Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  They waited for the remnants of Nuki’s light to draw away over the horizon, for the city’s smoky shroud to choke the streets into darkness. Outside the silence was eerie. No footstep sounded, no cart creaked, no voices could be heard. Axekami was a tomb.

  To break the silence, Juto suggested that Lon bring the newcomers up to date on events. ‘And stop acting so gods-damned jumpy,’ he added.

  ‘Right, right,’ Lon murmured, his eyes flickering over the assembled group. ‘You all know the content of the communiqué I sent?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ Phaeca replied. ‘There was some confusion as to the author, though. Our information usually comes from Juto.’

  Juto grinned, an expression which looked hideous on him coupled with his omnipresent scowl. ‘Lon was very keen to claim the credit on this one,’ he said. ‘He wants to be sure I don’t forget whose work it was when the money comes.’

  ‘I was the one that saw them,’ Lon protested in rough and ugly Low Saramyrrhic tones. He turned back to the sisters, as if seeking their support. ‘And it was me who found out where they live as well.’

  ‘Where they live?’ Kaiku prompted, looking at Juto.

  He nodded. ‘That’s where we’re heading tonight. Out to the pall-pits.’

  Kaiku’s brow crinkled at the unfamiliar term.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Juto promised, laughing.

  ‘You said they lived there . . . ?’ Phaeca inquired of Lon.

  ‘I saw them. After they left Axekami and I sent you that message, after that they came back. After they’d been to Juraka.’

  Kaiku did not trouble to ask how he knew about that. ‘And you saw them?’

  ‘I was right near the pall-pits. They bring a murk with them; it covers everything so you can’t see, so they can move in secret. It covered the city, worse even than what we have now. But I was close enough; I saw them go to the pits. Into the pits.’

  ‘There wasn’t any . . . murk at Juraka,’ Phaeca observed to Kaiku.

  Kaiku shrugged. ‘It would have hampered their own troops in Juraka. Perhaps they wanted us to see them. To let us know what we were up against.’ She turned her attention back to Juto. ‘And that is where we are going? These pall-pits?’

  ‘Unless you have any other suggestions?’ Juto replied.

  ‘We will need to get close if we are to determine the veracity of Lon’s information.’

  ‘My lady, I can get you so close you can jump right in if the mood takes you.’

  She let his irreverence slide off her. ‘Have the feya-kori emerged again since you saw them return?’ she asked Lon.

  He shook his head and coughed ralingly into his fist.

  Juto leaned out of the window and looked down into the street. A few lanterns burned in the depths of the houses, but none outside. Shadows were thickening. ‘It’s nearly time.’ He turned back to them and gave them another of his nasty grins. ‘Whatever gods you’ve got, pray to them now and hope they can still hear you in Axekami.’

  The night was shockingly dark. With moonlight blanketed by the miasma that the city seethed under, and without street lighting, it was difficult to see anything at all. What illumination there was came from the feeble candle-glow that leaked from the buildings of the Poor Quarter.

  Juto took them up onto the flat roof of the building, which was cluttered with debris and bricks, and made them stop there while their eyes adjusted. For the Sisters, there was no such need: their kana modified their vision, without any conscious thought on their parts, until they could see as well as cats. They waited for the others to catch up.

  Beyond the Poor Quarter the hillside was crowded with pinpricks of brightness, topped by the clustered windows of the Imperial Keep. It might have been possible to look on such a sight and imagine the Axekami of old, but even at night the Weavers’ influence was evident. The streets were black and quiet where once they had teemed with people in the lanternlight, and around the city the Weavers’ buildings were islands aglow in their own industry, a red illumination from within that seeped through slats and vents: the glare of the furnaces. They stood out like sores, angry coronas limning the surrounding buildings that they hid behind. The air tasted of metal, thick with corruption. It did not seem to bother the others, but the Sisters found it made them claustrophobic, penned in by the threat of suffocation.

  ‘I’m worried, Kaiku,’ Phaeca said quietly.

  ‘As am I,’ Kaiku replied.

