Zahn did not look at her as he spoke, but fixed his eyes on an imaginary point in the middle distance. ‘I came here to beg you to reconsider your decision to keep the throne.’
‘You are saying I should abdicate?’ Anais’s voice hardened to stone.
‘Take Lucia with you,’ Zahn said, his tone flat and devoid of emotion. ‘Leave the throne to those who desire it so much. Choose your child’s life over your family’s power. You can live in peace and prosperity the rest of your days, and Lucia will be safe. But your position is worsening, Empress, and you know what will happen if Blood Amacha or Blood Kerestyn have to take this city by force.’
Anais was furiously silent.
‘Then I will say it, if you won’t,’ Zahn continued. ‘You, they may well allow to live. But they will execute Lucia. They cannot risk her being a threat to their power, and the people will want their blood.’
‘And if I abdicate?’ Anais spat. ‘They will get to her, Zahn. She is still a threat even if I give up all claim to the throne. As many people who hate Aberrants, there are some who don’t and she will become a focus for their discontent, an icon for them to rally behind. Whether Kerestyn or Amacha become the ruling family, whether I abdicate or not, they will kill Lucia. They will send assassins. She is too dangerous to live, don’t you see that? The only way I can keep my child alive is to stay Empress and beat them!’
She was aware suddenly that she was shouting. Zahn put his hands on her shoulders to calm her, but she swatted him away.
‘Don’t touch me, Zahn. You have no right any more.’
‘Ah,’ the Barak said bitterly. ‘Yes, I have heard that you have taken to sharing your bed again with your wastrel husband. I remember when you—’
‘That is not your business!’ Anais snapped, her pale skin flushing.
Zahn held up his palms placatingly. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I forget myself. Do not let us argue; there are more important things at stake here.’
Anais searched his eyes for hints of mockery, but she found him honest. She relaxed. When Zahn saw she was ready to listen, he spoke again.
‘If you are adamant on staying, Anais, at least let your allies help you,’ he said. ‘There could be a thousand troops here in two days, ten times that in a week. You could put down the uprising, keep the people safe, and once within the city we would be unassailable. Amacha or Kerestyn would not dare enter.’
‘Zahn,’ Anais said wearily. ‘I trust you. But you know I cannot allow a force like that into Axekami. There are too many families involved, too many political uncertainties.’
‘Word has reached me that Barak Mos of Blood Batik has offered his troops, and that you accepted.’
‘Your spies are inept, my Barak,’ Anais said without rancour. ‘Mos has offered me troops, but I have not accepted yet. He is a different matter, anyway. My defence is in his interest: he has his son and granddaughter to protect. Durun would just as likely be killed as I if either Blood Amacha or Blood Kerestyn took Axekami.’
‘Mos is also the head of the only other family strong enough to take the throne,’ Zahn reminded her.
‘His son already has the throne,’ Anais replied. ‘I have not annulled our marriage through these years despite the obvious unsuitability of my husband. He has no reason to think I might now.’
‘Do you believe you can hold Axekami against your enemies, with the very people of the city against you?’ Zahn asked.
‘The people will learn to accept Lucia,’ said Anais. ‘Or I will make them learn. As to now, they are like children in a tantrum, and must be punished. I will keep them in order.’
They turned a corner, into the long shadow of a rearing thing that might have been a stone cobra, or perhaps a man and woman entwined. The evening sun shone through the gaps in the sculpture, reddening imperceptibly as dusk came on. Zahn gave it barely a glance. They walked on for a time in the sultry heat of the Saramyr summer before Anais spoke again.
‘I owe you an apology,’ she said.
Zahn was surprised. ‘For what?’
‘I have been presumptuous. I have been so busy trying to win my opponents over that I have not considered one of my greatest allies. For weeks I have been introducing Lucia to the high families in an attempt to dispel the myths that have arisen about her; but you have supported me from the start in this, and I have never once invited you to see the cause you fight for.’
Zahn inclined his head. She knew as well as him why he was on her side. ‘You are right, of course. I never have met her. I would be honoured if I might do so now.’
