Weavers of Saramyr

Twenty

The Barak Avun's rage knew no limit. 'You had her alone, you offered her the gift, and then you took it back}' he cried.

Mishani looked at her father, all glacial calm and studied poise. Her hands were tucked into the sleeves of her robe and held before her; her hair fell in black curtains to either side of her thin face. They were in his study, a small, neat room with dark brown furniture and a matching wooden floor. Fingers of evening light reached through the leaves of the trees outside and in through the shutters, tickling bright motes and making them bob and dance.

'I did, Father,' she replied.

'Ungrateful child!' he spat. 'Do you know what we were promised for your service? Do you know what your family would have gained?'

'Since you saw fit to exclude me from your dealings with Sonmaga,' she said icily, 'I do not.'

Mishani was really quite surprised by the vehemence of her father's reaction to her news that the Heir-Empress had not received the infected nightdress. He seemed to have abandoned all dignity, red-faced and shaking with anger in a way that she had not seen him before. The remnants of the old Mishani wanted to comfort her father, or at least fear his wrath; but in her heart, she was scorning him. How easily she had torn away his facade of unflappability. She had told him the honest truth about what had happened in the roof gardens of the Imperial Keep. She could have lied, told him that Lucia was too well guarded or that they had intercepted the gift she brought; but she would not degrade herself so. She held herself with pride in the face of her father's fury. If not for years of conditioning, she would not even have troubled to maintain the formal mode of Saramyrrhic used to address a parent.

'Where did I fail with you, Mishani? Where is your loyalty to your family?' He paced around the room, unable to stand still. 'Do you know how many lives would have been saved if you had done what I asked?'

'If I had murdered an eight-harvest child?' Mishani replied. Her father glared at her. 'Say it, then, Father. Do not hide behind euphemisms and evasive language. You are quite willing to have me bear the burden of your actions; at least have the courage to admit them to yourself.'

'You have never spoken to me this way, Mishani!'

'I have never had cause to until now,' she said. Her voice was perfectly level, chilling in its rigidity. 'You dishonour yourself, Father, and you dishonour me. I do not care to know what Sonmaga promised you. Even if it were the keys to the Golden Realm itself, it would not have been worth what you asked me to do. You made yourself his pawn for a reward; that I could understand. But you made me your pawn because you knew I could not refuse. You took advantage of me, Father. I would have done anything you asked if I could have done it with honour, no matter how hard it was. I have killed to protect you before!' His eyes widened at this; though he had suspected the death of Yokada to be no accident, the admission was still a surprise. 'But this} To give an infected nightdress to a child, and have her die a lingering death? I will not stoop so low, Father. Not even for you.'

Avun was almost choking with rage. 'How dare you suggest that your honour is greater than mine in this matter?'

'I suggest nothing,' said Mishani. 'You went through with this deed. I, at the last, did not.'

'She is an Aberrant!' Avun cried. 'An Aberrant, you understand? She is no child. She should have been killed at birth.'

Mishani thought of Kaiku, and the words came from her mouth before she could stop them. 'Perhaps that is not the way things should be, then.'

Her vision exploded in a blaze of white, and she was on the floor, her hair like a black wing over her fallen body. It took a few seconds to realise that she had been struck, hard, across the face. Surprise and pain threatened tears, but she swallowed them back and quelled any reaction on her face. She looked up at her father with infuriating calm. His bald pate was sweating, his eyes bulged. He looked ridiculous.

'Viperous girl!' he said. 'To turn on your own family this way! You will go back to Mataxa Bay tomorrow, and there you will stay for the season, and when winter comes we may see if you are my daughter again.'

He glared at her a moment longer, waiting to see if she dared to offer a rejoinder that he could punish her for. She would not give him the satisfaction. With a snort, he stalked out of the study.

She went to the servants' yard almost immediately, detouring past her room on the way to apply a face powder that would hide the bruise on her jaw. It did an adequate job, though it made her look a little sickly. Well, it would have to do. If she was leaving for Mataxa Bay tomorrow – and she could scarcely stay with things as they were – then she had business to attend to this evening.

