Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

‘You’d better come in then, you and your… woman,’ the woman suggested frostily.

The iron gaze of the guards still did not trust these arrivals in the least.

Behind the gates, Tynisa saw that the courtyard had a roof of sorts, but one that was no more than a lattice of sturdy timbers that would keep out neither enemy nor weather. She presumed that some manner of covers or hatches could be put in place if there was ever an assault on Castle Leose, or perhaps the courtyard was intended to be abandoned to the foe, who could then be penned in and shot at from the castle proper. In the end she was forced to admit that her grasp of siege warfare was lacking, and that whoever had gifted the Commonwealers with these edifices had been of a strange turn of mind.

There were servants, though: Dragonflies and Grasshoppers who led their badly used horse off for feeding and grooming in stalls that were set into the castle walls to the left and right. Before them was another grand portal, this one inlaid with symmetrical patterns of brass, or perhaps gold. A smaller portal was set into a corner of one of the grand doors, and the grey-robed woman now sent a youth of her own kinden hurrying through it.

‘The princess has been sent for,’ she explained. ‘She will come in her own time, as I’m sure you know, Turncoat.’

Gaved nodded. ‘We can wait.’

A jug of good honeydew was brought to them by another servant, whereupon Gaved simply seated himself on the ground in the middle of the courtyard, on a blanket he had already scavenged from his saddle.

‘You know her, I take it,’ Tynisa noted, nodding towards the Grasshopper woman, who was currently chastising one of the grooms over some point of detail. ‘She seems a barrel of laughs.’

‘She’s not so bad,’ Gaved said mildly. ‘Her name’s Lisan Dea, and she’s been seneschal to the Salmae since before the old man died.’

Tynisa realized, with a vertiginous lurch, that ‘the old man’ meant Salma’s father, of course. Feeling suddenly off balance, abruptly too close, too soon, to the heart of things, she changed the topic with, ‘I’d get tired being called “Turncoat” all the time.’

Gaved gave her a glance without expression. ‘I reckon they might have chosen something worse, so I’ll settle for it.’ A moment later he was scrabbling to his feet, as both of the grand and gold-chased doors swung open.

A woman stormed through them, outpacing her retinue of attendants. She was tall, for a Dragonfly, and more imperious than a regiment of Wasp-kinden. Her heart-shaped face was perfect and, although she was clearly a peer of Felipe Shah, her cold beauty admitted nothing of her age. She wore high-shouldered formal robes in red and pale blue and spotless white, starched and edged with gold plates, and Tynisa caught her breath, because she had seen Salme Dien wearing just such a garment in Collegium.

‘Turncoat!’ the woman snapped. ‘Where is my son?’

Gaved was down on one knee, but Tynisa hesitated for a moment, pride battling with propriety, before grudgingly doing the same.

‘He had set out on his Lycene for Leose before me,’ Gaved reported, staring down.

‘Feckless boy,’ the woman exclaimed, obviously not caring who heard her. ‘Probably having the run of every bandit camp and village from here to Tela Nocte. Idiot child.’

Tynisa stole a glance at her, seeing her regarding Gaved with distaste. By now her retinue had caught up with her, somewhat raggedly. There were a dozen or so finely dressed Dragonflies, either privileged servants or attendant lords, but Tynisa’s eye was drawn away from them towards one particular figure. For a moment, as his presence impinged upon her, Tynisa took him for yet another hallucination, mimicking her father’s intensely focused poise at the noblewoman’s shoulder. Then Tynisa’s gaze lifted further, and she realized that this was a different man, a living man. It is getting hard to tell, she recognized unhappily. First Salme Alain and now this newcomer. There would come a time when she would no longer be able to trust her eyes, and then where would she be?

The man was dressed in an arming jacket and breeches of pale grey leather, obviously far from new, and his boots were of a similar vintage, well crafted and just as well worn. Looking up furtively from her low vantage point, what caught her attention first was his utter stillness, for she had seen that particular brand of motionless calm before and she felt that this man was like a bow drawn back and ready to strike at any moment. She had known him for Mantis-kinden from the first glance. He was paler than the Dragonflies, and older than Tisamon had been when he died. This Mantis had hair gone completely white, and a hook-nosed face creased with lines of bitter experience. For all his years, Tynisa shivered when she saw him. A moment later her eyes picked out the brooch over his breast. The style of it was different, but she recognized the sword and the circle and knew him for one of the same order that she herself had been initiated into, and that Tisamon had been a master of.

‘My Princess, I have important news of the bandit communities to the south,’ Gaved added hopefully.

The woman, Salma’s mother, dismissed that comment with a wave of her hand. ‘Tell it to my seneschal and my champion,’ she told him. ‘If you’ve no more news of my son, I am done with you.’

‘Alas, no, Princess,’ Gaved replied, but the woman had already turned and was about to walk away.

Tynisa found herself on her feet so abruptly that the Mantis took a step in, to put himself between her and the princess.

‘My lady. Princess.’

The Dragonfly woman turned and regarding Tynisa blankly. ‘What is this?’

Gaved grimaced, and took a moment too long in deciding how to answer, and Tynisa declared. ‘My lady, I am come from the Lowlands.’

From the Dragonfly’s expression, she might never have heard of such a place. ‘On what business?’

‘I was a friend of Prince Salme Dien,’ Tynisa declared, pronouncing his full name carefully.

Salma’s mother stared at her for a long moment. ‘You are seeking employment – like this one?’ She threw Gaved the smallest nod imaginable.

‘No, my lady, I only wished…’ For some reason, though her mission to Felipe Shah had seemed utterly natural, before the cold gaze of this woman she faltered. ‘I aided your son Salme Alain at Siriell’s Town, and had hoped to meet him here. And I would speak with you of your elder son, if I could.’

The princess’s expression, already cold, froze entirely. ‘As you have heard, Prince Alain is not here. As for Dien, no doubt there were many Lowlanders he was… familiar with.’ Then she had turned and, with her robe flowing behind her, was gliding back through the gold-chased doors, her retinue following her hastily. Tynisa had her mouth open, wanting to call the woman back, but was suddenly aware of the line of etiquette that would transgress. The Grasshopper seneschal’s stern frown did not encourage her to push her luck.

Then the doors were closing again, and only Lisan Dea and the Mantis-kinden remained with them.

‘We passed through what they’re calling Siriell’s Town…’ Gaved started, but the Mantis was paying him no attention.

Tynisa took a step back, to allow herself fighting room. Since she first saw the man she had been waiting for this. Mantis-kinden and Spiders did not get on, and it would make matters considerably worse if he found out she was not a pure-blood Spider at all. His face did not betray the kind of fierce loathing she had encountered in the Felyal Mantis-kinden, when she had travelled there with Tisamon, but nonetheless he regarded her sternly, and his eyes were like steel.

‘Show me your blade,’ he instructed her, and it was as though Gaved and the Grasshopper were simply not there.