The Ascendancy Veil

FIVE

Nuki's eye was rising in the east as the barge lumbered downstream, following the river Kerryn towards Axekami. Paddle-wheels churned the water, driven by the groaning and clanking mechanism deep in the swollen belly of the craft. Vents on either side seethed a heavy black smoke that tattered and dispersed in oily trails. Once, there had been wheelmen to drive the paddles, swart and muscular folk who would labour below decks during those times when the barge headed against the flow or when the current was not strong enough to carry it. But their day was passing; many of the vessels that plied the three rivers out of Axekami had replaced the wheelmen with contraptions of oil and brass, pistons and gears.

Kaiku stood on the foredeck, the morning wind stirring her hair, watching the land slide by with a sickened heart. She was no longer dressed in the attire of the Red Order; her clothes were simpler now, unflattering and tough, made for travelling in. Her face was clean of the Sisters' paint. The cares of the past decade had not seamed her skin, though they told in the bleakness of her gaze sometimes. And it was bleak now.

The world had lost its colour. The plains that stretched away to the horizon on either side were not the sun-washed yellow-green she remembered. Even in the pale light of the dawn, she could see that they had been drained of something, some indefinable element of life and growth. Now they were doleful, and the occasional trees that grew in copses seemed isolated in a dull emptiness. Even the hue of the river water was unsettlingly altered to her eyes: once a blue so deep it was almost purple, it now seemed greyer, its vigour robbed. In days gone by birds would have circled the barge and settled in its rigging in the vain hope that it was a fishing vessel; but here there was not a bird to be seen.

This is how it begins, she thought. The slow death of our homeland. And we do not have the strength to prevent it.

She looked to the west, along the river, and there she saw a dim smear on the horizon and realised what it must be. She had heard the tales from their spies and from the refugees who had made it to the Prefectures from the Weaver-held territories. But nothing could prepare her for the sight of what Axekami had become.

The once-glorious city was a louring fortress, shadowed under a gloomy veil of fumes. The great walls bristled with fire-cannons, and other devices of war which Kaiku had never seen before. A huge metal watchtower squatted outside the south-east gate, dominating the road and the river alike. Scaffolding and half-constructed buildings patched the exterior of the capital. Kaiku remembered how she had been thrilled as a child to see this place, the wonder of their civilisation, the cradle of thought and art and politics. She was appalled to find it turned so, a forbidding stronghold steeped in a dark miasma that drifted slowly up to sully the sky.

The shanties of the river nomads on the approach to the city proper were deserted, their stilt huts empty. The nomads were gone. No longer would they crowd the banks and squint suspiciously at the barges passing by, no longer would they sew or string beads or pole out into the river for fish. The roofs of their huts were collapsing, crushed by the slow grip of entropy, and the supports on their rotting jetties tilted as they sunk into the mud. The clatter and growl of the barge's mechanisms disappeared into the silence as it slid by.

'What's been done to this place?' murmured Phaeca, who had joined her on the foredeck while she had been lost in reverie.

Kaiku glanced at her companion, but did not reply. She always found it strange to see Phaeca bereft of the accoutrements of the Order. Perhaps it was because she was more used to seeing her with the make-up than without it, but Kaiku thought it suited her better when she was painted. It shifted the emphasis of her face favourably; when it was not there, she looked too thin, and forfeited some of her mystery and character. Still, what she lost she more than regained through her natural style. She had grown up in the River District of Axekami, and had a flamboyancy about her that Kaiku faintly envied. Her hair was always a masterpiece, her deep red locks twisted through elaborate arrangements of hair ornaments, here hanging in a tress, there coiled or bunched or teased into a curl. Her clothes were outrageous in comparison to Kaiku's, and though she had toned herself down today so as not to attract too much attention in the city, she still trod the thin line between elegance and gaudiness that characterised the fashions of the River District.

'Where is Nomoru?' Kaiku asked distractedly.