  ‘No I mean . . . about them.’ She motioned with her head to indicate the others; they had drifted a little way apart from the group.

  ‘Juto and Lon?’

  ‘And Nomoru.’

  ‘Nomoru?’ Kaiku was surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s something between them. Something they don’t want to reveal to us.’

  Kaiku was inclined to agree. While Cailin’s teaching left her less and less time to see her friends, it brought her into closer contact with the other Sisters, and of them Phaeca was her natural ally in temperament. Through sharing the trials of the Red Order’s apprenticeship, they had come to understand one another very well, and Kaiku knew better than to dismiss Phaeca’s intuition where people were concerned.

  ‘They used to be in a gang together,’ Kaiku murmured. ‘It could be anything.’

  ‘They’re not pleased to see Nomoru.’

  ‘Who is?’ Kaiku returned dryly.

  ‘But Nomoru volunteered . . .’

  ‘Which is entirely unlike her.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Phaeca said, clapping her fingertips against the heel of her other hand. ‘They didn’t know she was coming, but she knew that they would be here. There’s a history between them, that much is certain. And it’s Nomoru who has chosen to dredge it up.’

  Kaiku sighed, rubbed the back of her neck. ‘We must be careful.’

  ‘You ready?’ Juto said, walking over to them. ‘We’d better go. It will take us most of the night.’ Behind him, Lon was manhandling a plank into place with Nomoru’s help, lowering it to form a bridge across the narrow alley to the next rooftop.

  Juto caught Kaiku’s gaze and smiled. ‘We’re not going down to street level until we don’t have any other choice. Not scared of heights, are you?’

  Lon scampered across the plank and secured the other side as they approached. Kaiku looked over the lip of the alleyway into the empty street below. Nothing moved.

  ‘Get on with it,’ Nomoru hissed.

  Kaiku gave her a disdainful stare and stepped up onto the plank. It was thick and solid, wide enough so that she would have thought nothing of walking its length if it were not suspended above a bone-breaking drop. Taking careful steps, she crossed the alleyway and stepped past Lon onto the next rooftop, which was similarly flat. The others followed without mishap, and then Juto and Lon hefted the plank between them and went to the other side of the roof.

  ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Juto grunted as he passed. ‘We’re great improvisers here in Poor Quarter.’

  In that way, they began to head round the hill on its westward side. Juto’s preparations were certainly thorough. Though most of the rooftops were not flat but made of patchy slate, he had mapped out a route that meant there was always one adjacent roof or balcony that they could use. It was circuitous and indirect, certainly, but caution was needed over speed, and his method did not require them to touch the ground for the greater portion of their journey. The buildings of the Poor Quarter were crowded close enough that it was often possible to jump the alleys without needing the plank, and they began to spot other people doing the same thing as them, passing by stealthily in the distance.

  As they went, Juto explained how this kind of travel had evolved in response to the curfew, and was used all throughout the Poor Quarter, which was the only place in Axekami where there were enough flat roofs to make it viable.

  ‘It’s a sort of truce,’ he murmured, as they darted quietly across another dark expanse littered with derelict shacks. Men idled there, wat
ching them as they passed. ‘There’s people who live in these buildings who’d cut my throat in the daylight; but at night, they give us free passage, and our gang will do the same for them. We might be dirty bastards, but we’ll be gods-damned if we’ll let the Weavers imprison us in our own territory.’

  ‘Could we not have got closer to the pall-pits during daylight, and gone from there?’ Phaeca asked. ‘We would not have had so far to travel then.’

  Nomoru snorted a laugh. Juto’s lips twitched in response.

  ‘You don’t know the Poor Quarter,’ he said. ‘Believe me, that dump where you met us was as close as any of our gang could safely get. The pall-pits aren’t far; it’s just slow going.’

