What surprised Ayae most about Anguish’s disappearance was how calmly Eidan took it. When she returned to the market square with Tinh Tu, she expected to find him anxious, pacing the broken cobbled road, having failed to find the creature in his search of Mireea. It was how Eidan had reacted in Yeflam after Se’Saera’s trial, and Ayae knew that he felt a responsibility for the other, a responsibility that had been born in Ranan, when he had stood beside the new god.
She was surprised, then, when she entered the square and found both Eidan and Jae’le sitting on a pair of empty barrels, talking among themselves. The afternoon’s sun had set and, if Ayae had not known otherwise, if she had come across the pair on the streets of Mireea before it had been destroyed, she would have thought that the two were nothing more than two poor men who worked in the markets. She would have thought that they had come to the end of their day’s work. It was a surprising thought for her: she had not, before then, viewed Eidan or Jae’le as anything but beings of immense power. But here, in their old clothes, patterned by scars and thinness, they looked as far from that as they could be.
‘I do not think Anguish will be back,’ Eidan said to her. ‘I think the events that gave birth to him have seen him taken elsewhere. My sister’s suggestion is most likely correct.’
‘Events?’ They meant fate, she knew. ‘You cannot keep trusting things you cannot see.’
‘It is not simply belief I have. I was there when Se’Saera made Anguish. I remember how she was at first pleased, but soon bothered by him, in some manner. She called him Anguish because of the pain he was in, but I do not think she was pleased by that. I wondered about that until she told me that some days he felt as if he was hers and on others as if he was someone else’s. I have a similar feeling here in Mireea. It is in the stones and the buildings. It is familiar but not. Close but distant. Wherever the ghosts have gone, Anguish has gone as well.’
‘You think the ghosts are gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Zaifyr remains the same,’ Jae’le said beside him. ‘But without our guide, it leaves us in a very strange position.’
‘It leaves us paralysed,’ Tinh Tu told him sourly.
‘It certainly leaves us waiting.’
‘For the army that follows us?’
It would be another three days before the combined forces of Yeflam, Mireea and the Saan entered Mireea. Once Ayae had climbed into the back of the cart in the camp, Jae’le had urged the horses into a steady pace to put distance between them and the forces. She had expected to still be in Mireea when they arrived, and the easy nature of Jae’le’s shrug suggested that he had always thought the same.
‘They are of no concern to us,’ he said. ‘Let them come and go.’
The night deepened around them and they continued to talk. Past midnight, Ayae found herself starting to drift to sleep, and to stave it off, she rose and walked over to the cart. There, she lifted the edge of the blanket that lay across Zaifyr. The moon and the stars lit him well enough that she could see the clothes his brothers and sister had dressed him in before they left the camp. They had done it carefully: they had acquired new clothes, well made and expensive, a contrast to what they themselves wore. They had combed his hair and, where they could, refastened the charms that had still been on him. More than a few were missing, but it was this attention to detail that, each time she looked at him, touched her deeply. As much as Zaifyr could not let go of life, his family could not let go of him—
‘Ayae,’ Jae’le said quietly.
She saw the ghost immediately: it walked down the road, a middle-aged bearded man in a robe.
‘Is he . . . ?’
‘No,’ Ayae said to him. ‘He is not a ghost of Mireea.’
She knew that with certainty. She did not know all the people who had died in the siege a year ago, but the robe the ghost wore was not one that anyone in Mireea would have worn. It reminded her of Se’Saera’s priests in Yeflam, the ones who had stood on the wooden crates and spoken to crowds who did not care for them.
When the ghost reached for Zaifyr, Ayae’s hand dropped to her sword – only to feel Jae’le’s grip stop her from drawing it. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Let us watch, first. Let us follow.’
The ghost picked up Zaifyr and cradled him in his arms like a child. He did not appear to notice the four of them. Soon, he began to walk along the damaged road.
Ayae believed he was heading towards the sunken remains of The Pale House, but she did not say anything to the others. She feared that she would be wrong if she said it, that they would skip ahead and the ghost would drop into one of the gaps in the road and disappear into the caverns beneath Mireea. If he did that, they would struggle to find him, she was sure. But despite her thoughts, the ghost continued towards The Pale House. Its front doors were half submerged beneath the cobbled road.
‘Do you think he is a priest?’ Eidan asked. ‘He looks like one of Se’Saera’s. Perhaps he is one she left behind.’
‘Look at the robe closely,’ Tinh Tu said. ‘There is a pattern in it.’
Ayae could not immediately see it. The white lines of the ghost, the lack of colour in its body, kept anything but the shape of its body from her, until, as the ghost climbed through a broken window, she saw the vaguest suggestion of chains woven into a long-lost fabric.
‘Ger,’ Jae’le said, as if he had been waiting for her to see it. ‘He is a priest who served the Warden of the Elements. Much like Lor Jix served the Leviathan, I would imagine.’
An ancient dead, then. A soul cursed by its god never to enter paradise. Ayae followed Jae’le and Eidan through the window into the remains of a once well-furnished office. There, on the sloped floor, she turned to offer her aid to Tinh Tu, but the old woman, who was climbing through the window, saw her offered hand and gave it such a withering look that Ayae mumbled an apology before turning away. She slid past the overturned table, the scattered papers and quills and out of the door into the office. If Tinh Tu’s two brothers had not already left the room, Ayae was sure that they would have laughed at her.
The two were already at the end of the hall, half a dozen steps behind the ghost. A spiral staircase led them downstairs into the lobby. There, split tiles and broken plaster defined the floor, but in the far corner was a collection of blankets and pillows. It looked to be recently made, the items taken from the rooms of The Pale House, rooms that had once cost a fortune for a night’s stay.
It was to that makeshift bed that the ghost took Zaifyr’s body and laid it down.
Once he had done that, he turned to face Ayae, Jae’le, Eidan and Tinh Tu, and this time, she could tell that the ghost saw each of them. In slender, flashing lights, other ghosts began to appear around the priest, some men, some women, each of them wearing similar robes. After a few moments, over two dozen ghosts stood there, each of them surrounding Zaifyr, as if to protect him from the men and women he called his family.