The Ascendancy Veil Part 12

'Even at the expense of this land and everyone in it?' Lucia replied scornfully.

'Even then,' said Kaiku. 'For as much as you think it might, the fate of the world does not rest on your actions.'

Lucia would not meet her gaze. 'I'm afraid, Kaiku,' she whispered.

'I know.'

'You don't know,' she said, and her expression revealed a depth of something that made Kaiku scared to see it. 'I'm changing.'

'Changing? How?'

Lucia turned from her, staring out into the forest. Kaiku's attention fell upon the burn scars on the nape of her neck. The stab of guilt at the sight would never go away, it seemed.

'I realise I am distracted sometimes . . . most of the time,' she said. 'I realise how hard it is to talk to me.

I do not blame you for not coming to see me so often.' She raised a hand to forestall Kaiku's protest. 'It's true, Kaiku. I can't pay attention to anything any more. Everywhere I go, there are the voices. The breath of the wind, the mutter of the earth; the birds, the trees, the stone. I do not know what silence is.' She turned her face sideways, looking over her shoulder at Kaiku, and a tear slid down her cheek. 'I can't shut them out,' she whispered.

A lump rose in Kaiku's throat.

'I'm becoming like them,' Lucia said, her voice small and terrifying in its hopelessness. 'I'm forgetting.

Forgetting how to care. I think of Zaelis and Flen, of my mother . . . and I don't feel. They died because of me, and sometimes I can't even recall their faces.' Her lip began to tremble, and her face crumpled, and she rushed into Kaiku's arms suddenly and clutched her so tightly that it hurt. 'I'm so lonely,' she said, and began to cry in earnest then.

Kaiku's stomach and heart were a knot of grief that brought tears to her own eyes. She wanted to reach Lucia somehow, to do something to make things better, but she was as helpless as anyone. All Kaiku could do was to be there for her, and she had been sadly remiss at that these past years.

And as they held each other on the narrow forest trail, the leaves began to fall. First one, then two, then a dozen and more, drifting down from the evergreens to settle on their shoulders and pile around their feet. Lucia was weeping, and the trees were shedding in sympathy.

THIRTEEN.

The Tkiurathi appeared one morning soon afterward, on a slope south of Araka Jo. By the time anyone noticed them, they had already made cook-fires, strung up shelters of animal hide, and dozens of them were sleeping in the boughs like cats. A makeshift village of yurts and hemp hammocks had sprung up overnight amid the tree trunks. To all appearances, they might have been living there for weeks.

Tsata was sitting in the crook of a tree, where the branch met the bole, one leg dangling. He was idly sharpening his gutting-hooks on a whetstone, his attention elsewhere. From his vantage point at the north side of the village he could see up the dirt trail towards Araka Jo. He believed at first that he had chosen this spot at random, but he decided in the end that he was fooling himself. He was keeping an eye on the trail. Waiting to see if Kaiku would come to him.

A Tkiurathi woman called from below. She raised her blade, and he tossed her down the whetstone, which she plucked from the air with a grin of thanks before wandering back towards the centre of the village.

Tsata slipped his gutting-hook back on to the catch at his belt and relaxed, watching the activity around him. It was exciting to be here in Saramyr again, and the better because this time he was not alone, but surrounded by his people. They took the strangeness of the land in their stride. They were brothers and sisters, insulated within their pash, comforted by the knowledge of community. Tsata found himself smiling.

At the base of the trees, traditional three-sided yurts called repka had been built. They were communal places for living and sleeping, with splayed, tunnel-like arms around a large hub construction with a chimney-hole through which curls of smoke rose. Other fires had been made outside: the hunters had already caught some of the local wildlife, and Tsata had been busy indicating foods that were safe to eat. He was recognised as the authority on Saramyr within the pash, having been here before and having studied its language and its customs long before that.

