The Godless Read online

  At the edge of the cart, Ayae stopped. “I can leave, if I bother you,” she said, trying to mask her frustration.

  “As you can clearly see, I am the one leaving.” Olcea had been holding a box of empty jars and she placed it on the back of the cart. She sighed once the weight left her, and slid it beneath the broken-down frame of her bed, next to another pair of boxes. There was room for more, though how much more, Ayae could not say. Already, the witch had filled the cart to the brim with much of her belongings, the jumble of odds and ends and furniture that had filled her house for over two decades looking like a miniature castle. Straightening, she turned to Ayae and said, “But I shall do it on my own terms so far as I can.”

  “I hadn’t heard that you planned to leave.”

  “It was not my plan until recently.” She beckoned Ayae to the door. “Come, I have a pair of chairs I have not yet packed. We can sit and discuss why I cannot help you.”

  Outside, the shadowed shape of Olcea’s house was, by daylight, a sagging map of repairs, as if a lifetime of work on it by children had caused its shape and consistency to be lost. On the inside, however, the witch had kept a stronger sense of herself, with the high ceiling leading to small vents, and the first two rooms being large and open and stocked—or, at least, once stocked—with glass jars of animals, bones and blood. What remained now was a vast emptiness, the internal organs of the building removed as if for embalming, leaving an echo that sounded as the witch passed through the doorways, heading deeper into her house, to the private rooms she kept, and where the rest of the boxes were stacked.

  “You cannot help?” Ayae asked, following her. “I haven’t even told you why I am here.”

  “You do not want to be cursed.” Olcea approached a pair of wooden chairs, stacked on each other, one upside down, with its legs in the air. “You are not the first to visit me in the middle of the night wanting a cure.”

  A hard, short laugh escaped her. “It didn’t even occur to me.”

  “You cannot take it away, I am afraid.” She placed the first chair in front of Ayae and sat down on the second, her wrapped hands gripping the edge as she did. “I could no more remove all your blood and expect you to live.”

  “It has already been described to me as an infection.”

  “Don’t sound bitter, girl.”

  “I—” She stopped herself, bit back words similar to what she had said to Lady Wagan. “It was too much to hope for, wasn’t it?”

  “It always is,” Olcea said. “But you do not look ill, or in pain.”

  “I am not.”

  The witch spread her hands. “That is not the case for all,” she said. “You should feel lucky for that, at least.”

  Ayae did not feel lucky. “Is there nothing to be done?”

  “You will be able to find someone who says that that there is, but it is a lie,” the witch said. “The dead simply do not have that much to give.”

  “I have seen amazing things done by others.” She was aware of how desperate she sounded. “Done by you, as well.”

  “There are limits to the blood magic.” Olcea pushed herself to her feet and moved to where the wooden boxes were. There were more, Ayae thought, than could possibly fit onto the back of her cart, each of them stacked on top of each other. As she watched, Olcea reached into one and lifted a jar from within it. “You remember Hien, yes?”

  At the bottom of the head, the spine showed from the soft, decayed edges of the neck, and it was pure and white, the only part of him that remained so. Decay and rot had set in elsewhere and pressed against the curves of the glass, the shape of his face had become distorted. His milky right eye raised itself above the dark brown of his left, the iris of which stared toward the ground. Hien had been a young man when he had been alive, and to a degree, the youth remained in the bloating of his flesh, and the gentle up-swept motion of his hair, which did not reach the briny water’s top.

  “Yes,” Ayae said softly.

  “My oldest friend.” Olcea placed him on the ground between them. “He was once my most bitter enemy, but you can hold the hate for only so long inside you.”

  “He was the man who killed your children.”

