6.

 

Zaifyr returned to the hotel and washed. Behind the large desk, Ari, a new, thin bandage around the tip of his left finger and a block of wood in his hand, informed him that he smelt worse than ever. After he had washed and dried, Zaifyr picked up the loose trousers he had worn and sniffed. Fit to burn, he told himself, though he feared he would be out of clothes—it was bad enough that he had only one pair of boots and they had holes in both soles. He hadn’t had that pair for long, either: a year at most. But he did a lot more walking, now. He made his way barefoot along the wooden floor to his room, having already found a bin for the trousers.

Inside, the faint smell of smoke lingered and he doubted it would ever leave. Zaifyr eased himself down on the one chair, spreading his charms and chains on the bed before him. He had begun attaching each to himself in the slow ritual he had learned as a child—the copper vi’a first, his father said; vi’a is a minor protective charm, but it is always the base—when behind him sounded a soft flap, followed by the faint scratch of claws on the window ledge. He hooked the thin clasp of the chain around his wrist into place, the chain that had been blessed by the witch Meihir for luck, and looked at the window.

“Hello, brother.”

The raven stared at him, its head tilted. “And to you,” the Animal Lord, Jae’le said in its thin, hard voice. “I saw you return. Smelt, too.”

“I’ve been told.” His smile was faint. “What else did you smell?”

“Meat.” His wings ruffled and he glided from the ledge to the bed. “I also smelt oil, steel, sweat and a city preparing itself.”

“When was the last time you were in a siege, brother?”

The raven watched as he picked up a piece of leather threaded with silver, tiny orbs laden with old symbols of life and fertility. “A long time,” Jae’le’s bird voice croaked. “In Seomar, on the Eastern Coast, I believe.”

Nine hundred years ago. Zaifyr began to wind the charm into his damp hair. “The last of the Animal Kingdoms,” he murmured.

“I wept when men swept in.”

Jae’le had given five animals a voice and a kingdom originally. It had been in the heart of Kuinia, a tiny world near his capital, a decree from a man who saw himself as a god. For every following decade—and there had been many decades in the Five Kingdoms—Jae’le had given another animal the power of speech, of an upright stance. No longer animals, but never men or women despite their ability to communicate, the chosen ones of the Animal Lord had been feared throughout the Five Kingdoms.

In Jae’le’s home, in the elaborate building that curled like fingers around tree branches, there was a leopard who, Zaifyr was sure, the dark hand of the Jae’le had dropped to. A leopard whose head he stroked with more than a casual touch.

“I saw Ger,” he said, finally.

“And?”

“Dying.” He tightened the charm in his hair. “He has no protector, no defenses and time has almost caught up to him.”

“So soon he will be dead?”

“And aware of the fact.” The raven’s gaze no longer followed the silver pieces as he lifted them from the bed.

“Do you think he has drawn the Leerans here?”

Zaifyr shook his head. “He is different to the other gods, that’s for sure. There is not the hate and the anger—”

“And the pain,” Jae’le said. “I feel the lack of that, as well.”

“He doesn’t like us here,” the other said. “You can still feel that, but it’s instinct, I believe, a reaction to what is in us. But he accepts us—something, I think, that the Keepers might not be fully aware of.”

“They are not that young.”

“Perhaps.” He reached for a new charm, this one a mix of silver and copper, symbols to turn away swords and arrows. “But he is looking for someone.”

“He has seen something in the final moments of his death?”

“I do not want to argue for fate, but—” He shrugged. “But in this case, it appears he has seen something in the future.”

The raven moved, claws picking at the cover. “I do not like this line of argument.”

“I do not either.” Lifting his right foot, he wound it around his ankle. “But you and I have learned that there are no truths, not in our world. The truly worrying idea is that he is looking for someone in the Leerans. I was shown a child, though I do not wish to trust the sight.”

“The sight, brother?”

Zaifyr’s smile was faint. “The sight of memory. Of the haunt’s memory.”

“You rode the mind of the dead?”

“It was necessary,” he insisted.

“The others will not be happy to hear.”

He shrugged.

“Do not shrug, brother.” The raven’s thin voice struggled with Jae’le’s emotion. “We must be careful. You must be careful.”

“You’re ignoring what I told you.”

“Yes, I am.” The bird drifted to the edge of the bed, where the midday’s sun cut across the faded frame. “If Ger has a presentiment, then it will emerge, and it will be something that we are either forced to deal with or not. But you—you brother, this is how it began, with the visions given to you by the dead.”

Instead of replying Zaifyr wound another silver and copper strap into his hair, this one with a simple prayer for safety written on it from when he was a child. He said nothing to the bird. He was right, of course; but whereas before he had been struck by his own fear on the top of the temple, he did not feel that now. Instead, he felt the desire to argue, to tell Jae’le that it was nothing, that it had simply been what was required. If he had not done it, he would not have seen the girl, he would not have felt her power—power, he was sure, that rivaled their own. Besides which, if Jae’le had not wanted him to speak with the dead, why had he asked Zaifyr to return to the temple itself, where the largest, most troubling of corpses lay?

He said, “I think—” before three knocks on his door interrupted him, and it was pushed open to reveal Ayae.