Twenty-Eight

Che did not hang up the dreamcatcher that same night. It was not that she wished thus to avoid her dreams, more she had accepted that there was no getting away from them, not any more. She had fought her newly Inapt nature at first, then she had tried to master it, as though in Khanaphes she might find some secret that would let her put the ancient world and all its magic back in the box . . .

The Shadow Box, of course, she interrupted her own musings. All this stems from the Shadow Box. Tisamon and the Empress and I, all linked.

. . . And Achaeos, too, but where is he? Why hasn’t his ghost really come to call? He was more closely linked to that box and its contents than I was.

Standing there by her hammock in the Lowlander embassy, her thoughts turned inexorably to Maure. She could . . . surely she could . . . She owed the halfbreed woman a great deal, and it was plain that Maure had suffered, in order to bring her from the depths of her own mind and back to the waking world. Can I ask this of her? No, I cannot.

But the thought did not go away.

In Khanaphes, the ancient world had almost destroyed her that first time. She had nearly drowned in a sea of half-understood hieroglyphs. Then the real world had intruded, sending her down into the catacombs beneath the city, where waited the Masters. There, for the first time, she had been forced to confront her new self. She had almost enslaved herself to the Masters, as an easy way to avoid taking responsibility for what she had become. In the end she had defied them, though, shamed them into doing what she wanted, been rid of the ghost that had been haunting her – Tisamon’s, not Achaeos’s – and then escaped with her life, and with her companions. With Thalric.

Since then, she had been trying to control what she was, but the dreams had got the better of her, till at last she had come to the notice of the Empress – my sister, they said – and been swatted by her like a fly.

But it had not been merely her intrusion that had so enraged the queen of all the Wasps; it had been that intangible kinship that meant that . . .

Whatever she forced out of the Masters, it came to me as well as to her. I have shared in her blessing, so what was it that Maure saw, when I awoke . . .?

Lying in the hammock later, probably she dreamt, but she had now gone so far into that other world that it was impossible to tell dream apart from just seeing. As if revelations had been backing up all the while she had been a prisoner of her own mind, now she was deluged. It was a wild flood at first, too fierce for comprehension, that buffeted and tumbled against her, filling all the land around her until she was at the centre of a vast ocean of foretelling, which stretched on all sides, beyond the horizon. Then the world became still, and she had silence for once, and for a moment she saw it all.

Too much, too much to hold on to, each insight displacing the next within her memory, those countless drops of understanding plunging through her mind and impossible to hold . . . but for that single moment it was all apparent, all clear to her, and she was something more than human with it, godlike in a godless land.

She was floating over Khanaphes seeing its dark, hidden heart beat sluggishly beneath her. Imperial soldiers were enforcing a curfew, the Empress’s airship gone already, as Ethmet and his ministers sat in the resounding unheard echo of the double coronation that the Masters had enacted. Praeda and Amnon were already sailed for Collegium.

In the desert of the Nem, the Wasp artificers furthered their plans, feeding into the great darkness all the terror and pain and fire of the future, all the pieces of their scheme laid out before her. Yet she could not understand it at all; an Apter mind was needed, and the Apt would never see as she saw now. It struck her that this must be how the Moth-kinden had felt on the eve of the revolution. Those ceaseless parsers of the future must have realized their world was about to end, and been unable to stop it, unable to even comprehend the disaster that was rapidly befalling them.

In the Empire’s capital, Seda had gathered her power about her, her servants and her generals. Che could see the manifest destiny of the Empire limning her like a golden halo, but Seda’s footsteps seeped blood, the blood of countless kinden. There was a hunger in her, a lust to consume and control. Had she been no more than a temporal empress then she would have been considered a terror to the world. She was crowned, though, as Che was crowned, and her ambitions could no longer restrict themselves to mere land and slaves, for there was a new hunger in her that would never be sated. But why now those dark Mantis forests, and a gateway of rotting wood? From whence came those twisting, devouring forms that writhed, shackled in the earth beneath? In that dislocated instant it seemed as if the whole world became merely the skin covering some darker place, locked away out of sight and yet never quite gone . . .

