Anais looked about the chamber, scanning the grandiose tiers. She would have to ask each of the thirty families in turn, and the order that she chose them was crucial. Some families who were wavering might be swayed if a more powerful ally took the lead. Blood Erinima was easy. She asked then three other families, all certainties, who assured her of their support. A fourth one, whom she had thought she could rely on, decided to remain neutral.
Then, reasoning that it was best not to use up all her support this early in the vote, she chose an obvious enemy: Blood Amacha.
‘We oppose you, Empress, with all our strength and vigour,’ Barak Sonmaga replied, somewhat unnecessarily.
She asked several other families, receiving mixed reponses. The powerful Barak Koli voted against her; his daughter Mishani was noticeably absent. Blood Nabichi threw unexpected support behind the Empress. But there was one to whom many of the lesser families were looking: Blood Ikati. Anais took a breath; their support was vital for snaring in some of those who sat on the fence.
‘Blood Ikati,’ she said, her voice echoing across the chamber. ‘How do you say?’
Barak Zahn tu Ikati unfolded his lean, rangy body from behind his stall. He regarded Anais carefully. Anais met his gaze with her own, unfaltering.
I have done him no wrong, she told herself. I have nothing to fear.
‘Blood Ikati supports your daughter’s claim, Anais tu Erinima,’ the Barak said, and as he sat down Anais felt herself weaken at the knees.
The ritual of asking each family was a nerve-racking affair, and by the time it had concluded there was no clear majority. Her supporters and opponents were evenly matched, and there were few who abstained. The council was divided, split down the middle.
Anais felt a thrill of mixed relief and trepidation. If the council had voted heavily against her, she would have been tempted to consider abdication, whatever the cost to Blood Erinima. Her daughter’s life would surely be forfeit if Anais tried to put her on the throne with no support. But now her course was set. Though it was risky, she had enough strength behind her to dare this, even if she was sorely tempting the prospect of civil war. When they left the chamber, Blood Amacha would be gathering their allies and Blood Kerestyn theirs. The only comfort she took was that the opposition was divided, whereas her support was as solid as she could hope for.
‘My daughter sits the throne,’ she said. ‘I bid you all a safe journey.’ And with that, she left, her composure threatening to break as she stepped from the dais; but she did not allow herself to cry until she was alone in her chambers.
It was perhaps an hour later when Barak Zahn tu Ikati came to her chambers.
Ordinarily, Anais would not have received visitors after council; but for him she made an exception. They had known each other long enough that formality was unnecessary, so she had Zahn shown into a room with plush chairs and gently smoking scented braziers, and she appeared wearing a simple dress and her hair, freshly brushed, worn loose. The décor was relaxed and homely, calculated to put him at his ease. Here some concession had been made to luxury over aesthetic beauty, and the room had a cosy air about it, with rugs on the lach floor and curtains of coloured beads hanging over the tall, narrow window arches.
‘Zahn,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘I’m glad to see you.’
‘You too, Anais,’ he said. ‘Though I wish the circumstances were somewhat different.’
She gestured him to a chair and sat opposite him. ‘Troubled times indeed,’ she said.
‘I cannot stay, Anais,’ said Zahn, scratching his neck with his thumb absently. ‘The afternoon is drawing on, and I have to journey back to my estate. I came to bring you a warning.’
Anais adopted an attentive posture.
‘A servant found my Weaver, Tabaxa, as he lay dying,’ Zahn said, frowning slightly. ‘He was struck down very suddenly, it seems, and was bleeding from the ears and eyes; yet there was not a mark on him.’
‘It sounds like another Weaver did it,’ Anais said. ‘Or perhaps poison.’
Zahn made a negative grunt. ‘Not poison. The servant removed Tabaxa’s mask, and he said a word before he died. Very clearly.’
Anais suddenly pieced together the puzzle: why Zahn had sent that letter; why he had seemed so cold in the council chamber. ‘Vyrrch,’ she said.
Zahn did not reply, but his eyes told her she was right.
‘Then why . . . ?’
