Tane took it all in with wonder. He had been to Axekami before on odd occasions, but it still held the power to awe him. His world had been the quiet of the forests, where the only loud noise was the sharp crack of a hunting rifle or snap of a fire. Already he could hear the pummelling blanket of sound that came from the city; many thousand voices jabbering, the rattle of carts, the lowing of manxthwa as they plodded through the streets. The city seemed to seethe on the shores of the river, waiting to consume him as soon as he stepped away from the sanctuary of the barge, an inescapable din that might drive a man mad. Tane was afraid of it and desired it all at once.
The same, he thought, could be said of his future.
Kaiku knelt before the mirror in the sparsely furnished guest bedroom, and looked at herself. The face that returned the gaze seemed unfamiliar now, though the red of her irises had long faded back to their natural brown. The world had turned but once since she had learned of her condition, and yet it seemed she had forever been this way, a stranger to her own perceptions.
Outside she could hear the sounds of the servants returning from the burial. Mishani would be with them. Kaiku had not thought it appropriate to go.
She had not cried. She would not. Keep the tears to quench the flame, she had thought in a fanciful moment; but the truth was, she felt no sadness. Sorrow had belaboured her past the point of tolerance, and still it had not broken her back. It held no power over her now. Instead, she felt a hard point of bitterness in her breast, a small stone forming in the chambers of her heart like a polluted pearl inside an oyster. She was sick of sorrow, sick of pain. How could she trust anything now, even the evidence of her eyes and ears, when twenty harvests of safety and happiness had come and gone in her life only to be smashed aside in a single day of tragedy? How could she rely on anything again? Weighed against that, grief and remorse were useless. All that was left was giving up, or going on.
She chose the latter.
Mishani had closed herself up like a fan since the fire of yesterday afternoon. The blaze was mercifully checked quickly and caused little damage to the house, but the damage it had done to their relationship was immeasurable. Her once-friend was cold to her now, an impassive veneer rigidly locked in place. And though she did speak, her words were robbed of feeling, and it seemed that it took great effort to converse.
‘You died, Kaiku,’ she had said the previous day, in the wake of her accusation. ‘It is not uncommon for Aberration to lay dormant for years, until something . . . wakes it up. All this time, you have carried it inside you and not known it.’
‘How can you tell?’ she had demanded, desperate to refute her host. ‘You are not a priest; how can you tell? How can you tell what is inside me is not a demon, a malevolent spirit?’
Mishani turned away. ‘We learned little of Aberrants from our tutors, you and I. They taught us manners, calligraphy, elocution; but not about Aberrants. They were not fit for polite young noblewomen like ourselves. But I have learned much since I have come to court, Kaiku, and I know how they preoccupy even the greatest of the high families.’ She spoke quietly, as if fearing someone would overhear; though the lack of doors in most Saramyr houses meant that eavesdropping was severely frowned upon, and repeating what one heard was tantamount to obscenity. ‘Our catches in Mataxa Bay grow more befouled by the year. Each haul brings in more three-clawed crabs, more fish with extra fins, more eyeless lobsters. Aberrations.’
Her voice was taut, suppressing disgust. The fact that Kaiku could tell at all meant that Mishani wanted her to know how she felt about it. In the background, Kaiku could hear the sounds of the servants racing to put out the fire she had started; the creaking of bucket handles, the slosh of water, shouts of alarm. They seemed impossibly distant.
‘I have seen a girl in a village on my family’s land,’ she continued, her back to her visitor. ‘She was hideous to look at, a freak of melted skin and hair, blind and lame. Where her hands touched, flowers grew. Even on skin, Kaiku. Even on metal. We found her being kept in a pen. She had killed her mother as an infant, after the poor woman allowed her daughter to feel her face. The mother’s eyes were bored through by flower roots, and she choked on blossoms that grew in her mouth.’ She paused, reluctant to go on; but she did so anyway. ‘I have never seen a person possessed by a spirit, but I have seen and heard of many Aberrants, and I have heard of several who brought flame simply by being in a room. Most burned themselves to death; the rest were executed by the Weavers. They had two things in common, though, the fire-bringers. All were female. All of them had your eyes when the flames came. Your red eyes.’ She faced Kaiku at last, and her gaze was hard and grave. ‘Aberrants are dangerous, Kaiku. You are dangerous. What if I had been in that room with you?’
