The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr / the Skein of Lament / the Ascendancy Veil

by Chris Wooding

  ‘You are thinking of home?’ he guessed.

  Kaiku made a soft noise in her throat, an affirmation.

  ‘What is there for you?’ he persisted.

  ‘Just home,’ she said. ‘That is enough for the moment.’

  He was silent for a time. Kaiku suddenly realised that she had been callous, and misinterpreted the pause. She laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘My apologies. I had forgotten. Your accent has improved so much, sometimes you seem almost Saramyr.’

  Saran gave her a heartbreaking smile. As usual, he was immaculately dressed and not a hair out of place. He might have been vain – something Kaiku had learned over the past weeks – but he certainly had something to be vain about.

  ‘You should not apologise. Quraal is not my home, not any more. I have been away a long time, but I do not miss it. My people are blinkered and reluctant to leave their own shores, afraid that mingling with other cultures is offensive to our gods, afraid that the Theocrats might accuse them of heresy. I do not think that. Those Quraal that do deal with foreigners stay aloof, but I find beauty in all people. Some more than most.’

  He was not looking at her as he delivered the final sentence, nor was it weighted any more that its predecessors, but Kaiku felt a blush anyway.

  ‘I thought that way once,’ she said quietly. ‘I suppose I still do, but it is not so easy nowadays. Mishani tells me I need a harder heart, and she is right. To think too much of someone only makes a person vulnerable. Sooner or later, one will disappoint or betray the other.’

  ‘That is Mishani’s opinion, not yours,’ Saran said. ‘And besides, what of Mishani herself? You two seem close as kin.’

  ‘Even she has wounded me in the past, and that hurt went deeper than any had before it,’ Kaiku murmured.

  Saran was silent for a time. They stood together, listening to the sussurant breathing of the sea, looking out over the darkness. Kaiku had more she wanted to say, but she felt she had already said too much, revealed too great a portion of herself to him. She kept her inner self guarded; it was her way, and experience had taught her that there was little point in trying to change it. Somehow, whenever she let her defences down, she always chose the wrong person; yet if she kept them up, she drove people away from her.

  She had fallen into two relationships since she had lived in the Fold, both fulfilling at the time but ultimately proving empty. One man she was with for three years before realising that she stayed with him to alleviate the guilt she felt over the death of Tane, who had followed her into the Imperial Keep out of love and had died there. The other lasted six months before he revealed a terrible temper, made worse by the fact that he could not physically overpower her since she was an apprentice of the Red Order. She did not see the rage building until it burst out. He hit her once. She used her kana to crush the bones in his hand. Unfortunately, despite his other failings, he had been a skilled bomb engineer and a great asset to the Libera Dramach, but Kaiku’s actions had put paid to that. She felt more sorry about causing trouble for Zaelis’s organisation than about maiming him.

  But there was one other, who had got under her skin a long while ago and would not be dislodged, persistent as the whispers from her father’s Mask that sometimes woke her in the night with their insidious temptations.

  ‘I miss Asara,’ she said absently, her eyes unfocused.

  ‘Asara tu Amarecha?’ Saran said.

  Kaiku’s head snapped around to meet his gaze. ‘You know her?’

  ‘I have met her,’ he said. ‘Not that she was going by that name, but then, she never did keep to one identity for too long.’

  ‘Where? Where did you meet her?’

  Saran raised a sculpted eyebrow at the urgency in Kaiku’s voice. ‘Actually, it was in the very port that we are docking at tomorrow. Several years ago, now. She did not know me, but I knew her. She was wearing a different face, but I had intelligence of her arrival.’ He smiled to himself, enjoying Kaiku’s attention. ‘I made contact with her. We are both, after all, on the same side.’

  ‘Asara is on nobody’s side,’ Kaiku said.

  ‘She chooses her allegiances to suit herself,’ Saran said, then turned away from her and into the wind, flicking his hair away from his face with a flourish. ‘But you of all people should know that she is helping the Red Order and the Libera Dramach.’

