The Ascendancy Veil (5 page)

He felt the infinitesimal give in the stone beneath his foot, the fractional slide and click as he depressed it. His body froze, his pulse and breath going still.

Nothing happened.

He exhaled slowly. He was not foolish enough to think that trap had malfunctioned, but it appeared to be designed in such a way that it triggered when it was released. Standing on it merely primed the mechanism. Stepping off would activate it. Most people would not even have noticed the tiny shift that betrayed its presence; but Keroki was sharper than most people.

He cursed silently to himself. The colonnade had been left dark to tempt an intruder, and at its most inviting point a trap had been laid. Keroki’s informer had known nothing about it. He should have realised that it was too easy.

Despite himself, a chill sweat began to form on his brow. He assessed his predicament. He was safely concealed from the guards, but he was also stuck here. Taking the weight of his foot from the pressure plate would undoubtedly not be pleasant for him. But what kind of trap was it? He could not imagine it would be anything fatal or overly dangerous, since this was a functional room and hence visited by people who would not know about the trap. Perhaps it was only rigged at night? Even so, he found it hard to believe that anyone would run the risk of accidentally killing a guest. An alarm, then; most probably a loud chime struck by a hammer that was cocked by putting weight on the pressure plate. But an alarm was just as fatal to him, for he had little chance of escaping alive if his presence was discovered.

The sweat inched down his cheek, and minutes crawled by against the background murmur of the guards. He had already wasted enough time negotiating the deadly false rooms in the tower; he could not afford to lose any more. Too soon the dawn would be upon them, and he had best be gone by then if he wanted to see another one.

He was still searching for an answer when the tone of the guards’ voices warned him that they were ending their conversation. Then they fell silent, and he heard their soft footsteps heading away in different directions. It took him an instant to realise what they were doing.

They were splitting up and patrolling the colonnade.

He felt a dreadful flood of adrenaline, and mastered it. Years of brutal training had made him ruthlessly discliplined, and he knew when to take advantage of his body’s reflexes and when to suppress them. Now was not the time for excitement. He needed to be calm, to think. And he had only seconds in which to do it.

When the guard found him, he was lying flat on his back and in such a way that the shadow of the pillar and the dim light combined to make him hard to see. The guard did not spot him until he was several feet away, and then he had to squint to be sure. It appeared to be a house servant by the garb, unconscious at the base of the pillar as if laid low by an intruder. And if the servant’s foot happened to be still pressing down hard on the invisible pressure plate, then the guard was too surprised to notice.

He gave a peremptory whistle to his companions and leaned closer to investigate. Foolishly, he did not imagine any threat from the prone figure. He assumed that the threat had already passed on and left this poor servant in its wake. The assumption cost him his life.

Keroki twisted his body, bringing the small blowpipe to his mouth and firing the dart into the guard’s throat. The poison was so fast-acting as to be nearly instantaneous, but even so, the man had a moment to let out a grunt of surprise before his vocal cords locked tight. By the time he had thought to draw his sword, the strength had left his body, and he was slumping. Keroki shifted to catch the falling guard’s arm, pivoting on the foot which was still holding down the pressure plate. He pulled the man’s weight so that he fell towards his killer, and Keroki muffled the sound of the impact with his own body. The guard was dead by the time Keroki pulled him onto the pressure plate. He sent a silent prayer to his deity Omecha that the mechanism was not especially sensitive, and then slipped his own foot off the plate.

There were no alarms.

The other two guards were calling in response to their companion’s whistle now. Keroki slipped another dart into his blowpipe. Looking round the edge of the pillar, he saw one man starting across the atrium from the colonnade, and another in the shadows who had not reacted quite so decisively. Keroki aimed an expert shot and fired across the width of the chamber. The dart flitted invisibly past the first guard in the gloom and hit the man behind him, who slid to the floor with a groan. The sound was loud enough to make the remaining guard turn around. He saw his collapsed companion, swung back with his sword drawn, and took Keroki’s third dart just below his eye. He managed a few seconds of defiant staggering before he, too, went limp and thumped to the ground hard enough to crack his skull.

