Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

That he was selling out one ally for another was a depressing weight in his stomach. He had tried, sincerely tried, to be an honest man, but nobody in the Commonweal wanted an honest Wasp. He seemed to have spied on everyone for everybody else, told each that they were the only one, like a faithless lover. He had lost track some time ago of precisely where his loyalties were supposed to lie.

The thought that he and Thalric had all this in common was a miserable one.

The weather was taking a turn, he felt – the air become crisp, snow on the way most likely. Just another way for the world to make his life harder just then. Let it snow when Sef and I are out of here. Let it snow all it likes.

And where the pits are they?

He pulled higher in the air, feeling the wind buffet him, taking his bearings, even checking his compass against the landmarks on offer. The Commonweal was so cursed big, and so much of it looked just like this, especially in Elas Mar Province. That was assuming he was still in Elas Mar Province, of course. The bandits’ flight had taken them some way east, and if Gaved had got his compass points wrong he could even be over the border by now.

But there: he saw them now – the riders. They had been a further distraction to the Salmae scouts, or so the word had come to him: a party of riders plainly not under Salmae command, an armed force with unknown intent. When the scouts had gone seriously hunting them, though, no trace had been found. Gaved could only envy the woodcraft.

He dropped down, hoping fervently that nobody was going to shoot him. Bad first impressions were likely to be fatal in this sort of situation. He had his arms out, fists closed, but who knew whether these people remembered civilized conventions like that, any more.

There were a dozen riders there, and the contrast to the Salmae’s people was plain: these were military, or at least the next best thing. There was a quiet discipline to them that put all the posturing of the local nobles to shame. Their armour was more functional than fancy, and they had a feel to them of men who had killed, and would kill again, and were utterly dedicated to their cause.

Gaved did not meet their gaze, because he was most certainly someone they would not hesitate to slay, given the order. Instead he hurried towards their leaders, two men he was at least on speaking terms with, even if those words were just orders that they gave him.

In the face of their stern looks, he had to fight the urge to salute.

‘I must report,’ he told them. ‘Please, hear me. There is a great deal I have to tell you.’

Tynisa stood there in the morning sunlight, feeling the easy weight of her rapier, like clutching the hand of an old friend. The Salmae’s people had started gathering at the trees’ edge, some venturing up the slope a little. There was no sign of Elass or of Isendter yet.

She sheathed the blade, its point finding the scabbard’s narrow mouth automatically, and took out her badge. The sword-and-circle glinted in the sun, looking polished as new. With care, she pinned it over her right breast.

The brigands had ventured out behind her, with plenty of nervous glances up at the sky. They held their weapons ready, and Tynisa realized that nobody cared about their supposed pledge to surrender themselves if she lost. When the tide of Salme Elass’s followers descended on them with spear, sword and bow, they would soon be scattered and killed. Some might make it back to the tower, or halfway back up the hill, but that would avail them little.

She glanced back, her eyes seeking Che. Her sister sat resting her leg, with Thalric standing guard over her, and the halfbreed Maure nearby. The magician was looking guilty, and Che had pointedly turned away from her, but Tynisa could feel philosophical. She was right, after all, this is the best way. I have done many bad things, and made many bad decisions, and I cannot blame them all on Tisamon’s ghost.

Even as she had this thought, the echo of his presence returned to her, almost like a plea to be allowed back in. I shall make you win. You will carve your way through them, spill the blood of your enemies. What else is there?

But she shook her head. If I die, it will not be undeserved. That was the bare truth of it. The Commonweal of Salme Dien, with its moral certainties, enlightened nobles and happy serfs, was already a lost world, and she had believed in it for too long, to her detriment. Perhaps men such as Felipe Shah and Lowre Cean did their best, but human nature was the same the world over. There was nothing magically pure about the nobles of the Commonweal. She had simply been lucky enough to know Salma, and he had been something special.

There was a murmur in the ranks, and she saw Salme Elass had arrived. Alain’s mother. Dien’s mother. The woman stared at her, the hard sun glinting and shimmering on her armour, then a servant brought forth a chair for her and she sat down, for all the world like the guest of honour at some theatrical presentation. Into the silence that followed stepped Isendter Whitehand.

The pale-haired Mantis paused a moment at Salme Elass’s side, gazing down at his mistress. His gauntlet was buckled on, its blade jutting out between his middle fingers, and he flexed it in and out as he watched her: now forwards like a punch-dagger, now folding back along his arm. For a moment Tynisa sensed uncertainty in him, and she wondered whether he might have some reason to fear her, after all. Then he came striding to meet her, and the silence seemed to grow and grow around them both. The light touched brightly on his brooch too, the match for her own.

‘You have lost a companion, I think,’ he told her, when close enough to be heard without raising his voice. For a moment she thought he meant Varmen, but then she realized that he must have sensed the change, the absence of the ghost.

‘I sent him away, in the end,’ she declared. ‘The price was too high.’

He regarded her levelly. ‘Some might say that it was now that you would most need such aid.’

She forced a smile. ‘I’ll beat you on my own. I need no crutch, Master Whitehand.’

His nod was brief but approving. ‘You are worthy to wear the badge, then,’ he said simply, but the words seemed to strike her deeper than she could account for, drawing out parts of her that had withered in Tisamon’s shadow.

I am a Weaponsmaster, after all. Live or die.

‘And the justice of your cause?’ he asked, nodding towards the little pack of brigands.

‘And the justice of yours?’ Because his words had practically invited the comparison. ‘The fight is all.’

‘We understand one another.’ In a single step, he had put a very precise distance between them, a fighting distance, and her sword was in her hand without her needing to reach for it.

Even as he cut for her, she heard in her mind the beat of the Martiette, back in the ballroom of Leose. She already knew him, knew his skill and his style, the pattern of how he fought, taught to her in that dance. He perhaps thought he knew her just as well, but she had been playing host to Tisamon since then, and been twisted in his grip. She was no longer the same dance partner as before.

The first series of cuts came as though she and he had arranged them by prior agreement, as he made to step within her reach and bring his shorter, more agile blade to bear, twisting his wrist to lash at her from all angles, and she stepped back and round, circling, letting him drive her, and adjusting her stance for the sloping ground but catching each blow as it darted towards her, turning it aside with her blade and, once, with her quillons. Then, without warning, she had taken two steps to his one, widening the gap between them and putting him at her sword’s point, and she lunged without giving him a chance to react. It was unfair, perhaps, that it was a move he would not see coming, not part of their previous course of dealings, but her sword led her into it, and she took the opening as soon as she had made it.