The Ascendancy Veil

FOURTEEN

After that, there was little else to say.

The assembly dispersed with a sense that things had been left unfinished. Lucia's announcement had effectively ended the conference. Kaiku saw Cailin muttering into Yugi's ear, and she suspected that the seeds of action put forward today had only just begun to germinate. But diplomacy was not her strong suit, and she was content to leave it to people like Mishani, who appreciated the subtleties. She looked around for Nomoru, still worried about the scout's intentions, but could not find her in the crowd. Instead, she led Tsata and the Tkiurathi out of the temple and into the cool night beyond.

'We will go with you, if you will have us,' Tsata said to Kaiku, as they came to the edge of the complex where the trail ran back towards the Tkiurathi village.

He was assuming that she would not let Lucia follow this course alone. And what was worse, Kaiku reflected, was that he was probably right.

'Xu is no ordinary forest,' Kaiku said. 'The spirits hold sway there, and have done since before my people ever set foot on these shores.' Her eyes were grave. 'There is no more dangerous place in all of Saramyr for our kind.'

'The more reason for you to take us,' said Tsata.

Kaiku felt too weary to try and argue. She thanked them all – though she suspected by Tsata's expression that she did not need to – and bade them farewell, leaving the offer open. She was not the one to make such decisions, and she had no intention of bearing the responsibility for their deaths inside the Forest of Xu. Only the gods knew what awaited them in there.

It occurred to her, as she walked back to her house in the Libera Dramach village downslope of the temple complex, that she was already thinking about the journey in terms of when she went, rather than if.

Heart's blood, where did all my choices go? she thought in a morose moment, then snorted with disgust at her own self-pity.

She shared a house with Mishani here at Araka Jo as she had in the Fold, though the two of them were rarely there at the same time, as turned out to be the case tonight. She presumed Mishani had gone elsewhere with other members of the assembly to continue their discussions privately. The house was near the building where the Red Order met and where most of the Sister had their rooms, but Kaiku had not felt comfortable with the idea of living there as Phaeca did: it felt too much like surrendering a part of herself. The place was relatively nondescript and a little cold in the wintertime, but Kaiku had given up on the idea of having a stable home at least until the war was over, and as long as she had a roof and a private space she was happy.

It felt empty tonight. She slid the outer door closed behind her and listened to the darkness for a time. Outside, night-insects were chirruping and clattering. She walked through to her bedroom. The glow of the lanterns rose gently as flames kindled in their wicks at her passing, sparked by a small and frivolous use of her kana. Cailin would have disapproved. Kaiku didn't care.

Her bedroom was small: she only came here to sleep. There was a comfortable mat of woven, springy fibres, upon which was laid a thick blanket, and then a further blanket on top of that. Simple, unadorned, utilitarian. On the wall facing the curtained doorway was a mirror, an old one of Mishani's; she caught her reflection, and thought how well the make-up of the Order hid the melancholy mood that had descended on her. Even now, she projected a certain aura of authority and aloofness. On the far side of her sleeping-mat were a pair of chests flanking a dressing-table with another mirror, and on one wall hung a scroll with a verse from Xalis, another donation from Mishani. Kaiku was terrible at decorating: it seemed so unimportant to her. Her interest was not in material things.

She had sat down at her dressing-table and was preparing to remove her make-up when she spotted the Mask. She saw it over the shoulder of her double in the small vanity mirror, leering at her from where it hung on the wall, and it startled her so badly that she jumped with a yelp and sent little wooden pots of lip-paint scattering noisily to the floor. She stared at it, meeting its empty gaze in the mirror. It stared back at her.

Her skin crawled. She could not remember putting it up there.

She got up and slowly walked over to it. Its face of red and black lacquer was mischievous, mocking.

'Gods curse you,' she whispered to it. 'Leave me be.'

She took it down from where it hung on the wall. The contact of her hand brought a faint sense-memory of her father, the indefinable warmth of his presence. She bit back tears and put the Mask back in its chest.