Keroki stepped out from behind the pillar, glanced around the room, and clucked his tongue. The inside man who had provided the poison for his darts really did have a remarkable talent.

He dragged the corpse of the last guard behind the colonnade and used a piece of fabric to wipe away the smeared trail of blood and hair that he left behind him. Then, satisfied that the bodies would not be seen if anyone should casually enter the room, he headed onward. Dawn was pressing on him, and he still had to get back out through the trap-laden false rooms before the household awoke.

He found no more holes in his informer’s knowledge. He negotiated the opulent corridors of the residence without another mishap, though twice he had to conceal himself to avoid a patrol of guards, and at one point he needed the assistance of a cleverly stashed key to allow him through a certain door that was always locked. Mirrored figures slunk alongside him in the silent corridors, where the cool air hung still as a dream, bereft of moisture. The night’s hue became a deeper green as Neryn glided out from behind her larger sister and cast her full glow. Statues of Suran regarded him from spiked niches in the lacquered walls. Once a cat padded past, keeping to the corners, on its own mission of subterfuge.

There were no guards on the door of Barak Reki’s bedchamber. His wife, so it was said, could not abide the idea of armed men so close as they slept. It was a foible that Keroki thought she would have cause to regret.

He put his hand to the door, resting it against the patterned surface, his other hand reaching for the blade of his knife. He got no further.

It was not the needle-bladed dagger that drove into his arm which truly stunned him, nor the hand that clamped around his mouth and drew his head roughly back. Simply, it was the fact that he had not heard them coming. He was tripped to the floor before he had a chance to react, and he hit the cold marble with enough force to take his breath away.

Now he found himself lying flat on his back once again, looking up at the ceiling, with a terrible numbness spreading like ice through his body. He tried to move, but his mind had been divorced from his muscles and his thoughts did not translate into action. Poison on the blade. Real panic filled him for the first time since childhood, a terror of paralysis that was raw and fresh and untested, and it pummelled him and made him want to scream.

Standing astride him in the darkness was a woman of almost supernatural beauty, with dusky skin and deep black hair, clad in a thin veil of a dress that was belted with silk. Keroki had purged all thoughts of lust from himself a long time ago, but even so a creature like this would have been enough to shatter his resolve, had the situation been different. But he felt far from ardour now.

She knelt down over him, straddling his waist with her hips. Delicately, she plucked the dagger from his arm and laid it aside, then brought her face close to his. Her breath smelt of desert flowers.

‘Your friend with the poisons is outstanding, is he not?’ she purred. ‘Before I killed him I persuaded him to give me the one you are enjoying at the moment.’ A slow smile, cruel and mesmerising, touched her lips. ‘I thought perhaps I would handle this matter myself. No need to trouble Reki; there would be so many . . . repercussions. And besides,’ she added, her voice dropping to a whisper, ‘I like my prey alive. And I am so very hungry tonight.’

Keroki, believing himself to be in the clutches of some demon, tried anew to scream; but all he could force from his body was a whimper.

She laid a finger on his lips.

‘Sssh,’ she murmured. ‘You will wake my husband.’

That was when Keroki finally realised who his assailant was. He had not recognised her at first, for he had never seen her face, and artistic renderings did not do her justice. Reki’s wife. Asara.

She put her lips to his and sucked, until he felt something wrench free inside him and the rushing, bright flow of his essence came sparkling and glittering from his mouth into hers. His last thoughts as he felt the tidal pulses of his life retreating into darkness were strangely unselfish. He wondered what would be the fate of his land, the land that he loved although he had never known it till now, if a monster such as this stood at the right hand of the most powerful man in the desert.

