The predators were all killed or scattered, and hunting parties were chasing those that still prowled in the wilds nearby or who hid in houses within the Fold. Against impossible odds, the town had held out; but there was no sense of triumph here, only a weary and broken resignation, a numbness brought on by more horror than they could have imagined. The valley was drowned in gore, choked in corpses. The cost in grief and misery was appalling. And on top of all that was the knowledge that even in triumph they had won only a pyrrhic victory. They had their lives, but the Fold was forfeit. Nobody could stay here now. The Weavers would be coming again, and next time they would not be so reckless. Next time, all the luck in the world would not be enough to save the town.
A dozen troops of Blood Ikati rode slowly into town, with Barak Zahn and Mishani tu Koli at their head. They were as weary as the townsfolk, but for different reasons. Their gruelling ride from Zila had been days of hard travel, pushing their mounts to the limit of their endurance. When Xejen tu Imotu had given up the location of Lucia to the Weaver Fahrekh, Zahn had been finally convinced of the truth behind Mishani’s claim. He had taken a thousand mounted men that he had brought to Zila and made all speed to the Fault, following Mishani’s lead. They had passed east of Barask, skirted the terrible Forest of Xu on its northern edge, and entered the Fault south of the Fold, where Mishani took them through trails that their horses could travel. Usually, such ways would have been dangerous in the extreme, guarded as they were by hostile factions; but the Fault had given up its petty territorial squabbles in the face of a more extreme danger, and they had made good speed and arrived, it seemed, just in time.
Yet there was no hero’s welcome for them in the town. Few even realised that they were responsible for the enemy’s ruin. They passed through stares that ranged from curious to accusatory: why were soldiers on horseback here now? Where were they when they were needed?
It took all Mishani’s strength to retain her composure. With each new corpse she expected to see Kaiku or Lucia or somebody else that she knew. Several of the dead or bereaved she did recognise vaguely, but she dared not allow them sympathy, for she did not yet know how deep her own hurt would be. The sight of her home town destroyed was bad enough, but to Mishani a place was just a place, and she was not so sentimental. However, she dreaded the thought of asking after her friends, what she might hear in response. If she knew Kaiku, she would have been in the thick of it. She always was a stubborn one, who would not back down from anything. Mishani dared not think of what she would feel if Kaiku was dead.
She barely knew where she was leading Zahn’s men, only that she had a definite sense of where she should be, a lingering instruction left in her head by Cailin. The shock of having the Sister speak in her thoughts had still not worn off, hours later. She understood how the chain of events had come about – how Lucia’s ravens had spotted them from on high, how Cailin had used her kana to speak to Mishani and tell her where the Nexuses were and what they had to do – but the sheer narrowness of their margin of victory terrified her. Gods, if the Weavers had been a little quicker off the mark in sending their army here, or if Zahn had wasted any more time with doubt and disbelief . . . if Fahrekh had suspected what Zahn was up to and had kept Xejen’s knowledge of Lucia a secret, if Mishani had not been ‘rescued’ by Bakkara from her father’s men . . . if Chien had not insisted she stay at his townhouse in Hanzean . . .
She shivered at the possibilities.
Thinking about Chien brought an image of his face back to her, his blocky features and shaven scalp. She felt little more than a passing regret for his death. He had been a good man, in the end, but she had learned that good men died as readily as evil men. She suspected her father’s hand in it, of course; but the assassins were far behind her now, for she had been smuggled out of Zila with all secrecy. At the last, Chien had not managed to fulfil the task she set him, so she did not count herself held to her promise of ensuring his family would be released from their ties to Blood Koli. In other times, she might have been more generous; but she had her mother’s welfare to think about, and for now it was best that the pact died with Chien. The world was cruel, but Mishani could be cruel too.
They turned onto a dusty street, and there Mishani saw what lay at their destination. The troops halted, and she dismounted and walked slowly onward, through the carpet of dead ravens and past the corpses of Weavers and furies and the body of the dead Sister. Standing in their midst was Cailin, like a black spike at the hub of all this killing. And crouched over the body of Zaelis was Lucia, her burned neck bent downward and her head hung, face in her hands.
