On the day that Ayae left the shore of Yeflam, a storm rushed in from Leviathan’s Blood. It turned the camp into a series of muddy, churned-up lanes that mirrored her emotional state.
She struggled with her doubt, self-recrimination and frustration beneath the morning sun’s leaked grey light. Out on the ocean, heavy clouds suggested another storm, but it did not stop people in the camp coming out and lining the makeshift streets to bid farewell to the men and women who would soon be led up the road to Mireea, through its ruins and onto the battlefields beyond. It was, Ayae thought, a sombre procession. The Mireean soldiers who joined Captain Mills at the edge of the camp were accompanied by their families and their friends. Men and women handed them tokens – trinkets, small carvings, pieces of cloth – when they passed. The soldiers who were part of the Yeflam Guard were similarly treated as they left the camp and lined up behind Xrie. Only Kal Essa’s Brotherhood avoided it, but they had been mobilized in the early morning’s rain and now waited alongside the larger force of the Saan.
‘There was some talk of having a parade,’ Caeli said, standing beside her. ‘Alahn suggested it, but Xrie refused it. He said the war had already begun.’
Se’Saera’s War. Ayae had heard the phrase used a week ago, after the announcement that the Mireean and Yeflam Guard would be joining the Saan. ‘How many do you think will die?’ she asked.
‘A lot of them.’
Ayae winced, despite herself.
‘You still made the right choice,’ Caeli said.
‘I’m not so sure,’ she admitted, letting her frustration have voice. ‘Jae’le and the others don’t need me. Anguish will take them to Zaifyr. I can’t help there. I can’t help when they find him.’
‘When they find his spirit, you mean.’ The guard shrugged. ‘From everything you’ve told me, they don’t know what they’re doing, either. Who knows what will happen when they find him?’
Jae’le had told her that the four of them – he, Eidan, Tinh Tu and Anguish – planned to follow the lines that led to Zaifyr.
‘What lines?’ Ayae had asked him.
‘I am not sure how best to describe them. Anguish sees them,’ he said. Jae’le had come into the camp the morning after Ayae had witnessed Tinh Tu’s vision of what had happened in Asila. He had come to the tent that she and Caeli shared. Ayae had been so surprised by the sight of him in the early morning dark that she invited him inside. Caeli, who had also awoken at the sound of his approach, sat on her bedroll, her naked feet strangely obscene while Jae’le spoke. ‘They are like thin cords. Anguish described them as frayed rope. Broken parts of a larger cord. He said that they lead from Zaifyr’s body up into the mountains.’
‘How can you trust what he tells you? Even Eidan calls him a deception.’
‘You must trust that everything is happening for a reason. All the words we say, all the actions we take.’
‘How do you know this cord is even attached to Zaifyr?’ Ayae pressed. ‘I have never heard him mention that when he sees the dead. How do you even know it is real?’
‘As I said, you must trust.’ In the dark of the tent, he was a collection of strange shadows, as if he was a man who had not yet been fully formed. ‘If we do not have trust, we do not have a way forward.’
She did not yet know what the way was, and she said that to him.
‘If we can find Zaifyr,’ Jae’le explained, ‘if we can return him to his body, we may well be able to stand against the new god much more easily. She is afraid of him, after all. I saw that clearly in Yeflam.’
‘If and may . . .’ She let the words fade. ‘You don’t know what state he will be in,’ she said instead.
‘No, I do not. I am not blind to that. It may be that my brother will need years to recover once we return him to flesh. It took centuries for him to return to himself mentally after Asila. I have not forgotten that he does not remember the worst of those days’ events, either. It could be that he does not remember what has happened at all when he awakes. The circumstances of his death in Yeflam are very different from his death in Asila.’
‘Yet, by the same logic, he might remember all of it,’ Ayae said.
‘He might,’ the immortal man admitted. ‘And it could be that we will bring him to life only to kill him again.’
‘Maybe it is better to leave him.’ It would be the most humane thing that they could do, she thought, but did not say it. ‘I know when we die there is a half-life for us, but it could be that is best. For him, that is.’
‘You do not believe that,’ Jae’le said.
‘What will you do if he needs . . .’ Caeli, speaking for the first time, paused. She was, Ayae thought, struggling with the word centuries. Struggling with the concept of talking to people who were thousands of years old. ‘What if he cannot fight Se’Saera straight away?’
