Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Che had woken up with a start then, and not dared go back to sleep.

I really need to talk to someone knowledgeable about this. But she had already made cautious enquiries of Varmen. Hunting magicians was an old practice here in the Principalities, though the game had grown scarce indeed. During the occupation, the Wasps had singled out any who had claimed such powers, not because they believed the claims, but because supposed seers and mystics were often a focus of rebellion amongst Commonweal loyalists. Since the Empire itself had receded, the new lords of the Principalities had apparently kept up the practice with gusto, and if there were any magicians left, they were certainly not announcing it to the world.

But we near the Commonweal proper, assuming Varmen can get us across the border. I will find all the magicians I want amongst the Dragonfly-kinden.

‘What’s your plan for getting over the Commonweal border, then?’ she asked Varmen.

‘We need to hop a barge soon,’ he said. ‘Easiest way, always.’ When Che looked puzzled he explained, ‘They have these canals all over. A couple cross right between the Principalities and the Commonweal proper, see?’

Thalric was frowning. ‘Why not just cross by land. Surely that’s easier?’

‘Oh, you’d think so.’ Varmen gave a grin, then repressed it. Since his discovery of Thalric’s former role in the Empire, his manner had become odd: now friendly, now standoffish, as though he had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t like Thalric any more. Che found his attitude almost endearing. Clearly he was not a man who held grudges well.

And a Wasp, too, like Thalric – and who knows how many other Wasps there are, that I would like if I ever got to know them? She felt a stab of anger at the Empire, and at the Empress who was invading her dreams piecemeal. These people could be so much more, if they were only allowed, but their kin and their rulers sharpen them into weapons, over and over.

‘What?’ said Varmen suspiciously, and she realized that she had been staring at him.

‘Nothing,’ she told him. ‘You were saying about a barge?’

Two days later found them camping beside a slipway, on the banks of a canal that looked as though it had been old when Collegium was built. The great grey stones of its walls had crumbled and fallen away in places, and the water was green and ribboned with weed, dancing with the golden flecks of insects.

‘You see, there’s a whole load of raiding that goes on across the border, heading both ways,’ Varmen was explaining. ‘This side, the local captains and what-have-you are all men who have just a little slice of things, pushed to the edge of power, and so they’re basically bandits in all but name, stealing from their neighbours ’cos they want something to bargain with, with their betters, right? Only, on the other side there’s not much better. No princes or nobles, much, because this is where the army stopped, and the nobles who used to hold all these lands are dead or driven off. So the Commonwealers raid right back, fighting all over the place. Couldn’t tell you where the actual border was, it moves about so much.’ He pointed along the straight line of the canal, where it was cut into the hillside, a water-road running east-west as far as the horizon. ‘There’s trade, though, and ’cos the trade comes from the big noises in the Principalities, and goes to the bigger brigands and the dodgier princes on the other side of the border, it’s not a good idea for your little fellows around here to get in its way. Nobody wants a hundred soldiers turning up and asking awkward questions, right? So the way things work is that only the big boys use the canals – and anyone on land is fair game.’

‘That sounds utterly unworkable,’ Che told him. ‘How could they be sure nobody would try and rob them?’

‘Well, they have guards and the like, and I reckon some of them do get hit, but it must work out all right, most of the time, or they’d not still be doing it.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, the next boat comes past, we’ll hop a ride, offer our swords, tell them the… you know, the Rekef story or whatever feels right. Then we’re over the border, and I’ll find me someone wanting an escort back.’

After a day and a night’s tense wait, a barge came as promised. Its master was a surprise, neither local nor Wasp but a spindly Skater-kinden, hunched up in a Commonweal-styled robe that failed to hide his fantastically long limbs. He had a face that was all sharp angles, down to the forked beard he affected. Varmen clearly recognized him, and seemed moderately glad to see him, naming him ‘Skelling’.

Skelling needed suspiciously little cajoling to take them on as additional guards, though he had half a dozen armed Dragonfly-kinden already on board. While they waited for the barge, Che had spotted two roving parties of what she took for bandits, so she had the impression that the border troubles Varmen had mentioned were now going through an active phase.

The barge itself was a long, graceless thing built of heavy timbers, its hold stuffed with all manner of crates and sacks that Skelling expressly forbade them to meddle with. The vessel moved ponderously, and at first mysteriously. There was a sail but it seemed ludicrously small to shift such a weighty craft, nor did the crew seem to be doing anything to contribute to its motion. The vessel was double-ended, too, and it was clear that, had Skelling wished, they could simply have headed back the way they had come, as the canal had very little current to it.

However, as they moored up after their first day’s travel, Che noticed a great disturbance at the vessel’s fore, as something broke the surface there. She caught only a glimpse, but divined that it must be some manner of insect nymph trained to the task of hauling. One of the Dragonflies appeared to be the creature’s handler, for he had spent the day’s journey at the bow, and he now threw chunks of something into the water where the beast had last surfaced. She wondered whether the man possessed that elusive Art that allowed him to speak to the creature.

‘Skelling reckons we’ll get within the general region of the border tomorrow,’ Varmen explained. ‘Exactly where the border runs is a matter for debate, as they say, but by dusk we’ll be inside the Commonweal proper. Assuming nothing bad happens.’

Che merely nodded, She was holding her dream-catcher in one hand, uncertain what to do with it. Last night she had left the thing inside her pack and, as a result, whatever dreams had come to her had failed to remain in her waking mind. Instead she had suffered all morning with a terrible feeling that something was going wrong: that some threat was approaching that she had thus blinded herself to.

But the dream of Praeda and Amnon had frightened her. They had been in great danger, in that dream, and she had been moved to step in. Or it was just a dream, and none of it happened. She could not believe that, even for a moment. She had already crossed some line, in coming to their aid, and she knew, beyond understanding why, that she had somehow opened herself up now, made herself somehow both vulnerable and powerful.

Achaeos never spoke of influencing the world thus, through a dream. Nor had any of the old tomes she had read in Collegium mentioned such a thing. What is going on? Even if I am a magician now, I must be the most wretched and powerless of them all. What is happening to me?

She put the dream-catcher down, knowing that whatever she did now, it would be the wrong choice.

The next day, Skelling set off before dawn, and everyone knew, without being told, that there would be trouble. The Dragonfly crewmen all had their bows ready strung, with spare quivers of arrows hooked on to the side rail, within easy reach. They also erected boards on either side of the barge, big solid pavises that would give them some protection from inbound arrows. Che had wondered if Varmen would take out his suit of mail, but in the end he obviously decided against it. He would vanish forever into the murky water should he go over the side in so much steel.