  ‘She was,’ said Kaiku. ‘I have not seen her since Lucia was—’ She stopped herself, then remembered that Saran already knew. Brushing her fringe back in an unconscious imitation of him, she continued more carefully. ‘Since Lucia came to the Fold.’

  ‘She spoke highly of you,’ Saran told her, pacing slowly about the foredeck. He stood too rigid, too straight, and Kaiku felt that his movements and speech were pretentiously theatrical. He annoyed her when he became like this. Suddenly, now that he knew he had information she wanted, he was showing off, making the most of his advantage. She should have deflated him and feigned disinterest, but it was too late. Quraal were legendarily arrogant, and Saran was no exception. Like many people who were naturally beautiful, he did not feel he had to cultivate the finer points of his personality since women would fall at his feet anyway. What irked Kaiku more than anything was that she knew that, and yet she still kept coming back to him.

  Saran wanted her to ask what Asara had said about her, but she would not give him the satisfaction this time.

  He leaned on his elbows against the bow railing, the moon at his shoulder, and studied her with his dark eyes. ‘What were you two to each other?’ he asked eventually.

  Kaiku almost felt that she did not want to tell him; but tonight she felt reflective, and it did her good to talk.

  ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I never knew who she was, or what she was. I knew she could . . . shift her form somehow. I knew she had watched over me for a long time, waiting for my kana to show itself. She could be cruel, or kind. I think maybe she was lonely, but too obsessed with being independent to admit it to herself.’

  ‘Were you friends?’

  Kaiku frowned. ‘We were . . . more than friends, and less than friends. I do not know what she thought of me, but . . . there is a piece of her still in me. Here.’ She tapped her breastbone. ‘She stole the breath of another and put it into me, and some of her went with it. And some of me went into her.’ She became aware that Saran was watching her coolly, shook her head and snorted a laugh. ‘I do not expect you to understand.’

  ‘I think I understand enough,’ Saran said.

  ‘Do you? I doubt it.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  Kaiku’s eyes flashed in disbelief. ‘How dare you ask me that?’ she snapped.

  Saran gave an insouciant shrug. ‘I was merely asking. You sounded like—’

  ‘I loved what she taught me,’ she interrupted him. ‘She made me accept myself for what I am. An Aberrant. She helped me to stop being ashamed of myself. But I couldn’t love her. Not as she was. Deceitful, selfish, heartless.’ Kaiku checked herself, realising that she had raised her voice. She flushed angrily. ‘Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Quite adequately,’ Saran said, unruffled.

  Kaiku stalked to the other side of the foredeck and stood with her arms crossed, glaring at the moon-limned waves, furious with herself. Asara was still an open wound that refused to heal. She had told Saran far more than she intended. It would be better to cut her losses and leave now, but she stayed.

  After a moment, she heard him walk over to her. His hands touched her shoulders, and she turned around, her arms unknitting. He was standing close to her again, his dark eyes piercing in the shadowed frame of his face, heavy with intent. She felt her pulse quicken; a salty wind blew between them. Then he bent to kiss her, and she turned her mouth away. He drew back, hurt and angry.

  Kaiku slipped from his grasp and turned her back again, her arms once more folded beneath her breasts. She could feel his frustrated confusion prickling at the back of her neck. She countered wit
h a coldness in the set of her shoulders, an impassable resolve. Finally, she heard him leave.

  Kaiku stood alone again, watching the stars, and added another brick to the barrier around her heart.

  They arrived at Hanzean early in the morning of the next day. The harbour town was bathed in a pink light. Far to the east, the Surananyi was blowing, great hurricanes throwing up the red dust of the Tchom Rin desert to tinge Nuki’s eye.

  As was customary, the sailors enacted a small ceremony around a tiny shrine that they brought up from its usual place belowdecks, and made offerings of incense to Assantua, goddess of the sea and sky, for their safe passage. All the Saramyr folk attended, but Saran and Tsata were notably absent.

  Hanzean was less hectic than Jinka to the north, which took most of the traffic from Okhamba, but though the journey was slightly longer it was the home port of Blood Mumaka’s fleet. It was the most picturesque of the western coastal towns, and the oldest, being the first Saramyr settlement ever on this continent. Ninety miles to the southwest stood the Palexai, the great obelisk that marked the point where landfall was first made. Though Hanzean had never blossomed into Saramyr’s first capital – the cursed Gobinda had held that title – it remained an influential place, steeped in its own history.

