Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

I’d love to think that this halfbreed was just conning Che, he mused, and that at the end of it there would be demands for money or such, but… He remembered the Twelve-year War and all the mysticism that the Commonwealers had laid claim to, and which the invading Empire had laughed at. Well, I’m loath to admit it, but perhaps this old lore of theirs has a few teeth left to it – not enough to turn back an army but sufficient to drive a mad Spider-kinden even madder than she was.

And following on that thought: Better that the Empire had taken the Commonweal entirely and wiped out all this mind-rotting mysticism. Reason enough for the conquest had it been fake, but all the more reason if there is some truth behind it. He knew Che would not understand, but she had never been a good arbiter of her own best interests. If I could take you away from this, then I would, but there remains a shard of it lodged inside you, wherever you go…

By evening they could see the Salmae’s army by its campfires, and it was plain that they would overtake it the following morning. They had a brief, divided discussion about whether to make contact meanwhile, with Thalric and Varmen both arguing that the victorious troops might mistake them for stragglers from the defeated brigands, so contact would be better made once their army had reached its destination and disbanded. Che would hear none of it, though. Tynisa was accompanying that force, and that was all that mattered.

Varmen insisted on taking the first watch, and even spent the time getting into the bulk of his armour to do it. The big Wasp had been growing more distant as they travelled, and it was clear to Che that whatever burden he had carried within him from Suon Ren was only growing, whether through time or distance. Still, he looked such a forbidding figure in all that weight of steel that she found that she did not quite have the courage to broach the matter. After Thalric and Maure had gone to sleep, she found herself still awake, staring at his plated form looming in the darkness which her eyes could pierce so easily, the black and gold of his mail dimmed to black and grey in her Art-sight.

At last his helm turned towards her, and he spoke. ‘If you’re not going to sleep, you might as well come over and keep me company.’ His voice sounded hushed and hollow.

Into the surprised silence that followed he explained, ‘Your breathing. I could tell from your breathing. People don’t realize how, if you spend a lifetime wearing this stuff, just how much you can see and hear and sense.’

Blankets wrapped around her, Che shuffled over to him. ‘Did you want to talk?’

‘You’re Beetle-kinden, and yet you understand all this magic business the Commonwealers talk about, right?’

‘Some of it, some of the time,’ she admitted.

‘Fate and destiny, that sort of thing.’ he added vaguely. ‘It’s just… I remember the war, and how we came through here, won our battles, took over their places, set up governors. We killed a lot of their people. I did myself. Pride of the Sixth, you know. Even then, there were moments… there was a girl, a Dragonfly girl, one of their nobles. We fought…’

‘You killed her?’

‘I never did. I liked her. Nice voice, she had. I like a nice-sounding voice in a girl. So I let her go. But then the Second bastard Army rolled through. I tried to find her, later… Stupid thing to have regrets about, eh?’

Che waited, watching him. He was no longer looking at her, just staring off into the night. At last he said, ‘I never before and never after had any second thoughts about what we were doing, except then, after that fight… She was brave, you see, and I liked her. And then they re-formed the Sixth, under General Praeter, and we marched off into the Lowlands, and there’s Malkan’s Stand…’ One gauntleted hand touched the rough-edged hole in his breastplate. ‘After that I don’t have an army, and even if I went back, and they took me back, I wouldn’t be what I was. No more Sentinels, eh? They’ve no use for Sentinels any more, not with snapbows ready to drill a hole in the strongest plate. A lifetime of training and being special, then it’s all down the drain. And what was I left with? When I sobered up, when I stopped trying to die… I was left with her. Crazy Dragonfly girl with the nice voice. I came back, you see. Hovering about the Commonweal border, plying some sort of useless bastard escort business. After all that, after getting shot through my mail, after the defeat, after losing it all… just her. Some dead Dragonfly girl that I’ll never find. The only thing left in my head, after all that, was remembering her.’

‘You’re still looking for her?’ Che asked.

‘She’s dead.’

‘You don’t know-’

Varmen’s helm had twitched towards Maure’s sleeping form, so Che understood when he repeated, ‘She’s dead.’

Che could have asked him, then. She could have asked, Did you speak with her? Or enquired what a long-dead Dragonfly noblewoman might have had to say to a representative of her murderers. She might even have asked if Varmen’s continued presence at her side was the result of some request or atonement demanded by this notional ghost. Or perhaps this duty was one that the Wasp had assumed himself, like another piece of ultimately ineffective armour.

But in the end she did not ask. Better that the man kept his secrets.

The Commonwealer force was still mustering by the time they reached it the next day, and even Che could see that this was chiefly because the bulk of it was anything but military. She was willing to wager that these peasants-turned-soldiers had been up at first dawn, but forming themselves into a marching column was clearly not part of their usual morning routine.

The arrival of the four of them caused a nervous stir amongst the common soldiery, their carefully constructed formations eddying and swirling aside as though to even be close to a Wasp-kinden was to invite extinction. Che expected this disturbance to swiftly attract the attention of the officers or the nobles in charge, but it quickly became apparent that there were few of their kind available. The small band of Dragonfly-kinden who eventually showed up spent more time staring at Thalric and Varmen than reordering their troops, and for a moment Che feared that the four of them, by their very presence, would somehow reverse the recent military victory and rout the entire army.

Then order was finally restored by the appearance of one man, and Che could see why. Her first thought was, Tisamon, but of course it was not. The dead Weaponsmaster had been in her thoughts so much that any Mantis of a similar bearing, and wearing the same badge above all, would have instantly brought him to mind. This man was older, with silver hair, and was wearing an arming jacket of pale grey leather, where Tisamon had favoured forest green. He seemed calmer, too, in a strange way. Che would never have described Tynisa’s father as agitated, but there had constantly been a high-strung tension to Tisamon, which this man had conquered. Here was Tisamon as he might have been, had he never loved Tynisa’s Spider-kinden mother, had he never become friends with Stenwold Maker.

‘What is your business here?’ he asked, not loudly but in a voice that could not be ignored.

‘Please, sieur,’ Che said, falling back on the Solarnese title for no reason she could think of, ‘we’re looking for my foster-sister, Tynisa.’

‘Tynisa?’ For a moment his face was blank, then something fell into place. ‘Ah, Maker Tynise. And you are her sister?’

‘Foster-sister,’ Che explained. ‘I’ve travelled a very long way, we all have.’

‘She’s left the column,’ the Mantis told her. ‘She’s flown off to Leose, along with most of the nobles.’