‘Chien? Ah, the hostage. I am sorry to say he died the night he was brought out of Zila.’
Mishani’s face showed nothing. She felt no grief for him: he was merely a casualty. What did concern her was that it meant her father’s men were aware she was in Zila, and they would be very close indeed. She had to win Zahn’s trust now, in any way she could. It was imperative that she got out of the town in secret, and the only way she would do that would be under Zahn’s protection.
‘So, will you answer my question?’ he prompted. ‘Why were you in Zila?’
‘Misfortune,’ she said. ‘I was waylaid as I travelled to find you. Although it seems the gods have brought us together anyway.’
‘That is too convenient,’ he said. His tone had become a lot less polite now. ‘You know that your being here is enough to have you beheaded. And you certainly were not a prisoner; you were found with the leader of the Ais Maraxa.’
Mishani had feared this. If she had been able to meet him at Lalyara, then his suspicions would not have been aroused; but circumstances had forced her into a position in which any play she made would seem like bargaining for her life.
‘You are correct,’ she said. ‘I was brought here against my will, but they did not keep me as a prisoner. I am something of a heroine to their cause because I helped to save your daughter. It does not mean I endorse it.’
‘Stop these lies!’ Zahn cried suddenly, grabbing the pattern-board and tipping the cradle. It hit the floor and smashed into coloured shards. ‘Lucia tu Erinima died five years ago and more. Her father was Durun tu Batik. I do not know what leverage you think you have over me, Mistress Mishani, but you are sorely misguided if you believe you will win your freedom by trying to resurrect a ghost.’
Mishani’s triumph did not show on her face, but she knew she had the advantage now. A man such as Zahn did not abandon his dignity easily; his skills at negotiation had kept Blood Ikati a major player in the courts, and his display of rage showed how sensitive the subject of Lucia was to him.
‘You could have me executed,’ Mishani said, her voice cold. ‘But then you will only learn that I was telling the truth when the Weavers kill your daughter. Could you live with that, Zahn? You have not been living with it well these past years.’
‘Heart’s blood, you do not know when to stop!’ Zahn cried. ‘I will not hear any more of this!’
He was heading for the curtained doorway when Mishani spoke again.
‘Zaelis tu Unterlyn was there on the day you met your daughter,’ she snapped, her voice rising. ‘It was he who organised the kidnapping of Lucia. On the very day that Blood Batik overthrew Blood Erinima, we stole the child and hid her. No corpse was ever found because there was no corpse, Zahn! Lucia is alive!’
Zahn’s shoulders were hunched, his hand on the curtain. She had not wanted to bring the leader of the Libera Dramach’s name into this, but matters were too critical. She could not let him leave.
He turned back to her, and his face was suddenly haggard again.
‘You know you believe me,’ she said. A sudden rush of lightheadedness took her, but she fought against it. It was stiflingly hot; she did not know how much longer she could go without sitting down.
‘I cannot believe you,’ Zahn croaked. ‘Do you understand?’ He knew how clever Mishani could be, he knew the ways of the court, and though he wanted more than anything to think that Lucia could be alive, he would not be manipulated. He was no friend to Blood Koli, and he had no reason to trust one of them. He would not lose his daughter again, by allowing himself to think he might regain her and then to discover it was a bluff. He could not go through that. He had been numb so long that it had become a shield against the world, and when it came to the moment, he found that he was afraid to discard it.
He turned to go again. This kind of torment could not be borne.
‘Wait,’ Mishani said. ‘I can prove it.’
Zahn had almost dreaded to hear those words.
‘How?’ he said, his head bowed.
‘Xejen will be interrogated,’ she said. ‘You must attend.’
‘What good will that do?’
‘He knows where she is, as I do. Sooner or later, we will talk. The Weaver will try to keep it secret; he will try to obtain the information for his kind alone. He will scour Xejen’s mind and then decide what to tell you. You must not let him. Make him share what he learns as he learns it. Have him make Xejen speak only the truth, and ask Xejen yourself. The Weaver cannot refuse you if you order him.’
