The ascendancy veil bp-3

by Chris Wooding

  They talked for a long while, for they had much to tell. It had been over a year since they had last met, just before Mishani departed for Tchom Rin. Kaiku's talk was mostly of her training, for she had not travelled so far as her friend had. Mishani carried the bulk of the conversation; Kaiku was eager to hear all about the desert cities.

  'And look at you now!' Kaiku said, plucking at Mishani's sleeve. 'You look like a desert noble yourself!'

  'I will confess a certain fondness for the fashion,' Mishani grinned. Then she sobered and said: 'I have to tell you this, Kaiku: Asara is here.'

  Kaiku's mirth flickered like a guttering candle. 'Asara?' For an instant, she was reliving that moment in the Fold, when she had seduced a man named Saran Ycthys Marul, not knowing that it was Asara in another shape. The sheer betrayal still scorched her. Then her smile returned, a little forced now. 'She can wait. Come, let us walk.'

  They followed a trail around the edge of the lake, a dirt path scattered with worn stones that had mostly sunk into the ground with the passing of centuries. Ravens and jays hopped about the undergrowth, or took off in a startled flap of wings, blasting leaves and twigs in their wake. Most of the foliage in Saramyr was evergreen, but the people held some residual genetic memory of the time when their ancestors dwelt in temperate Quraal, and even more than a thousand years after they had come to this land there was a faintly disjointed feel to the wintertime. A sensation that something should be, and was not. The majority of the trees here never bared themselves, and that jarred with old instincts.

  Kaiku felt happy to be with her friend again. There was an ease between them that nobody else in her life shared. As always, she was surprised that she could forsake that feeling so easily, that she could forget how it was when they were together; and yet she knew that when they were next parted, she would forget anew.

  As they walked, Mishani told Kaiku of her journey back across the mountains.

  'My impression was that the peaks were swarming with Aberrants, but we saw scarcely any, and those at a distance,' she said. 'Even when we got to the plains, and we had to cross the South Tradeway and skirt north of the marshes, our journey was unhindered. I had thought I was fortunate not to have encountered any trouble when I first crossed into the desert, but I am beginning to think that fortune had nothing to do with it.'

  'Our scouts report the same,' Kaiku agreed. 'The Weavers are concentrating their forces in the cities, and fewer of them are roaming the countryside. There is speculation that even they do not have the numbers to stretch adequately across all that territory. They lost hundreds of thousands in the early months of the war, before they learned to fight tactically. Maybe they cannot breed enough, or capture enough – or however they are replenishing their armies – to cover the shortfall.'

  'In that, at least, we can take heart.'

  There was a pause, filled with the soft tread of their shoes and the rustling of the leaves, long enough to elicit a new subject.

  'I read your mother's new book,' Kaiku said.

  'So did I. Several times.'

  'There is something odd about it. About those last lines, especially.'

  Mishani nodded sadly. 'The words Nida-jan says to the dying man? They are the first stanza of a lullaby she used to sing to me, one that she wrote herself. We were the only ones that knew it in its entirety.'

  'I know it,' Kaiku said. 'You sang it to me once, when you were telling me how you discovered Chien was working for your mother.'

  'You remember that?' Mishani asked in surprise. She had not thought of the unfortunate merchant for a long time now. He had been poisoned by her father's assassins during the siege at Zila; but not before Mishani had found out that he had been charged by her mother in secret to protect her from those same assassins.

  Kaiku's lip twitched at the edge. 'She does have a gift for words. It sticks in the mind.' She kicked at a branch that lay across their path. 'After I read those lines, I could not shake the sensation that she meant something by them.'

  'That is plain enough,' said Mishani.

  'So I began to read her earlier books. The ones since her style changed, since your father became Lord Protector. Trying to divine what her intention might be, what she was trying to express.'

  'And did you come to any conclusion?' Mishani was fascinated by this, that her friend should have been thinking along exactly the same lines as her.

  Kaiku tilted her shoulders in a shrug. 'Nothing, beyond a certainty that there is something there. The answers remain impenetrable.'