  And it got slower, for the Aberrant predators were appearing in numbers now. More and more often Juto froze as if in response to some signal, and they crept to the edge of their rooftop or balcony to see the dark, sleek shape of a shrilling loping through the street below, its soft pigeon-warble drifting up through the night to them. Eventually Kaiku realised that the clicks and taps that she had thought were the sounds of boards settling in the night were being made by the men and women who lounged on the rooftops: they were lookouts, communicating in code, warning each other when Aberrants were nearby. She found herself marvelling that such a disparate group of antagonists could be so united in purpose against a greater enemy. It was like the battle for the Fold, when the people of the Xarana Fault had joined against the Aberrant army. Perhaps Juto was wrong; perhaps there was hope for an uprising, if the folk of the Poor Quarter were willing to put aside their differences and resist their new despots.

  Eventually they came to the great thoroughfare that delineated the western edge of the Poor Quarter. They rested on the rooftop, overlooking the wide street, a river of deep shadow separating them from the more affluent districts on the other side.

  ‘That was the easy part,’ said Juto, hunkering down close to them. ‘From here on in we have to go through the streets. We have to be fast, and quiet; and don’t fire your rifles unless you have absolutely no other choice. Understand?’

  ‘Is that it over there?’ Phaeca asked, looking west to where an infernal red glow leaked into the sky, underlighting plumes of slowly roiling smog.

  ‘That’s it,’ Juto said. ‘We’re close. But it only takes one Aberrant to see us, and it’s over. Now you all know about shrillings, right?’

  ‘Echo location,’ Nomoru said. ‘Helps them see when it’s too dark for their eyes. Only forward, though. Can’t see behind them.’

  ‘It’s mostly shrillings we’ll be dealing with, though there’s skrendel out here too, and they’re hard to spot. Not so dangerous, but they’ll put up a racket if they see you. Maybe ghauregs, but they can’t see too well without any light. Chichaws, feyns. Assorted other types.’

  Kaiku felt a strange thrill. She and Tsata had christened those creatures, among others, back in the Xarana Fault; it made her feel unaccountably dislocated to hear those names used here, hundreds of miles away. She found herself in a fleeting recollection of the Tkiurathi man with whom she had shared that feral existence for a time. They had seemed sweeter days, somehow.

  They slipped down to ground level via a series of unsteady ladders and balconies on the north side of the building, after checking that the thoroughfare was clear. Kaiku felt her pulse begin to accelerate as soon as she touched the street. Suddenly the rooftops seemed a haven which she was reluctant to forsake. She clutched the barrel of her rifle, but it gave scant comfort, for like her kana it was a weapon of last resort and more likely to cost their lives than to save them.

  ‘Stay here,’ Nomoru hissed to the group at large. ‘I’ll go ahead.’

  Lon made a noise of protest, but before he could speak Juto grabbed her arm. ‘You won’t,’ he said. ‘We stick together.’

  She shook him off, her thin face angry, eyes glittering. ‘I’m a scout,’ she snapped. ‘Wait for my signal.’ Then before he could say another word, she flitted across the thoroughfare and disappeared into the black slash of an alley.

  Lon swore in frustration. Juto motioned the others back against the wall, and slid to the corner of the building where he could get a better view of anything approaching. The clicks and taps of the lookouts were fainter here, but Kaiku still had the distinct impression that Juto was listening to them keenly, keeping track of the beasts that stalked their streets.

  Time passed, marked by the thump of Kaiku’s heart. She glanced at Phaeca, who managed a wan smile of reassurance and clutched her hand briefly. The night was full of small movements: rats scuttled along, hugging close to the buildings; part of a wall would crumble in a soft patter of dust, seemingly of its own accord; a stone bounced into the street from a rooftop, making them jump in fright.

  ‘Enough,’ said Juto. ‘She’ll find us. Let’s move. It’s too dangerous to stay here.’

  Nobody protested. They slipped out of the Poor Quarter and across the street, where they were swallowed up by the alleys on the other side.

  Lon took the lead now, moving with a purpose. They hurried through the narrow ways that lay between the main thoroughfares, pausing at every corner, scrambling into cover at the slightest hint of motion. There were more lighted windows here, but they were shuttered tight and only a tiny glow fought through to brighten the night. No lookouts aided them now; each turning could bring them face to face with the beaklike muzzle of a shrilling. Periodically they would stop and listen for the telltale warbling that the creatures made, which might give them a few moments’ warning; but that did nothing to counter the threat of the other Aberrants who prowled more silently. Kaiku found her hands trembling with adrenaline.

