SIXTEEN

Aestival Week passed, but for Mishani there had been no celebration this year. For seven days now she had been riding through the Saramyr countryside, and for one not used to long journeys on horseback it was a gruelling test. Yet despite saddle-sores and fatigue, and the endless watchfulness, she never made a complaint, never let her mask slip even a little. Though she was surrounded by men whom she mistrusted, though she headed south in secret to an uncertain end, though her own father was trying to have her killed, she was calm and serene. It was her way.

They had left Hanzean soon after the attempt on Mishani’s life, timing their departure to coincide with the beginning of the harvest celebrations so as to take advantage of the confusion and slip away unnoticed. Chien had insisted on personally accompanying her as escort, to make reparations for the shame of allowing assassins to menace his guest. Mishani had expected no less. Whatever Chien’s plans for her, she was sure that he would want to be present to see them carried out.

Nevertheless, their journey was far from safe, despite the retinue of eight guards who went with them; the merchant put himself at considerable risk by travelling with her. Transport by sea was not an option, since all boats would be watched by Barak Avun’s men and their arrival logged in their destination port. That left land travel, which was more fraught with minor perils but which would make evading her father a much simpler task. Anyone seeking them from Hanzean would have no idea which way they went, since nobody knew their destination but Mishani.

Still, the need for secrecy carried its own disadvantages. Mishani was accustomed to travelling by carriage; but they were forced to stay off the roads, and that meant horses, and camping under the stars. Though Chien expended every effort to make her comfortable, providing her with sheets and an elegant tent which the grumbling guards had to put up for her each night, it was still somewhat irksome for the child of a Barak. Mishani liked her little luxuries, and she did not share Kaiku’s readiness to forsake them. But at least she still had her luggage with her from her trip to Okhamba, so she had her clothes and scents, and plenty of diversions.

They had struck out south from Hanzean for several days before turning south-east to meet the Great Spice Road below Barask, which ran almost exactly a thousand miles from Axekami to Suwana in the Southern Prefectures. They did not dare use the Han-Barask Highway, one of only two major routes out of the port, and even when they found the Great Spice Road they stayed well off it, keeping to the west of the thoroughfare until the northern reaches of the Forest of Xu began to loom to their left, and they were forced to join the road to take the Pirika Bridge across the Zan. There they were warned about the revolt in Zila and told to go back if they could and find another route to their destination.

Few heeded the warning: there was no other way. The vast and fearful forest crowded them to the east, spirit-haunted and ancient, while to the west was the coast. There were no ports of a size capable of supporting passenger craft unless they went back to Hanzean, and to go around the forest would require a detour of some nine hundred miles, which was insanity. Instead, most travellers were heading off the road, skirting the Forest as closely as they dared and passing to the east of Zila. With no option left to them, Mishani and her retinue took that route also.

By nightfall of their seventh day of travel, they were camped twenty-five miles to the south-east of the troubled city, near a shallow semicircle of black rocks that knuckled out of the flat plains. It was the last day of summer, and in Axekami the final ritual of Aestival Week would be at its height, welcoming in the autumn. There was no question of hiding out here, unless they cared to go within the borders of the forest which glowered a mile to their east. But their camp was anonymous among many scattered across the plains: other travellers heading south like them and forced to brave the bottleneck that Zila commanded.

Mishani sat cross-legged on a mat near the fire, her back to the rocks that ran along one edge of their campsite, and watched the guards building her small tent nearby. A slender book lay closed on the ground next to her. One of her mother’s. It was a gift from Chien: the latest volume of Muraki tu Koli’s ongoing series of fictions about a dashing romantic named Nida-jan and his adventures in the courts. Muraki’s creation had made her moderately famous among the high families, and her stories had spread by word of mouth to the servant classes and peasantry as well. Handmaidens would beg their masters and mistresses to read them the tales of Nida-jan, which were printed in High Saramyrrhic, a written language taught to high-borns, priests and scholars but incomprehensible to the lower classes. They would then eagerly pass the stories on to their friends, embellishing here and there, and their friends would do the same for their friends.

Nida-jan was everything Mishani’s mother was not: daring, adventurous, sexually uninhibited and confident enough to talk his way out of any situation, or able to fight his way out if words failed. Mishani’s mother was quiet, shy, and fiercely intelligent, with a strong moral compass; she lived her life in her books, for there she could shape the world any way she saw fit instead of having to deal with the one that was presented to her, a place that was often too cruel and hurtful for a woman so sensitive.