  “He was.” Her bandaged hands reached into the folds of her clothes, returning with a small, silver knife. With a small flick, she sliced her thumb, and held it above the jar. “If you live long enough, I’ve found, your enemies become your friends. Hien may think differently, but what remains of him is limited, and he is moved by the basest desires, only. He reacts only by the promise of life, and blood is life, Ayae. Within our blood is all that creation gave to us—and the nature of that cannot be underestimated. It is infinite in its complexity and its repercussions.” A drop of the witch’s blood hit the jar’s water and, for a second, the cartographer’s apprentice thought she saw a man, an outline of a soldier, his tall, lean form wearing intricate leather armor. So brief was it that Ayae doubted that she saw it until one of the boxes in the room rose and began to move, as if carried, out to the ox and cart. “I have kept him for years,” Olcea said softly, “his soul unable to forgo his head. He does not realize that if he could leave it, he would have nowhere to go, but that does not stop the urge. But because he cannot leave, I have used him, fed him and stolen from his very being for all that I have done in this world and will do, still. I have visited on him a horror so complete and awful that the depths of my rage are but just the start of it, the satisfaction that I demanded for the loss of my children paid a thousand times. That is the nature of what I do—the nature of my power, but it is not the nature of yours.”

  In front of Ayae, the head of Hien was still, the water placid. “Is it not?” she asked.

  “No,” Olcea said softly. “I use blood to take from the dead, but in you is creation itself, the very power that gave rise to all that we are, and that cannot be touched by the likes of me.”

  6.

  It was a year before Bueralan had an answer to Zean’s question about the First Queen’s reaction to his new role in life.

  Before that, before he pushed open the cracked wooden door of the inn where Ce Pueral of the First Queen’s Guard waited for him, there was the formation of Water. That was the name Serra Milai gave her newly made squad of saboteurs on the warm morning they rode from Lord Feana’s kingdom. She retired the name Sky in the dirt streets and, after the waves and handshakes from her old soldiers, left it behind with the copper bracelets she had worn, the ranks that she had bestowed, and the history of success and failure she had earned as a captain over two decades of blood and violence. She did it, Bueralan thought later, with an ease that he envied at the time, without the backward glance of which he had not entirely rid himself in relation to Ooila.

  He would eventually, but it would not be after he stepped out of the inn Pueral waited for him in. For years, he would be haunted by the ease and reach of the First Queen’s captain.

  “If you step out the door,” Ce Pueral had said as he held the old piece of wood open, “you will be shot.”

  Bueralan had let the door close behind him.

  The room was empty, the half a dozen long tables of old chipped wood that filled the floor ominous in their solitude, as if they had become conspirators with the woman who waited at their end, her gold-edged armor exchanged for nondescript leathers. Before her, she had two wooden mugs, and a squat bottle of sour wine that had given the inn its name, Second Taste. He could not see any weapons on her, but the shadows of the alcoves and the hidden corners of the room shifted as if they were flesh, as if the dark could take a breath.

  “If I wanted you dead,” the captain continued, “you would be so already.”

  “I know that.”

  “I did not think you looked scared.”

  “Just impressed.”

  Pueral’s smile was faint. “Take a seat,” she said, pointing across the table. “It won’t be a long conversation.”

  “You cleared out this whole inn?” He untied his sword from its
scabbard and laid it, slowly, on the table before he seated himself on the hard bench. “You know, I have to work in this town.”

  “You were made on the street of Wisal three days ago,” the other replied easily. “That is why you are in Venil alone, while the rest of Sky finish off their work for Aned Heast.”

  “I’ll still have to leave after this.”

  “Consider it part of our relationship. It’s healthier than the one I had with the Thousandth Prince, Jehinar Meih.”

  “I do like healthy.”

  “Is that why you killed two men on the streets of Wisal?”

