SEVENTEEN

The town of Zila stood on the southern bank of the River Zan, grim and unwelcoming. It had been built at the estuary of the great flow, where the waters that had begun their sixhundred-mile journey in the Tchamil Mountains blended into the sea. It was not a picturesque place, for its original purpose had been military, as a bastion against the Ugati folk who had occupied this land before the Saramyr took it, guarding the bottleneck between the coast and the Forest of Xu while the early settlers raised the city of Barask to the north. It had been here for over a thousand years now, and though its walls had crumbled and been rebuilt, though there was scarcely a building or street left that had existed back then, it still exuded the same brooding presence that it had possessed in the beginning. Cold, and watchful.

It had been constructed to take advantage of a steep hill, which sloped upwards from the south and fell off in a sharp decline at the riverbank. A high wall of black stone surrounded it, which curved and bent to accommodate the contours of the land. Above the wall, the slanting rooftops of red tile and slate angled backwards and up towards the small keep at the centre. The keep was the hub of the town; in fact, the whole of Zila was constructed like a misshapen wheel, with concentric alleyways shot through by streets that radiated out from the keep like spokes. Everything was built from the dense, dour local rock, quite at odds with the usual Saramyr preference for light stone or wood. There were two gates in its wall, but they were both closed; and though there were pockets of activity on the hills outside the silent town, they were few and far between. Most people had drawn back within the protection of the perimeter, and made what preparations they could for the oncoming storm. Zila waited defiantly.

The Emperor’s troops were coming.

It was early morning, and a soft, warm rain was falling, when Mishani and her captors arrived. They rode in along the river bank, down to the base of the sharp slope between the walls of Zila and the Zan. Docks had been built there, and steep, zigzagging stairs to link them to the town itself. But no craft were moored; they had been scuttled or cast adrift and floated out into the sea, to prevent the enemy seizing them.

The riders dismounted, and a man broke away from the dozen or so who milled about and walked over to meet them.

‘Bakkara!’ said the man, making the gesture of greeting between adults of roughly equal social rank: a small dip of the head, tilted slightly to the side. ‘I wondered if you’d be back in time. We’re closing the last gate at noon.’

The man he had addressed – the man who had captured Mishani’s horse, and the leader of the party – gave him a companionable blow on the shoulder. ‘You think I’d let myself get locked out and miss the fun?’ he cried. ‘Besides, there’s probably more food in there than in the rest of Saramyr, my friend. And a soldier fights on his stomach.’

‘Might have known you’d be where the meal is,’ replied the other, grinning. Then, catching sight of Mishani, he added: ‘I see you brought back more than just supplies.’ He glanced over at Chien, who was battered and bloodied in his saddle. ‘That one has seen better days.’

‘He wouldn’t have seen any more of them if we hadn’t arrived when we did,’ Bakkara said, casting a look at the merchant. ‘Bandits. These two were the only ones that got out alive.’

‘Well, I hope they’re suitably grateful,’ replied the man; then he looked at Mishani meaningfully and winked at Bakkara. ‘One of them, anyway.’

Mishani gazed at him icily until the humour faded from his face. Bakkara bellowed a laugh.

‘She’s a fearsome thing, isn’t she?’ he roared. ‘It wouldn’t do well to mock her. These are nobles we’ve got here.’

The man glared at Mishani sullenly. ‘Get inside, then,’ he said to the group in general. ‘I’ll take care of your horses.’

Mishani and Chien were forced to walk up the stone steps from the dock to the city. Chien was struggling because of his injuries, so their captors made allowances for him, and their progress was slow.

Mishani looked up at the towering walls above them. They were being brought into a city in revolt, and forced to weather it with them against the might of the armies of the empire. She did not know whether to thank the god of fortune or curse him.

The men who had attacked them had undoubtedly been her father’s, though she had certainly not told Barakka that. She did not believe that bandits would choose a party of armed guards rather than any of the other dozens of unarmed travellers that had been scattered across the plains last night. Besides, they were too singleminded in purpose, and too few. Bandits would never attack an enemy which outnumbered them.

She had no idea how the men had tracked them this far, but it had shaken her that they had managed to get so close to her once again. What if she had been in her tent when they rode through it? It was plain now that her father did not care whether she came back to him alive or dead. She felt a slender knife of sadness slide into her gut at that. It was a terrible thing to admit to herself.

