‘I told you,’ Heast said, ‘I was not dead.’
‘The Captain of Refuge was.’ Zeala Fe took the cup of bitter mixture from Safeen and settled it on the blankets that covered her frail lap. ‘Instead, there was a man who looked much like him,’ she continued. ‘But he denied the title that was his and worked many jobs, where he remained poor because he kept little of the money he earned. Most of his coin went to the families of those soldiers who had died in Illate under his command. Oh, the actions were well hidden. Debts cleared, educations paid for – no banker in Zoum would easily give up the man’s information. Not this man, especially. But in the port of Wisal the man was brought to the attention of the Eyes of the Queen, and very little was hidden from her.’ A faint steam rose from the top of her drink. The First Queen of Ooila looked at Heast. ‘Did you know the Eyes of the Queen, by any chance? Her name was Ce Pueral.’
‘I never met her. Not in Wisal. Not anywhere else.’ He felt a flatness in himself, a coldness he did not bother to hide. ‘I did hear of her later. She was said to be your right hand.’
‘I preferred to call her my Eyes,’ she said softly. ‘A conceit as I grew more and more ill. My body became a series of titles that others inhabited. But that was later, long after Wisal. She was but a captain, then, and it was purely by chance that you became of interest to her. She had travelled to Wisal for other reasons.’
‘Bueralan Le.’ The saboteur had been a young soldier in Water, then. Heast had hired that force. ‘Surely you had other exiles who became mercenaries?’
‘But few like the Baron of Kein. He was the son of a friend, and my Eyes thought he was a blind spot of mine. She convinced me that he needed to be killed when she heard that he was working for you. I was quite surprised when she returned and told me that she had left him alive.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Ce Pueral was a great friend, but a greater woman, I think. She had instincts that a nation could trust. I wish she were here today to speak with you.’
‘I doubt it,’ Heast said, his voice still cold. ‘I do not appreciate my private affairs being peeled open like a boiled egg.’
‘Few of us do.’ Her smile, or so it seemed to Heast, was strangely indulgent. ‘Tell me, Captain, did so many years of penance for your soldiers make you happy?’
‘I am not a man given to penance,’ he said.
‘No? Then what was it for?’
‘Loyalty.’
Behind him, at the door, Captain Lehana shifted slightly and spoke, ‘You sent your wages for twenty-six years to the families of your soldiers because they were loyal to you?’
The Captain of Refuge did not turn to the soldier. ‘You have a Queen,’ he said, ‘so perhaps you do not understand this, but when you sell your sword, you are not paid in the fallow times. You are paid only when blood is shed. When your sword is drawn. When it is you or another. A soldier of Refuge can be unpaid, even then. That is the nature of what we do. But a soldier of Refuge is like any other soldier. He has parents, she has a partner, he has a child. Perhaps she has neither and it is simply debts that she carries. Whatever the burden, it is the captain’s burden, once they have died.’
‘But after Illate, you must have been crippled with debt,’ the guard said, a hint of horror in her voice. ‘You must—’
‘Have had to work,’ Heast finished.
‘When Pueral told me, I was impressed,’ the Queen said. When she spoke, she revealed missing teeth on the right side of her mouth. ‘If politics had been different, I would have offered you a job. Instead, I will be content with being part of Refuge’s return in my final days. No, say nothing, Captain. Listen to me: I do this not because of you, or for our shared history. I do this because my loyalty ensures that I do. But unlike you, my loyalty is not just to the women and men who held swords for me. It is for the people who owned shops. Who sold books. Who made bedsheets. Who looked to me to protect them and to bring them prosperity. My loyalty is to the men and women that the Innocent and his god killed when they came to Cynama.’
‘The Innocent?’
‘Is it too much that I ask?’
Am I afraid, do you mean? That was the unspoken implication, but Heast was not, not now. If he was to be afraid – and he admitted that he might be – it would be much later. It would be well after he left this room. ‘There are rumours that he has left Sooia,’ he said. ‘You can hear them in the streets of Vaeasa – but I have heard those words said before in other cities.’
‘I have allowed you to speak quite freely in here, but you will not call me a liar.’ The First Queen’s hands tightened around her mug. The strength with which she did it revealed her bones. ‘Aela Ren will be here soon. I will not live to see it. Already I feel the touch of the dead around me. But there is life in me yet, and I will see that man hunted for what he has done to Ooila. I will see him broken for the casual cruelty he inflicted upon my nation. I will not abide a single man treating my people as if they were the husk of a butterfly to be crushed.’
‘My Queen,’ Safeen said, reaching for her. ‘You must remain calm.’
‘No, I will not hide from this man before me,’ she said, her gaze boring into Heast. ‘He must know exactly what I want. Let my desire take what remains of my strength. I have hidden for too long in this forsaken city. I have tried to play the politics of the Faaishan Lords but I do not have the time and I do not have the coldness for it. I cannot steer them towards the threat that approaches their shore, though I have tried to convince them of it. I have told them they need kill this Leeran general who so vexes them now. That he must be gone so they can prepare for a far worse danger. But they will not listen. The only way forward is the man who sits before me. The only option for me is Refuge.’ She took a breath, long and deep. ‘The Lords of Faaisha believe they made a mistake when they requested you, Captain,’ she said, her anger still present in her voice. ‘They claim that they did not know the symbol for Refuge. That the soldier who drew it was playing his own game. That may be true, but what they do not understand is the gift that has been given to them, and if they will not take it, then I will.’
Heast was silent. He believed that Tuael knew exactly what had been drawn. He did not believe that Baeh Lok would have agreed to it, otherwise. The old soldier had survived Illate, and he had not, in any of the years after, drawn the symbol once. When it arrived in Yeflam, it had arrived with his approval, a message to his captain, an acknowledgement that the situation was much worse than what could be dealt with by the Faaishan marshals.
But Lok, unlike Tuael, would have known that the Captain of Refuge would not have arrived alone.
‘Others have died fighting the Innocent,’ Heast said, finally. ‘Other captains of Refuge, that is. Four have died in Sooia and they died with more seasoned soldiers than I currently have.’
‘You will have mine,’ Zeala Fe said. ‘All the soldiers here will be yours after today. They will not go home. They will be the spine of your new Refuge.’
He shook his head. ‘The Queen’s Guard does not leave the Queen. Even I know that.’
‘But I am dying.’ She took another deep breath and laughed a little as she exhaled. ‘You sit at my death bed and you listen to my final wishes.’
‘The mug, Captain,’ Anemone said.
‘He already knows, child.’ The Queen grasped her bitter mug and sipped from it. ‘You can see it in his cold eyes.’
‘How long did you have before tonight?’ Heast asked.
‘Very little. Safeen has said a week, perhaps two, but I think less. I am in constant pain and my body fails in ways that I have long feared. I can no longer lift myself from this bed. To even be in the position I am now, I had to be helped. But worse is happening with my memory. I need drugs just to remember whose shift it is to stand guard outside my door. What would another week bring me?’
‘Death can rob us of our dignity,’ he said. ‘Better we take it within our own hands.’
‘I am glad you understand.’
‘I do.’
‘And of what I ask?’
‘The Captain of Refuge agrees,’ he said.
‘The witch of Refuge does as well,’ Anemone said.
‘And the soldier.’ Lehana’s voice was heavy with emotion. ‘The soldier of Refuge agrees.’