they were allowed to prevail, for Saran knew better than to allow the Weavers even an inch of leeway, to let them have the benefit of any doubt.
‘Saran’s information sheds a somewhat more foreboding light on another piece of news I received this morning,’ said Zaelis. ‘Nomoru, please stand.’
It was a young woman of perhaps twenty winters who responded. She was wiry and skinny and not particularly attractive, with a surly expression and short, blonde-brown hair in a ragged, spiky tangle. Her clothes were simple peasant garb, and her arms were inked with pictures, in the manner of street folk and beggars.
‘Nomuru is one of our finest scouts,’ Zaelis said. ‘She has just returned from the westward end of the Fault, near where the Zan cuts through it. Tell them what you saw.’
‘It’s what I didn’t see,’ Nomoru said. Her dialect was clipped and sullen, muddied with coarse Low Saramyrrhic vowels. Everyone in the room immediately placed her as being from the Poor Quarter of Axekami, and weighted their prejudices accordingly. ‘I know that area. Know it well. Not easy to cross the Fault lengthways, not with all that’s in between here and there. I hadn’t been there for a long time, though. Years. Too hard to get to.’
She appeared to be uncomfortable talking to so many people; it was obvious in her manner. Rather than be embarrassed, she took on an angry tone, but seemed not to know where to direct it.
‘There was a flood plain there. I used to navigate by it. But this time . . . this time I couldn’t find it.’ She looked at Zaelis, who motioned for her to go on. ‘Knew it was there, just couldn’t get to it. Kept on getting turned around. But it wasn’t me. I know that area well.’
Kaiku could see what was coming, suddenly. Her heart sank.
‘Then I remembered. Been told about this before. A place that should be there, but you can’t get to. Happened to her.’ She pointed at Kaiku with an insultingly accusatory finger. ‘Misdirection. They put it around places they don’t want you to find.’
She looked fiercely at the assembly.
‘The Weavers are in the Fault.’
ELEVEN
The Baraks Grigi tu Kerestyn and Avun tu Koli walked side by side along the dirt path, between the tall rows of kamako cane. Nuki’s eye looked down on them benevolently from above, while tiny hovering reedpeckers swung back and forth seeking suitable candidates to drill with their pointed beaks. The sky was clear, the air dry, the heat not too fierce: another day of perfect weather. And yet Grigi’s thoughts were anything but sunny.
He reached out and snapped off a cane with a twist of his massive hand; a puff of powder burst out from where it was broken.
‘Look here,’ he said, proffering it to Avun. His companion took it and turned it slowly under his sleepy, hooded gaze. There were streaks of black discolouration along its outer surface, not that Avun needed such a sign to tell it had been blighted. Good kamako cane was hard enough to be used as scaffolding; this was brittle and worthless.
‘The entire crop?’ Avun asked.
‘Some can be salvaged,’ Grigi mused, waddling his immense frame over to the other side of the dirt path and breaking off another cane experimentally. ‘It’s strong enough, but if word gets out that the rest of the crop is afflicted . . . Well, I suppose I can sell through a broker, but the price won’t be half what it could be. It’s a gods-cursed disaster.’
Avun regarded the other blandly. ‘You cannot pretend that you did not expect as much.’
‘True, true,’ said Grigi. ‘In fact, half of me had hoped for this. If the harvest had picked up this year, then some of our allies would be having second thoughts about the side they had chosen. Desperation makes weak links in politics, and they’re easily undone when times turn.’ He tossed the cane aside in disgust. ‘But I don’t like seeing thousands of shirets in market goods going to waste, whatever the cause. Especially not mine!’
‘It can only strengthen our position,’ Avun said. ‘We have made preparations against this. Others are not so fortunate. They will see that the only alternative to starvation is to oust Mos and put someone who knows how to run the empire on the throne.’
Grigi gave him a knowing glance. There was something else that they did not say, that they never spoke of any more than necessary. Getting Grigi on the