It was the way among the Tkiurathi that they were all teachers, each one sharing what unique knowledge or abilities they had. It had been one such man who had taught Tsata Saramyrrhic, a man who had travelled and lived here for decades before returning to his homeland. Tsata had a particular gift for languages he had already learned a good deal of Quraal, which was the lingua franca of the trading settlements dotted around the Okhamban coast and he had been bewildered and fascinated by stories of Saramyr. He applied himself to learning Saramyrrhic with a singularity of purpose that impressed his teacher, and within a few years he was as skilled at it as any foreigner could be. The months he had spent here had improved his command of the language vastly, but even now he was not entirely fluent in the overwhelming mult.i.tude of modes and inflections, the tiny subtleties of High Saramyrrhic that only those born to it could hope to master.

When he looked away from the settlement and back to the trail, Kaiku was there. She was regarding him impishly, a wry expression on her face.

'Are you coming down here, or shall I come up there?' she called.

He laughed; he knew her well enough to tell that she was not bluffing. With monkey-like grace, he slipped off the branch and swung from it to the ground ten feet below. There was a moment of awkward hesitation as they met, as each tried to determine whether to greet the other in their native fashion or that of the foreigner; then Kaiku stood on tiptoes, kissed him on the forehead and embraced him. Tsata was warmly surprised: it was an unusual gesture of extraordinary intimacy for a Saramyr to bestow.

'Welcome back,' she said.

'It is good to be here,' he said. 'I wish all welcomes had been as pleasant.'

'The feya-kori,' Kaiku murmured, nodding slightly. 'I fear you could have timed your arrival a little better.'

'Perhaps we have arrived at just the right moment,' he countered. 'From what I have learned, there have been no darker days than these. And there is no further need to convince my people of the threat to us; the men who return to Okhamba will spread the word. Seventy-five of us lost their lives the day we landed, but the remainder will fight harder for their sacrifice.' His face cleared suddenly. 'But we can talk of such things later. Let me show you our new home. And you must tell me what has occurred in my absence.'

It was as if they had never been apart. They fell easily into the rhythms of conversation that they had established during their long period of isolation, when they had lived and hunted together in the shattered wilderness of the Xarana Fault.

He talked of the many obstacles he had faced in his mission to alert his people to the danger of the Weavers. Kaiku spoke of her induction into the Red Order and her training. She told him also of Lucia and Mishani; he had met them briefly before his departure from the Fold, but he knew them primarily through Kaiku's stories. And she spoke of her fears for Lucia, and about the Weave-whales, and the plight of the beleaguered forces of the Empire.

They wandered the village as they talked. Kaiku had chosen travel clothes over the attire of the Order for her visit to the Tkiurathi village, for she did not wish to appear intimidating. Now she was glad that she had. Amid the informality of the Tkiurathi, she would have felt self-conscious in her make-up.

The people were muscled and lean, their skin tough and their hands seamed through the rigours of their lifestyle. She often found herself identifying them as much from the unique pattern of their tattoos as by their features, for it was difficult to see past them at first: they were such an overwhelmingly prominent facet of their appearance. The women were strong and physically unfeminine by Saramyr standards, having little softness about them, though Kaiku found in some a kind of wild beauty that was appealing.

They sat as equals with the men, their long hair bound with cord or left loose, wearing sleeveless garments of hemp or hide and trousers of the same.

Tsata sat with her around one of the campfires that had been built out in the open, along with a dozen other Tkiurathi who were eating. The men to either side of them handed them bowls and tipped a portion of their own bowls into those of the newcomers. It was a typically Okhamban gesture of sharing.

Kaiku did not know how she was supposed to respond, for she had nothing to give back; but Tsata motioned to her not to worry, no response was needed, and he began to fill the remainder of both their bowls from a pot of stew that hung over the fire. It was the meat of some local animal mixed in with vegetables and unfamiliar spices: it smelt delicious, though not so delicate as Saramyr food, more laden with heavy flavour. By the time he had finished, they had been handed chunks of bread from others in the circle, torn from their own loaves. Kaiku could not help but thank them, even though she knew almost nothing of their language.

'You do not need to thank them,' Tsata told her. 'You do so by allowing them to share in your food, when you have some and they are hungry.'

'I know,' she said. 'But it is difficult to break the habits of a lifetime. Just as I would find it odd if some of your people turned up at the door of my house expecting to be fed.'