She found Gomi currying the horses in the stables. He was a short, stocky man with a shaven head and flat features, managing to combine an impression of wisdom, earthiness and reliability in their assemblage. He bowed low when he saw her silhouetted in the light at the stable door, but Mishani fancied she saw something unpleasant in his eyes as he did so. Yokada, the servant girl Mishani had poisoned to protect her family's reputation, had been his niece.

'Bring the horses and prepare the carriage,' she said. 'I wish to go out.'

A short time later they were travelling through the streets of the Imperial Quarter, heading down the hill towards where the burnished ribbon of the River Kerryn slid through the city. Gomi was driving, sitting at the front with the reins of the two black mares in his hands. The carriage was as black as the horses, chased with elegant reliefs of blue lacquer and edged in gold around its spokes, a testament to the wealth of Blood Koli.

Mishani sat inside, looking out of the window. The clean, well-maintained thoroughfares of the Imperial Quarter seemed bland now, where before she had always enjoyed the sight of the ancient trees, fountains and carvings that beautified the richest district in the city. Vibrant mosaics had lost their colour; the play of shadow and reddening sunlight across the plazas was no longer attractive. Where once the wide streets and narrow alleys that sprawled up the contours of the hill had seemed to harbour intrigue and whisper of secrets, now they were just streets, robbed of mystery. She felt washed-out somehow, a lifetime of assumptions and conditioned responses turning to driftwood in the current of events. Her mind strayed to Kaiku again and again, and a single question weighed on her heart like a tombstone.

Was I wrong to do what I did?

The streets of the Imperial Quarter gave way to the Market District, and traffic thickened around them. Though Nuki was fleeing westward and the ravenous moons would soon come chasing into the night, the markets did not sleep until long after dark. They clustered together in an interlinked series of squares, set at uneven angles to each other and connected by winding sandstone alleys. The city here had a rougher edge, less well maintained than the Imperial District, but it was possessed of a comforting vibrancy. The squares were thick with noisy stalls, multicoloured awnings of all shapes and sizes piling on top of each other for space. The air smelled of a dozen kinds of food: fried squid, potato cakes, sweet-nuts, saltrice, all mingling amongst the jostle of cityfolk that milled to and fro.

But even the steadily growing babble and ruckus ahead did little to lift her spirits; where once it had seemed a thriving hive of life, now she heard only a senseless cacophony of meaningless cries, like the voices of madmen.

She thought of her destination, and wondered if she herself was entirely rational. You should go and see the dream lady, the Heir-Empress had said; and when she left the Imperial Keep, Mishani had realised that she knew where the dream lady was, without a word on the subject being spoken between them. She knew, as if something had touched her heart and shown her.

The child both terrified and fascinated her. There was no questioning that she was special; but was she evil? Could an eight-harvest child be evil? She thought of the malformed infant who made flowers grow wherever her fingers touched. Had she been evil, or just dangerous? The difference was important, but it had never seemed to matter until now.

And here she was, on her way to see Lucia's dream lady. What she might expect, she had no idea; but she knew that she had to find out before she was sent away from the city. For Kaiku, for Yokada, for her father, she wanted to be shown a truth.

Gomi, perhaps out of spite, had chosen a route that skirted the edge of the busiest market square in the district, and they were soon slowing as they forced their way through roads crowded with lowing animals and jabbering cityfolk who darted between the carriages and carts that choked the roadway, carrying with them baskets of fruit and bread or hurrying furtively away to their homes.

Mishani frowned. Even preoccupied, she noticed the atmosphere that prevailed here. The sounds of the Market District were different, and not only to her ears. She saw other passengers and drivers looking about in confusion. Stalls were packing up and being deserted. Customers were fleeing the square. It was not happening all at once, but rather an unevenly spread phenomenon. Everywhere Mishani looked, she saw people locked in intense discussion before hurrying to their friends to pass on what they had heard. The traffic had choked almost to a halt now, and Gomi scratched the thin rolls of fat at the back of his neck and shrugged to himself.

