The Braided Path: Ascendancy Veil Bk. 3 Read online

  She could sense the proximity of an answer in the pages before her. She knew she was close, but the solution still eluded her. Though she did not know what to focus on, where to look, she believed that if she persisted, the picture would gradually become clear. If only through sheer force of will.

  An owl hooted outside. She stared at the paper. For a long time, she did not move; she was entirely consumed by the workings of her mind, turning possibilities over and over. Absently, she picked up her mug, took a sip, and put it back again.

  The slight movement in her peripheral field of vision, the way the mug did not seem to sit quite right against her fingers as she replaced it: these were the tiny warnings that told her she had misjudged where to set it down, that the lathamri was tipping off the edge of the desk. She snatched at it, catching it before it could fall, and in doing so the trailing edge of her other sleeve caught the ink pot and tipped it over. She hurriedly set the drink down and righted the ink pot, but by that time a slick of black had spread in an ellipse over a section of her calligraphy.

  She huffed out a breath, annoyed by the waste of ink. Her sleeping-robe was stained at the cuffs too. She reached to roll up the paper and discard it, but she was arrested halfway. Slowly, she drew her hand back and stared at the paper again.

  The ink had spilled across several lines, but the one that caught her eye had escaped with only minor damage. Only two pictograms in the middle of a four-syllable word had been obscured. But what had caught Mishani’s eye was that there was a new word made by taking out those two symbols. The first and the last, when contracted together, created a new meaning.

  Demons.

  Excited, she looked to the book where the original poem had been, identified the missing symbols. Doing so shed no new light, but it did not diminish her sudden momentum. She laid aside the stained parchment and copied out the poem anew, then put two strokes across the two syllables to make demons again. On a whim, she hunted down any other instances of those pictograms. There was only one. She crossed it out, and it made the word senseless. Yet still she refused to believe that the appearance of demons was coincidence. She stared at the word she had mutilated. In its entirety, it meant perhaps. After a moment, she put a stroke through another of the pictograms. Now it said by, in the chronological sense. She studied the word for any other combinations that might make a meaning, but found none. She looked through the poem for other pictograms like this third one she had struck off, but it did not occur again. She examined the other words for symbols she might remove to make new meanings, but the possibilities were too many, and some words could not be contracted.

  She was confounded once more, but the elation of progress would not let her stop. After a moment of listlessness, she began flicking through the books to find other poems, copied them out, and crossed through the three pictograms whenever she could find them. Demons appeared again, formed out of the same word as last time. It was nothing conclusive, but it was the possibility that was tantalising.

  Finally, as night drew on, she found the word she needed. It was five pictograms long, and three of them were the three symbols she had marked for deletion. With quick strokes, she cut them out and looked at the result.

  Mountain.

  She was fractionally disappointed, having hoped for something more definite, something that could not possibly have been a random coincidence of syllables. But the disappointment lasted only a moment. It was a word, at least.

  She needed to know more symbols to strike out. She needed a key to solve the code. Where would she find such a key?

  The answer came to her immediately. She had had it all along; it was only a matter of asking herself the right question. The lullaby.

  Snatching up a new roll of paper, she scribbled the lullaby down, then located the original poem she had been working on. Notes spilled from the edge of the desk, displaced by frantic activity. She went through the poem symbol by symbol, crossing out whenever she found a pictogram that matched a pictogram in the lullaby. And slowly, words began to emerge there. Some of them were nonsense, and some were impossible to contract at all, but these she ignored. She read only those words that she had altered to form a new meaning, and when she did so, she found the message.

  New demons attack Juraka by midwinter.

  She sat back on her heels, gazing at the page. For some time, she was blank, her mind scattered in the aftermath of revelation. Then she began to draw her thoughts together.

  Mother, she thought in disbelief. All this time . . .

  It had started not long after the war had begun. The poems, the bad writing. She had become sloppy because she was writing too fast. The books were short because she had to distribute them quickly enough for the information contained to be relevant. The poetry was terrible because it was hampered by the need to embed messages in it, and because she wanted to draw attention to it.

