Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

After an audience with one of my Wasp friends… Che considered, hoping that Thalric had not managed to offend one of the most powerful men in the Commonweal.

The two Wasps rose soon after. Varmen was first to appear, bustling out of the embassy with only a brusque nod to her, off to check on his pack-beetle. Thalric stepped out a moment later, finding Che sitting near the door, looking towards the centre of Suon Ren, at the Dragonfly-kinden going about their business there.

She glanced at him, expecting that familiar closed look, the cynical Thalric armoured against the world, but instead she caught a strangely vulnerable expression there. Relief at her recovery, yes, but more than that. He stared at her without words, and at last she found her feet, with a flick of her wings, and walked over to him, holding his gaze.

‘You put me to a great deal of trouble, Beetle girl,’ he told her, but his voice trembled slightly, and she put her arms around him and hugged him tight, feeling his own embrace respond a moment later.

‘We must set off north, as soon as you’re ready to go,’ she murmured into his chest. ‘Tynisa needs me.’

He grunted. ‘Does she know that?’

‘No. Quite the opposite, probably. But I can’t abandon her to.. .’ She remembered that he would almost certainly not understand, and just let the sentence tail off.

‘Well, then, I can’t think of any urgent social engagements here that I can’t put aside,’ he told her. ‘Let’s beg some supplies and we’ll set off.’

Thalric had looked out a map, soon after they had arrived, in preparation for this moment. He produced it with something like embarrassment, because it made no sense to him, lacking the careful proportion and measurement of the charts used by the Imperial army. Che studied it with interest, though, seeing how the Inapt cartographers had set out their world, places and trails, landmarks and directions. She understood it perfectly.

When they were ready to set off, they found Varmen waiting for them, his laden beetle at his heels.

‘You’re heading back east?’ Che asked him.

He shuffled his feet. ‘Thought I’d come with you.’

She glanced at Thalric, who was frowning, clearly as surprised as she was. ‘You’ve been paid off?’ she pressed.

Varmen shrugged. ‘Paid, certainly. Listen, where you’re heading, it’s Rhael Province – bandit country. You’re saying you can’t use an extra sword?’

Che scrutinized his face, trying to detect treachery. She sensed a crack in his bluff and simple exterior, but she did not read guilt there, exactly. ‘What is it?’ she murmured, feeling obscurely that she should be able to tell precisely, to extract the knowledge from his face or his mind.

‘You were with Felipe Shah,’ Thalric noted, and Che readied herself for a display of suspicion, but instead the former Rekef man was nodding. ‘He’s hired you, hasn’t he, to look after Che?’

Varmen shrugged awkwardly. ‘He wasn’t exactly going to pay me anything to look after you,’ he said, still evasive. Thalric seemed satisfied with his own deductions, but Che could sense the gap, the discontinuity. Not that Thalric was wrong, but she knew there was more that was going unsaid by Varmen.

They set off shortly after, following a path that was little more than an animal track. They were barely a quarter mile from Suon Ren’s outskirts, though, when someone was calling them back. Glancing behind them, Che saw a figure swathed in a dark cloak hurrying to catch up.

‘It’s the world’s least subtle assassin,’ Varmen murmured, mirroring Che’s thoughts so closely that she could not suppress a bark of laughter.

‘It’s Maure,’ Thalric observed, ‘the… healer.’ It would be a desperate day indeed before the word ‘necromancer’ passed the Wasp’s lips willingly.

With that, there was no choice but to wait for the halfbreed to catch up. She stopped a little short of them, glancing from Wasp to Wasp, but looking mostly at Che.

‘What do you want?’ Thalric asked, a little harshly.

‘You just happen to be going the way I was heading,’ she told them, still hovering at that awkward distance, neither with them nor apart from them.

‘And what way’s that?’

‘Away from Suon Ren’s a good start,’ she told them. ‘Or you may not have noticed how I wasn’t exactly loved there, hmm? Got thrown out by that boot-faced seneschal on his master’s orders, first time round, and next thing I know is the prince’s soldiers are dragging me back, so I can look at you, lady.’ The nod she gave Che seemed overly respectful, endowing Che with the sort of gravitas that a great prince like Felipe Shah should own. ‘Now you’re well again, there’s no welcome for me here.’

‘So there’s a wide world,’ Thalric told her. ‘What do you want from us?’

‘Well, much as I love the thrill of travelling these roads on my own, what with the threat of robbery and rape to keep life interesting, I thought I might try walking in your shadows for at least a while.’

Thalric was opening his mouth to issue some fresh objection, but Varmen quickly said, ‘Let her come. Why not?’ And, in the moment before Varmen was reminded by Thalric that he had no vote in this issue, Che was saying, ‘Enough.’

They all listened to her. That was the frightening thing.

‘Maure,’ she said simply, ‘I owe you a great deal, and if Suon Ren has no gratitude, then don’t think we’ll repeat that failing. Travel with us if you wish. You’re welcome.’

Again she felt that these words carried more weight to them than the simple meanings she was used to. It was as though she was now some great queen whose merest nod or favour carried unthinkable importance. Maure seemed relieved, but at the same time in no great hurry to come closer. ‘That is all, is it?’ Che pressed her. ‘Safety in numbers?’

‘Oh, of course,’ Maure said, and the lie was obvious, but Che let it pass.

In the end, Che let Maure choose their path through Rhael Province, by roads that the woman had obviously travelled before. They made a point of keeping under tree cover whenever they could, and it was clear that the halfbreed was deliberately avoiding settlements along the way.

‘You don’t like doing business with brigands, then?’ Che had asked her.

‘I do business with anyone, if I have to. Brigands pay better than princes, and they pay in advance. I thought you wanted to get to Elas Mar as quickly as possible, though, so best to avoid the locals. They’re a curious lot, and might ask pointed questions.’

Che found herself still convalescing, lacking something of her customary Beetle stamina, which left her trailing behind whilst Varmen strode on ahead, his beetle ambling at his heels. Thalric, however, kept pace with her, which she found by turns comforting and annoying. She was not used to being indulged as an invalid.

After a while, she stopped paying much attention even to Thalric, because the long trek was wearing her down. She cut a walking stick to lean on, and still she laboured her way at the rear, so that Maure and Varmen were perpetually having to stop and wait for her. A shame no northbound barges are expected any time soon.

Towards the end of the first day she glanced up from her plodding feet, for the first time in a while, and saw the halfbreed necromancer leaning in towards Varmen, talking closely, and then the big Wasp’s head cocked back as he laughed at something she had said. Maure had never seemed much of a humorist to Che, but then the woman’s reaction towards her had been curious from the start. Plainly, with others she felt able to let go a little more.

‘Look.’ She managed a gesture towards them, for Thalric’s sake.