‘Turn left here,’ Eidan said, lifting the lamp higher. ‘At the corner.’
Ahead, the fence of the factory yard fell in a twisted crush of wire. Through it and over it lay the end of the building’s front wall.
The debris forced Ayae to take the corner wide, but the black and brown horse followed the instruction placidly, and the rotted inside of the two-storey building soon revealed itself through a mixture of starlight and weak lamplight. It was different to the other buildings she and Eidan had passed: there was no scaffolding around it, no sense that anyone had begun to fortify the foundations that had been shifted months before. Instead, the factory looked naked and exposed, the cracked and broken walls somehow still upright, though she could clearly see the weight of the building sagging down the middle. But it was across the floor that most of the destruction had taken place: the forges had been shattered into shapeless masses before collapsing next to broken barrels, splintered handles and scattered piles of coal and wood. The damage lay beneath a ceiling of chains that had once been used to hold apparatuses, but which now fell in limp lines and broken knots.
As if to announce what had made the destruction, a shudder ran through the stone streets of Neela, and Ayae tightened her hands on the reins to keep the horse calm. The quake was different to the aftershocks that ran through the Mountains of Ger and into the camp. The latter had a pattern, an almost predictable series of tremors, whereas what ran through Neela was anything but. The tremors here were sharp and sudden, and every time she was on it, Ayae believed that it was possible the stone would break apart and send her tumbling into Leviathan’s Blood.
Yet, the tremors that ran through the city now were not as bad as they had been over a month ago. The whole city had shaken beneath its tremors then, but Eidan’s repairs had stopped that, and it now shook only in places. The worst of it was near the bridge that led into Mesi, and on into the largely residential city that was dominated by houses built tightly against one another. Eidan was confident that he could save both – ‘The pillars of both are largely intact,’ he explained – but he was not so certain about Ghaam, that city that followed Mesi. There, a generous slope to the stone roads and paths left everyone with the belief that it would soon plunge into Leviathan’s Blood.
Before Ghaam had become too dangerous to stand on, Ayae had walked to the end of it. Her path had taken her to the very edge of the city to gaze into the shifting mass of Leviathan’s Blood and the yawning expanse that existed between Ghaam and the next city, Guranatan. That side of Yeflam, Eidan said, was quite safe: the fall of Nale had primarily broken the northern side of the Floating Cities. Still, Ayae felt no comfort. She had relived her memories of the night Zaifyr died and tried to imagine what would have happened had she been able to reach him. No matter how she allowed the story to unfold, she could never convince herself of a different outcome. She would only have died beside him.
‘Here,’ Eidan said. ‘Here will do nicely.’
She pulled up the cart’s brake. ‘How do you know that one of the pillars is here?’
‘I feel every part of Yeflam, even those that have sunk.’ Slowly, he climbed down. ‘It is said Sil could feel the same in her creations, in the continents, just as I do Yeflam. She could hear them as I hear the pillars beneath me, telling me their weakness.’ With the lamp held in his good hand, the stout man limped along the street, his soft, loose clothes looking like an assortment of rags. ‘At least, that is what is said,’ he said with a hint of self-mockery, ‘and you know you can always trust what is said.’
Sil had been the God of the Earth. ‘How can you be so sure your power is hers?’ she asked, following him.
‘You can find her remains in the tunnels that lead to the Saan. You will probably never know this, but it is a unique experience to stand before the remains of a god still with your power. Hate is not strong enough a word for what they feel towards you.’
‘Zaifyr told me that if you stand before any god, you feel that.’
‘It is not the same. I have often thought that the gods hate all living things. It is not a theory everyone shares, however.’
‘Jae’le?’ she asked.
‘There are better things to ask Jae’le about,’ Eidan said. ‘Ask him if he has found Zaifyr yet, for example.’
‘I don’t want to ask.’
‘I have noticed.’ He paused and turned to her. ‘Why is that?’
‘It’s morbid, Eidan.’
‘Only now,’ he said. ‘Death used to be sacred. To think about it, to ponder it, was considered an intellectual field for philosophers. I remember reading in my youth a book that argued that it was only through death that the gods bestowed their pleasure and displeasure. I think of what that author wrote, lately. In the days when the gods stood among us, a funeral was an event for a town as much as it was for a family. Everyone came out to see what judgement was passed on the deceased. Decay was seen as punishment, youth as a reward. To be returned to a child was something else, however, for quite often the gods would return such a person to life, to live again, and in doing so, exile them from paradise.’
‘Did you ever see that happen?’
‘No. Only Jae’le and Zaifyr saw such things.’
