must be the price we all pay. If you will not believe what your heart knows, then you will hear your daughter’s name on the lips of a Weaver.’
‘Pray that I do,’ Zahn replied. ‘For if not, I will be back, and I will have you killed.’
‘I pray that you do not,’ Mishani said. ‘For I would give my life in exchange for all those who will die to convince you.’
Xejen tu Imotu thought that his story was over when the ceiling came down on him, but he regained consciousness to find that there was an epilogue, and it was full of agony.
He woke on a bed in the donjon of the keep, and woke screaming. The pain from his shattered legs propelled him out of oblivion, an idiot, senseless roar of breathtaking brutality. His trousers had been cut away above the knee. His legs were massive and blue-purple, obese with swelling and the terrible bruising of drastic trauma. Both of them kinked unnaturally in several places. No attempt had been made to set them, and the snapped ends of bone made bulges against the blotched skin.
He screamed again, and screamed until his throat was raw. At some point, he blacked out.
When he awoke again, it was to a new horror.
He felt himself pulled into awareness, his mind hooked like a fish and dragged out of the protective cocoon where it sheltered from the inconceivable pain. His eyes flickered open. Afternoon light misted in through the dusty air from a barred window high on one wall, scattering across his ruined legs and the bare stone cell. Figures surrounded him, but one leaned closer than the others. A Mask of angles, sharp cheeks and jutting ridges of chin and forehead, some of gold and some of silver and others of bronze; a mountainous metal landscape, crafted by a master Edgefather, surrounding the dark, black pits of the eyes.
A Weaver.
He sucked in a breath to shriek, but a pale, withered hand passed over him, and his throat locked.
‘Be silent,’ hissed the voice behind the Mask.
There were two others here. He recognised the Baraks: Zahn, tall and rangy and gaunt; Moshito, stocky and bald and grim-faced. They looked down on him pitilessly.
‘You are Xejen tu Imoto?’ Moshito asked. Xejen nodded mutely, his eyes tearing. ‘Leader of the Ais Maraxa?’ He nodded again.
Zahn shifted his gaze to the Weaver. This one was in the employ of Blood Vinaxis, a particularly vicious and sadistic monster if Moshito’s accounts were to be believed. His name was Fahrekh. Zahn’s own Weaver he had left back at his estates at the disposal of his family; he detested Weavers, especially since he suspected that the last Weave-lord, Vyrrch, had been responsible for the coup in which Lucia had disappeared.
He caught himself. Already he was amending his beliefs to suit Mishani. In which Lucia had died, he forced himself to think. Blood Koli was an enemy, Mishani was an enemy, and however they might have learned of his weakness, he would not let her exploit it.
But gods, what if she was telling the truth? If Xejen talked, then neither the Weavers nor the Emperor would rest until Lucia was hunted down. Was there any way to stop this? Was there?
He bit down on his lip. Idiocy. Foolishness.
Lucia was dead.
‘Are you sure he will do as you told him?’ Zahn asked Moshito, motioning at the bent and hooded figure crouching over the bed.
‘I have heard my Barak’s command,’ Fahrekh said, with a curl of disdain in his voice. ‘Nothing will be hidden. You will ask him your questions. I will ensure he answers and speaks true.’
Xejen’s eyes roved from one to the other in alarm.
‘It is as he says, Zahn,’ Moshito replied. ‘What’s got you so suspicious?’
‘Weavers always make me suspicious,’ Zahn replied, trying to keep the uncertainty and indecision out of his voice. Yet he wondered whether the Weaver might not simply scour Xejen’s mind in secret and take what he wanted, and whether there was any way they could tell. Heart’s blood, how had it fallen this way: that the only method he had to prove Mishani right would also put that same knowledge in the hands of those who would desire Lucia’s death?
It came down to a matter of faith. Could he believe Mishani? Could he believe his daughter was alive? Once, perhaps. But his faith had died along with the other parts of his soul, and he had to know. Belief was not enough. He had to