The Skein of Lament (48 page)

‘Would you like to sit?’ Zahn offered, gesturing at a chair. But Mishani was not about to take any concessions.

‘I prefer to stand,’ she said levelly, knowing that there was only one chair and no mats in the room. He was well over a foot taller than her; if she sat then he would be looking down on her at a steeper angle than he already was.

‘My servants have told me that you wished to see me,’ he said.

‘Indeed,’ came the reply. ‘I have been wanting to see you ever since I was detained in Zila by the Ais Maraxa. Though in the end you had a somewhat violent way of bringing our meeting about.’

Zahn gave her a hint of a smile.

‘May I ask you a question?’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘What has become of Xejen tu Imotu?’

Zahn considered that for a moment. ‘He lives, barely.’

‘Might I know where he is?’

‘Are you concerned for him?’

‘I am concerned, but not for the reasons you imagine,’ she told him.

Zahn studied her for a moment. She was a sculpture in ice.

‘I let Barak Moshito deal with him,’ Zahn said. He linked his hands behind his back and walked over to the pattern-board, studying it. ‘Moshito will undoubtedly turn him over to his Weaver. I cannot say I feel sympathy. I have little love for the Ais Maraxa.’

‘Because they remind you of your daughter,’ Mishani finished. ‘They make you believe in the possibility that she is still alive, and that is a raw wound indeed.’

Zahn’s head snapped around, his eyes flashing angrily.

‘Forgive my bluntness,’ she said. ‘I was heading to Lalyara to find you with the intention of divining your feelings towards her. Now I cannot afford the time to be delicate.’ She fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘Her life hangs in the balance. Xejen tu Imotu knows where she is.’

Zahn made the connection immediately. If Xejen knew, then the Weaver would get it out of him. And if the Weavers knew . . .

This was too fast, too much to believe. If he accepted that, then he accepted his daughter was still alive. He shook his head, running his fingers down his bearded chin.

‘No, no,’ he murmured. ‘What is your agenda, Mishani tu Koli? Why were you here, in Zila?’

‘Did Chien not tell you this?’ she asked.

‘Chien? Ah, the hostage. I am sorry to say he died the night he was brought out of Zila.’

Mishani’s face showed nothing. She felt no grief for him: he was merely a casualty. What did concern her was that it meant her father’s men were aware she was in Zila, and they would be very close indeed. She had to win Zahn’s trust now, in any way she could. It was imperative that she got out of the town in secret, and the only way she would do that would be under Zahn’s protection.

‘So, will you answer my question?’ he prompted. ‘Why were you in Zila?’

‘Misfortune,’ she said. ‘I was waylaid as I travelled to find you. Although it seems the gods have brought us together anyway.’

‘That is too convenient,’ he said. His tone had become a lot less polite now. ‘You know that your being here is enough to have you beheaded. And you certainly were not a prisoner; you were found with the leader of the Ais Maraxa.’

Mishani had feared this. If she had been able to meet him at Lalyara, then his suspicions would not have been aroused; but circumstances had forced her into a position in which any play she made would seem like bargaining for her life.

‘You are correct,’ she said. ‘I was brought here against my will, but they did not keep me as a prisoner. I am something of a heroine to their cause because I helped to save your daughter. It does not mean I endorse it.’

‘Stop these
lies!
’ Zahn cried suddenly, grabbing the pattern-board and tipping the cradle. It hit the floor and smashed into coloured shards. ‘Lucia tu Erinima died five years ago and more. Her father was Durun tu Batik. I do not know what leverage you think you have over me, Mistress Mishani, but you are sorely misguided if you believe you will win your freedom by trying to resurrect a ghost.’

Mishani’s triumph did not show on her face, but she knew she had the advantage now. A man such as Zahn did not abandon his dignity easily; his skills at negotiation had kept Blood Ikati a major player in the courts, and his display of rage showed how sensitive the subject of Lucia was to him.

‘You could have me executed,’ Mishani said, her voice cold. ‘But then you will only learn that I was telling the truth when the Weavers kill your daughter. Could you live with that, Zahn? You have not been living with it well these past years.’

‘Heart’s blood, you do not know when to stop!’ Zahn cried. ‘I will not hear any more of this!’

