Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Dal turned to view his followers, casting his gaze over all of them. The new faces, those who had formerly been the peasants of Sara Tela, were staring at the dead Mercers with a world of possibilities in their eyes.

Salme Elass, Princess of Leose, felt herself poised on the brink of a great height, and the time had come to cast herself from it.

She sat in the chamber she governed from: not for her a garden, like Felipe Shah, but a high-ceilinged room where lofty windows let in coloured shafts of light that crossed each other like sword blades. There was a warrior statue on either side of her, the kind that the ancient magicians of her people had supposedly been able to imbue with life in order to defend their royal charges. All lost, she thought. Yet another thing lost, and nobody will do anything to stop these sands running through our fingers.

There were some, she knew, who had already grown sick with that loss, so that they turned away from the destiny that princes lived for. Felipe Shah had grown weak after the war, cut so deep by his losses that he feared to take any action, lest some further calamity befall him. Lowre Cean was another, although Elass still had a use for him.

And the Monarch is a third. A strong Monarch would make a strong Commonweal, but there was only silence from Shon Fhor. The land might as well now be leaderless.

It is time for someone of will and ambition to take a stand and recover what we have lost. The Commonweal can rise again, but those of us who are not grown palsied by doubt must act.

On either side of the two statues stood her chief servants: Isendter Whitehand, her champion, and Lisan Dea, her seneschal, both of them bound to her by the iron chains of loyalty. Both also thinking they knew best, but they were not prince or princess. They were not even Dragonfly-kinden, merely servants.

The brigands to the south were growing bold, no doubt expecting the usual Mercer patrols in response, just enough manpower diverted in their direction to make their raids difficult and costly and persuade them to look elsewhere for their loot. Thus the Commonweal had been dealing with its internal problems for years, either letting the villains run riot in abandoned provinces, or passing them on to a neighbour, who passed the problem on in turn, all motivated by some hope that time itself would smooth over the growing cracks.

No more. Elass had already sent out summonses to those minor nobles who she knew would heed her, and would therefore act. They were few enough, a half-dozen tiny families with a handful of house guards and a minuscule levy available to them. There were others, though, who had the resources but lacked the will. She needed a standard to inspire them, for the name of the Salmae was not yet great enough in its own right.

Ungrateful wretches, she thought bitterly. Her husband had died in the war, and her eldest son, too, and then her middle son had been taken by Felipe and sent to die in the Lowlands. And still they will not rise up at my bidding.

It would be different, she knew, if it were Lowre Cean sounding the horn and leading the charge. The old man’s name still carried weight, one of the few Commonweal leaders who had won any significant victories against the Empire. The effort of it had worn Lowre out, though, since he had lost his lands, his wife, his adored son. Even though he lived on Salmae soil, and by her graces, he would not draw his sword for her.

Until now, I hope, for something had changed. The girl had come, the one who had been trailing Alain’s footsteps so much. Elass was unsure of the Lowlander’s significance, but apparently Felipe Shah had been much impressed with her, and now she was part of old Lowre’s household, and obviously held in some esteem. Then there had been that business with the dance, and some piece of drama at Alain’s idiot hunt. She had made a name for herself, and it was not hard to see the direction her affections were pointed in.

It would not be the first time that Alain had come back with some beggar girl following at his heels, believing… what? Believing that the sanctity of princes would make her an exception, Elass supposed. And of course, they had no princes in the Lowlands, no royal blood, nothing but a grubby overclass of merchants, so she understood. The Spider girl would never be a suitable match for Alain, but likewise she would never understand the barriers between them. But she might be useful: a tool to take in hand and turn against the world, for old Lowre Cean was sentimental, and had clearly taken the girl to heart. Where a princess’s pleas might fall on deaf ears, the same words from Maker Tynise could sway him. So long as Elass could control her. So long as Alain had not already overplayed his part.

The nobility of the Commonweal observed complex strata of love-play, tiers and hierarchies, subtle distinctions, all the soft arts and their related games – the degrees of distance and attachment. There were the casual attractions, involving a single meeting and a parting, and no more. There were the soul-mates married and matched and bound together. There were the comrades enjoying a closeness of delicate balance not to be marred by fierce passions but no less a bond of love. The Spider girl hardly merited either of the last two, but Elass could only hope that her son had not already made of Tynisa the former – already had her and had done with her – leaving nothing that Elass could use.

For of course there was another relationship, to be held close and yet not touched: that of the useful servant, the special tool that will only be persuaded by promises. And let Alain remember his station, what he is and what she is, and not raise her too high nor cast her too far away…

‘You are sure she will come here?’ she asked, speaking into the silence that had held sway for more than an hour now, while she reflected.

‘My divination tells me so – and soon. Today most likely,’ Lisan Dea replied.

‘Then you must be ready to greet her,’ Elass instructed, with a gesture of dismissal. Lisan was unhappy about the business, she knew, but it was not her seneschal’s place to comment on the designs of her betters.

‘The girl has changed since she was last here,’ Isendter observed, as the echoes of Lisan’s footsteps faded.

‘In what way?’

The Mantis was silent for a long moment before he spoke. ‘It is hard to tell. She may seem a Spider, but there was always something of my people about her, perhaps granted to her by the badge she bears. Now that part has become greater. I look on her now and my mind says Mantis, whatever my eyes tell me.’

‘She has thoughts still for Alain, however she’s changed, I am sure,’ Elass decided. ‘Will she join the fight?’

‘Yes,’ came the immediate and firm response. ‘You may have no fear of that.’

Tynisa had expected a change of weather heralding the spring, but instead the skies had opened up with fresh snow, which lay in foot-thick drifts as far as the horizon. Lowre Cean had told her this was perfectly normal.

‘I understand it is different in your Lowlands,’ he had mused, ‘but here the winter does not let go without a fight.’

And something had twitched with approval inside of her, and she had smiled without meaning to.

‘I must practise now,’ she had told him, and departed for the courtyard where, before an audience of Roach-kinden travellers and a gang of Bee-kinden Auxillian deserters, she had thrown herself through all the paces that her father had ever taught her, every trick of footwork and bladework, as the snow filtered down around her.

She did not recall coming back here after the hunt. Her mind had been so seared by that impossible image of her father standing there before the Mantis icon, gleaming and translucent, holding one spined hand out to her. She remembered nothing else. They told her that she had collapsed.