The Ascendancy Veil

TWENTY-ONE

Kaiku slid the screen closed on the celebrations throughout Araka Jo and looked across the room at Cailin.

'They are in rare spirits tonight,' Cailin observed.

'They are idiots,' Kaiku said rancourously. 'Like goats, blindly trusting in their herders.'

It was dusk, and the night insects were beginning their discordant chorus in the undergrowth, all but smothered by the cheers and raised voices and fireworks that arced over the rim of the mountains. The house of the Red Order was quiet in comparison. Most of the Sisters were out in the village or up at the temple complex, overseeing the festivities that had erupted at the news of Lucia's return.

'You are angry,' Cailin said.

'Yes,' Kaiku replied. She was not wearing the attire of the Order: she had come here directly after their arrival, having found the folk of the Libera Dramach waiting for them, warned by scouts of their approach.

'About them?' Cailin motioned beyond the screens.

'Among other things,' Kaiku replied.

Cailin was standing, lantern-light falling on one side of her painted face. A table sat against one wall with mats tucked underneath it, but she did not bring it out or invite Kaiku to sit. There was a hostility to her that Cailin did not like.

'They think this is a triumph?' Kaiku snapped. 'They think we return in splendour? We straggle back, only a handful of survivors, and all they care about is that Lucia has returned, and with her she brings some… promise. That is all. No word of elaboration, nothing that might justify all those deaths, Phaeca's death. She will not speak a word of what went on in that forest, except to say that the spirits will aid us when the time comes.'

'She means hope to them,' Cailin replied softly. 'They do not care about the cost. They feared to lose their figurehead. Their saviour. They may be foolish, but they are desperate too. If we had lost her, we would have lost the hearts of the people.' She watched Kaiku suspiciously. 'I am grateful to you, Kaiku. Once again you have excelled yourself. You brought her back alive.'

'I am not certain I care for your gratitude,' Kaiku said.

Cailin descended into icy silence. She would not rise to that. Let Kaiku say what she wanted to say; Cailin would not trouble herself to draw it from her.

'You should not have sent Phaeca with us,' Kaiku said eventually. But her tone was quieter, and Cailin surmised that even this was not the true cause of her ire.

'You should not have agreed to have her along,' Cailin countered. 'I note you did not protest overly at her inclusion.'

'She was too sensitive,' Kaiku murmured. 'It drove her mad. Maybe she would have recovered when we got out of that gods-cursed place. But she should not have been there at all.'

Cailin let this go past. She did not have anything to say to it. None of them had any idea about what the Forest of Xu was like before Lucia and the others had entered. Placing blame was useless. Cailin felt Phaeca's death as keenly as Kaiku did, though for different reasons: she grieved to lose one of her precious Order, Kaiku grieved to lose a friend.

'And Lucia?' she asked. 'How is Lucia?'

'Different,' Kaiku said, pacing restlessly around her side of the room. 'Cold. Taciturn. But since she visited the Xhiang Xhi, she has been clear of mind. She is no longer dreamy or unfocused. If she is unresponsive, it is because she wants to be. I do not know which way I preferred her: they are equally bad.'

The agitation of her body language was increasing. Cailin knew that she would soon come to her point, that she was delaying the moment. She was afraid to speak her mind, perhaps. But Kaiku's nature would drive her thoughts into the open eventually.

'I must know,' she said suddenly. 'The Red Order. I must know.' She stopped pacing, faced Cailin and said bluntly: 'What are we doing?'

'We are saving Saramyr.'

'No!' Kaiku voice was sharp. 'I want the truth! What happens afterwards?'

Cailin's tone was faintly puzzled. 'You know this, Kaiku.'

'Tell me again.'

Cailin studied her for a moment, then turned away from the lantern. 'We take the place that the Weavers have occupied. We become the glue that holds our society together.' She turned her head to meet Kaiku's eyes. 'But there will be no conflict between us. We are not as the Weavers. We would not kill each other at our masters' behest, nor would we use our abilities to assassinate our masters' rivals. We would have no masters.'

