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, sweetnuts, 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, o
verwhelmingly, 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 décor 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 flicked 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.
The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil Page 24