The Skein of Lament

by Chris Wooding

  ‘You overstep your boundaries,’ said the Weave-lord, his voice dark and cold as the grave. ‘You will learn your place!’

  Mos cried out in fear, unmanned by Kakre’s power, his natural courage subverted by the insidious manipulation of his body and mind. The rain fell, soaking him, dripping from his beard and plastering his hair.

  ‘You need me, Mos,’ Kakre told him. ‘And I, regrettably, need you. But do not forget what I can do to you. Do not forget that I hold the power of life and death over you at every moment. I can stop your heart with a thought, or burst it within your breast. I can make you bleed inside in such a way that not even the best physicians could tell it was not natural. I can drive you insane in the time it takes for you to unsheathe your sword. Never touch me again, or perhaps I shall do something more permanent to you next time.’

  Then, gradually, Kakre seemed to diminish, and the terrible energy in the air slackened. Mos found his breath again, gasping. The room returned to what it once had been, gloomy and spacious and echoing, and Kakre was once again a small, twisted figure with a bent back, buried in badly sewn rags and hide.

  ‘You will deal with the revolt in Zila. I will deal with its causes,’ he rasped, and with that he departed, leaving Mos lying on his side in the rain, overlit by the fading dusk, angry and fearful and beaten.

  The Empress Laranya and her younger brother Reki collapsed through the elliptical doorway, wet and breathless from laughing. Eszel raised a theatrical eyebrow as they blundered into the pavilion, and said wryly to Reki: ‘Anyone would think you had never seen rain before.’

  Reki laughed again, exhilirated. It was not far from the truth.

  The pavilion lay in the middle of a wide pond, joined to the rest of the Imperial Keep’s roof gardens by a narrow bridge. Its sides were carved wood, a thin, hollow webwork of leaf shapes and pictograms that allowed those inside to look through them and out over the water. Baskets of flowers hung from the drip-tiles on the sloping roof, and at each corner were stout stone pillars painted in coral red. Eszel had lit the lanterns that hung on the inner sides of the pillars, for night had newly fallen outside. It was small, but not so small that eight people could not sit in comfort on its benches, and with only the three of them there was plenty of room.

  Reki flopped down and looked out through the wooden patterns, marvelling. Laranya gave him an indulgent kiss on the cheek and sat beside him.

  ‘Rain is something of a novelty where we come from,’ she explained to Eszel.

  ‘I gathered as much,’ Eszel replied, with a quirk of a grin.

  ‘Spirits!’ Reki exclaimed, his eyes flickering over the dark and turbulent surface of the rain-dashed pool. ‘Now I know what Ziazthan Ri felt when he wrote The Pearl Of The Water God.’

  Eszel looked at the young man with newly piqued interest. ‘You’ve read that?’

  Reki became shy all of a sudden, realising that he had been boasting. Ziazthan Ri’s ancient text – containing what was generally recognised as some of the greatest naturalistic writing in the Empire – was extraordinarily rare and valuable. ‘Well . . . that is . . .’ he stammered.

  ‘You precious thing! You must tell me about it!’ Eszel enthused, rescuing him. ‘I’ve seen copied extracts, but never known the whole story.’

  ‘I memorised it,’ said Reki, trying to sound as modest as possible. ‘It is one of my favourites.’

  Eszel practically squealed: ‘You memorised it? I would die to hear it from beginning to end.’

  Reki beamed, the smile lighting up his thin face. ‘I would be honoured,’ he said. ‘I have never met anyone who has even heard of Ziazthan Ri before.’

  ‘Then you haven’t met the right people yet,’ Eszel told him with a wink. ‘I’ll introduce you around.’

  ‘Now wait there,’ Laranya said, springing from Reki’s side to sit next to Eszel. She grabbed his arm possessively, dripping all over him. ‘Eszel is mine! I’ll not have you stealing him away from me with your dry book-learning and conversations about dead old men.’

  Eszel laughed. ‘The Empress is jealous!’ he taunted.

