And yet . . . and yet she was not gone. Kaiku could still feel her there, her imprint on the Weave. Her eyes were just not seeing her.

She slipped into the Weave herself, and there was Cailin, contoured in innumerable strings of light.

((How?)) She was aghast with wonder.

((There is more. Touch me with your hand)) Kaiku did so, reaching slowly towards the Pre-Eminent, using her Weave-imprint to see her. She rested her hand on Cailin's shoulder: but where she should have found flesh and bone, there was nothing. She inhaled a sharp breath in surprise. Again she tried, again she failed. She pa.s.sed her arm through where Cailin's body should be, and apart from a faintly glutinous drag on her fingertips, she touched only air.

((Impossible . . .)) Kaiku felt foolish as soon as she had transmitted the thought, but she could find no other way to express it. Cailin was in the Weave, and only in the Weave; her physical body was . . . gone.

((We have arts of which you have only scratched the surface, Kaiku)) Cailin's communication came without words, phrased instead in a semantic blaze. ((New techniques of manipulation that we have laboured on in secret for decades. You are ready to begin learning the inner mysteries of the Red Order)) The Weave warped, flexing inward and knotting into a singularity that existed for the slenderest of instants before bursting back into shape; and there was a leviathan.

Its very presence was enough to stun them. Distance had no meaning in the Weave except in how human minds interpreted it, but until this moment the leviathans had been far, far away, unfathomably aloof. Now one of them appeared in such close proximity that the backwash almost scattered the Sisters' consciousnesses, shaking them out of coherence. They regrouped, overwhelmed; but the ent.i.ty was still now, and calm descended.

Its size, its sheer impact on the Weave was colossal. The Sisters were motes in its presence: it dominated utterly the world of golden threads. It was a white void, an aching, blazing split that burned the eye with its brilliance. There was no shape to it, for it seemed to exist in many shapes all together; yet the human mind could not allow that, and so they put their own shape to the leviathan, fixed it in their perception. It was vast and smooth and streamlined, something like a whale in form but so alien to any creature they knew that a.n.a.logy was impossible; and they were plankton against its flanks.

They regarded it in utter terror, not daring to do anything but hang there, motionless, while their Weave-senses fought to cope with what was happening.

It regarded them, too. They felt its attention brushing them as the hull of some dark, gargantuan ship sliding past, a crushing force missing them by inches. It could destroy them with the weight of that scrutiny. Kaiku had once faced the Children of the Moons, spirits so old that it was not within humanity's grasp to comprehend them; yet they were children indeed compared to this. This was a factor of magnitude so far beyond those spirits that sanity would not hold long enough to consider it.

A moment pa.s.sed, and then, without warning, the Weave furled like a flower into a knot of infinite density, and then sprang back. The leviathan was gone, but the resonation of its pa.s.sing rang like a bell.

Kaiku and Cailin left the Weave together. Cailin was visible again. For a long minute, they stood listening to the ba.n.a.l night, breathing, feeling the touch of the wind on their faces and in their hair.

Questions were lancing back and forth beneath the skin of reality. The other Sisters had sensed the leviathan. But neither Cailin nor Kaiku could respond. They stared at one another, and did not say anything. They did not have the words.

A few days later, Mishani arrived at Araka Jo.

She found Kaiku by a small lake a little way east of the temple complex. She was standing at the edge of a wooden viewing-platform, looking out across the carpet of lily pads and floating blossoms of white and red. The lake was surrounded by kamaka trees, their leaves hanging over the water in long drowsy chains. Nuki's eye had that peculiarly sharp winter's quality; it was pleasantly warm in his gaze, but where the shade obscured it there was a faint chill.

Kaiku was not wearing the attire of the Order. She had dressed in a thick robe, purple and blue and lavender, belted with a green sash. To Mishani, who was used to her friend's tomboyish tendencies, it was an unexpectedly feminine choice of clothing. Mishani watched her for a time from the end of the viewing-platform, simply enjoying the sight of her in contemplation.

