Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Seda glared at them all. ‘Explain yourselves!’ she demanded.

‘You have dreamt of these halls of ours,’ another of the Masters interposed. ‘But your sister was here before you. She broke our spells and made demands of us, though she was not so ambitious as you. You are joined, you and she, and though we bless you and grant you our acknowledgement, yet we must grant her nothing less. Your lives are intertwined, but only one of you can triumph in the end. You have a rival, Little Empress, and she is watching you even now.’

Che jerked back, trying to escape from the dream, trying to be anywhere but that subterranean tomb as the Wasp Empress glanced furiously about. I am not here, she had to remind herself. This is just a vision. This is nothing -

Seda’s eyes found hers, and there was a physical jolt of recognition and enmity between them, whereupon Che stopped lying to herself.

‘I see her,’ the Wasp growled, and she thrust out a hand towards Che, as though to sting her across the hundreds of miles that separated them. There came no searing light and heat, though, and Che was just beginning to relax when Seda bared her teeth in a savage snarl, and a wave of darkness pulsed out from her, faster than any eye could follow. Che had only a moment to register its approach before she was struck. Then a hammerblow of the mind detached her from her disembodied viewpoint and cast her far away, down into endless night.

Tynisa had been left to her own devices amid the strange bustle of Lowre Cean’s compound.

The old man himself seemed to drift between a dozen baffling pastimes, as though to actually commit wholly to any one occupation would be the death of him. Sometimes he was closeted with his little singers, the sight of which still made Tynisa’s flesh crawl. At other times he would go off travelling through the snows with one band of reprobates or another, abandoning his servants and guards and vanishing for days. Tynisa was given to understand that all those armed bands that visited his estate were not, after all, bandits, or not only bandits, but also war veterans whom Lowre Cean had either commanded or fought alongside. Why the old tactician took the whole thing so personally, and what the precise relationship of duty and obligation was, Tynisa was not sure. Nobody spoke about it.

At other times, Cean would retreat into his workroom, where he would whittle away at tiny figures of soldiers and peasants and nobles, all carved out of a wood that could be found nowhere within a hundred miles, and that he had shipped in by infrequent barge. He would cook sometimes, inventing new concoctions and feeding all comers. He would tend his kadith ponds, adding his own blends of herbs and grasses for the insect larvae to knit into their cocoons, or he would retreat to his library and read some dusty scroll of centuries-old poetry.

He did not practise with weapons, or take a bow down to the butts to shoot at targets, as many of his people did. He did not talk about the war. He did not even seem to directly give orders to his guards or servants. They just went about their business, using their own best judgement.

Amidst all of this, Tynisa was left to amuse herself and she found that, rather than this leading to frustration and despair, she was oddly liberated by it all. Certainly she was waiting for Salme Alain to call upon her, as she was sure he would. Certainly she still had her great purpose, of bringing word of Salma’s end to his mother, who did not seem to want to know. Still, until that part of her life interfered again, she was a free agent. The winter world seemed to have forgotten about her, and so had her own driving demons. Even the shadows grew infrequent, and sometimes whole days could go by without her glimpsing that hunched, accusing figure in grey robes, or her father’s flayed corpse.

One morning she awoke in a sudden panic, hearing voices outside. For long moments she could not understand why the very sound of them had abruptly recalled to her all the guilt and fear that she had been hiding from. Then at last she placed it: a Collegiate accent, clear as day.

Outside in the courtyard she saw a covered wagon drawn by a brown-shelled beetle, and sitting on the driver’s board was a Beetle-kinden, who was currently bawling at the top of her voice at some of Lowre’s retainers. She was a stranger, and yet Tynisa felt she knew the woman instantly. She had seen plenty of that type in Collegium: stocky, bluff, forceful women striding about the city streets or College halls. They were independent, resourceful and practical, constantly making and selling and disputing, and always being loud.

The sight of such a woman here, wrapped in two layers of woollen robes and a long cloak, was bewildering, and Tynisa approached her cautiously.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, but the woman was giving strident directions to someone about what to feed her beetle on, and so Tynisa had to repeat herself, even louder.

‘What is it?’ the woman snapped, obviously impatient with anything not immediately concerned with her current purpose.

‘I was wondering… what can you be doing here.’

The woman stared at her, and suddenly let out a bark of outsize laughter. ‘A voice from home, as I live and breathe!’ she declared. ‘A strange-looking Collegiate you make, too. I’d take you for a native, else. Sammi, come and look at this!’

From the round back of the wagon came an elderly Grasshopper-kinden with thinning grey hair and a frame that was all angles.

‘Sammi?’ queried Tynisa weakly.

‘Well, it’s – what is it? – Tse Mae, or something very like it,’ the woman admitted, fighting with the man’s name. ‘But Sammi works for me, and so I get to call him that. Fordwright, by the way. Hardy Fordwright, Master of the College.’

Tynisa shook the proffered hand uncertainly. ‘Tynisa, student of the same. But, Mistress Fordwright, how long have you been here in the Commonweal?’

‘What is it… seven years now?’ Fordwright asked her companion.

‘Nine since we met, Harde,’ Tse Mae replied, mangling her name equally as much as she had mangled his.

‘On my life, is it really?’ Fordwright looked genuinely surprised.

‘But what are you doing here?’ Tynisa pressed.

‘Oh, old man Lowre’s our patron, don’t you know,’ the Beetle woman explained. By now their animal was being unhitched and watered, and Tse Mae was arranging for the wagon to be put under cover. Fordwright beamed at him, then explained, ‘You see, Sammi and me are here about a piece of research – You’ve heard of the Alchemical Theorem?’ – and she went on as if Tynisa had, regardless. ‘I was a chemical artificer back home, and Sammi here has spent his days cooking up elixirs and potions for the credulous. So I can put a bunch of ingredients together for a particular effect, and Sammi can do the same. The thing is that I can tell you why mine works, and he can tell you why his works, and neither of us agree why it works, but we both agree that it does.’

When Tynisa failed to react with immediate enthusiasm Fordwright pressed on impatiently. ‘But don’t you see? It’s a process and result that makes sense both to Apt and Inapt minds, even if my sense doesn’t work for him, and his doesn’t work for me. Give me another few years and I’ll stand before the College and tell them that I have found the exact field of study that Aptitude may have arisen from, and it’s still being practised here in the Commonweal.’

This last was thrown over her shoulder, as she was striding off towards Lowre Cean’s main hall, letting Tynisa and Tse Mae trail in her wake.

‘And Lowre Cean is an alchemist too, is he?’

Fordwright beamed back at Tynisa. ‘A little. He dabbles. Dabbles in just about everything, in fact. He’s a patron of just about every art you can name. Painters and poets, itinerant Roach-kinden balladeers, stargazers and hocus-pocus merchants, and people who’ll tell your future from your shadow. Lucky for Sammi and me that he’s up for supporting some serious inquiry, as well as all those quacksalvers. My guess?’ Even her colossal voice managed a crude sort of whisper. ‘The old boy is up for anything that’ll take his mind off the war.’