‘Once your civilisation was dedicated to great art and learning, to building wonderful architecture and long roads and incredible dwellings,’ Tsata began. ‘I have read your histories. And though I do not share your love for stone cities, or for the way you gather in such numbers that pash becomes meaningless, I am aware that all ways are not my ways, and I can accept that. I can even accept the terrible divide between the nobles and the peasant classes, and how knowledge is hoarded by one to keep the other in ignorant labour. That I find nothing less than evil, for it is so counter to the nature of my people; yet if I began to talk about that, we would be here a lot longer, and it is the Weavers I wish to speak of.’
Kaiku was mildly taken aback, both by his bluntness – which verged on rude – and his eloquence. She had rarely heard Tsata say more than a few sentences at a time; but his evident passion for this subject seemed to have overridden his usual quiet reticence.
‘When the Weavers came, your ancestors took them in,’ he said at length, his pale green eyes steady in the darkness. ‘They were dazzled by the power they might command with a Weaver at their side. Your nobles had so long been accustomed to treating lesser men like tools, that they thought they could use the Weavers in the same way, not knowing how dangerous a tool they were. For to accept the Weavers into your world was to make a pact; a pact that your ancestors made knowing full well the terms that they were agreeing to.’ His head hung in sorrow. ‘Greed ruined them. Perhaps they had noble causes at first; perhaps they thought that with the Weavers on their side, they could expand the empire and make it greater and more invincible. But sometimes the price is too high, no matter what the reward.’
Kaiku noticed that his hands were clenched in fists, the yellow skin taut around his knuckles.
‘You invited the Weavers into your homes, and you fed them with your children.’
That shocked her. But though she drew breath to protest, she found that she could not. He was right, after all. It was a noble family’s duty to supply their Weaver with whatever they wanted during their post-Weaving mania. She knew well enough some of the awful perversions that those creatures were capable of. As the backlash from using their Masks set in, like the withdrawal symptoms of a narcotic, they had no conscience in the face of their irrational, primal lusts and needs. Nothing was too depraved where the Weavers were concerned. Rape, murder, torture . . . these were only some of the desires that the Weavers demanded be satisfied. She knew of others. Blood Kerestyn’s Weaver was reportedly a cannibal. Blood Nira had one who ate human and animal faeces. The current Weave-lord apparently had a penchant for skinning victims alive and making sculptures from them. Though not every Weaver’s mania was harmful to others – some would do things as mundane as painting or merely hallucinate for hours – a lot of them were, and while they did not need to sate themselves every time they went Weaving, most Weavers still accounted for dozens of lives each. And as they become more insane and addicted and raddled with disease, the quantity increased.
She felt suddenly ashamed, remembering the simple joy she had felt in Hanzean at returning to her homeland from Okhamba. Saramyr was a place of beauty and harmony that she felt lucky to live in, and yet it was built on the bones of so many. Before the Weavers, there had been the systematic extermination of the native Ugati, a death toll that must have reached into millions. None of this was new to Kaiku – and still, it seemed so distant and so unconnected to her that she could not really identify with it – but hearing it put in such a straightforward way reminded her what a thin veneer civilisation was, a crust on which the dainty feet of the highborn walked, while beneath their soles a sea of disorder and violence seethed.
But Tsata was not finished. ‘You are not to blame for the crimes of your ancestors,’ he said, ‘though often your society punishes sons for their fathers’ mistakes, it seems. But now the Weavers despoil the very land