1.

 

“If you don’t mind a piece of advice,” Queila Meina said with easy humor, “a man is only as good as the coin you put down for him. Put down nothing, you’ll get nothing.”

The three mercenaries led Ayae alongside the Spine, the work on top forcing each to raise and lower their voices accordingly. As they passed a steel barrier being bolted into the wall, Meina had raised her voice and asked Ayae how long she had lived in Mireea. When they had walked around a group of men and women hauling barrels of oil up by rope, the captain had asked quietly how long she and Illaan had been together.

“I wouldn’t listen to my niece if I were you.” Behind them, the large man with the axe spoke; his name was Bael. “She hasn’t met a man she hasn’t paid for in over a decade.”

“You make it sound like a terrible thing, Uncle.”

“Your father would be horrified.”

“My father?” Meina turned to face him, her dark, leather boots moving backward without a hint of doubt. “My father did the exact same thing with men, as you well know.”

“He didn’t try to carry out meaningful relationships with them.”

“Neither do I.”

Her second uncle—Maalen—chuckled. “The entire company waits for the day you meet a fine man. We bet on it.”

“That never happened to my father.”

“No, he met a woman.”

“And did that make him happy?”

Maalen made a face. “It was a poor choice.”

“But a choice still.” Meina spread her hands. “If he had kept to his rules and simply paid for her, he would have been much happier.”

Laughter stole into the air with an ease that surprised and shamed Ayae. She had left Illaan lying on the ground, the elderly corporal bending over him. He had been hurt, by her, but not ten minutes later she was laughing as she walked down the street, aware that the words of Queila Meina were for her benefit. She—even she, who knew nothing of mercenaries—knew the reputation of the former Captain of Steel, Wayan Meina. He had built the mercenary unit up from the remains of others, a young man with a vision that saw the group gain fame as quickly as they had contracts. He had been one of the first mercenary captains to really embrace the use of cheap fictions, which until then had been used mostly by retired soldiers to supplement their income. Wayan Meina had been the first captain to bring bards and authors into his unit, with the express desire that they produce the fictions that would make heroes out of his soldiers. He had wrapped the truth of a mercenary’s life in a lie and, when news of his death on a small farm emerged, it was followed by a slim novel detailing his exploits of defending it for four days against a band of twenty-three raiders, the woman he stood beside the mother of his only daughter.

Meina and her two uncles stopped outside The Pale House. One of the tallest buildings in the city, it was constructed from large, white bricks that the original owner had brought in at great expense from across the Leviathan’s Throat. When Captain Heast had taken its roof as his command post, Ayae had heard that the current owner had closed down the rest of the hotel and told his staff that they were now, in an unofficial capacity, the servants of the city.

“You’ll find Heast on the roof with his table,” Meina said. “He’s expecting you. He has been expecting you for days, but don’t let him push you around. Once you are done there, come by Steel and share a meal.”

Ayae grasped the other woman’s hand, her palms warm. “Thank you.”

Then she was alone.

She had been inside The Pale House twice before. The hotel—despite its current use by Captain Heast—was an establishment for the wealthy. The first time she had entered with Faise, and the two of them had promptly learned that a pair of girls from an orphanage neither had the money nor the contacts to be treated properly in the open, ashwood bar that dominated the ground floor after reception. On the following occasion, she had accompanied Illaan, and met two of his brothers and their wives in the elaborate, second-floor dining room, where she had sat quietly and awkwardly throughout the evening. On her third visit, she crossed the empty, pale-stained floor and approached one of the staff, asking for Captain Heast. She was directed to one of the narrow, spiraling staircases that were like tubes throughout the building, and climbed four flights of stairs with only the echo of her steps for company.

At the end of the stairs, a guard held the door open for her. The light that followed was so bright that she squinted at the empty sky first, before noticing the cut-back branches and trunks that ringed the roof of The Pale House. It was at the far end of the roof that she saw Captain Heast, standing with a small, heavily scarred man before a large, heavy table. On the top of it she could make out a detailed, miniature model of Mireea, the Spine of Ger and the surrounding land.

“I have company,” she heard Heast say, “but I think that should cover us for the time being.”

The other man nodded and said, “I’ll make sure that it’s done,” but it was not until his heavy steps had faded from the stairwell that Heast spoke to her.

“Drink?”

“No,” she replied. “But thank you.”

“I asked for you two days ago.” His voice was even, controlled, with no hint of emotion. “I am to take it that my sergeant did not pass on that information?”

She started to apologize, but the Captain of the Spine held up his hand. “Please, it isn’t necessary. I was hoping for a different response from him.”

“He is a good soldier.”

“In peace, yes.” Heast’s hand touched the table before him. “Now? He is like brittle metal, continually cracking beneath the surface. It is not just the situation that he finds difficult, but the news that comes from Yeflam and his father. It appears that a power shift in the Traders Union has left him uncertain of his father’s future. But the question I am faced with is one that any smith faces in the same situation.”

“To reforge or to abandon,” she said softly. “What did you want to see me for?”

“To discuss what I am to do with you.”

On the table before her, the Spine of Ger ran from end to end of the map, the cartographer using the form of a giant to give shape and depth to the mountains around it. She was not surprised to see Orlan’s signature at the bottom, as the brushwork and modeling were without doubt his—but what did surprise her was how the signature repeated, echoing an earlier one, suggesting that the table she stood before was much, much older than she would otherwise have thought.

“I don’t believe in calling it a curse,” Heast continued. “Maybe here in the heat, on the Spine, it can only be that—but not with me.”

There was nothing friendly or unfriendly in Heast’s gaze. It felt calculated. There was an honesty in that, she realized.

She had not met Heast before in any personal capacity. He did not attend the functions that the soldiers organized. She had heard stories of him when he arrived—even young as she had been, then—but the hope that he would be of as much interest as the stories of Meina’s father had fled within weeks. What books there were about him were about strategies, about the details of battles that, Ayae had heard, were dry and humorless. He was a man, the Mireean Guard said, who only worked—and though this single-mindedness had more than won their loyalty, it had not won him the adoration of the city.

“In a tower above the Keep, there are two men who are a curse to me,” he continued. “If asked, they will say that laws keep them bound, that their neutrality is fundamental to them, but it is not to be believed. With them, I could heal an army, poison another. I could end the war before it began. Instead, I am left to fight—to watch not just my soldiers die, but those of a nation I have traded with and fought before. Fo and Bau think nothing of that, which is why their neutrality is but lip service.”

“I have little skill to fight either, if that is what you’re asking me,” she said. “All I can offer is the talents I do have. I can tell you your map is off.”

He turned, slightly. “Where?”

“The western edge.” She ran her finger down the hard edge of the mountain. “Here. That was cleared of bush for six new settlements over a year ago. Miners, if I remember right.”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

A loud knocking broke their conversation, followed by a sweating, young guard.

“Sir—Sergeant Illaan!” He caught his breath in gasps. “The healer wants you to know that you’re needed, that you should come and see the sergeant immediately!”