Mishani stopped in front of Cailin and looked up at her, black hair sloughing back from her cheeks as she met the gaze of the taller woman. Cailin’s irises had returned to their usual green by now.
‘Mishani tu Koli,’ the Sister said, with the appropriate bow. ‘You have my gratitude.’
Mishani was too agitated to respond with the correct pleasantries. Instead, she asked: ‘Where is Kaiku?’
Cailin did not reply for a moment, and Mishani’s heart jerked painfully in her chest.
‘I am not sure,’ she said at length. ‘She was on the other side of the Fault. She destroyed the witchstone we found there. It was she, as much as you, that turned this battle around. If the Weavers had still been fighting us, I would not have been able to contact you to direct you to the Nexuses.’
Witchstone? Mishani thought, but did not say. Much had occurred in her absence.
‘I cannot reach her,’ Cailin continued after a moment. ‘She does not respond to my attempts. What that means, I do not know.’
Mishani digested that, processing the implications and coming out only with uncertainty.
Cailin glanced towards Lucia. ‘She has not moved for hours. She will not let us take the bodies away. I fear she has taken a wound that she might never recover from.’
Mishani was about to reply, but then a footstep behind her made her look back, and she saw Zahn there, picking his way through the bodies, his eyes only on one person, on—
‘Lucia?’
She raised her head at his voice, but no more than that.
‘Lucia?’ he said again, and this time she turned to him, her face and hair smeared red. He took a shuddering breath at the sight of her. She got slowly to her feet and faced him.
They stood gazing at each other.
Then she raised her arms, palms wet with Zaelis’s blood held out to him. Her lower lip began to shake, and her face crumpled into tears. He covered the ground between them in a rush and gathered her up in an embrace, and she hugged him back desperately, her slender body racked with sobs. They stood there, amid smoke and grief and death, father and daughter clutched to each other with a force born of years of secret longing.
For the moment, it was enough.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Kaiku stirred and opened her eyes, squinting against the midday brightness. Her body ached in every part, and her clothes felt stiff against her skin. Nearby, there was the soft murmur of a fire, and smells of cooking meat. She was lying on stony soil, in a shallow depression surrounded by rock on three sides, a narrow step in the uneven land. Her pack was rolled beneath her head as a pillow. The air was curiously dead and silent; no insects hummed, nor birds flew. She had become used to it over the weeks. It meant that they were still close to the witchstone, still within the range of the blight.
She sat up urgently, wincing as her battered muscles protested their ill-use. Tsata was there, crouching by the fire. He looked over at her.
‘Do not exert yourself,’ he advised. ‘You are still weak.’
‘Where are we?’ she asked, and found her throat was parchment-dry and she could only manage a thin croak. Tsata handed her a water-skin, and she gulped from it, gasping as she finished. She repeated herself more audibly.
‘Several miles west of the mine,’ he said. ‘I think we are safe, at least for a short while.’
‘How did we get here?�
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‘I carried you,’ he said.
She rubbed at her forehead as if to massage life back into her mind. It did seem now that she could recall moments, half-dream and half-waking, dreams of water and being towed through rushing blackness, of being carried like a slain deer across his shoulders.
‘We got out the way we came in?’
Tsata nodded. ‘We rode the scoops as high as we could, and I ran with you the rest of the way. There were no Aberrants near the top of the mine.’ He smiled at her warmly, the tattoos on his face curving with the movement. ‘I do not think you noticed, though. That last effort was a little too much for you.’
She snorted a laugh.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, indicating the scrawny thing spitted over the fire.
She tilted her chin at him with a grin. He brought the spit over to her, settling himself by her side. Both of them were bedraggled, having been soaked and dried several times over the last few hours. Tsata tore off a chunk of flesh with his fingers; Kaiku brushed her errant fringe out of her eyes and took the proffered meat. They sat and ate for a time in companionable silence, their thoughts far away, Kaiku happy for the joy of being alive, of the sun on her face and the taste of the meal.