Mishani took after her mother in appearance, but her father in temperament. Muraki was a lonely woman, too introverted to connect with those around her, and though she was pleasant company, it was easy to forget that she was there at all. When her father Avun began grooming Mishani in the ways of the court, Muraki dropped out of the picture almost entirely. While Mishani spent all her time in Axekami with her father, Muraki stayed at their Mataxa Bay estates and wrote. When Mishani had fled to exile in the Xarana Fault, she had not considered her mother’s feelings at all. Muraki showed them so rarely that it simply did not occur to Mishani that they might be affected.

Now Mishani had finished the book, and a deep sorrow had taken her. The stories were not the usual Nida-jan fare; instead, they were melancholy and tragic, an unusual turn for the irrepressible hero. They concerned Nida-jan’s discovery that one of his courtly liasons had produced a son, who had been hidden from him, and whom he only learned of when the mother confessed it to him on her death-bed. But the boy had gone to the east, and had disappeared there some months before. Nida-jan was tortured by love for this unknown son, and set out to find him, becoming obsessed with his quest, spurning his friends when they told him it was hopeless. He set out on foolhardy adventures to seek clues to the boy’s whereabouts. Finally he faced a great demon with a hundred eyes, and he blinded his enemy with mirrors and slew it; but as it died, the demon cursed him to wander the world without rest until he found his son, and until his son called him ‘Father’ and meant it.

So the book ended with Nida-jan condemned, his soul racked and his quest still incomplete. Loss bled from every line. Each story had, directly or indirectly, been about a parent’s yearning for their child. Mishani’s mother may have been introverted, but she had not been cold. She poured out her pain on to the pages, and Mishani grieved to read it. Suddenly, she missed her mother like a physical ache in her stomach. She missed her father too, the way he had been, before she made herself an enemy to him. She wanted desperately to wipe away the years that separated them, to return to the time when she was her father’s pride, to embrace her mother and tell her how sorry she was that they had never been closer, that she had not realised how Muraki felt.

All the years of hiding bore down on her, living in fear of being recognised, terrified of her own family. She would have cried, had she been alone.

She was looking up at the moonless sky when Chien sat down next to her. The air, though warm, seemed unnaturally clear and brittle tonight, and the light of the stars was sharp and hard.

‘You’re thinking of your mother, aren’t you?’ Chien said, after a time.

Mishani supposed that was a guess based on the book lying by her side. She did not wish to answer him, so she avoided the question.

‘The Grey Moth is out tonight,’ she said, gesturing upward. Chien looked.

‘I don’t see it,’ he said.

‘It is very faint. Most nights it cannot be seen at all.’

‘I only see the Diving Bird,’ the merchant said, counting off nine stars in the constellation with one stubby finger.

Mishani lowered her head, her hair falling forward over her shoulder with the movement. ‘It is there,’ she said. ‘Hidden to some and visible to others. That is part of its mystery.’

Chien was still trying to find it, eager to be included in her experience. ‘Is it an omen, do you think?’

‘I do not believe in omens,’ Mishani replied. ‘I merely find it appropriate to my mood.’

‘How?’

Mishani looked up at him. ‘Surely you know how. Do you not remember the story of how the gods created our world?’

Chien’s blocky face was blank. ‘Mistress Mishani, I was adopted. They don’t teach adopted children the finer points of religion, and academia hasn’t played a great part in man-aging my family’s shipping business. I know about the tapestry, but nothing about moths.’

Mishani studied him, sidelit as he was by the fire of their camp. He seemed earnest, at least, but she half-suspected he was feigning ignorance simply to engage her in further conversation. He was sometimes hard work to be around, since he had none of the ease of spirit which allowed most people to sit in comfortable silence with each other. He always had to talk when he was with her, always had to have something to say. She could feel him squirming awkwardly when he did not.

‘The story goes that the gods were bored, and Yoru suggested they weave a tapestry to amuse themselves,’ Mishani began. ‘This was in the time before his enforced vigil at the gates of the Golden Realm, before Ocha discovered his affair with Isisya and banished him there.’

‘That part I do know,’ Chien said with a crooked smile.

‘Each god or goddess would stitch their own piece,’ Mishani continued. ‘But they had nothing to make it out of, so Misamcha went to her garden and gathered caterpillars. The caterpillars made silk at her touch, and she wrapped them up into skeins and gave them to the gods, who made their tapestry. When the work was done, all agreed that it was the most wonderful tapestry they had ever seen, the richest and the most detailed. Since they liked it so much, Ocha decided to give it life, so they could watch their tapestry grow. Each god or goddess became reflected in their favourite aspect. Some took physical things: the sea, the sun, the trees, fire and ice. Others took less tangible matters: love, death, revenge, honour. And so the world was created.’

‘You’ve told me of caterpillars now,’ said Chien, ‘but not of moths.’

