'Then what will you do? Will you create a new hero to write about?'
'I do not know,' she replied. 'Maybe I will stop writing altogether. Today, Nida-jan is ended, and all things are possible.'
Avun did not quite know how to gauge his wife's mood, and was careful in his words. Though he had always found Muraki's constant writing a source of irritation, he found himself unable to imagine her any other way, and now that it came to it he was not sure he wanted her to stop.
'Are you doing this for my sake?' he asked. 'I would not have you change yourself for me.' The hypocrisy of this passed him by entirely.
She met his eyes for a moment with something like amusement. 'It is not for you I do this, Avun,' she replied. 'Too long I have lived in the safety of my own world and ignored the one that surrounds me. Today I have closed my world away, and I am ready to face what is real.'
He set down his plate, hiding his wariness. He was unsure whether to be glad or worried about her decision. Writing had been such a big part of her life for so long that he was afraid she might not cope without it. And he would not be there to watch over her; there was no way he could delay the movement of the Aberrant forces now, even if he wanted to. After all the effort he had spent to make himself indispensible to the Weavers, he could not back out. Kakre would shred him.
'You must tell me,' he said, to cover his thoughts. 'How does it end?' He poured each of them a glass of amber wine.
'It ends well for him,' she said. 'He finds his son at last, in the Golden Realm where Omecha has taken him. There he wins him back after facing Omecha and beating him in a game of wits. They return to their home, and the son acknowledges Nida-jan as his father, for only a father's love could drive him to seek his son even beyond the realms of death. And so the curse laid upon him by the demon with a hundred eyes is lifted.'
'It is a good ending indeed,' Avun said. And yet privately, he wondered. For it was no secret to him that she had been mourning the loss of their daughter in her books, mirroring her grief in the actions of Nida-jan, and this sudden turn to happiness made him suspect that something had happened which he was unaware of.
'Come to the window, Avun,' she said, picking up her glass of wine and holding out her hand to him across the table. Surprised by her uncharacteristic impetuousness, he took up his own glass and rose with her. Together, they walked across the room to the window-arches that faced out over Axekami.
In the night, the miasma overhead could not be seen, and Axekami seemed peaceful. Lights were lit, tumbling down in profusion towards the Kerryn and the River District. Not as many as there had been in days gone by, but enough. It was almost possible to believe the city was beautiful again.
Muraki turned to him. 'While I was dreaming, you have become the most powerful man in Saramyr, my husband,' she said. She kissed him deeply, and there was a hunger in it that made him dizzy. He wanted to have her then and there, but he did not yet dare to do so, did not trust that he would not embarrass himself by overstepping the mark. Presently, she drew away from him, her eyes searching his, and she took a sip of wine, regarding him over the rim of her glass. He slid his arm around her tiny waist. His wife's words made him burn with pride. It was true: he had done all this, he had made this of himself. He sipped his own glass as he surveyed his conquest, the great capital of Axekami, and he was content.
It took him only seconds to realise that the wine was deadly poison, but by then it was far too late.
The first he knew of it was the awful tightening of his throat and chest, as if he was choking on a bone. His hand came free of Muraki and went to his collar; his other, absurdly, still held the glass out of instinctive reluctance to drop it. He could not draw breath. Gaping, he staggered backwards and tripped on his heel, falling to the floor. The glass shattered in his hand, cutting it badly. His chest was a blaze of pain as if he had swallowed the sun. His lungs would not respond to the urging of his brain, would not expand to fill with oxygen.
Wildly, in blind animal panic, he reached for his wife, but Muraki was standing by the window, her face shadowed by her hair, and she was not moving to help him. His eyes widened in horror and disbelief. That appalled gaze still rested on his wife when his body went slack and his life left him.
Muraki regarded him for a long time. She had expected tears to come, but there were none. She had expected, at least, to be consumed by remorse or guilt, but she felt none of that either. If she were writing this scene, she thought, she would not do so with such a dearth of emotion. Real life was infinitely stranger and unpredictable than the one she lived in her imagination.