For a moment, Che saw it all, the entire map of it, a prescient dream such as any Moth-kinden skryre would have wept at, and experiencing the full horror of what might happen stole her breath away.

But when she woke, after midnight, it was only with fragments like shards of ice melting, the sheer enormity of the vision defeating her, and all it left her with was a sense of dread – and an aftertaste of the Empress’s hunger.

I am running out of time, she told herself, I am here for a reason. When she slept again, her mind was focused not on the grand tapestry but on the threads, and there she saw Tynisa.

She let the rapier carry her forward, its needle point penetrating the chest of the Grasshopper-kinden before her, then whipping out again at her command, before flashing behind her without her even having to turn and look. She felt the slightest resistance as it carved into another enemy, and she exulted briefly in the sheer purity of the sensation. A spear was heading her way, its wielder scarcely seeming relevant. Her blade caught the shaft, bound around it in a circular motion that put her within the spearman’s reach, her point darting inside his guard until it had lanced him under the armpit.

For a moment she seemed clear of it all, unthreatened and alone in the midst of the skirmish, although Telse Orian’s people were still hard-pressed on every side.

Aerial scouts had reported a band of brigands lurking in the woods here, perhaps a score of them. Orian had set out with half as many again, a handful of nobles and Mercers backed by an unruly levy of Grasshopper peasants. The bandits had anticipated them, though, and then had come the ambush. The Salmae forces were outnumbered two to one, and many of the brigands carried bows, whilst of Orian’s party only the nobles were archers. The latter were better shots than the brigands, for sure, but numbers still counted. About half the panicking peasant levy had been scythed down, and several of the horses killed, before the ambushers had finally broken cover and attacked.

Those who met Tynisa regretted it, albeit briefly.

She had seen the ambush for what it was straight away. She had heard her father’s voice in her ear, felt him guide her eyes: they would be concealed here and here, and the main body of them there. She had said nothing to the others, feeling a need for blood building up in her. Let them come.

She picked her next target, a raggedly armoured Dragonfly cocking back his spear, about to drive it into a Mercer’s back. Levelling her rapier, she let it carry her to its inevitable destination, running the man through the ribs and out again, with barely more resistance from the flesh than from the air. She caught another before he even saw her, virtually by accident as he walked through the deadly path of her blade, and then she was passing on again, passing through the conflict like a plague, instantly striking down all who came within her orbit.

The rage was upon her, but it was harnessed now, tamed to her will. Her sword, her body, her father’s memory, all of them were working in seamless harmony, so that she could ghost through a scrum of half a dozen enemy, their spearheads and blades passing on every side, and barely have to sway or parry, their blows falling wide as if by prior arrangement. Once or twice an arrow flashed towards her, but she caught it with her sword, each shaft slanting away, spent or broken.

There was something in the faces of those she killed, and it was adulation. It was her due. In that succession of fatal moments, she became real and fulfilled, and so did her victims. She rescued them from a lifetime of greed and murder and made something great of them by using their bodies as her canvas.

She realized that they were gone, all the brigands. They had fled into the woods rather than face her. The ground was littered with them, and with the dead of her own side as well. She was not even bloodied, though. She was not touched. Instead she was smiling, and perhaps it was that smile alone that had finally driven them away.

As she looked round, something miscarried within her. For a moment the fierce killing flames guttered.

Telse Orian lay cradled in the arms of one of his fellows, an arrow sunk so deeply in his neck that the point must surely be jutting out behind. He was not dead, not quite yet, but beyond the skill of any healer they had brought with them, and it was plain that moving him would be certain to bring his end that much the sooner.

He was looking at Tynisa, or at least his staring eyes were turned towards her. His mouth worked, bloody at the corners, but no sounds came out.

Tynisa gazed about with fresh eyes. Of the score who had set out, only she and six others remained, four of the armoured nobles and a couple of the most fortunate peasants. The two of them, lean spearmen clad in leather cuirasses and helms, stood close together and regarded Tynisa with fear and awe. They did not look so very different to the bandits, and it seemed to her, in that moment, entirely possible that some of the flesh that had fallen before her blade might not even have been the enemy’s.

