Mishani looked out from a window in the keep, surveying the forces arrayed against the town, calculating.
‘There are not so many as I would have expected,’ she said at last. ‘The muster is poor.’
‘It’s more than enough to take this town,’ Chien said darkly.
‘Still,’ she said, turning away from the window. ‘The high families have spared only a small fraction of their armies. They keep their true strength to guard their own assets against the coming conflict. And there are no Imperial Guards at all, nor Blood Batik troops. Where is the Blood Emperor when one of his own towns defies him?’
The room they shared was a little stark, with its bare stone walls and floor, but Mishani considered that she could have done much worse for a prison. There were two sleeping-mats, a coarse rug, and cheap, heavy wall-hangings emblazoned with simple designs. There was also a table, with smaller mats for sitting on, and the food they had been getting these last few days was bland but palatable. The heavy wooden door was locked, but there were a pair of guards outside who would escort them to the appropriate room when they needed to make toilet or get dressed. They were not treated badly by any means, but for the simple fact that they were confined to their room.
There were other excursions, beyond the necessities of privacy. Bakkara had visited several times, and twice had escorted Mishani around the keep. He was not subtle at disguising his motivation: he wanted to hear about Lucia, and Mishani suspected that beneath his tough exterior he was somewhat awed to be in the presence of someone who knew her personally. Mishani played up to the reflected glory. It got her out of that room, and besides, she had to admit to herself that she found Bakkara strangely attractive. The sheer, overwhelming manliness of him, which her cynical side found faintly amusing in a pitying kind of a way, was also what made him so appealing: his lack of social graces, his jaded air that suggested he was above bothering to please anyone, his brawny physicality. It was a contradiction that she did not even attempt to reconcile; she knew well enough that matters of intellect and matters of the heart were independent of each other.
Chien was not fit enough to leave the room for long periods. His injuries had been treated, but he had developed a bad fever, probably due to the overnight ride to Zila. He spent most of the day lying on his sleeping-mat, dosed into near-unconsciousness with analgesic tinctures and febrifuges, occasionally rousing himself to complain about the lack of information they were getting, or to protest on Mishani’s behalf that a noble lady should be allowed her own room. Mishani wished it were so. Chien was beginning to annoy her. He did not take inactivity well.
The siege had been slow in coming. Troops arrived at different times, and co-ordinating them all efficiently took a long while. It had been three days since the first of the forces appeared, bearing the banner of Blood Vinaxis. They had been the first family ever to hold the Imperial throne, but they had diminished now, and were weak. Their holdings were directly in the midst of the blighted Southern Prefectures, and most of their money came from crops which passed through Zila on their way to Axekami. A lot of those crops were hoarded within the walls of the town. Small wonder, then, that Barak Moshito tu Vinaxis was first on the scene to get them back.
Mishani had learned from Bakkara that the Governor of Zila had been stockpiling a great deal of food against the coming famine, confiscating portions from the trade caravans that passed over nearby Pirika Bridge. He had been intending to keep enough only for the Town Guards and the administrative body, and to sell the surplus at extortionate rates to the high families when the starvation began to bite. The townsfolk would be left to get by as they could. It was the exposure of his plan by Xejen, leader of the Ais Maraxa, that had triggered the revolt; and now the townsfolk were sitting on a store of food that would last them through the winter and long beyond, with careful rationing. As long as their walls held and they kept the enemy out, they would be a tough nut to crack.
After Blood Vinaxis had come Blood Zechen, though Barakess Alita had sent generals in her stead; then a token force from Blood Lilira, who could afford many more, and whose Barakess Juun was similarly absent.
Last to arrive had been Barak Zahn, from his estates north of Lalyara, leading a thousand mounted Blood Ikati warriors and a thousand on foot, the green and grey standards of his family stirring limply in the faint wind as they approached. Mishani could appreciate the irony. It was Zahn whom she had been on her way to see, Zahn the reason that she had been captured; and now he came to her, and they found themselves on opposite sides of an uprising. The gods were nothing if not perverse.