The Heir-Empress Lucia had finished her lessons for the day, so she went up to the roof gardens to enjoy the last of the evening light. Zaelis had stayed with her. She liked the tall, white-bearded tutor. He indulged her relentlessly, and his deep, molten voice was comforting. She knew – in the unique way that she knew things – that he had her best interests at heart. She also enjoyed the freedom she felt when she was alone with him. He was the only one around whom she could use her talents overtly.
They were sitting together on a bench, a picturesque arbour within a shaggy fringe of exotic trees. Berries hung in colourful chains amid the deep, tropical green of the leaves. Insects droned and clicked from a hundred different hiding places, occasionally swooping past them in languid curves or hurried, darting rushes. Ravens perched all around them. The ravens of the Keep had learned to accept Zaelis, and he had learned to relax in their presence. They were fiercely protective of the young Heir-Empress. Saramyr ravens had a strong territorial instinct, and it bred in them a desire to guard and protect. They watched over Lucia as if she was an errant chick, motivated by parental drives they were not intelligent enough to understand.
‘Are you worried, Lucia?’ Zaelis asked.
She nodded. He had become adept at reading her moods, even though they rarely showed in the dreamlike expression she always wore.
‘About what is happening in the city?’
She nodded again. Nobody had told her anything – the tutors and guards had been instructed to keep outside matters secret after Durun’s outburst in front of the child – but Lucia knew anyway. How could you keep something like that from a girl who could speak to birds? Zaelis had ignored the edict and elaborated on the situation for her. Lucia had not told him that the dream lady had informed her of most of it anyway.
‘This was my fault,’ she said quietly. ‘I started this.’
‘I know you did,’ Zaelis replied, in the casual mode of address used for – and by – children, even the Heir-Empress. ‘But we’ve been waiting for you to start it for a very long time.’
Lucia looked up at him. ‘You’ll look after me, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘And my mother?’
Zaelis hesitated. There was no point lying to her; she saw right through him. ‘We’ll try,’ he said. ‘But she won’t see things the way we do.’
‘Who is “we”?’ Lucia asked.
‘You know who we are.’
‘I’ve never heard you say it.’
‘You don’t need to.’
Lucia thought about that. ‘Do you think I’m wicked?’ she said after a time.
‘I think you were inevitable,’ Zaelis replied.
She seemed to understand; but then, with Lucia, who could say?
‘Mother’s coming,’ she murmured, and almost simultaneously the ravens took wing, disappearing in a raucous flutter of black feathers, rising into the red sky.
A moment later, the Blood Empress came into view, walking with Zahn along a tiled path between a stand of narrow trees. She glanced once at the departing ravens, but no other reaction crossed her face. Zaelis got to his feet, ushering Lucia up with him.
‘Barak Zahn tu Ikati, allow me to present my daughter Lucia,’ the Empress said.
But her words seemed scarcely heeded by either the Barak or the child. The two of them were staring at each other with something like amazement on their faces. Anais and Z
aelis exchanged a puzzled glance as the moment became awkward; and then Lucia’s eyes filled with tears, and she flung herself at the Barak and hugged him around the waist, burying her head in his stomach.
‘Lucia!’ the Empress exclaimed.
Zahn folded his hands over the little Heir-Empress’s blonde tresses, a strange look in his eyes, a mix of bewilderment and shock. Lucia pulled herself away suddenly, glaring at him through her tears; then with a sob she turned and fled, disappearing into the leafy folds of the garden.
All three were dumbstruck for a moment before Anais found her voice.
‘Zahn, I cannot apologise enough. She never—’
‘It’s quite all right, Anais,’ Zahn said, his voice sounding distant and distracted. ‘Quite all right. I think I should go now; I seem to have upset her.’
Without waiting for her leave, Zahn turned and began to walk slowly to the entrance of the garden. Anais went with him, leaving Zaelis alone on the path. He sat back down on the bench.