  Bueralan smiled, but said nothing. The two men had been mercenaries, both members of the small army that merchants had hired to “liberate” Wisal from the hands of the governor, and turn it into a free-trade port which, among other things, would allow the slave trade to gain a large perch on the corner of Wilate. The two men—both born in Ooila—had not been part of the plan that Serra Milai and Sky had devised, but they had appeared unexpectedly on a small ship to meet with the merchants, and to bring with them sample wares. The older of the two, a man named Ge, had made the exiled baron on the street and raised his hand in greeting, calling out to him as “Baron Le!” but the destruction of Bueralan’s disguise as a seller of soggy fruit had not been why he had died.

  “Let me try another question,” Pueral said, her tone still light. “What did you do with the boys that had been brought ashore?”

  “I didn’t sell them, and I didn’t use them.” He shrugged. “Maybe they ran away?”

  “They were from Ilatte.”

  “I know where they were from.”

  Pueral lifted the clay pot of wine, began to pour. “I was surprised to see Ge,” she said. “His master has pushed very hard to expand the trade outside Ooila with the First Queen, though she has resisted. It is not to her taste, if you must know. The practice of buying the young in the wealthy families in, at least, the First Kingdom, has lost some favor, and she is happy to keep it at that. I might have had to kill Ge myself, if he had not seen you on the side of the road.” She pushed the cup to him, a courtesy that he did not fail to notice. “Imagine if I had not come all this way to learn about the work you were now doing?”

  “You’re welcome to claim his death as your own, if you want.”

  “I have no need for that.” A note of coolness entered her voice, yet it maintained its friendly tone. “Please, take a drink.”

  He took the cup, tasting it after Pueral had tasted her own.

  “It is a strange business you find yourself in, Bueralan Le,” the captain of the First Queen’s Guard continued. “A saboteur’s life is one of risk, deceit, and occasional murder—and you will not always be on the moral side of it. Your work in Hitna was very good. I had considered the war all but lost for the earl. I respected very much the part you played in the banker elections in Zoum—I had always thought democracy and capitalism went well together, but I never imagined how well until I heard that you had begun selling fake land. I won’t flatter you with more tales I’ve heard about your exploits from the last eight months, but it is sufficient to say that I always considered that you were wasting your life with the Thousandth Prince, a point that I feel has been validated since you parted ways with him.”

  “Youth is a graveyard of regrets,” the exiled Baron of Kein replied easily. “But I leave mine in Ooila, where they’re safe and quiet.”

  “You could return to them.”

  His hand tightened around the cup, and he almost replied immediately. Instead, he lifted it and drank, and said, eventually, “Not even if you paid me.”

  Around Pueral, the shadows shifted, as if they were alive, and impatient. “The First Queen does not need saboteurs,” she said. “They were the words she spoke to me. I came to Wilate on those words.”

  Beneath Bueralan’s grip he felt the mug weaken. “This is not Wilate.”

  “No, it is not.” She raised the cup, and drank its contents in one long drawn-out breath. “But what the First Queen needs is exiled barons who know their title contains both those words. What she needs is the quiet acceptance of her rule that comes from that—as well as the admittance that that one was wrong. Live as an exiled baron, Bueralan.” She rose from the table, but paused before she turned to leave. She said, “I like the tattoos, by the way.”

  The first of his white inked marks was on his left arm, running from around his wrist and up his forearm, over his shoulder. “Thank you.”

  She left then and, in her wake, the shadows of six men and women emerged from the room around him. He met the gaze of each, met the flatness, the coldness of their eyes, and knew that he was a lucky man, a man who had just avoided death. In his own eyes, he would continue to do so for years after, feeling as if a power much larger than him was watching his every move. It was a feeling he would not have again until Samuel Orlan told the Captain of the Spine that he would accompany Dark into Leera.

  In the barracks of Mireea, he felt a hand nudge his shoulder.

  “Don’t sleep in the chair,” Zean said, walking past him, leaving the empty room. “You always bitch about that on the horse in the morning, when you do.”

  7.

