Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  She got to her feet, dishevelled and haggard, and stared into the mist at the vague and swaying shape of the Xhiang Xhi.

  ‘I beg you,’ she said. ‘Help us. Help us stop all this coming to pass.’

  She felt the Xhiang Xhi regarding her, there in its chill and gloomy dell.

  ((I will help you)) it said. Then, after a pause of moments that felt like hours: ((But there is a price))

  It was dusk when Lucia emerged from the tunnel.

  Nobody noticed her at first. They had sunk into grief, and sat wearily on the forest floor beneath the unwavering gaze of the shadow-beast that hunkered atop the hillock. Most of them had fallen into an exhausted slumber, for here, in the presence of the great spirit, the nightmares were held at bay.

  Kaiku awoke to the touch of Tsata’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him. Sometime over the past hours, she had cried herself to sleep with her head on his thigh where he sat. She raised herself, brushing her hair back behind one ear, and followed his eyes to where Lucia stood.

  Then she was scrambling to her feet and rushing over. She gathered Lucia in a tight embrace; but the words of relief that were forming were never spoken. Lucia remained rigid, her arms by her sides. Kaiku backed away, searching her face quizzically.

  ‘Lucia?’

  The three soldiers were getting to their feet now, coming closer, warily, as if afraid of her. Asara had stood also, but she watched from a distance.

  ‘It is done,’ Lucia said, her gaze shifting minutely to meet Kaiku’s. Her voice was flat and expressionless. ‘We have been granted passage out of this forest. The beast will guard us.’

  ‘Lucia?’ Kaiku said again, the word a question. She tried to smile, but it faded into uncertainty. ‘Lucia, what happened?’

  ‘The spirits will aid us when the time comes,’ Lucia said bitterly. ‘That is what you wanted, is it not?’

  Before Kaiku could protest, Lucia addressed the group, overriding her.

  ‘We must return to Araka Jo. I do not wish to stay in this place an instant longer.’

  Her tone precluded any further questions, and she did not give anyone the opportunity anyway. She walked away from Kaiku, leaving her bewildered and hurt, and headed into the trees. With nothing else they could do, the remnants of her retinue followed, one by one, as night fell across the Forest of Xu.

  TWENTY

  The great city of Axekami loured in its own miasma.

  The exhalations of the Weavers’ constructions had a strange weight to them, a persistency unlike that of smoke. The main bulk of it rose above the city in a roiling cap, slanted by the breeze across the plains so that it leaned eastward; but it also sank to mist the earth, and to spread outward along the ground. At its edges it was a diffuse haze, but still it appeared to permeate the air from horizon to horizon, a suspicion of something amiss that was too subtle for the eye to define. There were always clouds around Axekami now, which was unusual for winter when the skies were traditionally clear. Occasionally they unleashed a brown rain which smelt powerfully of rotten eggs.

  The Imperial Quarter was a spectre of its former glory now. Its gardens went untended, its fountains murky and unclean. Its trees had shed their leaves and they decayed on the flagstones and cobbles. The townhouses that had once been occupied by the nobles and high families of the Empire had been gutted, their fineries long since stripped, occupied now by swarms of the destitute. The wide thoroughfares were all but empty of traffic, and shuffling vagrants meandered in the overgrown parks or the scummed water gardens.

  Yet though the heart of the place was gone, small sections of its past remained. Shops and wholesalers stayed open, eking a living from what they could get into the city to sell, barely able to afford the guards that prevented them from being robbed. A thin trade from the rest of Axekami kept them alive. The alternative was to abandon their property and move, but few had the money or the opportunity now. They weathered the troubles as best they could, and hoped for better days.

  One such shop was owned by a herbalist, who once had enjoyed a reputation as the best in the land. His father and grandfather before him had been appointed as suppliers to the physicians of the Imperial family, as had he in his turn. After the Weavers had taken Axekami, and the Imperial family was no more, he had refused to give up his ancestral premises. Even when the physician to the Lord Protector and Blood Koli offered him a place in the Imperial Keep, he had refused. Apart from his determination to keep his shop, he had little love for the Weavers, and he trusted them not at all.

