5.

 

Before they entered the Spine’s Keep, began walking through the long, empty corridors and stepped onto the open bridge before the silent tower, Meina returned to the Spine.

She had said only that she wanted to gather others, offering little to Ayae in terms of advice or tactics. When the meeting had finished, the mercenary captain had nodded to Lady Wagan and stepped outside, waiting for her—the Lady’s final words to Ayae had been a grasp of her hands, a whisper that she stay safe—and had fallen in beside Ayae as they descended the stairwell. If she had had words to speak it would have been there, but she had none and it was not until they reached the bottom that Ayae realized that while none of the doubts she felt were voiced by Meina, her quiet and straight mouth were not the contrast she first thought that they were.

Outside, she said, “You ever done anything like this?”

“First time,” the mercenary replied.

“It’ll probably hurt the first time.”

“It always does.”

“There was less pain the second time. That was my experience.”

“For me, it was the third. Maybe the fourth.”

“We’re lucky there’s another twenty-five in Yeflam. I’m sure we’ll be able to enjoy it by the end.”

Meina’s laugh was short. “You don’t have to come for this,” she said. “Those two will fight before they surrender. And we’re—”

“Going to hurt for it,” she finished. “If anyone should go alone, it should be me.”

“I’d never hear the end of it.” The mercenary began walking toward the Spine. “It might be that the Mireeans would agree to it, but Steel never would. They don’t abandon their own.”

Ayae did not reply. She had not been given the rotten straw as Meina had, she had drawn it. Yet, she could not lie to herself and say that she wanted to face Fo and Bau alone, and did not, in truth, want to face them at all. Oh, she knew why she had to, and she knew that even if she did not have her power and Meina and Steel had been ordered to enter the Keep, she would have followed regardless. As the captain had said: you did not abandon your own. But that she was part of the mercenary band without having joined was a strange sensation. Yet, as she drew closer to the Spine and the faces of those she had fought beside came into focus, she acknowledged that it was not entirely untrue. She had fought beside the men and women before her, watched others die, and she had saved more than once. She was bonded by friendship, blood and experience, bonded in the same way that she was to her home, here, in Mireea.

As she reflected on that, Ayae watched Queila Meina gather ten mercenaries to her. The tall woman pulled herself up onto the wall of the Spine, walking among the battlements that had already been patched and repaired. She looked at home there: a dark-haired, pale-skinned, lean figure raised on war, on its violence, its devastation and terror. She was more comfortable in its company than in the suite she had just left.

The mercenaries she chose numbered four women and six men. Each was a scarred and even-gazed veteran who nodded and rose with a sword and shield.

“Are you sure you won’t take more?” Bael asked as the two returned.

“The Spine still needs to be defended. If we cleared the wall it would be a signal to the Leerans to swarm, and rightly so. Besides—and I want this to be clear—if we don’t come back, I don’t want you or Steel going up there. Take them out of this city.” Then she added quietly, “There will be nothing to be gained if we fall.”

“Queila, think about this, please. The Innocent has slain—”

“The Keepers are not Aela Ren,” she interrupted. “And we do not go alone.”

Ayae met Bael’s gaze and smiled, feeling none of the confidence that she should. He began to respond—to point out, she thought, the inadequacy of Meina’s statement—but stopped when twelve members of the Mireean Guard arrived. They were reporting, the large, lean man who led them said, on the orders of Captain Heast. They had the look of veterans, professional soldiers in well-kept and well-worn boiled leather and chain with heavy swords by their sides.

“What’s your name, soldier?” Meina asked.

“Vasj.” He offered no rank, no introductions to those behind him.

The Captain of Steel did not expect either. “You seen these shields we have before, Vasj?”

“We have.”

“Do you know how to fight beside them?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Shortly after, they set out for the Spine’s Keep.

It was the silence of the building that struck Ayae deeply as she passed beneath the gate. The only reminder of Lady Wagan’s staff—and of the Lady herself—was in the recently planted gardens, the moist and mulched soil around the new life. But there was no sign of who had carried the watering can from the well or left the deep prints in the dirt. There was only absence. Stillness. A mixture of loss that mirrored Ayae’s own feelings from earlier, and grew as they entered the Keep, as they walked the long halls, the walls unlit, their quiet footsteps echoing loudly, interspersed with the clink of chain mail and the low breaths of each.

And then they were before the door.

Meina moved ahead, but Ayae’s warm hand fell to her shoulder. “I should go first,” she said, the words threatening to catch in her throat.

“It will be cramped inside,” the other woman said. “There will be no fighting room with all of us there, but that’s okay. We’ll pen them in. We’ll use our numbers like a weight. Let the shields stay close to you. Don’t step out of them.”

She nodded and pushed against the door.

It opened easily.

Inside, the room was still, quiet. The boxes remained pushed against the empty benches, the furniture isolated comforts. Yet there was a quality about it, about the pronounced nature of it that she thought, as she stepped further into the room, spoke of the two men who had taken residence in the tower. A quality that spoke of their emotional state, of an absence dissimilar to the one she felt; of a singular notion and a selfish need.

“Upstairs.” She heard Bau’s voice. “Don’t be shy now.”

The Keepers stood by the window of the second floor. Two chairs had been moved to the window, but the remaining furniture was untouched. “Ayae,” the Healer said, as soldiers and mercenaries followed her. “Little flame. You are going to make us break the rule.”