'It does not quite work that way,' he laughed. 'But I can tell there will be many such misunderstandings between your folk and mine in the days to come.'

One of the women, who had been studying Kaiku, said something to her in their rough, guttural dialect.

She looked uncertainly at Tsata.

'She says your language is very beautiful,' he translated. 'Like birds singing.'

'Should I thank her for that?'

He smiled. 'Yes. Ghohkri.'

Kaiku repeated the word to the woman, by chance p.r.o.nouncing it perfectly to murmurs of approval from round the fire. Encouraged by her response, others started to ask her questions or make observations, which Tsata translated rapidly back and forth. Presently Kaiku was drawn into the conversation around the circle, with Tsata murmuring condensed explanations in her ear as people spoke to each other in Okhamban. She began to interject with a few comments of her own, to which there was always a slightly uncomfortable moment of incomprehension until Tsata could provide the Okhamban; but they were polite and patient, and Kaiku began to enjoy herself greatly. They were clearly fascinated by her, and they thought that even the shabby travel clothes she wore were incredibly exotic.

'G.o.ds, they should see the River District in Axekami,' Kaiku commented to Tsata, then remembered that Axekami was not as it once was, and saddened a little.

Eventually, they left the circle and wandered around the rest of the camp. Everywhere Kaiku looked, she found something out of the ordinary, whether it was the way the Tkiurathi fashioned their tools, the smell of their strange meals or the startling way they slept in the trees.

'It is an old instinct,' Tsata explained. 'There are many things on the ground that cannot reach us in the branches. Some people still prefer it, even in a safe forest like this one. The rest of us sleep in the repka.'

'No forest is truly safe,' Kaiku said. 'The animals have become steadily more violent as the blight has encroached on our land.'

'In the jungles that we come from, Saramyr animals would not last a night,' Tsata said. 'We are used to worse predators than bears or wolves. I doubt you have anything that would trouble us much.'

'Ah,' said Kaiku. 'But we have Aberrants.'

'Yes,' Tsata said, who had gathered a good deal of experience at hunting them on his last visit. 'Tell me about them. I hear things are different now.'

So Kaiku told him about the latchjaws in the desert, and about other new breeds they had identified and named. n.o.body was sure if these species had recently appeared or if they had simply not been seen frequently enough to be noticed in the past. Certainly, there always seemed to be a few reports of Aberrants that n.o.body recognised, in among the usual ghauregs and shrillings and furies.

Then Tsata told her about the Aberrant man he had tried to rescue in Zila, and they were off on a new tack.

'Of course they still hate us,' Kaiku said, as they walked around the edge of the village. 'People have always been susceptible to the fear of difference. But things are progressing at a different pace in different areas. Aberrants who are outwardly freakish are despised more than those who look "normal."

I do not think most people even think of Lucia as Aberrant any more: they have elevated her into something else, some nebulous and divine saviour to suit their purposes, and the high families appear content to encourage it. They need a figurehead, and if the price of winning back their Empire is to have Lucia on the throne, then so be it. At least she is of n.o.ble blood. Plus she has Blood Ikati and Blood Erinima on her side, and the Libera Dramach. Between them they form the strongest alliance by far, and n.o.body wants to be divisive and oppose them.'

'And what of the Red Order?' Tsata asked.

A brief look of frustration pa.s.sed over her face. 'The high families do not like us, despite the fact that we saved them from destruction, despite the fact that we are the ones who protect them from the Weavers, who could otherwise simply reach into their heads from Axekami and kill them.' She snorted.

'The Red Order is mistrusted, as if we were another kind of Weaver.'

'And aren't you?'

She should not have been surprised: he was ever blunt. 'No!' she said. 'The Weavers killed Aberrants for centuries to cover the evidence of their own crimes. Their post-Weaving whims still account for more deaths than I would like to think. And they have taken the land from us.'

'As your people took it from the Ugati,' Tsata reminded her. 'I know the Sisters are not so foul nor so cruel as the Weavers, but you seek to fulfil their role within the Empire. Will you be content as servants?

The Weavers were not.'

