Zahn did not want to trouble himself with it. He believed their loyalty towards their kin was genuine – and indeed, he had never prevented them seeing Lucia – but it was also painfully transparent that they were thinking towards the outcome of the war, for if victorious then Lucia was by far the most likely candidate for the throne, and Blood Erinima wanted to ride with her to power again. However, Zahn's claim on her complicated things immensely, for as the only surviving parent she was legally his child before the family of the deceased mother. If that claim could be proved to be genuine.
But Zahn was not the biggest problem: Lucia was. She had no interest in such matters. She was happy to acknowledge her relatives, but she would not talk politics with them. Zahn was her father; it was that simple. As far as matters of Blood went, she needed neither Blood Ikati nor Blood Erinima. The Libera Dramach were at her beck and call, an army to rival any of the great houses and independent of them. She did not care about becoming Empress. She did not care about being a leader, or a figurehead, or anything at all of that nature. It was difficult to tell what she cared about. That frustrated women like Oyo immensely, and they fumed and said that the child did not realise what was good for her, and that she should be with her family. But Zahn knew his child, as well as anyone could know her, and he believed her a thing apart from the grubby machinations that Oyo wanted to drag her into. He loved her, and he let her go her own way. But he would not renounce his fatherhood, no matter how Blood Erinima cajoled and promised and threatened.
A rowboat was sliding across the estuary towards the southern shore; it was time to deal with the second and more recent concern. Zahn spurred his horse through the ranks of his men and trotted down the shallow incline at the base of the hill. Oyo watched him go with an unfriendly gaze. A small guard of twenty fell in behind at the command of one of his generals. A Sister joined them, appearing unobtrusively at his side like a shadow, her face still. They passed through the army to the stretch of clear grass where the water ended, and there they stopped.
The rowboat had reached the shore now, and the newcomers were dragging it out of the water, all four of them together. Zahn tried to establish which one of them was the leader, but it was hopeless. They were all dressed in simple hemp clothes, their hair varying in colour from blond to black; all had the same yellowish skin tattooed head to foot in curving tendrils of pale green. Tkiurathi, from the jungle continent of Okhamba, so his aides informed him. Savages, they said.
The question was, what were the savages doing in Saramyr?
The boat secured, one of them approached Zahn, walking fearlessly towards the forest of soldiers. Zahn glanced up at the junks. They were of Saramyr make. The gods knew how many other Tkiurathi were in there, but they had better hope they could swim: one signal from him and Zila's fire-cannons would blow them to flinders.
The stranger stopped a short way from Zahn. His orange-blond hair was smoothed back along his skull and hardened there with sap. Okhamban kntha – called 'gutting-hooks' in Saramyrrhic – hung from either side of his belt: double-bladed weapons with a handle set at the point where they met, each blade kinked the opposite way to the other.
'Daygreet, honoured Barak,' said the Tkiurathi, in near-flawless Saramyrrhic. 'I am Tsata.' He bowed in an ambiguous manner, in a style used between men who were unsure of their relative social standing to each other. Zahn could not decide if it was arrogance or accident. The name was faintly familiar to him, however.
'I am the Barak Zahn tu Ikati,' he said.
Tsata gave him a curious look. 'Indeed? Then we have a mutual acquaintance. Kaiku tu Makaima.'
Zahn's horse crabstepped with a snort; he pulled it firmly back into line. Now he knew where he had heard the name before. This was the man who had travelled with the spy Saran into the heart of Okhamba to bring back the evidence of the Weavers' origins; the man who had helped Kaiku destroy a witchstone in the Xarana Fault. He looked down at the Sister who stood to his right.
'Can you confirm this?'
Her irises had already turned to red. 'I am doing so.'
Zahn regarded the foreigner with frank suspicion on his face. 'Why are you here, Tsata? This is not a good time to be visiting Saramyr.'
'We come to offer you our aid,' said Tsata. 'A thousand Tkiurathi, to fight alongside you against the Weavers.'
'I see,' Zahn said. 'And what would you do if we did not want your aid?'
'We would fight anyway, whatever your wishes,' Tsata replied. 'We come to stop the Weavers. If we can do it together, so be it. If not, we shall do it alone.'
'He is who he says he is,' the Sister said. 'I have contacted Kaiku tu Makaima.' She bowed to Tsata in the appropriate female mode. 'She sends you greetings, honoured friend. The Red Order are pleased that your path has set you upon our shores again.'
Zahn felt a twinge of irritation at being undercut. His unfriendly stance was somewhat robbed of force now that Tsata had the Sisters' approval. The Red Order considered themselves above political loyalty; they knew they were invaluable, and took advantage of it. They might have been easier on the eye than the Weavers were, but they were not so different as they liked to think.
He slid down from his horse and handed the reins to a nearby soldier. 'It seems I have been ungracious,' he said, and bowed. 'Welcome back.'
'I am only sorry I could not come sooner, or bring more of my people,' Tsata said, dismissing the apology. 'Ten times this many would have come, if we had the ships.'
'I had not known the Tkiurathi were a seafaring folk,' Zahn said, embedding an implied question in an observation.
Tsata smiled to himself. Such a Saramyr thing to do, to be so indirect. 'The ships came from Blood Mumaka, as did the crew.'
'I thought they had fled Saramyr when the war began.' What Zahn thought of that was evident in his voice.
'To Okhamba, yes. They sailed their fleet away. But they still desire to help their homeland in such ways as they can. Mishani tu Koli came to me before I left and asked me to pass on news of Chien os Mumaka's death to his mother. I found them only hours before they left Hanzean, ahead of the Aberrant armies that were spreading through the northwest. In return for my news they allowed me to travel with them back to Okhamba. I have kept in contact with Blood Mumaka ever since; when the time came, they offered their aid.'
'Four ships?' Zahn said disparagingly.
'They need the others to conduct their trade with,' Tsata replied. 'The rest of the Near World goes on as ever, no matter what the state of matters here. They cannot see that if Saramyr falls, they will be next. But my people can. I have shown them.'
Zahn considered the Tkiurathi for a moment. On the one hand, any aid was welcome in these times, and he was not such a fool as to turn away a genuine ally; but on the other, it was difficult to believe that a thousand men – ten thousand, if Tsata was to be believed – would willingly sail to another continent to fight for people they had virtually no contact with.
'Our ways are not your ways, Barak Zahn,' Tsata said, his expression serious. He had guessed the other man's thoughts. 'We will not wait at home until it is our turn to be attacked. The Weavers threaten the whole of the Near World. We will stop them at their source, if we can.'
Zahn was about to reply when the Sister touched him on his arm. She was looking to the north, over the river. The line of the horizon was hazed. Zahn's eyes went to the junks: they seemed ghosted slightly, blurred at the edges. He blinked, feeling faintly myopic.
'Is it usual for fog to come so quickly in these parts?' Tsata asked, as the air thickened around them.
TEN
The walls of Zila had held back the enemies of the Empire for a thousand years and more. The feya-kori went through them like children kicking over mudcastles.