Glafanr was its own world, a ship of islands, of nations, of cities. It was not like any other ship that Zaifyr had stood upon before. He believed that it was alive, but not in a conscious way. It carried a life similar to the one that soil held: a life that was part of a system, that allowed for grass and trees to grow. It was a life that remained in the wood of the ship’s frame, as if it had been trapped there by design. It was this quality, he thought, that allowed it to travel down the still River of the Dead.
After Zaifyr and the others had climbed the plank onto Glafanr’s deck, the ship left the strange dock it had nestled against. Lor Jix had rounded on them and demanded to know who had released it, but they had all still stood beneath its five masts equally confused, and his anger died as suddenly as it had emerged. Still holding the staff, Zaifyr approached the great empty wheel. At the back of the ship, he leant over the rail and gazed down into the River of the Dead. For a moment, he thought he could see haunts within the water: they rose and fell, slippery and silver, like fish. But each time he thought he saw one, he was suddenly unsure if he saw anything. He tried to reach out with his power and found that he had neither the experience of it uncoiling from him, nor the sensation of touching the dead. For a brief, surprised moment, Zaifyr thought that his power had deserted him, that it was gone, but the panic he felt did not last. It was not gone. It was still there. He had lived so long with it that, even in death, had it been gone, he would have known. He would have felt the absence.
Beneath the deck of Glafanr, Zaifyr entered a narrow corridor with rooms on either side. He found Meina and her soldiers examining them. Since Mireea, Zaifyr had come to the realization that the soldiers who followed Meina’s commands were not all members of Steel. Some were from the Mireean Guard, others from the Brotherhood, the other mercenary group who had fought in the siege. Each of them, though, carried shields on their backs, and swords by their sides, and they answered to the tall, dark-haired mercenary, and not to him.
‘This is the Innocent’s ship,’ Meina said to him, later. They were in the captain’s cabin and she sat in one of the old chairs around the table. Anguish was perched on her shoulder like a dark, forbidden pet. ‘It sat in a harbour in Sooia for hundreds of years. It was said that no one could get onto it. That anyone who did was killed by a guard of such horror that it devoured their body after it killed them. Or during.’
Zaifyr sat opposite her, behind the captain’s desk. He had been drawn to it by the book that lay in the centre, a book that was chained to the table.
‘He isn’t listening,’ Anguish muttered to her.
‘The Innocent is not here. Neither is Ai Sela.’ He ran his hand along the book, his fingers trying to lift the leather cover. ‘It won’t move,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of a chain?’
‘What do the pages say?’ Meina asked.
‘It is lists of names.’
‘Whose names?’
Zaifyr met her gaze. ‘Our names,’ he said, simply.
‘My name?’ Anguish asked. ‘Is that there as well?’
He turned the pages forwards and back, and told the creature no. ‘But the pages are blank for so long,’ he said, turning over more and more of the white sheets than the book could possibly hold. ‘They keep going and going, as if no one—’
‘Has been to Heüala since the War of the Gods,’ Lor Jix finished, entering the cabin.
For the ancient dead, Glafanr was a divine artefact. His ability to stand upon it was a sacred, impossible realization after so many years at the bottom of Leviathan’s Blood. After his anger had left him, he had become lost in the details of the ship. He had watched the faded red sails unroll and fill with air that none could feel or see with an almost childlike innocence about him. He had run his hands along the wooden rails, and as he did, it seemed to Zaifyr that he forgot those around him.
‘There are no dates,’ he said to Jix as he sat in the old chair next to Meina. ‘But I imagine you are right.’
‘Yet another sign that we were expected,’ Meina said, distaste clear in her voice. ‘It does not please me to think that what I thought of as my choices were, in fact, another’s.’
‘If that is what you think, then you misunderstand the relationship that mortals and gods have with each other,’ Jix said. ‘The gods do not control us. They do not now, and they did not when they stood among us. Otherwise, they would not have had the relationship that they do with us. They would never have sought our faith.’ He paused and, in his silence, the Captain of Wayfair appeared to be reaching inside himself, searching for the thoughts he had held in life. ‘All captains pledged their loyalty to the Leviathan when I was alive. They all entered her service. They heard her voice and understood her desires. They took her rewards and they feared her anger. It was a relationship that they entered with her. I was no different. I paid my dues. I said my prayers. But I was always aware that my decisions were my own, never more than when she asked me to take on the task that led me here. I knew I would be part of a thousand other choices that would lead to one fate being chosen over another.’
‘That is what happened in Yeflam, isn’t it?’ Zaifyr asked. ‘You and I made choices that saw a new god be named.’
‘Why would they create that fate?’ Meina asked.
‘I would have thought that Se’Saera created it.’
‘I could not tell you,’ Jix said. ‘But what I do know is that we are all the creations of fate. Be it god, be it mortal, we are all part of this world, we all share it. One of us may create the futures, the pasts and the presents, but only one of us can realize it.’
‘Because fate is not linear.’ Zaifyr glanced at the book before him, at the slim pages he could see, and the countless thousands that he could not. ‘Where does that leave us?’
‘Drifting down a river,’ Meina said sourly. ‘We go where it takes us.’
‘We must trust in our faith,’ Jix said, ‘and in our fates.’
Anguish laughed. ‘You trust what has done this? After what has already been done to you? You are a fool. I would prefer to trust myself.’
‘Fate is primal. It can neither hear you, nor see you.’
‘But it made the gods. It made Se’Saera.’
‘And us,’ Meina added. ‘You said that yourself.’
‘You look for reason where there is none. You look for a start where there is no end.’ With a resigned look, Lor Jix glanced at all three of them. ‘You have all lived for too long in a world where the gods lie at your feet. You think it gives you knowledge. You think it makes the world knowable. You have never known what it is like not to know. What it is like to trust and to believe. When we are in the holy city, you will understand this.’
Zaifyr let his hand run along the smooth pages. There were no quill marks, and he thought it strangely appropriate, given all that had happened. But when he reached Heüala, he would not be satisfied by that. He would want to know who had written on the page, and with what. He would want, he realized, simply to know. To know everything. To know what had been done and why. He would have no time for faith in the holy city.