  So he remained here in the Imperial Quarter, and the physician came to him to buy what he needed, arriving in a black carriage gilded in gold, escorted by guards with rifles. The guards took station outside the shop while he went within.

  The physician, whose name was Ukida, was thin and frail, with lank white hair combed across a balding pate and rheumy blue eyes. Despite the infirmity of his appearance, he moved like a man half his age and his hands and voice were steady and sure. His robe hung awkwardly on his spare frame as he walked up to the counter of the shop, passing rows of jars and cloth bags half-full of powdered roots. Most of the shelving was bare. The lanterns lit to aid the grim daylight only served to add to the depressing atmosphere, for they reminded Ukida that there should have been no need for them at such an hour.

  He and the herbalist – a stout, rotund man with a whiskery moustache and a brisk, efficient manner – exchanged a few friendly words before a list was passed between them, and the herbalist disappeared into his preparation room to grind the necessary quantities. Ukida waited, tapping his fingers on the counter, looking idly about the shop.

  ‘Master Ukida,’ said a voice. ‘You are looking well.’

  The sound of his name startled him: he had thought the shop empty. He located the owner of the voice, appearing from a doorway that led into the back of the shop. She walked towards him, and his eyes widened in recognition.

  ‘I have been waiting a long time for you,’ she said. ‘Three days.’

  ‘Mistress Mishani!’ he exclaimed in a hiss, too shocked even to bow. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I have come to ask a favour of you,’ she replied, her narrow face sallow in the bad light. She was not dressed in her usual finery. The robe she wore was battered and dirty, made for travelling, and her hair was worn in an unadorned ponytail and tucked into the back of her robe to disguise its length, the deception concealed by a voluminous hood. Tied tight against her small skull, it made her look faintly rodentine and not at all noble.

  ‘You will be killed if they find you,’ Ukida said, then added: ‘I could be killed for just talking to you.’ He glanced nervously over the counter, where the herbalist had been.

  ‘He knows,’ Mishani said. ‘He remembers the days of the Empire, and he is loyal to them. I guessed you would come here eventually, so I asked him to let me wait for you.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘This was always the only place you would come to for supplies. You were most insistent, even with my father, that you would settle for nothing but the best.’

  ‘Your memory is good, Mistress, but I fear your judgement is not. You are in great danger in Axekami. Did you walk through these streets alone? Such madness!’

  ‘I know the risks, Ukida. Better than you do,’ Mishani replied. ‘I have a letter for you to deliver to my mother.’

  Ukida shook his head in alarm. ‘Mistress Mishani, you would risk my life!’

  ‘There is no risk. You may read it, if you wish.’ She drew the letter from the sash of her robe and held it out to him. It had no seal.

  He looked at it uncertainly. Mishani could tell he was deciding where his loyalties lay in this situation. On the one hand, he was blood-bound to Mishani’s family, and that meant her as well; she was still officially part of Blood Koli. On the other, all the retainers knew that Mishani was no longer welcome within that family, and her father would most likely have her executed if he caught her. At the very least, she would be imprisoned and inter
rogated. Her involvement in the kidnapping of Lucia was generally known now, though never officially ratified, as was her hand in the revolt at Zila several years later. The Weavers would show her no mercy if they found her, nor anyone who had abetted her.

  ‘Take it,’ she urged him. She was recalling how he had nursed her through childhood illnesses, tended to her scratches and grazes. He would not betray her; of that she was sure. The question was whether he would help her.

  Reluctantly, he took the letter and unfolded it. There was no indication of the recipient or the sender, only a dozen vertical rows of High Saramyrrhic pictograms.

  ‘It is a poem,’ he said. And not a very good one, he added mentally.

  ‘That it is,’ said Mishani. ‘Please, give that to my mother. You need not even say it was from me. Nobody will know.’

  ‘The Weavers will know,’ he said. ‘There are no secrets from them.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ Mishani asked him. ‘I would not have thought you prone to their scaremongering.’

  ‘They can pluck the guilt from a man’s mind,’ Ukida said.

