The Ascendancy Veil (36 page)

‘And where are the gods now?’ Lucia cried.

((To that I have no answer))
it said.
((Their ways are beyond me, just as mine are beyond you. All things are transient, all things dwarfed by matters of greater scale. Perhaps your war is beneath contempt in the eyes of such beings. Perhaps the acts you commit in the name of your gods go unnoticed. Or perhaps they watch your every move, and they wait for reasons of their own. I do not know. The gods do not interfere unless they must))

Lucia bit down on her frustration. Anger was an emotion that was almost foreign to her, but she felt it now. So many had died to bring her to this point, the culmination of her purpose, and now she learned that all their strife was to correct an error of judgement made by the gods themselves, and that the gods might not even be present to see them.

No. She would not believe that. When she was a child, the moon sisters themselves had sent their children to save her from the shin-shin. More than once she knew Kaiku had been spurred by the Emperor of the gods into actions she would not otherwise have committed.

And yet . . . what if the moon sisters were merely spirits that had no connection with the goddesses of the moon at all? It was entirely possible that they had saved Lucia for reasons of their own. Spirits were capricious in general, and the Children of the Moons were insane by human standards. What if Kaiku’s dreams were only that: dreams, evoked by faith?

The gods don’t control. They’re more subtle than that. They use avatars and omens, to bend the will of their faithful to do their work. There’s no predestination, no destiny. We all have our choices to make. It’s us who have to fight our battles
.

Her own words, spoken to her friend Flen back when he was still alive. And there was the crux: avatars, omens, subtlety. Never allowing certainty, never allowing their believers to know for sure, never providing anything that could not be accounted for in other ways, as coincidence or delusion. Heart’s blood, did they
purposefully
shroud themselves? Did they enjoy the torment of anxiety and bewilderment that their inconclusiveness caused in their followers? Was it better to be like the Tkiurathi, to worship no gods at all but the memories of their distinguished ancestors?

Or were the gods like distant parents, allowing their children to make their own mistakes and solve their own problems? Teaching them that they could not rely on anyone but themselves, intervening with only a guiding nudge here and there? Even when there was
everything
at stake?

But then, thought Lucia with a vertiginous plunge as her perspective shifted, perhaps theirs was not the only world that the gods ministered. Perhaps they were only a tiny, insignificant mote among the stars, one of uncountable cultures, each one squalling for attention in the emptiness.

The cruelty of that drove her to her knees.

((You can never know, Lucia))
said the Xhiang Xhi.
((One way or another, certainty would destroy you))

She stared at the wet grass of the tuffet.

‘Tell me,’ she said eventually. ‘What hope is there?’

((There is hope))
the spirit replied.
((For Aricarat’s plans have gone against him in some ways. He did not expect the Sisters. He did not expect you))

‘But we are Aberrants. We came from the blight he created. A disease of the land, that kills crops and twists children in the womb.’

‘Changing us?’

Lucia closed her eyes, and saw the images as the spirit spoke. A tear ran from the edge of one eye.

‘Then how does that offer hope?’ she asked.

‘Then what are we?’

‘Cailin was right,’ Lucia whispered. ‘All this time, she was right.’

((Indeed))
the spirit replied.
((I would have ensured safe passage for you and the Sisters, though I extended no such courtesy to those who had not breached the veil. One of you fell, however, and I could not prevent that))

She raised her head. ‘What about the Weavers?’

The Xhiang Xhi seemed to recede in her vision, melting into the mist.
((They are not as you are. Their abilities come from their Masks. From Aricarat))

‘But if Aricarat created the Aberrants, then why were the Weavers killing them?’ Lucia protested. She did not want to believe any of this, and was fighting to find holes in the spirit’s logic.

But the Xhiang Xhi was relentless.
((It was necessary, to safeguard their rise to power, to prevent beings such as you and the Sisters from existing. They failed at that, in the end. They will stop killing Aberrants in time, and begin breeding them selectively instead))

‘How do you know this?’ she cried.

((Because it is the only course of action that makes sense))
the spirit replied, and she was defeated. She could not argue with such an entity, something older than recorded history, which dwarfed her understanding so completely that she was fighting to assimilate even the limited snatches of information it fed to her. She dared not think of how much it was not telling, how much lay outside her experience. Maybe, if she knew, she would be as sorrowful as it was. Perhaps ignorance was better. How small they all were, in the final analysis.

She got to her feet, dishevelled and haggard, and stared into the mist at the vague and swaying shape of the Xhiang Xhi.

‘I beg you,’ she said. ‘Help us. Help us stop all this coming to pass.’

She felt the Xhiang Xhi regarding her, there in its chill and gloomy dell.

((I will help you))
it said. Then, after a pause of moments that felt like hours:
((But there is a price))

It was dusk when Lucia emerged from the tunnel.

Nobody noticed her at first. They had sunk into grief, and sat wearily on the forest floor beneath the unwavering gaze of the shadow-beast that hunkered atop the hillock. Most of them had fallen into an exhausted slumber, for here, in the presence of the great spirit, the nightmares were held at bay.

Kaiku awoke to the touch of Tsata’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him. Sometime over the past hours, she had cried herself to sleep with her head on his thigh where he sat. She raised herself, brushing her hair back behind one ear, and followed his eyes to where Lucia stood.