  All this time, Muraki had been their spy in the heart of their enemy’s camp, and they had not known it till now. Mishani had not known it till now. For it was only she who could have broken the code, only she – and Kaiku, though her mother did not know that – who possessed the necessary knowledge. But Muraki must have noticed that her warnings were doing no good, and finally, in her latest book, she offered a broad hint to her daughter, whom she must have believed was reading. For anyone else to decipher it meant death for Muraki. That was why it was only the first stanza of the poem: without both stanzas, the code was still gibberish.

  Now Mishani thought back. There had been other clues. References to lullabies; Nida-jan’s meditations on how his poetry had the cadence of a parent singing to their child; a passage where Nida-jan considered composing a song for his lost son, one that only they would know, which he would sing when he found the boy at last. Heart’s blood, how many lives might have been saved, how many battles won, if Mishani had been clever enough to decipher this earlier? It was so obvious in hindsight that she could not believe she had been so dull-witted.

  Her mother had been risking her life to help the Empire, drawing information from her husband the Lord Protector and passing it on through her writing. And nobody had realised.

  Once Mishani had thought her mother weak, weak and uncaring. She felt tears pricking her eyes at the shame of her ungraciousness.

  Spurred by that feeling, she went to work on the other poems. There would be no sleep for her tonight.

  SIXTEEN

  Kaiku awoke from a vivid dream of sweat and heat and sex, memory tattering with wakefulness, leaving only the face of the man who had been taking her. Tane.

  She felt suddenly embarrassed as her eyes flickered open, and she saw the others in the tent, kneeling nearby. Asara and Tsata. Had her dream showed outwardly, in moans or in the languid movement of her body? She was still fully clothed, but no blankets had been laid on her, which made her feel exposed. And gods, why Tane? She had not thought of him for a long time.

  Then she remembered the beast.

  She jerked upright in alarm. Tsata held up his hands in a placating gesture.

  ‘Be calm, Kaiku. No harm has come to you,’ he said.

  ‘No harm?’ she repeated. ‘And Lucia?’

  ‘Lucia is perfectly safe. Why would it be otherwise?’ Asara said.

  Kaiku stared at her for a moment. She was remembering how the thing had flitted at her, a charge broken up into a thousand tiny and discrete increments: flash impressions of shadow, each one larger than the last as it neared, enacted in a fraction of an instant. It was so fast she had not even time to rouse her kana. It should have battered aside dozens of trees as it came. Then darkness, and dreaming.

  Asara handed her a cup of water. She took it with a suspicious glance at the desert lady. Watching over her while she slept was far too compassionate an act for Asara: she cared only because Kaiku still owed her, and she intended to collect.

  Asara sensed her mood, perhaps, for she rose into a crouch then. ‘I am relieved that you are well,’ she said. ‘I must help wi
th the preparations. We leave soon.’ And she left, ducking through the flap.

  Kaiku began to arrange herself, a little self-conscious at being seen straight out of bed with her hair mussed and eyes puffy with sleep; then she remembered the weeks she had spent in the wild with Tsata back in the Xarana Fault, and laughed at herself for her vanity. He had already seen her at her worst; it was scarcely worth concerning herself over.

  He responded to her laughter with a look of bewilderment. ‘You seem in good spirits,’ he observed.

  She sighed. ‘No, it is not that,’ she said. She thought about explaining, but decided it was not worth the effort. Tsata would not understand.

  He let it drop. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked.

  So Kaiku explained about the beast in the trees. She made no mention of why she had strayed from the camp. She meant to have a word with Lucia about her dangerous wanderings as soon as circumstances would permit.

  Tsata listened as she talked. In contrast to Lucia, he had a wonderfully grave expression when listening, as if the object of his attention was the only thing in the world. Kaiku had found it mildly intimidating at first, but now she enjoyed it. When she spoke, she knew he thought her words important. It made her feel better about herself.

