Braided Path 03 - The Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

He was pointing at Juto, whose face was a hideous rictus of anger. ‘Why you gods-damned cur! You’d lie to save your own skin?’

  ‘He’s not lying,’ Phaeca said.

  ‘What do you know, you cursed she-Weaver?’ he hollered over his shoulder.

  ‘You’re not a good liar. It’s in your eyes,’ she replied. ‘He’s telling the truth.’

  A great, dreary moan rose from the pall-pit, and metal screeched as it took the strain of the demon beneath. Nomoru’s gaze had moved from Lon for the first time, and was on Juto now. Kaiku dared not look away, but she could sense the massive shape of the feya-kori rising from the pall-pit over her shoulder, could smell its abominable stench.

  ‘You?’ Nomoru hissed.

  Juto deliberated for an instant, then decided that pretence was not worth it any more. ‘You were becoming a root addict, just like your mother. A liability. We could spare you, and it never hurts to be on the Weavers’ good side.’ He grinned. ‘And since your friends over there can’t use their powers without giving themselves away, and their rifles are useless like yours was, I think that gives me the advantage.’ And with that, he squeezed the trigger and fired.

  Kaiku did not even think. Time crushed to a treacly crawl. She was in the Weave before the ignition powder had sparked, was flashing across the distance between them before the ball had left the end of the barrel, and had caught it and torn it apart before it reached Nomoru.

  She only just made it. The ball exploded a few inches from the side of Nomoru’s face, peppering her in burning fragments of iron and lead. The shot that had fired from her gun towards Lon suffered no such intercession: it hit him dead centre in the forehead and blew out through the back of his head in a crimson spray.

  Time snapped into rhythm again. Nomoru flailed backward into the ladder, her hand flying to her face, one side of which was a lashwork of blood. Lon fell to the ground. Juto looked shocked, unable to understand why his target was still on her feet. Then he turned to the Sisters in realisation.

  And from above them, a doleful groan, and the Sisters looked up to see the feya-kori towering to their right, half-out of the pit, a slimy mass in the suggestion of a humanoid shape, with a mere bulge for its head in which two yellow orbs fizzed and blazed. Those eyes were turned upon them now.

  ‘Gods,’ Phaeca whispered. ‘Run!’

  Nobody needed another prompt this time. Juto shoved Nomoru aside and clambered up the ladder and away; Nomoru scrambled after him in enraged pursuit, and the Sisters followed. They ran low, hiding themselves in the maze of obscuring pipes, shrinking under the dread regard of the demon. Nomoru was screaming at Juto, who was darting away ahead of them; she was still bent on revenge, apparently careless of the danger they were all in.

  The feya-kori dragged its hindquarters out of the pall-pit, emerging from the column of red smoke, rising to its full height of forty feet at the shoulder. Its companion gave a cry, and it responded; then, with a slow and langourous movement, it swept one enormous arm down to crush the four little humans that fled from it.

  They felt it coming, sensed the fog sucked away to either side as the stump came towards them, and they scattered. Nomoru threw herself beneath some enormous pressure chamber that was like a barrel of metal in a cradle; the Sisters flattened themselves against a rack of pipes; Juto ran on, seeking to outdistance the blow. The hand slapped down, spraying its acid vileness across the tier. It crashed into furnaces that buckled with the force and blasted steam and burning slag out in furious plumes. But its aim was poor, for they were hidden and it was only guessing where they were; though iron was bent and melted mere feet from Kaiku and Phaeca, they were unharmed.

  The Weave was suddenly alive, heavy with activity. Nomoru had not been wrong: it was an ambush. Weavers were here, close by. Phaeca and Kaiku had not noticed them till now, since they were reining in their kana and the Weavers were hiding themselves. The Sisters knitted themselves into their surroundings, trying to become invisible to the searchers; but Kaiku’s violent use of the Weave in saving Nomoru had given the game away, and they could not hide for long when the Weavers were on the scent.

  Yet across it all was the huge and disorientating presence of the feya-kori, throwing the Weave into disarray. They were simply too massive to work around; they influenced everything with an overwhelming force, confusing the Weavers and the Sisters equally.

  The Sisters did not dare to move. They could feel the feya-kori searching for them, like a piqued child looking for ants to squash, its gaze sweeping the pall-pits. Kaiku’s heart pounded in an agony of expectation.

