6.

 

The shallow spit of oil in the dimly burning lamp of Captain Heast’s office had been the only sound to greet Bueralan upon his arrival. Heast was there, sitting behind his wide, clean table, but he had few words to say and so the saboteur took the middle of the three empty chairs. Within minutes two other mercenary captains were led in, taking the remaining pair. The first, Queila Meina, was a tall, dark-haired, fair-skinned woman not yet thirty but who had taken command the six-hundred-strong Steel after her father’s death. Bueralan had met her twice briefly, and had been impressed by the discipline of her army. The result, no doubt, of a child raised among mercenaries and where loyalty to anyone outside Steel was bought in coin and trusted as far as it spent. The second captain, Kal Essa, was a squat, bald man, heavily scarred around the left side of his face, reportedly by a mace. He commanded the Brotherhood, an army four hundred strong that had arisen out of the remains of Qaaina after it had been conquered by his homeland of Ooila, three months across Leviathan’s Blood. Bueralan had never met him, but he had heard that his men were fierce in battle, an army of refugee soldiers who had been driven from their homes and had no desire to find a new one.

The saboteur liked the choices that Lady Wagan had made: loyal, disciplined, capable, her gold well spent. His only criticism was that neither Steel nor the Brotherhood had much experience in laying siege to another kingdom and were too small for such a task. They were big enough to defend Mireea and hold the city range that the Spine ran across, but neither were conquerors. By hiring them, the Lady was making a statement of her intent—defense rather than attack.

When he had returned from his first meeting with Lady Wagan to the barracks earlier, Zean had been awake. It was clear that he had not slept—he still wore the same clothes he had when he entered Mireea. “What,” the other man asked as the door opened, “are we being paid for first?”

“A ride,” Bueralan replied. “See the countryside, find a pet crocodile.”

Whetstone running across his dagger, the other man grinned and said, “We can skip the war then?”

“I’ve almost forgotten how.”

The tall man glanced up the stairs. Up the narrow steps was a warm dark and there, stretched across the doorway, was a thin tripwire.

Bueralan chuckled dryly. “This one will be civilized.”

“Then I’ll prepare my pie trays for the faire, sir.”

He had found an empty bunk near the door and, with the sound of Zean’s whetstone working along the edge of his knife, drifted off to sleep. His dreams had been fragmented, images of houses with straw roofs, of cattle little more than bones wrapped in hide, of farmers whose children succumbed to disease and famine, of the weapons the peasants made by melting down hoes and shovels and picks, and of Elar.

Of late, it was always Elar.

He dreamed of the man lying flat beneath a sheet, stains seeping through, and Heast’s voice: “Did he die well?”

It had been a relief when Zean had shaken him and, crouching next to his ear, whispered that Captain Heast requested his presence.

“There was a fire today,” the same man said, his voice breaking the silence of his office, ten minutes later. “In Samuel Orlan’s shop.”

Kal Essa’s thick arms shifted across his chest. “You woke us to discuss a fire?”

“The fire was enough to raise the interest of the Keepers.”

“They show up and put it out?” Bueralan asked.

No smile cracked Heast’s straight lips. “They let the guard do that, but they did clear a wing in the hospital for Orlan’s apprentice and the man that pulled her out of the fire.”

“What have the Keepers said?” Queila Meina asked.

“Very little.”

That didn’t surprise Bueralan.

“Reading between the lines, though, I think we can all agree that something interesting has happened.” The captain’s pale blue eyes met them all steadily. “Part of it is explained by the girl, who appears to be cursed.”

The saboteur leaned forward. “The Sooianese girl I met earlier?”

“Yes. She emerged from the fire completely unscathed.”

“I saw a dog do that, once,” muttered Essa beside him.

“Perhaps the Keepers will find it next,” Bueralan replied.

“She is not important,” Heast said, cutting in before the squat mercenary commander could reply. “What is, however, is that someone burned down Samuel Orlan’s shop, destroying generations of maps, and that that man has disappeared.”

“Spies are not uncommon.” Bueralan glanced at Queila as she spoke. “And there are plenty of maps of Leera.”

