The Skein of Lament by Chris Wooding Page A

came, fleeing the world outside. Those under sentence of death, those whose temperament made them too alien to live among normal people, those who sought the deep riches exposed at the bottom of the Fault and were prepared to risk anything to get it. Settlements were founded, small at first but then becoming larger as they amalgamated or conquered others. Aberrants – who would be executed on sight in any lawful town – began to appear, looking for sanctuary from the Weavers who hunted them.
    The home of the Libera Dramach was one such community. It was known to its inhabitants as the Fold, both to imply a sense of belonging and because of the valley in which the settlement was built. It was constructed across an overlapping series of plateaux and ledges that tumbled down the blunt western end of the valley, linked together by stairs, wooden bridges and pulley-lifts. The Fold cluttered and piled up on itself in a heap, a confusing mishmash of architecture from all over Saramyr, built by many hands and not all of them skilled. It was an accretion of dwellings raised over twenty-five years to no overarching plan or pattern; instead, newcomers had made their homes wherever they would fit, and in some cases they only barely did.
    Off the dirt tracks that wound haphazardly across the uneven terrain, rickety storefronts sold whatever the merchants could get this far into the Fold. Bars peddled liquor from their own stills, smokehouses offered amaxa root and other narcotics for those who could afford it. Dusky Tchom Rin children in their traditional desert garb walked alongside Newlandsmen from the far northeast; an Aberrant youth with mottled skin and yellow eyes like a hawk’s kissed deeply with an elegant girl from the wealthy Southern Prefectures; a priest of Omecha knelt in a small and sheltered shrine to make an offering to his deity; a soldier walked the streets, lightly tapping the pommel of his sword, alert for any trouble.
    Amid the immediate clutter of houses were the fortifications. Guard-towers and outposts rose above the crush. Walls had been built, their boundaries overrun by the growing town, and newer ones constructed further out. Fire-cannons looked east over the valley. On the rocky rim, which sheltered the Fold from prying eyes, a thick stockade hid between the pleats and dips of the land. In the Xarana Fault, danger was never very far away, and the people of the Fold had learned to defend themselves.
    Lucia tu Erinima stood on the balcony of her guardian’s house, on one of the uppermost levels of the town, and fed crumbs to tiny piping birds from her cupped hand. A pair of ravens, perched on the guttering of the building opposite, watched her with a careful eye. From within the house, sharing a brew of hot, bitter tea, Zaelis and Cailin watched her also.
    ‘Gods, she’s grown so much,’ Zaelis sighed, turning away to face his companion.
    Cailin smiled faintly, but the black-and-red pattern of alternating triangles on her lips made her look like a smirking predator. ‘If I were a more cynical woman, I would think that you engineered the kidnapping of your erstwhile pupil all those years ago just so you could adopt her for yourself.’
    ‘Ha!’ he barked. ‘You think I haven’t been over that in my mind enough times?’
    ‘And what did you decide?’
    ‘That I worry far more since I became her surrogate father than I ever did in all the years since I started the Libera Dramach.’
    ‘You have looked after them both admirably,’ Cailin said, then took a sip from the small green tea-bowl in her hand.
    Zaelis gave her a surprised look. ‘That’s unusually kind of you, Cailin,’ he said.
    ‘I am occasionally capable of being so.’
    Zaelis turned his attention back to the balcony where Lucia stood. Once, she had been the heir to the Saramyr Empire. Now she was just a girl a few weeks from her fourteenth harvest, standing in the sun in a simple white dress, feeding birds. Her blonde hair, once long,