Braided Path 02 - The Skein Of Lament Page 15

  ‘Do not listen to him,’ she said. ‘I know he is like a father to you, but only you know your capabilities, Lucia. Only you know what you are willing to risk.’

  Lucia’s pale blue eyes were far away. She was not too much shorter than Kaiku these days. Kaiku’s gaze flickered over the burns on the back of her neck, and she felt the familiar jab of guilt. Burns that Kaiku had given her. She wished that Lucia did not wear them so openly.

  ‘We need to know,’ Lucia said quietly. ‘About what happened on the river.’

  ‘That is not true,’ Kaiku responded, her tone sharp. ‘Heart’s blood, Lucia! You know as well as anyone that the spirits are not to be trifled with. Nothing is worth risking yourself like that. Start small again, if you must. Work up to it.’ She paused, then added: ‘Zaelis is sending spies to investigate. Let them do their work.’

  ‘We may not have time,’ Lucia said simply.

  ‘Are those Zaelis’s words, or yours?’

  Lucia did not give a reply. Kaiku felt her mood souring a little, but she was unwilling to let this go. She tried to keep the stridency out of her tone in the spirit of the occasion.

  ‘Lucia,’ she said softly. ‘I know the responsibility you have to bear. But even the strongest backs bend under the weight of expectations. Do not let anyone push you. Not even Zaelis.’

  Lucia turned to Kaiku with a dreamy expression on her face. She had heard, even if she seemed inattentive. A part of her was listening to the wind, and the ravens who watched her from their perches on the rooftops.

  ‘Do you remember when Mishani came to you in the roof gardens of the Imperial Keep, carrying that nightdress for you?’ Kaiku asked.

  Lucia nodded.

  ‘What did you think? When she offered it to you?’

  ‘I thought it would kill me,’ Lucia said simply.

  ‘Would you have taken it?’ Kaiku asked. ‘Would you have worn it, even knowing what it was?’

  Lucia turned away slowly, looking back out over the town. A clamour of drunken men staggered across the bridge behind them, hollering bawdy songs. Kaiku flinched in annoyance.

  A silence stretched between them.

  ‘Lucia, you are not somebody’s sacrifice,’ she said, her voice becoming gentle. ‘You are too unselfish, too passive. You are not a pawn here, don’t you see that? If you do not learn that now, then what will you be like in the years to come, when people will look to you with even greater hope in their eyes?’ Kaiku sighed, and put her arm around Lucia’s slender shoulders, hugging her companionably. ‘I think of you as a sister. And so it is my job to worry about you.’

  A grin touched the corner of Lucia’s mouth, and she returned the hug with both arms. ‘I’ll try,’ she said. ‘To be more like you.’ The grin spread. ‘A big, stubborn loudmouth.’

  Kaiku gave a gasp of spurious disbelief and pulled away from the hug. ‘Monster!’ she cried, and Lucia fled laughing as Kaiku chased her off the bridge and up the street.

  Night fell over the Xarana Fault. Fires were started and paper lanterns were lit in warm constellations. The darkness lay muggy and sultry around the periphery of the celebrations, but within the light all was merriment. The communal feast was well underway. Many people had already left the table to make room for others, and had gone to watch the actors performing on the stage, or were dancing to an impromptu orchestra of six musicians who were improvising their way around old folk melodies. The mismatched instruments and varying skill of the players made for a controlled raucousness, raw-edged and visceral. The low, sawing drone of the threestringed miriki was counterpointed by the glassy, plucked chimes of the reed harp and the mournful double-barrelled melodies of the two dewhorns. The rhythm was dictated by a swarthy man and his animal-skin drum, while over it all played the true talent of the group, a lady who had once been a courtesan for the Imperial family before the last coup. She played the irira, a seven-stringed instrument of leather and bone and wood that produced a hollow and fragile keening, and her achingly sweet touch on the strings almost made the air glimmer.

