Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Tynisa, she reminded herself. Just think of Tynisa.

But her dreams were all of the Empress and her kindred quest to understand the ancient powers. However far Che travelled, Tynisa seemed ever more distant.

Praeda awoke because of someone shaking her. For the briefest of moments she was unsure where she was, but the very air said Khanaphes even before her eyes had opened to the ancient city’s distinctive architecture.

Or to see Amnon, already clad in his battered, piecemeal armour of dark, fluted metal, with a snapbow over his shoulder and his sword ready at his belt.

‘What’s happening?’ she demanded.

‘Trouble,’ he told her. ‘We have to move.’

‘Trouble?’

‘The Wasps have gone mad,’ he said shortly, thrusting the snapbow at her and slinging a pack about his shoulders.

She dressed hurriedly. The snapbow felt strange in her grip, like handling a dangerous animal. Of course she knew the principles of its air battery – could have given a lecture and drawn diagrams if needed – but she had never used one before.

Amnon had reverted to his roots, though: he was always best with a sword. It therefore seemed that she would have to uphold the honour of the Apt, in whatever engagement he had now dragged them into.

‘Amnon, what have you done?’

‘I? Nothing. There are Wasp soldiers out on the streets. They say the Ministers are arrested. They say all foreigners are being arrested, too. The Marsh Alcaia is being raided and the ships in dock searched.’

‘Searched for what?’ Praeda demanded, dressed and ready in less time than she would ever have thought possible.

‘They say the Empress is missing,’ he spat.

The Empress? ‘Amnon, you didn’t…?’

‘No, I did not,’ he said, frowning. ‘But they will arrest us, if they catch us. Then they will discover you are a Lowlander, and they will kill you. We must leave.’

‘How do you know all of this?’

‘One of the Royal Guard remembered me fondly enough to bring me the news,’ he explained, and then the two of them were out of the room and down the stairs.

Two dead Wasps lay at the foot of the steps. One of them had been struck so hard in the chest that the plates of his armour were split apart.

‘You said you’d done nothing,’ Praeda snapped.

‘Nothing much,’ Amnon replied, slightly shamefacedly. ‘I did not think it was the time for details. Nor is this.’

Well, he’s right there. ‘Where are we supposed to go? You have a plan?’

‘Out of the city,’ he told her. ‘If the Marsh Alcaia is already taken then I know of no place to hide for certain. But in the marshes themselves the Wasps shall not find us.’

‘And your marsh-people, the Mantis-kinden?’

‘I do not know.’ He grimaced. ‘I do not see any other choice than to risk the desert itself, and their winged soldiers would see us far easier on the sands than in the marsh.’

She shrugged, arranging her cloak so that the snapbow was well hidden beneath it. ‘I can’t fault your logic. Let’s go.’

Had Amnon not known the streets of his own city so well, they might have fallen foul of the Wasp-kinden much sooner. His role as First Soldier had been more than a purely military one, however, and he had often gone out into Khanaphes to enforce the city’s laws against those who would disregard them. He had, he claimed, brought light into the shadows, which meant that he knew the shadows better than any.

The Imperial soldiers were out in force. Small groups of them hurried through the streets or coasted overhead. Any they found on the streets were stopped and questioned. Praeda saw doors kicked in, and soldiers flurrying into an upper storey through an open window. What can they hope to achieve? But it seemed they had lost their Empress somehow, and they were going mad trying to find her.

From elsewhere in the city could be seen the red glow of fire. She heard screams and cries in the night, from adults and children both. The two of them progressed through the city in fits and starts, hiding under awnings or in doorways, crouching on steps leading down to cellars hugging the walls at all times, because the skies were busy with the Light Airborne buzzing back and forth in search of… who knew what?

Abruptly Amnon hauled her around a corner of a building, holding his sword low, ready to ram it up into an enemy the moment a target presented himself. A moment later, a mob of Khanaphir stumbled past – men and women, old and young, dressed and half-dressed – with Wasp-kinden herding them, shoving and pushing and jabbing them at sword point. There was no hint of where they were heading, or for what purpose, or even suggestion that the Wasps themselves knew. Praeda had a horrible feeling that these soldiers were just doing something so that they could later say to their superiors that they had not stood idle in the Empress’s sudden absence. And if that something should include slaughtering the Khanaphir, then no moral qualms would outweigh their fear of the Wasp chain of command.

She half expected Amnon to move, because these were his people and she knew his fierce sense of duty, but he remained still, terribly still, holding his own feelings down. It was then she realized just how strongly he felt about her, because her safety was now the sole reason he was restraining himself.

Oh, curse the lot of them. With that, she brought the snapbow up, sighting her target in the moonlight – a Wasp standing furthest away from the group – and pressed the trigger. The sound of it, that infamous ‘snap’, seemed laughable, the jolt of the weapon in her arms hardly worth mentioning. The Wasp dropped with a brief bark of surprise, not even pain, but she realized that she had killed him.

It was a drastic way to grant him permission, but Amnon took her gesture for what it was and he was already rushing the remaining quartet of Wasps, swift and remarkably quiet, his mail just a susurration of metal.

They did not see quite what he was at first, as their stings flared off the planes of his armour. Then he was right amongst them, his sword making swift, ugly work of the nearest two, even as they tried to put their own blades in the way. Of the remaining two, one hopped into the air with a brief flash of wings, intending to drop on him, and the other fled.

Praeda had reloaded the snapbow, and the escaping man’s fast, erratic flight gave her one shot at him before he was lost over the rooftops. She missed, but in that time Amnon had dealt with the remaining Wasp, slamming him to the ground and lashing his sword’s edge across the man’s throat. He turned to the former prisoners, most of whom would surely recognize him.

‘Go. Run. Hide,’ he instructed them. Then Praeda was at his side and they were running themselves.

Trying to leave the city by any of the regular gates would be to chance Imperial checkpoints, and tonight it was plain that no amount of bribery or subterfuge would get them past the sentries. Quite possibly, anyone trying to leave at all would be shot on sight. Amnon continued moving through Khanaphes with a purpose, however, and Praeda could only trust his judgement. She realized that they were heading for the Estuarine Gate as its colossal pillars loomed close enough to blot out slices of sky and blot out the moon.

‘Can you climb?’ he murmured suddenly, and she stared at him in puzzlement before understanding that he meant using her Art. It was not exactly a dignified occupation for a College scholar, but her active adolescence had endowed her with a few advantages.

‘I need to know if the gate is up,’ he explained. ‘If so, we’ve come a long way for nothing.’

She nodded, glancing around to try to assemble a plan of the nearby buildings in her head: which of them was high enough, and which offered a useful vantage point. Then she had chosen her best prospect, and put her hands against the stone, feeling the contours of close-packed carvings underneath her palms. She kicked off her sandals, for the Art gripped just that little bit better with bare feet. Out of practice, for a moment she was just scrabbling at the wall, but then the familiar pull of the Art returned to her, and her hands and feet clung wherever she wanted, released when she bade them, allowing her to creep up the side of the building in a slow, deliberate crawl, keeping three points of contact with the stone at all times.