  Laranya looked from her brother to Eszel and back. She held great fondness for both of them. The two could not be more different, yet they seemed to be getting on better than she had hoped. Reki was grey-eyed and intense, his features oddly accentuated by a deep scar that ran from the outside of his left eye to the tip of his cheekbone. His chin-length hair was jet-black, with a streak of white on the left side from the same childhood fall that had marred his face. He was quiet, clever, and awkward, never seeming to quite fit the clothes that he wore or to feel comfortable in his own skin.

  Eszel, in contrast, was flamboyant and lively, very handsome but very affected; he seemed like he belonged in the River District rather than the Imperial Keep, with his bright eye make-up and his hair dyed in purple and red and green, tied with ornaments and beads.

  ‘Perhaps a little jealous,’ she conceded mischievously. ‘I want you both to myself!’

  ‘Rank has its privileges,’ Eszel said, standing up and making an exaggerated bow. ‘I am yours to command, my Empress.’

  ‘Then I demand that you recite us a poem about rain!’ she said. Reki’s eyes lit up.

  ‘I do so happen to have one in which rain forms something of a key element,’ he said. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘I would!’ said Reki. He was somewhat awed by Eszel, who Laranya had told him was a brilliant poet. He was a member of the Imperial Court on the suggestion of Mos’s Cultural Adviser, who believed that with a few years’ patronage Eszel would be turning out poems good enough to make him a household name in Axekami, and a prestigious figure to be associated with the Imperial family.

  Preening himself outrageously in the lantern-light, Eszel took up position in the middle of the pavilion and cleared his throat. For a few moments, the only sound was the hiss and trickle of the rain, and he basked in the rapt attention of his audience. Then he began to speak, the words flowing across his tongue like molten silver. High Saramyrrhic was a wonderfully complex language, and lent itself well to poetry. It was capable of being soft and sibilant or jarring and sharp, layered with meanings that could be shifted and manipulated in the mouth of a wordsmith to make them a sly puzzle to unlock and a joy to hear. Eszel was extremely talented, and he knew it; the pure beauty of his sentences entranced the listener.

  The poem was only obliquely about rain, being rather the story of a man whose wife had been possessed by an achicita, a demon vapour that had stolen in through her nostrils as she slept and was turning her sick inside. The man’s heartbreak made him mad, and in his madness he was visited by Shintu, the trickster god of luck, who persuaded him to carry his wife outside their house and lay her in the road for three days, at the end of which time Shintu would drive out the demon. Then Shintu asked his cousin Panazu to bring three days of rain, to test the man’s faith, for his wife was already weak and would likely not survive three days of being soaking wet. After the first day of sitting by his wife in the rain, the villagers, thinking the man insane, locked him up and put his wife back to bed, where she continued to sicken.

  Shintu, having played his trick, thought it was over and promptly turned his attention to something else. He forgot about the whole affair, at which time it came to the attention of Narisa, goddess of forgotten things, who saw how terrible and unjust it was that this couple should suffer so. She appealed to Panazu to put things right, since he too had played a part in this. Panazu, who loved Narisa – and whose love would later draw Shintu’s attention and result in the birth of the bastard child Suran by Panazu’s own sister Aspinis – could not refuse her, and so he relieved the wife of the achicita and sent lightning to break open the man’s jail cell. Freed and reunited, they were both pronounced cured, and found their happiness together once again.

  Eszel was just coming to the end of his tale, and was gratified to see tears standing in Reki’s eyes, when suddenly Mos came stamping in out of the ra
in. The poet faltered at the sight of the Blood Emperor, whose face was like a thunder-head. He stood there dripping, surveying the scene before him. Eszel fell silent.

  ‘You all seem to be enjoying yourselves,’ he said, and even Eszel could tell that he was spoiling for a fight, and wisely remained quiet. The Blood Emperor did not like him, and made no disguise of the fact. Eszel’s somewhat effeminate ways and showy appearance offended a man of his earthy nature. In addition, it was plain that Mos resented the friendship between Eszel and Laranya, for she often sought him out when Mos was too busy with affairs of court to attend to her.

  ‘Come and join us, then,’ said Laranya, getting up and holding out her hands for Mos to take. ‘You look like you need some enjoyment.’

