'There is another matter,' Cailin pointed out. 'The caged Aberrants Kaiku came across. What do they mean?'
'Perhaps they are studying the effects of the witchstones on living beings. Perhaps they are searching for a cure to Aberrancy.'
'Perhaps,' Cailin replied. 'Perhaps it was merely a product of their insanity. Or maybe it is a clue to something much greater.'
'We should think on this,' agreed one of the other Sisters.
'But this changes nothing,' Cailin said, her voice rising decisively. 'Kaiku's discovery is only a first step, a breakthrough that demands our attention. But we have other, more pressing concerns now. This can wait. We must disseminate the information and ensure it becomes spread so wide that it cannot be suppressed, we must plan and research and investigate… but all that is for the future.' She made a sweeping gesture as if to clear it from their minds. 'For now, we have another task. Axekami is falling apart; the city is in the midst of revolution. The Imperial Guards cannot contain it. The armies of Blood Amacha and Blood Kerestyn squabble just outside the city. The Weave-lord Vyrrch works from within to undermine the Empress and kill her child.' She paused, and her eyes flicked to each of them in turn. 'This must not be allowed to happen. She is the only hope we have of turning the people of Saramyr away from the Weavers' teachings, making them understand that Aberrants are not the evil they imagine us to be. I do not care who takes the reins of the Empire if Blood Erinima is overthrown, but I will not lose the Heir-Empress. I have met her in her dreams, and I know something of what she can do. She is too rare and powerful a creature to die on the end of some ignorant foot soldier's blade. Perhaps Blood Erinima will emerge triumphant, but I count the chances as slim. The Empress has set herself squarely against the world. If she loses, Lucia dies.'
'Then what do you propose to do?' Asara asked.
'The plans are in place, between ourselves and the Libera Dramach, to ensure the Heir-Empress's safety the only way we can,' Cailin replied. 'We propose to kidnap her.'
Twenty-Six
The door crashed inward, wrenched off its hinges with one swing of the short, heavy battering ram that two of the Imperial Guards held between them. Guard Commander Jalis led the way inside, clambering over the fallen obstacle, passing from bright daylight into the gloomy murk of the narrow stone stairway. Already a hue and cry was being raised somewhere beneath. He raced downward, the tarnished white and blue plates of his armour clinking as he descended headlong towards the basement of the tannery. The stench of the place was even worse down here than it had been in the open air, and it crowded him in and almost made him gag. He swallowed the reflex. His heart was pounding, his blood up. Behind him two cohorts of Guards were cramming down the stairway, their rifles and swords clattering. Running blind into who knew what, and none of them cared. They had found the bastards at last, and they were in no mood to go easy on them.
Jalis burst out of the stairwell and into the wide, low-ceilinged basement. He had no time to register the details of the room; there was only a flash impression of space, and gloom, and the blur of metal swinging towards him. His sword swept up to meet another man's blade with a ringing of steel. He parried, parried again, then put his weight to his sword and struck, knocking his opponent back as he fended the blow weakly aside. Jalis forced his way into the room, clearing a path for the others to break through and join the combat. Swords clashed in a metallic cacophony, and bodies heaved against each other as battle was joined.
Jalis threw back his attacker with a second push and stabbed. Until that point he had barely seen who it was he was fighting, but now he registered that it was a young man, wearing no armour and plainly no warrior, with his face contorted in an ugly grimace of hate. The unfair odds concerned him not one bit. He ran the young man through, and had his blade out and was fighting with someone else before his enemy's impaled body had hit the floor.
There were dozens of them, outnumbering the Guards in the room; but they were pitifully matched against trained, armoured soldiers. Jalis's arm juddered as he buried his blade in another man's neck, this one no more than eighteen harvests, little more than a boy. The Guards pushed outward from the stairway, allowing more of their number in behind them, and the ferocity of the initial onslaught diminished as more swords arrived to take the strain.
Jalis took a second to sweep the room with his eyes. The basement was massive, and poorly lit, but it took only one glance to realise that their information had been good. Everywhere, tables were laden with tubes of coiled brass, distillation bulbs, disassembled clockwork timers and fuses. All about lay kegs of ignition powder, stacked up against the round pillars that supported the ceiling, secreted in corners behind piles of crates. It was a disorderly clutter at the edges, where odd shapes bulked in the shadows, but the central section was lethally precise, its tables laid in stringent rows so that completed components could be passed along the line to the next worker.
This was the heart of Unger tu Torrhyc's secret army: the bomb factory. Dozens had died at the hands of these fanatics, and hundreds more from the chaos their bombs had sown. He had no pity for them. They were a threat to Blood Erinima, and to the Empire. Each one that fell to his blade made Axekami a better place.
And yet the frenzy with which they threw themselves on to the swords of the Guardsmen surprised even him. These were not fighters, yet not a one of them cowered, or tried to run. Instead they had taken up arms and raced to the attack, and they were hewn down like wheat. Jalis grimaced as a spray of blood gave him a warm slap across the jaw, and wondered what misplaced loyalty possessed them to such fervour.
A moment later, the crack of a rifle jolted his attention, and a Guard to his left fell with a sigh to the ground. It was followed by another, and again. Jalis picked out the source; two men against the far wall, where there was a rack of rifles and ignition powder. Several more had arrived and were taking their choice of weapons. A Guard just behind Jalis was already unslinging his own rifle from his back, but Jalis grabbed his arm roughly.
'Don't be a fool!' he cried. 'Retreat! Get out!'
It had been a risky gamble, to plough blindly into the enemy as they had done, but there was only one way into or out of the basement and they had had no other choice. Now Jalis saw he had underestimated the zeal of the bomb-makers, and it might cost them dearly. Gods, they should know better than to fire rifles down here! The entire place was one enormous bomb waiting to explode! It was suicide!
But perhaps that was exactly their plan.
The Guards pulled back towards the stairway, but the bomb-makers had redoubled the fury of their attack, throwing themselves at the intruders with no heed at all for their safety, choking the passage to freedom. More rifles joined the firefight, shooting friend and foe alike with indiscriminate aim. Jalis tried to push his way back through the ranks, the cloying stench of the tannery suffocating him, sudden panic swelling within; but there was nowhere he could go. He felt a sinking, draining feeling in his chest, and the world slowed to a crawl, and a sinister prescience whispered in his ear that the end was upon him.