‘Well, well, well,’ he murmured to himself, and an odd smile creased his face.
TWENTY-FOUR
Asara killed again in Chaim. It was an unwise risk, for she had no need to feed; but she sought diversion, and there was no other in the bleak, empty trading village to interest her. She chose a man this time, because she had less respect for them than for women, and she was less likely to suffer something like guilt for robbing their life as a source of amusement. This one was drunk, a leathery, tough brawler who had no fear of the short, dark route from the bar to his house, where no lights burned. Asara taught him otherwise.
Afterward, when she had hidden the body far away where it would not be discovered for days, she returned to her room. She was not worried about being caught. There was not a mark on him, nothing to link them. He had simply got lost on his way home in the dark, and fallen victim to exposure. Or perhaps his heart just stopped. He was a drinker, after all, and well-known for it.
She sat in her room, alone. As she preferred it. As it always was.
Her room at the lodging house was as spartan as everything else in Chaim. There was a double bed in the centre, its woollen covers dark with age and moth-ragged. There was a lantern on the wall, and bare, ill-fitting floorboards. Beyond that, there was nothing. The mountain winds cooed outside, sending chilly fingers in through the cracks in the wall to brush across her skin. The lantern was unlit, which made little difference to Asara – her night vision was near-perfect, like a cat’s. It was freezing, as always, for the winds cut to the bone here even in summer. She listened to the night, and the sudden, sharp gusts that whipped around the rickety lodging house.
The bliss of feeding was short-lived, and when it left her she was maudlin. She sat cross-legged on the tatty bed and looked at the empty room. Alone, ever alone. She did not know any other way. For there were none like her, not even the other Aberrants. She was a reflection, a cypher, without identity or cause. She was nothing, not even herself.
There was no memory of her childhood. There had been a time when she had wished she could gaze upon herself at the moment of her birth, thinking that if she could see her first face, even if it was the scrunched-up red ball of a newborn, then she might have a fix on her identity, a base line from which all her other selves grew. But it was fancy. She suspected anyway that she would not like what she saw there.
Her mother died in the pregnancy. During her early years, in her lonely quest for herself, she had tracked down the place where she had been born. She learned of a woman there who had become pregnant, and within three months had wasted away to the point of death. Yet the woman’s belly was so swollen that the physicians of the village cut her open, and they found a fully grown babe within. Asara had no doubt that it was her. She had sucked her mother dry from inside the womb.
What happened to the baby, nobody knew. Perhaps it was given away, perhaps lost and found. It was remarkably hard to trace her own trail, when with each new location she was a different person.
She remembered several mothers and fathers, foster parents who took her in. She was irresistible to them. With a child’s eagerness to please, she unconsciously changed herself, day by day, to accommodate her new parents’ vision of the perfect offspring. She bewitched them by fulfilling their heart’s desire. But always, sooner or later, the time came to leave. When a relative marked the drastic alterations since they had visited last year, too gradual for her parents to see but obvious to one who had been away for a while; when her cravings and appetites had claimed too many lives; when people began to question where she had come from: that was her time to move on, leaving only the memory of a curious ailment known as the Sleeping Death behind her, a disease that struck at random and left not a mark on the victim’s body. As if their life had simply left them.
She grew fast. When she was six harvests old, the craving began, and instinct taught her how to sate it in the same way it taught babes to suckle or adolescents to kiss. She was clever even then, and careful never to be caught, though there were times when she had come close. In the early days, the hunger was worse, for she was growing as well as changing. By the time she was thirteen harvests of age she had the form and understanding of an eighteen-harvest girl. In those days, she seemed to absorb something of her victims, shreds of understanding and knowledge that kept her mind apace with her body; that talent she had lost with the passing of childhood, and never regained. To her, it was simply a part of growing up.
Her uncanny growth meant that she was forced to move on frequently, and learn hard lessons in life; but she was a good pupil, and an attentive one, and she survived the fate that most Aberrants suffered. She avoided the Weavers and the hatred of those around her, until she had mastered herself enough to disguise her condition.