She turned away from her husband and looked out over the city once again. She could smell the oily tang of the miasma, overpowering the jasmine from the brazier. She had never quite become accustomed to it. Her lips tingled where the poison wine had touched them, but she had not let it past into her mouth. Simple enough to procure poison from Ukida: she had only to order him, and he obeyed. He was loyal enough to keep her secret and not to ask what it was for.
She glanced at the corpse of Avun again, trying for some last time to stir something in her breast. The newly awakened passion for him had not been faked by her. She had wanted to enjoy what she could while she could, and she wanted to make him happy too. After all, she thought he deserved that much before she killed him.
She realised what would follow now. The Weavers would take their revenge, would scour her mind agonisingly until they knew all about her code, and about Ukida, and Mishani's visit. They would know their plans had been compromised, and would alter them.
That could not be allowed to happen. From the time she had decided to murder her husband, she knew she would have to die too. She had found that knowledge an immensely liberating sensation.
Thoughts of her daughter brought back words she had spoken during those precious minutes when they were together, a few short minutes in ten terrible years – ten years for which Avun had been responsible.
We are on two sides of a war now. Mother, and one side or the other must win eventually. Whichever of us is on the losing side will not survive, I think. We are both of us too involved.
She was right. She always had the gift of cutting to the point. So let it be Muraki on the losing side, then, for she could not bear the thought of her daughter suffering such a fate.
Avun had indeed been clever in arranging the Weavers' power base so that so much relied on him. He had carefully guarded his battle tactics, kept them close to his chest, and ensured that there was nobody else in a position to easily succeed him. His death would be a major blow to the Weavers, at the time when they could least afford it. And from what she knew of Kakre, she did not think he would turn back from his assault now, no matter what speculation might arise as to what happened in this room tonight. The Aberrants would move according to plan, and their enemies would be waiting for them.
Would it be worth it, in the end? Only the gods could say. There were no certainties in the real world.
She gave a long sigh, and her eyes turned to the night, the impenetrable blackness with no moons and no stars. What a cold and dreary prison her husband had made for her. She much preferred her dreams.
She drained her glass, and soon she was dreaming once more.
TWENTY-SIX
Nuki's eye was sinking in the west, igniting cottony bands of cloud. The surface of the River Ko glittered in fitful red and yellow. It had been unseasonably hot today, but the folk of Saramyr were glad of it, for winter was drawing to an end and it was their first hint of a spring to come. Now the temperature dropped as Nuki retreated towards the far side of the world, afraid of the tumult that the moon-sisters would bring when they took the sky. For tonight the moons' orbits would cross at shallow angles, and they would drag screeching fingers across the darkness. There would be a moonstorm, and a particularly long and vicious one.
It would be a suitably apocalyptic backdrop, Yugi thought, to the battle that was to come. He stood holding the reins of his horse on a rise a litt
le way south of the river, and looked to the north. Waiting for the Aberrants.
The lands to the north and south of the Ko were rolling downs, a gentle sway of hills that ran from the Forest of Xu twenty miles to their west to peter out on the shores of Lake Azlea, a similar distance to their east. In between was the Sakurika Bridge, a sturdy arch of wood and stone that spanned the river. It was a plain construction, not as grand as many in Saramyr, and little used. Its abutments, spandrels and parapets were painted in faded terracotta to blend with the honey-coloured varnish on the wood, but beyond that there was no decoration. It had been built during a campaign in the far past to facilitate troop movement along the west side of the Azlea, but no road had ever been laid to it. The thin strip of land sandwiched between Xu, Azlea and the Xarana Fault was considered too perilous back then to merit a tradeway. Still, it had been maintained all this time, for it was the only crossing-place for this river east of the forest, and wide enough for twenty men abreast.
And it was here that the forces of the Empire hoped to halt the advance of the Weavers.
