The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr / the Skein of Lament / the Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  ‘I would not rely on that, Kaiku,’ Tsata said. ‘I think they will be guarding their witchstone very closely, and they will not entrust these small men or Aberrants with the task.’

  Indeed, Kaiku thought, and his words reminded her of something that she had been trying to push to the back of her mind since they had taken on this task. There were still likely to be Weavers here. She might have beaten a demon with her kana, but they were lesser things. She dared not match herself against even a single Weaver. The stakes were too high, even for her.

  Yet they had to know. Had to know whether the stories Asara had brought back from the other continents were true. Had to know if the Weavers had any vulnerabilities at all. For her oath to Ocha, for her dead family, for her friends who might even now be dying at the other end of the Fault, they had to strike a blow.

  Somehow, they had to destroy the witchstone.

  THIRTY-ONE

  For the second time in his life, Barak Grigi tu Kerestyn sat on horseback in the midst of an army and looked upon the city of Axekami.

  It was beautiful in the light of the early morning. Nuki’s eye was rising directly behind it in the east, the brilliance carved into rays by the spires and minarets of the capital, casting a long shadow like reaching fingers towards the throng of thousands who came to possess it. The air had a hazy, beatific quality, a fragile shimmer that made promises of the winter to come, where the days would be warm and still, and the night skies clear as crystal.

  Axekami. Grigi could feel the desire kindling in his heart just by shaping the word in his mind. Those towering beige walls that had thwarted him once before; the jumble of streets and temples, libraries and bath-houses, docks and plazas. A chaotic profusion of life and industry.

  His eyes travelled up the hill to where the Imperial Quarter lay, serene and ordered beneath the bluff that the Keep sat on, its far side aflame with sunlight and its western face in shadow. His gaze lingered on it, drinking in the sight of its magnificence, roaming over the temple to Ocha that crowned it and the Towers of the Winds that rose needle-thin at its corners. The Jabaza, distantly visible, wound in from the north, and the Zan headed away to the south, junks and barges waiting idly near the banks. Axekami had been sealed tight since the night before, as it always was in times of threat, and no river traffic was getting in or out.

  How he wanted that city, craved it as if it were a mistress long denied him. The throne had slipped from Blood Kerestyn before, but now he was here to restore his family to the glory they deserved. He felt an elation, a certainty of the righteousness of his cause. The revolt in Zila had showed just how weak Mos’s hold was on his empire. The fact that he had left the matter to local Baraks and sent none of his own troops only made things look worse for him. How the people of Axekami would welcome Grigi this time, instead of uniting to fight against him as they had before.

  And the only thing standing against him was the twenty thousand men camped between him and his prize.

  ‘History repeats itself,’ he grinned, flushed with the proximity of his dream. ‘Except that five years ago in summer, you were on that side.’

  ‘Briefly,’ Barak Avun said, the reins of his mount gripped in one bony fist. ‘Let us hope that history is kinder to us this time.’

  ‘After today, we will write history,’ Grigi said expansively, and pulled his horse into a canter.

  The two of them rode together along the rear of the battle lines, one huge and obese, the other gaunt and ascetic. Their Weavers were not far away, keeping pace, hunched ghoulishly in their saddles. They were on hand to coordinate instructions between the multitude of Baraks and Barakesses whose forces stood as allies.

  The high families had flocked to Kerestyn’s banner as the alternative to the ineptitude of Mos. If there had been any doubt, it had been dashed when the Empress Laranya fell from the Tower of the East Wind. Rumours of Mos’s state of mind had reached them long before, but his wife’s apparent suicide in response to the beating he delivered her was the final evidence that the Blood Emperor was insane. Grigi trusted that they would stand firm simply because there was no other option. None of the other high families, including Blood Koli, had the support or the power to make a play for the throne. Even if one or all of them betrayed him now, the families would simply fracture into an evenly-matched and self-destructive squabble, and they knew that. It was Grigi, or Mos.