Why couldn't she just destroy it? Why put up with that malevolent, insidious lure night after night? She could not have said herself. Perhaps because it was the last piece of her father she had. Perhaps it was the practicalities involved: she had used it twice before to breach the Weavers' barriers, and since the Weavers were still no wiser as to how she had done it, there was no reason it could not be used again. Cailin had made a brief stab at studying it, but there was little to learn beyond what the Sisters already knew. As True Masks went, it was young and weak and unremarkable, but no Sister dared probe too far into the workings of a True Mask, even one such as this. That way lay insanity.

Perhaps she kept it to remind her of what she was fighting against, and why she was fighting them. For this Mask had started it all for her: it had cost the lives of her family and set her adrift in the world. Until she found the Red Order; until she found another red and black mask to wear.

She caught herself. Thinking like that was not a good idea in her current state of lassitude. Seeing Lucia give herself up to her followers had drained her somehow, and she felt beaten and defeated. What was worse, she was resigned to going to the Forest of Xu, because someone that Lucia trusted had to be there, and she was the only option: Yugi was too valuable to go, and Mishani would be no use as part of such an expedition. Her talents lay elsewhere.

So Kaiku would be leaving Mishani again, after so short a time. She swore bitterly. This war was taking everything from her, little nibbled increments of her soul being swallowed as the harvests passed by, leaving her with just enough hate and determination to go on surviving. Her own side did not even appreciate her sacrifices. Her friends were torn away from her again and again. And it seemed they had not gained ground on the Weavers once since this whole affair began, since the death of the Blood Empress Anais. The best they had managed was to stall their retreat temporarily.

Something had to give. She could not continue this way for another ten years.

Take heart, then, a sardonic inner voice told her. The way things are going, the Weavers will have us all before the summer.

The chime sounded outside the door of the house. Kaiku looked up. For a moment, she considered not answering, but the lanterns were lit so her visitor knew she was in. Eventually curiosity got the better of her. She arranged herself quickly in the mirror, walked to the door and slid it open.

It was Asara. Kaiku recognised her even though she wore the form of a stranger, a dusky-skinned Tchom Rin woman with black hair in a loose ponytail hanging over her shoulder. She was wearing a robe of silver-grey.

'What do you want?' Kaiku asked, but she could not muster the effort to put any venom in her voice. It all seemed so pointless suddenly.

'Am I to take it, then, that you still resent me after our last encounter?' Asara guessed by Kaiku's tone that she had surmised her identity.

'A grudge worth holding is a grudge worth keeping alive,' she replied.

'May I come inside? I wish to talk.'

Kaiku thought about that for a moment, then she turned away and went into the house. Asara followed and slid the door shut behind her. Kaiku stood in the centre of the room, and did not invite Asara to sit.

'The attire of the Red Order does not suit you,' Asara said. 'It makes you into something you are not.'

'Spare me the criticism, Asara,' she said dismissively. 'If I had been a Sister when last we met, you would not have been able to deceive me as you did.'

'Perhaps that would have been better for both of us.'

'It would have been better for me!' Kaiku snapped, finding her anger.

But Asara did not rise to it; it seemed to slide off her. 'I came here to apologise,' she said.

'I am not interested in your apologies. They are as false as that skin you wear.'

Asara looked faintly amused. 'This skin is my own, Kaiku. It just happens that I can change it. I am Aberrant, just like you. How is it that you can celebrate your own abilities and despise mine?'

'Because I do not use mine to deceive other people,' she hissed.

'No, you use them to kill other people.'

'Weavers and Nexuses, demons and Aberrant animals,' Kaiku returned. 'They are not what I would call people. They are monsters.' She missed the hypocrisy of Asara's statement, for she had no knowledge of the lives that had been given to feed her, to fuel the metamorphic processes in her body.

'You killed several men on Fo; have you forgotten?'

'That was your fault!' Kaiku cried.

Asara raised one hand in a placating gesture. 'I am sorry. You are right. I do not want this to become an argument. But I would have you listen, even if you do not believe me.'

'Speak, then,' Kaiku said; but her arms were crossed beneath her breasts, and it was clear that nothing Asara said would appease her.

Asara regarded her for a moment, her gaze unreadable, made smoky by her eyeshadow.