‘There is still my sister,’ he said to her.
‘Aelyn Meah?’
‘Yes.’
‘You would go to war with her, even though she stands beside the new god?’
‘That is not what I mean,’ Jae’le said. ‘My sister knew that Zaifyr could not die. I do not believe she thought to kill him in Yeflam. Rather, I think she thought to die herself. I cannot assure you of this entirely, but Eidan tells me that Aelyn had been off centre for some time. It could be true that she thought to free herself from an influence she did not control. Tinh Tu tells me that she could control our sister. With enough time, she believes Kaqua could, as well. Aelyn will never admit to needing help, but by then we will know if she does or does not.’
His words were still in Ayae’s mind when she was summoned by Muriel Wagan and Lian Alahn to a meeting later that day. The sky was clear when the messenger found her, but each step to the tent felt as if it was being taken through the muddy roads that greeted her departure. She felt nothing but frustration. It was, she admitted later to Caeli, a frustration that had been building for a while. Perhaps it was because of Jae’le’s visit, because they had been talking about him so much, but Ayae could hear Zaifyr’s words, from nearly a year ago. ‘People work on your sympathy and you are asked for favours,’ he had said. It had been shortly after her powers emerged. ‘You are manipulated emotionally or intellectually.’ He had been speaking of his own experiences, and of how he had come to view himself as a god. Shortly afterwards, Ayae had agreed to help Muriel Wagan and, in hindsight, realized her actions had been a rejection of his cynicism. But now, removed from her home, from the house she loved in Mireea, from the world she had crafted for herself, she could see the truth in his words. She was asked, she was manipulated, she was pushed and prodded. She felt as if her kindness was constantly taken advantage of, that the exchange was one-sided, and endless.
Inside, the large tent held more than just the Lady of the Ghosts and Lian Alahn and their two guards. A table dominated the middle of the room, its surface taken up by a flat and uninspired map of the continent, detailing the shore of Yeflam, the Mountains of Ger, the Plateau, Leera and the Kingdoms of Faaisha. There were markers on it, some made in ink, others made from small models of soldiers and buildings, but her attention skipped past the map quickly, to the men and women around it. Miat Dvir and his wife Vyla were closest to her. Xrie stood opposite them, while Captain Mills and Captain Oake, the white-haired soldier who was second to Xrie, stood on either side of him. Lastly, the Captain of the Brotherhood, Kal Essa, stood at the back of the table. Of all of them, she thought that he looked the least happy to be there.
‘Ayae.’ Muriel Wagan approached her and took her hand. ‘Thank you for coming so swiftly.’
She was not asked immediately. At first, the Lady of the Ghosts said that she and Alahn had reached a consensus and decided to support Miat Dvir and the Saan and form a coalition against the Leerans. It would not be easy, Ayae was told. The Innocent would soon land on the Leeran shore with Se’Saera. He would join with the creatures that had attacked Yeflam. Alahn pointed to the map and explained how General Waalstan’s forces appeared to be well dug in throughout Faaisha and gaining ground. He said that they planned to contact the Lords of Faaisha and try to coordinate their forces. Once he had finished speaking, Muriel Wagan took up the thread again, and said, ‘We would like for you to accompany our forces. For you to help them.’
‘No,’ Ayae said, simply.
The silence that followed was no more than a pause.
‘You are not being asked,’ Lian Alahn said, first. ‘You are being given an order.’
‘I am not a soldier.’ Ayae crossed her arms, aware that as she did, she gave the impression of being defensive. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Jae’le and his brother and sister are planning to head into the Mountains of Ger. I will be going with them.’
‘Has Jae’le found Zaifyr, then?’ Xrie asked. His question was followed, almost instantly, by Vyla Dvir, who said, ‘Should they not accompany us?’
She took both questions. ‘He has,’ she said curtly. ‘As for accompanying you, I don’t think so. More than that, I don’t think you would want that.’ Ayae forced herself to straighten her arms. ‘If Jae’le wanted to do so, he could take command of your forces within hours.’
‘My husband,’ Vyla said, after Miat whispered to her, ‘does not think that is likely.’
‘That is because you do not know who he is, not truly.’
‘The Saan are loyal.’