That had been yesterday. Since then, she had been left alone, given the bare minimum of attention by her host, given time to think on her condition. She had done a lot of thinking.
She could hear the weeping of the servants as they neared the house. Yokada, the servant girl who had been the only witness to Kaiku’s condition as she escaped the fiery room, had died. It had been said she left a brazier burning in Kaiku’s room, sparking the blaze. She had drunk poison last night, a suicide to atone for her crime. Kaiku doubted that the suicide was voluntary. She wondered if Yokada had even known she was drinking poison at all.
Mishani had grown ruthless in her time at court.
Kaiku had no illusions. Being at her lowest ebb afforded her a wonderfully clear perspective on things. Mishani had not been protecting her; she had been protecting herself. Blood Koli’s standing would suffer terribly if it was found that they were harbouring an Aberrant. Worse, that the heir to the family had been fast friends with that unclean creature all through childhood and adolescence. The taint would be on Mishani’s family then; they would be shunned. Their goods would fall in price, and stories about the strange fish in Mataxa Bay might start circulating. Kaiku’s presence in their home was enough to ruin Blood Koli. Mishani could not risk the loose tongue of a servant girl undoing generations of empire-building.
Mishani came into the room without ringing the chime. She found Kaiku still sitting before the mirror. Kaiku turned her gaze to Mishani’s reflection.
‘My servants tell me you did not eat this morning,’ she said.
‘I feared to find something deadly in my food,’ Kaiku replied, her manner chilly and excessively formal, her mode of address altered so that she spoke as if to an adversary.
Mishani betrayed no reaction. She met Kaiku’s eyes in the mirror levelly, her small, thin face in amid the mass of black hair.
‘I am not so monstrous that I would order your death, Kaiku, no matter what you have become.’
‘Perhaps,’ Kaiku replied. ‘Or perhaps you have changed much these past years. Perhaps I never really knew you.’
Mishani was perturbed by this shift in character. Kaiku was not properly and rightfully ashamed of what she was; instead, her tone condemned Mishani for her lack of friendship, her lack of faith. Kaiku had always been stubborn and wilful, but to be an Aberrant was surely indefensible?
Kaiku stood and faced Mishani. She was a few inches taller than the other, and looked down on her now.
‘I will go,’ she said. ‘That is what you came to ask, is it not?’
‘I was not intending to ask, Kaiku,’ Mishani replied. ‘I have told you what I know about the Mask. It is better if you go to Fo and seek answers for yourself. You understand, I am sure.’
‘I understand many things,’ said Kaiku. ‘Some less palatable than others.’
There was a long silence between them.
‘It is a measure of our friendship that I have not had you killed, Kaiku. You know how dangerous to my family you are. You know that, by revealing yourself as an Aberrant, you could hurt us badly.’
‘And be executed by the Weavers,’ Kaiku retorted. ‘I would not throw my life away like that. It is precious. You thought so too, once.’
�
�Once,’ Mishani agreed. ‘But things have changed.’
‘I have not changed, Mishani,’ came the reply. ‘If I was ill with bone fever, you would have sat by me and nursed me even though you might have caught it yourself. If I was hunted by assassins, you would have protected me and used all your family’s powers to keep me safe, though you yourself would have been endangered. But this . . . this you cannot condone. I am afflicted, Mishani. I did not choose to be Aberrant; how, then, can I be blamed for it by you?’
‘Because I see what you are now,’ she replied. ‘And you disgust me.’
Kaiku felt the blow of her words as an almost physical pain. There was nothing else that needed to be said.
‘There are clothes in that chest,’ Mishani said. ‘Food in the kitchens. Take what you will. In return, I ask this courtesy. Leave after sunset, that you may not be seen.’
Kaiku tilted her chin proudly. ‘I ask no favours of you, nor will I grant any. I want only what is mine: my father’s Mask, and the clothes and pack I came with. I will leave as soon as I have them.’