'I have never meant to be your enemy, Kaiku. I did deceive you in the past, but I did not intend to harm you. Even that last time.' Her voice dropped a little. 'I would have stayed as Saran Ycthys Marul. You would never have known. We could have been happy.'

Kaiku opened her mouth to speak, but Asara stopped her.

'I know what you would say, Kaiku. It was foolish of me. I thought I could create myself anew, spin a new past: to wipe the slate clean. And you were ready to love Saran. You were, Kaiku.' She overrode Kaiku's weak protest. 'You would not love me, but you would love him.'

'He was not real,' Kaiku said in disgust.

'He was as real as Asara was. As I am now.'

'Then you are not real either,' Kaiku returned. 'The Asara I knew was only the face you wore, the role you took on, when first I met you. Is that who you are? How many faces had you worn before that? Do you even know?'

Asara saddened. 'No,' she said. 'No, I do not. Have you an idea what it is to be me? I do not even know what I should look like. Counterfeits are all I have.'

'You will get no pity from me,' Kaiku laughed scornfully.

Asara's face became stony. 'I do not want pity from anyone. But sometimes…' She looked away. 'Sometimes I do need help.'

This shocked Kaiku more than anything Asara had said so far. Asara had always been fierce in asserting her independence; this was a terrible admission for her. Despite herself, she softened for a moment. Then came the memory of Saran Ycthys Marul, looking at her with Asara's eyes as Kaiku, half-clothed, wept with the shame of betrayal.

'You do not deserve my help,' she said.

Asara glared across the room, her beautiful face cold in the lantern-light. 'I do, Kaiku. Honour demands that you discharge your debts, and you owe me your life. I did not merely save you from dying. I brought you back from the dead. Nothing you have done for me has ever come close to repaying that.' Her voice was flat with menace now. 'You nearly killed me, and I have never held you accountable. I watched over you for years before your kana emerged, and I rescued you from the shin-shin when they would certainly have had you. You think me so deceitful and cruel, but I have been a better friend to you than you realise. I have forgiven you everything, and asked almost nothing in return.'

Kaiku was unmoved. Asara tossed her head and made a noise of disgust. 'Think on what I have said. You count yourself honourable; well, honour does not extend only to your friends and your loved ones. The time has come to pay me back what is owed. Then we will be even, and I will leave you forever.'

With that, she walked to the door and slid it open. On the threshold, she looked back.

'I am going with you into the forest. We shall resolve this later.'

Then she was gone, and Kaiku was alone again. Sometimes, when the fumes of the amaxa root had swaddled him in their plush and acidic folds, Yugi thought he could glimpse the spirit that haunted his room. It hid in the corner where the ceiling and two of the walls met, a spindly thing all bones and angles, black and beaked and half-seen. It was never still; instead it was in constant jittering motion, shivering and twitching with a rapidity hard for the eye to follow, making it blurred and unfocused. Yugi would study it while he lay on his sleeping-mat, puffing at the mouthpiece of his hookah. It was a part of the night to him, and night was where he found his peace, where he could be left alone and the jagged rocks of his memory could be blanketed in a narcotic fog.

He had been watching the spirit, lost in a haze, when he noticed a movement at his doorway. It took him a moment to establish who his visitor was. She came and squatted down next to him, laying her rifle aside.

'Bad habit,' she murmured.

'I know,' he replied. His mouth was dry and the words felt thick in his throat. He felt her hand grip his jaw gently, move his head left and right, looking into the cracked whites of his eyes.

'You're under,' she said. 'Thought you could handle this.'

'Want some?'

'No.'

She took the pipe out of his hand and put it back in its cradle on the hookah, where a wisp of smoke drifted up towards the white stone ceiling. Yugi tried muzzily to focus on her.

'I'm sorry about your face,' he mumbled.

Nomoru shrugged her narrow shoulders. 'Never the prettiest kitten in the box anyway. Besides, it makes Kaiku nervous. Can tell she thinks I want to kill her. Funny.'