  Mishani had visited Hanzean several times, in the days before her estrangement from her family. She was fond of its quiet alleyways and ancient plazas; it reminded her of the Imperial Quarter in Axekami, but a little less carefully kept, a little rougher around the edges. Somehow more real. Now, however, the sight of the smooth stone towers and the red skirts of ornamental guttering around the market-dome made her feel a strange mix of relief and trepidation. Their journey had been bought at a price, but what kind of price she could not yet tell. Chien had not been interested in money; instead, he had exacted a promise from her, one that courtesy demanded she grant in such a situation, even if it was not in return for such a heavy favour as the merchant had done them.

  ‘You must be my guest at my townhouse in Hanzean,’ he said.

  On the surface, it seemed innocent enough; but surfaces, like masks, covered over the truth beneath. Though no time had been set, etiquette demanded that Mishani stay for at least five days. And in that five days, anything could happen. She was far too close to Blood Koli’s estates in Mataxa Bay for her comfort.

  She examined all the angles, looked for hidden meaning in everything. It was a necessary habit with Mishani, and she was particularly talented at it.

  Chien was not an idiot; he could have negotiated great advantage for himself out of the deal. She knew what she would do in his shoes. If he truly had heard about the rift in her family, then he was aware that she had nothing to offer him, and he probably knew that Barak Avun was secretly searching for his daughter. He would simply trade her into the arms of her enemy.

  Then why am I letting him? she asked herself, as she mouthed the words of the mantra to Assantua and paid attention to the sailors’ ceremony with only a small fraction of her mind.

  Because she had made a promise. It was her refusal to compromise her honour that had made her an outcast in the first place; she would scarcely abandon it now. Chien knew she could not refuse his invitation without insult, and it would have revealed that she suspected him. He was probably just as puzzled about her motives as she was of his. What had she been doing on Okhamba? Why risk herself that way?

  She had told him nothing, though they had talked often on the journey. His uncertainty was her advantage, and she had to keep hold of it. When they got to his townhouse, then she would see what could be done about her situation.

  She had not shared her fears with Kaiku. Though Kaiku had initially had the same suspicions as Mishani, she had been calmed by assurances that Chien was trustworthy. It was, of course, a lie, but Kaiku was in no position to help anyway. She had to take Saran and his Tkiurathi companion back to the Fold, and her passionate outbursts would be counterproductive to Mishani’s intrigues.

  Kaiku was content to let it drop, in the end. Mishani’s intention had always been to head south when they returned from Okhamba, anyway; Kaiku knew that. Mishani was next to useless in the Fold, except when Zaelis or Cailin called on her for advice or Lucia needed a sisterly hand. No, she had other errands to run, assuming she had liberty to run them after Chien was done with her. She was going to Lalyara, to meet with the Barak Zahn tu Ikati. Lucia’s true father.

  They disembarked on Chien’s private jetty, after which he insisted that they come to his townhouse and dine with him before they set off. Saran appeared reluctant to Mishani’s practised eye, but he made no complaint. Kaiku, who was eager to put off her farewells to her friend, was happy to accept. Tsata and Chien exchanged a few words in Okhamban – in which the merchant was apparently fluent – and then he, too, acquiesced. Not being bound by Saramyr manners, Kaiku had feared he would say something rude; but Chien knew how to deal with Tkiurathi.

  They were met at the jetty and taken by carriage through the quiet streets of Hanzean. Slender cats watched them curiously from rooftops; sun-browned women stepped aside as they passed, and then returned to sweeping the dust away from their doorsteps with reed brooms; old men sat outside streetside restaurants with cups of wine and cubes of exotic cheese; startled birds took flight from where they bathed in ancient fountains. Kaiku was rapt, enjoying the simple glory of being back in Saramyr and off that ship. Mishani wished she could do the same. She had noted that the carriage was taking a very indirect route to wherever it was going, heading down narrow, winding thoroughfares and doubling back on itself several times. The others had not noticed, or appeared not to; but for one who knew Hanzean well, it was obvious.