What am I doing? She asked herself, looking again at Telse Orian. His eyes were still fixed . . . no, not at her exactly, but as though he saw something – or someone – at her shoulder.

She saw the light go out, the last spark of what had been Orian, who, out of all Alain’s peers, had shown her kindness. For a moment she felt that she should run, should flee this place while she was still free of . . .

Tynisa shook her head to clear it of such foolishness. ‘We must report back to Alain,’ she told the survivors, assuming command effortlessly. ‘We must report how the bandits are driven back.’

For a moment they stared at her blankly, trying to equate her triumphant tone with the scene around them.

Che woke up into perfect awareness in the pre-dawn greyness, staring up at the ceiling. The previous night’s images stirred in her mind, but most of all she remembered Tynisa, fighting with breath-taking elegance and grace, and not alone. Her every move had been shadowed by a twisted figure always at her back, one hand on her shoulder, corded with vines and racked with thorns. Tisamon had found his daughter, and Che had witnessed how he was moulding her. What part of the Mantis Weaponsmaster that was still left to haunt the land of the living had obviously decided to cling to the ancient values of his kinden: blood and death, fierce and uncompromising, with not a hair’s-breadth gap into which mercy or regret could pry. Che remembered Tisamon, and what she had heard of the man’s last days. From what she gathered, regrets had eaten him alive, unable to reconcile his humanity with the impossible and terrible ideals his people aspired to.

It was plain that his ghost did not intend to let his daughter go the same way, even if he had to cut out her humanity to do so. What will Tynisa become?

Her sister was suffering, and there was nobody else who could go to her aid, but Cheerwell Maker.

By the time dawn had claimed the east, she was ready. She had dressed, recovered those of her possessions that Thalric and Varmen had brought with them, and now sat waiting impatiently for the light to waken her companions.

First up was Gramo Galltree, whom she had met briefly the previous evening, before she abandoned the world for much-needed sleep.

He eyed her cautiously. ‘You seem recovered.’

With what she now knew, such small talk seemed an unconscionable waste of her time. ‘Will the prince see me?’ she asked flatly. ‘Alternatively, will he mind if I take my leave . . .? Why are you smiling?’

Gramo coughed into his hand, a perfectly Collegiate way of hiding amusement. ‘Prince Felipe Shah departed, with his retinue, even as you were being . . . recovered,’ he told her. ‘He had an audience with one of your Wasp friends, and then he set off for Esselve. Today is the first day of spring. A prince-major is expected to visit his vassals, although for the last few years Prince Felipe has not been too prompt in that.’

After an audience with one of my Wasp friends . . . Che considered, hoping that Thalric had not managed to offend one of the most powerful men in the Commonweal.

The two Wasps rose soon after. Varmen was first to appear, bustling out of the embassy with only a brusque nod to her, off to check on his pack-beetle. Thalric stepped out a moment later, finding Che sitting near the door, looking towards the centre of Suon Ren, at the Dragonfly-kinden going about their business there.

She glanced at him, expecting that familiar closed look, the cynical Thalric armoured against the world, but instead she caught a strangely vulnerable expression there. Relief at her recovery, yes, but more than that. He stared at her without words, and at last she found her feet, with a flick of her wings, and walked over to him, holding his gaze.

‘You put me to a great deal of trouble, Beetle girl,’ he told her, but his voice trembled slightly, and she put her arms around him and hugged him tight, feeling his own embrace respond a moment later.

‘We must set off north, as soon as you’re ready to go,’ she murmured into his chest. ‘Tynisa needs me.’

He grunted. ‘Does she know that?’

‘No. Quite the opposite, probably. But I can’t abandon her to . . .’ She remembered that he would almost certainly not understand, and just let the sentence tail off.

‘Well, then, I can’t think of any urgent social engagements here that I can’t put aside,’ he told her. ‘Let’s beg some supplies and we’ll set off.’

