Lord Elan Wagan, who had been the Lord of the Spine until, with a tragic sense of inevitability, he became the Lord of the Ghosts, did not acknowledge his stepdaughter.
He sat outside his small tent, folded into an old, but well-maintained wheelchair. In the fullness of his health, he had been a tall, handsome man, and the echoes of that still remained, even though his muscles had wasted to such an extent that the bones of his long limbs were revealed starkly. He no longer talked, though he did still make noises: Eilona heard him hum a tune she did not recognize and mutter words she could not identify. She did not know what caused him to make those sounds, or if he was responding to anything at all, for he did not react to the presence or absence of his carers. He took what was put in his hands and ate what was put in his mouth, but the black cloth across his empty eyes was always turned towards the sky, regardless. It might have been nothing more than his memories, Eilona thought as she sat beside him. If so, she hoped that the mix of keft and bjir he was given every two hours allowed him pleasant memories.
Her stepfather had been the first casualty of Se’Saera’s War. Before anyone had known about the new god, Elan Wagan had responded to the raids on Mireea by riding to Leera. He returned blind and, with the loss of his eyes, he had lost his self as well. Eilona’s mother sent her a letter when it happened and she returned, with Laena, to Mireea.
She had cried when she first saw him, but when he began to scream during the night, she realized that a part of her world had been removed. Her stepfather had always treated her as his daughter. He had never once seen her as anything else, and in her visits home he had done much to mend the relationship between Eilona and her mother.
She did not know what terrorized her stepfather at night. Neither did Reila. ‘I suspect that his injuries were inflicted at night,’ the small silver-haired healer explained to her in Mireea. ‘If it is true, there is little I can do to help him. There are some actions a man can simply not return from.’
Eilona sat in her small, cramped office, the walls around her surrounded by jars and small plants. ‘What took his eyes?’ she asked.
‘No knife or finger. They were not removed by any implement that I know of. It is as if he was simply born without them.’
Or, Eilona thought now, as if they were removed by a god.
Did Se’Saera tell him that when he first met her? The afternoon’s sun was starting to set out on the ocean, the scudding clouds and light mingling over it like burn marks. How the Lord of the Spine met a god was, perhaps, the real question to ask. Eilona knew he would not have approached her with respect, but did Se’Saera appear when he entered? The god would have looked like a child then, or so Eilona had been told. She could imagine a child standing on a street, surrounded by the buildings the Leerans were stripping to build siege towers and catapults. Her stepfather would have ridden along a road surrounded by men and women pulling down houses, tearing up floors and breaking roofs apart. She could see him on the back of his horse, approaching the new god.
Eilona loved her stepfather, but she was not blind to his faults. He was vain, but his vanity was not one born from his looks, or even his intellect, but rather his masculinity. Now that she was older, Eilona recognized that he had always defined a part of himself through his physical prowess. He had been a captain in the Mireean Guard before he and Muriel Wagan married and, after, he had attempted to be both lord and captain. In hindsight, Eilona could see how such a role was never tenable, but after her mother employed Aned Heast to be the Captain of the Spine – a title she made just for him – her stepfather had responded by spending a fortune on armour, weapons and honorary ranks.
‘How is he today?’ Muriel Wagan asked as she approached. She wore a dress made from green, red and black, the edges of its sleeves and hem frayed. ‘I am told he had a good night’s sleep.’
He had awoken only once, Eilona heard. ‘I was told the same,’ she said. ‘He seems content. I think he likes the sun on his face.’
‘He always has.’
Behind Muriel Wagan came Caeli. The guard did not spare a glance, or say hello to Eilona, but rather walked inside her father’s tent.
‘How did it go with the Saan and Lian Alahn?’ she asked.
‘Difficult.’ Her mother kissed her stepfather’s forehead as Caeli re-emerged with a chair. She set it wordlessly next to Eilona. ‘But in three days, they will begin to go over the Mountain of Ger,’ the Lady of the Ghosts said, taking the seat.
‘That doesn’t sound like a difficult conversation.’
‘No, but Miat Dvir wanted a young woman to accompany him. After she told him no, things grew heated.’
Eilona was lost, but it was Caeli who answered. ‘You had asked too much of Ayae already,’ the guard said. ‘She has her own mind. She was always going to use it sooner rather than later.’
‘You weren’t supposed to become friends with her,’ Muriel Wagan said. There was no rancour in her voice when she spoke. ‘You were meant to watch her and learn about her. You were supposed to help me with her.’
‘I needed a new friend,’ the guard replied blandly. ‘Besides, I didn’t push her towards Aelyn Meah, or her brothers—’
‘Thank you.’ Her interruption was sour. ‘Anyway,’ Eilona’s mother said to her, ‘managing that was the difficulty of the morning. It was made harder when my guard took her side.’
Her stepfather had never liked Caeli. It was there, Eilona knew, that the first seeds of what would see her leave Mireea had been planted.
Caeli was only a few years younger than her, but their childhoods had little in common. If Eilona had been raised in the heart of all the privilege that could be gained in Mireea, then Caeli had grown up in the veins that kept that luxury alive. Her parents had been bakers. When their daughter expressed an interest in becoming a mercenary, they sought out Aned Heast and asked him for advice. He had taken over Caeli’s education and, under his tutelage, the teenage girl was taught swords, knives, horses and all the various other skills that one needed to survive the profession of war. Once she had finished her training, Heast assigned her as the personal guard to Eilona’s mother.
