Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

So close. Che sagged a little. A day gained somewhere and I’d have caught her. ‘You’re taking your soldiers to… Leose then?’ she asked, stumbling a little over the name.

‘I return there myself, so accompany me if you will.’ He was still studying Che’s face, without expression. She wondered how much he could read there of her recent history.

‘We’ll make better time on our own,’ Thalric suggested. The Mantis’s eyes flicked towards him sharply, a man with no love for Wasp-kinden, nor fear of them either.

‘You’ll do better to approach Leose with a friend to gain you admittance,’ Maure murmured. ‘The Salmae’s doors don’t open even as wide as Felipe Shah’s, I’ve heard.’ She wore a wry smile, no doubt thinking of her reception back at Suon Ren.

Che glanced between them, keenly aware of the Mantis’s gaze turning back to her. ‘Then, yes, we’ll travel with you, and gladly,’ she told him at last. ‘Cheerwell Maker of Collegium,’ she introduced herself, then named her companions in turn.

The Mantis’s name was Isendter, pronounced with a typical Commonweal flourish that Che found almost impossible to replicate. He was called Whitehand also, apparently, so she settled for that. As the day wore on, it became clear why he had set himself aside as the only one who would reach Leose. Little detachments of the makeshift soldiers were constantly abandoning the column, their ranks thinning and thinning as time wore on: the peasants were returning to their farms and villages, their herds and crops, Che realized, and clearly glad to be putting the military life behind them. It was spring, after all, and a farmer had better things to do than go chasing about with a spear. She thought of those soldiers of Collegium, who were re-purposed tradesmen, artisans and shopkeepers, yet had still accounted for themselves well enough during the war. Then she thought about the Empire, whose every male son was given a uniform and a weapon, and allowed no other trade but fighting.

How did we ever beat them? she asked herself, but then had to admit, We did not. They were not beaten: they just stepped back to deal with a little infighting. And they have since whipped their rebel governors into line, and they now have their new Empress, and surely I can hear the sound of a thousand thousand swords being drawn even now. What is to stop them?

‘Che?’ Thalric touched her arm and for a moment she wanted to run away from him and from his brutal birthright. Instead, she hugged him tight because he was surely proof that redemption was possible, even for the Wasp-kinden.

Che had the impression that Whitehand was a man who spoke little, yet he broke his rule to ask her about Tynisa, and through his few terse questions he managed to prompt from her a great deal of the curious story of Stenwold Maker, of Cheerwell, and of Tynisa’s mother. Che approached the subject of Tisamon carefully, never quite naming him as Tynisa’s father in case Isendter held any great grudge against halfbreeds, but making the strength of their relationship clear. Whitehand’s face remained impassive throughout, but Che had the impression that he had been waiting for a figure such as Tisamon to turn up in this account.

As she recounted what she knew of Tisamon’s death, Isendter nodded fractionally, but that small movement spoke volumes, the only acknowledgement he had made. ‘And they were close?’ he put in.

‘Very,’ Che agreed. ‘And I believe…’ For a moment the old Collegium Che rebelled against the words, or perhaps felt embarrassed at speaking them before Thalric, but she pressed on. ‘I believe that he is haunting her now. I think that his ghost takes its duties as a. ..’ she almost said ‘father’, ‘… as a mentor very seriously indeed.’

‘It may be as you say,’ was all Isendter Whitehand replied, but Che knew that he had sensed something or seen something in Tynisa. ‘There was a shrine of my people, in the woods, out west. We came upon it while hunting. After that…’

Che nodded, seeing the perfect gateway through which the ghost could have stepped, directly into Tynisa’s mind.

By the time they came to Leose, most of the impromptu army had disbanded, hurrying back to lives that had no need of conflict or bloodshed in them. Che found herself and her companions quickly abandoned in a great courtyard, lined to one side with ranks of stables, and roofed by a wooden lattice that Maure explained was for dragonfly steeds to land on. They had just enough time to wonder if they had been forgotten, when a lean Grasshopper-kinden woman wearing dark colours came out to them, looking them up and down with that crisp and slightly disapproving expression of senior servants the world over.

‘The champion tells me you are here to see the Spider-kinden girl,’ she remarked. ‘Which of you is her sister?’

‘Her foster-sister.’ Che raised a hand. ‘Cheerwell Maker of Collegium. This is Thalric, this Varmen, and this-’

‘Maure,’ said the mystic quickly, cutting her off, and Che wondered if magicians were supposed to introduce themselves, or whether being named by another might diminish their power, or some such. And is that real, or just superstition? There’s so much I don’t know.

The Grasshopper stared at the halfbreed necromancer for a long moment. ‘Lisan Dea, seneschal of Leose,’ she named herself.

‘There are those who might use my services here? The lady of the house, perhaps?’ Maure enquired, as though simply having turned up there as a solitary vagabond.

‘Not the lady, I think,’ Lisan Dea replied, ‘but there are others, nonetheless.’ She had clearly somehow recognized the services that Maure could provide, and there was a hint of some small tragedy written in her features, some impenetrable loss that Che would never dare ask about, and that Maure would never report. The Grasshopper nodded suddenly, gathering her composure about her like a cloak. ‘You are welcome here, Maure, for the gifts you bring. You are welcome, Cheerwell Maker, as the sister of our guest. Your companions are not so welcome, however.’

Che opened her mouth to protest, but the Grasshopper held up one lean finger. ‘They will be lodged with other servants of the Salmae.’

‘Go,’ Thalric suggested. ‘Do what you’ve come to do and then we’ll be well rid of this place.’

Stepping into the shadow of the Commonwealer castle caused an almost physical shock, so that Che was forced to clutch at Maure’s arm, feeling disoriented by the shift between what she saw and what she felt. That it was daylight outside, channelled in by the high windows, seemed to be denied by every part of her but her eyes. That the high-vaulted ceilings made the halls beneath airy and spacious, her senses insisted was false, a mere gloss. She felt as though she was entombed underground. She felt as though those lofty arches were not for the convenience of a flying kinden, but simply to accommodate ponderous forms of much greater stature than herself, and that these Commonwealers were merely living in their discarded shells.

In short, although the design was as different as several hundred miles of distance, and perhaps several centuries of time, could account for, she felt that she already knew the builders of this place. Their presence, even the last decaying scraps of it, oppressed her. Of all the kinden of the world, and of all the secrets of history, she’d had enough of them.

She glanced at Maure, but it was impossible to tell whether the necromancer recognized her disquiet. In front of Lisan Dea, the mystic was all business.

‘Your sister came to us at the start of winter, from Suon Ren,’ the Grasshopper was saying. She had deliberately slowed her long-legged pace to let Che keep up, but because of that she seemed to be watching always from the corner of her eye, reading every least twitch of Che’s features. The Beetle girl made a dutiful show of listening.