When Eilona woke, the afternoon’s sun was down, and the night surrounded her. Against the fabric of the tent she lay in, the campfires left a series of strange, undefined silhouettes against the walls. In the first moments of being awake, she saw the gods in their various forms, stretched out in long lines, only to be compacted suddenly, then broken apart, as if the war that had raged for so long still played itself out around her.
But there was only one god now, she knew.
Se’Saera: the new god, the undefined god, the god who announced herself to Eilona with gentleness, and with such violence to Olcea.
In Pitak, the University of Zanebien would be busy trying to find out what they could about Se’Saera. Her arrival was momentous. Eilona was in no doubt that the university would send people to all the major capitals, to catalogue the reactions of citizens from around the world and to begin studying what the new god was. A god, they would argue, was not only defined by what it did and what it said, but by the reaction of people to it. A woman with a background in the study of divinity could, Eilona knew, make her career at this moment . . . but that woman was not her.
Earlier, when Eilona had left her mother’s tent, she had realized her mistake in coming to Yeflam. It was nothing Muriel Wagan said, or did, that led her daughter to believe that. In fact, her mother had greeted her warmly, even as Eilona struggled to hide her shock at the age that had etched itself across her since she had last seen her. No, it was the men and women who greeted her mother in the camp that met Eilona differently.
She had recognized a number of them immediately. Ila, a dark-skinned girl who had been a childhood acquaintance, was the first. She stood before a tent holding a child. When she saw Eilona, her lean face turned hard and she went inside. A short while later, her mother stopped a white man who had worked in the Mireean market and asked him how his eye was. A wide strip of black cloth covered the left side of his face, but his uncovered right looked past her mother to find her while he answered. Eilona didn’t know his name, but she knew what he thought of her. Another white woman came up behind him while her mother talked. Her name was Togo. She had once been a tutor of Eilona. She had three children with her – two brown, one white – each holding supplies and, after she had greeted the Lady of the Ghosts, she greeted Eilona. The chill in the former tutor’s voice lingered in the air long after she had disappeared into the tents.
Her mother made no mention of it, though she must have noticed.
‘This third woman you arrived with,’ she said, instead, as they walked through the camp. ‘Was her name Tinh Tu?’
‘Yes.’ Eilona was not sure what she should say out in the open. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘I am not.’ A large tent began to take shape in the camp. At the edges of it stood soldiers in red cloaks. ‘She has family here.’
Eilona recalled the inn and the dead in it. ‘She mentioned a brother who died. Was his name Qian, by any chance?’
‘He was known as Zaifyr.’ Muriel stopped and turned to her. ‘What happened on the way here?’
‘She took my voice away.’ She could not hide the emotion when she spoke, could not hide the mix of fear and powerlessness that defined her journey to the shore of Yeflam. ‘It was shortly after we left Zalhan. When she said her name, I knew who she was. Olcea had known before me. I think she had met her before. I wanted to ask her about the Five Kingdoms, about Se’Saera, but she told me not to ask. She told me not to speak. Those were her exact words.’
‘And you couldn’t?’
‘No matter how much I tried, I could not.’
Her mother grunted. ‘She sounds like Jae’le. I had hoped that she would be more like her sister. For all her faults, I understood Aelyn Meah.’
The head of the Keepers of the Divine, the absent ruler of Yeflam. Eilona said, ‘I’ve heard—’
‘You’ve heard right.’ Her mother turned away and began walking down the path to the tent. ‘No one knows where Aelyn is now, nor any of the other Keepers. At least it is a small blessing for us. You cannot imagine what it looked like when she fought her brother. What it will look like when her family find her. If it is revisited here, we won’t survive an hour.’
‘Surely you have little say in whether they come back or not. The Enclave are not as powerful as the five siblings, but they are more powerful than you.’
‘I know. It is one of the reasons we need to be part of the Saan’s push across the mountain. We need to take the battle to Leera. Se’Saera’s attention is elsewhere for the moment, and that makes it the best time – the only time. If we push into Leera while she is spread across so many fronts we can take the eyes of the Keepers, the monsters and all the soldiers away from Yeflam. If we do it quickly enough, we may even be able to destroy her.’
‘The new god?’ It was, Eilona would think later, entirely fitting of her mother that she would decide to go to war with a god. ‘We don’t even know what she stands for.’
‘She is a god of horror. Of violence and death.’ As Muriel spoke, Eilona saw the weight that sat on her shoulders, the weight that was slowly dripping through her entire body. ‘If we bow to her, she will take all that we have. If you do not believe me, give it time. You will see it soon enough.’ The tent was close now, and her mother stopped, and turned to her again. ‘I will speak with you later. I have to convince a selfish man that he has to send our forces into Leera. I have to make it clear to him that Miat Dvir and the Saan will not help him remake the cities of Yeflam. They will not help him rebuild a fleet. I have to show him the obvious. But after – after that, I will send for you and we will talk properly.’
She nodded and said that she understood.
Her mother touched her arm, gently. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Caeli will find you a tent. It won’t be pretty, but you’ll be able to clean up and sleep in it.’
The Lady of the Ghosts left with Captain Mills at her side. Once the two entered the tent, Caeli turned to her, and it was there, in the company of her mother’s guard, that Eilona realized she had made a mistake in coming to Yeflam.
Eilona had been young, confused about herself and about her place in the world when she had grown up in Mireea. She could offer no more of an excuse for what she had done than that. In the years since she had left, Eilona had often thought that, if she had not been the child of the Lady of the Spine, her actions would not have been worse than those of any other confused, angry child. But she was. The power she had was more than most saw in their entire lives. When she lashed out, she did it without understanding what would happen. Who would listen to her. Who would do what she said out of an attempt to earn favour, or to simply use her as an excuse to do something they wished. It was a knowledge that Eilona would never forget.
Caeli, she knew, would never forget, either.