Eilona approached the Spires of Alati on the old, creaking deck of the ship on which she and Olcea had come to Yeflam. Tinh Tu had called it The Frozen Shackle, but Eilona could find no mention of the ship’s name, either on the hull, or in the closed ledger in the captain’s cabin.
She had returned to the vessel on the dinghy that had delivered her to the camp. As it had done on that day, a ghost rowed the small boat out to the ship, and as before, Eilona’s mind was unable to picture a man between the two oars, rowing steadily at the command of Olcea. She wondered if Caeli, sitting beside her, could see it. She tried not to stare at the guard and found herself, instead, gazing out over the black ocean. Once on deck, the memories of Eilona’s silent journey on The Frozen Shackle with Tinh Tu returned. Olcea had almost died piloting the ship down the coast and, at the helm, the old wheel was still covered in dried blood.
A part of Eilona did not believe she should have agreed to her mother’s plan. Earlier, she had watched the combined forces of the Mireean, Yeflam and Saan people march up the Mountains of Ger. She had planned to stand beside her mother in support while the soldiers left the camp, and she had even woken in the early hours of the morning to ensure that she was there. But, as she stood in front of her tent beneath the grey sky, she began to second-guess herself. She was sure the soldiers would not be happy to see her. At the entrance to the tent she told herself that it would be best to remain away. Besides, her mother did not need her. Eilona said that to herself at least half a dozen times that morning, but she did not believe it. Her mother was no longer the indomitable figure of her childhood.
‘Ah, the prospect of battle,’ Sinae Al’tor said, approaching her. He was neatly dressed in fine black, as if he were going to a funeral. A step behind him followed his beautiful blonde shadow. ‘It is meant to fire the heart, inspire the mind, and seal all your doubts inside you, where they will not be allowed to find voice. Unless you are a cynic, of course, and then you wonder how many can return from war with the Innocent.’
‘In Sooia, he was once buried beneath a mountain,’ Eilona said. ‘It was five hundred years ago. The desert still had its oasis then. The southern side of the country was flooded with refugees. There are old sketches of them. They carry everything they own on their backs. I remember reading about it in my first year at the University of Zanebien. For some reason, I had always thought that the Innocent’s conquest was done in a day, or a week, not in centuries. But he was defeated. It was his first real loss, and for a decade afterwards the people of Sooia thought that he and his soldiers had been killed. But he wasn’t dead. He crawled from the mountain that had buried him. He and all his soldiers emerged as if they had been asleep and returned to their war.’
‘Your answer, then, is none?’ He smiled, and she supposed that there was, in it, something sad. ‘Then the question for us is, what will we do, after?’
‘I’ll return to Pitak. To my house, to my research, to Laena. Maybe I will help her. She will have a lot of writing about the god Ain to complete.’
‘But that will be temporary, won’t it? Se’Saera will continue to spread herself further and further through the world forced upon us by the Innocent. He will demand that we bow to her.’
‘I don’t imagine you bowing.’
He shrugged. ‘If it was the choice between death and life, I would bow. I have seen the dead. I have seen them in ways that have frightened me like nothing else. Who would wish to court that? I ask you.’
Not her.
But more tellingly, Eilona thought that Sinae’s words mirrored a realization she had about her mother.
Muriel Wagan had very little. Olcea had tried to tell her that when she had delivered the letter to her home, but it was not until Eilona arrived on the shore of Yeflam that she finally understood it. Her mother was the Lady of the Ghosts because she could no longer be the Lady of the Spine. She was a wealthy woman but if her debts to Lian Alahn were paid, she would no longer be that. Stripped of title and wealth, her mother would be a middle-aged woman kept by the few people who had faith in her. Oh, Eilona knew that she would carve out a life for herself within that. Muriel Wagan had not been the ruler of Mireea through a trick of birth. She had built up her fortunes and political alliances while the lord before her declined. When she had taken control, she had done so because she had been intelligent, canny and fearless. With time, those attributes would allow her mother to regain the money she had lost, but without Mireea, would it matter?
Her mother did not define herself through her child, her marriages, or even her friendships. Eilona was keenly aware – and had been since she was a child – that her mother defined herself through Mireea. Ultimately, that was why Eilona had agreed to go to the Spires of Alati, to be her mother’s envoy. On the deck of The Frozen Shackle, invisible hands drew up the anchor. Leviathan’s Blood shifted and rocked the boat, as if the first of an acidic humour had awoken, courtesy of Eilona’s thoughts. The ocean had the right to laugh at her acting as a political envoy. She lacked the political cunning to deal with Lian Alahn’s son, to negotiate with the men and women she met in the remains of Yeflam. She was simply an academic.
If her mother only had more. If only she had not been so diminished. If only Eilona did not feel a responsibility to her. If only she had not begun to feel as if she owed not just her mother, but Mireea, this act.