  Mishani felt a twinge of disappointment. She had hoped her friend might have some kind of resolution for her.

  'Tsata is back,' Kaiku said, apropos of nothing.

  'Here?'

  'In Saramyr. He is coming to Araka Jo with the Tkiurathi.' Kaiku had charged the Sister present at the attack to find out whether Tsata had survived. It had taken several days, for the Tkiurathi had departed from the main army some time before, and the Sister had other things to do; finding someone who remembered one man amid an army of people who looked identical to her eyes was not an easy task. But the answer had come that morning.

  Kaiku had been almost giddy with relief: she had not realised how tautly she was wound until the tension inside her slackened.

  'Strange days indeed,' Mishani said wryly, looking up at Kaiku, who was several inches the taller.

  'Do not use that tone!' Kaiku laughed. 'I know what you insinuate.'

  'He has crossed an ocean to come back to you, Kaiku,' Mishani pointed out.

  'He has crossed an ocean to fight the Weavers,' she replied. 'You know his kind; it was the only logical course of action to him.'

  'I do not know his kind,' said Mishani. 'Their ways are hard for me to understand. Not for you, though, it seems.'

  Kaiku made a prissy little moue at her friend. 'Perhaps I should be the ambassador, then, instead of you.'

  'Ha! You? We would be at open war within the day!'

  And so it went. They meandered along the lakeside in the bright light of the winter's day, and for a time they forgot their cares in the simplicity of companionship. Such moments were all too brief, for both of them. In the Imperial Keep at Axekami, the evening meal was served.

  The Lord Protector Avun tu Koli knelt opposite his wife at the small, square table of black and red lacquer. Between them were woven baskets which steamed gently, separate ones for shellfish, saltrice, dumplings and vegetables. Little bowls of soup and sauces, tall glasses of amber wine. The servants ensured everything was satisfactory and then retreated through the curtained archway, leaving their master and mistress alone.

  They sat in silence for a time. The room, though not so large, seemed cavernous and hollow; the sound of their breathing and their tiny movements were amplified by the empty space. It was not yet late enough to merit lanterns, but the murk over the city choked the sunlight that came in through the trio of floor-to-ceiling window-arches in the western wall and left only a drab gloom. Vases and sculptures were positioned in alcoves, but the central space was open, and only they were there, kneeling on their mats with the table and the food between them.

  'Will you eat?' Avun said eventually.

  Muraki did not respond for a few seconds. Then she began to slip on the finger-cutlery. Avun did the same, and they took food from the baskets and put it onto their plates.

  'Did your writing go well today?' he asked.

  'Well enough,' she replied quietly, an unspoken accusation in her voice.

  'I thought you should get away from that room,' Avun said. 'It is not good for your health, to shut yourself away like that.'

  Muraki glanced up at him through the curtains of her hair, then looked meaningfully out of the window and back to him. Healthier than breathing this air, her gaze said.

  'I am sorry for having interrupted you, then,' he said, pouring a dark sauce over the shellfish, holding the bowl with his unencumbered thumb and forefinger. 'I wanted to have a meal with my wife.'

 
She did not reply to that. Instead, she began to eat, cutting portions with the tiny blades and forks set on silver thimbles that she wore on the middle and ring fingers of her right and left hand, taking small and delicate bites.

  'The feya-kori are on their way back from Zila,' Avun said. He needed to say something to breach his wife's wall of silence. When she did not respond, he persevered: 'The troops of the Empire were driven out with barely any resistance at all. The Weavers are pleased with their new creations; more will join them soon, I think.'

  The quiet became excruciating once again, but Avun had given enough to expect something in return. Eventually, Muraki asked: 'How soon?'

  'A matter of weeks. It is uncertain.'

  'And then?'

  'We will overrun the Southern Prefectures, and after that we will turn to Tchom Rin.'

  'And will you turn their cities into places like this?'

  'I cannot see why the Weavers would do so,' he replied. 'There will be no need for feya-kori once they have control of the continent. And so, there will be no need for this miasma.'