Phaeca made a noise that indicated she did not really care. Nomoru had, predictably, failed to endear herself to the Sister on their long journey from the Southern Prefectures. Even Phaeca, who was the soul of tolerance, had grown to dislike the scout's unremitting rudeness.

'Be aware,' Kaiku said after a time. 'The Weavers may be searching. Do not let your guard rest until we are out of the city again.' She looked again at the grim cloud seeping upward from the city and felt nausea roll in her stomach. 'And do not use your kana if you can possibly help it, except to hide yourself from their attention. It will draw them down onto us.'

'You're nervous, Kaiku,' Phaeca smiled. 'There's no need to remind me what to do; I know well enough.'

Kaiku gave her an apologetic look. Phaeca's ability to see through people was second only to Lucia's; she had an extraordinary talent for empathy. 'Of course I am nervous. What kind of fool would I be if I was not?'

'The kind of fool who volunteered for the mission in the first place,' Phaeca said dryly. Kaiku could not muster the humour to laugh. Her spirits had been too depressed by the ghastly shape of the unfamiliar city that loomed up before them.

The enormous stone prayer arch that had straddled the gate where the Kerryn flowed into the city was chiselled blank, the blessings gone. The grumbling, fuming barge took them steadily towards it. Kaiku feared to think what would be beyond that smooth maw, what she would find when they were swallowed.

If it had been a matter of preference, she would not have set foot on the barge at all. But the roads were carefully guarded by Weavers, and it was easier to slip into the city undetected at a crowded dock, so they had left their horses in a small town on the south bank of the Kerryn and taken this route. She despised every moment she spent aboard this craft with its mechanical core. It was a Weaver contraption, and Weavers created with no thought for consequence. She watched the greasy smoke venting from the barge with flat and desolate eyes.

Yet even they are not the real enemy, Kaiku reminded herself, only puppets of a greater master.

'Kaiku,' Phaeca murmured suddenly, a warning in her tone. 'Weavers.'

She had already sensed them, their consciousnesses purposeful as sharks, slipping beneath the surface of the world. They were hunting for Sisters, seeking any disturbance in the Weave that might indicate the presence of their most dangerous foes. The chances were slim that Kaiku and Phaeca would be noticed, but it was never wise to rely on chance. The Weavers' abilities had been unpredictable of late. Each witch-stone they awakened increased their powers, and they had surprised the Red Order more than once. The feya-kori were only the latest example of that.

Phaeca and Kaiku sewed themselves into the Weave, blending with the background, becoming as inert to the Weavers' perception as the boards of the deck beneath their feet. Such a technique was second nature to them, and required only a small amount of concentration and a minuscule exertion, not enough even to trigger the darkening of the irises that came as a side-effect of kana usage. They stood together as the Weavers passed over them, unseeing, and faded away to search elsewhere.

The barge slid beneath the desecrated arch and into the city proper, and Kaiku felt her chest squeeze tight in anguish at the sight.

Axekami had withered. Where once the sun had beat down on thronging thoroughfares, on gardens and mosaic-addled plazas, on shining temple domes and imposing galleries and bathhouses, now it filtered onto a place that Kaiku would not have thought was the same city had it not been for the familiar layout of the streets. A funereal gloom hung over the scene, a product of something deeper than the smoke that shrouded Nuki's eye. It exuded from the buildings themselves, from their shuttered windows and discoloured walls: a sense of exhaustion, of resignation, of defeat. It bore down on the Sisters like a weight.

The temples had gone. Kaiku searched for them, seeking out points of recognition from long ago, and found that where once the gaudiest and grandest buildings had stood there were strange carapaces of metal, humped monstrosities that sprouted pipes and vast cogs and vents seeping fumes. As her gaze travelled up the hill to their right towards the Imperial Keep at the top, she saw that the stone and gold prayer gate which had once marked the entrance to the Imperial Quarter had been pulled down. Even the small shrines in the doorways of the riverside houses were gone, the wind-chimes taken away. Without the religious clutter that adorned their facades, they seemed hollow and abandoned.