‘As you wish,’ Mishani replied. She paused then, as if she wanted to say something else; but the moment passed, and she left.
Kaiku walked boldly out of the front gate once the servants had brought her belongings. Barak Avun – Mishani’s father – was away, so she was spared the dilemma of whether to thank him for his hospitality and bid him goodbye. She could feel the servants watching her leave. The sight of their noble lady’s friend departing in trousers and boots – travelling clothes – was odd enough. Perhaps some of them also blamed Yokada’s suicide on her. She cared little. They knew nothing of her affairs. They were only servants.
I have a purpose, she thought. A destination. I will go to the Isle of Fo. There I will learn of the ones who killed my family.
The afternoon was sweltering and muggy now that the sun had climbed clear of the obscuring red dust of the Surananyi, and so bright that her eyes narrowed unconsciously. The Imperial District’s streets were as clean and wide and beautiful as ever. She had money in her pack. Her first destination would be the docks. She would not think about Mishani, nor about what had been done to her, until she was far away from this place. She would not look back.
She left the compound of Blood Koli, turned a corner into a narrow side-street sheltered by overhanging trees, and almost walked into Tane, coming the other way with a woman at his side.
Surprise paralysed them both for a moment, before Kaiku found her voice. ‘Tane,’ she said at last. ‘Daygreet. Shintu’s Luck, no?’ The latter was a phrase expressing amazement at an unlikely coincidence – in this case, their meeting here.
‘Not luck,’ he replied. ‘We have been searching for you. This is Jin, an Imperial Messenger.’
Kaiku turned to the woman who walked with him, and the colour drained out of her. The sound of the city birds chirruping in the trees lining the lane seemed to fade. She became aware that, in this narrow passageway, she was all but invisible to anyone on the main thoroughfare.
‘Is something wrong?’ Tane asked, putting a hand on her shoulder in concern. ‘Are you ill?’
Kaiku’s mind whirled in denial even as her senses bludgeoned her with their evidence. A subtle difference in the bone structure, in the hairline, the lips, the skin . . . but none of those mattered. She saw the eyes, and she recognised her. Impossible as it was, she recognised her.
‘She is not ill,’ said Jin, grabbing Kaiku by the front of the shirt and pulling her roughly so they were face to face, their noses almost touching. Tane was too startled to intervene. ‘You know me, don’t you, Kaiku?’
Kaiku nodded, suddenly terrified. ‘Asara,’ she breathed.
‘Asara,’ said the woman in agreement, and Kaiku felt the sharp prick of a blade at her belly.
TWELVE
The temple of Panazu towered over the River District of Axekami, its garish blue colliding with the greens and purples and whites and yellows of the surrounding buildings and overwhelming them with sheer grandeur. It rose tall, narrow in width but extending far back into the cluster of expensive and outrageously ostentatious dwellings that huddled on the small island of land. Steep, rounded shoulders of blue stone were swirled and crested like whirlpools and waves, and curved windows of sea-green and mottled silver glided elegantly across its façade. Panazu was the god of rain, storms and rivers, and so it made sense that here, where there were no roads but only canals, he should reign supreme.
The River District was an archipelago of buildings, sheared into irregular shapes by the passage of the canals that ran asymmetrically through the streets like cracks in a broken flagstone. It sat just south of the Kerryn, a florid clump of houses, gambling dens, theatres, shops and bars. Long ago it had been a simple heap of old warehouses and yards, convenient for storage of small items; but as Axekami grew and larger cargo barges began to arrive, the narrow canals and the small amount of space to build in the River District necessitated a move to larger, more accessible warehouses on the north side of the Kerryn. The River District became a haven for criminals and the lower-class element for many years, until a group of society nobles decided that the eccentricity of living in a place with no roads was too much to resist. The cheap land prices there triggered a sudden rush to buy, and within a decade large portions of the District had been swallowed by insane architectural projects, each newcomer trying to outdo his neighbours. The criminal element already present boomed with the new influx of wealthy customers; soon the drug hovels and seedy prostitution bars were replaced by exquisite dens and cathouses. The River District was for the young, rich and bored, the debauched and the purveyors of debauchery. It was a dangerous, cut-throat place; but the danger was the attraction, and so it flourished.