  The armies stood on the yellow-green grass of the plains to the west of Axekami, where so much blood had been spilt before. The sheer numbers present defeated the eye, thousands upon thousands, an accretion of humanity too vast to take in. Each man a different face, a different past, a different dream; yet here they were anonymous, defined only by the colours dyed on the leather of their armour or the hue of the sashes that some wore tied around their heads. Great swathes of warriors, sworn by blood to the families that ruled them. Each one a weapon for their nobles to wield, and in their hands a weapon of their own. Divisions of riflemen, swordsmen, riders of horses and manxthwa, men to operate fire-cannons and mortars; they stood in formations according to their allegiance or their speciality, their discipline utter, their dedication total. For these were soldiers of Saramyr: their lives were subordinate to the will of their masters and mistresses, and disobedience or cowardice was worse than death in their eyes.

  The defenders were predominantly attired in red and silver, the colours of Blood Batik. Those wearing other colours were the few whose dogged loyalty to the Imperial throne had blinded them to Mos’s faults, or whose hatred of Blood Kerestyn had led them to join against him. The Imperial Guards he had kept within the city, but Mos had sent the remainder of his forces out onto the battlefield. Mos knew that if he allowed the usurpers to lay siege to the city, with the onset of famine and his unpopularity among the people he ruled, then it would only be a matter of time before the end.

  Mos would not let himself be cornered. Instead, he chose to meet his enemy head on. Even weakened by splitting his forces, he possessed an army not much smaller than the combined might that Kerestyn had brought against him.

  But Grigi had a trick up his sleeve. He had the Weave-lord.

  Gods, the treachery was spectacular. Grigi could not even begin to imagine how Kakre had arranged the Empress’s death, but it had weakened Mos just enough. All the time Kakre had been conspiring with Grigi and Avun tu Koli, spinning secret deals, plotting to get rid of the unpopular Mos and install a new, powerful ruler in the shape of Grigi. Like a rat leaving a sinking ship, and swimming to a new one.

  Of course, such untrustworthiness made them dangerous. And Weavers were not the only ones who could be sly. Once he was firmly in his rightful place, Grigi would use Kakre’s betrayal of Mos as an excuse to get rid of the Weavers once and for all. The people would demand it. Grigi had no wish to have his own ship sunk under the weight of the rats that clambered aboard.

  He looked at Avun, his small eyes agleam amid the folds of his face. Avun returned the gaze unblinkingly. As if summoned, the two Weavers rode up alongside, one with the visage of a grimacing demon, one with an insectile face of gemstone, a Mask of incalculable wealth.

  Avun nodded imperceptibly at Grigi. Grigi’s voice was trembling with excitement as he turned to the Weavers and spoke.

  ‘Begin.’

  The rising roar of the armies as they closed on each other floated high into the sky, reaching to where Mos stood on a balcony of the Imperial Keep and looked down over the distant battle. His eyes were hollow and his beard thin and lank; a soft breath of air from the city below stirred his hair where it hung limply against his forehead. His flesh seemed to hang off his broad, stocky frame now, and he held a goblet of dark wine in one hand, nursing it as tenderly as if it were the child he had killed. But his gaze was clear, and despite the grief written so plainly on him, he seemed more his old self than in recent days.

  How ridiculous it seemed, he thought. The plains surrounding Axekami were so flat that there was no real terrain advantage to be had
, so Kerestyn had simply marched up to the city, Mos had sent his men out, and they had stood there waiting to kill each other. An idiotic civility. If there had been any passion involved, the enemy forces would have torn into each other on sight; but war was passionless, at least from where he stood. So they lined up their pieces in preparation for a charge, and only commenced when everyone was ready. It was enough to make him laugh, if he had any laughter in him.

  The charge looked strangely surreal, like homing birds released from their cages. The front ranks simply dissolved into a mad dash as the signal to attack was given, and were matched by their counterparts on the other side. The distant report of fire-cannons preceded flashes of flame as sections of the charging troops were immolated. Riflemen were firing, reloading, firing, switching guns when their powder burned out. Horsemen swung out to the flanks. Manxthwa-riders powered through the foot-soldiers, their mounts turned from docile beasts of burden to angry mountains of shaggy muscle in the heat of combat, kicking out with their spatulate front hooves, their sad and misleadingly wise-looking faces turned to snarls. Up here, it was possible to see the formations moving in a slow dance, arranging themselves around the great central mass where the foot-soldiers hacked each other into bloody slabs in a dance of exquisite bladework.