Yugi felt sick. He wished he could smoke a little amaxa root to take the edge off his fear. Instead he surveyed the scene below him, the sea of armour and blades and rifles. Several artillery positions were dug in on the hilltops to either side of the bridge, densely packed with mortars and fire-cannons and even old trebuchets and ballistae that they had managed to acquire. The flat ground in between was thick with soldiers, representing almost all of the remaining high families and the Libera Dramach. Their banners hung limp in the failing breeze.
A barricade of spikes had been built along the centre point of the bridge, and behind it soldiers waited. Beneath their feet, well hidden inside the arch, were enough explosives to blow the bridge to matchwood.
'Gods, I can't stand this waiting,' Yugi murmured to those nearby: a few generals, a black-haired Sister that might have been a twin to Cailin in her make-up, Barak Zahn, Nomoru, Mishani and Lucia. Horses shifted and whinnyed restlessly; there was the creak of leather armour and subdued coughing.
'Are we certain that they are coming this way at all?' Mishani asked. It was a measure of how tense she was that she asked such a redundant question; she already knew the reports of the scouts.
'They are coming,' said the Sister, whose irises were red.
Yugi glanced down at Lucia. Her expression was bland. The enemy had to be on time. There were better places in which they could have met the Aberrants, places further south where they could mount ambushes and which were far more defensible than this. But they would not win without Lucia, and it was at her insistence that they chose to meet the threat here. This, their scholars promised, was the night of the moonstorm; and it was on this night that the Aberrants – whose steady and unwavering advance had been marked by scouts all along their route – would reach the river. This night, in this place, Lucia would draw the spirits to the defence of their land.
They could only pray that Lucia knew exactly what she was doing, for without the intervention she had promised their stand would not last for long. Thousands upon thousands of lives were staked on the word of a girl barely into adulthood. Yugi thought they could be forgiven a little nervousness at this point.
Mishani, not for the first time, was asking herself why she was here at all. For someone who prided herself on her self-control and level-headedness, she seemed to have been remarkably rash of late. First her visit to Muraki and now this.
But if not for my rashness, we would not have even this chance, she thought. Oh, Mother.
She took a steadying breath to keep down the tears. No, she would not cry again. The thought of that last meeting still burned her with grief, but she was glad, at least, that she had made amends to Muraki. If she died today, she would have done that much.
Had she known then that her mother and father had already been dead for weeks, her grief would have been keener still. But the Weavers had been careful to keep that matter secret.
In the end, Mishani thought, it came down to Lucia. Mishani and Kaiku had been her guardians throughout her childhood in the Fold, and they had acted as elder sisters to her. Though time and circumstances had made them distant, they still had that bond. But Kaiku was needed elsewhere, and Mishani could not bear the notion of leaving Lucia to face this alone. She knew how easily manipulated Lucia was, and there was nobody here who truly cared for her except her father Zahn, but he would be down in the battle. Mishani could not contribute much to war, but she could stand alongside Lucia. She felt that it would be dishonourable to abandon her.
Once, she had almost killed the young Heir-Empress, when she brought her a nightdress which she thought was infected with bone fever. When it came to it she had backed out; but she still felt responsible for harbouring the intention, and she had come terrifyingly close to executing it. She owed Lucia this, at least. And if Lucia fell, there would soon be little left to live for anyway. As with her visit to her mother, this was something Mishani had to do, no matter what the risks. A moral need that would not be overmatched by sense or logic.
You are getting impulsive in your old age, Mishani, she told herself wryly.
There was a cry from somewhere to their left, echoed by another voice closer by. The lookouts with their spyglasses had seen something on the horizon. A few moments passed, during which Mishani felt her blood slowly chill, before the Sister spoke.
'Our enemy has arrived,' she said.
Zahn exchanged glances with Yugi and the generals, a grim understanding in their eyes. Zahn was overall commander of this force, by consent of the council of high families. The generals mounted up and began to disperse to their positions. Yugi looked at Lucia, who did not acknowledge him, then he swung on to his horse, and pulled Nomoru up behind. Zahn put his hand on his daughter's shoulder, and her gaze shifted to him.
'We will do a great thing this night,' he murmured. 'Be strong. I will return to you; I promise you that.'
