Chris Wooding - The ascendancy veil

They had been moved around since last time Avun visited, and he unconsciously sought out the figures that had stuck most in his mind: the hunched figure whose left side was stitched from the skin of a man and whose right side from a woman; the winged being whose feathers were made of tanned and leathery sinew; the shrieking man from whose gaping mouth another face peered. There were animals and birds too, and other things not humanoid, frames overlaid with patchwork epidermis of many shades to form strange geometric shapes, or forms so repellent to the eye that they could not be classified. The accumulation of torture and pain and terror this room represented was more than even a man as cold as Avun could bear to consider. The faint shrieks of the tormented Weavers in nearby rooms only served to disconcert him further.

The Weave-lord Kakre was there, of course. He seemed to have lapsed into some sort of trance, standing immobile just off-centre of the mosaic that covered the floor. Avun approached quietly, watching him for any sudden movements. He had learned to be careful around the Weave-lord of late. Kakre's mental health had taken a dangerous slide in recent months, and Avun never quite knew where he stood with his master these days.

He studied the hunched figure before him. Like all his kind, the Weave-lord was clad in heavy, ragged robes sewn haphazardly together from all manner of materials – including hide and skin, in Kakre's case – and hung with ornaments: knucklebone strings and twists of hair and the like. The voluminous cowl partially covered the stretched, ghastly corpse-face that was his True Mask; the Mask concealed the even fouler visage beneath. Avun had never seen Kakre's real face, and never wished to.

'Kakre?' he prompted. The Weaver started a little and then slowly turned his dead face to the Lord Protector.

'You have come,' he wheezed, a faintly disorientated and dreamlike tone to his voice. Avun wondered whether he had accidentally interrupted Kakre's Weaving.

'You asked to see me,' Avun pointed out.

Kakre paused for a little too long, then shook himself and recovered from whatever befuddlement had been upon him. 'I did,' he said, more decisively. 'The feya-kori are ready once again. What is your advice?'

Avun regarded Kakre with his drowsy eyes. His permanent expression of disinterest belied a mind of uncommon ruth-lessless. He did not look the part of the most important non-Weaver in Axekami, with his gaunt frame and balding pate, but appearances could deceive. He had rode the chaos of the Weavers' coup to make Koli the only high family to come out on top while the others went under, and in a short time had worked his way from being a mere figurehead for the Weavers – the human face of their reign – to becoming utterly invaluable to them.

'Zila,' he said.

'Zila?' Kakre repeated. 'Why not attack? Go straight for their core, straight for Saraku?'

'They expect you to move on and try to take the Sasako Bridge, to push towards their heartland from Juraka. Do not do so. Let them know we can harry them all along their front. They will be forced to divide their armies, not knowing where the next assault will come from. Attack Zila with the feya-kori, take it, and fortify.'

'What good will that do?' Kakre asked impatiently. 'To chip away at them one town at a time?'

'War is not conducted in a headlong charge, Kakre,' Avun said. 'I would have thought you had proved that yourselves by now. Remember the early days, Kakre? That first sweep across the country after taking Axekami? Your only strategy was to fling as many troops as possible at your targets, counting your numbers as unlimited. You were beaten back time and again by forces one tenth your size. Because they used tactics. They knew how to fight wars.' He raised an eyebrow. 'As do I.'

He could feel the hatred in Kakre's glare from behind the shadowed eyes of the Mask. It was necessary to remind the Weavers of his worth now and again, lest they forget, but it was a risky business. Kakre was apt to lose his temper, and the consequences for Avun were usually painful.

'Tell me the details,' Kakre said eventually, and Avun felt the tightness in his chest slacken a little. He began to explain, recalling troop locations and the size of armies from memory, laying out the plan for his master. And if, long ago, he might have felt a twinge of guilt at betraying his fellow man this way, he felt nothing of the sort now.

The beginning of the war had not gone at all the way the Weavers had wanted it to. They had envisioned a complete collapse of the Empire, allowing them to overwhelm the disorganised opposition with their superior numbers and suicidal troops. But they had known nothing of the Sisters. With the Red Order knitting themselves across the gap that the Weavers had left and protecting the nobles from the Weavers' influence, the high families put up an unexpectedly efficient resistance. They were quick to recognise that their opponent had no knowledge of military strategies, and capitalised on it. The Weavers had the advantage in numbers; but the skilful generals of the Empire, well-studied and practised in the art of war, made them pay dearly for every mile gained. In time, it became obvious that even the apparently endless armies of the Weavers could not support such losses, and the Empire began to counterattack.

That was when Avun stepped in to lend his services. The Weavers were not generals: they were erratic, most of them were borderline maniacs, and they had no interest in history and so had not learned its lessons. Avun was shrewd and clever, and under his direction the armies of the Weavers became suddenly far more effective, and the Empire's counterattack was battered into a stalemate.

But by then the advantage had been lost. The forces of the Empire had retreated to the Southern Prefectures and held it tenaciously. The damage caused by the Weavers' ineptitude and the vast areas that they now had to keep occupied meant that the Aberrant armies were stretched thin, and the breeding programmes would take years to catch up. Time was both on their side and against them, for every witchstone unearthed made the Weavers stronger, but it accelerated the blight that was killing the crops.

The Weavers were impatient. They were afraid of their armies starving. Avun could understand that. But what he could not understand was what method lay in the Weavers' madness. A desire to conquer he could appreciate. The thirst for power through Masks and witchstones he could sympathise with. But the witchstones were causing the blight. It had been a secret for so long, but only the blind could fail to see the connection now. What use was a poisoned land to the Weavers? Even they had to eat.

Kakre would provide no answers, Avun was sure of that. But for his part, as ever, he would seek advantage for himself and his own, and as long as he was Lord Protector he had leisure to manoeuvre. Let the other nobles fight their hopeless battle against the Weavers' tide. Avun had made betrayal a science, and it had served him well. When the time came, he would betray the Weavers too.

But for now, he spoke his soft words of advice, teaching Kakre the best way to kill those he had once counted as allies, while distantly there came the hoot and gibber of the inmates of the madhouse that surrounded him. He found his wife in her chambers. It was hardly a surprise to him. She almost never left them.

Muraki tu Koli was quiet, pale and petite, an elegant ghost whose voice was rarely raised above a whisper. Her long black hair fell in an unadorned centre parting to either side of her face, and she wore an embroidered lilac gown and soft black slippers because she did not like the noise that shoes made on the hard lach floors of the Imperial Keep. Her quill was scratching as Avun entered the room, inking vertical chains of symbols on a paper scroll.