1
A thousand years ago, Zaifyr’s sister tried to kill him.
She had not been alone. Aelyn had been one of four who had come into his kingdom, drawn by the reports of massacres, by the reports of madness.
By his madness.
In the ruins of Asila, in the city that shared the name of the country he ruled, Zaifyr and his family fought. They fought a day and a night. Yet, he could not remember how it had started. He could remember his family asking him to come with them. Could recall them telling him that they did not want to hurt him. But he could not remember who spoke those words. The dead had been so strong and vocal beside him that it was their words he heard before any others. They stood beside him—a new family, a family forever growing—and for the first time in his life he knew that he had made the dead happy. He had given them not just life, but themselves. He had made them as whole as he could. Oh, he knew that he had done that only through a horrific act; even then he knew that, but he was thankful for their happiness. They were no longer hungry. No longer cold. They could remember their names and who they had once been. In their joy, their bodies lit not just the city, but the whole nation in an unearthly blue glow. It remained until his family began to speak to him. Then the light turned bright and hard with their anger. The dead hurled themselves at his brothers and sisters. They tore at them. They burned all the new life that they had in them. And his brothers and sisters met them. Jae’le. Tinh Tu. Eidan. And Aelyn, the youngest. He did not know how she came to be behind him. He had lost track of her toward the end. That is all he knew. When he became aware of her again she was approaching silently between the broken walls and past the corpses of the men and women and children. She was dirty and bloodied, but she was not weak. She was never weak. Her hands flexed strong fingers. With little effort, she could break his neck. He knew that. As she drew closer, he realized that she no longer fought to subdue him. Perhaps she had been right to put that aside. Perhaps she was still right, even now. Beneath him, a series of thick lines began to split open along the ground, and the head of a massive construction began to emerge. It was Eidan’s creation, but it was the moment Aelyn had been waiting for. The rocky head gave way to a body, to thick arms, to huge legs. She rushed forward, she reached out … and as she did so, the cold hands of a dozen haunts closed around her, their bodies appearing out of the air as his power flushed through them. Not all the dead had fed on flesh and blood for weeks, not all had become as close to human as they would ever be again, and it was these dead that lifted her, these that wanted her, that needed—
“Zaifyr.” A thousand years later his sister Aelyn Meah, the Keeper of the Divine, the Head of the Enclave of Yeflam, stood before him. “Brother.”
And it did not matter that she thought herself a god.
He offered her half a smile. “Sister.”
The two stood on a road, the Southern Gate of Yeflam behind her, and the Mountains of Ger behind him. He had not seen her in decades, but now he stood before her, his hands chained, a prisoner for killing two men who had been sent to Mireea on her word.
“There is still time to turn away,” she said quietly. She wore a pale robe of blue and her dark hair ran to her shoulders, grown out since he had last seen her. “Time to stop this.”
“There isn’t,” he said.
“Don’t bring this war to Yeflam.”
“I already have.” He raised his manacled hands. “I killed Fo and Bau.”
From behind her, voices rose. They did not come from the twenty-three men and women who stood near Aelyn and himself. In the centuries after Asila, his sister had remade herself and remade her empire. She drew to herself immortal men and women like herself—like him—and had taken the title Keeper of the Divine. She convinced each of them that they would one day be gods. She allowed them to stand beside her as she created an artificial stone continent across Leviathan’s Throat. Of the men and women who stood before him now, Zaifyr knew six. They had been alive before he had been placed in his crooked prison after Asila had crumbled. Before the hungry haunts had lifted Aelyn into the sky and begun to tear at her skin. Before the stone giant had reared to its full height. Before he had been forced to release her to stop the heavy hand coming crashing down on him.
No, the sound of voices did not come from them. To him, the Keepers had nothing to say. But the long, tangled mass of people who lined the bridge into Yeflam, the people who called the artificial nation home, did. They had not liked Fo the Healer and Bau the Disease: the voices that they raised were not for them. The sounds of disapproval were aimed at the men and women who stretched behind Zaifyr, the Mireean people who had fled their home and come here for sanctuary. Most of all they were objecting to the woman who now left the head of the Mireean people and came to stand beside him as he lifted his chained hands.
“Lady Wagan.” Aelyn did not look at the woman who had led the people down the Mountains of Ger to Yeflam. “You have done me a service,” she said. “You have done Yeflam a service.”
Muriel Wagan, the Lady of the Spine, replied that she had only been respecting Yeflam law.
Zaifyr smiled at her words.
“I will offer you sanctuary for bringing my brother to me,” his sister replied. “For bringing him to stand trial for the murder of Fo and Bau.”
