Two days before Zaifyr’s body was stolen, Xrie visited Ayae.
The Soldier found her in The Pale House after the combined forces of Yeflam, Mireea and the Saan entered the ruins of Mireea and set up camp for the night. Ayae had not gone out to greet him, but Xrie, as if he had known where they were all the time, climbed through the window of The Pale House, walked through the slanted rooms and made his way down the spiral stairs to where she and Jae’le were with Zaifyr’s body, where he had been laid by the ghosts. Yet, when Xrie stepped into the room he was surprised to see the back of the other man, not as if he was unexpected, but as if he had not sensed him at all.
‘Aela Ren would have killed you by now,’ Jae’le said, when the other did not speak.
‘He is not here,’ Xrie said, leaving the stairs. ‘But thank you for your concern.’
The sitting man did not turn from the ghosts before him. ‘He cannot die,’ he said. ‘You must not doubt that. You will not be able to defeat him as you have others.’
‘May I ask how you know this?’
‘Aela is a scarred man,’ Jae’le continued, as if he had not heard the other man’s question. ‘It is how you will recognize him. Whenever someone has said, in the past, that they have seen him, the truth has always been evident in their descriptions. He is a man defined by wounds.’
Standing against the wall, Ayae felt her breath catch. Briefly, she felt as if she stood behind the battered, marked walls of her earliest memories.
‘You speak as if you were friends with him,’ Xrie said.
‘I did not understand friendship when I knew him,’ Jae’le said, his gaze on the figure the ghosts surrounded. ‘But I knew him.’
‘Did you try to kill him?’
‘No. I knew he could not die.’
‘How did you learn that?’
‘Hide who you are from him,’ the sitting man said. ‘Hide it for as long as you can. Hide it so you can cripple him before he knows you. It is the only way.’
Xrie turned to Ayae, but she held up her hand. ‘I have no advice about him, if you mean to ask,’ she said.
The Soldier was shaking his head before she finished. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I came here to see Eidan. I thought he was down here with you.’
He’s on the roof, she said and led him out of the room. Eidan stood in the centre of the roof. The afternoon’s sun highlighted the black scars on his face and arms. The more they healed, the more the scars began to resemble an elaborate form of scarification.
‘It is a small force you bring,’ Eidan said, gazing at the people spread out through the broken streets before him. Like his brother, he did not turn as Xrie and Ayae approached. ‘Will it be enough to destroy a god?’
‘There are more,’ the Soldier said. ‘But if you wish to help, we will not turn you away.’
At the edge of the building was one of Samuel Orlan’s maps. Ayae remembered that she had seen it here with Captain Heast, nearly a year ago.
‘Ayae answered for us,’ Eidan said.
‘I answered for myself.’ The map had fallen on its side, before rolling over. The miniatures had been damaged, she saw. ‘If you wish to answer differently, you should.’
‘I do not have a different answer.’ The stout man took the opposite edge of the table and, when she was ready, lifted the map. ‘We have other duties.’
‘To Zaifyr?’ Xrie asked.
‘Yes.’
‘But not to Aelyn?’
‘I do not have duties to Aelyn.’
‘Do you not plan to help her, then?
‘Is that why you have come to speak with me?’ Eidan did not set the table down, but held it easily while Ayae examined it. She did not realize straight away that he held it in his crippled hand, but when she did, she saw how much it had healed since she had seen it last. ‘You have surely spent enough time with Aelyn to know that she would only resent any attempt I made to help her.’
‘She taught me that we have responsibilities,’ he said. ‘We hold the world in our hands, she said. We have the power to reshape it. We have a responsibility to it.’
‘Did you ever hear her say we had a responsibility to her?’
‘No.’
Ayae kicked the legs out from under the table, folding them beneath it. She lowered her end to the roof and took Eidan’s.
‘When I first met Aelyn, she could not read.’ The stout man took a step back from the map and, in doing so, he allowed the afternoon’s sun to highlight the broken mountains, the scratched Spine of Ger and the broken paint across it. ‘I offered to teach her, but she declined. She said that she would teach herself. It took her twice as long as it would have if she’d had a teacher. But she taught herself. After she learned how to read, she taught herself philosophy, law, history. No topic was denied to her. She took all of that learning and put it into her creation of Yeala. She did not allow me to help her there, either. She built a city of beautiful spires and taught the people in it how to fly. She showed men and women how to make gliders and kites and, in those early years, ensured that the city’s balloons rose and fell without any danger. When the first people brought a civil war against her, she took away their power of flight. When they resented that, she killed them. I was there, that day. I remember walking beside her through the near-empty streets, where the people who broke the law were forced to live. I offered to spare her the horror of killing her own citizens, but she said no. She said, I do not need another’s hand. I will never need another’s hand. I love you, but I will never be beholden to you, or to another. She all but rejected Yeflam when I made it for her, after she was forced to destroy her spires. But by then our love permitted gifts. It allowed for us to do things for one another. But to ride into Leera for her would be an insult.’
‘She saved us from dying after Nale fell,’ Xrie said. ‘I have tried to make that clear to Alahn and others since then, but few listen.’
‘Do you think they will listen when she is back?’
‘They will fall quiet. They will not be able to challenge her.’
‘But what if she destroyed Nale because she wanted to?’ Eidan asked. ‘You have decided that she could not have done that herself, but what if she did?’ He approached Xrie and, when he spoke next, his voice was quiet. ‘I love Aelyn. I have loved her for such a time that the time I have not is but a few scant years . . . but I know she is capable of this and more.’
‘You did not hear Kaqua’s voice,’ the Soldier said stubbornly. ‘It whispered in the Enclave. It was sweet and it was fearful. It made promises to you. It spoke to your dark desires. It spoke to your loves. For the longest time, I thought it a test between us, but now I know otherwise.’
‘Tinh Tu will tell you that he never made anyone do something that they did not wish,’ he said. ‘She will tell you his power came from Wehwe and he used only the truth.’
‘Perhaps she is describing herself.’
‘No. Tinh Tu does not have the kindness of the Pauper.’ He allowed himself a faint smile. ‘If it helps you, my brother believes there may be a time when Aelyn will need our help. I do not agree, but I tell you this so you know that we have not abandoned her. No matter what happens, I do know that she will return to Yeflam one day. She may not stay there, and indeed, she may not let it stand, but she will return.’
A tremor ran through the building, as if to emphasize Eidan’s point, and once it finished, Xrie did not pursue the topic.
Ayae could see his need for Aelyn, for the Enclave, for how Yeflam had once been. It was a starkly naked need and that surprised her. In Yeflam the Soldier had always been composed. But he had to be: as people accused him of being a traitor, of being weak, the security of those without a home had fallen to him. Here, on the Spine of Ger, he did not have that responsibility. Now he had been given a different task and, as he marched towards it, she realized it was not the choice he would have made. The knowledge uncurled in Ayae like a scroll as she watched him shake Eidan’s good hand, then her own. He wanted Aelyn Meah back. He wanted to stand beside her. Despite all that had happened, all that Eidan had said, he needed to believe he served someone with integrity. He was a soldier. He was at the front of battle. He was the will of a nation. Ayae saw that clearly as he walked to the edge of the roof. With a single glance behind, Xrie dropped carefully to the cobbled road. There, Ayae watched him walk to the market square, where the combined forces had pitched tents and lodged inside the remains of buildings. In the dying light of the afternoon’s sun, Ayae was suddenly struck by how abandoned Xrie was. She realized now that he was a man whose world had been ruined and who was desperately trying to repair it.
Two days later, Zaifyr’s body was stolen.