Then Bakkara and his riders had turned up. Perhaps she could have got away if not for their intervention, but the point was moot now. They had slaughtered Avun’s killers by weight of numbers, in time to save Chien’s life but not those of his guards. And then, instead of setting them free, they had asked Mishani and Chien to accompany them. It was phrased as a request, but they were in no doubt that they were captives. And besides, Chien needed medical attention, which they offered at Zila. Mishani acceded, to spare herself the humiliation of being tied and taken anyway.

Despite their purpose, they did not treat her like a prisoner. They were talkative enough, and she learned a lot from them during their journey, and the short camp they made on their way back. Most of them were townsfolk from Zila, peasants or artisans. They had been despatched to raid supplies from the travellers passing south down the bottleneck – without harming anyone, they took pains to emphasise – and bring them back to bolster the stocks in the city for the oncoming siege. Their scouts had reported several armies due to reach them the next evening to crush the revolt, and they were by turns fearful and excited at the prospect. Something had sparked an unusual zeal in them, but Mishani could not divine what. They seemed more like folk with a purpose than desperate men fighting for their right to feed.

But it was Bakkara that Mishani spent most of the journey with. An ingrained sense of political expedience dictated that she should not waste time with the foot-soldiers when she could forge relations with their leader; and he, apparently, was as happy to talk as his subordinates. He was a big man: swart, with small dark eyes, a stubbled lantern jaw and a squashed nose. His black hair was bound into ropes and tied through with coloured cord, swept back from his low forehead to hang down to his nape. Though he was nearing his fiftieth harvest, his bearish physique made him more than a match for most men half his age. In his voice and his eyes were a weary authority, a soldier who had seen it all many times before and had resigned himself to seeing it again.

It was through Bakkara that Mishani learned how they had known who she was, and why his men’s reaction to their impending fate was so optimistic.

‘It’s not my habit to rescue noble ladies,’ he had said with a rough grin, in response to her question. They had been riding through the early hours of the night, and the atmosphere had a surreal and disjointed quality, as if their group were alone in an empty world.

‘Then what prompted you to break with tradition and kidnap me?’ she asked.

‘Hardly kidnapping, Mistress,’ he said. He used the correct title, though the mode he spoke in was anything but subservient. ‘Unless you want your man back there to ride the rest of the way to your destination in that state.’

Mishani angled her head, and the faint starlight caught the sharp, thin planes of her cheek. ‘We both know that you would not let me ride away now,’ she said. ‘As for Chien, I care little for him. And he is certainly not my man.’

Bakkara chuckled. ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ he said. ‘Anyone else, we’d have let them go on their way. But not you. On the one hand, Ocha forbid harm should come to you; and I wouldn’t like to let you go riding on your own any further south. Things are getting worse down there.’ His face creased in a twinge of regret. ‘On the other, you’re an asset too valuable to pass up, and Xejen would kill me if I did. We may need you at Zila. So I’m afraid that’s where you’re going.’

Mishani had already worked out what her situation was before he mentioned Xejen’s name and confirmed it.

‘You’re Ais Maraxa,’ she said.

He grunted an affirmative. ‘Aren’t you lucky?’ he said sarcastically.

Mishani laughed.

‘You’re something of a legend in the Ais Maraxa, Mistress, as I’m sure you know,’ Bakkara continued with a wry tone. ‘You were one of those who saved our little messiah from the jaws of death.’

‘Forgive me, but you do not sound like the foaming zealot I would have expected of a man in your position,’ Mishani said, provoking a bellow of mirth from the soldier.

‘Wait till you meet Xejen,’ he returned. ‘He should match up to your standards much better than I.’ His laughter diminished a little, and he gave Mishani a strange look. ‘I believe in Lucia,’ he said eventually. ‘Just because I don’t spout the dogma doesn’t make my strength of conviction any the less.’

‘But you understand it is rather harder for me to see the point of view your organisation espouses,’ Mishani explained. ‘For you, she may represent an ideal, and objects of worship I find are more effective when worshipped from a distance; but for me, she is like a younger sister.’

‘Worship is a strong word,’ said Bakkara uncomfortably. ‘She is not a goddess.’

‘That much I am certain of,’ said Mishani. She found Bakkara curious. He did not seem entirely at ease with his professed allegiance, and that puzzled her.

‘But she’s something more than human,’ the soldier continued. ‘That much I am certain of.’

