Elan Wagan’s funeral was a small affair. It was, Heast thought, an audience to acknowledge the death of a man that had happened over a year ago, not two days earlier.
The funeral was held not on Neela, but on the bare, dirty island below it, Wila. A single, steel-framed funeral pyre was built in the centre a day before and Wagan’s body was laid on top of it, wrapped in multicoloured cloth, before Heast and the others arrived. Unlike the funeral pyres outside Mireea, the new pyre had no image of the gods on the framework. It was not the shortness of preparation time that had kept it off: the night before, Muriel had told him that she intentionally ordered it to be left blank. ‘People have already complained about it,’ she said. ‘They hear that the dead are leaving, that they are no longer trapped in our world, and they think that it is the work of the gods. Or a god.’ Heast thought of that again as she lit the pyre of her husband. He thought of the speech that she could have given to the small group of people who stood on the dirty sand. How she could have said that the gods had kept the dead here, how their war had raged for thousands of years with souls as weapons. How the dead could only return to Heüala now because the gods were gone. It was a story that the shamans out of the Plateau were telling and Muriel Wagan could have repeated it, but she didn’t. Instead, she greeted all sixteen men and women as the fire burned her husband and thanked them for their presence.
Heast accompanied her back to her house after they left Wila. People were scattered through the streets that they walked through, some carrying long trestle tables and chairs. Many put down their loads and came to offer their condolences to Muriel and her daughter, Eilona, who was half a dozen steps behind her with her partner. Her daughter looked mostly exhausted, but that was not terribly surprising, Heast thought.
Muriel bid her daughter goodbye at her house, left Caeli at the door to stand guard, and led Heast inside. With the door shut, it was quiet and still, the front room empty but for a few stubborn bloodstains on the ground. A flight of stairs upwards, a narrow hallway and a small back room revealed an old leather couch facing the open window. Against the wall were glasses and two bottles of laq.
‘Later today,’ Muriel said, as she handed him a glass, ‘I have a meeting with Ayae. I am told that she will be asking for the land Mireea was on.’
‘Asking?’ He took the glass, took a seat on the couch and stretched his steel leg out in front of him. ‘You might say no to her, but not to the rest of them.’
She sat beside him, a glass in her hand. ‘I don’t plan to say no. It will be years before anyone can live in Mireea and it will be longer without her influence.’ She took a drink and sighed. For the first time since he had returned to Neela, he saw her relax. ‘Besides, I hear she killed the Innocent and carries his sword, now.’
‘She carries that burden.’ The news had been in Jeil before Heast and Refuge reached the port to catch a ship down to Yeflam. ‘She does it to tell people he is dead.’
‘Then Mireea is a price she can name,’ Muriel Wagan, the former Lady of the Spine, said. ‘But what of you, Aned? What is next?’
‘Refuge needs to rebuild.’ He took a sip of the laq. ‘We’ll go to Leviathan’s End for that, I think. Once that is done, we have work in Illate.’
‘Illate?’ He saw her surprise. ‘You never struck me as the kind of man who kept unfinished business.’
‘It is the second half of Zeala Fe’s contract.’ He offered her half a smile. ‘Maybe I’m getting old, but it doesn’t hurt that it is Illate.’
‘Next you’ll be adopting children.’
He laughed, despite himself. ‘I have mercenaries instead.’
She made a noise, part disagreement, part agreement. ‘Well, I wasn’t going to bring this up, but since you are in the mood for change, my daughter’s partner made a request of me the other night. Laena wants me to ask you if you’d consider an authorized biography.’
‘The war didn’t change me, Muriel,’ Heast said. ‘That is about the last thing I want.’
‘No, the last thing you want is a hack following you and your mercenaries around to write The Adventures of Refuge. This would be a very different thing.’
‘You can’t think this is a good idea.’
‘At first, I simply thought you wouldn’t be part of it, so I didn’t think about it. But the idea has stuck. I’ve rescued thousands of books from Nale in the last two weeks. I’ve been in contact with the other lords and ladies of Yeflam – that is what they call themselves now, you know.’ Heast had heard. Yeflam, it appeared, was drifting towards being a council of city states. ‘They defined the world, Aned,’ Muriel continued. ‘These books, these histories – they define what has gone before us. But what has been missed? What person, what man or woman, was lost, because he or she was too humble? It shouldn’t happen to the Captain of Refuge.’