Mishani leaned out of her carriage door a little way and called to a boy coming up to his twelfth harvest. It was undignified to do so, but she had a creeping concern that there was something happening she should know about. The boy hesitated, then came over to her, subservient to her obvious status as a noble.

'What is going on here?' she asked.

'The Empress has arrested Unger tu Torrhyc,' the boy said. 'Over at the Speaker's Square. Imperial Guards took him away.'

Mishani felt a shadow of dread climb into the carriage with her. She did not need to, but she gave the boy a few coins anyway. He took them gratefully and ran. She sensed the air of impending panic, and feared it. The people knew as well as her what would come of arresting the most popular and outspoken opponent to the Empress among the common people. Mishani cursed silently. She had thought the Empress arrogant before in the way she ignored the cityfolk and concentrated only on the nobles; now she was staggered by her foolishness. To inflame an already enraged populace by publicly arresting their figurehead was nothing short of an incitement to riot.

'Gomi!' she called, leaning out of the window again. 'Can you get us away from here?'

She saw him turn around to reply, his mouth opening in an O, and then the world exploded around her.

The carriage was lifted from the road in an ear-shattering tumult and a flash of light. She felt herself thrown heavily back inside the carriage as it was swatted aside by the force, and a split-second later the door where her head had been punched inward, smashing into splinters. The whole side of the carriage crumpled in on her, splitting into wooden daggers, but she had neither the time nor the purchase to react, and instead she could only watch in shock as the confining wooden box she rode gathered in to crush her life away.

Suddenly, overwhelmingly, there came a single picture in her mind, strong enough to be a vision. Time seemed to freeze outside, and Mishani was once again on the beach at Mataxa Bay, with the summer sun sparkling on the rippling waves. She was perhaps ten harvests old, and laughing, running breathlessly through the surf. Behind her came Kaiku, holding a sand-crab the size of a dinner plate before her, laughing also as she pursued her friend. And there was nothing in Mishani's heart at that moment but joy, and carelessness, and freedom. Then: reality. She blinked.

The side of the carriage had crumpled and splintered, and the broken blades of wood had stopped mere inches from her.

She began to breathe again. Sounds from outside filtered in. Screams arose; first a single one, then many. She heard the hungry growl of flame, running feet, cries for help. Stunned, she could not piece together the evidence of her senses to determine what had happened. Instead, she concentrated on freeing herself from the coffin that her carriage had become. She had been thrown up against one door when the other one caved in, but it had been buckled by the impact and would not open when she tried it. Twisting herself within the dark confines of the carriage, she elbowed the shutters open – which had been closed by the force of the explosion – and mercifully they gave easily. She clambered out, her hair snagging on loose bits of wood as she emerged into the evening light.

It took only moments to see what had happened. The epicentre of the blast was clearly visible by soot marks. Something – perhaps a cart, for it was now impossible to tell – had exploded by the side of the road, destroying the fascia of a money-house. Shattered wreckage of carriages and horses reduced to smoking meat surrounded the epicentre; they had absorbed the blast that would have otherwise killed Mishani. Instead, her carriage had been thrown against the side of another carriage to her right; the two of them had merged into a mess of wreckage.

All around, the carnage was horrific. Men, women and children lay still on the road, or hung impaled where they had been flung against a heap of jagged debris. The wounded moaned and writhed or staggered among them, some newly bereft of a limb. The air tasted of blood and sulphur and acrid smoke. Plaintive wails issued from a noble lady who was kneeling by the scorched corpse of her husband. Gomi lay next to the dead horses that had drawn her carriage, his brains dashed out on the road. A fire was burning somewhere, and outside the blast area people were shrieking and fleeing in headlong panic. Mishani flinched as another explosion tore through the air nearby, and a hail of pebbles and splinters pattered across her head. The screams were silenced, only to begin anew.