Then she was scrambling to her feet and rushing over. She gathered Lucia in a tight embrace; but the words of relief that were forming were never spoken. Lucia remained rigid, her arms by her sides. Kaiku backed away, searching her face quizzically.

‘Lucia?’

The three soldiers were getting to their feet now, coming closer, warily, as if afraid of her. Asara had stood also, but she watched from a distance.

‘It is done,’ Lucia said, her gaze shifting minutely to meet Kaiku’s. Her voice was flat and expressionless. ‘We have been granted passage out of this forest. The beast will guard us.’

‘Lucia?’ Kaiku said again, the word a question. She tried to smile, but it faded into uncertainty. ‘Lucia, what happened?’

‘The spirits will aid us when the time comes,’ Lucia said bitterly. ‘That is what you wanted, is it not?’

Before Kaiku could protest, Lucia addressed the group, overriding her.

‘We must return to Araka Jo. I do not wish to stay in this place an instant longer.’

Her tone precluded any further questions, and she did not give anyone the opportunity anyway. She walked away from Kaiku, leaving her bewildered and hurt, and headed into the trees. With nothing else they could do, the remnants of her retinue followed, one by one, as night fell across the Forest of Xu.

The great city of Axekami loured in its own miasma.

The exhalations of the Weavers’ constructions had a strange weight to them, a persistency unlike that of smoke. The main bulk of it rose above the city in a roiling cap, slanted by the breeze across the plains so that it leaned eastward; but it also sank to mist the earth, and to spread outward along the ground. At its edges it was a diffuse haze, but still it appeared to permeate the air from horizon to horizon, a suspicion of something amiss that was too subtle for the eye to define. There were always clouds around Axekami now, which was unusual for winter when the skies were traditionally clear. Occasionally they unleashed a brown rain which smelt powerfully of rotten eggs.

The Imperial Quarter was a spectre of its former glory now. Its gardens went untended, its fountains murky and unclean. Its trees had shed their leaves and they decayed on the flagstones and cobbles. The townhouses that had once been occupied by the nobles and high families of the Empire had been gutted, their fineries long since stripped, occupied now by swarms of the destitute. The wide thoroughfares were all but empty of traffic, and shuffling vagrants meandered in the overgrown parks or the scummed water gardens.

Yet though the heart of the place was gone, small sections of its past remained. Shops and wholesalers stayed open, eking a living from what they could get into the city to sell, barely able to afford the guards that prevented them from being robbed. A thin trade from the rest of Axekami kept them alive. The alternative was to abandon their property and move, but few had the money or the opportunity now. They weathered the troubles as best they could, and hoped for better days.

One such shop was owned by a herbalist, who once had enjoyed a reputation as the best in the land. His father and grandfather before him had been appointed as suppliers to the physicians of the Imperial family, as had he in his turn. After the Weavers had taken Axekami, and the Imperial family was no more, he had refused to give up his ancestral premises. Even when the physician to the Lord Protector and Blood Koli offered him a place in the Imperial Keep, he had refused. Apart from his determination to keep his shop, he had little love for the Weavers, and he trusted them not at all.

So he remained here in the Imperial Quarter, and the physician came to him to buy what he needed, arriving in a black carriage gilded in gold, escorted by guards with rifles. The guards took station outside the shop while he went within.

The physician, whose name was Ukida, was thin and frail, with lank white hair combed across a balding pate and rheumy blue eyes. Despite the infirmity of his appearance, he moved like a man half his age and his hands and voice were steady and sure. His robe hung awkwardly on his spare frame as he walked up to the counter of the shop, passing rows of jars and cloth bags half-full of powdered roots. Most of the shelving was bare. The lanterns lit to aid the grim daylight only served to add to the depressing atmosphere, for they reminded Ukida that there should have been no need for them at such an hour.

He and the herbalist – a stout, rotund man with a whiskery moustache and a brisk, efficient manner – exchanged a few friendly words before a list was passed between them, and the herbalist disappeared into his preparation room to grind the necessary quantities. Ukida waited, tapping his fingers on the counter, looking idly about the shop.

‘Master Ukida,’ said a voice. ‘You are looking well.’

The sound of his name startled him: he had thought the shop empty. He located the owner of the voice, appearing from a doorway that led into the back of the shop. She walked towards him, and his eyes widened in recognition.

‘I have been waiting a long time for you,’ she said. ‘Three days.’

‘Mistress Mishani!’ he exclaimed in a hiss, too shocked even to bow. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have come to ask a favour of you,’ she replied, her narrow face sallow in the bad light. She was not dressed in her usual finery. The robe she wore was battered and dirty, made for travelling, and her hair was worn in an unadorned ponytail and tucked into the back of her robe to disguise its length, the deception concealed by a voluminous hood. Tied tight against her small skull, it made her look faintly rodentine and not at all noble.

‘You will be killed if they find you,’ Ukida said, then added: ‘I could be killed for just talking to you.’ He glanced nervously over the counter, where the herbalist had been.

‘He knows,’ Mishani said. ‘He remembers the days of the Empire, and he is loyal to them. I guessed you would come here eventually, so I asked him to let me wait for you.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘This was always the only place you would come to for supplies. You were most insistent, even with my father, that you would settle for nothing but the best.’