“We ask for no more,” Lady Wagan said.
Zaifyr had watched Aelyn try to prevent his arrival during the three-week march down the trembling Mountains of Ger.
She had tried through her representative, Faje—a tall, soft-spoken man whose brown skin disintegrated across his body, leaving blotches of pale pink. He had attempted to convince not just Muriel Wagan and her people that they should not come to Yeflam, but Zaifyr as well. He had spoken to them about the need for Yeflam to remain neutral in the war between Mireea and Leera. He did not want war to spread over both sides of the Spine of Ger, he said. He tried to warn Lady Wagan away with dire predictions of how the presses of Yeflam would treat her and her people. He told her that the “free” presses would be without mercy, that factions within Yeflam would seek to exploit both her and the situation. Those words, Zaifyr knew, were also meant for him. He had smiled when Faje had turned to address him with similar concerns. He had not needed to say a word to the mortal man. Faje’s dark eyes had reflected the knowledge that his words were falling flat before the charm-laced man, just as they did before Muriel Wagan.
His companion to the meetings, Benan Le’ta, a fat white man who represented the Traders’ Union, had virtually hummed with pleasure in comparison. From what Zaifyr understood, Le’ta represented a political force within Yeflam that threatened the Keepers’ power base. Centuries of changing attitudes and new political ideals had given the Traders’ Union a hold in the Floating Cities, and the Traders had used it to argue for democracy, free markets and a form of self-determination that had found root in the dreams of the populace. The Traders’ Union had not yet been able to break the hold of Aelyn Meah on Yeflam. The merchant Le’ta, who wore long, flowing clothes that hid the extent of his weight, believed that the arrival of the Mireean men and women, along with the trial of Zaifyr, would begin that process in such a way that Aelyn and the Keepers of the Enclave would not be able to maintain their grip on Yeflam.
The man was a fool.
“Lady Wagan.” Aelyn raised her voice so that the people behind her could hear clearly. “The people of Yeflam are humbled to offer you and your people sanctuary on the island of Wila.”
The people behind Muriel murmured, but the Lady of the Spine inclined her head and accepted the prison she was offered.
Ayae had told Zaifyr a week ago about the offer. The former apprentice cartographer had been invited to the meetings hosted by diplomats on the road to Yeflam. She had gone reluctantly to the tents that the Traders’ Union had provided and listened to both factions talk to Muriel Wagan about her welcome in the Floating Cities.
“Fo and Bau’s deaths will only get her so far. Bringing you to Yeflam to answer for killing them doesn’t give her free rein in Yeflam.” The two of them stood beneath the night’s sky, the dimly lit tent she had emerged from behind them. “They won’t let the Mireeans in, either. Faje argued that neutrality is too important politically. He believes that there will be a peace to be negotiated with the Leerans, and that the Keepers will be able to preside over it.”
“Le’ta agreed with him?”
She nodded. “The people of Yeflam don’t fear her.”
Her was the child, the gods’ only child, the force behind the Leeran army. “They will soon enough,” he said.
Her warm brown hand touched his arm. “The trial will go ahead in Yeflam. Benan Le’ta has insisted and Faje has agreed.”
“Good. When my sister officially calls a trial, it will bring the others to Yeflam.”
“What if they don’t come?”
“They will.”
None of his brothers and sisters would like it, but that was not the point. Ayae did not like it, either, but Zaifyr had, in the journey down the Spine of Ger, convinced her that it was the only way that they could fight the child. He had persuaded her of the necessity of fighting her, as well. Now he just had to prevail on his sister and his family, and convince the Keepers—and the quickest way to do that, he knew, was to frighten them with the return of Asila if they did not call a trial. To remind them, not just of the ghosts, of the dead, but of what happened after, in the empires that they had ruled.
Zaifyr was led to the Southern Gate of Yeflam by Aelyn. With each step, he could feel the vastness of his sister’s power, a sensation akin to the long, clear sky turning its gaze on him. It enveloped him, as it always had, and smothered the powers of the other immortal men and women who moved to take control of the Mireean refugees.
On the bridge, the crowd watched him and Aelyn approach. A carriage without horses waited before the gate and, as the two came closer, small twists of wind began to form around the empty shafts. Within moments, they had taken on the shape of two horses and their pale wind-born bodies had filled the leather harnesses of the carriage.
Behind him, Zaifyr heard a shout, a voice issuing a command, but he did not turn to see who spoke, did not turn to see what was happening to the Mireean people.
He stepped into the carriage and his sister, who followed, closed the door.
Copyright © 2016 by Ben Peek