“There’s a lot special in what Orlan does.” Heast leaned back, the faint light of his lamp casting him in shadows. “The Orlan Maps, for generations, have been known as the most accurate of any kingdom. They go beyond street names and dominion lords. They follow sewers, trade routes, dams, crop growths, weather patterns, bolt-holes, escape routes, back doors and more.”

The captain’s lips parted in a faint smile. “My point still stands. It’s not as if there was one map. Orlan’s apprentices have drawn and redrawn his maps throughout the world.”

“She does have a point,” Bueralan said, looking at Heast.

“She does,” he conceded.

“Then what did this person want, if not the girl?”

“Orlan?” Queila asked.

“He hasn’t been seen for about a week, but that’s not unusual. His work often takes him out of Mireea.”

“Is he as neutral as they say?”

“Every Orlan has been,” Heast said. “I think that’s why so many of them have lived here. No need to worry about being pressured to change the lines in estates or conscripted into a war to advise on routes and supplying needs. Here, he offers no allegiance to anyone and his services bring all to him.”

“Strange to burn such a man’s work,” Essa mused. “Are you sure that this attacker was not after the girl?”

“No.”

Bueralan turned, hearing the door to Heast’s office open. Four figures stood there, three of them guards under Heast. Solid men, though the sergeant had a nervous look about him, a twitch in his brown eyes that the saboteur found himself cold toward. It appeared that he was not the only one possessed of such a reaction for the fourth man, who did not wear a guard’s dark-green cloak, regarded the sergeant flatly. The soldier looked capable with the longsword at his side, but the saboteur had the distinct impression that, for all the charms the other wore, he was not a man to take lightly.

“Thank you, Illaan,” Heast said, standing as the others did. “Did you speak with Ayae?”

The sergeant hesitated, then said, “Yes, sir.”

“Is she—”

“Fine, sir.”

The start of a frown tugged at Heast’s lips. “If you would rather return to the hospital, I understand.”

“I will stay here, sir.”

With the briefest of nods the Captain of the Spine dropped the subject and motioned for the man adorned in charms to be brought forward. The shadows of the room clung to him as he did, the burns and stains in his clothes lending him the impression of a figure not yet fully formed, of a man being created before Bueralan’s eyes.

“This is Zaifyr,” Heast said. “A man in my employ from Kakar.”

“Kakar,” Queila Meina said. “That’s little more than ruins now.”

“People still live there,” he said, accent sharpening his use of the letter p. “Some of the older men and women still call it Asila, but it has been a long time since I lived there. I spend a year here, a year there. My home becomes more distant every day.”

Stepping from behind his desk, Heast’s steel leg hit the ground solidly. “You saved someone today.”

Zaifyr’s right hand drifted to the chain around his left. “Luck, really.”

“I was told you slashed open the throat of the man who started the fire, but there was no body to be found.”

“Slashing that throat did very little,” he said.

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I heard Ayae scream.” At the use of her name, Illaan frowned. “I could see fire coming out of the door of Orlan’s store, so I ran in, mostly on instinct. I thought it was simply someone trapped, or panicking—I certainly didn’t think I would enter just in time to see a man throw a girl across the room as if she were a doll. She was unhurt, but the man’s skin was blackened, especially around the hands. When he took a step through the flames to reach her, I came up behind him, grabbed his hair and slashed his throat. It didn’t stop him, though. It didn’t even make him bleed.”

“Wrong angle?”

He shook his head and Bueralan glanced at the two mercenary commanders beside him. Kal Essa’s arms were folded across his chest, the look of doubt clear, and Queila, though not as obvious, still seemed dubious.

“I dragged him outside,” Zaifyr continued. “It was hard to see or breathe in there, but I had enough of him to drag him onto the road. There was a crowd starting to show, but as the man hit the ground, they scattered. It wasn’t until he turned around that I could see why they did that: he looked awful, a mix of burned flesh and aged bone. He stared at me, and ran with a growl. I was left with a choice of following him or rescuing Ayae—I chose the latter.”

“You don’t sound particularly bothered by that,” Essa muttered.

The Captain of the Spine shook his head. “It was the right thing. The smart thing. A man like that fights with no pain.”

“What do you mean?” Bueralan asked.

“Our friend here can explain.”

Beneath the gaze of everyone in the room, Zaifyr smiled faintly, and shrugged. “It was a Quor’lo,” he said easily; “a dead man possessed.”