  ‘Only if they have reason to look there,’ she replied. ‘Trust me, Master Ukida. I have lived alongside the Red Order a long time. I know what the Weavers are capable of, and what they are not. There is a risk, but it is small. You are my only hope.’

  Ukida studied her carefully, then folded up the letter and bowed to her. ‘It shall be done,’ he said tightly.

  ‘You have my deepest gratitude,’ Mishani said. And with that, she returned his bow, purposefully choosing a more humble attitude than she should have. She knew him: arrogance would not play well, even though he was still her servant. He seemed faintly shamed by her action.

  She departed through the doorway to the back of the shop as the herbalist returned, his timing impeccable. Ukida paid for his supplies and left, the letter carefully concealed in his robe.

  Muraki tu Koli sat at her writing desk in her small room, her quill scratching and jerking in the light of a lantern. The lack of windows meant that she took no account of day or night, and she had little desire to see the murk-shrouded disc of Nuki’s eye anyway. Aside from the occasional meals that she took with her husband, she rarely left this room. She was nearing the end of her new volume of the adventures of Nida-jan, and she was lost in the world she had created, spurred along by the unstoppable momentum of the story. A part of her still felt bitter at the necessity of haste, for she took great pride in her work and she resented that matters of the real world had conspired to make her rush it; but though unpolished, her tales still had an energy all their own, and she lived for that.

  She did not hear Ukida’s chime outside the curtained doorway, nor did she notice him enter uninvited. Her retainers had learned not to wait for her to reply, for she never did. He simply entered, bowed, and placed a letter on the edge of her writing desk. He cast an appraising eye over her, noting that she was very pale and looked consumptive. Bad air, bad eating habits, no exercise, no sunlight. She would sicken soon. He had told her so, and had dared to tell Avun too, but he had been politely ignored. With another bow, he withdrew.

  Muraki continued writing. It was several hours before she stopped to ease the cramp in her hand, and then she noticed the letter and wondered how it had got there. She picked it up and unfolded it, read what was within. There was a short interruption in her breathing, a soft intake of surprise. She read it again, crossed out several of the pictograms, read it once more and then burned it to ash in the lantern. Then she sat back at her desk and stared at the page that she had been writing.

  After an hour, she got up and went to find Ukida, her soft shoes whispering as she went.

  Avun tu Koli entered his study with a wary tread. It was dim and cool in here, the swirled lach floors sucking what warmth there was from the room. There was little furniture but a huge marble desk before a row of window-arches that looked out across the shrouded city, and a few cabinets for storing paperwork and stationery. He kept his private space orderly and spartan, like his life.

  He glanced around the room, unconsciously furtive in his movements, then, satisfied that it was empty, he slipped inside and let the curtain fall behind him.

  ‘Welcome back, Avun,’ Kakre croaked, and Avun jumped and swore.

  The Weave-lord was standing behind his desk, but Avun had somehow not seen him there. His eyes had skipped over the intruder, a blind spot in his mind.

  ‘You seem unusually nervous today,’ Kakre observed. ‘You have good reason to be.’

  ‘Do not try anything foolish, Kakre,’ Avun warned, but there was little strength in his voice. ‘Fahrekh’s actions were nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Convenient, though. Oh, indeed,’ the Weave-lord replied, shuffling around the edge of the desk. ‘What excellent timing he possessed, to strike just after you had done your level best to exhaust me.’ He cocked his head to one side, the gaping corpse-Mask tipping in a grotesque parody of curiosity. ‘Where have you been, my Lord Protector?’

  Avun calmed himself, regaining his composure. Like his daughter, he valued the ability to control the expression of emotion, and it was a measure of how scared he was that Kakre had noticed his fear.

  ‘I went to Ren to discuss the construction of a new pall-pit there,’ he said.

  ‘And was that not something you could have left to an underling?’

  ‘I wanted to be there personally,’ Avun replied, walking further into the room to assert that he was not afraid, that he had nothing to be afraid for. ‘It is well to keep myself involved in small matters as well as large. It helps me to keep perspective.’