  Then she saw Juto, spotted him through the buckled pipes before them. He was climbing up to the next tier, still running from the demon. And there at the top of the steps Kaiku saw a pair of Weavers, their Masks turning as they scanned for their quarries. If there had been any doubt as to Nomoru’s story, it was dispelled by the sight of Juto heading up towards them, hailing them as he went.

  The feya-kori lumbered past them to their right, its steps accompanied by a shriek of metal as it stamped the landscape of the pall-pit flat. It had stepped off the ramp and onto the tiers. Heading for Juto.

  He looked back in alarm, clambered up the last of the stairs so he was standing near the Weavers. It was evident that he thought it would provide some kind of sanctuary. He was wrong. The feya-kori’s stump crashed down onto him in a geyser of sludge, turning Juto and the Weavers alike into burning pulp.

  The Weavers’ death-cry rolled across the Weave like thunder. Kaiku and Phaeca used its wake to dig themselves deeper into concealment, evading the frustrated minds that searched for them. The Weavers were distressed by the loss of two of their number. Kaiku found strength in that. She remembered Lon’s reaction to the descending fog, and Juto’s strange and mistaken certainty that it was nothing to do with the feya-kori. Matching that with the circumstances of the Weaver’s ambush, she could only draw one conclusion. Neither the men who had betrayed them nor the Weavers who lay in wait had known that the demons were going to emerge.

  Still they did not dare to move. They could sense the feya-kori waiting for them to show themselves. The Weavers had turned their attention to it now, lulling it, cajoling it in some fashion that Kaiku did not understand. After an agonising minute, the Sisters heard it turn and climb back onto the ramp. Kaiku dared a glimpse through the piping at their back, and saw it retreating into the red smoke. The second demon was visible as a ghostly blur beyond it. They were heading up the ramp, towards the Emperor’s Road, a wide thoroughfare that led to the west gate. Gradually, the stench of their presence began to diminish, and with it their violent influence on the Weave.

  ‘We have to go,’ Kaiku said. If they did not take advantage of the Weavers’ disarray now, it would be too late.

  Phaeca was shivering, her pupils pinpricks in her red irises. She jumped at Kaiku’s touch, startled back into the real world. Kaiku repeated herself, and Phaeca nodded tersely. They got to their feet and hurried to where Nomoru had hidden; but when they arrived, there was no sign of her, except for a rusty spattering of bloodstains.

  ‘She can take care of herself,’ Phaeca murmured. When Kaiku hesitated, her companion gripped her arm hard. ‘She can, Kaiku. It’s us they’re after. She’s safer on her own.’

  Kaiku realised that they were still carrying their rifles, and she threw hers aside. She would not dare to fire it after what Juto had said. Phaeca did the same.

  The steps that Juto had climbed had been melted by the touch of the demon, so they headed around the tier to find another way up. Without a guide, their path was tortuous, and they found dead-ends more often than not. As the demons retreated, the Weavers were returning to their search in earnest, but the Sisters were harder to find now that they had moved on. It was not only the Weavers they had to worry about, however: through a break in the miasma they spotted the tall, black-robed shape of a Nexus on a higher tier, and that meant there were Aberrants hunting for them too.

  But the feya-
kori’s fog worked in their favour. As foul as it was, it was keeping them hidden. They made their way up two tiers in quick succession without encountering anything, and with distance the Weaver’s probing grew less accurate.

  Kaiku gave her companion a nervous glance. In the red light, without her make-up and dressed in dowdy peasant clothes, she barely recognised her friend. Nor did she recognise the expression of abject terror on her face. Kaiku, frightened as she was, had been hunted before, and she had survived then as she was determined to survive now. But this was new to Phaeca, and her talent for empathy made her mentally frail. The unrelenting expectation of running into a Weaver or an Aberrant – both of which would result in an excruciating death – was pushing her into the edge of something like shock. Her Weaving was suffering too, becoming clumsy and distracted; she was not disguising herself well.

