going to pay for this,’ he promised, reining his horse around. He did not care that other Weavers were within earshot, both Blood Kerestyn’s and the gem-stone-Masked Weaver of Blood Koli. ‘Why didn’t he warn me about the extra troops? And where’s this intervention he promised?’ He glared at Barak Avun, blaming him for Kakre’s mistakes; after all, it was through Avun that Kakre had contacted him.
Avun, who had been watching the battle with his hooded, drowsy eyes, turned and gave Grigi a bland stare.
‘There will be an intervention,’ Avun said. ‘Just not as you imagine.’ He flicked a gesture at his Weaver.
The stabbing pain in Grigi’s chest took his breath away. His multitudinous chins bunched up as he gaped, clutching at his leather breastplate. A sparkling agony was spreading along his collarbone to his left arm, numbing his hand. His eyes were wide with disbelief. They flicked to his own Weaver, desperate supplication in their gaze, but the grimacing demon looked at him pitilessly. Grigi gasped half a curse as the strength drained from his limbs.
‘History does repeat itself, Grigi,’ Avun said. ‘But it appears that you do not learn from it. You had me betray Blood Amacha last time we were here; you should have known that I cannot be trusted.’
Grigi’s face had reddened, his eyes bulging as he fought for air that would not seem to come. His heart was a bright star of agony in his chest, sending ribbons of fire through his veins. The sounds of the battle had dimmed, and Avun’s voice was thin in his ear as if from far away. He clutched at his saddle as realisation struck like a hammer: he was dying here, now, surrounded by these three impassive figures on horseback. Gods, no, he wasn’t ready! He hadn’t done what he needed to do! He was within sight of his prize, and it was being snatched from him, and he could not even make a sound to voice his defiance at his tormentor.
His Weaver. His Weaver was supposed to defend him. They were always loyal, always. The very fabric of their society depended on it. If a Weaver did not serve his master in all things, then the Weavers were too dangerous to exist. They even killed each other in the service of the family that supported them. But this one was letting him die.
How had Avun won round his Weaver? How?
‘You will find that the orders you sent did not get through to their intended recipients,’ Avun was saying languidly. ‘And they will most likely be quite surprised when my troops turn on them, and they are sandwiched between Koli and Batik men to the west and Mos’s main force to the east. It will be quite a slaughter.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You, of course, will not live to see it. Your heart gave out in the heat of battle. Small wonder, for one so fat.’
The pain in Grigi’s body was nothing compared to the pain in his soul, the raw and searing frustration and anger and terror all mixing and mingling to scald him. His vision was dimming now, turning to black, and no matter how he fought against it, no matter how he struggled to cry out and make a sound, he was mute. Men of Blood Kerestyn were only metres away, and yet none of them marked him, none of them saw what the Weavers were doing, reaching an invisible hand inside him to squeeze his heart. To them, he was merely in conference with his aides, and if his expression was distressed and gawping, something like a landed fish, then they were not close enough to notice.
He looked to Axekami, and it was dark now, the shadowed fingers of its spires reaching out across the carnage to enfold him. Twice he had sought it; twice been denied. Unconsciousness was a mercy. He did not feel himself slump forward and then slide from his saddle, his mountainous body crashing to the earth; did not hear the cries of alarm from Avun, false words to Grigi’s men as they gathered; did not see him and his Weaver slip away from the crowd, to turn the battle with perfidy. There was only the growing golden light, and the threads that seemed to sew through everything, wafting him like fallopian cilia towards what lay beyond oblivion.
Kakre’s hood flapped about his Masked face in a flurry of wind as he watched the battle unfold. Nuki’s eye had risen