  ‘Here is your perspective,’ Kakre hissed. He cast one withered hand towards Avun, and the Lord Protector’s insides wrenched as if twisted. The agony made him stagger, but he gritted his teeth and did not scream as he wanted to.

  ‘You thought my anger might calm if you got out of my way for a few days?’ Kakre snarled. ‘You thought I would forget, perhaps? That my addled mind would not remember what you had done when you returned? Like Fahrekh, you underestimate me greatly.’ His fist clenched, and Avun did cry out this time, and dropped to one knee. His pate was sheened with sweat and his face taut with pain.

  ‘I knew . . . you would make . . . the wrong assumption,’ Avun gasped.

  ‘I think I know you well enough, Avun, to be confident that you were conspiring with Fahrekh to kill me,’ Kakre said. ‘Treachery is second nature to you. But you chose the wrong victim this time.’

  ‘I . . . it was not . . . I . . .’ Avun could barely manage a breath now. Kakre was increasing the pain, and it was like knives had been shoved into his guts and were slowly revolving.

  ‘More denials? I could search your thoughts to find the truth, if you would prefer,’ the Weave-lord offered. ‘Though I am not as precise as I used to be. The results could be . . . unfortunate.’ His dead face stared passionlessly from beneath the shadow cast by his hood. ‘It would be easier just to kill you.’

  ‘You cannot kill me,’ Avun spat. Loops of crimson spittle hung from his narrow chin.

  ‘Would you like me to try harder?’

  Avun’s teeth were pressed together so tightly that it was an effort to force them apart to speak. ‘The Weavers . . . die with me . . .’

  Abruptly the pressure on his organs loosened. Not much, but enough to let him breathe precious air easily again. He sucked in great lungfuls, on his hands and knees now. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the floor.

  ‘Interesting,’ Kakre said, his tone flat. ‘And what did you mean by that, my Lord Protector?’

  Avun delayed his answer for a moment, savouring the respite, choosing his words carefully. They meant the difference between life and death. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glared up at the hunched figure who stood over him.

  ‘There is nobody else who can lead your armies,’ he said.

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’ Kakre mocked. ‘Pitiful. There are many s
ubordinates, generals of the Blackguard who would be eager to take your place.’

  ‘And who chose those generals? I did. And I have been systematically removing all the good ones from positions of power for years now.’

  Kakre was silent. Avun got one foot beneath him and rose unsteadily, clutching his thin stomach with one hand.

  ‘Search their records, if you wish,’ Avun said. ‘None of them have any real experience of mass warfare. They are peacekeepers, men whose expertise is policing our cities. The old generals were useless since we had Aberrants and Nexuses to fight with, so I got rid of them. You did not pay close enough attention to that, Kakre. It is well to keep yourself involved in small matters,’ – he managed a red-stained grin – ‘as well as large.’

  Still the Weave-lord said nothing, merely regarding him from within the dark pits of the Mask’s eye-holes. Avun stumbled to his desk and leaned one arm on it, supporting himself. He felt like he had swallowed broken glass.

  ‘Remember the first months of this war? Remember how your armies were slaughtered by the generals of the old empire? That is how it will be again, if you kill me. There is nobody to take my place.’

  ‘We can find one,’ Kakre said darkly, but he sounded uncertain.

  ‘Can you? Do you know what to look for in a leader?’ Avun shook his head dismissively. ‘No matter. It would take time for them to familiarise themselves with your forces, to assemble a power structure. Time you do not have. Your breeding programmes fail to provide you with enough Aberrants to both control your territories and attack new ones. And the more you produce, the faster your armies starve. You need the Southern Prefectures, and you need them before Aestival Week. We will be hard pressed to do so as it is. If you get rid of me, your chances drop to nothing. And then begins the slow decline of your forces, and the Empire will take you apart, piece by piece, feya-kori or not. You can invade a city with your blight demons, but you cannot occupy it. For that you need armies. For that you need me!’

  He raised himself to stand erect again, keeping the pain from his face, and turned his dull, reptilian eyes upon the Weave-lord.