  When she was done, he shifted himself so that he was sitting cross-legged. Tkiurathi could never kneel for long; it became excruciating for them after a while, unlike the folk of Saramyr.

  ‘It appears that you were fortunate indeed. We lost two more soldiers last night. We can presume that they met the same creature that you did.’

  ‘We lost them? How do you mean?’

  ‘They are gone. Tracks lead into the forest, but beyond that all trace has disappeared.’

  Kaiku rubbed her hands over her face. ‘Gods . . .’ she murmured. ‘Lucia said that the spirits’ agreement to let us pass was no guarantee of safety. I had hoped to keep that from the rest of the group, at least until our morale was better.’

  ‘That was foolish,’ said Tsata. From anyone else, it would have been rude, but Kaiku knew how he was. ‘Perhaps we would have been more careful if we had been told.’

  ‘More careful than we were? I doubt it.’ She would not shoulder the responsibility for their deaths. ‘Everyone was frightened last night; they were watchful, despite what Lucia had told them.’

  ‘They are more frightened now,’ Tsata observed.

  ‘As well they should be,’ Kaiku replied.

  There was a beat of silence between them.

  ‘You were writhing in your sleep. Who were you dreaming of?’ he asked suddenly.

  Kaiku blushed. ‘Heart’s blood, Tsata! There are some politenesses my people employ that you would do well to learn.’

  He did not look in the least abashed. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I did not realise you would be embarrassed.’

  She brushed her hair behind her ear and shook her head. ‘You should not ask a lady such things.’ She met his gaze, his pale green eyes devoid of guile, strangely like a child’s. For a moment she held it; then she looked away.

  ‘Tane,’ she said with a sigh, as if he had forced it out of her. ‘I dreamt of Tane.’

  Tsata tilted his chin upward: an Okhamban nod, in understanding. ‘I appreciate your honesty. It is important to me.’

  ‘I know,’ she murmured. Then, feeling she needed to apologise herself, she took his hand in both of hers. ‘It was only a dream,’ she said.

  He seemed surprised by the contact. After a moment, he squeezed her hand gently and let go. ‘We all dreamed last night,’ he said. ‘But you, it seems, were the only one who dreamt anything pleasant.’

  ‘I am not so sure it was pleasant at all,’ she said. Though she could remember nothing for certain except that Tane was in it, she was unsure whether the dream-congress was entirely consensual on her part. In fact, she had an uneasy intuition that he had been raping her. She looked up. ‘What did you dream of?’

  Tsata seemed uncomfortable, and did not reply. ‘We should go; the others will be waiting for us.’

  ‘Ah! You will not get away so easily,’ she said, grabbing his arm as he made to rise. ‘Where is your honesty now?’ she chided playfully.

  ‘I dreamt of you,’ he said, his tone flat.

  ‘Of me?’

  ‘I dreamt I was gutting you with a knife.’

  Kaiku stared at him for a moment. She blinked.

  ‘I see your studies of Saramyrrhic have not yet encompassed the art of telling a woman what she wants to hear,’ she said, and then burst out laughing at his expression. ‘Come. We should be on our way.’ When he still seemed uneasy, she said again: ‘It was only a dream, Tsata. As was mine.’

  They emerged from the tent to a crisp dawn. It was early yet, but from the faces of the group Kaiku guessed that few had slept well, if at all. They were wearily taking down the camp, wandering in pairs or eating cold food – no fires were allowed in the forest, on Lucia’s advice. The silence that surrounded them was as oppressive as it had been the day before. It made the whole forest seem dead. Asara had packed her tent up and was sitting on the grass, watching Kaiku across the camp. Kaiku dismissed her with a glance. She did not want to worry about that one for now.

  A sudden commotion from the treeline drew her attention. People were getting to their feet, running up towards where two men were emerging with a third being dragged between them.