Mishani brought herself back to the present, and back to the frowning walls of Zila that rose above them as they climbed the steps, helping the wounded merchant. She was recalling all that she knew of the Ais Maraxa, remembering old conversations with Zaelis and Cailin, mining titbits of information from the past like diamonds from coal. It had been too long since she had paid attention to the Ais Maraxa; she had never given them as much credit as she should have. Now she had been away and out of contact for over two months, and in her absence the Ais Maraxa seemed to have showed themselves at last to the world at large. She would never have thought them capable. It was what everyone close to Lucia had feared.

They had begun as nothing more than a particularly radical and enthusiastic part of the fledgling Libera Dramach. Stories among the peasantry concerning a saviour from the blight were already rife long before the name of Lucia tu Erinima was heard. It was a natural reaction to something that they did not understand: the malaise in their soil that could not be checked. Though the Libera Dramach strove for secrecy, there were still those among them who talked, and stories spread. The tale of the imprisoned Heir-Empress became mingled with the already established webwork of vague prophecies, hope and superstition, and fitted in perfectly. In their eyes, the appearance of a hidden Heir-Empress who could talk to the spirits was a little too coincidental with the spread of the blight. It made sense that she had been put on Saramyr by the gods to engage the evil in the land. Certainly, there could be no other reason why Enyu, goddess of nature, would allow an Aberrant to be born into the Imperial family. Suddenly, the peasants talked not of a god or a hero who would save them, but a little girl.

Still, the organisation that would become the Ais Maraxa remained nothing more than a mildly over-enthusastic splinter of the Libera Dramach. Until the Heir-Empress was rescued.

The presence of their figurehead in the Fold was the incitement that they needed. Lucia’s preternatural aura and her seemingly miraculous escape from death convinced them that the messiah they had dreamed of was here at last. They had become more vocal in their dissent, arguing that total secrecy was not the answer; they should spread the news that Lucia was alive throughout the land, to gather support for the day when she would lead them. Much of the peasantry had seen their faith crushed when the Imperial Keep fell, and telling them of the child’s escape would only redouble their joy.

Zaelis had forbidden it outright, and eventually the dissenting faction had quieted. Several months later they had left without warning, taking with them some of the most eminent members of the Libera Dramach. It was not long after that reports began to filter back of an organisation calling itself the Ais Maraxa – literally ‘followers of the pure child’ in a reverent dialect of High Saramyrrhic – that was spreading uncannily accurate rumours far and wide.

Zaelis had fretted and cursed, and Cailin had sent her Sisters to divine the extent of the danger the Ais Maraxa posed; but it seemed at least that their worst fears had not been realised. Those few who had split from the Libera Dramach to form the Ais Maraxa had kept the location of the Heir-Empress a secret. Only a very select number knew where Lucia was. The rest of the organisation knew only that she was hidden, and passed that information on to others. It did little to reassure Zaelis, who thought them reckless and irresponsible; yet it had seemed for years that they were content to spread their message, and in the end Mishani had begun to discount them as virtually harmless.

Now the gates of Zila stood before her, and she walked at Bakkara’s side into a town that was soon to close itself up for a siege. She wished she had paid more attention to Lucia’s fanatical followers, for the oversight might yet cost her dearly.

The estate of Blood Koli lay on the western side of Mataxa Bay, on a cliff overlooking the wide blue water. Far beneath it were white beaches and coves, unspoilt stretches of sand that dazzled the eye. Several small wooden villages of huts, jetties and walkways built on stilts sprawled from the feet of the cliff out into the bay, and tiny boats and junks bobbed against their tethers. Several massive shapes bulked out of the sea in the distance, enormous limestone formations covered with moss and bushes, their bases worn away so that their tops were wider than their bottom ends, like inverted pinecones. The fishermen glided around them, stirring pole-paddles, and cast nets in their shadow.

The Koli family house was built close to the edge on the highest point of the promontory. It was a coral-coloured building, constructed around a circular central section with a flattened and ribbed dome atop it. The uniformity of its surface at ground level was broken by a square entrance hall that poked out like a blunt snout, facing away from the bay. Two slender wings encompassing stables and servants’ quarters ran along the cliff edge. Cut in steps into the cliff itself was an enormous three-tiered garden, its lowest tier balconied and jutting out over the drop to the beach below. All kinds of trees and plants were cultivated there, and carved pillars of rock had been left in strategic places to maximise the aesthetic pleasure in the fusion of stone and greenery. On the highest tier was a small conservatory, a skeletal framework of tall arches and curved pillars, where Mishani’s mother Muraki would sit to write.