Zahn was silent, his back to her. Mishani knew that this was a desperate play, but it was all she had. The lives of thousands depended on her. If she was unable to prevent the Weavers finding the Fold, then at least with Zahn on her side she might be able to get them a warning in time to do something about it. It was a slim chance, but better than none at all.
‘You will learn the truth at the same time as you condemn her to death,’ Mishani said. ‘But if I cannot persuade you to stop this, then that must be the price we all pay. If you will not believe what your heart knows, then you will hear your daughter’s name on the lips of a Weaver.’
‘Pray that I do,’ Zahn replied. ‘For if not, I will be back, and I will have you killed.’
‘I pray that you do not,’ Mishani said. ‘For I would give my life in exchange for all those who will die to convince you.’
Xejen tu Imotu thought that his story was over when the ceiling came down on him, but he regained consciousness to find that there was an epilogue, and it was full of agony.
He woke on a bed in the donjon of the keep, and woke screaming. The pain from his shattered legs propelled him out of oblivion, an idiot, senseless roar of breathtaking brutality. His trousers had been cut away above the knee. His legs were massive and blue-purple, obese with swelling and the terrible bruising of drastic trauma. Both of them kinked unnaturally in several places. No attempt had been made to set them, and the snapped ends of bone made bulges against the blotched skin.
He screamed again, and screamed until his throat was raw. At some point, he blacked out.
When he awoke again, it was to a new horror.
He felt himself pulled into awareness, his mind hooked like a fish and dragged out of the protective cocoon where it sheltered from the inconceivable pain. His eyes flickered open. Afternoon light misted in through the dusty air from a barred window high on one wall, scattering across his ruined legs and the bare stone cell. Figures surrounded him, but one leaned closer than the others. A Mask of angles, sharp cheeks and jutting ridges of chin and forehead, some of gold and some of silver and others of bronze; a mountainous metal landscape, crafted by a master Edgefather, surrounding the dark, black pits of the eyes.
A Weaver.
He sucked in a breath to shriek, but a pale, withered hand passed over him, and his throat locked.
‘Be silent,’ hissed the voice behind the Mask.
There were two others here. He recognised the Baraks: Zahn, tall and rangy and gaunt; Moshito, stocky and bald and grim-faced. They looked down on him pitilessly.
‘You are Xejen tu Imoto?’ Moshito asked. Xejen nodded mutely, his eyes tearing. ‘Leader of the Ais Maraxa?’ He nodded again.
Zahn shifted his gaze to the Weaver. This one was in the employ of Blood Vinaxis, a particularly vicious and sadistic monster if Moshito’s accounts were to be believed. His name was Fahrekh. Zahn’s own Weaver he had left back at his estates at the disposal of his family; he detested Weavers, especially since he suspected that the last Weave-lord, Vyrrch, had been responsible for the coup in which Lucia had disappeared.
He caught himself. Already he was amending his beliefs to suit Mishani. In which Lucia had died, he forced himself to think. Blood Koli was an enemy, Mishani was an enemy, and however they might have learned of his weakness, he would not let her exploit it.
But gods, what if she was telling the truth? If Xejen talked, then neither the Weavers nor the Emperor would rest until Lucia was hun
ted down. Was there any way to stop this? Was there?
He bit down on his lip. Idiocy. Foolishness.
Lucia was dead.
‘Are you sure he will do as you told him?’ Zahn asked Moshito, motioning at the bent and hooded figure crouching over the bed.
‘I have heard my Barak’s command,’ Fahrekh said, with a curl of disdain in his voice. ‘Nothing will be hidden. You will ask him your questions. I will ensure he answers and speaks true.’
Xejen’s eyes roved from one to the other in alarm.
‘It is as he says, Zahn,’ Moshito replied. ‘What’s got you so suspicious?’
‘Weavers always make me suspicious,’ Zahn replied, trying to keep the uncertainty and indecision out of his voice. Yet he wondered whether the Weaver might not simply scour Xejen’s mind in secret and take what he wanted, and whether there was any way they could tell. Heart’s blood, how had it fallen this way: that the only method he had to prove Mishani right would also put that same knowledge in the hands of those who would desire Lucia’s death?