‘Did you know of it, Anais?’ Zahn demanded, suddenly lurching forward towards her.
‘No!’ she replied instantly.
Zahn paused, half out of his chair, and then sank back with a sigh. ‘As I thought,’ he said. ‘A single word is a slim rope to hang so much weight on, Anais. But you must watch him, your Weave-lord. Perhaps he seeks to undermine you. Have you thought what it might mean for the Weavers if Lucia sits the throne and there isn’t a revolution?’
Anais nodded grimly. ‘She is a mockery of all their teachings about Aberrants. They have killed Aberrant children for so long, and so young . . . Lucia is living proof that they do not always turn out evil, if at all. If she becomes Empress, they fear what she will do.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Zahn, ‘it is something that needs to be done.’
Anais nodded slightly, her gaze turning to the windows, where Nuki’s eye watched benevolently over Axekami from behind the bead curtains.
‘Why did you vote for me, Zahn, if you thought I had sent Vyrrch to spy on you?’
‘Because I trust you,’ he said. ‘We have been allies and opponents by turns for a long time now, but you have never broken a deal with me. Also, I confess, I wanted to see how you reacted when you saw me; I would have been able to tell, I think, if you had been guilty.’
‘Maybe you would,’ said Anais with a faint smile. ‘Still, I am grateful for your trust.’
‘I must go now,’ said Zahn, standing up. ‘I shall see myself out. Please, Anais, take warning. Do not turn your back on Vyrrch. He is evil, and he will kill your child if he can.’
‘And I can do nothing to him without proof,’ she replied sadly. ‘And perhaps not even then. Goodbye, Zahn. I hope we meet again soon.’
‘Indeed,’ said the Barak, and he left Anais alone in the muggy warmth of the afternoon, thinking.
ELEVEN
The morning sun dawned red as blood behind the barge as it lumbered westward into Axekami. They called it the Surananyi – the fury of Suran. Somewhere in the eastern deserts of Tchom Rin, great hurricanes were tearing across the desolate land, flinging the red dust into the sky to mar the light of Nuki’s single eye.
Legend told how Panazu, god of rivers and rain, had been so besotted with Narisa, daughter of Naris, that he had asked a wise old apothecary to make him a potion that would cause her to fall in love with him. But the old apothecary was none other than Shintu the trickster in disguise, and Shintu put a feit on Panazu so that he would think the first woman he saw was his beloved Narisa. So it came to pass that he returned to his home, and the first to greet him was his sister Aspinis, goddess of trees and flowers. Panazu, thinking his sister was Narisa, chose the moment to slip his potion into Aspinis’s drink, and she fell under its influence. And so they coupled, and when the morning came and their eyes were cleared they were horrified at what they had done.
But worse was to come; for they were the son and daughter of Enyu, goddess of nature and fertility, and from their coupling grew a child. They dared not tell their mother, for the child was not natural, conceived as it was of incest; and they knew well how their mother could not condone anything that was not complicit with her laws. Aspinis fled, hiding her shame. But she was beloved of the gods, and sorely missed; and so Ocha and Isisya ordered that all should search for her until she was found.
So began the Year of the Empty Temples, when the people of Saramyr suffered greatly, for the gods turned their faces away from the land and hunted through the Golden Realm for their lost kin. Crops failed, cruel winds blew, famine struck the land.
Even Nuki turned away from them, and the sun was dim that year. And though the people thronged to the temples to pray for deliverance, their gods were not present.
Then, joy. Aspinis returned from the wilderness, and all the Golden Realm celebrated. In Saramyr the crops flourished, the fish were plentiful and the livestock grew fat once again. Aspinis would not speak of where she had been; but Shintu, who had guessed what had happened, threatened to tell her mother Enyu unless she revealed to him where the baby was. Aspinis – who had no inkling of Shintu’s hand in the affair – told him that the baby was in a cave deep in the desert, where she would have long died.