'I know you are there, Mishani,' she said, a smile in her voice. 'I am long past the stage where you could sneak up on me.'

Mishani laughed, and Kaiku turned around to embrace her.

'G.o.ds, I am glad to see you safe,' she murmured.

They talked for a long while, for they had much to tell. It had been over a year since they had last met, just before Mishani departed for Tchom Rin. Kaiku's talk was mostly of her training, for she had not travelled so far as her friend had. Mishani carried the bulk of the conversation; Kaiku was eager to hear all about the desert cities.

'And look at you now!' Kaiku said, plucking at Mishani's sleeve. 'You look like a desert n.o.ble yourself!'

'I will confess a certain fondness for the fashion,' Mishani grinned. Then she sobered and said: 'I have to tell you this, Kaiku: Asara is here.'

Kaiku's mirth flickered like a guttering candle. 'Asara?' For an instant, she was reliving that moment in the Fold, when she had seduced a man named Saran Ycthys Marul, not knowing that it was Asara in another shape. The sheer betrayal still scorched her. Then her smile returned, a little forced now. 'She can wait. Come, let us walk.'

They followed a trail around the edge of the lake, a dirt path scattered with worn stones that had mostly sunk into the ground with the pa.s.sing of centuries. Ravens and jays hopped about the undergrowth, or took off in a startled flap of wings, blasting leaves and twigs in their wake. Most of the foliage in Saramyr was evergreen, but the people held some residual genetic memory of the time when their ancestors dwelt in temperate Quraal, and even more than a thousand years after they had come to this land there was a faintly disjointed feel to the wintertime. A sensation that something should be, and was not. The majority of the trees here never bared themselves, and that jarred with old instincts.

Kaiku felt happy to be with her friend again. There was an ease between them that n.o.body else in her life shared. As always, she was surprised that she could forsake that feeling so easily, that she could forget how it was when they were together; and yet she knew that when they were next parted, she would forget anew.

As they walked, Mishani told Kaiku of her journey back across the mountains.

'My impression was that the peaks were swarming with Aberrants, but we saw scarcely any, and those at a distance,' she said. 'Even when we got to the plains, and we had to cross the South Tradeway and skirt north of the marshes, our journey was unhindered. I had thought I was fortunate not to have encountered any trouble when I first crossed into the desert, but I am beginning to think that fortune had nothing to do with it.'

'Our scouts report the same,' Kaiku agreed. 'The Weavers are concentrating their forces in the cities, and fewer of them are roaming the countryside. There is speculation that even they do not have the numbers to stretch adequately across all that territory. They lost hundreds of thousands in the early months of the war, before they learned to fight tactically. Maybe they cannot breed enough, or capture enough or however they are replenishing their armies to cover the shortfall.'

'In that, at least, we can take heart.'

There was a pause, filled with the soft tread of their shoes and the rustling of the leaves, long enough to elicit a new subject.

'I read your mother's new book,' Kaiku said.

'So did I. Several times.'

'There is something odd about it. About those last lines, especially.'

Mishani nodded sadly. 'The words Nida-jan says to the dying man? They are the first stanza of a lullaby she used to sing to me, one that she wrote herself. We were the only ones that knew it in its entirety.'

' I know it,' Kaiku said. 'You sang it to me once, when you were telling me how you discovered Chien was working for your mother.'

'You remember that?' Mishani asked in surprise. She had not thought of the unfortunate merchant for a long time now. He had been poisoned by her father's a.s.sa.s.sins during the siege at Zila; but not before Mishani had found out that he had been charged by her mother in secret to protect her from those same a.s.sa.s.sins.

Kaiku's lip twitched at the edge. 'She does have a gift for words. It sticks in the mind.' She kicked at a branch that lay across their path. 'After I read those lines, I could not shake the sensation that she meant something by them.'