There were a few quick thuds on the door, and Bakkara opened it without waiting for permission. Mishani could never get used to the doors in this keep; they seemed such an impediment. She supposed their purpose was defensive, but they stopped breezes getting through to lighten the humidity of the hot days. Luckily, the draughty stone walls compensated well enough.
Mishani was still standing by the window when the old soldier entered. Chien was sitting upright on his sleeping-mat, his face swollen from bruising and sheened with fever. He glared at Bakkara. The merchant seemed to have taken a strong dislike to the soldier, presumably because of the older man’s rough tongue.
‘You’re wanted, Mistress Mishani,’ he said.
‘Am I?’ she said dryly, an imperious tone in her voice that suggested she was not about to be ordered anywhere.
Bakkara rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘Very well: I am here to request your presence at an audience with Xejen tu Imotu, leader of the Ais Maraxa, mastermind of the Zila revolt and maniacal foaming zealot. Is that better?’
Mishani could not help but laugh at the bathos. ‘It will do,’ she said.
‘And how are you feeling?’ he asked Chien.
‘Well enough,’ Chien replied rudely. ‘Are you going to let us out of here now?’
‘That’s up to Xejen,’ Bakkara said, scratching the back of his neck. ‘Though I can’t see your hurry. If we let you out of here, you’ll still be stuck in Zila. Nobody’s getting past that wall, one way or another, for a very long time yet.’
Chien cursed softly and looked away, breaking off the conversation.
‘Are you coming?’ Bakkara asked Mishani.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I have been waiting to talk to Xejen for quite some time now.’
‘He’s been very busy,’ Bakkara said. ‘You may have noticed a little disturbance outside Zila that’s causing us all some concern.’
They left Chien to his rest; he bade them a sullen farewell as they departed.
Bakkara took Mishani along a route that they had not walked before, but the surroundings were little different from any other part of the keep. It was dour and utilitarian, with narrow corridors of dark stone and little ornamentation or consideration for the natural flow of the elements.
Bakkara told her that it was built to the original plans, drawn up over a thousand years ago, which explained its miserable lack of soul. It was a military building constructed in a time when the recently-settled Saramyr folk were still using Quraal architectural ideas, where the weather was harsher and where ruthless practicality was far more important than the frivolity of aesthetics. As Saramyr evolved its own identity, the people began to explore the freedom of religion and thought and art that had been suppressed in Quraal by the rise of the Theocracy, and which had led them to choose exile. The blazing summers and warm winters made the stuffy and close Quraal dwellings uncomfortable to live in, and so they invented for themselves new types of housing, ones that accommodated their environment rather than shutting it out. Many old settlements still bore traces of the Quraal influence in some parts, but most remnants of that era had been torn down as they crumbled and replaced with more modern buildings. Saramyr folk had little love for ruins.
Xejen tu Imotu, leader of the Ais Maraxa, was pacing his chamber when they arrived. He was a bland-looking man of thirty-three harvests, thin and full of nervous energy. A mop of black hai
r topped his head, and he had sharp cheekbones and a long jawline that made his face seem narrower than it was. He was dressed in simple black clothes that hugged his wiry figure, and he scampered across the room to meet them as Bakkara knocked and entered.
‘Mistress Mishani tu Koli,’ he said, his speech rapid. ‘An honour to have you here.’
‘With such a gracious invitation, how could I refuse?’ she said, glancing at Bakkara.
Xejen did not seem to quite know how to take that. ‘I hope your confinement has not been too terrible. Please forgive me; I would have seen you earlier, but the task of organising Zila into a force capable of defending itself is taking up all of my time.’
He resumed his pacing around the room, picking up things and putting them back down, adjusting bits of paper on his desk that did not need adjusting. This room was as spartan as the rest in the keep: a few mats, a table, a desk and a small settee. Glowing lanterns depended from ceiling hooks, and outside the single window the twilight was deepening to darkness. If his headquarters were anything to go by, then Xejen could not be accused of the same abuse of power that the erstwhile Governor had.
