another battle, where at the very same moment the last remaining thorn in the Weavers’ side was about to be removed. How things had shifted in their favour, that the Ais Maraxa should be foolish enough to expose themselves by inciting a revolt in Zila. Kakre had promised Mos that he would deal with the cause of that revolt and he had meant it. He had contacted Fahrekh, Blood Vinaxis’ Weaver, and all the others in the vicinity and given them one simple instruction: take one of the leaders alive, and strip their mind raw. Chance had delivered them Xejen tu Imotu, but it could as easily have been one of a half-dozen others. The Ais Maraxa had been troublesome for so long: they were too well hidden, and Kakre did not have the time to ferret them out, especially as their connection with the Heir-Empress might have been a false lead. But their zeal had been the end of them, and now it would be the end of their divine saviour. For Lucia was alive, and furthermore, Fahrekh had found out where she was.
The timing was fractionally inconvenient. Kakre would have liked to send an even greater number of Aberrants to the Fold than they had mustered, but the bulk of their force had been needed elsewhere. Even so, there were more than enough; enough to weather the occasional mistakes and setbacks, such as the massacre of the Aberrants in the canyons west of the Fold.
Kakre did not want to take the risk of simply killing the Heir-Empress and then have the Libera Dramach use her as a martyr. He wanted the Libera Dramach too, to smash that last resistance, to capture their leaders and force them to give up their co-conspirators until all sedition was stamped out. And if he was fortunate, more fortunate than he dared hope, he might even find that Weaving bitch that had killed his predecessor.
Today, in the span between sunrise and sunset, all the Weavers’ troubles would be removed.
He had all but forgotten about his suspicious mood when he felt the mental approach of another of his kind. Fast as the flicker of a synapse, he dived into the Weave to meet him, flashing along the currents of the void until the two minds joined in a tangle of threads, knotting and mingling, passing information, then pulling away into retreat. Kakre was back into himself in moments, rage bursting into life inside him. He turned his attention to the battle again, looking hard at the tiny figures that fought and died down there.
A mile north-west of the combat, a vast clot of red and silver had appeared, moving fast towards the rear of the Blood Kerestyn forces. Eight thousand Blood Batik troops, as if from nowhere. From the Imperial Keep, they could see fifteen miles to the horizon, and there had been no sign of the troops until now.
‘Mos!’ he croaked. ‘What is this?’
Mos gave him a dry look. ‘This is how I beat Grigi tu Kerestyn,’ he said.
‘How?’ Kakre cried, his fingers turned to claws on the parapet of the balcony.
‘Kakre, you seem discomfited,’ Mos observed, mockingly polite. ‘I’d advise you not to take out your aggressions on me as you did before. I may be Emperor for a very long time yet, despite your best efforts to the contrary, and it would be well not to make me angry.’ He smiled suddenly, a mirthless rictus. ‘Do we understand each other?’
Kakre had been listening in disbelief, but now he found his voice again. ‘What have you done, Mos?’ he demanded hoarsely.
‘Eight thousand cloaks, matched to the colour of the grass on the plains,’ he said. He sounded nothing like the broken man that he had seemed to be only a few short hours ago. Now his voice was flat and cold. ‘I didn’t send my men to meet the desert Baraks. And I didn’t send them after Reki either. I had them all double back. I had something of an intuition that Kerestyn might hear of this opportunity, and that he might come in greater numbers than I expected. Before dawn, I sent them out and had them hide under their cloaks and wait. You’d never see them unless you were close.’
Kakre’s eyes blazed within the black pits of his Mask. ‘And what about the desert Baraks?’ he hissed.
‘Let them come,’ Mos shrugged. ‘They’ll find Kerestyn shattered and me ruling in Axekami with nobody to challenge me. And of course, my loyal