6.

 

If Lady Wagan’s office was a measure of her intelligence, her strengths and her weaknesses, then it was an office that presented a woman with a mind that held both disarray and order within it equally. Paper was strewn across her table, scrawled notes and an array of knick-knacks. Yet each of the items on her desk had an order, a place: that much was clear. Through it all was a thread of control, of an underlining structure that was known to the woman who sat behind the table, who held all before her in a glance that did not require a rigid structure, but who was happy to allow overlaps and meshes.

And then there was the drink.

“Good laq is the work of an artist.” The near-finished bottle sat before the Lady of the Spine, while she passed one to Ayae and poured one for herself. “All liquor is, truly, but it is laq that I find has the most variety in its creation, the most room between the good, the excellent, and the brilliant. In part, it is the difference in how it is made. Take this, for example: this expensive bottle was made in ice. It is the work of a brewer in Faaisha. Once a year, he and a crew of fifty sail up into the cold north, to where the ground is made from ice, where, if there was no ice, there would be no ground, and where your exposed skin dies from cold if you are not careful. He stays there for three months and he and his men—they are all men, incidentally—freeze the start of the liquor, and spend the remaining three months removing the ice from it.”

“Why would they do that?” she asked.

“To make a fine drink.” Behind her, the midday’s sun had begun to set, the afternoon’s rising in the empty sky. “Is that not reason enough?”

“I have had laq before,” Ayae said. “This isn’t that different.”

“But it is different.” The Lady finished her drink, poured a second. “Sometimes, a big act only results in a small difference, but it can be the difference between greatness and success.”

“Is that what is happening here?” She was only halfway through her own, but did not intend to drink a second; she had never overly enjoyed laq. “What you and Heast have planned with the gates is a big act that will only make a small difference at the end? We will still be driven out of our home.”

“There are large differences. Sadly, I might add. Perhaps it would be as you said if we could leave before the fighting started. If Yeflam would open its gate to refugees who were not bloodied, both you and I would be on the road now. But the Keepers will not help us unless we are in dire need. The social pressure of seeing men and women in terror is the only thing that will move them into real action and see them break their shallow neutrality and publicly align themselves against the Leerans. If I could, I would negotiate a peace with the Leerans that I could undermine and erode, but they are interested only in what is beneath us. That leaves few options in either direction. The truth is, we are an empire of finance and if we fall, there will be people lined up to pick our carcass clean—so when you say that our act is big, yes, you are right; but when you say the difference is small, you are wrong.”

“Our homes will be lost.”

“Our homes will still be here. I will give up nothing.”

“And your favor?” Ayae placed the half-empty glass on the table. “Do you plan to explain it to me yet?”

“When Reila—” A knock on the door interrupted the Lady of the Spine, but she smiled when it was pushed open. “Who is here.”

The elderly healer smiled, fatigue straining the edges of her lips. With a greeting to the Lady and Ayae, she pulled a chair from the side of the room and seated herself before the table, taking the glass of laq that was poured for her. “You’ll have to accept my apologies. I had to attend a meeting with Heast at the last minute.”

“Any problems?”

“None you have not already heard. An army is in front of us, Steel is half its strength and the saboteurs have been a complete failure.” She hesitated. “However, Qian was not there.”

The Lady shifted her gaze to Ayae who responded, uncomfortably. “He said that he might not go,” she said.

No more was required from her, for which she was thankful. Instead, Muriel Wagan nodded to Reila, who pulled out a wrapped bundle from the satchel she carried. Small, the size of a bird, it was wrapped in green cloth, and was followed by a notebook, half of the pages used.

“You recognize the bird that was found in Sergeant Illaan Alahn’s house, no doubt,” Lady Wagan began. “With it are the notes comparing what was found in the bird with what has been found in Illaan, a compound that caused a scandal two hundred and seventy-two years ago when the recipe was sold to a black-market apothecary in Yeflam by the Keeper Fo.”

“It caused a scandal,” Reila continued, “because it was seen as an attempt by Fo to move into the underworld, to take not just a financial stake but to claim all who worked in it as his own, as his province. It was the first time that any of the Keepers had tried anything like that and the scandal that came from it was not about the poison itself, but rather the idea that anyone would seek to lay claim to a group of people, to start appearing before them as a divinity. The result was a loss of power for the Keepers. As a result, the poison became known as Divinities Facade.”

“Will it—is there an antidote?” Ayae asked.

“In a day, maybe two,” she said. “Hopefully it will be in time for Illaan.”

She said nothing.

“The book and the bird are our evidence against Yeflam,” Lady Wagan said quietly. “It is leverage that shows the Keepers were not sent here to help us, but to stop us from retreating. It is not much leverage for us against them, but it is leverage for the Traders Union. That conflict I would prefer to avoid, but it is from the Union that we are receiving what little help we are, and not the Enclave. Furthermore, the change in leadership in the Union has meant that we have to offer more now than we did before. To the previous leader, Lian Alahn, a battered and bruised brave band of refugees who have fled their destroyed city was an event that he believed he could use to erode the power of the Enclave. Under his leadership, the Union were not interested in destroying the men and women who ruled over them, but rather about sharing. Their new leader, Benan Le’ta, is a much more radical man. He does not believe that battered refugees are worth much.”

Ayae’s voice cracked on the first word, but the second was strong, clear. “What … what do you want from me?”

“It is said that a Keeper will not attack a Keeper, that to do so invites the wrath of all the cursed upon you.” She lifted up the drink in a salute. “Because of that, I would like you to carry our evidence through the gates of Yeflam to Benan Le’ta, to ensure that when we fall back, there is someone waiting for us at the gate of Yeflam.”