  Kaiku, red-cheeked with wine and heat and laughter, danced a peasant dance with the young men and women of the Fold. It was much more energetic and less elegant than the courtly fashion, but far more fun. She spun and whirled from one man’s arms to another, and then found herself with an Aberrant boy, whose skin was clammy as a dead fish and whose blank eyes were bulbous and blind. After the initial moment of surprise, she led him through the wild motions until someone else took his hand and they parted. Exhilarated and not a little drunk, she let the music sweep her up, and for once her cares were forgotten in the movement and the motion of the dance.

  The song ended abruptly as she was being passed from one dancer to another, and she was surprised to find Yugi before her as the revellers rested in the pregnant silence between tunes. They were both breathing hard from the exertion, and exchanged a guilty grin.

  ‘My timing is as good as ever, then,’ he said. His eyes were very bright, his pupils huge. ‘May I have the honour?’ He held out his hand, inviting her to partner him for the next dance.

  But Kaiku had seen a figure watching her on the edge of the lantern light, leaning against one of the wooden poles that held up the overhead banners.

  ‘My apologies, Yugi,’ she said, kissing him on his stubbled cheek. ‘I have someone I have to see.’

  And with that she left him, the music started up again behind her, and he was gathered up by a pretty Newlander girl and drawn into the heart of the dance. Kaiku left the noise and the warmth, walking out to where the darkness and quiet held ready to invade, and where Saran was waiting.

  ‘Do you dance?’ she asked, tilting herself flirtatiously.

  ‘Regretfully not,’ he replied. ‘I do not think we Quraal have such loose joints as your folk seem to.’

  It took her a moment to realise that it was a joke, delivered as it was in a tone dry as dust.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked. She wavered slightly, but the flush in her cheeks and her more inviting manner only heightened her allure to him.

  ‘This is not my celebration,’ he said, his features dark against the moonless night.

  ‘No, I mean: where have you been?’ she persisted. ‘It has been days since the assembly. Have you forgotten me that soon? Could you not even muster a goodbye? Spirits, I am leaving the day after tomorrow to cross the Fault!’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Tsata is going with you.’

  ‘Is he?’ Kaiku asked. That was news to her. ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I have not decided yet.’ He was silent for a long moment. ‘I thought things would be awkward,’ he said at last. ‘So I stayed away.’

  Kaiku regarded him for a time, then held out her hand. ‘Walk with me,’ she said.

  He hesitated, studying her intensely; then he took it. Kaiku tugged him gently away from the pole he had been leaning on, and they made their way around the edges of the celebration, back towards the town. To their left, the valley was like a void, only defined by the lighter night sky that surmounted its rim. To their right, there was fire and laughter and feasting. They walked the line of the limbo in between, where the two sides met and blended and neither could quite find dominance.

  ‘Part of me . . .’ Kaiku began, then stopped, then began again. ‘Part of me is glad to be going. I have been idle too long, I think. I have been helping the Libera Dramach in my own small way over the years, but these subtle increments of progress do not satisfy me.’ She looked up at Saran. ‘Nor do they satisfy Ocha.’

  ‘The gods are patient, Kaiku,’ he said. ‘Do not underestimate the Weavers. You were lucky once. Most people do not get a second chance.’

  ‘Is that concern I hear from you?’ she teased.

  Saran released her hand and shrugged. ‘Why would you care for my concern?’

  Kaiku’s expression fell a little. ‘I apologise. I did not mean to mock you.’ She had forgotten how tender his pride was. They walked a little further.
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br />   ‘It is the Mask I fear,’ she said, feeling it necessary to give a little to rekindle the moment that had existed between them. ‘It has been five years since I wore it last, but it still calls to me.’ She shivered suddenly. ‘I have to wear it again, if we are to get past the Weavers’ misdirection.’

  ‘You are cold,’ Saran said, unclasping his cloak and putting it around her shoulders. She wasn’t, but she let him anyway, and as he fixed the clasp at her throat she put her hand over his. He paused, prolonging the contact, before drawing away.

  ‘Why not have a Sister unravel the barrier?’ he said. ‘Why you?’