As time went on, she grew bitter and resentful. She searched for her past and found fragments, each as unsatisfying as the last. In the end, she gave up. And yet the feeling remained, even now, eighty harvests after her birth. She had no core. She was a mirrored shell, reflecting other people’s ideas of beauty, but under it all there was nothing. A void that sucked in life, and was never quite filled. It demanded that she prey on the things she imitated, desperately drawn to their light like a moth to a candle. She was an effigy, a parasite . . . anything but a person.
Time had given her ample opportunity to change, both in conviction and form. She had spent a few years as a man before deciding that it did not suit her. She had briefly tried to struggle against her need to feed and liberate herself from it, but in the end she could not convince herself of the worth of human beings, and she still saw most of them as a brand of cattle only slightly more unpredictable than oxen or cows. The rest were dangerous to her: the Weavers and the nobles, those who would hunt her down and slay her because she was a threat to them. No, she owed humanity no favours, and though she still hung on to a vestigial semblance of guilt and regret at sacrificing a particularly pretty life to her hungers, it was more in the manner of having been forced to break a beautiful vase.
But all changes led back to the same void, the same boredom and emptiness. And so she sat, alone, in her room in Chaim, and wondered when it might ever end.
Asara awoke at mid-morning, a moment before there came a knock at her door. She dressed hurriedly, already alert, and opened it.
The owner of the lodging house was there, a thin, grizzled, wiry man with few teeth. She dismissed him from her gaze, shifting it immediately to the one who stood next to him. Their eyes met, and the other managed a smile so weak that it told all the story it needed to tell.
Kaiku.
‘This one wanted you,’ the owner said. ‘Was asking around.’
Kaiku stepped into the room. She looked half the weight she had been when they set off into the mountains, three weeks ago. Asara embraced her gently; she felt frail and thin, all bone.
‘Bring us food,’ she said to the owner. ‘Meat, fish.’
‘She’ll be staying in this room, then?’ the owner q
ueried, a note of disapproval in his voice.
‘Yes,’ Asara replied bluntly. ‘She will.’
By the time she had turned back, Kaiku was lying on the bed, asleep.
They did not leave the room for three days. Kaiku slept most of that time, and Asara watched over her. She seemed withdrawn, hollowed-out, and by the look in her eyes Asara knew it was something more than a physical trial she had suffered. She barely talked the first day, and only a little more on the second. Asara did not press her, not even to ask whether she had found the monastery or not. She knew Kaiku had, anyway. Her father had borne that same look about him when he returned to their house in the Forest of Yuna, shortly before the shin-shin came. Instead Asara simply waited, and guarded her while she recovered.
At Asara’s behest, the owner knocked and brought them food at intervals. He was well paid for his trouble. The wealth that Asara and Kaiku carried between them, while not impressive by city standards, was a small fortune in Chaim. Kaiku ate, at first a little and then a lot as her shrunken stomach stretched to the prospect of life-giving energy. She was ravenous. At night, they slept huddled together. Asara had the owner bring extra blankets, but Kaiku shivered anyway.
By the third day, Kaiku’s strength had returned somewhat. Without prompting, she suddenly began to talk.
‘I imagine you are curious to know where I have been,’ she said to Asara, who was sitting on the edge of the bed combing her hair.
‘The thought had crossed my mind, yes,’ she replied dryly.
‘Forgive me my silence,’ Kaiku said. ‘I have had much to think about.’
Asara finished her combing and twisted to face Kaiku, who was wrapped in a blanket, hugging her knees. ‘You have suffered,’ she observed as a way of excusing her.
‘No more than I deserve,’ she replied. Then she told Asara about what she had seen and done, of her journey across the mountains and the slaying of the Weaver whose robes she stole, of the Mask and the crossing of the barrier that hid the Weavers from the world. She talked of the monastery and the strange things within, of the foul prison full of Aberrants and the creature’s accusation: Look what you’ve done to us . . .
The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr / the Skein of Lament / the Ascendancy Veil Page 29