That was when the alarm was tripped.
Vyrrch panicked as the web around him erupted in a deafening din, a stunning cacophony of resonances. For an instant, he flailed; then he regained himself, and cast about for the cause. Nothing! There was nothing! He had been careful! He could feel the sudden, urgent movement of Tabaxa as he hefted his bulk up and came racing down the web, searching for the intruder. Vyrrch tried to move, to get out before he was identified, but he was trapped, his consciousness snared. Frantically, he shifted back down to normal resonance, and there, to his horror, he found himself engulfed in some grotesque, slippery thing, half mist and half solid, a vile amoeba that was clutching his mind tightly.
Vyrrch cursed. Tabaxa had not only employed alarms that were visible exclusively in the higher spectrum – the filmy ghosts he had seen before – but he had used ones that could only be seen in the normal spectrum too. Vyrrch had been caught out; he should have been switching between the two resonances.
Enraged suddenly, he annihilated the amoeba with a thought, disassembling its threads in fury. But Tabaxa was almost upon him now, a dark, massive shape, eight legs ratcheting as he raced along the threads of his weave to see what was amiss. It was too late to avoid a conflict, too late to escape and remain anonymous. Tabaxa would know he, Vyrrch, had been here.
Heart's blood! he thought furiously. There's nothing else for it now.
He tore out through the webbing of alarms, tattering it behind him, and crashed into the spider-body of his opponent. His world dissolved into an impossible multitude of threads, a rushing, darting tapestry of tiny knots and tangles, and he was in the threads, controlling them. Tabaxa was here too; Vyrrch sensed his angry defiance. He was puzzled as to why Vyrrch had come into his domain, but eager to demolish the older Weaver. There would be no quarter given, and none asked.
The conflict was conducted faster than consciousness could follow. Each sought a channel into the other, so they dodged and feinted down threads, finding one suddenly knotted against them, untangling this one or that, reaching dead-ends and loops that had been laid as traps or decoys. Each wanted to confuse the other long enough to break through the defences, while simultaneously shoring up their own. By manipulating the threads of the Weave, they jabbed and parried, darting back and forth, creating labyrinths for their opponent to get lost in or frantically unwinding a complex knot to create a channel into their enemy.
But in the end experience won out, and Tabaxa slipped up. Vyrrch had left him a tempting channel as a lure, and he impetuously took it; but it came up against a dead-end, and Vyrrch was waiting. With a speed and skill unmatched among the Weavers, he fashioned an insoluble knot behind Tabaxa, trapping him. Tabaxa tried to skip threads, to get out of the trap, but he only came up against another trap, and another, and by that time it was too late. Vyrrch was already away, burrowing through his defences, and Tabaxa could not get out in time. Vyrrch had identified a knot in Tabaxa's wall that was fraying, and he tore it open and raced through, into Tabaxa's mind like a meathook into a carcass, lodging in there and rending…
He could feel the force of his enemy's haemorrhage as he withdrew, feel the flailing embers of Tabaxa's consciousness as they were pulled back to his dying body. Tabaxa was even now spasming on the floor of his chamber, his brain ripped from the inside by the force of Vyrrch's will. The Weave-lord himself was retreating, the agony receding behind him rapidly as he raced out of the Weave, following the threads back to his own body, cursing and raging.
Vyrrch's eyes snapped open in the dim, filthy room where he sat. He shrieked in frustration, consumed by an anger that could not be borne. He had been careless! He, Vyrrch, the Weave-lord, had been caught by a trap he should have avoided with ease, would have avoided a year ago. What was wrong with him? Why could his mind not assemble his thoughts, lessons, instincts as it used to? He was perhaps the most formidable Weaver in the land, and yet he had blundered into Tabaxa's trickery, and been forced to kill him to protect his own identity. And all without getting close to Barak Zahn. A failure; an unmitigated failure.
Vyrrch rose suddenly, another shriek coming from beneath his Mask. He picked up the unidentifiable corpse on his bed and tossed it into the bloodied pool. He swatted aside a crystal ornament that stood in the corner of the room, one he did not recall seeing before. It dashed into shards on the tiles, a fortune destroyed in an instant. Like a whirlwind he swept through his chambers, breaking and throwing anything he could pick up, screaming like a child in a tantrum before flinging himself to the floor and scratching at it until his fingernails snapped.
The pain of his broken nails brought him to a momentary calm, a lull in the storm. He lay panting for a moment, before getting to his feet and stumbling to where a mouthpiece was set into the wall, connected by an echoing pipe to the quarters of his personal servants.
'Get me a child!' he rasped. 'A child, I don't care what sort. Get me a child, and… and bring me my bag of tools. And food! I want meat! Meat!'
He did not wait for a response. He threw himself to the floor again and lay there, his emaciated ribs heaving, waiting, drooling in anticipation. He did not know what would happen when the child got here. He never knew what would happen. But he thought he was going to enjoy it.
Nine
The compound of Blood Tamak was on the other side of the Imperial Quarter from Blood Koli's, but Mishani chose to walk anyway. For one thing, it was a beautiful day, with cool breezes from the north offering relief from the usual stifling heat of the city. For another, she preferred that her business this afternoon remained a secret.
The streets of the Imperial Quarter were wider than the usual thoroughfares of the city, and less trafficked. Tall, ancient trees lined the roadside, and the rectangular flagstones were swept for leaves every morning. Fountains or ornamental gutters plashed and trickled, collecting in basins where passers-by could drink to quench their thirst. Carts rattled by with deliveries piled high upon them. Mishani passed many gates, each one belonging to an important family, each one with their ancestral emblem wrought upon them somewhere. The Imperial Quarter was made up mainly of the townhouses of the various families – not only the high families who sat on the councils, but a multitude of minor nobles as well.
She glanced up at the Imperial Keep, its angled planes sheening in the sunlight. One such council was going on now, and it was one that she should well be attending. The Heir-Empress was an Aberrant, and the Empress in her hubris still seemed intent on putting her on the throne. Mishani would never have believed it possible – not only that Lucia had been allowed to reach eight harvests of age in the first place, but also that the Empress was foolish enough to think the high families would allow an Aberrant to rule Saramyr. Her father would be angry that she had not been there to lend her support to his condemnation of the Empress; but she had something else to attend to, and it had to be done while all eyes were on the Keep.
The divisions brought about by the revelations in the Imperial Family had come swift and savage. Longtime allies had separated in disgust, driven apart by their inability to condone the other's viewpoint. Arguments had erupted and turned to feuds. Most of it was down to men and their posturing, Mishani thought with a wrinkle of contempt. Her father was an example. He and Barak Chel of Blood Tamak had been political allies and good friends a month ago. Mishani had often accompanied him on visits to the townhouse of Blood Tamak. Then Chel's support of the Empress in the matter of the succession sparked a debate in which both said regretful things to each other, and now they were bitter enemies and would not speak.