  ‘You do not seem at all concerned, my Emperor,’ Kakre said, stepping out onto the balcony. Mos’s nose wrinkled slightly at the sick-dog smell of him.

  ‘Perhaps I simply don’t care,’ Mos replied. ‘Win, lose, what does it matter? The land is still blighted. Perhaps Kerestyn will kill me, perhaps I will kill him. I don’t envy him the task he takes on with my mantle.’

  Kakre regarded him strangely. He disliked the tone in Mos’s voice. It was entirely too light. Since the death of Laranya, Kakre had ceased twisting the Emperor’s dreams, trusting his own despondency to make him pliable without the risk of manipulating his mind directly. For a time, it had worked: he had barely questioned Kakre when he had advised that an army should be sent to forestall the desert Baraks, had not even checked the size of Kerestyn’s army for himself. And yet now, despite his words, that despondency seemed to have fallen from him. Perhaps he was simply being fatalistic, Kakre reasoned. He had good reason to be, oh indeed.

  Kakre’s mind went elsewhere, to another battle, where at the very same moment the last remaining thorn in the Weavers’ side was about to be removed. How things had shifted in their favour, that the Ais Maraxa should be foolish enough to expose themselves by inciting a revolt in Zila. Kakre had promised Mos that he would deal with the cause of that revolt and he had meant it. He had contacted Fahrekh, Blood Vinaxis’ Weaver, and all the others in the vicinity and given them one simple instruction: take one of the leaders alive, and strip their mind raw. Chance had delivered them Xejen tu Imotu, but it could as easily have been one of a half-dozen others. The Ais Maraxa had been troublesome for so long: they were too well hidden, and Kakre did not have the time to ferret them out, especially as their connection with the Heir-Empress might have been a false lead. But their zeal had been the end of them, and now it would be the end of their divine saviour. For Lucia was alive, and furthermore, Fahrekh had found out where she was.

  The timing was fractionally inconvenient. Kakre would have liked to send an even greater number of Aberrants to the Fold than they had mustered, but the bulk of their force had been needed elsewhere. Even so, there were more than enough; enough to weather the occasional mistakes and setbacks, such as the massacre of the Aberrants in the canyons west of the Fold.

  Kakre did not want to take the risk of simply killing the Heir-Empress and then have the Libera Dramach use her as a martyr. He wanted the Libera Dramach too, to smash that last resistance, to capture their leaders and force them to give up their co-conspirators until all sedition was stamped out. And if he was fortunate, more fortunate than he dared hope, he might even find that Weaving bitch that had killed his predecessor.

  Today, in the span between sunrise and sunset, all the Weavers’ troubles would be removed.

  He had all but forgotten about his suspicious mood when he felt the mental approach of another of his kind. Fast as the flicker of a synapse, he dived into the Weave to meet him, flashing along the currents of the void until the two minds joined in a tangle of threads, knotting and mingling, passing information, then pulling away into retreat. Kakre was back into himself in moments, rage bursting into life inside him. He turned his attention to the battle again, looking hard at the tiny figures that fought and died down there.

  A mile north-west of the combat, a vast clot of red and silver had appeared, moving fast towards the rear of the Blood Kerestyn forces. Eight thousand Blood Batik troops, as if from nowhere. From the Imperial Keep, they could see fifteen miles to the horizon, and there had been no sign of the troops until now.

  ‘Mos!’ he croaked. ‘What is this?’

  Mos gave him a dry look. ‘This is how I beat Grigi tu Kerestyn,’ he said.

  ‘How?’ Kakre cried, his fingers turned to claws on the parapet of the balcony.

  ‘Kakre, you seem discomfited,’ Mos observed, mockingly polite. ‘I’d advise you not to take out your aggressions on me as you did before. I may be Emperor for a very long time yet, despite your best efforts to the contrary, and it would be well not to make me angry.’ He smiled suddenly, a mirthless rictus. ‘Do we understand each other?’

  Kakre had been listening in disbelief, but now he found his voice again. ‘What have you done, Mos?’ he demanded hoarsely.