Mishani decided to be blunt. ‘Why was I brought here?’ she asked.
‘To my chambers?’
‘To Zila.’
‘Ah!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Part charity, part misunderstanding. Bakkara, why don’t you explain?’
Mishani turned to the soldier with a patient expression, as if to say: Yes, why don’t you? It had been one of the few things he had refused to talk about; he had been waiting for Xejen’s permission, it seemed.
‘Well, first there was the matter of your friend Chien,’ he said, scratching his stubbled jaw. ‘Even if you hadn’t been there, we couldn’t leave him in the state he was in. Then—’
‘That’s the charity part,’ Xejen broke in. ‘And as for you, well, Bakkara made the entirely understandable mistake of assuming you were still well connected in the high families, and that you may prove very useful in attracting Blood Koli to come to our defence, to heighten the profile of our plight.’
Bakkara looked abashed and gave an apologetic shrug, but Mishani was not concerned with that. She did not take it personally.
‘By the time you had come to my attention, the gates had been shut and we could not very well let you out,’ Xejen chattered on. ‘Of course, I realised immediately that you did not possess the worth that Bakkara imagined – excuse my plain speaking – because I knew that you and your father were very much at odds. And since you are, after all, something of a heroine to the Ais Maraxa, I would hardly use you as a bargaining chip and deliver you to him.’
‘I am relieved to hear it,’ Mishani said. ‘Am I to take it, then, that my relationship with my father is known to the Ais Maraxa?’
‘Only myself and a few others,’ Xejen replied almost before she had finished her sentence. ‘Many of us were part of the upper echelons of the Libera Dramach, don’t forget; and we were there when you came to the Fold. But your secret is safe. I understand you have been a great help to the Libera Dramach by trading on the illusion that you are still a part of Blood Koli.’
‘I still am, as far as I am aware,’ Mishani said. ‘Legally, at least. My father has not cut me off yet.’ Though he had tried to kill her twice, she added mentally.
‘Your mother’s latest book has not helped matters in your case, I imagine,’ Xejen commented.
‘That remains to be seen,’ Mishani said. Truthfully, she had not even begun to consider the implications that Muraki tu Koli’s latest collection of Nida-jan tales might have.
Xejen cleared his throat, wandering restlessly to the other side of the room. Mishani found his constant motion dizzying.
‘I’ll not dance around the issue, Mistress Mishani,’ he said. ‘You’d be a great asset to our cause. One of Lucia’s rescuers. Someone who knows her intimately.’ He looked up at her sharply. ‘You’d do wonders for the morale of these townsfolk, and lend the Ais Maraxa a good deal of credibility.’
‘What are you asking me to do?’ she prompted.
Xejen stopped for a brief instant. ‘To support us. Publicly.’
Mishani considered for a moment.
‘There are things I would learn first,’ she said.
‘Ah,’ said Xejen. ‘Then I will do the best I can to answer any questions you have.’
‘What are you doing here in Zila?’ Mishani asked, her keen eyes studying him from within the black mass of her hair. ‘What purpose does it serve the Ais Maraxa?’
‘Notoriety,’ came the reply. ‘It has been some years since we first learned of the sublimity of the Heir-Empress Lucia, some time since we broke away from the Libera Dramach whose more . . .’ he waved his hand, searching for the word, ‘secular appreciation of her was blinkering them to the wider picture. In that time the Ais Maraxa have striven to spread the news that there exists one to deliver us from the evil of the Weavers, to end the oppression of the peasantry and to turn back the blight that ruins our land.’
Mishani watched him carefully as his rhetoric became more heated. She knew Bakkara had meant his comment about Xejen being a zealot as a joke, but she was conscious that there was a grain of truth in what the soldier had said, and now that she met him she suspected that Bakkara was not entirely at ease with his leader.