  Chien’s townhouse was not particularly ostentatious. It was a squat, three-storeyed building like a crushed pagoda, with scalloped tiling on its skirts and a sculpted effigy of a spirit on each corner serving as a gargoyle. Enclosed within was a small garden, with colourful rockeries arranged with typical care and forethought. The grounds were small and tidy, merely a lawn within the compound wall and a few cultivated areas of flowers and trees, where stone benches were placed and a small brook ran. It was located in a wealthy district, on a street of compounds that were a similar size, and it stood out not at all from its neighbours.

  The theme continued on the inside. While he was a man of undoubted wealth, Chien had chosen comfort and simplicity over opulence, and the only real displays of his merchant prowess were the rare and valuable Okhamban stone icons that rested on pedestals in some of the rooms. Kaiku shivered at the sight, remembering the dreadful awareness of the idols at the Aith Pthakath.

  The meal was exquisite, and doubly so after the preserved food that they had been getting on board the ship. Pot-cooked slitherfish, seasoned saltrice in delicate cakes wrapped in strips of kelpweed, a stew of vegetables and grilled banathi, and – most delicious of all – jukara berries, that only flourished in the last few weeks of the harvest, and were ruinously hard to cultivate. They ate and talked and joked, united in the common relief of being back on dry land. Laughing, reminiscing about the journey, they cut and speared food with silver finger-forks worn on the second and third digit of the left hand, and their counterpart finger-blades on the right. Occasionally they switched to delicate spoons, held between the unencumbered thumb and forefinger. Neither Saran nor Tsata appeared to have any trouble with the technique, nor with the rituals of politeness at the table. Mishani guessed that the quiet Tkiurathi was a lot better educated than she had initially thought.

  Finally, the meal was over. Chien, as was expected, asked Mishani’s companions to stay and they, as was equally expected, regrettably refused. Chien did not insist; but he did offer to put a carriage at their disposal to take them out of the town.

  They went out to the small lawn of the compound together, strolling idly in the muggy heat of the afternoon. The cooling breezes of approaching autumn had died off and left the air still and humid. Mishani walked ahead with Kaiku, the former as
poised as ever, the latter as casual.

  ‘I will miss you, Mishani,’ Kaiku said. ‘It is a long way to the Southern Prefectures.’

  ‘I shall not be gone for ever. A month, two at most, if my errands are well.’ She gave her friend a wry smile. ‘I thought after this trip you would have had enough of me.’

  Kaiku returned the smile. ‘Of course not. Who else would keep me out of trouble?’

  ‘Cailin tries, but you do not let her.’

  ‘Cailin wants me as a pet,’ Kaiku said derisively. ‘If she had her way, I would spend every day studying, and by now I would have been putting on that ghoulish make-up and that black dress as part of the Red Order.’

  ‘She does have a lot of faith in you,’ Mishani pointed out. ‘Most masters would not put up with such an errant pupil.’

  ‘Cailin looks after her own concerns,’ Kaiku replied, shading her eyes and squinting up absently into the sun. ‘She trained me to harness what I have inside me – for that, I will always be grateful – but I never agreed to spend the rest of my life as one of her Sisters. She does not understand that.’ Kaiku dropped her gaze. ‘Besides, I am pledged first to a higher power than her.’

  Mishani laid a hand on her elbow. ‘You have done much to help the Libera Dramach over these past years, Kaiku. You have played an important part in many of their operations. Everything you do for them hurts the Weavers, even in a small way. Do not forget that.’

  ‘It is not enough,’ Kaiku murmured. ‘My family are still unavenged; my promise to Ocha unfulfilled. I have waited, and waited, but my patience is growing thin.’

  ‘You cannot defeat the Weavers on your own,’ Mishani told her. ‘Nor can you expect to undo two and a half centuries of history in half a decade.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kaiku. ‘But that does not help.’

  They said their goodbyes, then Saran, Tsata and Kaiku departed in a carriage, leaving Mishani with Chien.