Beneath the midday’s sun, the streets beyond the cathedral of Ranan were full. Bueralan would find himself at the end of a bridge, or at a corner, or walking along a street, and his internal map would be broken not by the barricades, or deviations to the streets, but by the sheer number of men and women around him. They spilled out of flat-roofed houses into the streets. They sat on piles of stone for the catapults, missiles ranging from the size of his head to the size of his torso. They sat on the wooden frames of barricades, stood by huge ballistas, and on top of towers that had been pulled into the city, all of them deep in conversation. ‘—Faaisha—’ ‘Se’Saera has said within the week—’ ‘She has seen—’ ‘More than one force?’ ‘—victory.’ Their voices threaded around him, a mix of the traders’ tongue, of Leeran, none of it hidden by silence, or code, as Bueralan passed. That did not surprise him, but the awareness the Faithful had of him did. He had seen it before, in the attention they paid to the god-touched, but he had not thought that it would extend to him. He was continually caught off-guard by men and women who gave him short nods of greeting, stepped out of his way, and even went as far as to greet him by name, referring to him as ‘Lord Bueralan’. Aelyn Meah, who walked beside him, was not once greeted by name, despite the fact that many of the Faithful would have known her by sight and by reputation. It was how the Faithful treated her that made it clear to Bueralan that he was expected to walk down the streets of Ranan. That not only was he was meant to be walking here, but that he was meant to do so with Aelyn Meah beside him. The Faithful’s greetings were Se’Saera’s way of letting him know that. Aelyn must have noticed, just as he did, but her face was still, and he could not read the emotions on it. He had been unable to do so since they had left the cathedral.
‘My brother is upstairs,’ she had said, before they left. ‘He is on the top floor. Our new god has him laid out on the ground. She is trying to bring him back to life.’
Bueralan had put sheets over Orlan and Taela. Bloodstains had begun to leave an outline of their bodies, of their wounds, through it. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Zilt and the last of his monsters are with her, but they say nothing the wind can repeat to me.’
Bueralan remembered the shifting breezes in her room before he left Ranan and did not ask her what she meant by the last.
‘When my brother died,’ Aelyn continued, ‘when he came back, he did not know who he was, then. In that state, he can perform great horrors. I assume our new god knows this.’
He began to walk to the door. ‘There are enough atrocities already. Maybe you ought to try and stop this one.’
‘You think I want this to happen?’ Her words stopped him, but before he could speak, she continued. ‘I would be careful with my words, if I were you, Bueralan. Responsibility for this does not fall onto many. It falls to one. Just one. She is creating everything that is happening here. She may not be fully aware of how she does it, but this is her creation we are standing in. It speaks to us of pain and suffering and I am not immune to that. Do you think your blood brother is anything but the face of this new world she is making?’
‘New world?’ His laugh was a half a huff of disbelief. ‘She isn’t making anything new. You are wrong when you say it is just her. Mother, father, son, daughter. It’s the same poisonous dynasty around us.’
Aelyn did not disagree, did not say much until Bueralan picked up his sword, and strapped it around his waist. There, she offered to take him out of Ranan, and as she did, the wind shifted on either side of her feet into shapes, hints of beasts. ‘I’m getting my horse,’ he said. There was no give in his voice and, as the room receded behind him, the stairs to the cathedral passed and the door opened to reveal the warm, midday’s sun, Bueralan felt his resolve harden. He would not leave the grey here. He would not return, after he found Zean. He would not come back to Se’Saera, to Aela Ren, to the god-touched, the immortals, the Keepers of the Divine, the Faithful and, more importantly, he would not return to the dead girl whom he had failed to help.
The door to the stables shuddered open beneath the palm of his hand. Inside, shafts of light ran through gaps high in the wall, but darkness defined the space between the stalls. The grey was towards the end, Bueralan knew. The other horses, watered, and brushed, stood in their stalls and watched him pass, the light falling over half their bodies, giving them a strange radiance that, at the end of the stables, fell over Kaze in faint, golden light.
She sat on a wooden stool, her head leant back against the wall, and a bucket and brush beside her. ‘It is over, is it not?’ Her glasses sat on her knee, faint silver glints. ‘Se’Saera’s child is born.’
‘You knew.’ It wasn’t an accusation. ‘You knew when you saw me.’
Kaze’s long fingers picked up her glasses, put them on. ‘You got to see Taela before,’ she said. ‘She spent her final moments with someone she cared about. How many mortals in the service of a god can claim that?’
He was aware that, behind him, Aelyn Meah had taken two steps back, giving him privacy he did not need. ‘You could have done more for her,’ he said. ‘You had a duty.’
‘To defy my god?’
‘She’s not your god.’
‘After all this time, you don’t understand.’ Kaze nodded to Aelyn. ‘We’re not like her. She is nothing. A fluke. A creation made by fate’s whim, fit only to be consumed by Se’Saera. She is chaos. The only reason she hasn’t been killed already is because Se’Saera has given orders for us not to kill her. She is supposed to be here, now. But you and I, we are different. Our fates were locked down from before we are born. Everything about us has been decided. We are the servants of a god. We are defined by that. We cannot defy a god, not for love, not for hate, not for kindness, and not for cruelty.’ She rose, her slight stoop straightening as she did. ‘I did as I was made to do.’
She tried to shoulder past him, but Bueralan held his arm up. ‘You and I, we can’t kill each other. That’s how it works, right?’ He met her hazel eyes. ‘But I can hurt you.’
‘Pain is our life.’ She held his gaze. ‘I would have thought you understood that by now.’
He did, and it was because of that, that he did not turn to her as she pushed past him. With long, even strides, she walked past Aelyn Meah and into the darkness of the stables. When the door shut, he turned to the grey, who had watched him with his steady dark eyes the entire time.
‘Orlan’s horse is in the next stall,’ the saboteur said. ‘We won’t leave her, either.’