Chris Wooding - The ascendancy veil

She appeared not to notice Avun. That, too, was hardly a surprise. She spent a great deal of her time in her fantasies, and when she was there it was as if the real world did not exist. She had once told him, back when they were in something approximating a normal marriage, that she could not tell what her hands were doing when she was in that fugue state, that they set down words with a will of their own, as if she were a medium and others were speaking through her. He did not pretend to understand. He had marvelled at his wife's gift back then. Now it infuriated him. She used it as a retreat, and more and more she refused to return.

'Is it going well?' he asked, referring to what she was writing. He did not need to ask the nature of it. It was a Nida-jan book. It always was.

She ignored the question while she finished off a line and then put down her quill and glanced at him briefly through her curtains of hair.

'Is it going well?' he asked again.

She nodded, but gave no more answer than that.

He sighed and took a seat nearby. Her writing room was small and stuffy and lantern-lit, with no windows to the outside, only small ornamental partitions on the top edge of the wall to provide a throughflow of air. It was exactly the opposite of the kind of open and sunny place she liked to work. She hated this room, and resented working here. Avun knew that, and she knew he did. She was martyring herself in protest at being forced to remain in Axekami when she wanted to be home in Mataxa Bay. In such indirect ways she expressed her displeasure to him.

Avun regarded her for a time. She was not looking at him, but was staring into the middle distance. 'Are you sure you would not be more comfortable in a larger room?' he asked at length.

'The local air does not agree with me,' she replied softly. 'Did your meeting with Kakre go well?'

He told her about what had been said, pleased to have something to converse about. Muraki usually took little interest in anything he did, but they could talk politics at least. Or rather, he could talk to her about it; she never gave anything back. But she listened. That was better than nothing.

He exhausted that topic and, feeling the conversation was going unusually well, he went on with a new one.

'This cannot continue, Muraki,' he said. 'Why are you so unhappy?'

'I am not unhappy,' she whispered.

'You have been unhappy for ten years!'

She was silent. Contradicting him twice in a row would be too much for her, and she was plainly lying anyway. He knew exactly why she was unhappy, and wanted to draw her into a discussion. She did not like confrontations.

'What can I do?' he said eventually, seeing that she was not rising to the bait.

'You can let me go back to Mataxa Bay,' she replied, meeting his eye at last. Then she broke his gaze and looked intently down at the paper before her, fearing she had gone too far.

But Avun was cold-blooded as a lizard and slow to anger. 'You know I cannot do that,' he said. 'You would be in danger there. You are the wife of the Lord Protector; there are many who could kill or kidnap you, use you as a bargaining chip against me.'

'Would you bargain for me, then?' she murmured. 'If I was captured?'

'Of course. You are my wife.'

'Indeed,' she said. 'But we have no love.' She glanced at him again, her face half-hidden by her hair. 'Would you sacrifice for me?'

'Of course,' he said again.

'Why?'

He gazed at her strangely. He could not see why she was finding this difficult to understand. 'Because you are my wife,' he repeated.

Muraki gave up. She had learned long ago that Avun's views on marriage and fatherhood had nothing to do with the finer points of emotion. Their own joining was one of political advantage, like many in Saramyr high society. There had been an element of attraction at the start, but that had long died, and they had been virtually strangers ever since.

Yet there was no possibility of annulment, even now, when the political advantage had become meaningless since the courts of the Empire had disbanded. She would not ask, and he would not countenance it. It would be shameful to him, a failure on his part. Just as he still refused to cut off Mishani from Blood Koli, even so long after he had driven her away. He would not admit to the dishonour of a wayward daughter, and yet he certainly would not reconcile with her.

'I am in the midst of writing,' she said after a time. 'Please let me finish.'

Avun took the dismissal with weary resignation. He got up from his seat and walked to the doorway. Once there he paused and looked back to where his wife was already freshening the ink on her quill.

'Will you ever finish?' he asked.

But she had already begun scratching her neat rows of pictograms, and she did not reply. More than six hundred miles to the southeast, high in the Tchamil Mountains, Mishani was reading her mother's words.

She sat sheltered in the lee of a rock, wrapped in a heavy woollen cloak with the wind blowing her hair across her face. She had put it into one enormous braid for the journey, tied through with blue leather strips, but some errant fronds had escaped and now tormented her. She brushed them away behind her ears; they worked free and came back.

Asara was nearby, feeding the manxthwa while the others went off and hunted. They jostled for their muzzle bags, nudging her with their heads. Mishani was surprised to hear her laugh at their impatience, and she looked up from her book as Asara playfully berated one of them. A smile curved Mishani's lips. The manxthwa's drooping, ape-like faces made them look mournful and wise, but they were in reality docile and stupid. They stared at Asara in incomprehension before beginning to butt her again.

The manxthwa had carried them from Muia, across the rocky paths of the desert and up into the mountains. They were seven feet high at the shoulder, incredibly strong and tireless, with shaggy red-orange fur and knees that crooked backwards. Since their introduction to Saramyr, they had become the most popular mount and beast of burden in Tchom Rin. Their spatulate black hooves, wide and split, dealt with smooth or uneven ground just as easily, and spread the manxthwa's weight well enough for them to walk on the dunes; they had evolved in the snowy peaks of the arctic wastes where the ground was soft and treacherous. Though slow, they were nimble enough for narrow passes, they could go for days without rest as long as they were fed often, and they could survive extremes of heat without discomfort even beneath their thick pelts.

Once Asara had fixed on all their muzzle bags, she sat down next to Mishani and began rummaging in her pack. She was wearing furs, for winter at this altitude was cold even in Saramyr. Presently, she pulled out a small, round loaf of spicebread, tore it down the middle and offered one half to Mishani. Mishani put her book aside, accepted it with thanks, and the two of them ate companionably for a time, looking out across the hard, slate-coloured folds to where Mount Ariachtha rose in the south, its tip lost in cloud.

'You seem in high spirits,' Mishani remarked.

'Aren't you enjoying this?' Asara replied with a grin, knowing full well that Mishani hated it. She had been born a noble, and unlike Kaiku she disliked giving up the luxuries of her position.

'I can think of better ways to spend my day. But you seem glad of the journey.'

Asara lay back against the rock and took a bite of spicebread. It was baked with chopped fruit inside, and made a refreshingly sweet snack. 'I have been in the desert too long, I think,' she said. 'I need a little danger now and again. When you get to be ninety harvests, Mishani, you will know how jaded the old thrills can get; but risk is a drug that never gets dull.'

Mishani gave her an odd look. It was not like Asara to be so effusive. She usually avoided mention of her Aberrant abilities, even with those, like Mishani, who already knew about them. 'The gods grant I get to ninety harvests at all,' she said. 'Still, we have been fortunate so far. Our guides have kept us out of trouble. We may yet cross the mountains without running into anything unpleasant.'