To their left, the archipelago of the River District was a shell of its former brightness and vivacity. Kaiku heard Phaeca suck her breath over her teeth at the sight of what her home had become. The great temple of Panazu had been destroyed and left to ruin. The cathouses and narcotic dens were empty, and those few people who walked its narrow paths or poled boats between the splintered islands were drab and went with their eyes lowered. The bizarre and whimsical architecture of the houses had not changed, but now it seemed foolish rather than impressive, a folly like an old man's last, sad snatch at youth.

Kaiku heard the catch in Phaeca's throat as she spoke. 'I think I'll go and change,' she murmured. 'Even this dress is too much for a city so dour.'

Kaiku nodded. It was a wise enough decision, but she suspected it was really an excuse to retreat and compose herself. Phaeca's sensitivity to emotions was a double-edged sword, and she was undoubtedly feeling the oppressiveness of this place far more than Kaiku was. She departed hastily.

'Find Nomoru,' Kaiku said absently after her, and Phaeca made a noise in acknowledgement before she was gone.

By the time they reached the docks, the fug in the air was thick enough so that it was palpably unhealthy to breathe, and Kaiku felt dirty just standing in it. The streets were crowded around the warehouses. Barges and smaller craft unloaded at piers amid the hollering of foremen; carts and drays pulled by manxthwa creaked by, heaped with netted crates and barrels; merchants argued and haggled; scrawny cats wound in and out of the chaos in the hope of spying a rat or two. But for all the industry, there was no laughter, no raucousness: cries were limited to instructions and orders, and the men worked doggedly with their attention on what they were doing. Heads down, concentrating only on getting through their tasks, as if existence was an obstacle they had to surmount daily. They were simply enduring.

Nomoru joined them as they disembarked. There were formalities: a passenger register to be signed with false names, faked papers of identification to be shown, a search for weapons. An officer of the Blackguard asked them their business, and reminded them of several rules and regulations that they were to abide by: no private gatherings of more than five people, no icons or symbols of a religious nature to be displayed, a sunset curfew. Phaeca and Kaiku listened politely, half their attention on shielding themselves from the Weavers who lurked nearby and monitored the docks. Nomoru looked bored.

They found their contact in the Poor Quarter as arranged. Nomoru led them, having grown up among the endless gang warfare that consumed the shambolic, poverty-stricken alleyways of this section of Axekami. Even here, the change in the city was evident. As squalid as it was, its occupants had always been angry, their tempers quickly roused, railing against their conditions rather than meekly submitting to them; but now the alleyways were quiet and doors were kept closed. Those people that they saw were thin and starving. The famine was biting even in the capital, and as always, the underprivileged were the first to suffer.

The sight made Kaiku think of Tsata, with his alien views on her society, and she wondered what he would make of all this. The memory of him brought a twinge of sadness. He had almost entirely slipped her mind over the years, buried as she was in studying the ways of the Red Order under Cailin; but his influence had lasted, and she often found herself trying to think of things from his viewpoint to lend herself a measure of objectivity. It was because nobody questioned the way things were that the Empire was in this situation in the first place: the ingrained belief that society could not do without the Weavers had allowed them to wrest the Empire from the hands of those who created it. Tsata had helped her see that, but then he had left her, returning to his homeland to warn his people about what was happening in Saramyr. As they walked through the dereliction of the Poor Quarter, she wondered vaguely if he would ever come back.

Their contact lived on the second storey of a tumbledown building, and they had to climb a set of rickety steps propped up with makeshift kamako cane scaffolding to get to the door. Kaiku's uneasiness had grown during their journey. Distantly she could hear the rumble and clank of one of the Weavers' beetle-like buildings in the eerily subdued quiet. The atmosphere here was an effort to breathe and tasted foul. If it were not for the fact that she knew her body was subtly and instinctively neutralising the poisons she was inhaling, she would have worried what damage it might be doing to her. Gods, what must it be like to live in this miasma?