She felt a deep sense of validation, a relaxing of some tension inside her that she had not even known was there. They had destroyed a witchstone; they had struck the Weavers a blow that nobody in Saramyr had ever managed before. It was still a long, long way from the vengeance demanded by her oath to Ocha, but it was enough for now. She had been chafing at her inactivity for so long, driven to do something instead of playing this interminable waiting game that Zaelis and Cailin favoured. She could ask no more of herself for the moment. She felt worthy again.
But there was more, even than that. She was not the Kaiku that had set off broken-hearted from the Fold all those weeks ago. That Kaiku had been marvellously naïve, unaware of the potential of the power inside her, content to wield it like a club and control it only as far as preventing it damaging herself. Yet circumstances had forced her to stretch herself again and again, to use her kana in ways she had never dared before, and she had risen to the challenge every time. Without adequate schooling, without any experience whatsoever, she had faced down demons, had cleansed a man of poison and saved his life, and most incredible of all, she had beaten a Weaver. Granted, the victory had been a terribly near thing, but it was still a victory.
She had wondered often about why Cailin was so cursedly persistent with her, why she tolerated a pupil so errant that most tutors would have given up. Now she knew. Cailin had told her time and time again, but she was too stubborn to listen; it was only after all this, only after she had learned it herself, that she realised Cailin was right. Her talent with kana was extraordinary; her potential was limitless. Spirits, the things she could do with it . . .
She had been too impatient to devote herself to years of study and the Red Order, and so she had squandered her talents on small missions that could have been done by other people. But these past weeks had made her realise at last that her kana was more than a weapon. And she also realised that possessing a power and not knowing how to use it well was worse than not possessing it at all. What if she had not been able to save Yugi’s life? Or to have destroyed the witchstone? How heavy would the guilt have weighed on her then? She would keep on finding herself in situations where she was forced to use her kana, and one day she would not be equal to the challenge, and it would cost lives.
She saw now that the quickest path to fulfilling her oath to Ocha was not the one she thought. Cailin had always said she must go slowly to reach the end faster: that she must master herself to become a more effective player in the game. It had seemed like specious reasoning at the time, but now it made perfect sense. She cursed herself as a fool for not seeing it before.
And in that moment, she came to a decision. She would let Cailin teach her. When she returned, she would make her apologies, and ask to begin again as a pupil; and this time, she would hold nothing more important. Her resolve was firmer than ever now that her burning urge for vengeance was temporarily sated. She would join the Red Order. She would become a Sister. And through them, she would fight the Weavers with the abilities that she had once thought a curse, that had once made her outcast.
If, of course, there was any Red Order left when she returned. But curiously, she could not find it in herself to worry about that, nor about the Fold or Mishani or Lucia. She had strange, elusive memories of her time in unconsciousness, of a voice calling to her, and whatever that voice said set her heart at ease. With no clear reason why, she knew that all was not lost, the Weavers had not crushed the last hope, and that both Mishani and Lucia still lived. With that, she was content.
‘What will you do now?’ she asked Tsata.
‘I will return with you to the Fold, then I will make my way back to Okhamba,’ he said. ‘I have to tell my people what has happened here.’ He hesitated a moment, then looked at her. ‘You could come with me, if you so chose.’
And just for a moment Kaiku saw how simple that would be, how wonderful, that they might prolong this time that they had spent together, that she would not have to return to the world she knew. How it might be to be with him, this man whom she trusted utterly and whom she believed incapable of guile or deceit or treachery. For that moment, she wavered; but it was only a moment.
‘I would like nothing more,’ she said, smiling sadly. ‘But we both know I cannot. And we both know you cannot stay.’
He nodded, Saramyr-fashion. ‘I wish that it were otherwise,’ he said, and Kaiku felt a painful squeeze in her chest at his words.
After that, there was nothing that could be said. They finished their meal, and rested for a time, and when Kaiku was strong enough to walk he helped her up. They shouldered their packs and their rifles, and together they set off east, back towards the Fold, and whatever lay afterward.