'And in such a way could you hold the whole of Saramyr to ransom,' Kaiku said.

Cailin regarded her steadily. 'Is that what you think we will do?'

Kaiku gave a short, humourless laugh. 'What does it matter what I think? The nobles will think that. The Empire cannot be run when its power lies in the hands of the Red Order. Are the nobles to believe that we would act out of charity? That we would dedicate our lives to being their mouthpieces, their messengers? We are not blood-bound to anyone, and hence we can do as we choose. Do you think they would stand that for long?'

'They would have little option,' Cailin said. 'Granted, we would be able to extract certain concessions, but not more than the Weavers took. We do not need lives as the price of our power.'

'No, Cailin. They are too clever to fall for that, and you know they are. That is not security enough. Eventually, their fear of us would make them depose us. And I will wager that whatever plan you have for the Sisterhood is geared towards making that eventuality impossible. Even if it means deposing them first.'

'Your accusations are becoming insulting, Kaiku,' Cailin warned. 'Remember to whom you speak.'

Kaiku shook her head. 'I have heard you talk about how the Sisterhood are higher beings than men. I do not for one instant think that you would willingly be a servant to anyone. You are lying, Cailin. You have an agenda.' She brushed her hair back behind her ear. 'Otherwise, you would not have let the Weavers take the throne. You would not have let Axekami fall into ruin. You would not have let all those people die.'

Cailin was a thin, severe line of black against the blue light of the night that glowed through the paper screens. 'You have been speaking with Asara, I see.'

'No,' said Kaiku. 'I speak to her as little as possible. I have been thinking, though. It is all very obvious if I proceed from the premise that you – like everybody else in this damned world, it seems – are merely out for your own advantage.

'If we had resisted the Weavers at the first, if we had warned the nobles and lent our strength to their cause, they might have stopped all this from happening. But what would we gain? The nobles would have averted a terrible danger, and, once their lesson was learned, they would never let beings such as the Weavers – beings such as us – anywhere near a position of power again. Aberrants would still be Aberrants: despised, outcast and hunted. Lucia would have been executed.

'But what if it were different? What if the Weavers shattered the Empire? What if they were allowed to become a threat so terrible that anything would be preferable to them? What if the only way the Empire could be saved was by an Aberrant empress and by the Red Order? How could they refuse to let us be part of their new world then? Everyone already accepts that Lucia will be Empress if we win this war; and you have been making very certain that she holds you in the highest regard all these years. The Red Order will rise as she does. I imagine that the Red Order would rise even without her now. You have played your hand well.'

Kaiku stared hard at the Pre-Eminent. 'The Weavers had to crush the people so that they would accept us, and we let it happen. Maybe we even helped it along.'

Cailin gave a dismissive flick of her fingers. 'Of course we helped it along. Do you really think the Libera Dramach could ever have resisted the Weavers? Even with Lucia on our side, we would have gone the way of the Ais Maraxa, cut down as soon as we showed ourselves. The high families needed to be united against the Weavers, and that would never happen unless they were under real and direct threat. So yes, we wanted the Weavers to take the throne, no matter how many lives it cost. It was the only way to get the nobles on our side, to make them see what was good for them. Such is the art of politics, and its results are not measured in lives but in who gets to write the history books.'

'So we manipulate them as the Weavers did,' Kaiku said, and lowered her head. 'We are the lesser of two evils, Cailin. But we are still evil.'

Cailin laughed bitterly. 'Evil! What do you know of evil?' Her laughter faded, and her face took on a hateful expression, her voice deepening. 'Evil is a village stoning a seven-harvest child and leaving her for dead in a ditch. Evil is being left to fend for yourself when you are afraid of even going to sleep in case the fires come, wandering from town to town, a slave and later a whore because you have no home, because each time the burning comes you have to run, you have to run into the wilderness and scrabble for roots and starve or the men with knives will come and kill you! Evil is the look in their eyes, those ignorant bastard cattle who populate this land, as they despise you for being Aberrant!' Her voice had risen to a shout, but now it dropped, and was hard with scorn. 'They can despise me, Kaiku. But they will fear me also.'