  It was Ayae, not Hien, who helped Olcea pack the rest of the cart. It took just under three hours, the last of the boxes being packed and repacked for space, and by the time Ayae carried out the box and jar to the driver’s seat, the night sky had deepened and darkened into the early hours of the next day. “You never told me.” She pushed the last box in securely and turned to the witch, who was doing a final pass around the cart, checking the heavy tarpaulin and ropes, her wrapped hands pulling on the knots. “Why you were leaving?”

  “There is an army approaching,” the other woman replied.

  Ayae did not believe it. “You have been in fights before,” she said.

  “A long time ago.” Olcea passed her on the other side of the cart and approached the black ox, her hand falling on his back. “But you are right, I have fought before. I thought to fight here as well. Mireea has been my home for a long time.”

  “But no more.”

  “No more.” She scratched the ox’s ear and, over the beast’s head, met Ayae’s gaze. “I am leaving and you should do the same. You could even come with me, if you wanted.”

  “You haven’t even told me what you’re running from,” she said.

  “Running?” Olcea laughed ruefully and patted the ox’s head. “I am too old to run, but I am too young to stay. There is too much power in this city, now.”

  “The Keepers and—”

  “Another.” She left the ox and drew closer to Ayae. “The dead have begun to bend.”

  Ayae hesitated. In the witch’s gaze was a look she had seen in Fo and Bau, a knowledge that she did not have, but unlike the two Keepers, Olcea feared what she knew. “I don’t understand that,” Ayae said, finally.

  “They move toward him,” Olcea said softly. “It is like corn in a field. The wind rises and it pushes it one way, then another, and it has not the strength to resist. I have never seen the likes of it before. The dead do not move easily, but even Hien tries to follow the call to him. He struggles to break the connection with his head, to leave the last of his flesh. I had been told before that the dead react like this to him, but to see it is another thing to experience. It is as if a myth, a tale told by witches and warlocks to their children, has emerged from the Five Kingdoms before me.”

  “It ended over a thousand years ago.” Ayae wanted her voice to sound as if such a number meant nothing, but she knew that it did not. She felt dwarfed, insignificant, as if she were in the process of being consumed by horrifically large history. “So much has been lost.”

  “This has not been lost,” the witch said. “This could never be lost. Not even for the thousand years we thought him dead, not even then could we forget. When, decades ago, he began appearing in cities and in towns, there was much panic. Qian, witches said. Qian, warlocks said. In each v
oice was a tremble much as you hear in mine, Ayae. They feared what he would do, and feared it even more when he did not. After a while, others began to say that he was not the same man he once was. He said the words himself to witches and warlocks and stories of him working with them began to emerge. In Faaisha, it is said he stood beside a witch who possessed a child, watched her work, and thanked her later. But in all those stories, the witches and warlocks are not like me. Each one of those has talismans made from the bones of their family, of the men and women who came before them, who taught them all they knew. Their legacy was to each other. When the witch in Faaisha dies, she will leave her own bones to her daughter, and her daughter will leave her bones for her child. Of course he would not strike her, or any of her kind. But I am not her kind. I was not given my power. I did not ask for consent. I took my power in fire and steel and the tragedy of blood.”

  “He saved me,” Ayae said. “From a Quor’lo.”

  Olcea nodded, briefly. “He found it later, and chased it beneath the city, to where all the old dead waited. Don’t stay, Ayae. Don’t stay for this. Come with me.”

  It will not be long until a kindness is said. She heard Muriel Wagan’s words again, but knew that this was not the kindness she meant. It was clear that Olcea was being driven out by her fear—fear of Qian, fear of Zaifyr. Her old, bandaged hands shook as she pulled herself up onto the cart and took the driver’s seat. On the wooden bench, she hunched into herself as if to hide in a way that Ayae had never seen before. The witch looked, suddenly, as if she were old, much older than she was, and Ayae knew that her offer to come with her was not one born of friendship, but fear. She wanted Ayae to come with her because she was just like Zaifyr, because she was cursed.

  “Are you going through Yeflam?” she asked.