  He ignored her hands and glowered at her. ‘I have searched for you, Laranya, because I thought I might find some solace from my wife after the ordeal I have suffered. Instead I find you . . . soaking wet and playing childish games in the rain!’

  ‘What ordeal? What are you talking about?’ Laranya asked, but in amid the concern there was already the spark of anger that had ignited in response to the Emperor’s tone. Eszel sat down unobtrusively next to Reki.

  ‘Don’t concern yourself,’ he snapped. ‘Why is it that whenever I have to track you down, I find you with this abhorrent peacock of a man?’ He waved a dismissive gesture at Eszel, who took the insult meekly. He could scarcely do any different. Reki looked in horror from Mos to Eszel.

  ‘Do not take out your frustrations on your subjects, who cannot answer you back!’ she cried, her cheeks becoming flushed. ‘If your grievance is with me, then say so! I am not at your beck and call, to wait in your bedchamber until you decide you need solace.’ She twisted the word to mock him, making him seem needy and ridiculous.

  ‘Gods!’ he roared. ‘Am I to face hostility from all sides? Is there not one person with who I can exchange a kind word?’

  ‘How persecuted you are!’ she retorted sarcastically. ‘Especially when you blunder in here like a banathi and begin insulting my friend, and embarrassing me in front of my brother!’

  ‘Come with me, then!’ Mos said, grabbing her wrist. ‘Let me speak to you in private, away from them.’

  She pulled her arm back. ‘Eszel was reciting a poem,’ she said, her voice taut. ‘And I will stay to hear it finished.’

  Mos glared balefully at the poet, almost shaking with rage. Reki could almost feel Eszel’s heart sink. His sister meant well, but when incensed she was not subtle. In providing a reason to refuse Mos, she had turned his wrath back onto her defenceless friend.

  ‘And how would you feel if your treasured poet was suddenly to find himself without a patron?’ he grated.

  ‘Then my treasured husband would find himself without a wife!’ Laranya fired back. Once she had dug her heels in, she would give no ground.

  ‘Does he mean so much to you, then?’ Mos sneered. ‘This half-man?’

  ‘This half-man is more a man than you, since he can keep his temper, as a noble like you should be able to!’

  This was too much. Mos raised his hand suddenly, a reflex of pure anger, drawing back to hit her.

  She went suddenly cold, her passion taking her beyond mere fury and into a steely calm. ‘I dare you,’ she said, her voice like fingernails scraping on rusted metal.

  The change in her stopped him. He had never raised his hand to her before, never lost control this way. Trembling, he looked into her eyes, and thought how achingly beautiful their arguments made her, and how much he loved and hated her at the same time. Then he cast one last glare of pure malice at Eszel, and stormed out of the doorway and onto the bridge, disappearing into the rainy night.

  Reki let out a breath that he did not know he had been holding. Eszel looked miserable. Laranya’s chin was tilted arrogantly, her breast heaving, fiercely pleased that she had faced her husband down.

  The mood was spoiled now, and by unspoken consent they dispersed to their chambers. Later, Laranya would find Mos, and they would fight, and reconcile, and make frenetic love in the embers of their anger, unaware that then, as now, Kakre would be watching from the Weave.

  TEN

  Kaiku, Saran and Tsata arrived in the Fold in the early morning, having ridden hard from Hanzean. They had made their way along secret routes into the Xarana Fault under the cover of darkness and slipped into the heart of the broken land without alerting any of the hostiles that lived there. Their return was greeted with great activity by those who knew of Kaiku’s mission and guessed who her companion was. By midday, an assembly of the upper echelons of the Libera Dramach and the Red Order had gathered to hear what their spy had to tell them, and Kaiku was included, both at Saran’s insistence and at Cailin’s. She felt a certain amount of relief. After giving two months of her life – and almost losing it – to bring this man back, the thought that the information he carried might be too sensitive to trust her with was too cruel.