He was heading for the curtained doorway when Mishani spoke again.

‘Zaelis tu Unterlyn was there on the day you met your daughter,’ she snapped, her voice rising. ‘It was he who organised the kidnapping of Lucia. On the very day that Blood Batik overthrew Blood Erinima, we stole the child and hid her. No corpse was ever found because there
was
no corpse, Zahn! Lucia is alive!’

Zahn’s shoulders were hunched, his hand on the curtain. She had not wanted to bring the leader of the Libera Dramach’s name into this, but matters were too critical. She could not let him leave.

He turned back to her, and his face was suddenly haggard again.

‘You
know
you believe me,’ she said. A sudden rush of lightheadedness took her, but she fought against it. It was stiflingly hot; she did not know how much longer she could go without sitting down.

‘I cannot believe you,’ Zahn croaked. ‘Do you understand?’ He knew how clever Mishani could be, he knew the ways of the court, and though he wanted more than anything to think that Lucia could be alive, he would not be manipulated. He was no friend to Blood Koli, and he had no reason to trust one of them. He would not lose his daughter again, by allowing himself to think he might regain her and then to discover it was a bluff. He could not go through that. He had been numb so long that it had become a shield against the world, and when it came to the moment, he found that he was afraid to discard it.

He turned to go again. This kind of torment could not be borne.

‘Wait,’ Mishani said. ‘I can prove it.’

Zahn had almost dreaded to hear those words.

‘How?’ he said, his head bowed.

‘Xejen will be interrogated,’ she said. ‘You must attend.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘He knows where she is, as I do. Sooner or later, we will talk. The Weaver will try to keep it secret; he will try to obtain the information for his kind alone. He will scour Xejen’s mind and then decide what to tell you. You must not let him.
Make
him share what he learns
as he learns it
. Have him make Xejen speak only the truth, and ask Xejen yourself. The Weaver cannot refuse you if you order him.’

Zahn was silent, his back to her. Mishani knew that this was a desperate play, but it was all she had. The lives of thousands depended on her. If she was unable to prevent the Weavers finding the Fold, then at least with Zahn on her side she might be able to get them a warning in time to do something about it. It was a slim chance, but better than none at all.

‘You will learn the truth at the same time as you condemn her to death,’ Mishani said. ‘But if I cannot persuade you to stop this, then that must be the price we all pay. If you will not believe what your heart knows, then you will hear your daughter’s name on the lips of a Weaver.’

‘Pray that I do,’ Zahn replied. ‘For if not, I will be back, and I will have you killed.’

‘I pray that you do not,’ Mishani said. ‘For I would give my life in exchange for all those who will die to convince you.’

Xejen tu Imotu thought that his story was over when the ceiling came down on him, but he regained consciousness to find that there was an epilogue, and it was full of agony.

He woke on a bed in the donjon of the keep, and woke screaming. The pain from his shattered legs propelled him out of oblivion, an idiot, senseless roar of breathtaking brutality. His trousers had been cut away above the knee. His legs were massive and blue-purple, obese with swelling and the terrible bruising of drastic trauma. Both of them kinked unnaturally in several places. No attempt had been made to set them, and the snapped ends of bone made bulges against the blotched skin.

He screamed again, and screamed until his throat was raw. At some point, he blacked out.

When he awoke again, it was to a new horror.

He felt himself pulled into awareness, his mind hooked like a fish and dragged out of the protective cocoon where it sheltered from the inconceivable pain. His eyes flickered open. Afternoon light misted in through the dusty air from a barred window high on one wall, scattering across his ruined legs and the bare stone cell. Figures surrounded him, but one leaned closer than the others. A Mask of angles, sharp cheeks and jutting ridges of chin and forehead, some of gold and some of silver and others of bronze; a mountainous metal landscape, crafted by a master Edgefather, surrounding the dark, black pits of the eyes.

A Weaver.

He sucked in a breath to shriek, but a pale, withered hand passed over him, and his throat locked.

‘Be silent,’ hissed the voice behind the Mask.

There were two others here. He recognised the Baraks: Zahn, tall and rangy and gaunt; Moshito, stocky and bald and grim-faced. They looked down on him pitilessly.