She nodded, her face set.
'Keep her safe,' he said to Mishani, and then he launched himself up onto his horse. He sidled the mount over to Yugi's, and the two of them clasped arms. Nomoru turned her scarred face to Lucia and Mishani and regarded them with an impenetrable stare, then both Zahn and Yugi spurred their horses and she was carried away, down the hill and towards the front.
Lucia and Mishani were left together on the hill with the Sister and a group of bodyguards. They watched and waited. Night was drawing in as the Aberrants came, pounding through the twilight in a filthy tide of teeth and claws. They swept across the downs like the shadow of an eclipse, at a speed just short of a headlong run. Even at such a pace, they were virtually tireless, and could travel all hours with very little rest. More than once the Weavers' ability to move armies so quickly had surprised the forces of the Empire.
There were no gristle-crows in the sky. Like Lucia's ravens, they were useless at night, for they could not see well without the sun. And so the Weavers had no warning of the army ranged across the south bank of the Ko until they were close enough for the front ranks to be able to see the artillery on the hills.
The guiding minds of the Weaver forces were safely protected amid the mass of expendable soldiers. Nexuses were scattered about, riding on Aberrant manxthwa. With them rode Weavers, to whom the Nexuses signed when they had information to pass on from their connection to the Aberrants. The Weavers then penetrated deep into their servants' minds, through conditioned channels that made it an easy process, and learned what the Nexuses knew. They conversed among themselves along the Weave and then gave their orders to the Nexuses, never knowing that they themselves were in turn enslaved by the will of the witchstones and of the moon-god Aricarat. Through such a chain of command were the Weavers' affairs conducted.
The passage of information throughout the Aberrant army from the moment that the forces of Empire were spotted took less than a minute. The reaction was immediate, and unexpected. The high families had predicted that the Aberrants would slow,
to take stock of the situation. But they did not know that Avun was dead, and that Kakre was in command here. Kakre had a different way of doing things to Avun.
He sent his orders, and the Aberrants charged.
Thousands of animals bayed and roared as they were goaded into a berserk rage by their handlers. The colossal swell of noise washed over the downs and reached the soldiers of the Empire. They stood grimly along the riverbank, on the flanks of the surrounding hills or packed thick on the bridge. They would not dishonour themselves by showing fear, but they felt dread settle on their hearts as they saw the hills aswarm with an army that vastly outnumbered theirs. They thought of their families, of moments of joy and pleasure, of things left undone. Some of them felt regret at their mistakes and hoped that the gods would find them worthy when they came to the Golden Realm. Some of them regretted nothing, and waited coldly for the end. Some of them felt the fire in their veins and thirsted for combat. Some felt noble, proud to be part of this; some were angry at throwing away their lives when they could have run and seen another day, another month or year, and honour be hanged.
But none of them broke ranks, and none of them shed a tear, and none of them showed their weakness. Though some sweated and trembled, though some fought to keep down the contents of their stomachs, they held at the riverbank as the Aberrants raced towards them, each second bringing them closer and closer.
And closer.
The air was torn by the scream of a firework as it spat into the twilight, trailing dazzling white fire; then the artillery opened up.
The first salvo drew a billowing line of fire across the downs, and ripped the leading edge of the Aberrants apart. Broken bodies spewed into the air in clouds of dirt and flame, shrapnel tore away limbs and sliced through hide. Those that survived the concussion and the heat were knocked to the ground where they were crushed by the stampede. The entire front line collapsed and was driven into the earth by the predators behind, who ran on through the blazing slicks left by the fire-cannons. A second salvo followed the first, pitched shorter. Shellshot sprayed burning jelly, mortars maimed and blinded, and heavy trebuchets lobbed bags of explosives that clattered to the earth amid the horde and then erupted, sending flailing corpses in every direction. The Aberrants were a target that was impossible to miss, and each shell or bomb accounted for a dozen or more. Hundreds fell as a result of those initial salvos, but they were a drop in the ocean. And the tide kept on coming.
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