‘I thought she was dead,’ Kaiku said.
Tane looked over at her. Slats of light shining through the boards above drew bright stripes across her upturned face. The room was dark and swelteringly hot. It was the first thing she had said since Asara – the one he had called Jin – had left them here.
‘Who is she?’ Tane asked. He was sitting on a rough bench of stone, one of the square tiers that descended into a shallow pit at the centre of the room. This place had been a steam room, once. Now it was empty and the air tasted of disuse.
‘I do not know,’ Kaiku replied. She was standing on the tier below, on the other side of the pit. ‘She was my handmaiden for two years, but I suppose I never knew who she was. She is something other than you see.’
‘I had my suspicions,’ Tane confessed. ‘But she had the mark of the Imperial Messenger. It’s death to wear that tattoo without Imperial sanction.’
‘She was burned,’ Kaiku said, hardly hearing him. ‘I saw her face, burned and scarred. It is her and yet not her. She is . . . she is more beautiful than before. Different. I would say she was Asara’s sister, or a cousin . . . if not for the eyes. But she was burned, Tane. How could she heal like that?’
Asara had been angry. Kaiku could still feel the press of her dagger against her skin, that first moment when they met outside Blood Koli’s compound. For a fleeting instant, she had expected Asara to drive it home, thrust steel into muscle in revenge for what Kaiku had done to her.
But what had Kaiku done to her? Up until that moment, she had thought her uncontrollable curse had killed her saviour and handmaiden; now she found she had been mistaken. It was not an easy thing to accept.
‘You left me to die there, Kaiku,’ Asara said. ‘I saved your life, and you left me to die.’
Tane had been too surprised to react until then, but at that moment he made a move to protest at Asara’s handling of the one they had come to find.
‘Stay there, Tane,’ Asara hissed at him. ‘I have given a lot to ensure this one stayed alive, and I will not kill her now. But I have no such compunctions about you, if you try and stop me. You would be dead before your hand reached your sword.’
Tane had believed her. He thought of the flash of light he had see
n in her eyes back in the forest, and considered that he did not know who or what he was dealing with.
‘I thought I had killed you,’ Kaiku said, her voice calmer than she felt. ‘I was scared. I ran.’ She had considered adding an apology, then thought better of it. To apologise would be to admit culpability. She would not beg forgiveness for her actions, especially in the face of Asara’s deceit.
‘Yes, you ran,’ Asara said. ‘And were things otherwise I would hurt you for what you did to me. But I have a task, and you are part of it. Come with me.’ She turned to Tane, her face still beautiful, even set hard as it was. ‘You may accompany us, or go as you wish.’
‘Where?’ Tane replied, but he had already made up his mind. He would not abandon Kaiku like this.
‘To the River District,’ said Asara.
She had put her dagger away as they walked, warning both of them not to attempt escape. Neither had any intention of doing so. Though there was violence in her manner, they both sensed that Asara did not mean them actual harm. When Kaiku added up all she knew about Asara, she came to one conclusion: Asara had been trying to take her somewhere ever since the night her family died. If it had been kidnap she intended, she could have done it long ago. This was different. Kaiku was part of Asara’s task, and she guessed that the task involved getting her to the River District of her own will. She could not deny more than a little curiosity as to why.
They had crossed the Kerryn at the great Gilza Bridge into the gaudy paveways that fronted the houses of the District. The sudden profusion of extravagance was overwhelming, as if the bridge formed a barrier between the city proper and this nether-city populated by brightly plumed eccentrics and painted creatures. Manxthwa loped past, laden with bejewelled bridles and ridden by men and women who seemed to have escaped from some theatrical asylum. There were no wheeled vehicles allowed here, even if they had been practical on the narrow paveways that ran between the stores and the canals, but the punts and tiny rowboats more than made up for them, explosions of colour against the near-purple water.
The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil Page 13