  ‘Spirits, what now?’ Kaiku muttered, and she headed that way herself, with Tsata close behind.

  They had dumped the man face down on the grass by the time she arrived, and soldiers were jabbering over the corpse. ‘Who is this?’ she demanded, putting enough of the Red Order authority into her tone to silence them. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He’s one of those who went missing last night,’ came the reply. ‘We went to look for them. Didn’t find the other.’ He exchanged glances with his companion. ‘As to what happened to him, your guess is as good as ours.’

  With that, he tipped the body over with his boot, and it came to lie on its back with one arm awkwardly underneath it. The soldiers swore and cursed.

  Though he seemed otherwise untouched, his eyes were milky white, no pupil or iris visible. The skin around them was speckled with burst blood vessels, and brilliant blue veins radiated out from the sockets, starkly protuberant. The man’s expression was slack, his jaw hanging open in an idiot gape.

  ‘I think you were more fortunate than we had guessed,’ Tsata muttered, ‘if this is what your beast does to its victims.’

  Kaiku turned away, crossing her arms over her stomach, hugging herself. ‘Then why did it spare me?’

  She began to walk; the sight of the dead man was more than she could take at the moment.

  They travelled round the gorge and onward, following Lucia’s directions. She was their compass, for she could sense the Xhiang Xhi and headed unerringly towards it. The group were jumpy now. The forest had a way of tricking the eye, inventing movement from nothing, so that people would start violently and look down at their feet, or out into the trees, thinking something had scurried past. They began to hear noises in the silence now, strange taps and clicks from afar. The first time they occurred, Doja – the leader of the soldiers – called a halt and they listened for a while; but the sounds were random and monotonous, and eventually they tried to ignore them. It did little good. The tapping began to wear at them, much as the silence had before it.

  The forest continued to change, darkening as they penetrated further. Purple was predominant now, as of deciduous leaves on the late edge of autumn, and the canopy thickened overhead so that they walked in twilight. A strange gloom hung in the air. The taps and clicks echoed as if they were in a cavernous hall, unnaturally reverberant.

  The group threaded its way through terrain that became increasingly hard, up muddy slopes and through tangled thickets with branches they dared not hack aside for fear of retaliation. They went with swords and rifles held ready, in the faint hope that they
would be any use.

  Kaiku and Phaeca walked together, keeping close to Lucia. Phaeca seemed better today, despite having barely slept. Whenever she had closed her eyes she had been pitched into the same nightmare, something so horrible that she refused to speak of it. Still, she had artfully made herself up and disguised the shadows under her eyes, and it did not show on her. Kaiku had been concerned about how well she might hold up in this environment, but she felt a small relief at seeing her friend recovered.

  ‘How is she?’ Phaeca murmured, gesturing at Lucia.

  Kaiku made a face that said: who can tell? ‘I do not think she even knows where she is at the moment.’

  They observed her for a time, and indeed, she had the look of a sleepwalker. She drifted along without paying attention to anything or anyone nearby.

  ‘She is listening to them,’ Phaeca said. ‘To the spirits.’

  ‘I fear for her, Phaeca,’ Kaiku admitted. ‘She said things to me, back at Araka Jo . . .’ She trailed off, deciding that to speak of it to Phaeca would be breaking a confidence. ‘I fear for her,’ she repeated.

  Phaeca did not pry. ‘What is she, truly?’ she mused.

  ‘She is an Aberrant, the same as you and me.’

  Phaeca looked unconvinced. ‘Is that all she is, do you think? I’m not so sure. It’s her nature more than her abilities. And her uniqueness.’ She glanced at Kaiku. ‘Why aren’t there more of her? There were many with our powers: the Sisterhood only accounts for a fraction of the total, those that were not killed or who did not kill themselves. Yet have you ever heard of anyone with Lucia’s talent?’

  Kaiku did not like where this was going. It came uncomfortably close to suggesting that Lucia was divine, and she had thought Phaeca above that. ‘What are you saying?’ she asked.