His apprenticeship at the temple was a refuge, a restoration for the crime he had committed. He regretted less the fact that he had murdered his own father, but more that his actions had driven away the rest of his family. His mother was ineffectual without her husband's control, incapable of initiative. His sister had been recently raped. The misfortunes that could have assailed them were legion, and he would never know. For weeks he had tried to track them, to find word of them in nearby towns; but they had vanished, like smoke in the wind. Then the guilt had set in, the terrible weight of what he had done. Despair took him, and he languished in his empty home for weeks. After that, he had gone to the temple and offered himself to Enyu. If he could not heal himself, perhaps he could heal others. Grief-stricken, he was not thinking as clearly as he might have been; but the priests accepted him, and there he found order, a routine, and time to piece his life back together.
But it was the wrong life, and he had taken it for the wrong reasons. He had not the temperament nor the discipline nor – he sickened to admit – the raw faith to dedicate his life to serving Enyu in a temple. Kaiku had been the catalyst that had shown him that. He still believed Enyu had spared him from the slaughter at the temple for a reason, but it was not the reason he had first envisaged. She had sent him to walk among the Aberrants.
When he had left Asara in Chaim and gone south, he had sought only to get away from her. He could not bear the thought of Asara's mocking gaze, or what he might say to Kaiku if she ever returned from the mountains. He needed to be alone, to think things through. He had ever been a solitary child, and he was used to his own counsel; now he needed the peace to listen to it.
You believe your journey was ordained by your goddess, that you were spared for a purpose; but there is no greater foulness to Enyu than an Aberrant. Reconcile these things, if you can.
Asara's words haunted him as he took a ship from Pelis, back to Jinka and the mainland. He could not reconcile them. Was this a test of his faith? Was he supposed to help them, or thwart them? Were they not all working towards the same goaclass="underline" finding the hand behind the shin-shin? Was there a lesson to be learned here, or was he simply not seeing it? Whichever way he turned, he came up against the same block: Aberrants, whether they were inherently evil or not, were perversions of nature, products of the blight that had stricken the land. How could he believe that any path that Enyu set him would coincide with theirs?
He thought about it all the way back to Axekami, where he found the city in turmoil. It was only then that he realised he had given himself no plan, no destination, and that he had nowhere to go. What money he had with him was fast running out, and there was no prospect of getting any more. He had relied on Kaiku and Asara's charity since he had joined them, and payment for the journey back from Fo had sapped the little he had taken from his temple when he left. He thought to find another temple of Enyu, who would not turn away one of their own. Not in Axekami, for it was evident the capital was a seething boil of anger at the moment; but there were others elsewhere, where he could find calm and meditate on his quandary.
Yet he did not go to a temple. That would be going backwards, settling himself into the life that Kaiku had torn him from. And whatever else had come of it, he had not forgotten the feeling of rightness he had experienced as he and Asara sailed out of the Forest of Yuna towards Axekami. That feeling told him now that the temple of Enyu was not the answer. Instead, he went to the temple of Panazu.
Getting into the city was not easy, but Axekami had not closed itself off completely. Many folk were leaving in terror as martial law gripped the interior, and a way out was a way in. Tane had not forgotten the note Asara had left him. He was still no closer to an answer than he ever had been, but he had learned that he would never find the truth by leaving the path he had taken. All he could do was follow it and hope things became clearer. That was his reasoning, anyway. He resolutely refused to recognise the tug of his heart in the matter, and he would not think of Kaiku at all.
Now she had returned to him. The news she brought staggered them all, revealing the full extent of the Weavers' evil, showing them finally the source of the sickness in the land. Alone, she had walked into the wilderness, and come back bearing something more precious than all the jewels in the world.
It came to him then as a revelation. In his arrogance, he had always imagined that he was the one ordained by Enyu for great things. There had always been beneath his reasoning a selfish centre, considering all events in relation to him. But it was Kaiku who had found the source of the blight, picking up a thread woven by her father and following it to its end. Who knew how far back into time that thread stretched, the accretion of knowledge by scholar after scholar, building into wisdom? It took the courage and guile of one man to find the secret; but it took the strength of his daughter to bring it back. It was not Tane's path that was important, but Kaiku's. All that the priests of Enyu's temples had been working for these past decades, with their prayers and meditation, had been unravelled by an Aberrant, the most cursed of nature.
Then why was he there? As a witness? As one who should guard her? As a representative of Enyu's will? He had not been particularly successful at any of these tasks.
Perhaps you are just here, Tane, he thought. Perhaps there is no greater plan, or if there is, it is too great for you to see it. You always were too introspective. That is why you never made a good priest. Too many questions, not enough blind faith.
It was not satisfying, but it would do for now. Whatever the real answers, he had no doubts about Kaiku now. He would follow her where she went. As if his traitor heart would allow him otherwise…
'Out of the question,' Cailin snapped. 'She's too valuable.'
'Nobody knows that more than me,' Mishani replied. 'But if you want me to go, she goes too.'
Mishani and Cailin faced each other, locking eyes and wills. Cailin was almost a head taller than the diminutive noblewoman, but Mishani was not in the least cowed by her opponent's size or fearsome appearance. They stood in one of the upper rooms of the house of the Red Order, a long building with a curving, peaked roof which overhung the balconies running around its first floor. In contrast to the somewhat ramshackle nature of its surrounding buildings, this one was tidy and precise, with pennants of red and black hanging from the balcony rail before the entrance.
'You would willingly put your friend in danger, Mishani,' Cailin accused.
'No,' said Kaiku, from where she leaned against a wall boyishly. 'I asked her. I demand to go.'
'So do I,' put in Tane, who was watching from the other side of the room. Asara stood near him, a faint smirk on her face.
'Why?' Cailin asked, her voice cold. 'You are no warrior. Have you killed before? Have you, Kaiku?'
'I made an oath to Ocha,' said Kaiku calmly, ignoring the question. 'My enemy are the Weavers. The Weavers want Lucia dead. I wish to be part of any effort to thwart them.'
'You will be!' Cailin said, anger creeping into her tone. 'You will learn to be a more powerful force than you can imagine. Dying in the Imperial Keep before you grow into your strength is futile.'
'Cailin, she speaks sense,' Asara said. 'The Keep guards will expect warriors, much as those you have already chosen to go. They will not suspect women and priests.'
'She is dangerous still!' Cailin hissed, flinging out a finger at Kaiku. 'She has only begun to learn how to suppress her kana. If she should unleash it within the Keep, we would all be killed.'