Chris Wooding: Weavers of Saramyr

Lucia herself recovered from the burns she had suffered, but she never lost the scars. Her upper back and the nape of her neck were wrinkled and puckered, and though the redness faded over time, they were still an abomination against the clear, unspoilt skin that surrounded them. Lucia, converse to expectations, chose not to grow her hair back to its previous length, but instead had it cut boyishly short. When Zaelis gently pointed out that long hair might hide her scarring, she simply gave him one of her unfathomable looks and ignored his advice.

At first, Zaelis was protective of Lucia and acted as a father to her. His broken leg had healed badly and left him with a pronounced limp, but it did not stop him keeping her apart from the other children and away from harm. Of all people, it was Mishani who finally talked him into letting her run free. Lucia had never tasted freedom, never lived a life outside a gilded cage, always too important to be risked. But on the day of the new Emperor's accession to the throne, Mishani went to Zaelis and spoke with him. She was ever the persuasive one.

'She is not the Heir-Empress now,' Mishani pointed out. 'And she should not be treated like one. You'll make people suspicious.'

Zaelis finally demurred, and allowed Lucia to enrol in the school rather.than be taught by him. Kaiku and Mishani took it upon themselves to act as elder sisters to her. She was a strange and distant girl, but there was something about her that drew people in, and within days she had been integrated into the close community of the Fold children, scars or no scars. Zaelis fretted and worried until Cailin pointed out the ravens that had taken to gathering on the rooftops of the buildings lately, and which roosted in the trees in the next valley.

'They will look after her much better than you can,' she said.

For herself, Kaiku found an odd sort of happiness after the kidnapping of the last of the Erinima line. Here she no longer thought of herself as Aberrant. It was a meaningless term now, and one that had lost all the connotations of shame and degradation it had carried for the greater part of her life. For the first time since the Weavers had murdered her family, she could simply be herself, to drift for a while without a pressing purpose to spur her on. Her oath to Ocha was there, of course, always present in the back of her mind; but she had her whole life in which to fulfil it. And besides, she had already struck her enemies a crucial blow. Her discovery that the witchstones were responsible for the blight on the land, for the Aberrants themselves, had caused a furore among the Libera Dramach, and plans were already afoot to deal with the problem. Let them plan, she thought. She found she could hold her cares away for a while in the lazy days of late summer. The Weavers could wait. Their time would come.

But first she had to learn. She applied herself to Cailin's lessons,

and those of the other Sisters, who periodically returned from their secretive errands in other parts of Saramyr. Gradually her kana became less of an enemy and more of a friend, and she learned not to fear it but to treasure it. Though mastery of her abilities would be a long and arduous journey, she had taken the first steps, and they brought her greater joy than she might have imagined.

She and Mishani shared a house, in one of the middle tiers of the cascade of rocky plateaux that formed the backbone of the Fold. It had stood empty for a long while, so Zaelis gave it to them in recognition of their actions, and they took it and made it their own. The friendship between them was better and stronger now than it had been for years, since Mishani went to the city to learn the ways of court. They supported each other through the days when they felt bleak, when they grieved for the loss of their families or friends. Kaiku remembered Tane often, more often than she would have liked. For someone who had been such a brief episode in her life, he had made more of an impact on her than she would have believed at the time. Only when he was gone did she realise it, and by then it was too late.

Her father's Mask lay in a chest in her house. She took it out once in a while to look at it, and sometimes she felt a tugging, a strange urge to put it on, to have the scent and memories of her father back again. At times it seemed to whisper to her in the darkness of the house at night, calling her to it. Those nights she lay awake, but she never went to the chest. There was something in the call she disliked, something like a craving that she did not want to succumb to. Occasionally she thought of throwing it away, but somehow she always forgot about it soon after.

For Asara's part, she left soon after it became clear nobody was going to follow Lucia to the Fold. The easy days of peace Kaiku and Mishani enjoyed were anathema to her, so one warm evening as they sat on the slopes of the valley she announced to them that she was going. Where she went or when she would return, only she knew. But Kaiku remembered the look that had passed between them as they hugged their goodbyes and kissed each other on the cheek, the moment of uncertainty when it seemed their lips might brush, the awkward swell of repulsion and desire intermingled. Then Asara dropped her eyes, smiled a strange sort of smile and left. That smile haunted Kaiku sometimes. She found she wanted to see it again.

And so it went for them, safe in their sanctuary. The days passed, the summer wore on, and they built themselves new lives and lived them, like the other folk of the Fold. But all were conscious at every moment that there among them was a small bloom of hope, a child upon whom their futures rested. A child who still might take the throne, and change their world for the better.

She was growing. All they had to do was wait.

The new Blood Emperor of Saramyr strode out of the council chamber of the Imperial Keep, the roars of disapproval ringing throughout the corridors. His face was dark as thunder, but he had expected nothing less in reaction to his announcement. The very nobles who had cheered his accession with joyous voices, who had been there as he was proclaimed and all Axekami hailed him, had turned against him today. Yet more potent than the outrage against the laws he had declared was the knowledge that they could do nothing about it. The council was weakened. The nobles teetered, gathering themselves in, fresh from the memory of the recent conflict and keen not to be involved in another one. There was nobody to unite behind against him. Blood Amacha had been all but been annihilated with their defeat outside Axekami. Kerestyn and Koli had expended most of their forces in the attempt on the city, and been forced to retreat empty-handed. They knew better than to show their faces at court now. They hid and licked their wounds.

The Blood Emperor Mos tu Batik swept through a pair of double doors into his private stateroom, and knew there were none left to stand against him.

It was the same room in which he had once met the former Blood Empress, when he had warned her that Vyrrch and Sonmaga were plotting against her. She had little suspected that it was not Sonmaga but he and his son who were conspiring with the Weave-lord. Deception and deceit did not sit easily with a man of Mos's bluntness, but he could rise to the challenge when the occasion demanded.

The room was much as it had been then. It had escaped the fires that burned a portion of the Keep and ruined many precious artefacts. Another consequence of the shambolic execution of their plan. Vyrrch was supposed to have been there to coordinate the dampening of the fires after the coup, using his ungodly powers to

help extinguish them. Instead he had been killed, somehow. The door to his chambers had been opened from the inside. And if the Weavers knew anything about it, they weren't saying a cursed thing.