She was there now, Barak Avun suspected, though he could not see from where he lounged on the lowest tier with Barak Grigi tu Kerestyn. No doubt concocting more of her stories, he thought with distaste. Sharing her family’s problems with the empire. In all things she obeyed him, except in this. He had been furious when news of her latest book had reached him; it fuelled scandalmongers the breadth of the land. There was enough rumour about their missing daughter without her adding to it. But she would write what she would write, and she defied him to censor her.

Still, the damage could be minimised. If all went well, then soon he would have his daughter back, one way or another, and then they could concoct a cover story that would put all that dishonour to rest. If all went well . . .

‘Gods, it’s not so bad, is it?’ said Grigi, who was lying on a couch and looking over the balcony to the bay. ‘Up here, you can forget about the problems of the world, forget about the blight. Nuki’s eye still shines on us, the sea still ebbs and flows. Our problems are small, when you look at them from this height.’

Avun regarded him with vague contempt. The obese Barak was drunk. Between them was a table scattered with the remnants of the food Grigi had devoured, and empty pitchers of wine. Avun was ascetic in his tastes, but Grigi was a glutton, and he had gorged himself all afternoon.

‘They are not small to me,’ Avun said coldly. ‘The sea still ebbs and flows, but its fish are becoming twisted; and those fish paid for the food you have eaten. My fishermen have taken to holding back some of their catch for their own families. Preserving them against the famine. Stealing from me.’ He turned his hooded eyes outward, to where the distant cliffs of the eastern side of the bay were a low, jagged line of deep blue. ‘It is easy to pretend that nothing is wrong. It is also foolish.’

‘No need to be so dour, Avun,’ said Grigi, a little disappointed that his ally did not share his expansive mood. ‘Heart’s blood, you know how to bring a man down.’

‘I see nothing to be cheerful about.’

‘Then you don’t see the opportunity that this famine brings us,’ Grigi said. ‘There is no stouter warrior than a man fighting for his life, and the lives of his family. All they need is someone to unite behind. That person will be me!’ He raised his goblet clumsily, spilling a little wine onto the slabs of the balcony.

‘There goes the Barakess,’ said Avun, languidly indicating a brightly coloured junk that was slipping out of the harbour far below them, making its way through the clutter of fishing vessels.

Grigi shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun and looked down. ‘Do you trust her?’

Avun nodded slowly. ‘She will be there when the time comes.’

The afternoon’s work had been satisfactory. Emira, a young Barakess of Blood Ziris, had visited them at her request. She had talked with them about many things: the threat of famine, the Blood Emperor, the plight of her own people. And, in her sly and roundabout way, she had wondered whether Blood Kerestyn intended to make a play for the throne, and whether they might need Blood Ziris’s help when they did.

It was ever this way, in the game of the Imperial courts. Families backed each other in the hope that the one they supported would gain power, and in turn that family would elevate the ones that had helped them get there. As Mos’s ineptitude became clearer, and with Blood Kerestyn the only realistic alternative, the high families were flocking to Grigi’s banner without him even having to call them. With Blood Koli at his right hand, he was a powerful figurehead, and the strength of the empire was gathering itself to him.

But always there had been the problem of the Emperor’s strength of numbers. With the Weavers at his side, and the Imperial Guards at his command, he was a near-invincible force. While Kerestyn forces had been smashed during the last coup, Blood Batik had walked unopposed into the city, and had grown since then. Even with overwhelming support from the other high families, Grigi knew it would be a close call. He had broken himself on the walls of Axekami once before; he would have to be very sure of himself before he would try it again.

Avun had brought him the solution to that problem this very day.

‘I have a new friend,’ he had said, as they walked through the chambers of the family house that morning. ‘One very close to the Emperor. I was contacted not long ago.’

‘A new friend?’ Grigi had asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘This person tells me that something is going to happen, very soon. We must be ready.’

‘Ready?’

‘We must assemble our support, so we can march on Axekami at a day’s notice.’

‘A day! Ridiculous! We would have to tell all the families well in advance, gather their forces here.’

‘Then we shall do so, when the time is right. There will be a signal. And when it comes, we must act swiftly, and have our allies ready to do the same.’

Grigi had adjusted his purple skullcap on top of his head. ‘That’s a little too much to take on trust, Avun. Tell me just who this new friend of yours is.’

‘Kakre. The Emperor’s own Weaver.’