‘Colonel, speak your
piece.’
‘Sir.’ Edric had not
forgotten himself so far as to miss his salute. ‘We made progress, sir, we
really did. I’m told that the combination of engines, troops and the grenades
broke up the defenders so that we were able to send a whole wave of the
airborne over the wall without resistance.’
‘Really, Colonel? And
amongst the hill-tribes, this is considered progress?’
‘Sir?’
‘And will you take the
city with just one wave of the light airborne?’ Alder shook his head. ‘Go see
to your men, Colonel. Those few that are left.’
There was a bitter taste
in his mouth, and he had nobody to share it with.
That is
what it means to be in command.
But of his subordinate colonels, Edric
was too savage and Carvoc too dull. Only Norsa, of the Daughters, could
possibly understand his feelings. He promised himself that he would visit her
tonight, share a bowl of wine and talk of this in tones that would not be
overhead.
An imperial general shows no weakness to his men.
His bleak thoughts could not hide from his own scrutiny, however, nor would he
disown them.
We have done poorly today, and that bastard
Drephos is to blame.
He saw the man in
question now, swathed in his robe as always, with not a crease or scratch on
him. As he watched the Colonel-Auxillian make his way over, his gait slightly
offset from some old injury, his face was just a blur under the cowl, but Alder
was sure that he could glimpse a smile there.
‘Drephos,’ he growled,
‘explanations, please?’
The cowled man made an
amused noise. ‘It’s war, General. Surely you know your own business.’
Alder’s one remaining
hand caught him by the collar, twisting the cowl half across his face. ‘For
what cause have you spilt the blood of so many of my men?’ he demanded.
‘For
your
cause, General,’ said Drephos, his voice showing no
sign that Alder held him by the throat.
‘I don’t see any of the
walls down, Drephos,’ Alder snapped. He knew that Wasp lives were less than
nothing to this man. Spending life in the Empire’s name was one thing, while
spending it to fuel the Colonel-Auxillian’s private games was quite another.
‘Let us have this
conversation again in two days’ time,’ Drephos suggested. ‘Then you might see
something quite different.’
Tisamon and Tynisa were
duelling, passing rapidly around the circle of one of the practice halls of the
College. There were a dozen or so spectators, students garbed or half-garbed as
Prowess contestants, sitting on one of the tiers of steps. There was none of
the cheering and shouting of a public performance; instead, the watchers
murmured to one another on technique as they compared notes.
Nor was it the
formalized shortsword technique of Collegium’s duelling circle being practised
here. The pair carried rapiers, live steel blades, and the air between them
flickered and sang with the lightning clashes of the weapons. It struck Stenwold,
as he entered, that he had never seen Tisamon with a rapier in his hand before:
the folding blade of his clawed gauntlet had always been his first choice.
Rapiers were a Mantis-kinden weapon nonetheless and he was showing his
proficiency here. They dodged and lunged so abruptly, father and daughter, that
Stenwold felt that they must have rehearsed this between them. Each move was
matched by the other and he thought, at first, that the entire bout, starting
however long before his entrance, must have continued entirely without contact.
Then he heard Tisamon’s
voice coming in at irregular moments. ‘Strike,’ he would declare, and then
after another furious pass with the weapons, ‘Strike.’ He was marking his
touches, Stenwold realized. Unlike any sane or civilized duel the fight did not
pause on a hit. There was no moment permitted for Tynisa to regain her
composure or her balance. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, soaking her arming
jacket, but Tisamon’s brow was pearled as well. Stenwold could not tell if it
was the injury from Helleron or the pace of the current duel that strained him.
‘Strike,’ Tisamon noted
again, and they fought on. Neither was cut: the blows had been delivered with
the flat of the narrow blades only. Their faces had so much the same expression
of intense concentration that in that moment Tynisa truly resembled her father.
The features of her dead mother were momentarily banished.
Stenwold sat down a
little way from the rapt students. Tisamon had promised to train his daughter –
the one gift he could give – and he took that vow as seriously as the
Mantis-kinden always did.
‘Strike,’ he said again.
Stenwold expected Tynisa to become frustrated now, stirred to anger that would
be fatal for a duellist. Instead she seemed calmer after each call, focusing
more and more within herself.
Stenwold glanced around
at the students. They had stopped murmuring now, were watching the action with
almost as much concentration as the protagonists themselves. They were all
young, in their first year, local Beetle-kinden mixed with a few visitors. No
Tarkesh Ants, of course. They had been recalled, all of them, when the news
broke of the threat to their city.
‘Strike,’ came Tisamon’s
voice, and then, ‘Strike!’
The sound of swords
stopped, and Stenwold struggled to disentangle what had happened. Only when he
saw the line of her blade pressed against her opponent’s side did he realize
that the last call had been Tynisa’s.
They were all watching
Tisamon now for his reaction. It was a nod, just a small, sharp nod, but
Stenwold read volumes of approval in it. The Mantis ran a sleeve over his
forehead, fair hair flat and damp with sweat there, and then came over to sit
by Stenwold. Close to, the strain was clearly visible, more lines about his
eyes and an added pallor to his face.
