He looked back in alarm, clambered up the last of the stairs so he was standing near the Weavers. It was evident that he thought it would provide some kind of sanctuary. He was wrong. The feya-kori's stump crashed down onto him in a geyser of sludge, turning Juto and the Weavers alike into burning pulp.
The Weavers' death-cry rolled across the Weave like thunder. Kaiku and Phaeca used its wake to dig themselves deeper into concealment, evading the frustrated minds that searched for them. The Weavers were distressed by the loss of two of their number. Kaiku found strength in that. She remembered Lon's reaction to the descending fog, and Juto's strange and mistaken certainty that it was nothing to do with the feya-kori. Matching that with the circumstances of the Weaver's ambush, she could only draw one conclusion. Neither the men who had betrayed them nor the Weavers who lay in wait had known that the demons were going to emerge.
Still they did not dare to move. They could sense the feya-kori waiting for them to show themselves. The Weavers had turned their attention to it now, lulling it, cajoling it in some fashion that Kaiku did not understand. After an agonising minute, the Sisters heard it turn and climb back onto the ramp. Kaiku dared a glimpse through the piping at their back, and saw it retreating into the red smoke. The second demon was visible as a ghostly blur beyond it. They were heading up the ramp, towards the Emperor's Road, a wide thoroughfare that led to the west gate. Gradually, the stench of their presence began to diminish, and with it their violent influence on the Weave.
'We have to go,' Kaiku said. If they did not take advantage of the Weavers' disarray now, it would be too late.
Phaeca was shivering, her pupils pinpricks in her red irises. She jumped at Kaiku's touch, startled back into the real world. Kaiku repeated herself, and Phaeca nodded tersely. They got to their feet and hurried to where Nomoru had hidden; but when they arrived, there was no sign of her, except for a rusty spattering of bloodstains.
'She can take care of herself,' Phaeca murmured. When Kaiku hesitated, her companion gripped her arm hard. 'She can, Kaiku. It's us they're after. She's safer on her own.'
Kaiku realised that they were still carrying their rifles, and she threw hers aside. She would not dare to fire it after what Juto had said. Phaeca did the same.
The steps that Juto had climbed had been melted by the touch of the demon, so they headed around the tier to find another way up. Without a guide, their path was tortuous, and they found dead-ends more often than not. As the demons retreated, the Weavers were returning to their search in earnest, but the Sisters were harder to find now that they had moved on. It was not only the Weavers they had to worry about, however: through a break in the miasma they spotted the tall, black-robed shape of a Nexus on a higher tier, and that meant there were Aberrants hunting for them too.
But the feya-kori's fog worked in their favour. As foul as it was, it was keeping them hidden. They made their way up two tiers in quick succession without encountering anything, and with distance the Weaver's probing grew less accurate.
Kaiku gave her companion a nervous glance. In the red light, without her make-up and dressed in dowdy peasant clothes, she barely recognised her friend. Nor did she recognise the expression of abject terror on her face. Kaiku, frightened as she was, had been hunted before, and she had survived then as she was determined to survive now. But this was new to Phaeca, and her talent for empathy made her mentally frail. The unrelenting expectation of running into a Weaver or an Aberrant – both of which would result in an excruciating death – was pushing her into the edge of something like shock. Her Weaving was suffering too, becoming clumsy and distracted; she was not disguising herself well.
Kaiku grabbed her suddenly, pulling her aside into the niche between two sets of pipes. She was only just fast enough. Her eyesight was better than the ghaureg's, and she had spotted its silhouette in the mist before it had registered hers. Kaiku clutched her friend close to her as the massive Aberrant trod slowly towards them, then on and past, leaving only a fleeting glimpse of a shaggy, muscular body and oversized jaws packed with teeth. Phaeca's breath fluttered as she released it, and Kaiku saw that her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
'We will get out of this,' she whispered. 'Trust me.'
Phaeca managed a nod, her red hair falling untidily across her face. Kaiku brushed it back, unconvinced.
'Trust me,' she repeated with a smile, and through her fear she actually felt confident. They would not die here. She would see to that, even if she had to take on every Weaver in the area.
She pulled Phaeca into motion, and they slipped away in the direction the ghaureg had come from. The air crawled with the attention of the Weavers, the threads of the Weave humming with their resonance. They were sending vibrations between themselves, throwing a net for the others to catch and hold, hoping that the Sisters' presence would interfere with the pattern. It was a technique Kaiku had never seen before: ineffective, to be certain, but it meant that the Weavers had begun devising ways of working together, and that was dangerous.
The Sisters cringed as something jumped across the aisle right in front of them, a shadow darting out of the murk and away. They froze, but it did not come back; it had not seen them. Phaeca was a wreck after that, but Kaiku urged her up another set of steps and onto a higher tier. They were hopelessly lost, navigating only by the brighter glow in the mist that was the pall-pit's centre. The plaintive wail of the feya-kori came to them distantly.
Kaiku said a quick prayer to Shintu – she could not decide whether he was on their side or not tonight, but with what she knew of the god of fortune it was probably both and neither – and an instant later she turned a corner and almost ran into the outer wall of the pit.
She blinked in surprise.
'It's the wall…' Phaeca said, a slowly dawning hope in her voice.
Kaiku gave her a companionable squeeze on the arm. 'See? Have faith.' She looked up at it. It was only nine feet high. Scalable. They would not have to waste time looking for the way in that Lon had provided for them.
'Help me up,' Kaiku said. Phaeca glanced around, seeing only the swirling mist – which was gradually beginning to lift with the departure of the demons – and the dark bulk of the Weaver contraptions that hummed and tapped. Convinced that there was nothing immediately nearby, she made a stirrup with her hands for Kaiku to step into. Kaiku boosted herself up onto the wall, and Phaeca jumped as her friend unexpectedly shrieked. Her fingers came loose and Kaiku fell back down, landed on her heels and collapsed onto her back. She scrambled to her feet, and her forearms were running with blood.
Phaeca was frantic. The Weavers' attention had devolved upon them suddenly, drawn by the scream.
'Again,' Kaiku said through gritted teeth.
'But it's-'
'Again!'
For she knew that her cry had given them away, and if they did not get out of there now they were not getting out at all. Phaeca hurriedly knitted her fingers again and Kaiku threw herself up before her instinct for self-preservation could stop her. The thin bladed fins atop the wall cut into her arms in a dozen different places, slicing across the existing cuts, bringing tears to her eyes. Her kana was racing to repair the damage, awakening without her volition; she forced it down, for it would bring the Weavers more surely than her scream had. She lifted her weight, driving the blades deeper into her flesh, tiny razors that ribboned her skin agonisingly. She got one foot to the top of the wall, holding her body clear, and then she stood in one convulsive movement. The blades slid clear of her, and the pain was so exquisite that she almost fainted.