  They met on the top floor of a semicircular building that was unofficially the nerve centre of the Libera Dramach. It stood on one of the highest tiers of the Fold, its curved face looking out over the town and into the valley below. The uppermost storey was open to the view, with pillars to hold up the flat roof and a waist-high barrier of wrought iron running between them. The whole storey was a single room, used for congregations or occasional private theatrical performances or recitations, and like most of the buildings in the Fold it was functional rather than elegant. Its beige walls were hung with cheap tapestries and there was wicker matting to cover the floor, and little else except a prayer wheel in one corner and some wind chimes ringing softly in the desultory breeze, to ward off evil spirits. It was a quaint and ancient superstition that seemed somehow less comical here in the Xarana Fault.

  There was no real formality about the meeting, but basic hospitality demanded that refreshments be served. The traditional low tables of black wood were scattered with small plates, and metal beakers of various wines, spirits and hot beverages were placed between them. Kaiku was sitting with Cailin and two other similarly attired members of the Red Order, neither of whom she had met before, since the membership seemed to be constantly shifting and only Cailin provided any permanence. She was excessively paranoid about letting the numbers of the Red Order be known, and kept them scattered so that they might not all be wiped out at once by any disaster. Nearby sat Zaelis with Yugi, who was virtually his right-hand man. Yugi caught her look and gave her a reassuring grin; startled, she smiled back. Tsata sat on his own, away from the tables at the edge of the room.

  Kaiku watched him for a moment. She had to wonder what the Tkiurathi was doing here at all. Why had he accompanied Saran so far? What was the relationship between them? Though her anger at the callous way he had risked her life had been ameliorated by the intervening month, she had learned little about him and Saran was strangely reluctant to fill in the details, claiming that it was Tsata’s business and that he would tell her if he wanted. Kaiku could not decide if Saran was being diplomatic out of respect for his companion’s foreign beliefs, or if he was just being obtuse to vex her.

  Her thoughts turned from Saran to Lucia. She wished she had been given time to visit the former Heir-Empress before the meeting, but she supposed there would be time later. Still, something chewed annoyingly at her about the matter. When Kaiku enquired after her health to Zaelis, he had responded with a breezy comment and changed the subject; but thinking back on it, he never had answered her question. If she had been Mishani, she might have thought it suspicious; but being Kaiku, she assumed that it was her own fault for not pressing him.

  Then silence fell, and Saran stood with his back to the railing, framed against the far end of the valley and outlined by the sun. It was time to learn what she had risked her life for, and to determine whether it was worth it.

  ‘Only a few of you here know me,’ he began, his voice clear and almost entirely free of Quraal inflections now. In his tight, severe clothes he looked like
a general addressing his troops, and his voice had a similar authority. ‘So I will begin with an introduction. My name is Saran Ycthys Marul. I have been a spy for the Libera Dramach for several years now, travelling far afield with one objective in mind: to discover all I could about the Weavers. My mission has taken me to the four countries of the Near World: Saramyr, Okhamba, Quraal and distant Yttryx. If you will indulge me, I will tell you now what I have found.’

  He paused dramatically, and prowled left and right, sweeping the assembly with his gaze. Kaiku flinched inwardly at his grandstanding. It occurred to her suddenly that by delivering his message personally to so many people he was endangering himself in the future. The more people that knew he was a spy, the more likely he was to be discovered. She wondered what had brought on this recklessness; surely it was not that he was so conceited that he was willing to take the risk in exchange for this moment of glory?

  ‘Saramyr has forgotten its history,’ he said. ‘So proud were you to settle this great continent that you did not think about what you were sweeping aside. In hunting the Ugati aboriginals to extinction, you wiped the slate clean, and lost thousands upon thousands of years of this land’s memory. But other lands still remember. In Okhamba, tribes have lived untouched by outside civilisation for centuries. In Quraal, the repression of doctrine and the rewriting of history by the Theocracy was not thorough enough, and still there persists evidence from the darkest depths of the past, if a person knows where to look for it. And in Yttryx, where the constant internal wars have shifted the epicentre of power so often, documents have become so scattered that it is both impossible to find them all and impossible to destroy them all. History persists. Even here. And it seems we would do best not to forget it, for we never know when the events of the past may emerge to change the present.’