  ‘Back! Back!’ Lon was whispering suddenly, and they flattened against the wall. They were in the middle of a long and narrow lane between residential houses, façades blank and featureless without the shrines and votive ornaments that they used to display. Dead plants straggled from clay pots, poisoned by the atmosphere.

  A soft trilling coming from the end of the alley. Lon looked in alarm the other way, but it was too far to run. Kaiku felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, and gripped her rifle hard enough to bleach her knuckles.

  ‘Here!’ Juto snapped, and they scrambled behind a set of stone steps that descended from the porch-front of a house. It was pitifully inadequate as a hiding place: the four of them could barely cram behind it. Then Kaiku saw what Juto was up to. There was a cross-hatched grille there, covering the opening to the house’s basement. He was pulling at it frantically.

  Phaeca drew her breath in over her teeth. She was peering down the alley, where the lithe shape of a shrilling was silhouetted against the lighter street. It paused, head swinging one way and then the other, deciding which way to go next. The seconds it took making up its mind were agony for the Sister, who was praying to all the gods at once that it should go on its way and leave them alone.

  But the gods, if they heard her, were feeling malicious that day. It turned towards them, and into the alley.

  ‘It’s coming,’ she warned.

  Lon cursed. ‘Get that grille off!’ he urged Juto, who gave him a roundly offensive oath as a reply. He had given up trying to pull and was shaking it instead, trying to work it loose from its setting. He had made some progress, for the stone was crumbly and weak, but it was still firmly in place.

  ‘How close?’ he murmured.

  ‘Close,’ Phaeca replied.

  ‘How close?’ he hissed.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she said. She had never been good at judging distances.

  Kaiku began to look over the edge of the step, but Lon pulled her down, and Phaeca with her. ‘It’ll see you!’

  The warbling they could hear was merely the lower end of the aural spectrum of the shrilling’s calls, which rebounded from objects and were picked up and sorted by sense glands in their throat, in a manner analogous to that of bats. The Sisters had captured live specimens in the past and studied them well.

  J
uto had freed up the grille a little, but not enough. The warble of the shrilling was becoming louder. He shook the grille hard. It was breaking away the stone bit by bit, scraping out dust and tiny pebbles, but it was still not coming free.

  ‘Sweet gods, come on,’ he pleaded. The shrilling was almost upon them now, they could hear it, as if it were standing right beside them . . .

  Phaeca grabbed his arm.

  And they were still, all of them, like statues hunkered together. A moment later, the shrilling’s head appeared, its long skull curving back to a bony crest, its sharp teeth bared beneath its rigid upper jaw. It came slowly forward, bringing its scaled, jaguar-like forequarters into view, and there it stopped, cooing softly, looking up the length of the lane.

  The creature was mere feet away from where they crouched motionless in the shadow of the steps. They could see the rise and fall of its flanks, hear the hiss of its breath. They were paralysed, some ancient and primal biological response freezing them to the spot like a mouse in sight of a cat. It seemed ridiculous that the thing was right in front of them and it had not yet pounced.

  But it did not see them. The darkness was too deep for its peripheral vision to pick them out, and its echo location system was too directional to detect them. At least, until it turned its head.

  Still it did not move. The outsize sickle-claws of its fore-paws tapped softly on the cobbles. Some animal intuition was pricking it, a sensation of being watched, of the nearness of other beings.

  Go, Kaiku urged silently. They were close enough so that she could see the glistening black nexus-worm buried in its neck. Heart’s blood, go!

  She could sense Lon reaching for his dagger, moving slowly, slowly. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she dared not make a noise, fearing that even the movement of her lips or the disturbance of her exhaled breath would tip the balance here and bring the creature down upon them. Her kana was on a hair-trigger, coiled inside her, ready to burst free in an instant.