The temple to Ocha on the top of the Imperial Keep was the highest point in Axekami, excepting the tips of the towers that stood at the vertices of the colossal golden edifice. It was ornate to the point of excess, a circular building supporting a wondrous dome, chased with mosaics, filigrees, intaglios, and inlaid with precious metals and reflective stones so that the sheer wealth it exuded stunned the eye. Eight exquisite statues of white marble broke the dome at the points of the compass, each a representation of one of the major deities, both in their rarely-depicted human forms and with their earthly animal aspects at their feet: Assantua, Rieka, Jurani, Omecha, Enyu, Shintu, Isisya and Ocha himself standing over the entrance, a rearing boar before him. The boss of the dome was most magnificent of all, a cluster of iridescent diamonds visible only from the top of the Towers of the Four Winds, representing the one star, Abinaxis, that had created the universe and birthed the gods and goddesses in the beginning. When Nuki’s eye looked upon it, the diamonds blazed like their namesake. That sight was intended for the gods above, in recompense for the arrogance that had led to the downfall of Gobinda all those centuries ago.
It was no less resplendent within, though redecoration had updated it over the years to make it less gaudy than the exterior and more in keeping with the elegance of Saramyr architecture. Here, tall lach sentinels stood in alcoves in the walls, and an ivory bas-relief twisted across the interior of the dome like convoluted vines. The air was cool and moist in contrast to the heat of the day. A raised path was laid from the entrance to the grand altar at its centre, but all else was water, a clear, shallow pool with submerged mosaics and clusters of polished stones arranged artfully to please the eye. No fish swam in the pool, and it was still as glass and restful.
Avun tu Koli knelt on the circular central island, before the ivory altar, a cluster of incense sticks in his hand and his balding head bowed. He mouthed a silent mantra, over and over, time and again. He had unconsciously begun to rock to the rhythm, his body swaying slightly with the imagined cadence of the words. It was a ritual of thanks of
fered to Ocha, who apart from being the ruler of the Golden Realm was also god of war, revenge, exploration and endeavour. Thanks to the god who had delivered him and his family safely through the fall of the empire.
Once again, Avun had guided Blood Koli into the most terrible peril and brought them stronger to the other side. Blood Batik would be extinguished, without mercy; already none bearing that name lived in Axekami. With its standing army gone, its holdings would soon be seized, and any remaining members of the line hunted down. For five brief years they had held the throne, and Blood Koli had been outcast; but in the end it was Avun that knelt in the temple of Ocha, and Mos who was crushed.
There would be many changes in the weeks to come. Kakre had explained it all to him. The Weavers were too hated to rule, the Aberrants too fearsome to keep order in any way other than by terror. A terrified populace was not a productive one. And so they had needed him, a figurehead. He would be the human face to the Weaver’s regime; his men would replace the decimated Imperial Guards with a new peacekeeping force. Once order was established in Axekami, then the Aberrants’ presence would be diminished, moved elsewhere where it was needed more. And gradually, the people would come to understand that this was the new way, that their world of courts and tradition and nobility was dead and gone, that family meant nothing any more. Avun would be the Emperor in all but name, only subordinate to the Weavers. They would call him Lord Protector, and his men would be the Blackguard.
All it had cost him was his honour. But honour was a small thing compared to victory. Honour had driven his daughter from him.
He thought on Mishani. She was only a face to him now; there was no parental love left in him for his absent child. He had to assume that she had evaded his attempts upon her life, for he had received no word of success. It brought a faint smile to his face. She was her father’s daughter in that, at least. Tough to kill. Well, let her do as she would now, for she shamed him no longer. Now that the elaborate politics of the Saramyr courts meant nothing, she had no power to cause him disadvantage. The news of a disobedient child could harm him as a Barak, but it could not harm the Lord Protector, who had no peers to jostle with. He would not waste his time trying to be rid of her now. He would simply forget about her.
The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil Page 96