Yugi grinned widely, then faltered, not sure whether it was appropriate. His hand came up, seemingly belonging to someone else, moving into his vision to touch her scarred cheek. At the moment of contact his fingertips exploded into sensation, bypassing his numb arm and going straight to his brain, islands of exquisite sensitivity free-floating before him. He felt the rayed tracks of the cicatrices that marred her skin, his face a comical picture of childlike wonder.

'It's a beautiful pattern,' he murmured.

Nomoru grunted a laugh. 'You're under,' she said again. 'You'd think mud was beautiful.'

Yugi did not appear to be listening. He took his hand away, suddenly unable to get comfortable on his mat. The curvature of his spine was annoying him. He got up into a cross-legged position with some difficulty, only to find that his knees were now causing him bother and he had merely shifted the ache from his upper back to his coccyx. He reached for the hookah, but Nomoru caught his arm and guided it back to his lap.

'Don't,' she said. 'Not going to watch you end up like my mother.'

'Come under with me,' he said, his pupils huge and bright though his face was slack.

She shook her head. 'You know what happened last time.'

'Weavers won't get you here. You can trust me.'

She looked away from him. 'I don't trust anyone.'

He was hurt by that. For a moment, there was nothing to say.

'Where did you go? In Axekami,' he asked at length. Sparkling shapes were whirring about the floor like translucent wriggling eels. 'I was worried.'

'No you weren't,' she said. She leaned back on her hands. 'Easier to get away on my own. Had to see an Inker.' She drew up her sleeve, where a freshly completed tattoo of a hookah with a dagger in it stood out against the paler pictures surrounding it. 'Paid the debt I owed Lon. Or Juto. Doesn't matter which.'

He was getting more lucid now. Amaxa root was shortlived in potency, and required a constant topping-up from the hookah to remain effective. The spirit that lived in the corner of his room was nothing more than a grey smear now, if ever he had seen it at all.

Suddenly he reached out and slipped his arm round Nomoru's waist, drawing her to him. He lay back as she moved with the pressure, uncrossing his legs so that she could slip onto his chest, her thin, hard body resting down the length of him. Her face was close enough to his so that he could feel her breath on his face, the sensation narcotically amplified to a rolling cloud of fire on his stubbled cheek. He studied the newly cut contours in her skin, his eyes flicking across them in fascination. Then he put his lips to hers. Her tongue was small and she tasted sour and kissed too hard, but it was familiar to him and he liked it. The amaxa root sent sparkling bursts from his mouth throughout his body.

She pulled away from him. 'Take that off,' she said, touching the trailing end of the rag tied round his forehead. 'Feels strange.'

'I can't,' he said, with a tired sigh. They had been through this before.

She was cooling again. 'She's dead. It's done. Take it off.'

'I can't.'

She looked down at him a moment, then shrugged. 'Worth a try,' she said, and fell to him once more. The roof gardens of the Imperial Keep had withered and died. Where once they had been verdant and lush, planted with trees and flowers gathered from all over the Near World, now they were a brown, skeletal wasteland. The flowerbeds were a mush of detritus and spindly crinkles that were the remnants of bushes. The trees sloughed bark and oozed sap, and the leaves were all gone. It was a doleful and tragic place, and few came here now. The murk closed it in, a smoky grey canopy, and a bitter wind chased sticks and twigs across the flagstones.

Avun met the Weaver in a small paved area screened by a dense tangle of branches on all sides. At its south end, a double set of steps flanked by small statues of mythical beings led to paths set higher and lower in the gardens. There was a carved wooden bench, dull from lack of care, but Avun did not sit. He stood with a heavy cloak wrapped around him, for the lack of sunlight and the wind made it as cold as he could ever remember being in his life. The branches rattled a macabre and erratic rhythm as they tapped against each other.

The Weaver came slowly up the steps from below. He was young, not so raddled as others of his breed, and he moved with a slow and controlled gait. His Mask was all angles of gold, silver and bronze, his cowl hanging loosely over it. The patchwork robe was stitched and patterned crazily; there seemed to be some kind of order there, but Avun could not grasp it. He gave up looking. Perhaps it would be best not to work it out.

'Lord Protector,' he said, the voice made tinny by the metal Mask.

'Fahrekh,' Avun replied.

'I assume you have heard about Kakre's injudicious choice of victim today?'

