Read The Braided Path: The Weavers of Saramyr, The Skein of Lament and the Ascendancy Veil for Free Online

pikes as they passed him by. The newly
turned soil of the flower bed showed no sign of the disturbance Purloch had created while digging himself into it.
    Now the guards were gone, and the child was here alone. Time to do what had to be done. Slipping silently along, he undid the clasp of the dagger at his belt.
    He found the girl in a small paved oval hemmed in by trees. A cat was chasing its tail, while the Heir-Empress watched it with a strangely detached look on her face. The cat was absorbed in its
own capering, so much so that it did not notice his approach. Lucia did, however, though he had made not a sound. She slowly looked into the foliage, right at him, and said: ‘Who are
you?’
    The man slid out from behind a tumisi tree, and the cat bolted. Lucia regarded the newcomer with an unfathomable gaze.
    ‘My name is of no consequence,’ Purloch replied. He was nervous, glancing about, eager to be gone.
    Lucia watched him placidly.
    ‘My lady, I must take something from you,’ he said, drawing his dagger from its sheath.
    The air around them exploded in a frenzy of movement, a thrashing of black wings that beat at the senses and caused Purloch to cry out and fall to his knees, his arm across his face to shield it
from the tumult.
    As quickly as it had begun, it was over. Purloch lowered his arm, and his breath caught in his throat.
    The child was cloaked in ravens. They buried her, perching on her shoulders and arms: a mantle of dark feathers. They surrounded her, too, a thick carpet of the creatures. Dozens more perched in
the branches nearby. Now and then one of them stirred, preening under a wing or shuffling position; but all of them watched him with their dreadful black, beady eyes.
    Purloch was dumbstruck with terror.
    ‘What did you want to take?’ Lucia asked softly. Her expression and tone reflected none of the malevolence the ravens projected.
    Purloch swallowed. He was aware of nothing more than the ravens. The birds were protecting her. And he knew, with a fearful certainty, that they would tear him to bloody rags at a thought
from the child.
    He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He swallowed and tried again. ‘A . . . a lock of your hair, my lady. Nothing more.’ He looked down at the dagger still in his hand, and
realised that his haste to get his prize and escape had made him foolish. He should not have drawn the blade.
    Lucia walked slowly towards him, the ravens shuffling aside to let her pass. Purloch stared at her in naked fear, this monster of a child. What was she?
    And yet what he saw in her pale blue gaze was anything but monstrous. She knew he was not a killer. She did not think him evil; she felt sympathy for him, not hate. And beneath it all was a kind
of sadness, an acceptance of something inevitable that he did not understand.
    Gently, she took the dagger from his hand, and with it cut away a curl of her blonde, tumbling hair. She pressed it into his palm.
    ‘Go back to your masters,’ she said quietly, the ravens stirring at her shoulder. ‘Begin what must be begun.’
    Purloch drew a shuddering breath and bowed his head, still kneeling. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, humbled. And then he was gone, disappearing into the trees, with Lucia watching after
and wondering what would come of what she had done.

FOUR
    It was four days after the murder of her family that Kaiku was found. The one who discovered her was a young acolyte of the earth goddess Enyu, returning to the temple from a
frustrating day of failed meditation. His name was Tane tu Jeribos.
    He had almost missed her as he passed by, buried as she was under a drift of leaves at the base of a thick-boled kiji tree. His mind was on other things. That, he supposed, was the whole
problem. The priests had taught him the theory behind attuning himself to nature, letting himself become blank and empty so he could hear the slow heart of the forest. Yes, he understood the theory
well. It was just that putting it into