Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

‘But Leose is…’

‘Oh, I am here with Lycene, who will carry us both.’ His smile flashed again, like a blade. ‘You’ll come, won’t you?’

‘Your mother didn’t seem too fond of me, when we last met,’ Tynisa said weakly.

‘I am her heir, and she may not therefore turn away my guests,’ Alain declared, with a rebellious spark.

She found herself glancing at Lowre Cean, which was ridiculous. He was not her guardian, and she needed no one’s permission. Still, she had hoped to see some manner of approval on the old man’s lean face. He was quite unreadable, though, save that he had evidently no warmth to spare for Salme Alain, nor apparently for the young man’s mother.

Strange, she considered, for Cean seemed to be guesting within Elas Mar province at the Salmae’s invitation, and yet the fallen prince-major was obviously anything but grateful. Is it merely that, then? Does he resent being beholden to them? But that conclusion would go against all she had gathered of the old man’s character. Or is it his losses in the war? She could understand that he might not wish to be reminded, by seeing those still in possession of what he himself had been stripped of. Not lands, not castle, but… She racked her memory, then decided, Yes, there was a son of the house of Lowre. Someone has mentioned that to me. Perhaps that alone is enough to make him a bitter neighbour. He certainly goes to some lengths to put aside the trappings of a prince, and loses himself in trivial matters instead.

The thought still did not quite sit right, but she had no better option, nor could she readily enquire of either Lowre or Alain. Gaved, she felt sure, would know, and would tell her, but the Wasp was not here to ask.

‘I shall go,’ she told Alain. ‘I would be honoured.’

‘They are celebrating our demise even now, I’ll wager,’ said the broad-shouldered Grasshopper. His lean, scarred face had struck fear into enough hearts in its time, but it looked worried now. During three years of relative peace he had been happy running protection rackets and ordering thugs here in Siriell’s Town, but it was increasingly clear to all that those days were gone. His real name was Ang We, but during the war he had fallen in with foreigners who had dubbed him ‘Angry’. For good reason, the name had stuck.

‘Half the town has left already. The smallholders are scattered all across Rhael province, hoping to forage. Most of the merchants and the artisans have slunk off to look for better markets.’ This complaint came from a young Dragonfly woman who called herself Pirett, and who had claimed to be like a daughter to Siriell, the bandit queen’s natural heir. Now that Siriell was dead, the hollowness of that boast had become clear. Siriell had left no heir and, deprived of the fallen woman’s authority and her indefinable ability to yoke warring factions together in a common cause, the town was fast falling apart.

‘Let them go. What’s to stay for? She’s dead, and we’re done here,’ said another Dragonfly, this time a man of stockier build than most, with a touch of grey to his hair and a square face that had seen a great deal of good times and bad.

‘Cold words coming from the man who shared her bed, Dal,’ Angry noted.

The Dragonfly-kinden, Dal Arche, shrugged. ‘And you and your lads are staying, are you?’ The Grasshopper did not reply.

The three of them, alone and without even their most immediate followers, had commandeered a room high up in the ruined face of the castle. Below them Siriell’s Town was going about its business of falling apart, fighting with itself, lashing about in its death throes.

‘I’m for the east,’ Pirett declared. ‘They say there’s all manner of opportunity to be had at the border.’

‘Then you’ll be the first to know when the Empire comes knocking,’ Dal told her. ‘Or even when the Principality folks decide to take a bite. I’ve seen enough war for a lifetime. If you must go, go west.’

She shook her head stubbornly. The words went unsaid, but anywhere further west the land was unfamiliar, and it was said the Monarch’s writ ran stronger there. Whether the spectre of the Commonweal’s ruler truly had any claws left, none of them could say, but Pirett was clearly not ready to put it to the test.

‘Rhael has life in it yet. All those weaklings who run from here, they’ll set up elsewhere, in villages and farms. My lads want to follow them, keep them honest.’ Angry gave them a patchwork smile of missing teeth.

‘Meagre pickings,’ Dal observed.

‘That’s what the lads want.’ It was a curious trait in the Grasshopper brigand that he always hid his own desires behind the supposed will of his followers. ‘The pickings’ll be that much more meagre if someone else is trying to split the difference with me.’

‘Have no fear. I’ve better to do than starve so hard that I take everyone nearby with me,’ Dal Arche said sharply. For a moment the two men stared at each other, but it was Angry, the bigger and the louder, who looked away first.

‘What, then?’ Pirett asked him. ‘You’re going to throw yourself on Prince Felipe’s mercy?’

He gave her a level stare. ‘I would not go east, to the Empire and the creatures it has left behind. I have been a prisoner of the Black and Gold once, and never again.’ He turned his regard on Angry. ‘I have men and women to feed, who will demand full bellies, drink, action and prospects, or they will abandon me or else cut my throat. I’ll not take them deeper into Rhael to plague those few poor beggars who’ve tried to turn the soil into a living.’

The Grasshopper sneered. ‘Soft,’ was all he said.

Dal Arche’s smile had murder in it. ‘You know I’m not one to stint in taking what I want from any that has it, but even I can’t take what they don’t have. No, since Siriell’s Town is become a rotting corpse as of now, there’s only one direction that I know has provision enough for my band. We march north.’

‘You’re not serious?’ Pirett breathed.

‘No? If they had just come here and killed Siriell, then perhaps it could be mended. I’m not a sentimental man. She knew the life she led. But come here and burn our stores…’ He gestured at the window, where the shutters kept out all but the smell of the smoke. The Mercers had been thorough, and while their leader himself had slain the town’s self-made ruler, the others had fired every warehouse and stockpile they could find. The accumulated harvests of the farmers and brigands and vagabonds of Siriell’s Town had burned.

‘Well then,’ Dal Arche declared, in the silence that followed, ‘they could have left well alone, and in ten years, perhaps, this place would become so tame I’d need to go rob some prince or other just to keep me from going mad with boredom. I thank the Salmae that they spared me the wait. They have food, north of the province border, and I see no better option than to take it, and spill what blood needs shedding.’

The other two brigand chiefs eyed him suspiciously, as though he was spinning them some particularly self-serving lie, but at last Pirett said wonderingly, ‘Well, I wish you luck. Give my regards to Mother Salme when she has you hanged.’

Angry said nothing, but he nodded grudgingly.

Outside, with the other chieftains heading off to mobilize their followers, Dal Arche sought out his own three lieutenants. There was more in his mind than he had let on to the others, for his profession was never one to breed trust. He needed to steal a march on his rivals.

They were waiting for him, his most valued followers, his brothers of the wilds: a Wasp, a Scorpion and a gaunt and spindly Grasshopper passing a jug of beer between them as they waited for his return.