She gazed at the mayhem with the dull, slack face of a sleepwalker. Then, slowly, she began to walk, not hearing the cries for help or seeing the bloodied hands that reached out in supplication. There was no sense in returning home, back to the protection of a father who had betrayed her. She was heading for the River District, and the dream lady.

The Guard Commander was thrown to his knees before his Empress in a clatter of armour.

'You gave the order,' she accused.

The throne room of the Imperial Keep was less ostentatious than some of the state rooms, but its decor was heavy and grave, befitting the business that was conducted there. Arched windows were set high in the walls, slanting light down on to thick hangings of purple and white, the colours of the Blood Erinima standard. Braziers smoked gently with incense, set on high, thin poles, corkscrews of silver that stood on either side of the dais where the thrones rested. The thrones themselves were an elaborate fusion of supple, varnished wood and precious metals, coils of bronze and gold interweaving across its surface in seamless unity.

Anais rarely came in here except during times of crisis or meetings of extreme importance; the air of intimidation that the throne lent her was an edge she did not usually need. She had been receiving report after hurried report for an hour now, but it all came down to one thing: Unger tu Torrhyc had been arrested by Imperial Guards. But she had not told them to do any such thing.

'Empress, I did give the order,' the man replied, his head bowed.

'Why?' Anais demanded. Her tone was cold. This man's admission had already signed his own death warrant.

The Guard Commander was silent.

'Why?' she repeated.

'I cannot say, Empress.'

'Cannot? Or will not? Be aware that you are already dead, Guard Commander, but the lives of your wife and children depend on your answer.'

He raised his head then, and she saw the terror and confusion on his face. 'I gave the order… but I do not know why. I know full well the consequences of my action, and yet, at that moment… I thought of nothing, Empress. I cannot explain it. Never before has…' He faltered. 'It was an act of madness,' he concluded.

Anais's anger was only fuelled by his unsatisfactory answer, but she kept her passions well reined. She nicked her gaze to the Guards that stood at the kneeling man's shoulder.

'Take him away. Execute him.'

He was pulled to his feet.

'Empress, I beg of you the lives of my family!' he cried.

'Concern yourself with the last moments of your own life,' she replied cruelly, dismissing him. He wept in fear and shame as he was led away. She had no intention of punishing his family, but he would go to his death not knowing that. For a man who had jeopardised her position with such gross stupidity, she was in no mood for mercy.

She motioned to a robed advisor who stood near her throne, an old academic named Hule with a long white beard and bald head.

'Go to the donjon and bring Unger tu Torrhyc to me. See he is not mistreated.'

Hule nodded and departed.

The Empress settled back on her throne. Her brow ached. She felt besieged, conspired against by events. The chain of explosions that had ripped across the city in the last hour had happened too fast and were too well coordinated. They had already been in place, awaiting the spark to ignite them. Torrhyc's arrest threw that spark. There seemed to be no specific targets in mind; they occurred in crowded streets, on ships at the docks, even outside temples. Whoever was behind them, she suspected that their intention was to sow mayhem. Their method was effective. She had already been forced

to send over half her Imperial Guards to quell riots in different districts of the city, but the sight of their white and blue armour only seemed to agitate the crowds.

The Guard Commander's idiocy had put her in a dire position, but it was not irretrievable yet. Unger tu Torrhyc's influence was evidently greater than she had first imagined. She knew he was an agitator and an orator of great skill; now it seemed apparent that he had a subversive army working for him. It was not hard to see how a man of his charisma could inspire that kind of loyalty in his followers.

Someone had planted those bombs. She suspected that Unger tu Torrhyc could tell her who.

At that very moment, the subject of the Empress's thoughts brooded in a cell, deep in the bowels of the Keep.

The prisons of the Imperial Keep were clean, if a little dark and bare. His cell was unremarkable, the same as every other cell he had been put in. And he would be released with his head held high, just like every other time. Noble lords, landowners, even local councils had incarcerated him before. His calling made him many enemies. The rich and powerful did not like to be brought to account for the injustices and evils they brought upon the common folk.