Kaiku was silent for a long time. The two of them faced each other across the room.

'I will help you destroy the Weavers,' said Kaiku. 'And after that, it is over. I want no part of you or your Order, Cailin. I see now that you are not what I was looking for all this time.'

She slid the screen open and left, shutting it behind her. Cailin stood alone, listening to the celebrations outside. Barak Zahn found his daughter sitting on the roof of a temple.

It was a flat roof, made of white stone. Figures guarded the corners, eroded away to mere lumps; it was otherwise featureless. A stairway led up from beneath. Lucia was sitting inches from the edge, with her arms wrapped around her legs and her knees drawn up to her chin, looking out into the night.

When Zahn emerged and saw his daughter like that, he was momentarily at a loss for what to say. When he did speak, the words came awkwardly.

'The guards below told me I might find you here,' he said, redundantly.

She turned to look at him and smiled over her shoulder. 'Father,' she said. 'Come sit with me.'

Puzzled by this response, which was at odds with the one he had been expecting from the accounts of those who had spoken with her recently, he did as she bade, and settled his rangy frame next to her, dangling his legs over the edge of the roof.

'Everyone is happy tonight,' she said. The lights from the lanterns below were glowing strings in the pale blue of her eye. The dirt paths of the temple complex were bright and stalls were busy. People talked and drank or wandered down the slope on their left, towards the lake. Music drifted up to them from an unseen band.

Not knowing what to say to that, Zahn looked at the moons. Aurus was full in the north, dominating the sky, and Iridima peered out from behind it like a sharp white blister.

'I am glad to see you are recovered,' she said. 'I missed you.' Gods, she was a beautiful creature, so much resembling her mother. It made him proud to think that she was his child.

'Your relatives will have to do better than that to get you from me,' Zahn said, his lips twisting into a grin.

'I have spoken with Oyo,' she said. 'It will not happen again.'

Zahn blinked. 'You did what?'

Lucia gave him an innocent look.

'But you did not even know it was her!' he exclaimed. 'Even I am not certain.'

'I knew,' she said calmly. 'It was obvious.'

'And you accused her? You have only been back a few hours!'

'I did not accuse her,' Lucia said, unfolding her legs and dangling them alongside his. 'I said to her that if you should die in the future, in any manner I found suspicious, I would disown Blood Erinima.'

Zahn was open-mouthed for a moment, then he laughed heartily and shook his head in disbelief. He had never known Lucia to be this assertive. 'Heart's blood, you really are getting to be like your mother. Whatever happened in that forest, it certainly lit a fire in you.'

'Yes,' she said quietly, her eyes drifting to the horizon, to the north, where the Forest of Xu lay beyond the mountains and beneath the moons. 'Yes, it did that.' Asara came to Kaiku's house in the dead of night. Kaiku had known she would. Kaiku was waiting for her.

'Sit down, Asara,' she offered as an invitation, motioning to the mats she had laid in the centre of the room. There was a table next to them, with bitter tea and wine and other spirits, as well as several snacks and small cakes. A proper reception for a guest; something that Kaiku rarely bothered with, if ever, and doubly strange to Asara since she had turned up unannounced. Trebly so, since she was under the impression that Kaiku hated her.

Asara stood just inside the door for a moment, caution evident on her face. Then she knelt on one of the mats, arranging herself elegantly. She had bathed and dressed and reapplied sparse touches of eyeshadow, and she looked perfect, as ever. Kaiku wore a simple black robe of silk belted with gold, her hair damp and raked through with her fingers, as casual as if Asara were her sister and had dropped around for a gossip.

Asara looked frankly uncomfortable as Kaiku offered her tea. She had wine instead. Kaiku had the same, then sat cross-legged on the mat opposite.

'What is all this?' Asara asked.

