Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

‘I would not deny to others whatever comfort the words of ghosts can bring,’ the prince told him philosophically. ‘Find the woman and bring her here.’

They had placed Che in another garden chamber, open to the sky, and also to the horizon on two sides. Seeing her laid out there, surrounded by spring flowers, Thalric felt a lurch of emotion inside of him. And they have sent for some kind of mystic undertaker. Is she

…? He could see her breast rise and fall with shallow breathing, but death seemed to hang about her, as though only waiting for the right moment.

The idea of placing her fate – and my fate! – into the hands of some raddled old hag, some morbid chanting charlatan, disgusted him. Have they no doctors? Part of him railed at it, but experiencing the inexplicable had made inroads enough into his mind that he did not truly believe mere medicine would carry the day: not the herbs and poultices of Commonwealer healers, nor good Imperial surgery.

Varmen joined him later. The big Wasp looked sober and thoughtful as he stripped his armour off again.

‘Not under threat any more? Or are the odds so bad that the armour wouldn’t help?’ Thalric needled him, needing something to take his mind off other things.

Varmen just shrugged. ‘I reckon your woman’s on her way – the ghost-talking one, I mean.’

Thalric nodded morosely. ‘If this doesn’t work…’

‘What, waving her arms around and talking to spirits and magic, not work? What are the odds on that?’ Varmen’s smile was weak. ‘Curse me, but I remember the last year of the war, you know? ’Wealer armies bunching up to defend Shon Fhor, and leaving all their civilians behind them, villages and towns full of them ripe for the Slave Corps

… We were first in, a couple of times. You’d find them on their knees around some sage or seer or magic-maker, begging their spirits to do something, to protect them from us. You’d find tens of them, hundreds even, singing and dancing and chanting, and then we’d walk in, us heavy-armour lads, and they’d go quiet one by one, then all of ’em. If we could see who their wizard-type was, orders were to shoot ’em dead. The rest would cave in soon enough after that. You could see it in their faces, like you’d just come and tilted their world on its side. And now nothing worked like they thought it should, poor bastards.’

‘And now we seem to need to tilt it back again,’ Thalric said wryly, just as Coren came marching in with a couple of his glittering soldiers, and also a woman.

In that moment, it was clear to Thalric that nobody had explained to the necromancer what she was being brought to Suon Ren for, and that the seneschal had not only copied but actually intensified his prince’s dislike of the breed. The expression on the woman’s face was that of a prisoner on her way to an execution, and seeing a pair of Wasp-kinden there did not change it.

She was not what Thalric had expected: not a crone, nor even a Dragonfly-kinden. She was considerably younger than he was, and her skin was a curious shade: pale underlain with lead-grey highlights, so that she herself looked half a corpse already. Her face was narrow, and her eyes held no irises at all, just pinpoint pupils amidst a pale field. She was a slender creature, dressed in a robe that had seen much darning, her dark hair streaked messily with white and hanging raggedly about her shoulders. There was an empty scabbard attached to her belt, for a short-bladed sword, and she clutched a travelling pack.

Thalric guessed that some conjoining of Moth, Roach and Mantis inheritance had led to this particular miscegenation. How many flavours of mystic nonsense am I getting, combined in this one woman? He awaited the inevitable outpouring of curses, benedictions and portentous threats that all these quacksalvers seemed to come out with.

Instead, the seneschal gave the woman a shove towards where Che was laid out, and she rounded on him as soon as she was out of arm’s reach.

‘What do you want, you bastard lackey? Selling me to the Empire, is it?’

‘Make her well,’ the Dragonfly ordered her. ‘The prince demands it.’

The necromancer looked rebellious. ‘The prince didn’t want my skills a few days ago. How about I tell him he can go -’

Coren’s hand went for his sword, but Thalric stepped forward pointedly, making them both flinch. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ he announced. The Dragonfly seneschal stared at him, blankly hostile, then turned on his heel and left, his men following him.

The halfbreed woman hugged her satchel and eyed the Wasps doubtfully. ‘So, what?’ she asked, sneaking a glance at Che. ‘She’s not dead. What am I supposed to do with someone who’s not dead?’

Thalric forbore to ask what she might have done with a corpse, had one been offered. ‘Examine her,’ he instructed. ‘They said you could help.’

‘They say a lot of things.’ The woman was already retreating. ‘This isn’t anything to do with me. I’m not the woman for it.’

Bitterness rose inside Thalric and he advanced on her angrily. ‘Is that what the mystics of the Commonweal have come to? You’re not even going to make a few passes in the air and then vomit out some ambiguous prediction? Come on, you might at least go through the motions, woman – or what’s a charlatan for?’ After just a few steps, he had backed her into a corner, trampling over Felipe’s flowers. ‘Because they claimed you could help, and now I’m cursed if I have anyone else to turn to. They said her self had been cut loose, whatever that’s supposed to mean, and all I know is that something struck her down, and I can’t tell what’s wrong, and it might as well be…’ He realized that he had her by the shoulders, in a grip that must surely have hurt, and was staring her right in the face, and about to do who could know what.

Her expression had gone from alarm to calm acceptance, and now to curiosity. ‘Magic?’ she whispered.

Feeling suddenly defeated, Thalric let her go and stomped back over to Che. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘What’s left except lies like that? Why not magic?’

‘My name is Maure, sir,’ she told him. ‘Will you pay me for my work?’

He turned back to her, frowning. ‘What sort of magician are you?’

‘One that has to eat,’ she stated. ‘And there’s no payment promised by Prince Felipe, and living off the gratitude of princes is like to leave me hungry, in any event.’

‘Recover Che and I’ll pay you,’ he told her gruffly. ‘And no “sirs”. We’re neither of us in the army any more. I’m Thalric, that’s Varmen, she’s Cheerwell Maker.’

Maure approached Che’s body almost casually at first, but then she flinched back, eyebrows vanishing under her uneven fringe. ‘Oh, now,’ she murmured, ‘what am I looking at? What did they do to her?’

‘The consensus of the prince’s seers was that she represents some kind of menace best destroyed, or so the steward said,’ Thalric said acidly.

‘Is that the truth?’ Maure wondered. ‘Well, then, I should do my best to bring her back to herself as quickly as possible, if only because it will annoy that man so. Now, you two, sirs, give me room and time to work, and don’t expect too much too soon, sirs – and, yes, I know you said not to call you that, sirs but, as a halfbreed and a woman and a Commonwealer to boot, I’ve not enjoyed the best experiences with any of your people, so you’ll appreciate if I keep myself on the windy side of civil.’

The hall of Leose was busy now, far more so even than when the young nobles had danced here. Salme Elass was holding her council of war.

She held pride of place, with Alain sitting to her left, and Isendter Whitehand to her right, whilst the seneschal, Lisan Dea, hovered in attendance behind. Around the room she had assembled many of those same aristocrats that had been hunting the stag, together with their own champions, their war leaders and headmen of their retinues.