He had begun to view being arrested as part of the process of negotiation now. He had become too dangerous, a threat to the safety of the city. Stirring up trouble, inciting revolution. He had expected arrest; it was a mere flexing of muscle, to show that they were still the ones in power. Afterwards, they would talk to him. He would bring them the people's demands. They would agree to some, but not all. He would be released, hailed as a hero by the people, and use that status to resume haranguing the Imperial Family until the people's remaining demands were met.

This time the people's demands were simple, and not open to negotiation. The Aberrant child must not sit the throne.

Anais had been a good ruler, as far as the frankly despotic system of Imperial rule went. Even Unger would admit that. But she was blind, and arrogant. She was so high up on her hill, in this mighty Keep, that she did not see what was happening in the streets below. Furthermore, she did not appear even to be interested. She dallied with politicians and nobles, winning the support of armies here and signing treaties there, and all the time forgetting that the people she ruled were crying out in an almost unanimous voice: We will not have her!

Did she think her Imperial Guards could keep the people of Axekami in line? Did she plan to rule them by force? Unacceptable!

Unacceptable!

The people would be heard, and Unger tu Torrhyc was their mouthpiece.

He had been placed far away from other prisoners, so that he could not spread his sedition among them. A high, oval window beamed a grille of dusk light on the centre of the stone floor. There was a heavy wooden door, banded with iron, with a slat for guards to look in that was now closed. Otherwise, the cell was absolutely bare, hot and gloomy. Unger sat in a corner, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, and thought. He was a plain man, plain of dress and plain of speech, but he questioned all and everything. That made him a threat to those who relied on tradition for their advantage. And whatever his feelings on Aberrants were, the Empress could not be allowed to foist upon the people a ruler that they so vehemently did not want.

His eyes flickered open, and his heart lurched in his chest. There was someone in the cell with him.

He scrambled to his feet. The cell had darkened suddenly, as though a bank of cloud had swallowed the last of the day's light. Yet, by the dim rays coming through the window, he saw the faintest shape in the far corner of the room. It filled him with an unwholesome dread, emanating malevolence. There had been nothing in here before, and the door had not opened. Only a spectre or a spirit could have come to him this way.

It did not move, and yet he never for a moment doubted the shrieking report of his senses. The air seemed to whine in his ear.

'What are you?' he breathed.

The shape moved then, shifting slightly, an indistinct form that brightness seemed to shy from.

'Are you a spirit? A demon? Why have you come?' Unger demanded.

It walked slowly towards him. He took a breath to cry for help, to rouse the guard outside; but a gnarled and withered hand flashed into the shaft of dusk from the window, one long finger pointing at him, and his throat locked into silence. His body locked also, every muscle tensing at once and staying there, rendering him painfully immobile. Panic sparkled in his brain.

The intruder moved into the dim light. He stood hunched there, his small body buried in a mountain of ragged robes and hung with all manner of beads and ornaments. He wore a Mask of bronze, contorted into an expression of insanity; and as Unger watched, he slowly unfastened the latch strap and removed it.

He was like a man, but small and withered and grotesque, his skin white and parchment-dry. And his face… oh, there was ugliness such as Unger had never seen. His aspect was twisted so far out of true that the prisoner would have shut his eyes if he could. One side of the sallow face seemed to have melted, the skin becoming like wax and sliding off the skull to gather in folds of jowl and chop, a flabby dewlap depending from his scrawny neck. His eye on that side laboured to see from beneath the overhanging brow; his upper lip flopped over his lower one. But his right side was no less repulsive: there, his lips had skinned back as if they had simply rotted away, exposing teeth and gum in a skeletal rictus; and his right eye was huge and blind, an orb that bulged from the socket, milky with cataract.

'Unger tu Torrhyc,' croaked the intruder, his malformed lip flapping. 'I am the Weave-lord Vyrrch. How pleasant to meet face to face.'

