The morning’s sun revealed the ragged length of the Leeran port of Gtara. The sunlight ran across the black water like lances as Glafanr closed in on its docks.
Bueralan stood alone at the bow of the ship, listening to the oars dip in and out of the water as it navigated past half a dozen other vessels. From his perch, the saboteur could gaze into the open holds of the other ships. From them, chains spilled out onto the decks as if they were metal digestive tracts. In a future world, he imagined, in another time line, the chains might be part of a clockwork construction, part of a giant and elaborate mechanism that powered the ships across the black ocean. In this world, however, in his world now, Bueralan knew that the chains belonged to slavers. When the ships left Gtara, the chains would be thrust back into the holds, and men, women and children would be attached to each joint. The crew would thrust the chains and the people into the dark below the decks where they would huddle inside for the months it took to cross Leviathan’s Blood to Gogair.
Jao, the ship that had taken them to and from Leviathan’s End, had once been used to carry slaves. Zean had known the moment that they stepped on it.
Bueralan had said—
‘I haven’t seen ships like this for a long time.’ Kaze came up behind him now. She was dressed in dark leather pants and a dark, stained leather shirt that was studded with iron at the wrists and shoulders. In addition, she had a long sword on her hip, a weight she carried comfortably. ‘I had almost hoped they had stopped being used.’
‘But not the trade itself?’ he asked.
‘I am too old for that.’ She took hold of Glafanr’s rail as water sprayed up. ‘There is a great wealth to be made in the exploitation of others.’
Bueralan smiled ruefully.
‘I know how it sounds,’ the god-touched woman said. ‘It would be easier for you if I said that I was lured to sleep by the sound of human misery, would it not?’ She took off her glasses and, with a piece of cloth, began to clean them. ‘Some days, I think it would be easier for me, as well. I would not have to ask if my guilt was mine, or if it was simply weakness and regret within me for all that I have done.’
He did not want to respond to her words, not now. ‘I thought you were going to stay with the horses,’ he said instead.
‘Se’Saera wants us all on deck.’ As she spoke, Bueralan saw Zilt emerge from below, his deformed soldiers with him. Taela and Se’Saera followed. ‘She wants us all to be present when she meets the Keepers of the Divine,’ Kaze added.
‘I wouldn’t have thought she needed a show of strength.’ The last to emerge was Samuel Orlan.
‘You heard what happened to Zilt.’ She nodded ahead. ‘Is that them at the end of the dock?’
The wooden planks were empty of men and women, just as the ships and chains were, until the dock touched the land. There, and only there, waited a group of men and women.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I recognize some. The one in the multicoloured robes is called Kaqua.’
‘Which one is Aelyn Meah?’
‘I don’t see her.’
Kaze made a sound of disapproval.
‘You would make the same sound if she stood there,’ Bueralan said.
‘I imagine so.’ She hooked her clean glasses back over her ears. ‘Long ago I learned that her kind are worthless.’
Glafanr gently bumped against the dock and a heavy rope was thrown over the side. One of the god-touched soldiers followed it down, to tie it securely to the dock.
The gangway followed and, as it was lowered to the dock, Kaze touched Bueralan’s arm. He had not responded to her last comment, and he thought, for a moment, that she was inviting him to do so; but instead she was, much like a tutor, directing him to the line that had formed behind her new god. At the head of the line was Aela Ren, but he did not stand beside Se’Saera. Zilt stood by her side, while behind him – and before Ren and the others – waited his two deformed soldiers. For a moment, Bueralan thought there was symbolism in it, but he soon corrected himself. Orlan was right: Ren needed a god to define him. From a god, he took certainty and absoluteness, a sense of place and definition that Bueralan had seen in Onaedo. To her, Baar was gone, and his absence was a betrayal, but in his absence she was still defined by him. In that, she offered a stark contrast to those around him, a sudden insight into the blind need of the Innocent and his soldiers, into the desire of Kaze to care for Taela, into Ai Sela’s captaincy of a ship that needed no captain, and the others, whose names and faces he had learned over the last months at sea.
Wordlessly, Bueralan joined the line. He took his place behind Samuel Orlan and Taela, and he did so alone.