her arm back. ‘Eszel was reciting a poem,’ she said, her voice taut. ‘And I will stay to hear it finished.’
Mos glared balefully at the poet, almost shaking with rage. Reki could almost feel Eszel’s heart sink. His sister meant well, but when incensed she was not subtle. In providing a reason to refuse Mos, she had turned his wrath back onto her defenceless friend.
‘And how would you feel if your treasured poet was suddenly to find himself without a patron?’ he grated.
‘Then my treasured husband would find himself without a wife!’ Laranya fired back. Once she had dug her heels in, she would give no ground.
‘Does he mean so much to you, then?’ Mos sneered. ‘This half-man?’
‘This half-man is more a man than you, since he can keep his temper, as a noble like you should be able to!’
This was too much. Mos raised his hand suddenly, a reflex of pure anger, drawing back to hit her.
She went suddenly cold, her passion taking her beyond mere fury and into a steely calm. ‘I dare you,’ she said, her voice like fingernails scraping on rusted metal.
The change in her stopped him. He had never raised his hand to her before, never lost control this way. Trembling, he looked into her eyes, and thought how achingly beautiful their arguments made her, and how much he loved and hated her at the same time. Then he cast one last glare of pure malice at Eszel, and stormed out of the doorway and onto the bridge, disappearing into the rainy night.
Reki let out a breath that he did not know he had been holding. Eszel looked miserable. Laranya’s chin was tilted arrogantly, her breast heaving, fiercely pleased that she had faced her husband down.
The mood was spoiled now, and by unspoken consent they dispersed to their chambers. Later, Laranya would find Mos, and they would fight, and reconcile, and make frenetic love in the embers of their anger, unaware that then, as now, Kakre would be watching from the Weave.
TEN
Kaiku, Saran and Tsata arrived in the Fold in the early morning, having ridden hard from Hanzean. They had made their way along secret routes into the Xarana Fault under the cover of darkness and slipped into the heart of the broken land without alerting any of the hostiles that lived there. Their return was greeted with great activity by those who knew of Kaiku’s mission and guessed who her companion was. By midday, an assembly of the upper echelons of the Libera Dramach and the Red Order had gathered to hear what their spy had to tell them, and Kaiku was included, both at Saran’s insistence and at Cailin’s. She felt a certain amount of relief. After giving two months of her life – and almost losing it – to bring this man back, the thought that the information he carried might be too sensitive to trust her with was too cruel.
They met on the top floor of a semicircular building that was unofficially the nerve centre of the Libera Dramach. It stood on one of the highest tiers of the Fold, its curved face looking out over the town and into the valley below. The uppermost storey was open to the view, with pillars to hold up the flat roof and a waist-high barrier of wrought iron running between them. The whole storey was a single room, used for congregations or occasional private theatrical performances or recitations, and like most of the buildings in the Fold it was functional rather than elegant. Its beige walls were hung with cheap tapestries and there was wicker matting to cover the floor, and little else except a prayer wheel in one corner and some wind chimes ringing softly in the desultory breeze, to ward off evil spirits. It was a quaint and ancient superstition that seemed somehow less comical here in the Xarana Fault.
There was no real formality about the meeting, but basic hospitality demanded that refreshments be served. The traditional low tables of black wood were scattered with small plates, and metal beakers of various wines, spirits and hot beverages were placed between them. Kaiku was sitting with Cailin and two other similarly attired members of the Red Order, neither of whom she had met before, since the membership seemed to be constantly shifting and only Cailin provided any permanence. She was excessively paranoid about letting the numbers of the Red Order be known, and kept them scattered so that they might not all