‘You are Xejen tu Imoto?’ Moshito asked. Xejen nodded mutely, his eyes tearing. ‘Leader of the Ais Maraxa?’ He nodded again.

Zahn shifted his gaze to the Weaver. This one was in the employ of Blood Vinaxis, a particularly vicious and sadistic monster if Moshito’s accounts were to be believed. His name was Fahrekh. Zahn’s own Weaver he had left back at his estates at the disposal of his family; he detested Weavers, especially since he suspected that the last Weave-lord, Vyrrch, had been responsible for the coup in which Lucia had disappeared.

He caught himself. Already he was amending his beliefs to suit Mishani. In which Lucia had
died
, he forced himself to think. Blood Koli was an enemy, Mishani was an enemy, and however they might have learned of his weakness, he would not let her exploit it.

But gods, what if she
was
telling the truth? If Xejen talked, then neither the Weavers nor the Emperor would rest until Lucia was hunted down. Was there any way to stop this? Was there?

He bit down on his lip. Idiocy. Foolishness.

Lucia was dead
.

‘Are you sure he will do as you told him?’ Zahn asked Moshito, motioning at the bent and hooded figure crouching over the bed.

‘I have heard my Barak’s command,’ Fahrekh said, with a curl of disdain in his voice. ‘Nothing will be hidden. You will ask him your questions. I will ensure he answers and speaks true.’

Xejen’s eyes roved from one to the other in alarm.

‘It is as he says, Zahn,’ Moshito replied. ‘What’s got you so suspicious?’

‘Weavers always make me suspicious,’ Zahn replied, trying to keep the uncertainty and indecision out of his voice. Yet he wondered whether the Weaver might not simply scour Xejen’s mind in secret and take what he wanted, and whether there was any way they could tell. Heart’s blood, how had it fallen this way: that the only method he had to prove Mishani right would also put that same knowledge in the hands of those who would desire Lucia’s death?

It came down to a matter of faith. Could he believe Mishani? Could he believe his daughter was alive? Once, perhaps. But his faith had died along with the other parts of his soul, and he had to know. Belief was not enough. He had to
know
.

‘Begin,’ said Moshito.

Fahrekh turned his gleaming face slowly toward the broken figure on the bed, the afternoon light skipping from plane to plane in triangles of brightness.

‘Yes, my Barak,’ he muttered.

As the Weaver bored into his thoughts and will like a weevil into the bole of a tree, Xejen found his throat free to scream again. Fahrekh found that he worked better when his victims were responsive.

The science of predicting the orbits of the three moons was ancient. Though moonstorms came at apparently random intervals, over hundreds of years it was possible to see a pattern of unwavering regularity. Astronomers could now tell almost exactly when the three moons would be in close enough proximity to spark a moonstorm. Navigators relied heavily on their ability to plot the course of the moons so that they could assess what effect each would have on the world’s tides. Though it was only the learned who knew just when a moonstorm would hit, usually rumours carried far enough among the peasantry to make almost everyone aware of it.

None of which was any help to Kaiku and Tsata, who were out in the open when the moonstorm struck.

There had been developments since the night when they had narrowly escaped the ghaureg, and all thoughts of turning back for home had been cast aside. Though they had previously abandoned any hope of catching or killing one of the Nexuses, they had resolved to observe the flood plain and see if any more information could be gained about the foul, seething building that crouched near the banks of the Zan. They kept themselves at a distance, where the sentries were sparse enough to avoid. Getting close to the plain was impossible now, for it was too well guarded.

Kaiku’s determination to stay was rewarded sooner than she thought. The very next night, the barges began to arrive.

She had theorised that the river must have been the method for getting all these Aberrants here in the first place, and that they must be transporting food from the north which they had stockpiled in the strange building for their army of predators. Kaiku and Tsata had witnessed several mass feedings, in which great piles of meat were brought out on carts driven by the same docile midget-folk that had served the Weavers at the monastery on Fo. She called them
golneri
, meaning ‘small people’ in a Saramyrrhic mode usually applied to children. She should have expected that they would be here: the Weavers were notoriously incapable of looking after themselves, afflicted as they were by a gradually increasing insanity as a result of using their Masks.