  Kaiku grabbed her suddenly, pulling her aside into the niche between two sets of pipes. She was only just fast enough. Her eyesight was better than the ghaureg’s, and she had spotted its silhouette in the mist before it had registered hers. Kaiku clutched her friend close to her as the massive Aberrant trod slowly towards them, then on and past, leaving only a fleeting glimpse of a shaggy, muscular body and oversized jaws packed with teeth. Phaeca’s breath fluttered as she released it, and Kaiku saw that her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

  ‘We will get out of this,’ she whispered. ‘Trust me.’

  Phaeca managed a nod, her red hair falling untidily across her face. Kaiku brushed it back, unconvinced.

  ‘Trust me,’ she repeated with a smile, and through her fear she actually felt confident. They would not die here. She would see to that, even if she had to take on every Weaver in the area.

  She pulled Phaeca into motion, and they slipped away in the direction the ghaureg had come from. The air crawled with the attention of the Weavers, the threads of the Weave humming with their resonance. They were sending vibrations between themselves, throwing a net for the others to catch and hold, hoping that the Sisters’ presence would interfere with the pattern. It was a technique Kaiku had never seen before: ineffective, to be certain, but it meant that the Weavers had begun devising ways of working together, and that was dangerous.

  The Sisters cringed as something jumped across the aisle right in front of them, a shadow darting out of the murk and away. They froze, but it did not come back; it had not seen them. Phaeca was a wreck after that, but Kaiku urged her up another set of steps and onto a higher tier. They were hopelessly lost, navigating only by the brighter glow in the mist that was the pall-pit’s centre. The plaintive wail of the feya-kori came to them distantly.

  Kaiku said a quick prayer to Shintu – she could not decide whether he was on their side or not tonight, but with what she knew of the god of fortune it was probably both and neither – and an instant later she turned a corner and almost ran into the outer wall of the pit.

  She blinked in surprise.

  ‘It’s the wall . . .’ Phaeca said, a slowly dawning hope in her voice.

  Kaiku gave her a companionable squeeze on the arm. ‘See? Have faith.’ She looked up at it. It was only nine feet high. Scalable. They would not have to waste time looking for the way in that Lon had provided for them.

  ‘Help me up,’ Kaiku said. Phaeca glanced around, seeing only the swirling mist – which was gradually beginning to lift with the departure of the demons – and the dark bulk of the Weaver contraptions that hummed and tapped. Convinced that there was nothing immediately nearby, she made a stirrup with her hands for Kaiku to step into. Kaiku boosted herself up onto the wall, and Phaeca jumped as her friend unexpectedly shrieked. Her fingers came loose and Kaiku fell back down, landed on her heels and collapsed onto her back. She scrambled to her feet, and her forearms were running with blood.

  Phaeca was frantic. The Weavers’ attention had devolved upon them suddenly, drawn by the scream.

  ‘Again,’ Kaiku said through gritted teeth.

  ‘But it’s—’

  ‘Again!’

  For she knew that her cry had given them away, and if they did not get out of there now they were not getting out at all. Phaeca hurriedly knitted her fingers again and Kaiku threw herself up before her instinct for self-preservation could stop her. The thin bladed fins atop the wall cut into her arms in a dozen different places, slicing across the existing cuts, bringing tears to her eyes. Her kana was racing to repair the damage, awakening without her volition; she forced it down, for it would bring the Weavers more surely than her scream had. She lifted her weight, driving the blades deeper into her flesh, tiny razors that ribboned her skin agonisingly. She got one foot to the top of the wall, holding her body clear, and then she stood in one convulsive movement. The blades slid clear of her, and the pain was so exquisite that she almost fainted.

  ‘Kaiku!’

  It was Phaeca’s cry that brought her back from the brink. She staggered, and the blades cut through the sole of her boot and pricked into her heel. With a moan, she bent down, holding her arm out, and only then did she catch sight of the thing thumping towards Phaeca from the right. It was a feyn, an awful collision between a bear and a lizard, with the worst features of each. Phaeca’s expression was desperate, frantic: she saw Kaiku leaning down and she jumped. Kaiku braced just in time, her adrenaline pumping, and she caught Phaeca and hauled her up and over the wall. Phaeca’s legs dragged across the blades as she went, carving through her trousers and darkening them in red, but she somehow got them under her again in time for Kaiku to drop her over the other side of the wall.