'That is plain enough,' said Mishani.

'So I began to read her earlier books. The ones since her style changed, since your father became Lord Protector. Trying to divine what her intention might be, what she was trying to express.'

'And did you come to any conclusion?' Mishani was fascinated by this, that her friend should have been thinking along exactly the same lines as her.

Kaiku tilted her shoulders in a shrug. 'Nothing, beyond a certainty that there is something there. The answers remain impenetrable.'

Mishani felt a twinge of disappointment. She had hoped her friend might have some kind of resolution for her.

'Tsata is back,' Kaiku said, apropos of nothing.

'Here?'

'In Saramyr. He is coming to Araka Jo with the Tkiurathi.' Kaiku had charged the Sister present at the attack to find out whether Tsata had survived. It had taken several days, for the Tkiurathi had departed from the main army some time before, and the Sister had other things to do; finding someone who remembered one man amid an army of people who looked identical to her eyes was not an easy task.

But the answer had come that morning.

Kaiku had been almost giddy with relief: she had not realised how tautly she was wound until the tension inside her slackened.

'Strange days indeed,' Mishani said wryly, looking up at Kaiku, who was several inches the taller.

'Do not use that tone!' Kaiku laughed. 'I know what you insinuate.'

'He has crossed an ocean to come back to you, Kaiku,' Mishani pointed out.

'He has crossed an ocean to fight the Weavers,' she replied. 'You know his kind; it was the only logical course of action to him.'

'I do not know his kind,' said Mishani. 'Their ways are hard for me to understand. Not for you, though, it seems.'

Kaiku made a prissy little moue at her friend. 'Perhaps I should be the amba.s.sador, then, instead of you.'

'Ha! You? We would be at open war within the day!'

And so it went. They meandered along the lakeside in the bright light of the winter's day, and for a time they forgot their cares in the simplicity of companionship. Such moments were all too brief, for both of them.

In the Imperial Keep at Axekami, the evening meal was served.

The Lord Protector Avun tu Koli knelt opposite his wife at the small, square table of black and red lacquer. Between them were woven baskets which steamed gently, separate ones for sh.e.l.lfish, saltrice, dumplings and vegetables. Little bowls of soup and sauces, tall gla.s.ses of amber wine. The servants ensured everything was satisfactory and then retreated through the curtained archway, leaving their master and mistress alone.

They sat in silence for a time. The room, though not so large, seemed cavernous and hollow; the sound of their breathing and their tiny movements were amplified by the empty s.p.a.ce. It was not yet late enough to merit lanterns, but the murk over the city choked the sunlight that came in through the trio of floor-to-ceiling window-arches in the western wall and left only a drab gloom. Vases and sculptures were positioned in alcoves, but the central s.p.a.ce was open, and only they were there, kneeling on their mats with the table and the food between them.

'Will you eat?' Avun said eventually.

Muraki did not respond for a few seconds. Then she began to slip on the finger-cutlery. Avun did the same, and they took food from the baskets and put it onto their plates.

'Did your writing go well today?' he asked.

'Well enough,' she replied quietly, an unspoken accusation in her voice.

'I thought you should get away from that room,' Avun said. 'It is not good for your health, to shut yourself away like that.'

Muraki glanced up at him through the curtains of her hair, then looked meaningfully out of the window and back to him. Healthier than breathing this air, her gaze said.

'I am sorry for having interrupted you, then,' he said, pouring a dark sauce over the sh.e.l.lfish, holding the bowl with his unenc.u.mbered thumb and forefinger. 'I wanted to have a meal with my wife.'

She did not reply to that. Instead, she began to eat, cutting portions with the tiny blades and forks set on silver thimbles that she wore on the middle and ring fingers of her right and left hand, taking small and delicate bites.