It came down to a matter of faith. Could he believe Mishani? Could he believe his daughter was alive? Once, perhaps. But his faith had died along with the other parts of his soul, and he had to know. Belief was not enough. He had to know.
‘Begin,’ said Moshito.
Fahrekh turned his gleaming face slowly toward the broken figure on the bed, the afternoon light skipping from plane to plane in triangles of brightness.
‘Yes, my Barak,’ he muttered.
As the Weaver bored into his thoughts and will like a weevil into the bole of a tree, Xejen found his throat free to scream again. Fahrekh found that he worked better when his victims were responsive.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The science of predicting the orbits of the three moons was ancient. Though moonstorms came at apparently random intervals, over hundreds of years it was possible to see a pattern of unwavering regularity. Astronomers could now tell almost exactly when the three moons would be in close enough proximity to spark a moonstorm. Navigators relied heavily on their ability to plot the course of the moons so that they could assess what effect each would have on the world’s tides. Though it was only the learned who knew just when a moonstorm would hit, usually rumours carried far enough among the peasantry to make almost everyone aware of it.
None of which was any help to Kaiku and Tsata, who were out in the open when the moonstorm struck.
There had been developments since the night when they had narrowly escaped the ghaureg, and all thoughts of turning back for home had been cast aside. Though they had previously abandoned any hope of catching or killing one of the Nexuses, they had resolved to observe the flood plain and see if any more information could be gained about the foul, seething building that crouched near the banks of the Zan. They kept themselves at a distance, where the sentries were sparse enough to avoid. Getting close to the plain was impossible now, for it was too well guarded.
Kaiku’s determination to stay was rewarded sooner than she thought. The very next night, the barges began to arrive.
She had theorised that the river must have been the method for getting all these Aberrants here in the first place, and that they must be transporting food from the north which they had stockpiled in the strange building for their army of predators. Kaiku and Tsata had witnessed several mass feedings, in which great piles of meat were brought out on carts driven by the same docile midget-folk that had served the Weavers at the monastery on Fo. She called them golneri, meaning ‘small people’ in a Saramyrrhic mode usually applied to children. She should have expected that they would be here: the Weavers were notoriously incapable of looking after themselves, afflicted as they were by a gradually increasing insanity as a result of using their Masks.
Still, for all that, they had never seen any evidence of river travel until now; but when the barges arrived, it was in a multitude.
They had appeared during the day, so when Kaiku and Tsata breached the barrier that night they found them already waiting. They crowded the banks of the river on either side, a clutter of more than three dozen massive craft along the edge of the flood plain. For two nights a steady stream of carts went back and forth in the moonlight and the golneri swarmed to unload great bales and boxes. Suddenly the Weavers’ apparently random barge-buying enterprises over the last five years made sense: they had been moving the Aberrant predators along the rivers, gathering them together, assembling their forces. Kaiku wondered what kind of influence the Weavers had over the barge-masters that walked the decks, to trust them with the knowledge of this secret army. It had to be something more than money.
On the third night, the boarding began.
The initial shock at finding the flood plain half-empty when they arrived just after dusk was quickly surmounted by what was happening on the river. The Aberrants were being herded up wide gangplanks into the holds of the fatbellied barges, a steady stream of muscle and tooth parading meekly onto the cargo decks under the watchful eyes of the Nexuses. There were so many barges that they could not all berth along the bank at once, and they queued northward to receive their allocation of the monstrosities, and headed upstream when they were done. It seemed that the barrier of misdirection did not cover the river; but then, nobody came this far down the Zan anyway, for the great falls were just to the south and no river traffic could pass that. Kaiku and Tsata watched in amazement at the sheer scale of the logistical maneouvring.
‘They are on the move,’ Tsata said, his pale green eyes shining in the moonlight.
‘But where are they moving to?’ Kaiku asked herself.