In the broken remains of the factory, she heard a sound: a stone falling, as if it had dropped through a hole in a floor. ‘Are we being watched?’
‘By two men.’ With his good foot, Eidan began to clear a space on the road, pushing dirt and stone away. ‘But my original point was that we have honoured the dead differently throughout time. Jae’le and I are simply men from a different time.’
‘You should learn to cry,’ she said. ‘Aren’t tears enough?’
‘For our brother?’ He gave a small smile and shook his head. ‘It would depend entirely on whose tears they were, I believe.’
‘Then be angry.’
Indistinct sounds – words, she was sure – came from the building. ‘My brother is angry,’ he said. He lowered the lamp to the ground, but did not turn towards the sound. ‘I cannot make out what they are saying. The building is too damaged for that, but I do not believe that they are friends of ours. They are on the second floor, arguing.’
He would have trouble climbing the broken stairs. ‘I’ll check it out,’ Ayae said. ‘But, Eidan, if only Jae’le is angry, what does that leave you?’
‘Sad, mostly.’ He sank into a sitting position, both his good hand and crippled hand flat on the ground. ‘I had not thought to see our violence return.’
He meant Asila, of course.
Ayae stepped over a section of rubble and began to make her way to the factory. She was in clear sight of the two inside, but she did not hear anything, or see anyone, even as the light from Eidan’s lamp began to fade. She did not think of the men in the building as she approached it. Instead, she thought of Asila. It was not surprising: for Eidan, Jae’le and Aelyn, for all of Zaifyr’s family, Asila was always the point of return. They were obsessed with it, and their obsession had begun to lay itself in her. She had finally begun to understand that Zaifyr’s family did not return to it because of the madness he had suffered, nor because of the horrors he had unleashed: no, they returned to it because of the battle with him, because of what it had revealed of themselves, and because of the small, crooked tower in the Eakar mountains in which they had been forced to imprison him for a thousand years.
In the aftermath of that, their family had broken, and the world they understood had fallen away.
In the months since Zaifyr had been killed by Aelyn, Ayae had come to see Yeflam as the perfect metaphor for how the immortals viewed themselves in the world. Unable to form a unified whole, they had become two distinct entities, divided by what they had learned about themselves at Asila, and divided again by the violence that they had done to each other in Yeflam. It would take decades to repair what had been done to the physical nation of Yeflam, if it could be repaired. Eidan had been quite clear that he might not be able to save the cities that had sunk into the ocean. When he spoke, Ayae knew, he was not just speaking about his creation.
At the entrance to the factory, she paused. It was dark, but she could still see the damage inside. It was in worse shape than she had at first thought.
The walls sagged and the floor above her tilted down, as if it was ready to break apart and fall on her. Chunks of plaster and wood from both had crashed to the ground, mixing with the debris that the forges and tools had made, leaving the impression that the building had begun to weep in on itself. Yet, even with the sense that the factory walls could collapse around her at any moment, Ayae took a step forwards, her boots finding purchase between broken bricks. Her hand curled around the hilt of her sword and, above her, the chains attached to the ceiling began to catch alight with small flames, one after the other finding purchase on the metal. Ayae did it without effort, with an ease that she had become more and more comfortable with since the night Yeflam broke apart. Beneath the light, she continued forwards, until she paused in the middle of the room as a harsh voice caught her attention—
The floor above her shook.
And shook again as the two men had begun to jump on it, trying to bring the floor down upon her.
Darting forwards, Ayae made her way swiftly through the debris, the ceiling shaking after her as she closed in on the shadowed steel staircase.
The speed by which she came up the stairs and into the room surprised the two men. While both were startled to see her, neither hesitated to rush her, despite the fact that they were unarmed. As they drew closer, Ayae saw that the men wore old clothes, clothes that had been lived in for the last four months and showed the wear of that time, as did their faces. The first to reach her – a white, middle-aged man with shaggy, greying hair – threw a wild punch that she was able to step around easily, while the second – a black man of similar age, but with a head of short black hair – threw himself at her.
He hit the ground hard, causing the building to shudder, and both Ayae and the white man nearly lost their footing.
Ayae knew that the real threat was not the two men before her, but from the weakness of the floor. She could feel it sag beneath her feet as she took a step forwards to sway beneath the white man’s punch. Her right hand thrust out, palm flat into his stomach, but rather than hitting him with all her strength and launching him through the air, she held back, and he doubled over instead. Her left hand, following through, landed on the back of the man’s head and he fell to the ground unconscious. With a quick step, she lashed out with her right boot, and kicked the black man in the side of the head as he tried to rise.
‘Well done,’ a voice said behind her.