  Kaiku had one last glimpse of the enraged monstrosity before she pulled her foot free and jumped down next to Phaeca, who was picking herself up, tears blurring her eyes. She was whimpering; Kaiku, whose wounds were much worse, was silent. They staggered across the waste ground towards the city, and the fog swallowed them, leaving the fruitless questing of the Weavers behind them like the buzzing of angry wasps.

  Kaiku did not remember the journey back to the Poor Quarter, and the sanctuary of the rooftops. She did not know what Phaeca said to the men that they found there. She remembered rough faces and an ugly dialect, questions which frightened her; and then dirty bandages, mummifying her arms and enwrapping her feet. They were little more than strips of cloth. At some point her ability to suppress her kana had slipped: she could feel her body healing itself restlessly.

  She never exactly lost consciousness, but she slipped out of the world for a time, and when she came back to it she was in a bare room, and a grey dawn was brightening outside. Her head was on Phaeca’s breast, and she was being held like a baby. Her arms burned. She became aware that Phaeca was Weaving, concealing the activity within Kaiku’s body as the power inside her repaired the damage done to its host. She felt hollow, as if there was a vacuum in her veins where the lost blood should be. But she was alive.

  ‘Kaiku?’ Phaeca’s voice came simultaneously from her mouth and reverberantly though her breastbone.

  ‘I am here,’ she said.

  There was a silence for a time. ‘You faded away for a while.’

  ‘It takes more than that to kill a Sister,’ she replied, with a faint chuckle that hurt too much to continue. Then, because the bravado felt good, she added: ‘I told you to trust me.’

  ‘You did,’ Phaeca agreed.

  Kaiku swallowed against a dry throat. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The building belongs to a gang. I don’t know their name.’

  ‘Are we prisoners?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even . . . did they see our eyes?’

  ‘Of course,’ Phaeca said. ‘They know we’re Aberrants. I could scarcely conceal it from them.’

  Kaiku sat up slowly and felt lightheaded. Phaeca put out a hand to help her, but Kaiku waved her off. She steadied herself, took a few breaths, and raked her tawny hair back.

  ‘What will they do? What did you tell them?’

  ‘I told them the truth,’ said Phaeca simply. ‘What they wil
l do is up to them. We’re in no state to do anything about it.’

  Kaiku frowned. ‘You are very calm.’

  ‘Should I be scared of men? After what we saw in the pallpits?’ Phaeca’s face was wry. ‘I think they already knew of us. I believe they believed me. Aberrants are the least of their worries here in the Poor Quarter. And now we are not the scapegoat for all the world’s ills, people like these have found somewhere new to put their hate.’

  Kaiku looked around the room. It smelt of mildew. The wooden walls were greened with mould, and the beams were dank. A few dirty pillows were thrown in one corner, and a heavy drape hung across the doorway. No lantern burned here; they must have been sitting in the dark.

  Kaiku noticed then the bandages around her friend’s legs, beneath the bloodied tatters of her trousers. ‘Spirits, Phaeca, you’re hurt too.’ She remembered what had happened as she said it.

  ‘Not as badly as you were,’ she replied, and there was something in her eyes, some depth of gratitude that words were inadequate to express. She looked away. ‘I’ll deal with it later. Until then, you rest.’

  Kaiku sagged, and Phaeca put her arm round her friend again, letting her rest her head. ‘I am tired,’ Kaiku murmured.

  They heard footsteps, and the drape was pulled back. Kaiku did not even rouse herself from Phaeca; her muscles were too heavy. Two men came in: one was very tall and thickly bearded; the other had shaggy brown hair and a rugged, pitted face, and when he spoke Kaiku saw that his teeth were made of brass.

  ‘We’ve been talking,’ he said, without introduction or preamble.

  Phaeca looked at him squarely. ‘And what have you decided?’

  The brass-toothed man squatted down in front of them. ‘We’ve decided that you look like you need a hand.’

  NINE

  Yugi tu Xamata, leader of the Libera Dramach, awoke in his cell at Araka Jo to find Lucia standing at the window, looking out onto the lake. His head was thick with amaxa root. His hookah stood cold in the corner, but the sharp scent remained in the air, evidence of another night of over-indulgence. He sat up on his sleeping-mat, the blanket falling away from his bare shoulders. It was chilly in winter at these altitudes, and there was no glass in the windows, but he had been burning up with narcotic fever last night.