She realised what would follow now. The Weavers would take their revenge, would scour her mind agonisingly until they knew all about her code, and about Ukida, and Mishani's visit. They would know their plans had been compromised, and would alter them.
That could not be allowed to happen. From the time she had decided to murder her husband, she knew she would have to die too. She had found that knowledge an immensely liberating sensation.
Thoughts of her daughter brought back words she had spoken during those precious minutes when they were together, a few short minutes in ten terrible years – ten years for which Avun had been responsible.
We are on two sides of a war now. Mother, and one side or the other must win eventually. Whichever of us is on the losing side will not survive, I think. We are both of us too involved.
She was right. She always had the gift of cutting to the point. So let it be Muraki on the losing side, then, for she could not bear the thought of her daughter suffering such a fate.
Avun had indeed been clever in arranging the Weavers' power base so that so much relied on him. He had carefully guarded his battle tactics, kept them close to his chest, and ensured that there was nobody else in a position to easily succeed him. His death would be a major blow to the Weavers, at the time when they could least afford it. And from what she knew of Kakre, she did not think he would turn back from his assault now, no matter what speculation might arise as to what happened in this room tonight. The Aberrants would move according to plan, and their enemies would be waiting for them.
Would it be worth it, in the end? Only the gods could say. There were no certainties in the real world.
She gave a long sigh, and her eyes turned to the night, the impenetrable blackness with no moons and no stars. What a cold and dreary prison her husband had made for her. She much preferred her dreams.
She drained her glass, and soon she was dreaming once more.
TWENTY-SIX
Nuki's eye was sinking in the west, igniting cottony bands of cloud. The surface of the River Ko glittered in fitful red and yellow. It had been unseasonably hot today, but the folk of Saramyr were glad of it, for winter was drawing to an end and it was their first hint of a spring to come. Now the temperature dropped as Nuki retreated towards the far side of the world, afraid of the tumult that the moon-sisters would bring when they took the sky. For tonight the moons' orbits would cross at shallow angles, and they would drag screeching fingers across the darkness. There would be a moonstorm, and a particularly long and vicious one.
It would be a suitably apocalyptic backdrop, Yugi thought, to the battle that was to come. He stood holding the reins of his horse on a rise a little way south of the river, and looked to the north. Waiting for the Aberrants.
The lands to the north and south of the Ko were rolling downs, a gentle sway of hills that ran from the Forest of Xu twenty miles to their west to peter out on the shores of Lake Azlea, a similar distance to their east. In between was the Sakurika Bridge, a sturdy arch of wood and stone that spanned the river. It was a plain construction, not as grand as many in Saramyr, and little used. Its abutments, spandrels and parapets were painted in faded terracotta to blend with the honey-coloured varnish on the wood, but beyond that there was no decoration. It had been built during a campaign in the far past to facilitate troop movement along the west side of the Azlea, but no road had ever been laid to it. The thin strip of land sandwiched between Xu, Azlea and the Xarana Fault was considered too perilous back then to merit a tradeway. Still, it had been maintained all this time, for it was the only crossing-place for this river east of the forest, and wide enough for twenty men abreast.
And it was here that the forces of the Empire hoped to halt the advance of the Weavers.
Yugi felt sick. He wished he could smoke a little amaxa root to take the edge off his fear. Instead he surveyed the scene below him, the sea of armour and blades and rifles. Several artillery positions were dug in on the hilltops to either side of the bridge, densely packed with mortars and fire-cannons and even old trebuchets and ballistae that they had managed to acquire. The flat ground in between was thick with soldiers, representing almost all of the remaining high families and the Libera Dramach. Their banners hung limp in the failing breeze.
A barricade of spikes had been built along the centre point of the bridge, and behind it soldiers waited. Beneath their feet, well hidden inside the arch, were enough explosives to blow the bridge to matchwood.
'Gods, I can't stand this waiting,' Yugi murmured to those nearby: a few generals, a black-haired Sister that might have been a twin to Cailin in her make-up, Barak Zahn, Nomoru, Mishani and Lucia. Horses shifted and whinnyed restlessly; there was the creak of leather armour and subdued coughing.
'Are we certain that they are coming this way at all?' Mishani asked. It was a measure of how tense she was that she asked such a redundant question; she already knew the reports of the scouts.
'They are coming,' said the Sister, whose irises were red.
Yugi glanced down at Lucia. Her expression was bland. The enemy had to be on time. There were better places in which they could have met the Aberrants, places further south where they could mount ambushes and which were far more defensible than this. But they would not win without Lucia, and it was at her insistence that they chose to meet the threat here. This, their scholars promised, was the night of the moonstorm; and it was on this night that the Aberrants – whose steady and unwavering advance had been marked by scouts all along their route – would reach the river. This night, in this place, Lucia would draw the spirits to the defence of their land.
They could only pray that Lucia knew exactly what she was doing, for without the intervention she had promised their stand would not last for long. Thousands upon thousands of lives were staked on the word of a girl barely into adulthood. Yugi thought they could be forgiven a little nervousness at this point.
Mishani, not for the first time, was asking herself why she was here at all. For someone who prided herself on her self-control and level-headedness, she seemed to have been remarkably rash of late. First her visit to Muraki and now this.
But if not for my rashness, we would not have even this chance, she thought. Oh, Mother.
She took a steadying breath to keep down the tears. No, she would not cry again. The thought of that last meeting still burned her with grief, but she was glad, at least, that she had made amends to Muraki. If she died today, she would have done that much.
Had she known then that her mother and father had already been dead for weeks, her grief would have been keener still. But the Weavers had been careful to keep that matter secret.
In the end, Mishani thought, it came down to Lucia. Mishani and Kaiku had been her guardians throughout her childhood in the Fold, and they had acted as elder sisters to her. Though time and circumstances had made them distant, they still had that bond. But Kaiku was needed elsewhere, and Mishani could not bear the notion of leaving Lucia to face this alone. She knew how easily manipulated Lucia was, and there was nobody here who truly cared for her except her father Zahn, but he would be down in the battle. Mishani could not contribute much to war, but she could stand alongside Lucia. She felt that it would be dishonourable to abandon her.
Once, she had almost killed the young Heir-Empress, when she brought her a nightdress which she thought was infected with bone fever. When it came to it she had backed out; but she still felt responsible for harbouring the intention, and she had come terrifyingly close to executing it. She owed Lucia this, at least. And if Lucia fell, there would soon be little left to live for anyway. As with her visit to her mother, this was something Mishani had to do, no matter what the risks. A moral need that would not be overmatched by sense or logic.