She looked over at the couches and the table he had indicated. There was a lach pitcher there on a silver tray, and several goblets of silver and glass, etched with swirling patterns. A selection of small cakes were arranged around the pitcher. ‘You already have wine,’ she said. ‘Might we share it?’
Reki felt the heat rising in his face again. There were always refreshments at his table; it was a courtesy provided to him as an important guest. The servants periodically replaced the pitcher to keep it cool, even though he never touched it. He had found it vaguely irritating to begin with, but he felt it would be rude to ask them to stop bringing it. He had got so used to their unobtrusive visits by now that he had quite forgotten the wine was there.
‘Of course,’ he said.
She arranged herself on the couch, lying sideways with her legs folded and tucked underneath her. Reki sat on another, awkwardly. The simple presence of this woman was excruciating.
‘Shall I pour?’ she asked.
He made an indication that she should do so; he did not trust his tongue.
She gave another flicker of a smile and picked up the pitcher. Her eyes on the wine as she tipped it, she said: ‘You seem nervous, Reki.’
‘Does it show so much?’ he managed.
‘Oh yes,’ she replied. She offered him a glass of the delicate amber liquid. ‘But that is why Yoru gave us wine. To smooth the edges of a moment.’
‘Perhaps you had better hand me the pitcher, then,’ Reki said, and to his delight she laughed. The sound ignited a bloom of warmth in his chest.
‘One glass at a time, I think,’ she said, then sipped her drink, regarding him seductively.
For Reki, the momentary pause seemed an endless silence, and he struggled to fill it. ‘You mentioned that you knew Eszel . . .’ he prompted.
She relaxed back into the couch. ‘A little. I know a lot of people.’ She was not making this easy for him. She seemed, in fact, to be enjoying his discomfort. Just being this near her was making his groin stir, and he had to adjust himself so that it would not show.
‘Why have you come to see me?’ he asked, and then inwardly winced as he realised how blunt it sounded. He took a swallow of wine to cover it.
She did not appear to be offended. ‘Ziazthan Ri. The Pearl Of The Water God.’
Reki was confused. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Eszel told me that you had read it, and that you gave him a very accomplished recitation of the story.’ She leaned forward a little, her eyes bright. ‘Is that true?’
‘I memorised it,’ Reki said. ‘It is only short. The accomplishment was the author’s, not mine.’
‘Ah, but it is the passion of the speaker, the understanding of verse and melody, that can bring the heart from a story read aloud.’ She looked at him with something like wonderment. ‘Have you really memorised it? I suspect it is not as short as you pretend. You must have an exceptional recollection.’
‘Only for words,’ Reki said, feeling that he was coming uncomfortably close to bragging.
‘I would be very interested to hear it,’ she purred. ‘If you would recite it to me, I would be very grateful.’
The tone in her voice forced Reki to shift position again to conceal his gathering ardour. He was blushing furiously now, and for a moment he could not think of anything to say.
‘Let me explain,’ she said. ‘I subscribe to the philosophy of Huika: that everything should be experienced once in the interests of a completeness of being. I have spent fortunes for a glimpse of the rarest paintings; I have travelled long and far to see the wonders of the Near World; I have learned many arts unknown to the land at large.’
‘But you are so young to have done so much . . .’ Reki said. It was true; she could not have been more than twenty harvests, only a little older than him.
‘Not so young,’ she said, though she sounded pleased. ‘As I was saying, I met Eszel before he left the Imperial Keep, and he told me about you.’ She leaned over, reached out and stroked her hand lightly down his face, whispered: ‘Ziazthan Ri’s masterwork inside your head.’ Then she let him go, and he realised he had been holding his breath. ‘There are so few copies in existence, so few uncorrupted versions of the story. There is little I would not do to experience something so rare.’
‘My father possesses a copy,’ Reki said, feeling the need to say something, ‘in his library.’
‘Will you recite it to me?’ she said, slipping off the couch and getting up.
‘Of . . . of course,’ he said, furiously trying to summon it to mind. His memory seemed to have become jumbled. ‘Now?’
‘Afterwards,’ she said; and she put out her hands for him to take, and lifted him to his feet.
‘Afterwards?’ he repeated tremulously.
She pressed herself gently against him, one finger tracing the line of the scar on his eye. The softness of her breasts and body make his erection painful. He felt drunk, but it was nothing to do with the wine.
‘I believe in a fair trade,’ she said. Her lips were close enough to his so that he had to resist the almost magnetic pull of her. Her breath was scented, like oasis flowers. ‘An experience for an experience.’ Her hand slipped to the brooch at her shoulder, and she twisted it; her robe fell away like a veil. ‘Unlike any you have ever had before.’
Reki’s heart was pounding in his chest. A voice was warning him to caution, but it went unheeded. ‘I do not even know your name,’ he whispered.
She told him just before her mouth closed on his.
‘Asara.’