Thalric had looked out a map, soon after they had arrived, in preparation for this moment. He produced it with something like embarrassment, because it made no sense to him, lacking the careful proportion and measurement of the charts used by the Imperial army. Che studied it with interest, though, seeing how the Inapt cartographers had set out their world, places and trails, landmarks and directions. She understood it perfectly.

When they were ready to set off, they found Varmen waiting for them, his laden beetle at his heels.

‘You’re heading back east?’ Che asked him.

He shuffled his feet. ‘Thought I’d come with you.’

She glanced at Thalric, who was frowning, clearly as surprised as she was. ‘You’ve been paid off?’ she pressed.

Varmen shrugged. ‘Paid, certainly. Listen, where you’re heading, it’s Rhael Province – bandit country. You’re saying you can’t use an extra sword?’

Che scrutinized his face, trying to detect treachery. She sensed a crack in his bluff and simple exterior, but she did not read guilt there, exactly. ‘What is it?’ she murmured, feeling obscurely that she should be able to tell precisely, to extract the knowledge from his face or his mind.

‘You were with Felipe Shah,’ Thalric noted, and Che readied herself for a display of suspicion, but instead the former Rekef man was nodding. ‘He’s hired you, hasn’t he, to look after Che?’

Varmen shrugged awkwardly. ‘He wasn’t exactly going to pay me anything to look after you,’ he said, still evasive. Thalric seemed satisfied with his own deductions, but Che could sense the gap, the discontinuity. Not that Thalric was wrong, but she knew there was more that was going unsaid by Varmen.

They set off shortly after, following a path that was little more than an animal track. They were barely a quarter mile from Suon Ren’s outskirts, though, when someone was calling them back. Glancing behind them, Che saw a figure swathed in a dark cloak hurrying to catch up.

‘It’s the world’s least subtle assassin,’ Varmen murmured, mirroring Che’s thoughts so closely that she could not suppress a bark of laughter.

‘It’s Maure,’ Thalric observed, ‘the . . . healer.’ It would be a desperate day indeed before the word ‘necromancer’ passed the Wasp’s lips willingly.

With that, there was no choice but to wait for the halfbreed to catch up. She stopped a little short of them, glancing from Wasp to Wasp, but looking mostly at Che.

‘What do you want?’ Thalric asked, a little harshly.

‘You just happen to be going the way I was heading,’ she told them, still hovering at that awkward distance, neither with them nor apart from them.

‘And what way’s that?’

‘Away from Suon Ren’s a good start,’ she told them. ‘Or you may not have noticed how I wasn’t exactly loved there, hmm? Got thrown out by that boot-faced seneschal on his master’s orders, first time round, and next thing I know is the prince’s soldiers are dragging me back, so I can look at you, lady.’ The nod she gave Che seemed overly respectful, endowing Che with the sort of gravitas that a great prince like Felipe Shah should own. ‘Now you’re well again, there’s no welcome for me here.’

‘So there’s a wide world,’ Thalric told her. ‘What do you want from us?’

‘Well, much as I love the thrill of travelling these roads on my own, what with the threat of robbery and rape to keep life interesting, I thought I might try walking in your shadows for at least a while.’

Thalric was opening his mouth to issue some fresh objection, but Varmen quickly said, ‘Let her come. Why not?’ And, in the moment before Varmen was reminded by Thalric that he had no vote in this issue, Che was saying, ‘Enough.’

They all listened to her. That was the frightening thing.

‘Maure,’ she said simply, ‘I owe you a great deal, and if Suon Ren has no gratitude, then don’t think we’ll repeat that failing. Travel with us if you wish. You’re welcome.’

Again she felt that these words carried more weight to them than the simple meanings she was used to. It was as though she was now some great queen whose merest nod or favour carried unthinkable importance. Maure seemed relieved, but at the same time in no great hurry to come closer. ‘That is all, is it?’ Che pressed her. ‘Safety in numbers?’

‘Oh, of course,’ Maure said, and the lie was obvious, but Che let it pass.