Unger could not reply. He would not have had the words anyway. He felt a scream rise inside him, but there was nowhere for it to go.

'You've served me well these past weeks, Unger, though you didn't know it,' the foul thing continued. 'Your efforts have accelerated my plans tenfold. I had expected it would take so much more than this to set Axekami on its way to ruin. I had to tread carefully, to keep my hand hidden, but you…' Vyrrch wagged a finger in admiration. 'You stir the people. Your arrest has angered them mightily. I never would have thought it so simple.'

Unger was too terrified to think where Vyrrch was leading this; the sensation of having bodily control robbed from him was overwhelming his reason.

'It was quite a risk, even the little push it took to make the Guard Commander do what I needed. I had thought there would be outrage, counted on it… but even I had underestimated the effectiveness of your secret army of bombers, Unger. I would hate to see them stop the good work they are doing.'

'Not… not…' Unger managed, forcing the words in a squeak past his throat.

'Oh, of course they're not yours. They're mine. But the people and the Empress alike assume you are responsible, so let us not disabuse them of that notion.'

The creature was close enough to touch him now, and Unger could see that it was not wholly real, but faintly transparent. A spectre, after all. It ran a finger down his cheek, and the sensation was like freezing water.

'Your cause needs a martyr, Unger.'

The spectre seized him savagely by the back of the head, and despite its apparent intangibility, Unger felt its massive strength. His muscles loosened, and he screamed as it propelled him against the wall of the cell, smashing his skull like a jakma nut on a rock, leaving a dark wodge of blood and hair above his corpse.

The gates to the temple of Panazu in the River District of Axekami stood open as dusk set in. Mishani stood beneath them, looking up at the tall, narrow facade that towered over her, its shoulders pulled in tight and sculpted into the form of rolling whirlpools. She was bedraggled, exhausted and suffering from shock, and yet she was here, at the abode of the dream lady. The sounds of Axekami beginning to tear itself apart were audible across the Kerryn. New explosions could be heard, and bright flames rose against the gathering dark. Voices were raised in clamour, mob roars made weak and thin by distance. This night would be an evil one for all concerned.

She walked up the steps to the temple, through the great gates and into the cool sanctuary of the congregation chamber. The interior of the temple was breathtaking. Pillars vaulted up to domed ceilings, painted with frescoes of Panazu's exploits and teachings. The walls were chased with reliefs of river creatures. The vast curved windows of blue, green and silver in the face of the building dappled the temple in shades of the sea floor, and seemed to stir the light restfully to heighten the illusion. The sound of water was all around: splashing, trickling, tinkling, for the altar was a fountain from which many gutters ran, directing the crystal liquid into artful designs carved into the blue-green lack on the floor. The congregation area, where the oblates came to kneel and pray, was surrounded by a thick trench of water in which swam catfish, the earthly aspect of Panazu, and bridged by short arcs of lack.

There was nobody here. The place was peaceful and deserted. Mishani shuffled in, and did not even turn around when the gates closed behind her of their own accord. She walked listlessly down the central aisle, her mind and body still numb from the tragedy she had witnessed in the Market District.

'Mishani tu Koli,' a soft voice purred, echoing around the temple. Mishani looked to the source of the sound, and found her standing to one side of the chamber. The dream lady. She looked more like something in a nightmare, a tall, slender tower of elegant black, her face painted with crescents of red that ran over her eyelids from forehead to cheek. Her lips were marked with alternating triangles of red and black, like teeth. A ruff of raven feathers grew from her shoulders, and a silver circlet with a red gem was set on her forehead.

She crossed the chamber to the central aisle, emerging between the pillars to stand before Mishani. She took in Mishani's unkempt appearance without a flicker of an expression.

'My name is Cailin tu Moritat. Lucia calls me the dream lady. She told me you would be coming.' Cailin took her by the elbow. 'Come. Rest, and bathe. Your journey has not been easy, I see.'

Mishani allowed herself to be led. She had nowhere else to go.