9.

 

By the time the afternoon’s sun had begun to set, Ayae knew she was being watched.

After leaving Zaifyr, she had not returned to her home. At first her steps had been without direction. Fo’s words replayed in her mind, the horror she felt was strong; but when the sense of being followed emerged she realized that she did not want to bring whoever it was into her home. The thought was a surprising and sad one. As she passed along the Spine, lined with men and women who had not spoken to her since the fire in Orlan’s shop and who now sought to catch sight of the approaching army, she knew the thought was untenable. The wooden walls around her had begun to look more and more like the walls of the camp in Sooia and she knew that the war would come to her home no matter what she wished; but she told herself that it could wait.

Two blocks to her left, where The Pale House rose like a thick, white gravestone, there was the sound of a horn and the Mireean Guard began moving quickly to the building, passing her with grim faces. She did not follow. No matter what drew them—and she believed that it was nothing more than a training exercise—it did not have anything to do with her, but the sudden appearance of the guard did put a thought in her mind, and she began the slow circuit that took her looping around Mireea to where Steel were encamped.

The mercenary army was camped on the western edge of the city, in a timber yard that had been closed shortly after their arrival. The wood from the company had been used for the gates that stood in rough attention around the city, while what remained in offcuts had been taken by Steel and turned into barricades throughout the western part of the city. The camp was located near the Spine, but to reach it Ayae had to pass through three guard checkpoints and at the second, with two lean mercenaries nodding her through, she heard a woman calling her name out.

The Captain of Steel—Queila Meina, shadowed by her two uncles—lifted her hand in greeting when she turned.

“You missed all the fun,” the dark-haired woman said, drawing closer. When Ayae made no response, she added, “Heast was attacked on the top of his building. Well, attacked is too strong a word: he killed an assassin who had slipped in at the back of a meeting. I was there and I still can barely believe he walked up to an unassuming looking man, grabbed the back of his head, and slit his throat all while talking about supplies. Before the man hit the ground, Heast had reached for his horn to call the guard to send them to the hospital and the Keep.”

“How did he know?”

“He had never seen the man before. I would not have had the confidence to do it myself, but by the time we were leaving, reports of men and women breaking into both the Keep and hospital were being carried to him. No one was hurt, by all accounts.” Meina shook her head and laughed, a quiet sense of disbelief in both. “If that’s the opening gambit of the Leerans, it’s going to be a short war, I tell you that. Now, what brings you here?”

Ayae hesitated, then said, “I’m being followed.”

“Still?”

She nodded, though she could not have explained how she knew, other than the warmth that had begun to spread throughout her body, a sensation so different to what she had felt before that she could only explain it as a warning.

“It would make sense,” Bael murmured quietly. “Heast, the Lady Wagan, that Healer and the Keepers. They’re the power in this city.”

And Zaifyr?

“We’ll have to trust that the Keepers can take care of themselves.” To Ayae, she said, “Let’s head in and see if we can’t draw whoever this is out.”

Ayae doubted that whoever was following her would do so as all four walked deeper into Steel’s camp, but the sensation of being followed did not leave her.

Steel’s camp was the timber mill itself, located deep in the poor working-class district of the city. Past a thick wooden wall and gate, the mill nestled against the Spine, dominating the expanse of land it owned with a large building that had housed the timber that had been brought in, not by river, but by human and animal muscle. Ayae had been told by Orlan it was a business that defied the usual practice, forcing loggers to pay the price of hauling their merchandise up the mountain rather than using a river as was traditional. But even located at the edge of Mireea as it was, it was a mill that was in the center of numerous trade routes, a mill that the owners took pride in having a variety of wood available for those who came to it—wood now, Ayae knew, that dominated the city’s skyline, taken at a quarter of the going price under the order of Captain Heast.

The large warehouse was being used as Steel’s sleeping quarters. As she walked past the mercenaries with Meina greeting most she passed, Ayae was told that the other two buildings in the yard—both large offices—were used by herself and her officers for meetings and as a storage facility for their food and water, rations that she said would be important if the siege began to drag on, or if they were forced into retreat.

At the door to her new office, Meina—free from her uncles—sat herself down on the stairs, leaving room for Ayae. “You don’t appear that impressed.”

She took the offered place next to her. “Memories,” she admitted.

“You’ve been in sieges before?”

“I was born in a village called Iqua, in Sooia.”

“We’re competing against the memory of Aela Ren? I will be happy to come in second.”

“I never saw him.”

“Few have,” Meina said. “One of the advantages of genocide, I imagine.”

She nodded.

“There are rumors that he has left Sooia,” Meina continued. “A lot of gold has started to come out of Ooila, and with it the rumors that he is there.”

“It was said that the armies of Sooia rose up against him, at first. That they were huge, nearly equal to the armies of the Five Kingdoms, but they did nothing. In the camps they would talk about those old battlefields, and men and women would dig in them for weapons.” She spread her warm hands out in front of her. “It is not the same, but—”

“This is all too familiar,” Meina finished.

Ayae nodded.

“It’s home to me,” the mercenary said. “My family is here, the memories of my family and the business I was raised to inherit.”

And she would die for it as well, but neither she nor Ayae said the words.

Instead Ayae let her gaze drift over the paved ground, the afternoon’s sun having risen to start baking the stone. The mercenaries of Steel came and went beneath her gaze, half a dozen entering the provisions building and emerging with freshly slaughtered meat.

The mercenary began to speak again, but her voice was stolen by a sudden explosion that shook the ground and the Spine, that caused the base of the wall to fall inward. A cloud of debris rose and it fell like a curtain across the mill.

And from it emerged armed men and women.