  'Will there be a need for us, do you think?' she asked softly. 'When they have control of the continent?'

  Avun smiled gently. 'I am no fool, Muraki. I do not think they would keep me as Lord Protector out of gratitude. I will be invaluable to them still. The people need a human face upon their leader. They will never trust a Mask.'

  'But they will trust you?'

  'They will trust me because I will give them their skies back,' Avun said. He took a sip of wine. 'I do not want to live under this murk any more than you do; it is unnatural. But the sooner we are rid of the opposition, the sooner we can dispense with the feya-kori and dissemble the pall-pits.'

  'And the temples?'

  Avun was lost for an answer for a moment. His wife had a way of pricking his sorest spots in a tone so submissive that he could not take umbrage. 'The temples will not return. The Weavers do not like our gods.'

  Muraki's silence was more eloquent than words. She knew he still prayed in the dead of night, in the empty interior of the temple to Ocha on the roof of the Keep. The dome still remained in all its finery, though the statues of the gods that had ringed it were gone, and the altars and icons stripped away. It had an appallingly wounded feel to it now, and Muraki would not go near it. But Avun did.

  Muraki wondered how he reconciled his actions to himself: he was not the most pious of men, but he would not forsake his gods, even though he would tear down their temples. Did he expect forgiveness? She knew of no deity so divinely gracious as to provide him with that, after the crimes he had committed against the Golden Realm.

  Avun dodged the subject in the end, returning to his previous point. 'In the end, the world will be as it was. The blight can be contained once the Red Order are overthrown, for the Weavers will not need so many witchstones. The miasma will be gone. And the land will be united once again.'

  'That is what the Weavers say? I had not heard that before now.'

  'I met with Kakre this morning. I persuaded him to divulge. It was not easy.' Avun seemed proud of himself; she had no trouble believing that it was a courageous thing to do. She knew what had happened to him in the past when Kakre was displeased.

  'Why?' she asked, puzzled. 'Why did you do it? You have been content in ignorance until now.'

  He gazed at her levelly. 'Because my wife does not like the air here,' he said. 'And I had to be able to tell her it would be pure again one day.'

  Muraki's eyes flickered to his, and then back to her plate. It was the only outward sign of the flutter she felt in her breast. For a long while, she said nothing.

  'Do you believe them?'

  'It is the only way I can make sense of it. The alternative is to continue to poison the land. To do that would kill their own people, their own army. There is not enough food, and the famine will get worse.'

  'Or perhaps we do not see the Weavers' greater plan,' she whispered, her voice softening with the terror of contradicting him. 'Perhaps Kakre is merely mad.'

  Avun nodded. 'He is mad.'

  Muraki looked at him in surprise.

  'I have been watching his decline most carefully,' Avun said. 'It has steepened since he awakened the feya-kori. I think the effort of controlling them has hit him the hardest. His sanity is eroding fast.' He took a bite of a dumpling, chewed for a moment and swallowed, as if what he was saying was just idle conversation and not something he might be executed for. 'I suspect he would not have told me the Weavers' long-term plans if he had not been quite so addled.'

  'But if the Weave-lord is mad,' Muraki breathed, 'who will direct the Weavers?'

  'That,' he said, raising his glass, 'is the question.'

  TWELVE

  The desert city of Izanzai sprawled over an uneven plateau that rose high above the dusty plains. It was a forest of dark spikes, its buildings cramming up to the lip of the sand-coloured cliffs. Needle-thin towers speared towards the pale sky; bulbous temples tapered to elegant spires as they ascended; bridges looped above the hot, shadowy streets. At its southern edge there was a vast earthen ramp that was the only road up to the top of the plateau, built through years of toil and costing many lives.

  Izanzai commanded an impressive view of its surroundings. To the south and east the plains were gradually swallowed by the deep desert, and in the distance it was possible to see the beginning of the enormous dunes that humped across central Tchom Rin. To the north and west the land was starker still, dry flats and mesas streaked with swatches of muddy yellow and deep brown, then suddenly rising hard, becoming the great barrier of the Tchamil Mountains. The mountains loomed grey and bleak, their sides flensed of life by hurricanes, innumerable peaks ranked one behind the other and stretching to infinity.

