The Emperor had laughed, his hunched shoulders shaking, before he turned his head to fix Shroudweaver fully.
His voice a snake’s hiss. ‘Weaver! Everything you’ve learnt, everything they taught you in that pathetic birch grove you call an Aestering.Everythingyou think you know is but the briefest sliver of the world I could show you. The world I have walked in since before the ice lay on the stone.’
Shroudweaver recalled his twisted fingers reaching upwards, his eyes wet and luminous in the dim light. ‘You have not even begun to know the touch of death, Weaver, the mysteries of the soul.’ That smile, pale as bone. ‘You’re like a blind child lost in a forest. I’m the moon above.’
Shroudweaver had shivered, something in the words lodging under his heart. ‘You’re talkative, that’s all I know.’
A light had gone out in the Emperor’s eyes, which turned flat and hard. ‘Laugh it off, Shroudweaver.’ He’d chuckled. ‘Howmany voices laughing in you now? A thousand? Five thousand?’ He shuffled forwards, chain links stretching. ‘I was widespread, little weaver, like a seed in the wind, like a lie in the heart, there was a shard of me within everyone, livingordead in this mountain.’
He lunged on the chain, his knees striking the wet sand. ‘That is where my magic surpasses yours, blind child. I willalwaysbe in this mountain, in its people, in their blood and bone. I have woven myself into them in their smallest spaces. Every hollow of their heart is a home for me.’
His smile radiant again, a preacher spreading the gospel. ‘This brief separation of yours will fail, Weaver. You cannot hold these stolen souls forever.’
Impossible to forget the feral light in the Emperor’s eyes as his voice soared. ‘And once they are unbound, they will flow forth into every single little shadow, every drop of blood. Every cut, every mouth, every wound will be as a door to me. I ride their souls like skin upon flesh, like wind upon the land, like the buzz in the heart of the fly. You cannot hold me forever. You cannothold me.’
His face twisted with glee, the echoes falling into the black lake, which ate the sound. Shroudweaver remembered the way the words had died, sifting into the black.
Skinpainter had simply rolled their eyes and rubbed their knuckles. ‘Are we about done here Shroud? We’re getting nothing useful, and I’m growing tired of the sound of his voice.’
The Emperor was now nothing but a grinning, tilting head, hissing into the dark. ‘Arewe done here, Shroudweaver? Do you grasp what I am telling you?’
He ran a tongue over crusted lips. ‘Such hubris, Shroudweaver. You took themallinto you. Desperate. Thoughtless. Crude. Taking when you could simply … give.’ Sand sifted between his fingers. ‘They are all mine.Everyonein this mountain, in Thell, in that shrieking city called Luss. I bound a shard of my soul to theirs on death, and for those still living I prepared a home in their flesh for me to find them when they died.’
The Emperor’s head had tipped back, something close to wonder in his eyes. ‘You cannot destroy me. You cannot stop me. I amforeverin this mountain. And the moment you release those souls I will reclaim them, every one. I will move into their bodies like glass into water. And all it will take will be a single cut. A single tear. One, small, mistake.’
Shroudweaver had watched the man in front of him rant, and heard Shipwright’s voice in his head, climbing above his hammering heart. ‘Folk are always loudest when they’re scared.’
She’d said that the night before the last battle, in camp, as the people of Thell and Hesper fucked and yelled and fought each other just enough to keep the fear of dying away. She’d been right though. He had seen the edges of that fear around the Emperor’s eyes.
‘Do you buy it, Shroud?’ Skinpainter’s face clouded.
‘Perhaps,’ Shroudweaver had said, as he felt a little steel flourish in his spine.
The Emperor had snarled. ‘Perhaps? You know it, Weaver.’
Shroudweaver had thought for a moment. Taken a little of the calm he was taught at the Aestering. The drip of water over stone. The heat of his own breathing. Had felt his mind quiet a little, felt the run of those other voices slow.
He’d looked to Skinpainter, to their broad, expectant face. ‘I can’t hold these souls forever. That much is true. But we have time to figure out a solution to that.’ He had pressed his fingers against his nose, trying to quiet the chattering that pushed on the inside of his skull and pointed to the Emperor. ‘His soul might be spread all through the mountain. It might be bonded, somehow, with those that have already died. I don’t know. This is seven grades of wrong beyond anything I was ever taught.’
‘Lies,’ the Emperor had growled, before Skinpainter cuffed him again, then turned to Shroudweaver with bruised knuckles and a heavy brow.
‘Speak Shroud, I need your advice here. Before I found you, I had no idea anyone could even play this bastard at his own game. You’re our best hope, and you’ve done right by us. Tell us what needs done, and we’ll do it.’
Shroudweaver had smiled sadly. The weight of it all sitting in his gut. ‘Even if his soul is spread like seeds on the wind, it’s still tied to his body,’ he’d pointed, ‘tothisbody. Everything needs an origin, and anchor. No one’s ever been able to weave without one.’
He’d gazed coldly at the Emperor. ‘I don’t think he’s brokenthatrule yet.’
He paced back and forth flexing his hands. ‘We can’t stop him reasserting control if he gets back into these people.’ Held up his fingers. ‘Which means we need to secure three things. The living, the dead, and him.’
The Emperor had watched them sullenly, eyes lidded, as Shroudweaver took Skinpainter aside, an arm around their shoulders. Voice low and confident. ‘You’ll need to figure out some way of guarding people against this.’
Skinpainter’s eyes had widened. The scale of the task blossoming in the silence. ‘Is that even possible?’
Shroudweaver sighed. ‘Feels like we’re specialising in impossible lately. But if that’s what it takes.’
Skinpainter spat. ‘This is going to be a bastard lot of work.’
‘Make it something they want to do then.’ Shroudweaver had paused, ‘Give them something to believe in.’ He’d glanced at the Emperor. ‘Give them something to fear.’