Nomoru struck the chime and the door was opened by a sallow, ill-looking man. His eyes widened in recognition as he saw the scout. After an awkward instant, they exchanged passwords and he let them inside. He took them into a threadbare room where tatty mats lay on the floor. Sliding doors were left half-open to expose cupboards of junk crockery and chipped ornaments, and thin veils were draped over the window-arches, obscuring the view and making the room dim. An imposing, shaven-headed figure had moved one of the veils aside a little and was peering out at the street below. As they entered, he let the veil fall and turned to face them. He was ugly, with thick lips and a squashed nose and a brow that fell in a natural scowl.

'Nomoru?' he said. 'Gods, I never thought I'd see you again. You haven't changed a bit.'

Nomoru shrugged without replying.

He looked at the Sisters. 'And you must be Kaiku and Phaeca then. Which is which?'

They introduced themselves properly, despite his informality, bowing in the correct manner for their relative social stations.

'Good,' he said. 'I imagine you've guessed me by now. Juto en Garika. And that's Lon in the doorway. There's more of us, but we don't gather here. For now, you deal with me and Lon, and that's all.'

Kaiku studied him closely. His accent and manner all bespoke a life in the Poor Quarter. Like many here, he had no family name, but he took in its place the name of his gang, and the Low Saramyrrhic en prefix meaning literally 'a part of'. His sheer physical presence was intimidating. Ordinarily, Kaiku would not have felt threatened by that – not now she was a Sister of the Red Order – but the shock of seeing how Axekami had fallen and the fact that she could not use her powers within its walls had combined to make her feel on edge.

He sat down cross-legged on a mat without inviting anyone else to, but Nomoru sat down anyway and the Sisters followed her lead. Lon slipped unobtrusively away. The room was haphazardly set out with no thought to aesthetics, which mildly offended Kaiku's highborn sensibilities, but she told herself not to be priggish. If this was as much as she had to deal with during her time in Axekami, she would count herself blessed by Shintu.

'Let's get to it, then,' Juto said. He cast a glance at the Sisters. 'First thing, though: we all know who you are and your particular… abilities.' Kaiku was pleased to note that the familiar note of disgust when referring to her Aberrant powers was absent in his tone. 'It'd be best if none of us mentioned them aloud. Plots and schemes come and go, but anyone catches a whiff of you and they'll trip over themselves to sell you to the Blackguard.' He caught Phaeca's glance towards the doorway. 'Lon knows. You can trust him. Nobody else, though.'

'Do you two know each other?' Phaeca asked, referring to Juto and Nomoru. Kaiku had been wondering the same thing ever since Juto had first spoken.

Juto grinned, exposing big, browned teeth. 'We don't forget our own.'

'You were part of the same gang?' Phaeca prompted her. Nomoru just gave her a sullen glare in reply.

'Some time ago now,' Juto said. 'We'd given her up.' His gaze flickered to Nomoru. 'I went looking for you. Tracked you to the Inker that did you last. He said you-'

'Juto!' she snapped suddenly, cutting him off. 'Not their business.'

His eyes blazed for a moment, and then an expression of dangerous calm settled on his face. 'You haven't been Nomoru en Garika for a long while,' he said with an unmistakable threat in his voice. 'You be careful how you speak to me.'

She just stared at him, a challenge in the set of her shoulders, a scrawny creature with hair in spiky tangles levelling with somebody twice her bulk. There was no fear in either of them.

'How are things in the city?' Kaiku asked, in an attempt to break the stalemate. It worked better than she intended, for Juto bellowed with laughter and shook his head.