‘But spreading the word is not enough,’ Xejen continued, wagging a finger in the air. ‘The Heir-Empress is a rumour, a whisper of hope, but the people need more than rumours to motivate them. We need to be a threat that is taken seriously. We need the high families talking about us, so that their servants see they are worried . . . so that they see that even the most noble and powerful are afraid of the followers of Lucia. Then they’ll believe, and they’ll come to her when she calls, when she returns in glory to take the throne.’
He was gazing out of the window into the night now. Mishani cast a glance up at Bakkara, who caught it. He looked skyward briefly in spurious exasperation, and the corner of his mouth curved into a faint smile.
‘But even with our best efforts, we couldn’t make the empire sit up and take notice,’ Xejen went on. ‘Until now. We’ve been working at Zila for a long time, and the onset of famine has given us just the climate we need to make our move. The fact that the Governor has stockpiled all our provisions for us . . . it’s as if Ocha himself has given us his blessing. We can hold out for a year within these walls. By that time, there won’t be anyone in the empire who hasn’t heard of the Ais Maraxa and learned of our cause.’
‘Are you not concerned about Lucia?’ Mishani inquired. ‘After all, if her name becomes so notorious, you can be sure the Weavers will be searching for her harder than ever. It is because she is presumed dead and her abilities are not generally known that we have managed to hide her so long.’
‘The Weavers will still think she’s dead,’ said Xejen dismissively. ‘They’ll think we’re just wasting time fostering rumours. Besides, they’ll never find her. But what preparations are the Libera Dramach making for when she comes of age? None! We are building her an army, an army of common folk, and when she reveals herself they’ll suddenly discover that their rumour of hope is real, and they’ll come flocking to her banner.’
Mishani’s inclination was to argue: what banner? If this was all about building Lucia an army, then he was making an extraordinary assumption in assuming that Lucia wanted one. She wondered if he would talk this way if he knew Lucia as she did. Not as some glorious general, nor as some beatific child assured of her own destiny. Just a young girl.
But she had no illusions about changing Xejen’s mind, and she wanted to stay on his good side, so she held her tongue.
‘But what of the siege?’ she asked. ‘How do you plan to deal with that? You will run out of food eventually.’
‘You know what’s going on in Axekami, Mistress Mishani,’ he said, again clipping the end off her sentence in his rush to speak. ‘The high families will have a lot more than us to worry abou
t in this coming year. You can see yourself how little enthusiasm they have for a fight. Look at that army!’ He made a sweeping gesture to the window. ‘We have ways of communicating with our operatives outside Zila. They are already talking about our plight and what we represent. Word will spread. A lot may change in a year, but whatever comes, everyone will know the name of Lucia tu Erinima before we are done.’
Xejen crossed the room to face them, his thin features wan in the lantern light. There was an intensity in his eyes now, a fire ignited by his speech. Mishani had no doubt that he was a formidable orator when faced with a crowd. His conviction in his own words was indisputable.
‘Will you help us, Mistress Mishani?’
‘I will consider it,’ she said. ‘But I have a condition.’
‘Yes, you wish to have your confinement ended,’ Xejen finished for her. ‘Done. A sign of good faith. It would have been sooner, but I had too many other things to worry about. I don’t want you as a prisoner, I want you as an ally.’
‘You have my thanks,’ said Mishani. ‘And I will think on your proposal.’
‘I need not tell you, I suppose, that your freedom only extends to the walls of Zila,’ Xejen added. ‘If you try and leave the town, you will regrettably be shot. I am sure you will not attempt anything so foolish.’
‘Your advice is noted,’ Mishani said, and with that she made the requisite politenesses and left, telling Bakkara that she could find her own way back.
Chien was asleep when she returned, murmuring and stirring in the grip of a dream. She shut the door of their room quietly behind her and sat on a mat to think. A plan was forming in her mind. It was like the old days at court. The principal players had been introduced; now she just had to work out how best to exploit them.
But this man, she did not yet understand. There was a piece of the puzzle missing here, and had been since the start. Until she knew what it was, until she knew whether Chien was an enemy or a friend, she dared not act.
The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil Page 71