Mishani looked back up at the night sky, where the Grey Moth hung, seven dim stars surrounding an abyss of perfect void. ‘The gods wanted the tapestry to be perfect. But after it was sewn and the world made, the caterpillars changed into beautiful coloured moths. All but one, and that one was grey and sickly. For no thing is utterly perfect, not even that which the gods create, not even the gods themselves.’

She turned her gaze to the fire, and it danced in the pupils of her eyes. ‘The grey moth had produced a silk that was corrupt, a thread that the gods had used along with all the others to make their tapestry, interwoven with the other threads. And in that silk was all the evils of the world, all the jealousy and hatred and foulness, all the sadness and grief and hunger and pain. Once the gods saw what had been done, they were appalled; but it was too late to undo their work. They loved the world a little less after that.’ She paused for a time, considering. ‘They called the silk of that caterpillar the Skein of Lament, and then they put the image of the Grey Moth in the night sky as a reminder.’

‘A reminder? Of what?’ Chien asked.

‘A reminder that we should never relax our vigilance. That even the gods could not make something perfect without it becoming corrupted, and humankind is more fallible than they. If we cease to be watchful, then evil slips into our lives, and it will undermine us and bring us down.’ She met Chien’s gaze, and she let her eyes show her weariness, and a fraction of her melancholy. ‘I do not think we have been watchful enough of late.’

Chien regarded her strangely for a few moments, his plain features blank with incomprehension. Mishani did not feel inclined to elaborate any further. Presently, Chien began fiddling with the hem of his cloak, a sure sign that he was becoming uncomfortable. She let him suffer until he spoke again.

‘We’ve passed Zila,’ he said, ‘and the way south widens again. Perhaps it’s time you told us where you’re going now. We need to decide if we have to stop for supplies and choose the best route.’

Mishani acceded with a tilt of her head; Chien would, after all, be unable to do anything about it now, even if he had wished to betray her somehow.

‘I will go to Lalyara,’ she said. ‘There you may leave me, and I will count your obligation fulfilled with honour.’

‘Not until I have you safely delivered to your ultimate destination, Mistress Mishani,’ Chien insisted. ‘Into the care of someone who will take responsibility for your welfare.’

Mishani laughed. ‘You are kind, Chien os Mumaka; but there is nobody in Lalyara who will do that. My business must remain my own, and I am bound by other promises not to tell you.’

Chien bore the news well enough. She had expected him to be crestfallen – he was curiously childlike at times – but he smiled faintly in understanding. ‘Then I will treasure these last days we will spend in each other’s company,’ he said.

‘As will I,’ Mishani replied, though more because it was expected than because she meant it. In truth, against her better judgement, she did like Chien. It was wise not to feel affection for a potential opponent, but that tension was the part of their relationship that she found most interesting, and she had to admit that he had grown on her. He had a quick brain and a sharp wit, and Mishani could not help but respect his achievements: how he had overcome the stigma of being adopted into a disgraced family to help raise Blood Mumaka back to power through his devious mercantile skills.

Still, for all that, it would be a great relief to be rid of him. She was constantly on edge, waiting for his hidden agenda to manifest itself.

But would her destination be any better?

He excused himself and got up to go and talk to his men, leaving Mishani to her thoughts. She found them wandering ahead of her, to what she had to do once he was gone.

She was to meet Barak Zahn tu Ikati, Lucia’s true father. And if things went well, she was to tell him that his daughter still lived – and that Mishani knew where she was.

It would be a terribly delicate thing to achieve, and it would test her diplomatic skills more sorely than at any time past. The risk was immense, and the responsibility placed in her hands was greater still. Mishani dared not reveal that she knew anything about Lucia until she was sure that the Barak would react in the way that they wanted. If she misplayed her hand, she could find herself a hostage, held and interrogated, at the mercy of Zahn’s Weaver. Zahn might demand to have his daughter brought to him, or he might marshal his troops and storm into the Fold, and that would be catastrophic.

His mental state over the last few years had been more and more distracted and lugubrious if accounts were to be believed. He had let the affairs of his family slip and retreated to one of his estates north of Lalyara. Popular rumour had it that he was mourning the death of his friend – and lover, so the gossips said with unwitting accuracy – the former Blood Empress Anais tu Erinima. Mishani knew better.

Zaelis had witnessed the moment when Zahn met Lucia for the first time in the roof gardens of the Imperial Keep, and both father and daughter had known at that moment what Anais had kept concealed all those years.

But if Zahn had ever intended to make a claim on his daughter, he missed his chance. The Blood Empress was slaughtered, and in amongst the confusion the little Heir-Empress disappeared. Though her body was never found, it was assumed that she had died in the fires and explosions that raged through the Keep on that day, her corpse charred beyond recognition. In reality, she had been snatched away by the Libera Dramach, but not even Zahn knew about that.