As dawn broke, and the last of the barges departed, Kaiku and Tsata retreated beyond the barrier to rest; but sleep would not come easily that day, and they spent their time restlessly chewing over the implications, and whether they should risk warning Cailin via the Weave. This was what they had remained behind for: to raise the alarm if the Weavers should make a move towards the Fold. But the barges were not heading that way. They were going towards Axekami, and from there they could travel to any point along the Jabaza, the Kerryn or the Rahn.
Tsata pointed out that it was possible they could re-enter the Xarana Fault via the latter river. The Fold was only a dozen miles or so to the west of the Rahn. But Kaiku did not dare to send word unless it was absolutely necessary, and they did not know enough of where those barges were going.
Eventually, they agreed that they would stay two more nights. If no other information had come to light by then, they would head east for a day to get as far from the Weavers as they might, and Kaiku would send her message. What perils that would bring, she had no idea. Perhaps the Weavers would not notice her at all, and Cailin’s edict against distance communication was simply her being overcautious. Or perhaps it would be like a waterfowl trying to sneak through a roomful of foxes.
The next night brought the moonstorm.
It was because they had been out of contact with the world for so long, existing in their own little society of two, that they did not expect it. They had crossed the Zan and were watching from a bluff on the western side, where the sentries were much fewer. There, the high ground reached like fingers towards the edge of the river, cutting off suddenly in sheer cliffs as it came to the water. Wide open-ended valleys lay between the cliffs, nuzzling gently against the banks. Kaiku and Tsata had hidden themselves in a brake of blighted undergrowth that fringed a tall promontory, and were lying on their bellies watching the inactivity below through Nomoru’s spyglass. She had reluctantly consented to leave it with them in amid sullen threats as to what would happen if they did not bring it back intact.
The moons had risen from different horizons – Aurus in the north, Iridima in the west, and Neryn from the southwest – so that there was no warning until they had almost converged, directly overhead.
Kaiku felt the sharpening in the air first, the strange plucking sensation as if they were being gently lifted. She looked at Tsata, and the golden-skinned man
with his green tattoos looked corpselike and unearthly in the moonlight. The rustling of the tough bushes in which they sheltered seemed a rasping whisper. Her senses tautened, picking up a sensation of unseen movement like rats in the walls of a house.
She looked up, and felt a thrill of alarm as she saw the three orbs, all half-shadowed at a diagonal angle across their faces, crowding towards each other in the sky. Clouds were boiling out of nowhere, churning and writhing under the influence of the muddled gravities.
‘Spirits,’ she muttered, glaring down at the plain. ‘We need to get to shelter.’
They barely made it.
The moonstorm began with a calamitous shriek just as they found the shelter they were searching for. It was a deep and wide shelf in a hulking accretion of limestone, with a broad overhang for a ceiling, as if some enormous beast had taken a bite out of the smooth side of the rock. The bottom sloped up towards the top so that it narrowed as it went further in, but even at the back there was enough space for Kaiku and Tsata to huddle under, he cross-legged, she with her arms around her knees.
The rain followed that first unearthly cry, coming down all at once, and suddenly the previously quiet night was a wet roar of pummelling rain, bowing the gnarled stalks of the blighted foliage and spattering furiously against unyielding stone. Kaiku and Tsata found that they were quite dry in their little haven. Though the lip of the shelf became quickly soaked, they were well clear of the storm’s reach.
Tsata broke out some cold smoked meat and split it with Kaiku, as he always did, and for a time they sat in silence, watching the rain and listening to the saw and scrape of the sky tearing itself to pieces. The desolate scene flickered purple in the backwash of the eerie lightning that attended the phenomenon.
Kaiku felt uneasy. Moonstorms had always frightened her, even as a child; but events in her past had rendered them heavy with bad memories. Her family had died in a moonstorm, poisoned by her own father to save them from what the Weavers would do to them. And both that moonstorm and the subsequent one had seen her fleeing for her life from the shin-shin, the demons of shadow that the Weavers had sent to claim first her and then Lucia.