‘Ayae is right,’ the Lady of the Ghosts said. She held up a hand to silence the others. ‘It would be foolish for us to believe that Jae’le, or Eidan, would do anything that we ask. They are joined by their sister Tinh Tu now, and if I am to believe what I have been told about her, we should treat her as we treat them: with the utmost respect and at arm’s length.’ She turned from the people around the table to face Ayae. ‘But you are not like them. You are not flooded with centuries of power. You are a woman raised on the back of Ger. You are someone who shares our hopes and desires, and it would be of great reassurance to me if you accompanied us into Leera. You would be a great help to our soldiers. To all our soldiers.’
‘You are asking too much,’ Caeli said, before Ayae could reply. The guard left her position in the far shadows of the tent to stand beside her. ‘She is not a sword, or knife, or a bow. You cannot point her in a direction and expect her to solve whatever is there.’
‘You overstep yourself.’ Alahn left the table, a cold anger in his voice. ‘Is this how you allow your employees to act, Lady Wagan?’
‘Caeli?’ the Lady of the Ghosts said.
‘She is my friend,’ the other woman said. ‘If I must make a choice between my friend and my work, then I will make that choice, My Lady. But you have forgotten something very important: Ayae is not a soldier. She does not know our formations. She does not know how to command troops. She does not know how to read the landscape of a battlefield and react to it. Xrie does. So do Miat Dvir, Fyra Mills and Kal Essa. So do the soldiers under their command. You will need that more than you will need her when our forces come against the Innocent. What Captain Essa said to you before you sent for Ayae was right. She will not win a battle against a seasoned army. You should heed his advice.’
‘His advice,’ Alahn said stiffly, ‘is simply to replace Ayae with Aned Heast.’
‘You don’t quote me right,’ Essa said firmly. ‘I said our priority should be to reach out to the Captain of Refuge.’
‘Have we not captains enough to make decisions with?’ Vyla Dvir said, the words that Miat Dvir whispered to her. ‘We know the reputation of Captain Heast, even in the Saan, but it has been many years since Refuge has ridden into battle. We have no idea what kind of force he will have with him. It may be no better than his most recent battle – which, my husband would like to remind you, was a loss.’
‘My uncle knows better than that,’ Xrie said. He had remained silent while the others talked, his dark gaze flicking to those around the room, before he settled on Ayae. Now, he turned back to the map on the table. ‘Caeli is correct. Ayae is not a solution to our problems, no more than I am. It does not diminish us greatly if she will not fight beside us. Indeed, it highlights the necessity for us to establish contact with the Faaishan marshals and the Captain of Refuge. We should revisit that topic now. The letters we had planned to alert the marshals to our presence in Faaisha will have to change, after all.’
Shortly after that, Lady Wagan dismissed her. Ayae left the tent with a sense of relief but, as she walked along the dirt paths, she was surprised by how much she felt that a constraint had been removed from her. The feeling persisted throughout the day, but that night she began to doubt what she said. Maybe, Ayae told herself, as news broke of the plan to invade Leera, as soldiers prepared to march within a week, she should have agreed. Yes, she admitted, she had become tired of being asked, of feeling as if she was being used, but the men and women she saw before her would be in battle against the Innocent. It awakened in her an old fear, but it was not a fear unique to her, she knew. Yes, she had Sooia, she had her childhood memories. But all the soldiers would have heard stories about him. She said as much to Caeli, one night, before they fell asleep.
‘Do you think you would make a difference, when so many others haven’t?’ Ayae heard the guard shrug beneath her blanket. ‘I was serious when I told them that you would not.’
‘But what if I could?’
‘You cannot make the impossible happen. You are better off going with Jae’le and the others. Whatever they find, it will catch Se’Saera’s attention. When that happens, they will need all the help they can get.’
As a cart emerged on the muddy road before her, Ayae recalled Caeli’s words. At its front was Jae’le, and beside him, Tinh Tu. A large white raven sat between the two of them. In the back, Ayae could see Eidan and a series of blankets and supplies, all carefully arranged to cover Zaifyr’s body.
‘It’s time,’ Caeli said.
Ayae reached down for her pack and for her sword. ‘Keep yourself safe with Eilona Wagan.’ When Caeli had told Ayae about her new duty, she had been unable to keep a thin strand of disgust out of her voice. ‘You take care, all right?’
‘You too,’ the other woman said, before she hugged her, and walked with her to the cart that would take her back home.