  At their feet, men fought and died.

  Barak Reki tu Tanatsua sat on manxthwa-back on the lip of a mesa, overlooking the battle. The warm wind plucked at his hair and clothes and ruffled the pelt of his mount. His eyes were narrowed, studying the form and movement of both sides, calculating strategies. The fight was all but over, and the desert forces were the victors, but he would not count it done until every last one of the enemy were dead. To his right and left, also on manxthwa, were a Sister of the Red Order and Jikiel, his spymaster. Other bodyguards waited at a distance, keen and alert, though they were far from anything that could harm them.

  The latchjaws had arrived in greater numbers than ever this time. Had they come up against the armies of the families of Izanzai alone, they would have crushed them. But the unification of the Baraks had changed things, and with old enmities laid aside, Reki had been able to direct a much larger force to defend the city. The alliance had come not a day too soon, it seemed.

  But the battle had been costly. Those cursed Aberrant beasts were tough to kill, and more often than not they took a few men with them when they went. Unlike the majority of the predator species that the Weavers had deployed thus far, they needed little water or food and were all but immune to the heat. They dealt with shifting sand or hard stone with equal ease; and their deadly natural armour meant that the desert warriors' manic, close-up fighting style was effectively rendered suicidal. Too many were falling to them, snatched up in the mantrap-like jaws that gave them their name. Gods, if he didn't think it impossible, he would have believed that the Weavers had tailored this species for exactly this purpose: to overrun the desert.

  It was impossible, wasn't it?

  'Your men in the mountains have located some of the Nexuses,' the Sister murmured suddenly, relaying the information passed from her companions nearer the battle.

  Reki made a noise of acknowledgement. He could have guessed that anyway. A section of the shambling monstrosities down on the plain had suddenly gone berserk, a sure sign that their masters had been killed. No longer under the control of the Nexuses, they reverted to being animals again, and animals were liable to react badly at finding themselves in the midst of a pitched battle of thousands.

>   'It seems that this day is ours,' Jikiel observed.

  Reki looked askance at his spymaster. 'This day,' he said. 'But how many more can we win?'

  Jikiel nodded gravely. He was old and bald, brown and wrinkled as a nut, with a thin black beard and moustaches hanging in three slender ropes down his chest. He was robed in beige, with a nakata, the hook-tipped sword worn by the warriors of Tchom Rin, belted to his hip. 'Perhaps we should take action against the source,' he suggested.

  'I was thinking the same,' said Reki. 'Each time they come, there are more. We are forced to spread ourselves thin, for the borders of the mountains are vast. By bringing the Baraks together, we have won a respite; but that is all. They will overwhelm us in time.'

  'What are your orders, my Barak?'

  'Assemble as many men as you need. Send them into the mountains. I want to know where these things are coming from.'

  'It shall be done.'

  They watched the battle for a little longer. The Nexuses were falling, and with them went their troops, collapsing into disorder and being shot down by the desert folk. The manxthwa stirred and grumbled, shuffling from side to side and scraping their hooves. The Sister delivered reports from time to time.

  Half of Reki's mind was on the battlefield, but half had drifted elsewhere, to his wife. It always seemed to. She had been gone over a month now, but the anxiety of separation had not faded. He still yearned for her. And he still burned at the way she had left him: without an explanation, with only cryptic hints and emotional blackmail left in her wake. He was furious at himself for letting her go without demanding more. He wondered what she was doing now, what was so important as to take her over seven hundred miles to the west. In the time she had been gone, he had tormented himself with innumerable invented histories; but in the end, how could he guess? What did he really know about Asara's past? She was a mystery to him, as much as she had ever been.

  And yet, was there really anything to fear? Was there anything he could not forgive her for, anything that might stop him loving her? He could not believe that. And he could not bear the torture of possibilities when there were the prospect of certainties that he could deal with and overcome.