call out, to shout that they had to attack not just him, but Bau, that Bau was
important
, that they couldn't just
let
the other Keeper stand there, that
nothing
would happen if they did that, when Vasj vaulted over the shields. The words died on her lips and she shifted forward, aware that she was standing at the back now, that she was the last person in the room.

Vasj's heavy sword leveled at Bau, intent to take his head from his neck … and he stumbled, the sword dipping, the strength leaving his body.

The floor erupted in a sickly green light, driving back those attacking Fo.

Slowly, the Keeper picked up the fallen man's sword with his scarred hand. “Everything can contain a disease, a rot. Steel, wood, flesh: it matters not to me.” As he spoke, a faint green glow began to emanate from the blade. “Imagine, now that Ger has finally died, what will happen to the foundation of this mountain? As the rot sets in, even the ground you stand on will not stay safe.”

Green lines began to emerge around his feet, webbed from each step. She saw those who had fallen around him bloat, saw their flesh split and crack … and before any of those standing—the dozen that included the Captain of Steel—could react, Ayae found herself suddenly, surprisingly, next to Fo. Her swords led the way, thrusting high and low, forcing him to raise the sword in his grasp, to parry both her blows. Still, quick as he was in his defense, she was quicker, and her left blade sliced through his shoulder.

As she thrust again, as she pushed that wounded arm, she saw it heal.

With a grunt, she drove Fo backward. But with the rush of her emotions fading, she realized that she had made a mistake. She had stepped into his unhallowed ground, ignored the very advice she had given herself moments before. She could feel weakness in her feet. As she took a step back, the sole of her boot gave way, the leather splitting from sudden age, her balance lost and saw Fo's sword—

—caught by another.

Meina twisted, thrust the sword away, and mercenaries and guards barreled into Fo, thrusting him to Bau, threatening to take both out of the window.

She could not watch. The pain in her feet was unbearable and she needed Meina to steady her. When she met the gaze of the mercenary, she saw a dark fatalism there. It was justified. The pain she felt was a fraction of what the guards and mercenaries who had led the attack felt. They lay in crumbled heaps, their skin sagging, their bones piercing their skin in angry, red protrusions.

It had taken only a handful of heartbeats for the two Keepers to accomplish that. The tiniest fraction in all their lives to kill them.

Ayae pushed away Meina, her anger fueling her, but as soon as she placed her weight on her feet, she screamed. The bones in each foot cracked, fractured. It was as if she could feel each break, as if each foot were on fire, as if she were on fire—

And she was on fire.

The pain of it ran through all of her, so suddenly and painfully, like burning liquid in her joints. The pain in her feet evaporated, her consciousness slipping for a moment. The world went dark. She could hear nothing. She felt nothing. And then—a sudden rush of noise, of crying, shouting, of steel clashing and voices calling out orders, calling out for Meina, the woman who had been forced to step away from Ayae by the heat that had ignited the floor of the tower.

A burning floor that she stood on without pain.

“Captain—”

“—where did—”

“The injured—”

“—Captain!”

“
Ayae!
”

She heard Meina cry her name, but her steps had already been taken, her path cleared by the flames around her. Flames that did not and
would
not terrify her. Flames that she could control, that bent to her desire and intent. As she ran, the flames bent to reveal crumbled shields and twisted swords, men and women who no longer looked as if they had ever been alive, who had been robbed of their humanity and their dignity. It was especially clear to her in the body of Vasj, of the man who had appeared so strong but now lay on the ground, curled in on himself as if his skeleton had lost all that it took to keep him straight.

It was Fo who saw the danger first, how close they had come to the window, and he cried out, too late, too late—