'The Weavers never intended to be. They always meant to dominate, whether they knew it themselves or not. The G.o.d that pulls their strings demanded it. It was the only way they could get to the witchstones.'

'You have not answered the question,' he chided softly.

'I do not know the answer,' she replied. ' I do not intend to be a servant of the high families when this is done, but I do not know what plans Cailin has made. I have an oath to fulfil, and that oath requires the destruction of the Weavers. If I can make it that far, I will die content.'

'You must consider the consequences of your actions, Kaiku,' Tsata said, though it was evident by his tone that he meant it as general advice rather than referring specifically to the Sisters. 'You must look ahead.'

'What point is there in that?' she asked. 'There is no alternative. We have but one path in this matter.

The Red Order are trying to help people achieve that.'

'This land has been stung once before by placing their trust in beings more powerful than they,' Tsata said. 'It is understandable that they are wary of you.'

She let it drop at that. Tsata was a questioner, and she admired that in him he made her examine herself, to scrutinise her own choices and opinions but he was also tenacious, and she did not want to get into an argument now. Instead their talk drifted to other things. Surrounded by Tkiurathi, she found herself wondering about Tsata's childhood, and began to ask him about it. She was surprised that she had never done so before, but she had always been afraid to pry for fear of making him reveal something he did not want to: Okhambans were unfailingly obliging, but they did not like their generosity abused. He was perfectly open, however.

'We do not have parents in Okhamba.' He saw the smile growing on her face, and corrected himself. 'I mean, we do not a.s.sign responsibilities to the ones who give birth to us. The children are raised equally as part of whatever pash they are. Everyone takes a hand in child-rearing. I do not know which of them were my parents, though I had an inkling. The biological bond is discouraged. It would lead to favouritism and compet.i.tion.'

They talked of G.o.ds and ancestors also. Kaiku had learned in the past that Okhambans did not revere deities, but rather pursued a form of ancestor-worship similar to Saramyr folk, if much more extreme.

Whereas Saramyr respected and honoured their ancestors, Okhambans had a more ruthless process.

Those who had achieved great things were treated as heroes, with stories told about them and legends spun so that their deeds might be pa.s.sed on to inspire the younger generation. Those who had not were forgotten, and their names were not spoken aloud. Okhambans believed that a person's strength and courage, ingenuity and wit and inspiration came from themselves alone; that they were responsible for all that they did, that there was no deity to make reparations to or to blame when things went bad.

Tsata saw deities as a kind of cushion against the brutal and raw realities of existence.

Kaiku, on the other hand, could not believe how an entire continent of millions could not see what every Saramyr saw: that the G.o.ds were all around them, their influence felt everywhere, that they might be capricious and sometimes terrible but that they were undoubtedly there.

'But Quraal has different G.o.ds,' he had said once. 'How can you both be right?'

'Perhaps they are merely different aspects ascribed to the same ent.i.ties,' Kaiku had countered. 'We put our own faces on our G.o.ds.'

'Then who would they side with in a war between Quraal and Saramyr?' Tsata had returned. 'How do you know who is right if you do not know what they want?'

But Kaiku could only think how empty her life would be if she believed that the world as she perceived it was all that there was. She knew otherwise. She had looked into the eyes of the Children of the Moons.

Tsata's ruthless practicality and realism failed to take into account the spirits that haunted both their lands.

'Spirits are beings that cannot be explained,' he had said, 'but we do not worship them, or ask them for forgiveness.'

'If you cannot explain spirits,' Kaiku had replied, 'then how much else can you not explain?'

'But what if your G.o.ds are merely spirits of a much greater magnitude?'

So it had gone on. But that was a debate that she had no wish to revisit, so she steered away from contention. She talked about her own beliefs, hopes and fears, and was surprised anew by how easy it was. For such a guarded soul, she found it remarkably effortless to lower her defences to this man. He was so honest that she could not believe him capable of deception, and deception was what she feared the most: she had been duped too many times in her life. So caught up was she that she did not notice Nuki's eye slipping westward through the trees. When she did, she gave a start and clutched his arm.

'Heart's blood, Tsata! It's late. I'd forgotten the other reason I came to see you. Will you come back to Araka Jo with me? Yugi has called a meeting, and he asked if you would attend.'