He did not agree, but the thought stayed with him after he left, after he climbed into the small carriage that took him away from the Lady of Neela, who had not entirely lost her title as the Lady of the Ghosts, not yet. He sat in the empty carriage, his steel leg thrust out before him, and tried to push the thought from his mind. Authors had written about him before, he knew. There had been a pair of books about his tactics, dry works for which academics had sent him letters with questions he never bothered to answer. He had not stopped those books being published, but he had stopped a handful of others, cheap fictions that promised little truth. But a biography? An authorized biography? No, he told himself as the carriage stopped outside The Collapsed City, the inn Refuge were lodged at. No, he did not need anyone to write about him.
Inside, the spacious bar was dotted with soldiers from both Refuge and the Brotherhood. He saw Oya and Qiyala next to Jaerc, the former baker’s apprentice who had petitioned him for a place. Kal Essa had vouched for him – ‘The boy,’ he had said, ‘has a good hand with a pot of food and a steady hand on a sword’ – and Heast had taken him on as a cook and soldier. The scout Fenna nodded at him as he pressed deeper into the inn. She was practising on a flute, but paused to answer his question, to point towards the back, where a series of long tables looked out over Leviathan’s Blood. At the furthest, he found Lehana and Anemone, drawn together by both the chains of command and the dead that were still part of the Witch of Refuge.
‘Captain,’ the former said, as he approached. ‘How was the funeral?’
‘Fitting.’ He took a seat on the other side of Lehana, placing her in the middle. ‘Are most still sleeping?’
‘There’s not much to do on Neela, but there’s enough to drink.’
‘We’ll start tightening the company purse strings in a few days.’ Zeala Fe’s gold would go a long, long way, Heast knew, if he used it right. He’d probably have to employ an accountant to help him with that. Before, or after Leviathan’s End, he thought, he would visit Tjevi Minala again. ‘Have you given thought to what I said?’
‘You could have asked Anemone first,’ Lehana said. ‘She might say no.’
‘I said yes,’ the witch replied. ‘You know that.’
The Lieutenant of Refuge sighed. ‘I asked around,’ she said. ‘No one who served in the First Queen’s Guard has any objection to Kal Essa or the Brotherhood. But – well, here’s my concern: if we are really going to go to Illate, ex-soldiers from Qaaina are not going to make that easy for us. It’s already going to look bad when the Queen’s old guard shows up under the Captain of Refuge. If the Queens don’t immediately march on us it’ll be a miracle.’
‘How much worse do you really think soldiers from Qaaina are going to make it? I don’t think it’ll matter after they see the badge that you’re wearing,’ Heast said. ‘Even if they do march, there’s not a thing we can do to make it easier. It’s going to be hard, and it isn’t going to be won in a day or two, maybe not even in a whole year. We’re going to need good soldiers and Essa is a good soldier. But if he joins with us, you’ll be sharing rank with him. It won’t happen if you don’t want it to happen.’
‘I know.’ She let out a breath, turned to Anemone, then back to Heast. ‘Okay, make him an offer. But tonight, sir, we’d like for you to meet with a young woman who came in here yesterday. Her name is Laena.’
Eilona’s partner. ‘She came to speak to you as well?’
‘Actually,’ Anemone said, ‘she came looking for you, but you weren’t here. Grandmother had us talk to her.’
‘I don’t need a biographer.’
‘The witch and the soldier disagree.’
‘Soldiers, actually,’ Lehana added casually. ‘The girl got quite the audience.’
‘Grandmother says you should meet with her,’ the witch said. ‘You can do it before you meet with Bueralan Le tonight.’
The soldier frowned slightly at that. ‘You still going to make him an offer?’
The Lieutenant of Refuge did not agree, at least on his matter. ‘As I said, he’s a friend, and I think he needs a friend, now.’
‘I don’t disagree with that,’ she said. ‘But, Captain, I think he might be broken.’