Elan Wagan resisted and Eilona took his side, as much to spite her mother as to support him.
The event that led to Caeli’s appointment was the death of Joerl. He had guarded Eilona’s mother, father, stepfather and her, since her mother’s first marriage. Joerl had been a huge, brown-bearded white man whose downfall began when he was caught selling information about trade to merchants. Her mother and stepfather had approached him about it but upon hearing the accusation, Joerl had announced his innocence publicly and called upon the Captain of the Spine to recant. Heast had not, of course, and Joerl’s disgrace went from private to public, before it ended in the public shame of suicide.
‘His wife found him.’ Her stepfather was sitting alone in his office. Eilona had come to find him after hearing the news. His face, she remembered, had been one of grief. ‘He had cut open his stomach with a dagger.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I told him not to challenge Heast. I told him he would not show mercy. I said he was not a man like me. But he did not listen, and now we will have a young woman of Heast’s choice thrust into our midst. A young spy to report to him.’
Caeli had moved into the Keep after the funeral. In hindsight, Eilona knew that everything she did came from within Eilona herself, and not the other woman, but that did not change what had happened. She spoke against Caeli’s appointment in public. In the midst of it, she realized that what she was doing was no more than hurting someone. She could still remember the starkness of the moment when she recognized that, the hollowness of it. But it did not stop her. She spoke about Caeli to trade representatives, to friends of the family, to other soldiers. She attacked Caeli’s family, her inexperience, her looks, everything that she could. She became so vitriolic that at one point her stepfather drew her aside and counselled her against what she was doing, but it was too late.
Caeli’s parents were assaulted in their home. The two men who did it were part of a fringe group in Mireea, supporting a cause Eilona could not even remember. They were within a breath of killing Caeli’s father, having tied her mother up, when the guard came home. One of the men survived long enough to tell Captain Heast why they had done it, for whom, and the public outcry that followed was one Eilona knew she deserved.
‘Things will be changing,’ her mother said, beside her, drawing her attention back to the now. Before them, fires were being lit in the camp. ‘Xrie and the Yeflam Guard will be leaving with Dvir. Captain Mills will also be going with half our force. I had to commit Kal Essa and the Brotherhood, as well. The force that remains here is to be led by Captain Oake. She is Xrie’s second in the Yeflam Guard.’
‘Why is she not going?’ Eilona asked.
‘Her right arm was badly broken in the evacuation of Yeflam. From what I understand, it hasn’t completely healed.’
‘She put off having the arm set properly,’ Caeli said. ‘Said that others had greater needs. A week after it was originally set, it had to be broken and reset again.’
‘Unfortunately,’ her mother continued, ‘Oake has more loyalty to Lian Alahn than Xrie does. That may become an issue later, but at the moment it is not. Our immediate concern is to ensure that you arrive in the Spires of Alati without incident.’
The Spires was one of the remaining cities of Yeflam. It was a city primarily of universities and schools. ‘Why would I be going there?’ Eilona asked, not bothering to hide her surprise. ‘I have things to do here. Mother, you and I haven’t even discussed the letter you sent me in Pitak.’
Muriel Wagan gave a small wave of her hand, unconcerned. ‘None of the bankers agreed to do it, did they?’
‘No, but—’ Eilona hesitated. ‘You were signing significant amounts of capital over to Lian Alahn. I was told that it was land you had spent most of Mireea’s capital buying. If the deal went through, you would be bankrupt.’
‘I needed his support,’ the Lady of the Ghosts said without pause. ‘But if he asks, it would be best if you told him the bankers were working on the deeds.’ She sighed. ‘I know how it sounds. It sounds like every bad business practice I have argued against. I even know that if it goes through, Mireea will cease to exist – and Alahn will push for it to go through for that exact reason. It is why you must go to the Spires. You have to argue for us while people still remember who we are.’
‘I’m not a negotiator, Mother.’
‘You sell yourself short. You will be a fine envoy to see who will help us.’
‘Help us do what?’
‘Make a new home. All I need is a city. Just one city. From there I can resettle our people from the Spine of Ger. Once I have that, I will be able to cut my ties from Alahn and gain some autonomy. But to do that, I am going to need the support from the governance in the other cities. I have to convince them to support the idea that Yeflam can be a collection of city states, rather than one nation under one rule, as Alahn wants.’
‘But—’
‘No buts. There simply aren’t buts. We have an opportunity here, that is all. If it slips past us, Mireea will cease to exist. We will lose who we are, if we do not succeed. I mean we, as well. Right now the number of people I can rely upon is small. I need you to do this for me. For your family. For Mireea.’
‘How will I even get to the Spires?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard they sink any boats from here.’
‘Olcea will take you,’ Muriel Wagan said. ‘She will pilot that wreck you arrived on. Caeli will go with you, as well. She’ll keep you safe in the Spires.’
Eilona resisted the urge to look at the guard, to measure the coldness in her gaze. ‘Will I need to be kept safe?’
‘Probably.’ Her mother smiled, but there was something tired in it. ‘After all, your contact in the city will be one of Lian Alahn’s sons. After he fails to buy your loyalty, I expect he will try to kill you.’