'The feya-kori are on their way back from Zila,' Avun said. He needed to say something to breach his wife's wall of silence. When she did not respond, he persevered: 'The troops of the Empire were driven out with barely any resistance at all. The Weavers are pleased with their new creations; more will join them soon, I think.'

The quiet became excruciating once again, but Avun had given enough to expect something in return.

Eventually, Muraki asked: 'How soon?'

'A matter of weeks. It is uncertain.'

'And then?'

'We will overrun the Southern Prefectures, and after that we will turn to Tchom Rin.'

'And will you turn their cities into places like this?'

'I cannot see why the Weavers would do so,' he replied. 'There will be no need for feya-kori once they have control of the continent. And so, there will be no need for this miasma.'

'Will there be a need for us, do you think?' she asked softly. 'When they have control of the continent?'

Avun smiled gently. 'I am no fool, Muraki. I do not think they would keep me as Lord Protector out of grat.i.tude. I will be invaluable to them still. The people need a human face upon their leader. They will never trust a Mask.'

'But they will trust you?'

'They will trust me because I will give them their skies back,' Avun said. He took a sip of wine. 'I do not want to live under this murk any more than you do; it is unnatural. But the sooner we are rid of the opposition, the sooner we can dispense with the feya-kori and dissemble the pall-pits.'

'And the temples?'

Avun was lost for an answer for a moment. His wife had a way of p.r.i.c.king his sorest spots in a tone so submissive that he could not take umbrage. 'The temples will not return. The Weavers do not like our G.o.ds.'

Muraki's silence was more eloquent than words. She knew he still prayed in the dead of night, in the empty interior of the temple to Ocha on the roof of the Keep. The dome still remained in all its finery, though the statues of the G.o.ds that had ringed it were gone, and the altars and icons stripped away. It had an appallingly wounded feel to it now, and Muraki would not go near it. But Avun did.

Muraki wondered how he reconciled his actions to himself: he was not the most pious of men, but he would not forsake his G.o.ds, even though he would tear down their temples. Did he expect forgiveness?

She knew of no deity so divinely gracious as to provide him with that, after the crimes he had committed against the Golden Realm.

Avun dodged the subject in the end, returning to his previous point. 'In the end, the world will be as it was. The blight can be contained once the Red Order are overthrown, for the Weavers will not need so many witchstones. The miasma will be gone. And the land will be united once again.'

'That is what the Weavers say? I had not heard that before now.'

'I met with Kakre this morning. I persuaded him to divulge. It was not easy.' Avun seemed proud of himself; she had no trouble believing that it was a courageous thing to do. She knew what had happened to him in the past when Kakre was displeased.

'Why?' she asked, puzzled. 'Why did you do it? You have been content in ignorance until now.'

He gazed at her levelly. 'Because my wife does not like the air here,' he said. 'And I had to be able to tell her it would be pure again one day.'

Muraki's eyes flickered to his, and then back to her plate. It was the only outward sign of the flutter she felt in her breast. For a long while, she said nothing.

'Do you believe them?'

'It is the only way I can make sense of it. The alternative is to continue to poison the land. To do that would kill their own people, their own army. There is not enough food, and the famine will get worse.'

'Or perhaps we do not see the Weavers' greater plan,' she whispered, her voice softening with the terror of contradicting him. 'Perhaps Kakre is merely mad.'

Avun nodded. 'He is mad.'

Muraki looked at him in surprise.

'I have been watching his decline most carefully,' Avun said. 'It has steepened since he awakened the feya-kori. I think the effort of controlling them has. .h.i.t him the hardest. His sanity is eroding fast.' He took a bite of a dumpling, chewed for a moment and swallowed, as if what he was saying was just idle conversation and not something he might be executed for. 'I suspect he would not have told me the Weavers' long-term plans if he had not been quite so addled.'

'But if the Weave-lord is mad,' Muraki breathed, 'who will direct the Weavers?'

'That,' he said, raising his gla.s.s, 'is the question.'

TWELVE.