The Skein of Lament (70 page)

All it had cost him was his honour. But honour was a small thing compared to victory. Honour had driven his daughter from him.

He thought on Mishani. She was only a face to him now; there was no parental love left in him for his absent child. He had to assume that she had evaded his attempts upon her life, for he had received no word of success. It brought a faint smile to his face. She was her father’s daughter in that, at least. Tough to kill. Well, let her do as she would now, for she shamed him no longer. Now that the elaborate politics of the Saramyr courts meant nothing, she had no power to cause him disadvantage. The news of a disobedient child could harm him as a Barak, but it could not harm the Lord Protector, who had no peers to jostle with. He would not waste his time trying to be rid of her now. He would simply forget about her.

He only wished his wife Muraki would see sense and do the same, but it was a minor annoyance.

Footsteps from behind him heralded the arrival of the Weave-lord Kakre, and he finished his round of mantras and stood to bow deeply to the altar. When he was done, he turned to face his new master.

‘Prayers, Lord Protector?’ Kakre rasped. ‘How quaint.’

‘The gods have favoured me,’ Avun replied. ‘They deserve my gratitude.’

‘The gods have deserted this land,’ Kakre said. ‘If ever they existed to begin with.’

Avun raised an eyebrow. ‘The Weavers bow to no gods, then?’

‘From this day, we
are
your gods,’ the Weave-lord said.

Avun studied the corpse-faced grotesquerie in front of him, and made no response.

‘Come,’ said Kakre. ‘We have much to talk about.’

Avun nodded. There was plenty to be done. Even the Weavers could not conquer a land as vast as Saramyr in a day, or a year. They had cut the head off the empire, and seized its capital and several major cities, but the nobility and populace were too widely scattered to easily subjugate, even with the overwhelming numbers that the Weavers possessed and the armies of most of the high families destroyed. The north-west quarter of the continent would be entirely under Weaver control within the month. After that, it would be a matter of sweeping away the disoriented remnants of the nobility, powerless without their Weavers, blinded and crippled. Consolidating and then pushing southward, until all the land was theirs and there was no one to oppose them.

Whether it would be as easy as that, Avun had no idea; but he had a knack for picking the winning side, and in this case he would far rather be with the Weavers than against them.

Kakre’s own concerns ran deeper than troops and war and occupation. His thoughts were on what might have happened in the Fault, the loss of so many Weavers, and most abhorrently the destruction of a witchstone. He felt its death like a physical wound, and it had aged him, making him more bent and pain-racked than ever before. What had become, then, of the Fold, and of Lucia?

And what of the entities that had fought his Weavers, the women who dared oppose them in the realm beyond the senses? That was a danger beyond anything he had yet encountered, the most potent threat he could imagine now. If he had been able to spare enough of his forces, he would have sent them rampaging toward the Xarana Fault; but even then, he suspected he would find that his targets had gone back into hiding. How long had they been there? How long had they spread and grown? All these years of killing Aberrant children had been precisely to prevent something like this from happening, and yet despite their best efforts it had happened anyway. How strong were they now? How many did they number?

He thought of the Sisters, and he feared them.

They walked slowly down the raised path across the pool towards the entrance to the temple, where blinding sunlight shone through the doorway. They spoke as they went, of triumph and failure, their voices echoing in the silence until they faded, leaving the house of the Emperor of the gods empty and hollow.

The sun was setting in the west as Cailin watched, a sullen red orb glaring through the veil of smoke that still rose from the valley of the Fold. She stood on a high lip of land, a grassy shelf jutting out over a splintered hillside of dark rock. She had been here for some time now, thinking. There were many plans to make yet.

The remainder of the Sisters were scattered around the Fold, helping in the dispersal. The Libera Dramach was breaking up, spreading out, making itself an impossible target; they would regroup at a rendezvous in several weeks’ time. The people of the Fold were doing what they could: most were intending to rejoin the others, putting their trust in the leaders who had seen them through good times and tragedy. Others were going their own way, amalgamating into other tribes and factions or heading out of the Fault altogether. The unity of the Fold was shattered, and would never be regained.

Messages had been flashing across the Weave all day, from other cells of the Red Order elsewhere. News of Axekami, of massacres in the northern cities, of the Weavers’ daring and unstoppable coup. News of the fall of the Emperor, and with him the empire. The Sisters knew that the game was up now, that the Weavers were aware of them at last, and their silence was broken.

There was a soft tread behind. Cailin did not need to turn to know it was Phaeca. The red-headed Sister walked to the edge of the precipice and stood beside her. She was clothed in black, as all the Sisters were, and she wore the intimidating face-paint of the Order; but her dress was a different cut to Cailin’s, her hair worn in an elaborate style of braids and bunches that bore testament to her River District upbringing.

For a time, they were silent. Nuki’s eye was slipping towards the horizon, turning the sky to coral pink and purple, marred by the drifting smoke.

‘So many dead,’ Phaeca said at last. ‘Is this how you planned it?’

‘Hardly,’ Cailin said. ‘The Weavers finding out about the Fold was an unfortunate happenstance brought about by a mob of foolish and misguided zealots.’

Phaeca’s silence was response enough. Cailin let it drag out.

‘Did we cause all this?’ Phaeca persisted at length. ‘Hiding, refusing to act, all these years when we could have done something . . . is this the price we pay?’

Cailin’s voice was edged with annoyance. ‘Phaeca, stop this. You know as well as I why we have not acted these long years. And the lives lost here will be nothing to the lives that will be lost in the months to come.’

‘We could have stopped them,’ Phaeca argued. ‘We could have stopped the Weavers taking the throne. If we had tried.’

‘Perhaps,’ Cailin conceded doubtfully. She turned her head slightly, looking sidelong at her companion. She was seeking a salve to justify herself. Cailin had none to give. ‘But whyever would we do that? There is no sacrifice too high, Phaeca. Do not let your conscience prick you now; it is too late for regrets. This is only the beginning. The Sisters have awakened. The war for Saramyr has commenced.’ A sultry breeze stirred the feathers of her ruff. ‘
We wanted
the Weavers to take the throne. That is why we have held our allies back, that is why we preached secrecy and told them to hide, that is why we refused to use our abilities to aid them. They can never be allowed to know that. They would call it a betrayal.’

Phaeca nodded in reluctant understanding, her gaze fixed on the middle distance.

‘If this is only the beginning,’ she said, ‘I fear what is to come.’

‘As well you should, Sister,’ Cailin told her. ‘As well you should.’

They said no more, but neither did they leave. The Sisters stood together for a long while in the fading light of the dusk, watching the rising smoke from the valley as the colours bled from the sky and darkness covered the land.