The man screamed as the knife slipped under the warm skin of his cheek, slicing through the thin layer of subcutaneous fat to the wet red landscape of muscle beneath. Weave-lord Kakre rode the swell of the scream like an expert, angling the blade to account for the distortion in his victim’s face. He sheared upward to the level of the eye socket, then cut towards the back of the skull, gliding through the soft tissue until a bloody triangular flap peeled away. At the sight, he felt a deep peace, a fulfilment that never seemed to wane no matter how many times he sated himself. The post-Weaving mania was upon him, and he was skinning again.
His skinning chamber was windowless, hot and gloomy, lit only by the coals of the fire-pit in the centre of the room. Underlit in the red glow were his other creations, arranged on the walls or hanging on chains in the heights: kites and sculptures of skin gazing at him from empty eyes, watching him at his craft. His latest victim was placed on the iron rack which was his canvas, tilted upright in a spread eagle. This particular piece he had been carving since dawn, and now it was a patchwork, a frame of muscle with jigsaw skin and half the pieces missing.
Kakre felt inspired today. He did not know if he would get a kite out of this one or if it would simply be therapeutic, but the joy of cutting rendered it immaterial. It had been too long since he had worked at his art, too long; but the rigours of his Weaving had lately increased, and his appetite had increased with it.
He realised that he had been standing admiring the flap of skin he had peeled for some time, and in that time the man had fainted again. Kakre felt a pang of annoyance. He was usually so good at keeping his victims awake, with herbs and poultices and infusions. His knifework was shoddy as well, he noticed suddenly. He glared at his withered, white hand. His joints pained him constantly. Could that be a contributing factor? Was he losing his skill with a blade?
It was an idea too horrible to contemplate. Even though, distantly, he knew that his Mask was eating him from the inside as it had eaten its previous owners, the actual implications of that had never occurred to him. How strange, that a mind as sharp as his might miss something as obvious as that.
A moment later, he had forgotten about it again.
He put his bloodied blade listlessly on a platter with all his other instruments, and wandered to the edge of the fire-pit before easing himself into a sitting position. As always, he was planning.
Already the deceptions were being drawn. Blood Ke
restyn and Blood Koli were gathering a formidable army, but it was not formidable enough to challenge the might of Axekami yet. In a few more years, maybe. But in those years, the source of the blight might be discovered by the people at large. He had heard of rumours, extremely accurate rumours, that were being repeated quietly in the courts of the high families. They worried him. Soon the famine would bring the country to the point of total desperation, and those rumours might be enough to make the high families turn their wrath from Mos onto the Weavers.
He did not have time to wait. Therefore, Kakre intended to tempt Mos’s enemies closer.
His overtures to Barak Avun tu Koli had been well received; but Avun was a treacherous snake, as likely to bite the one who handled him as the one he was set upon. Had Avun believed him? And could he convince Grigi tu Kerestyn to believe him as well?
You must strike when I say! he thought. Or this will all be for nothing.
More distressing than that, though, was a message that had come from the Imperial Keep itself, one sent by courier that he had failed to intercept. He was not sure who had sent it, but he knew Avun had received it, and he was anxious to know what it said. Another doublecross? But who was making deals behind his back?
It worried at Kakre’s mind even as he worried at the Blood Emperor’s.
At night, when Mos fell into a drunken sleep, Kakre wove dreams for him. Dreams of infidelity and anger, dreams of impotence and fury. Dreams calculated to tip him in the direction Kakre needed him to go. It was a dreadful risk, for if Mos began to suspect him, all would be lost. Even the best Weavers could be clumsy – he thought of his aching joints, and wondered if his skill in the Weave had suffered also – and they might leave traces of themselves behind that would fester, until the victim eventually realised what had been done to them. If Mos were not drinking too much and already beleaguered with stress, Kakre might not have dared it; but the Blood Emperor had become unbalanced long before the Weave-lord had begun to interfere with his mind.
Lies, deceit, treachery. And only the Weavers matter.
He sat in his ragged robes of badly-sewn hide and fur and little pieces of bone, rolling that phrase around in his head. Only the Weavers mattered. Only the continuation of their work. And it was Kakre’s job – no, his calling – to manipulate this crisis to ensure their survival. There was only one way out of it that he could see, but it required a game to be played so skilfully, so subtly, that the slightest miscalculation could mean disaster.
The pieces were in place. But the board was anyone’s yet.
TWENTY-ONE
The besieged town of Zila sat grim and cold in the twilight, a crooked crown atop a lopsided hill. Hundreds of yellow lights burned in the narrow windows of its buildings, gathering up towards the keep at its tip. To the north, where the hill was viciously steep, the Zan was a black, restless torrent, dim fins of drab lime glinting on its surface. Neryn had taken early station high in the sky tonight, even before the stars had begun to show; she commanded the scene alone, bathing it in funereal green.
The soldiers ringed the town, just out of bowshot and firecannon range, which was some considerable distance. Seven thousand men, all told, representing four of the high families. Tents were being erected and mortars assembled. Campfires dotted the dark swathe of the siege-line like jewellery. Fire-cannons of their own had been set up on either side of the Zan where the ring cut across it, to prevent any attempt to escape by water either upstream or down. The absence of any visible boats at the docks did not concern them. They were taking no chances. Nobody was getting out.
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 h
ad 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.’