The Ascendancy Veil

'Daygreet, Yugi,' Cailin said. 'Did you sleep well?'

It was a weighted question. Yugi made a neutral noise to evade it. 'Lucia said there is news.'

'Kaiku has made contact.'

'She is safe, then?' Yugi asked. Despite their estrangement, he had been worried for her these past weeks; it was only now, at the point of discovery, that he realised how worried.

'She is safe,' Cailin said. 'Though she very nearly did not make it out at all.'

'Where is she now?'

'Heading down the Zan towards Maza.'

'And the others?'

'Phaeca is with her. Nomoru is gone.'

'What do you mean, gone?'

'She disappeared. They do not know where she is.'

Yugi held up a hand. 'Start from the beginning, Cailin, and tell me what Kaiku told you.'

So Cailin relayed the story of the investigation of the pall-pits, of their betrayal and how Nomoru had second-guessed it, and how they had escaped the city.

'A gang from the Poor Quarter helped them?' Yugi repeated in frank disbelief.

'Smuggled them aboard a barge.'

'And what did they want in return?'

'Apparently nothing.'

Yugi grimaced. 'Gods, they were lucky, then.'

'Perhaps so. But the people of the Poor Quarter are not stupid. The Sisters may be Aberrants, but even we are not so despised as the Weavers. Things are turning, Yugi. They know we are on their side.'

'Are you really?' Yugi said skeptically.

Cailin did not reply, and Yugi left it at that. He glanced at Lucia, who was looking away across the lake, apparently oblivious to their conversation.

'My Sisters learned a lot from the pall-pit,' Cailin said at length. 'The implications are grave indeed.'

Yugi felt a cold eel of nausea turn gently in his stomach, a remnant of last night's excesses. He did not want to hear any bad news now.

'The Weavers have modified the old sewers into a pipe network. They are channelling the miasma that their buildings produce.'

'Into the pall-pits,' Yugi guessed. He scratched his stubbled cheek. 'Why?'

'Because that is where the feya-kori are.'

'Because that is what the feya-kori are,' Lucia corrected, over her shoulder.

Yugi cocked his head at Cailin, expecting elaboration.

'They are composed of the Weavers' miasma,' Cailin said. 'Without it, they are formless. They draw it around them like a shroud, and build their shape from it. When we called them blight-demons, we did not know how right we were.'

Yugi was quick to latch on to a potential upside. 'Would that explain why they returned to Axekami after the assault on Juraka? That they need to… replenish themselves? Like a whale can dive for hours, but has to come up for air?'

'Exactly,' Cailin said, raising an eyebrow. 'An apt analogy.'

'Could that be the reason the Weavers are poisoning Axekami in such a way?'

'Perhaps,' came the careful reply. 'But let us not tie all our threads to a single revelation. There is much we do not understand yet.'

'But this gives us hope, surely?' Yugi said. 'The feya-kori have a limit, a weakness.'

'You do not yet see the grander scale,' Cailin replied. 'It is not only Axekami that the Weavers are choking. There are pall-pits in various stages of completion in Tchamaska, Maxachta and Barask. More are being built on the north side of Axekami, and in Hanzean to the west.' A chill wind off the lake rippled through the grass and hissed through the trees. 'These two feya-kori are only the first. The Weavers will bring more. We cannot stand against them.'

Yugi sighed and rubbed at his eye. 'Gods, Cailin, does it get any worse?'

'Oh yes,' she said. 'Two nights ago, the feya-kori left Axekami again.' The fortified town of Zila had seen its fair share of conflict. Since the time it was built over a thousand years ago it had weathered assaults from the native Ugati, from renegade warlords, and from the Empire itself; and still it stood, grim and dark upon a steep hill to the south of the River Zan. It was a strategic linchpin, commanding both the estuary and the thirty-five mile strip of land between the coast and the western edges of the Forest of Xu, a thoroughfare vital for travel between the affluent northwest and the fertile Southern Prefectures. Now it had become a bastion against the Weavers, denying them the passage along the Great Spice Road.

Barak Zahn looked over his shoulder at the town, a crown of stone, the roofs of its houses sloping back to the narrow pinnacle of the keep at its tip. That wall had never fallen to an enemy, not in all the history of Zila. Not even when the town was overrun, when Zahn himself had been one of the invaders; they had surmounted the wall, but they had not breached it. Then, he had left Zila smoking and battered. It was in considerably better shape now: the ruined houses had been rebuilt, the keep repaired, the streets set back in order. Troops of the Empire walked behind its parapets; fire-cannons looked out over the river. But its air of invulnerability was gone, its power diminished.

His horse stirred beneath him, and he turned his attention back to the estuary, where four huge junks swayed at anchor. The wind was brisk and the light crisp and sharp: they were heading into midwinter now, and though it was still warm the breeze off the sea could be biting.

He was a lean man, his hair grey and his stubbled cheeks uneven with pox-scars. He wore a brocaded jacket with its collar turned up, and his eyes were narrow as he stared across the water. Around him and before him were hundreds of mounted men in the colours of their respective houses. Most of them were his own Blood Ikati, clad in green and grey. To his right, wrapped in a fur cloak, the head of Blood Erinima sat in her saddle, plump and wizened. Lucia's great-aunt Oyo.

It was over a week since Kaiku and Phaeca had escaped Axekami, but Zahn knew nothing of that. He had, however, heard the news that the feya-kori were on the move again. The Red Order were few in number and stretched thin, but Cailin tried to ensure that there was at least one in every frontline settlement. The warning had spread within minutes. Not that it concerned Zahn overly: the feya-kori, like the Aberrant armies, moved too fast to keep up with, and the news that they had been deployed simply meant they were at large again, and Saramyr was a very big place. They could be up to anything. Besides, he had more immediate concerns.

The first was the woman next to him. It seemed that even in the face of the greatest threat the Empire had encountered since its inception, the wranglings of the courts went on. Though they were all ostensibly united against the Weavers, the old powerplay of concessions and arrangements and oaths continued. Oyo was annoyingly persistent, even following him up to Zila where the greater portion of his armies were garrisoned along with those of Blood Vinaxis. Her demands were simple: she wanted his daughter.

Zahn had known it would be impossible to keep Lucia's parentage a secret forever. She was so obviously affectionate towards him, and that coupled with the rumours of the Emperor Durun's infertility and Zahn's close relationship with the Empress Anais was all that anyone needed to draw the correct conclusion. Once he had become convinced that it was hopeless concealing it any longer, he let it be known that he was the father, and hoped to have done with it. But Blood Erinima – the mother's family – were not satisfied. They disputed his claim. They wanted her back, to bind her to Blood Erinima where they believed she belonged.