'I will come,' he said. 'May I bring others?' In response to Kaiku's puzzled frown, he said: 'I am not their leader, merely their . . . favoured amba.s.sador. Others should come, to hear and decide. I will keep the number small. There will be three, including myself. Is that acceptable?'

'Three, then,' Kaiku said. 'We convene at sunset.'

The meeting was held in the rectangular central hall of the largest temple in the complex. It was open to the air, for what once had been a magnificent roof had crumbled under the pressure of ages, and the early-risen Iridima looked into the hall from overhead as Nuki's light turned the sky to copper and gold. It was built of the same white stone as the rest of the complex, and from that stone were carved a dozen enormous idols which lined the walls, four on each of the long sides and one at each corner. The roof had protected the idols for centuries from the worst of time's a.s.saults before it fell, and they were better preserved than most: disconcerting, imposing beings that spoke to something subconscious in the viewer, some ancient memory long lost that still lingered in wisps in the deepest chasms of the mind. Their eyes were uniformly bulbous and slitted horizontally, exuding a dark hunger, and their forms were amalgamations of mammal and reptile and bird.

Lanterns had been placed in newly-set brackets, and an enormous wicker mat dyed with fine designs had been laid in the centre of the otherwise featureless floor, on which the debaters would sit. When Kaiku and Tsata arrived, most were already there, kneeling or cross-legged with their shoes or boots neatly set behind them, just beyond the edge of the mat. She recognised them all: Cailin, Phaeca and several other Sisters, Yugi, Mishani, Lucia, Heir-Barak Hikken tu Erinima, Barakess Emira tu Ziris, and a.s.sorted folk of the Libera Dramach. Kaiku was relieved to note that Asara was not present: she had been avoiding her ever since she received news of her arrival. Then she wondered if she was here, and Kaiku simply did not recognise her.

There were few n.o.bles present, since most were content to stay in the cities, and this was primarily a Libera Dramach gathering. Hikken was here because he never strayed far from his niece Lucia, hovering like a vulture, and Barakess Emira had been at Araka Jo on a visit. She was an enthusiastic supporter of the Libera Dramach, but she was not powerful, having unwisely backed Blood Kerestyn during the last coup and suffering the loss of most of her army.

Kaiku led Tsata into the hall along with the two other Tkiurathi a brown-haired, thickset man named Heth who spoke some Saramyrrhic, and the woman who had complimented her on her language back at the village, whose name was Peithre. Beyond the mat where the princ.i.p.al partic.i.p.ants would sit, there were a few dozen others lining the walls to observe. Then she spotted Nomoru.

Kaiku's heart jumped in surprise as their eyes met. There she was, in the flesh, scrawny and unkempt and surly, half her face in shadow. Kaiku had almost given up on seeing her again, a.s.suming that she had died in Axekami. How she had got out of the pall-pits and out of the city, Kaiku would probably never know. But she was tough as a rat, this one, and she had come through once again.

As Kaiku stared, she tilted her head, and the light from nearby fell on the side of her face that had been hidden. Kaiku caught her breath. Nomoru's skin was crisscrossed with scars, thin raised tracks like ploughlines streaking her from cheek to ear and along her neck. It occurred suddenly that Nomoru was showing them to her. She looked away, perturbed by this new thought. Did Nomoru hold her responsible? Kaiku had not thought fast enough when she saw Juto squeeze the trigger to shoot Nomoru: she should have killed the momentum of the rifle ball in the air instead of blowing it apart.

Even though Kaiku had scarred her in the process of saving her life, did Nomoru blame her for her disfigurement? G.o.ds, she did not want that woman as an enemy.

But then she was slipping her shoes from her feet and kneeling on the communal mat, and Tsata indicated to his companions that they should do the same. She was in full Red Order garb now, and it armoured her against the stares of the people in the hall, against the resentful presence of the idols and the restless flitting of the spirits that whirled invisibly in the recesses, stirred by the unwelcome crowd.

The appearance of the Tkiurathi caused some whispering around the room, but they seemed oblivious.