Shintu, eager to see the results of his meddling, travelled to the cave, and there he found the baby not dead, but very much alive. She was being fed by snakes and lizards who brought her morsels, and she was a wrinkled and ugly thing with long, tangled hair and odd eyes – one green and one blue. But Shintu was struck with pity then, and he took the baby to his own home and nurtured her in secret, and named her Suran. She became a bitter girl, for in the way of the gods she remembered what had been done to her as an infant, and when she was grown she left Shintu and went back to the desert to dwell among the lizards and the snakes, to become the antithesis of everything her hated parents stood for. Suran was the outcast, the goddess of deserts and drought and pestilence; and when she raged, the whole of Saramyr saw red.
Tane’s heart felt heavy in his breast as he sat on the forecastle of the barge, feeling the slow surge of the ship beneath him as it bore him onward. It was a low, clumsy craft, laden heavy with ores and minerals from the mines in the Tchamil Mountains. The rough cries of the bargemen sounded in his ears, hollering in their jagged dialect; peeping birds banked and swirled high above, mistaking the barge for a fishing vessel and hoping for breakfast; hawsers creaked and timbers groaned. All around him, life; and yet he felt lifeless.
He looked down at the planks between his knees, their colour stained red by the bloody sun, and traced the grain of the wood with his gaze. How like himself those lines were, he thought. They travelled their solitary way, sometimes brushing near to another line but rarely touching. Sometimes they were swallowed by a whorl or knot, sucked into a tangle; but always they emerged on the other side, always returning to an aimless and lonely path. He felt himself flailing inwardly, scrabbling for a greased rope of purpose that eluded his grip. Of what worth was he, one among thousands, millions; what right had he to expect the forbidden happiness of belonging? The gods meted out their gifts and blessings as they chose, and there were certainly many more worthy than him. Though he was a priest, he was still lower than these simple bargemen; for he had taken the order to atone for his past, not out of nobility or generosity. To pay off his guilt and regain his innocence. How many lives, how many sacrifices would it take before the gods were satisfied?
He felt sorrow for the priests of the temple that he had left behind, but no real grief. He and Jin had returned to Tane’s erstwhile home at daybreak, and found it in terrible disarray. The priests were scattered haphazardly about like discarded dolls. They scarcely seemed real to Tane as he identified each of them: effigies only, as if the faces he had known these past few years had been replaced by waxy sculptures with glazed, glassy eyes and dry mouths gaping and lolling purple tongues.
‘They were looking for something,’ Jin said.
‘Or someone,’ Tane added.
He took Jin’s silence to mean she had guessed who he referred to.
Later, he brought the priests out of the temple and laid them on the grass. There, he named them silently in prayer to Noctu, that she might record their deaths and inform her husband Omecha. He said another prayer to Enyu while Jin waited patiently, and he was just finishing when Jin’s sharp intake of breath warned him that something was amiss.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the bears. They waited at the edge of the clearing, massive black and brown shapes hidden in the foliage, watching and waiting. Tane bowed to them, and then led Jin away to the boat which the priests used to travel to the nearby settlement of Ban and back.
‘Is there to be no burial?’ she asked.
‘That is not our way,’ he replied. ‘The forest beasts will have them. Their flesh will return to the cycle of nature; their souls to the Fields of Omecha.’
They had bought passage on a barge from Ban. During the six-day journey, Tane had been given plenty of time for introspection. He sought inside himself for the well of loss, but found nothing. He was confused by the absence. His home, all the faces he had known, his tutors and friends and even old Master Olec were gone in a single night. Yet he could not bring himself to grieve; and in fact, he felt a guilty excitement at the prospect of moving on. Maybe he had never belonged there at all, and he had simply not admitted it to himself until now. Maybe that was why he could never find the inner peace he sought.
Enyu has another path for me, he thought. She has spared me the slaughter and set me on my way. I, the least worthy of her followers.
The thought made him strangely happy.