Kaiku tilted her shoulder in a shrug. 'I felt like it.'

Asara's unease was not abated at all by that.

'I envy you sometimes, Asara,' she said conversationally. 'I envy the way you can change. How you can start again at any time. That is a wonderful gift, I imagine.'

'Are you mocking me?' Asara asked. It was impossible to tell by her tone.

'No,' Kaiku said. 'I mean it.'

'Then you have nothing to envy,' she replied. 'We do not learn from our mistakes. Age lends no wisdom, only removes the enthusiasm for foolishness. You could change yourself a thousand times and you would still dig yourself the same holes to fall into.'

Kaiku's eyes lowered to her glass. 'I was afraid you might say that.' She took a sip.

'Kaiku, are you in some kind of trouble?' Asara could hardly believe that those words had come from her mouth, but there was something in Kaiku's manner that moved her.

Kaiku raised her eyes, and her lashes dislodged a tear from each eye to run unevenly down her cheeks. Asara almost reached across the gap between them to touch her arm in comfort, then stopped herself.

'Everything is falling apart, Asara,' she whispered, her throat tight. 'I cannot hold it together. I cannot hold anything together any more.'

Asara, shocked, could not think of a thing to say.

'I watch my friends die and I am powerless to prevent it,' she said. 'I have been fighting for almost ten years and it has gained me nothing. What good is victory? All I will succeed in is removing the only reason I have had to keep living ever since my family died. I will destroy the Weavers and be left with nothing. Nobody I can trust, nothing I can believe in. Everyone proves false in the end, every ideal is a sham. I am not fighting to make my life better, I am just fighting to stop it becoming worse.'

'This is not like you,' Asara said at last. 'You are stronger than this.'

'Am I not allowed limits?' Kaiku cried. 'Gods, how much am I expected to take before I go the way of Phaeca?'

Asara did not comment on that. She was not sure whether Kaiku blamed her for the death of her friend or not.

Kaiku wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. 'Oh, this is ridiculous,' she murmured to herself. 'I can hardly expect you to care.'

'But I have… contributed to your sorrow,' Asara said, wringing her hands in her lap. 'Forgive me.'

Kaiku shifted herself so that she was kneeling, and she put her arms around Asara and held her closely. Asara, still perturbed by Kaiku's mood, returned the embrace. After a moment, it stopped feeling unnatural.

'I cannot hold you in enmity, Asara,' she said. 'You have been a friend to me, in your way.'

Asara let out a sigh, battling down an emotion that she did not wish to experience again. She held Kaiku for a long while, until she was sure she had herself under control, and then said: 'I will not hurt you again. I promise you that. I am selfish and cruel – more than you know – but I will not hurt you again.'

She heard a sob from Kaiku, and then she drew away; and Asara saw that Kaiku's eyes were red, and not only from weeping.

'It is done,' she said.

Asara's heart jumped a beat. She stared at Kaiku, not daring to believe.

'A small thing,' Kaiku said, 'Some kind of process that was not working as it should. I made it work.' Her face saddened a little. 'There has been too much death in this world. I would take this one chance to bring life. It is all I can do.'

When Asara still appeared stunned, Kaiku sobbed a laugh and wiped her eyes. 'Do not just sit there gaping. You are fertile. Go back to your husband.'

Asara exhaled a shuddering breath, and her eyes filled and spilled over. 'Promise me,' she whispered. 'Promise me you will never tell anyone of this. Of what you have done.'

'You have my promise.'

'I will never forget this, Kaiku,' Asara said tremulously. 'In all the emptiness of this world, you will always have me, for what that is worth to you.'

'It is worth much,' Kaiku said, then reached over and stroked her cheek, wiping a tear across her skin. 'I have never seen you cry,' she said thoughtfully.

Asara caught her hand and held it against her cheek, her eyes fluttering closed. Then she got to her feet and went to the door. She slid it open, looked back, and was gone, closing the door behind her.

An hour later, she had stolen a horse and was riding east, to the Tchamil Mountains and the desert beyond.