Zaelis had charged Mishani to make the decision whether to tell him or not. It was a heavy burden to bear. But they could not keep Lucia a secret for ever, and if they could get Zahn onto their side, then they would gain a powerful ally. It would take time to prepare the moment when Lucia would emerge from the shadows, years of planning; and it began here, with Mishani. After Zahn, she would approach Blood Erinima, who also had a vested interest, for Lucia was a living child of theirs that they had thought dead, and ties of blood were the strongest of all.

But first, Barak Zahn. One trick at a time.

A stirring in the camp brought her out of her musing. A few of the guards had got up hurriedly from around the fire, and were looking into the darkness over her head, past the shallow semicircle of black rocks. She felt a vibration in the ground, and a moment later the sound reached her ears. Hooves, pounding on the plains.

Approaching fast.

The first volley of shots cut down four of the eight men that Chien had brought to protect them. The defenders’ night vision was destroyed by the fire, and the attackers were firing from the outside in, so Chien’s men were easy targets while the newcomers were impossible to see. Mishani scrambled into the shelter of the rocks a moment before six horses came leaping over them, one thundering to the ground mere inches from where she lay and trampling over the mat where she had sat. The attackers rode into the camp, swords chiming free, and cut down another of the guards; then they galloped through Mishani’s tent and off into the dark again.

‘Put out that fire!’ Chien screamed. He kicked the blaze into burning clumps of wood and stamped on them. One of the other guards threw a pan of water across the embers, soaking Chien’s boots in the process, while the remaining two had got their rifles up. Somewhere beyond their circle of vision, their attackers were repriming their weapons, ready to shoot again. The light dimmed suddenly as the fire was dispersed, and darkness took the camp.

‘Mistress Mishani! Are you hurt?’ the merchant cried, but Mishani did not reply. She had already clambered over the low rocks to the other side, keeping them between her and where she imagined the attackers to be, hiding her from the camp. Her heart was hammering in her chest with that same horrible nervous fear that had gripped her when the assassins came for her at Chien’s townhouse. Were these more of the same? Was it her they wanted? She had to assume so.

‘Mishani!’ Chien called again, a tone of desperation in his voice; but she did not want them to find her. Right now, they were in the open, and they were the targets these new killers would go for. That gave her a chance.

She heard an anxious blast of breath, and suddenly remembered the horses. They had been tethered to a post on the near side of the camp. She could almost make them out if she squinted, ghostly blue shapes jostling in alarm. By Shintu’s luck, they still wore their tack; the guards had been told by Chien to put up Mishani’s tent each night before unsaddling their mounts. Her disdain for sleeping rough just might save her life.

‘Mishani!’ Chien cried again. Mishani was happy to let him carry on doing so. He was drawing attention to himself. Through a gap in the rocks, she could see that Chien and his remaining guards had adopted a defensive stance now, grabbing what cover they could, their guns pointed outwards. But the riders were not attacking yet. Dousing the fire had made the assassins’ job of picking targets a lot harder. Mishani thanked the moon sisters for their decision to stay out of the sky tonight, and then crept to the horses.

The twenty feet that she had to cross felt like a mile, and she had the terrible intuition that at any moment she would feel the brutal smack of a rifle ball and know no more. And yet, to her mild disbelief, the moment never came. She slipped the tethers of her horse from the post and swung into the saddle with a stealthiness that surprised even herself.

That was when the second attack began.

They came in from three sides this time, in pairs. One of each pair had a rifle raised, the other a sword. They fired as they galloped in, and Chien’s men fired back at the same time. By good fortune or poor aim, the defenders came off better: none of them were hit, but they managed to kill one of the horses as it bore down on them, striking it directly between its eyes so that it crashed to the ground and rolled over its rider with a cracking of bones.

And then there were swords, crashing against rifle barrels or the guards’ own hastily drawn blades, and the cries of men as they fought desperately. Mishani, who had stayed motionless since the attack had begun for fear of drawing attention to herself, put heels to her mount. At her signal, it bolted, and the acceleration took her breath away. The cool wind caught her great length of hair and blew it out in a streamer behind her, and she plunged away into the concealing darkness.

Then, seemingly from nowhere – her eyes were still labouring to adjust to the night – there were other horses alongside her, blocking her in, and a hand grabbed the reins she was holding and pulled her horse to heel. All around, there was a percussion of hooves as they slowed hard and came to a halt, and guns were trained on her. Other men went racing away towards the camp, where Chien and his guards fought a losing battle.

A tall, broad-shouldered man – the one who had stopped her horse – studied her. She could not make out his face, but she glared at him defiantly.

‘Mistress Mishani tu Koli,’ he said, his voice a deep Newlands burr. Then he chuckled. ‘Well, well, well.’