'Were you wearing blinkers on the way here?' he asked in disbelief. 'The people are crushed. The Lord Protector has the city under his boot heel and he'll keep on grinding until all that's left is powder and bone. Axekami is the lucky recipient of most of the remaining food in the north-west and still hundreds starve to death every day. The only good thing I can say is that at least we don't have the nobles siphoning all the supplies as we would have done under the magnificent government of the Empire.' His sarcasm was obvious and scathing. 'The workers get the food. And the Blackguard and the Weavers' damned Aberrant army, of course; that goes without saying. But the Poor Quarter suffers as ever, because some of us would rather die than go to labour in those gods-cursed constructions they've built in place of our temples.'

'And what do they do in there?' Phaeca asked. The Sisters had never been able to establish the purpose of the Weavers' buildings in the cities.

Juto curled his lip. 'No idea. Each worker only knows his own task, and what all those tasks amount to, nobody seems to be able to work out. They don't seem to produce anything. That's the cursed mystery of the things.'

He got to his feet and went to the window-arch again, looking out past the veil. When he spoke again, it was more measured. 'Then there's this murk. Old men cough themselves to death, mothers miscarry, the sick don't get better and cuts gets infected. What kind of people take over a city and then poison their own well? What idiocy is that?'

The question did not seem directed at any of them, so they stayed silent. He turned around and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. 'They've outlawed the gods,' he went on. 'All of them. They're crippling any chance of rebellion by not allowing us to gather and coordinate. That's the reason everybody thinks they took down the temples. But heart's blood, it doesn't make sense! Letting the people have their faith would keep them calm, discourage revolt.' He scratched his ear and snorted. 'Some say they just want us to know that we haven't any hope. I don't believe that. I just think they hate the gods. Either that, or they're afraid of them.'

'And has it worked?' Kaiku asked. 'Do you think Axekami could be persuaded to rise against their oppressors?'

Juto sat down again, shaking his head as he did so. 'You could march an army up to the gates and they wouldn't dare to open them. It's not only a matter of spirit, though there's little enough of that left. We're weak and sickly. The Blackguard are fed and strong and there's more of them each month because people join up all the time. They see their families dying and their principles fade like mist in the morning sun. Then you've got informers and spies, all working to fill their bellies. The Weavers seem to know everything, whether by the cursed powers they possess or by the folk who've sold themselves. As fast as rumours start spreading about a new leader there are rumours that they've died or disappeared. And on top of all that, there's the Aberrants. The Weavers just have to say the word and the streets are full of them.'

'What about Lucia?' Nomoru interjected. 'Could rouse them then. If Lucia came.'

'Lucia?' Juto mocked. 'I won't deny the people would welcome anyone in place of the Weavers, Aberrant or not, but a legendary figure's no good if they're not here. I won't believe she's real till I see her with my own eyes, and even then she'd have to be in golden armour with the gods themselves singing her praises from the skies before I'd count myself safe enough to turn on the Weavers.' His tone was becoming bitter now. 'You think you can even get to Axekami with an army? I don't. The Weavers would crush you before you got north of the Fault.'

Kaiku took the disappointment stoically. She had expected such a response anyway. It did not take someone of Phaeca's skills to divine that Yugi's faint hope of picking up the scent of revolt would be thwarted; Kaiku had guessed that as soon as they entered the city. She did not think he had seriously entertained the possibility anyway.

'Enough of our troubles,' said Juto, hunkering forward and giving them a smile that was more like a snarl. 'What about yours? How goes the battle in the south?'

'That is a puzzle,' Kaiku said, brushing her hair behind her ear. 'It is much as we left it almost a fortnight ago. The Weavers have occupied Juraka, but there has been no move to cross the river as yet, and the feya-kori seem to have disappeared.'

'Ah, there's the meat of it,' said Juto. 'The feya-kori.'

'They came from Axekami,' Phaeca said. 'Do you know where?'

'I have my suspicions,' Juto said. 'But I've been waiting for you to arrive so we can take a look.'

'When can we go?'

'Tonight,' he said. 'After curfew.'

Kaiku considered this for a moment, then a small frown crossed her brow. 'What exactly do the Blackguard do to enforce this curfew?'

Juto grinned nastily. 'They let the Aberrants out.'