The Godless (7 page)

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.”

 

7.

 

Ayae considered running. The windows in the hospital were not big, but she was small enough to slip through and, even in the gown she wore, she believed that she could make her way down the warm cobbled road to her house and be gone before the first of the sun began to soak through the canopies of the mountains' forest.

But she had nowhere to go. If she went back to her house, once she'd pulled on old trousers and new shirt, found her boots and filled her pack, hiding what gold she had at the bottom, she would step to the doorway and simply stop. The dark shadow of the tree before her would offer no hint of direction, other than to point back into her house with its cut branches. It would urge her to stay. To stay in the place that was the only security she knew. A small spark of anger ignited in her stomach with the thought. She had not been born in Mireea, but it was her home.

Her
home.

The door to the ward opened, revealing the two guards who stood straight and still as a large, hairless man stepped between them. Dressed in expensive red leather trousers and gray silk shirt, and wearing boots made from soft, supple leather, it was his hands that drew her attention. They were littered with scars. The succession of tiny white marks looked as if they had been made by a plague thousands of years old. His eyes, when they turned to her, were similarly afflicted, faint, white specks drifting over the pale gray iris, as if once a milky blindness had threatened him.

“My name is Fo,” he said, approaching her, his scarred hand held out to her. “I'm a Keeper from the Enclave in Yeflam.”

Fo, the Disease.
He looked neither sick nor afraid. Ayae shook his clammy hand and introduced herself hesitantly.

She was aware that she was in the presence of a man who did not age, a man whose life was meshed in myth and rumor, but whose grip was firm. He was a Keeper of the Divine, a man who had been cursed—or blessed, depending on who spoke—with immortality. Fo also had the power to infect a living creature with illness, design and create new diseases, but offer no cure. He was one part of the Enclave, the organization that ruled Yeflam, drawing men and women into their city on the promise of utopia on the day they ascended.

Still holding her hand, he sat opposite. “I hope you're feeling better. The healer here tells me that you're fine, but—well, let us just say, I like to see things myself.”

“I'm fine.” Ayae attempted to pull her hand back, but could not. “Reila knows what she is talking about.”

“Reila is a fanatic: a ‘healer' who would rather work with herbs and alchemy than magic, but who draws from her own blood when she must.” His voice was cool. “A year ago, a young healer came to Mireea to set up shop. He had a touch of the gods in him. A tiny curse, you could say, enough that he could mend a wound and intuitively pick up an illness. He was a rarity—a young man who wanted to help, and sought neither riches nor fame doing so. The Lord Wagan sent him back to Yeflam in chains two months after his arrival, as your same healer had him arrested and roundly denounced him in front of the Lord and Lady.”

“He killed two people.”

Fo gazed at her, his gray eyes unblinking.

Unwilling to be put off, Ayae continued, “One had a broken leg, the other a cancer in the stomach. Reila said he treated neither.”

“And you believed her?”

She had. With a quick tug, she pulled back her hand and rubbed the sweat from it. “I'd never heard of anyone dying from a broken leg before that.”

The Keeper's eyes blinked, slowly, then shook his head. “I see I will have a lot of work to do with you.”

“You'll have
nothing
to do with me.”

His hairless eyebrows rose at her tone. “You emerged from a burning building without a mark on you, child. You survived an attack from a Quor'lo—”

“A what?”

The large man rose, a frown added to his list of expressions. “A Quor'lo. Moves, acts, smells just like it would alive, but its body is given life by a living person elsewhere.”

“Does the captain know? If this has—”

“He knows.” At the front of her bed, he met her eyes. “Bau already informed Heast what it was, though I imagine that the captain's meticulous mind would have found it quickly enough. You needn't worry about the Quor'lo. Right now I am sure they are discussing it, wondering where it is hiding, and if they can capture it. I can only imagine that the man who pulled you out of the fire is helping them greatly.”

“Zaifyr?”

“That's his name, is it?” The Keeper's tone suggested familiarity, though not friendly in nature.

“Who is he?” Ayae asked.

“At this moment, I am sure he is nothing more than a man employed by Captain Heast.” Fo's scarred fingers laced together. “However, you have changed the subject. I am here to talk about you. You emerged from a fire without a burn today, but should I hold your hand again I would feel it smolder.”

Her hands slipped under the blankets, falling warmly against her legs. “I was just lucky.”

“There's no such thing.” She met his strange gaze, but said nothing. “I imagine, since you live on this mountain, you think anybody with a touch of power in them is cursed by the gods.”

“I don't want any of that,” she said, quietly. “I just want to be able to tell my partner that I am just who I am. I just—I don't want this.”

“You think you can give up what is inside you?” Fo's scarred hands dropped to the metal end of the bed. “What remains of the gods finds us. In wombs, in childhood, in the summers and winters of our lives. Once it has found us, only death can drive it out. If that two-bit copper healer told you she could do that, she has done nothing but lie to you.” His long fingers curled, one at a time, over the bed frame. “But you have nothing to fear, child. Not from this. Trust me. Trust us. My brothers and sisters and I study the remains of the gods. They lay around us as they lived: on our land, in our oceans, and in our skies, the power that made us originally still there, wishing to create.”

“Wishing to create?” Ayae met Fo's disease-scarred eyes. “What is it that you're implying? That I have been infected by a god?”

“Possession is not infection.” His smile was faint. “I can tell you that on a number of levels, child.”

“Then what?”

“We are being recreated, reborn. The power in the gods does not wish to die with its host. It is searching for escape, for a new home, and it has found you, just as it found me. With it, you and I are in evolution to take back what was once ours.”

A laugh escaped her mouth at the ridiculousness of the statement, but a second did not follow. The bar beneath Fo's hands had bent and she waited for him to lash out. What did he expect? She had grown up hearing stories of men and women who were cursed, stories of wives taking children away from fathers who melted, of lovers devoured by their partner with teeth made from stone, and of blindness and deformity that resulted in abuse. In the orphanage, children had teased others with the term, used it to suggest that the newest among them might harbor such a power, that it might be the reason they had no family, no home, and could not be trusted.