The sun had risen high in the eastern sky by the time they reached Axekami, but it had still not cleared the veil of desert dust that hung before it, and the capital of Saramyr glowered angrily in brooding red. The approach to the city proper was through the sprawling shanties of the river nomads, whose stilt huts and rickety jetties crowded the river banks. Withered, wiry old men poled back and forth, seeming to take their lives in their hands as they cut into the path of the barge. The barge master did not slow or pay any attention. The nomads sat outside their wooden homes and shops, scraping leather or weaving, and their eyes were suspicious or indifferent as they passed over the hulking barge that plied past them down the Kerryn. Nomads only trusted their own kind, and likewise were mistrusted by all.
Jin came and sat by him as the shanties gave way to buildings, mostly warehouses and shipyards initially. She brushed her hair back over her shoulder and watched the wine-coloured water.
‘I think you want to find this Kaiku tu Makaima for more reasons than simply helping me deliver my message,’ she stated.
Tane looked at her sidelong. She was still gazing out over the gunwale. He studied her profile; it was flawless. She truly was beautiful; and the curious thing was she seemed to grow more beautiful by the day. If anything, she seemed too perfect in aspect. Even the great beauties had imperfections: a freckle, or a slight unevenness about the lip, or the colours of their irises mottled slightly. The imperfection heightened their beauty by contrast. But Jin had not even that.
She puzzled him. She had proved herself during their conversations these past six days to be luminously intelligent and well-travelled. Coupled with her appearance, she had the world in her lap. He found it hard to imagine anything she could not do, any position she could not attain with ease if she had the will. Why, then, an Imperial Messenger? Why choose a dangerous and dusty road, always on the move, never settling? Who was she, in truth?
She turned to him expectantly then, and he realised she wanted an answer. He gave her none. Let her speculate as she liked. Even he could not fathom why he was following Kaiku’s trail; only that she was the last destination left to him after his home was gone.
‘Do you think we can find her?’ he said at length.
‘I can find this Mishani you spoke of with ease. She is Mishani tu Koli, daughter of Barak Avun. If Kaiku is with her, our task is that much easier.’
Tane nodded. He hoped he had not made a mistake in revealing what he knew to Jin; but he could scarcely have done otherwise. They were companions, at least for a short while, and he had no idea how to find someone in a city the size of Axekami without her. Still, his suspicions about her had hardly been eased by the apparent knowledge she displayed of the shin-shin, and led him to wonder once again about that strange light he had seen in her eyes back in the forest.
‘We are safe from them, at least for the moment,’ she had told him. ‘Whatever brought them to your temple, they cannot track us
on the water. They may guess where we are heading, and possibly follow us downstream on the north bank, but once near Axekami they will not come any closer. The city is the place of men, where spirits do not belong.’
‘And they’ll stop tracking us then?’ Tane had asked.
‘Shin-shin are persistent, and they do not let their prey go easily. But if they are tracking us at all, they may give up when we reach the city. Or they may wait outside and hope to pick up our trail again when we leave.’
Tane had wanted to ask her how an Imperial Messenger had learned so much about spirits and demons, but in the end he decided that he would rather not know.
The vast capital swelled around them, domes and spires and temples crowding together, hugging in close to the Kerryn. To the north, the land sloped upwards and the buildings rose with it, until it became too steep to build on and rose almost sheer in a great bluff, upon which stood the mighty Imperial Keep, its skin burnishing red-gold in the dust-hazed sunlight. The city streets were a canvas of tinted whites, weathered greens, columns and fountains and parks. Here a clutter of warehouses in the worst state of dereliction; there a gallery, a bell tower, a library, all elegant sweeps of stone and wood and inscribed in fine metals across their entranceways. An enormous prayer gate lunged across the border of the Imperial Quarter, a tall ellipse of stone and gold, its edges dazzling even in the muted rays of Nuki’s eye.
To the south was the famous River District, where there were no roads but only canals, a place both exquisitely fashionable and extremely dangerous. It was as chaotic and beautiful as the rest of the city, only concentrated in a smaller area, with buildings of extraordinary design crowding over each other on tiny, irregular islands. The people that walked to and fro or were poled along the canals by puntmen were swathed in extravagant and impractical fashions, such as would make respectable society blush; but in the River District, nothing was too extreme.
The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil Page 12