  ‘Eight thousand cloaks, matched to the colour of the grass on the plains,’ he said. He sounded nothing like the broken man that he had seemed to be only a few short hours ago. Now his voice was flat and cold. ‘I didn’t send my men to meet the desert Baraks. And I didn’t send them after Reki either. I had them all double back. I had something of an intuition that Kerestyn might hear of this opportunity, and that he might come in greater numbers than I expected. Before dawn, I sent them out and had them hide under their cloaks and wait. You’d never see them unless you were close.’

  Kakre’s eyes blazed within the black pits of his Mask. ‘And what about the desert Baraks?’ he hissed.

  ‘Let them come,’ Mos shrugged. ‘They’ll find Kerestyn shattered and me ruling in Axekami with nobody to challenge me. And of course, my loyal

  Weavers by my side.’ This last was delivered in an insultingly sardonic tone.

  ‘Sometimes it’s best not to let anyone know everything, Kakre. A good ruler realises that. And don’t forget I helped make Blood Batik great long before I met you.’

  ‘I am your Weave-lord!’ Kakre barked. ‘I need to know everything!’

  ‘So you can turn it against me? I think not,’ Mos said, his voice quiet and deadly. He was a man who had nothing left to lose, and even the terror of the Weavers had no hold on him now. The Imperial Keep had cast them both in shadow, but Mos’s rage made him seem darker still. ‘I’m no fool. I know what you’re doing. You treat with Koli and Kerestyn to get rid of me.’ His eyes filled with tears of sheer hatred. ‘You should never have let go, Kakre. You should never have stopped the dreams.’ He leaned closer, breathing in the stench of corrupted flesh, showing his enemy that he was not afraid.

  ‘I know it was you,’ he whispered.

  The gaping death-mask of Kakre looked back at him emptily.

  ‘I can kill you in a moment,’ the Weave-lord said, the words issuing from the cavernous black mouth dripping with venom.

  ‘But you daren’t,’ Mos said, leaning back and away from him. ‘Because you don’t know who will be Emperor by nightfall now. And you won’t use your cursed mind-bending power on me, because you can’t be sure it will work. You slipped up once, Kakre. You didn’t cover your tracks when you left.’ He was almost shaking with disgust. ‘I remember. I remember your filthy fingers inside my head. The memories came back; you didn’t bury them deep enough.’

  He turned away, back to the battle, the tears still standing in his eyes. ‘But I
still need you, Kakre. Gods save me, I need the Weavers. Without you, there’s no way to get in touch with Okhamba and the Merchant Consortium fast enough to avert this famine. There’s no way to keep this land together when people begin to starve. It will be chaos, and riots, and slaughter.’ He took a shuddering breath, and the tears spilled at last, twin tracks losing themselves in the bristles of his beard. ‘To expose you, to call the noble houses to rise up and throw you out, would cause the death of millions.’

  Kakre’s reaction was unreadable. He faced the Emperor for a long while, but the Emperor would only look at the battle below. Eventually, Kakre turned his attention back that way also.

  ‘Watch closely, Kakre,’ Mos said through gritted teeth. ‘I still have one trick left to play.’

  The noise of the battle was immense, a thuggish, constant bellow underpinned by the boom of artillery and counterpointed by the scrape of steel on steel, the screams of the dead and the dying, the bone-snap reports of rifles. In the killing ground at its centre, men struggled and fought in amidst a crowd of allies and enemies, a world of disorder where every angle could bring a new attack, the survivors owing their continued life to luck as much as skill. Arrows smacked into shoulders and thighs like diving birds plunging after fish. Swords carved through flesh, causing death in ways far more brutal than fiction or history would present. The neat beheadings and swift killing strokes were few; blows glanced, slicing meat from the forearm or hacking halfway through a man’s knee, splitting someone’s face from left cheek to right ear in a spray of shattered bone or chopping into an artery to leave the wounded man bleeding white on the grass of the plains. Flame sprang up in slicks as shellshot burst, burning jelly sticking to skin and cooking it, men flailing and shrieking as their tongues blackened and their eyeballs popped and ran sizzling down their faces. The air was smoke and blood and the sick-sweet smell of charred bodies, and the battle raged on.