Avun blinked languidly. 'He was a useful general.'

'He may still be alive,' Fahrekh said. 'Though I doubt he will be good for much any more.'

'He had been with Kakre too long before I found out,' said Avun. 'There is no point antagonising the Weave-lord now. My general would not lead the Blackguard so well without half his skin.'

'And without half his sanity, I suspect.'

Avun did not care to think about it. 'This has become intolerable,' he muttered.

'Indeed.'

There was a silence between them. Each was waiting for the other to say what they both thought. In the end, it was Fahrekh.

'Something must be done.'

'And what do you have in mind?' Avun said carefully, though he knew full well what it was. They had fenced around this before. Avun had no idea about Fahrekh's feelings, but he was gods-damned if he was going to incriminate himself by being the first to speak it out aloud.

'We will kill him, of course,' Fahrekh said.

Avun regarded the Weaver with hooded eyes. Could he trust this one? He still had a suspicion that Fahrekh was only faking complicity, that this was some test of loyalty by the Weavers. If he went along with it, would they treat him as a betrayer?

'You would kill one of your own?' he asked.

'It is necessary. We must cut off the spoiled right hand to save the arm.' Fahrekh's voice was an even and measured monotone. 'Kakre is a liability. For the good of the Weavers, he must be removed.'

'Will he stand down?'

Fahrekh chuckled. 'No Weave-lord has ever stood down before. Besides, he is too irrational now. He will not see things as we do. The Weavers need a new and clear-sighted leader, or our ambitions will go unfulfilled.'

Avun thought about this. He had learned a lot about the Weavers in his time as Lord Protector, through observation and conversation and by listening to Kakre's periodic fugues. Discovering the power structure of his allies was an important goal for him: their strength lay in secrecy, and Avun was determined to uncover them.

How was it that the Weavers were so united in purpose? And how could that be squared with the way they would kill each other in times past at the behest of their masters? At first he had believed that there was a coterie of Weavers in Adderach dispensing orders, but that was not good enough. In two hundred and fifty years he would have expected at least a few coups, power struggles, something like that. Yet there was no evidence of such. There were certainly disagreements about the way things should be done from time to time, but never about the ends, only the means.

Avun had not been able to understand it to his satisfaction, but he had established some things. The Weavers did not appear to know themselves where their direction came from: it was simply an instinctive drive towards the same goal. Whatever provided this goal was vague and indistinct, not an absolute dictator or an entity that was in complete control of the Weavers; it was simply a knowledge that all of them accepted and did not question.

There had never been a usurper in the Weavers before; but then, they had never needed one until now. Weave-lords had become liabilities to their patrons in the past, but they had been mere inconveniences. Kakre was the first Weave-lord who had command: command of the Aberrant armies, the feya-kori, and through Avun, the Blackguard. And a commander who was insane worked against the best interests of the Weavers.

Avun had to decide: was Fahrekh genuine, or was this all a trick?

'How would you do it?' he asked.

'I will catch him after he has Weaved. During his mania, when he is vulnerable.' Avun could feel the Weaver studying him from behind his Mask. 'I will need you to help me,' he said.

This was what Avun had feared. To commit himself would mean his death, if Fahrekh was false.

'What would you have me do?'

'We must contrive a reason for him to Weave. Something very difficult. I will supply you with the task; you must persuade him to take it up. Once exhausted, I will strike.'

'And after he is dead? I suppose you will be the new Weave-lord?'

'For the good of the Weavers,' Fahrekh said. 'I shall expect your immediate support.'

The branches rattled as the two of them faced each other beneath the iron-grey sky. Avun knew there was no way to be sure of the creature before him. Who could tell what kind of madness lurked beneath that surface? But he also knew that Kakre was a liability, and becoming more so by the day, and sooner or later he might take it into his head to get rid of his Lord Protector. There was risk in both action and inaction, and in the end, he had to trust his intuition. And he was an expert betrayer.

'I will do as you ask,' he said.

Fahrekh nodded slowly, once. He turned and departed without a word. Avun watched him go, and then clutched his cloak tighter around him. It really was cold out here; he had begun to shiver.