The unification of the Baraks of Tchom Rin was made official at mid-morning, in the western courtyard of the Governor of Muia’s residence. It was a suitably grand venue for a day so momentous, set high up above the surrounding houses, protected by a wall whose top had been moulded into spiked cornices. The white flagstones and the pillars that ran around the edge of the interior were dazzling where the sunlight struck them. Verdant troughs of lush flowers were arranged around the central space; vines dangled through the wooden trellis that reached from the top of the pillars to the outside wall, forming a roof for the shaded portico. Steps went up to a dais at the western side, where the treaty was laid out, and beyond that it was possible to see to the cliffs where the enormous seated figure of Suran watched over proceedings with her odd-eyed gaze.

It was a remarkably sedate affair considering the importance of the occasion: merely a half-dozen speeches and a little pomp as the Baraks filed up with their retinues to sign the agreement. But then few people felt that this was truly a cause for celebration. Pride had been swallowed and old enmities grudgingly put aside, and the sting of it was bitter. Even as whole portions of Saramyr were overrun by the Weavers, even when Aberrants poured from the mountains to threaten their own homes, they had still squabbled and jostled between themselves for four years before finally accepting that they needed to band together for mutual survival in the face of the greater threat. It was not an easy matter to put their differences aside; they were buried deep in the grain.

One person who
was
celebrating was Mishani tu Koli. She stood near the back of the sparse gathering, holding a glass of chilled wine, as the last of the signatures were put to the treaty and Reki delivered the final speech. The rays of Nuki’s eye slanted across the courtyard and the clean heat on her pale skin was pleasant and soothing. She felt lighter of spirit than she had in a long time. The treaty was completed, and her work was done here.

She had been in the desert almost a year in an ambassadorial role, for the Libera Dramach specifically and the western high families generally. Not that the time had darkened her complexion at all, but it had given her a taste for Tchom Rin fashion. Her dress was airier than she would have worn back home, a deep orange-brown like the last minutes of the sunset. Her black hair had been coiled and arranged with jewelled pins to fall in a multitude of braids down to the backs of her knees. She wore a dusky eye shadow, and small silver ear-ornaments. If not for her skin, she could have passed as a woman of the desert.

‘Mishani,’ said a soft voice in greeting. Mishani turned her head to see Asara standing next to her, watching the events on the dais draw to a close. As always, it took a fraction of a second to connect her with the Asara that she had known in the past. Even after all the time they had spent in each other’s company trying to arrange the treaty that was being signed today, she could not reconcile this woman with the one who had been Kaiku’s handmaiden. Something fundamental and instinctive in her rebelled against it, and had to be mastered by intellect. After all, they were physically
not the same
. Nothing by which she might recognise the old Asara existed in this new form.

Had she not known better, she would have said she was looking at a purebred Tchom Rin woman from the noblest desert stock. Her skin was tanned and flawless, her hair – blacker even than Mishani’s – tied back in a simple ponytail that accentuated the elegant bones of her face, and drew attention to her almond-shaped eyes whose natural hue had been complemented by sea-toned eye shadow. Her pale blue robe was clasped at one shoulder with a brooch and clung to her figure, fluttering slightly in the warm breaths of wind that came from the west. She had dressed with the minimum of ostentation so as not to outshine her husband on this day, and yet all it served to do was to highlight how beautiful she really was.

But it was a false beauty. Mishani knew that, even if nobody else here did, except the Sister of the Red Order that observed from one side of the dais. Asara was an Aberrant, able to change her appearance to suit her desires. Her talent was unique among her kind, and Mishani was thankful that it was so. One of her was dangerous enough.

‘You must be proud, Asara,’ Mishani commented.

‘Of Reki?’ she appeared to consider this for a moment. ‘I suppose I am. Let us just say I still find him interesting. He has come a long way since I met him.’

That was something of an understatement. Though they had never met, Mishani had heard accounts of Reki as an adolescent: bookish, timid, lacking the fire of his older sister the Empress. Yet when he returned to Jospa to take the title of Barak after his father’s death, he had been a different person. Harder, more driven, ruthless in the application of his natural intelligence and cunning. And in four years he had not only made Blood Tanatsua into the strongest high family in the desert, but today he had succeeded in bringing the other families under his banner.