  ‘Cailin dare not risk a fully-fledged Sister being discovered,’ Kaiku said. ‘And it would be unsafe to let anyone else use the Mask. The Weavers know nothing of the Red Order, and she would have it stay that way. The Mask is a Weaver device, and so the breach it causes in the barrier should raise no alarms.’

  ‘But you have no idea if the Mask will even work this time,’ Saran argued. ‘Perhaps it was made only to work at the monastery on Fo.’

  Kaiku made an expression of resignation. ‘I have to try,’ she said.

  Saran brushed his sleek black hair behind his ear. Kaiku watched him sidelong, studying the lines of his figure beneath the severe cut of his clothes. A cautionary voice was warning her against what she was doing, but she ignored it. The pleasant glow of the wine she had drunk kept her mind resolutely in the present and refused to allow it to construct consequences.

  Saran caught her looking, and she was a little too obvious in her haste to look away.

  ‘Why is Tsata coming with us?’ she asked, suddenly needing something to say. Then, realising that it was something she actually wanted to know, she added: ‘What is he to you?’

  Saran was silent a while, thinking. Kaiku could never decide if he was merely weighing his words or if he added these pauses in a conscious attempt at drama or gravitas. It was difficult to tell with Saran, whom she found annoyingly affected at times.

  ‘He is nothing to me,’ Saran said at last. ‘No more than a companion. I met him in Okhamba, and he came with me into the heart of the continent for reasons of his own. By the same token he came to Saramyr. I do not know why he has asked to go with you across the Fault, but I can vouch for his worthiness. Of all those who I travelled with on my journeys across the Near World, there was none I would more readily trust with my life.’

  By now they had reached the edge of the town, where it spilled onto the valley floor. The lowest steps formed a natural protective barricade, into which lifts had been built and gated stairways cut. The gates would be closed in times of war and the lifts drawn up to prevent enemies getting in.

  They made their way upward along the less-travelled routes. Lanterns spilled bright islands into the darkness. They passed townsfolk kissing or singing or fighting, and once they almost walked into a parade which had gathered up hundreds in its wake and was marching them on a sinuous path to an uncertain destination. At some point, Kaiku took Saran’s hand again. She thought she could detect him trembling slightly, and smiled secretly to herself.

  ‘Do you have any doubts?’ she said. ‘About what you found?’

  ‘The fourth moon? No,’ Saran replied. ‘Zaelis is convinced, too, now I have shown him the evidence and the Sisters have verified it. I had thought, perhaps, that the idea would be too outlandish for your people to accept; after all, you are the only people in the Near World who still worship the moons.’ He flicked a strand of hair away from his forehead in a curiously effeminate manner. ‘But it seems that I was wrong. In only the last thousand years, there have been other gods forgotten and lost in antiquity; it is only natural that you should not know of one that died before your civilisation was founded.’

  ‘Perhaps he did not die,’ Kaiku murmured. ‘Perhaps that is the problem.’

  Saran made a questioning noise.

  ‘It is nothing,’ Kaiku said. ‘Just . . . I have an ill suspicion about all this. I was touched by one of the Children of the Moons; did you know that? Indirectly, anyway. It was Lucia they were helping.’

  ‘I knew,’ said Saran.

  ‘This affair with Aricarat, it makes me . . . uneasy.’ She could not put it better than that, but there was a faint nausea, a trepidation like the warning rumble of the earth before a quake, whenever she thought of that name. Would she have felt it if she had not once brushed against the unfathomable majesty of those spirits? She could not be sure.

  ‘But more than that,’ she continued. ‘My friend Tane died trying to live out what he believed his goddess Enyu thought he should do. I almost shared that fate on Ocha’s behalf, and tomorrow I set off to risk the same again. The Children of the Moons themselves intervened for Lucia. And now you tell me that the source of the Weavers’ power, the true reason for this land’s affliction and misery, are the remnants of another moon, a forgotten one?’ She made an unconscious sign against blasphemy before continuing. ‘I begin to believe that I have stumbled into a game of the gods, willingly or not; that we are part of some conflict beyond our power to see. And that we are all of us expendable in the eyes of the Golden Realm.’

  Saran considered this for a moment. ‘I think you put too much stock in your gods, Kaiku,’ he said. ‘Some people mistake their own courage for the will of their deities, and others use their faith as an excuse to do evil. Be careful, Kaiku. What your heart dictates and what your gods tell you may one day be in opposition.’

  Kaiku was frankly surprised to hear such words from a Quraal, whose upbringing within the Theocracy generally made them rigid in their piety. She would have responded then, but she found herself suddenly before the door of the house that she shared with Mishani. It stood on one of the middle tiers of the Fold, a small and unassuming place with the rough edges of its construction smoothed over by some artful use of creepers and potted plants. Since it was hardly possible to recreate the elegant minimalism of the dwellings they had grown up in among all the surrounding chaos, they had decided to try and beautify it as much as possible. It was all Mishani’s work, as was the interior, for Kaiku was hopeless at decorating; it was a very feminine art, and she had been too busy competing with her older brother to learn it.

  There was a moment of shared intent, when Kaiku and Saran met each other’s eyes and neither really considered saying goodbye to the other, when both feared that any advance might be rebuffed even though their senses told them it would not. Then Kaiku opened the door, and they both went inside.

  The threshold that they crossed was more than physical. Kaiku had barely closed the door before Saran was kissing her, and she responded with equal fervour, her hands on his cheeks and in his hair, a warm flush seeping through her body as their tongues touched and slid. He pressed her against the wall, their lips meeting and parting, the hot gusts of breath the only sound between them. Kaiku moved her hips up against him, felt with lewd pleasure the bulge at his crotch. The cautionary voice had been swept away to the corners of her mind now, and there was no question of stopping what was going to happen.

  Her hands were already working at his tight jacket, fumbling with the unfamiliar Quraal catches. She laughed at her own clumsiness; he had to help her with the last few before he slid his jacket off to reveal the bare torso underneath. She pushed him back from her a little way to see what she had uncovered. He was lean and muscled like an athlete, not an ounce of fat on his body. She ran her hands over the landscape of his abdomen, and he shivered in pleasure. She smiled to herself, coming in closer to place wet, languorous kisses on his neck and clavicle. His lips were in her hair, on the lobe of her ear.

  Kaiku steered them over to a long settee and fell on to it, pulling him down on top of her. The night was close and shadowy, for the lanterns in the room had not been lit. The shutters were closed, muting the revelries outside. They kissed again, moving against each other, her hands running down the ridge of his spine to his lower back.

  He stripped her blouse from her with fluid expertise
, leaving it rumpled and discarded; then, without pause, he slipped off her upper undergarment, which caused Kaiku a twinge of disappointment. He was getting hasty in his ardour, and she liked her lovemaking to be slow and gradual. Anxious to interrupt him – for his hands were already moving towards her waist – she tipped him gently off the settee and onto the floor, rolling with him so that she came out on top.

  Straddling his hips, she kissed his cheeks and forehead, and he leaned upward to take her breast in his hand and bring his mouth to her nipple, the hot, wet touch of his tongue sending minute trembles of delight through her. She reached behind herself and began to massage his erection through the fabric of his trousers with the heel of her hand. He was becoming excited, his breathing fast and shallow, and while part of her found it flattering that she elicited such a reaction in a man so rigidly calm and controlled, she was again a little concerned that he was getting too overeager. She sucked in her breath through her teeth as he bit her nipple hard enough to hurt.

  He shifted her weight suddenly, turning her over so that he was on top now, and she saw that his face had become red and straining and ugly. Her heat faded, underpinned by something unpleasant that she saw in his eyes, an animal lust that went beyond the coupling of man and woman.

  ‘Saran . . .’ she began, not knowing what she would say, whether she would ride this out and hope that it was but a passing moment or if she would disappoint him and stop this. She was afraid of how he might react if she dared to do that. She did not want to hurt him, but she would if she had to.