‘You should perhaps take
things easier for a while,’ Stenwold suggested, knowing the suggestion was
futile.
‘I’m getting old.’
Tisamon smiled a little. ‘I used to heal faster than this.’
‘You’ve healed faster
than anyone has a right to,’ Sten-wold told him. ‘You took quite a scorching
there.’
‘It has been a while
since someone put such a mark on me,’ the Mantis agreed.
Tynisa had meanwhile
been accepting the congratulations of the students, who seemed to appreciate
that fighting Tisamon was like fighting a force of nature, and that even one
strike was equivalent to a victory.
‘Of course, you killed
her a dozen times there,’ Stenwold remarked.
Tisamon shook his head.
‘Practice is always different to blood, even using a real sword.’
‘I notice she wasn’t
using the sword you gave her.’
Tisamon seemed to find
that amusing. ‘It is crafted for killing, Stenwold. It wouldn’t understand.’
‘What will you do, when
she’s good enough?’
‘She is already good
enough, or nearly.’ There was hard pride in the Mantis’s voice. ‘She was on the
edge of good enough before I even met her. Blood will out, and all she needed
was real blood on her hands to call to her heritage.’
Stenwold shifted
uncomfortably. ‘So what will you do now?’
‘When this is done and
when we can, I shall take her to Parosyal.’
‘I can’t even begin to
imagine what that means for you, but surely your people . . . ?’
‘They will hate her, and
despise her,’ Tisamon said flatly. ‘Not one of them will look at her, or even
at me. We will be pariahs in my people’s holy place. But they will not deny
her, because she has the skill. If she can pass the trials they set, then in
the end . . . in the end she will be one of us and then their hate must drain
away, and they must accept her.’
‘“Must” . . . ?’
Stenwold prodded.
Tisamon was silent.
‘Well, if Cheerwell can
be accepted by the Moth-kinden, then anything is possible,’ Stenwold allowed,
and rose to greet Tynisa as she approached.
It was late when they
finally returned to Stenwold’s townhouse. Tisamon had cautioned him to reside
elsewhere after the last attack on it, but Stenwold had a stubborn streak when
it came to giving up what was his. He would not be harried out of his own home,
his own city. Besides, with Tynisa and Tisamon under the same roof with him, he
reckoned it would be a brave assassin that tried it.
After watching the duel
he had gathered reports from some of his people within the city. They were not
his agents as such, but he had slipped them a little coin to keep their eyes
and ears open. He knew that the Assembly still kept its doors closed to him,
out of pique more than anything else. Until that attitude changed, the Wasps
had time and, while they had time, they would move carefully.
But there would come a
moment, as there had in Helleron, where the metal met, as the saying went, and
caution went out of the window. A night of knives, it would be. He was glad to
have Tisamon and Tynisa with him, glad also to have sent his niece Cheerwell to
the relative security of Sarn.
In the quiet of his own room
he shrugged out of his robes, letting them pool on the floor. The night air was
cool on his skin through the knee-length tunic, and the water he splashed on
his face made him shiver. They were forecasting a cold winter for Collegium –
for the Lowlands as a whole. Cold, of course, meaning a few cloudless and icy
nights. Salma, hailing from north of the Barrier Ridge, had claimed that nobody
in the Lowlands knew what winter really meant.
It was still warm enough
to sleep in his bare skin, so he stripped off the tunic and cast it on the
floor, then turned the flame of the lamp out. Finding his way in the moonlight
to his bed he threw himself down on it. His mind was alive with stratagems,
shreds of information, clues and counter-intelligence. The threat of the Wasps
was bad for his sleep patterns.
And then he became aware
that he was not alone in the room. Somewhere in the darkness someone moved.
All at once he went
colder than the night could make him. At first he was going to call out for
Tynisa or Tisamon, but if he did so then it would only mean a swift blade – a
blade that might come at any time, but would surely come now, right now, if he
called.
Why
couldn’t I have listened to Tisamon?
He reached out. There
was always a sword within reach of his bed, a judicious precaution that had
borne fruit more than once. His fingers brushed the pommel, so he stretched a
little further to grasp the hilt.
‘There is no need for
that, Master Maker,’ said a woman’s voice, one he knew, he realized, although
he could not immediately place it.
‘Who’s there?’ he asked,
excruciatingly aware that whoever it was could obviously see better than he
could in the dark.
‘Wouldn’t you be more
comfortable if you lit the lamp again?’
Yes.
Yes I would.
He crawled backwards off the bed, sword in one hand, still
sheathed, and in the other a sheet clutched demurely to his chest. He thought
he heard a snicker from the unseen woman which helped not at all. Then he
realized that he would need both hands free to light the lamp.
Both hands. His
sword-hand included. Or perhaps not. He let the sheet go, modesty playing
second fiddle to mortality, and opened the lamp hatch single-handed. Thick
fingers fumbled across the cabinet top until they located his steel lighter. He
flicked at its catch until it caught, and then brought the fragile flame to the
oil. It lit with a gentle, golden glow and, with his sword firmly presented, he
turned to face the intruder.
She had a hand over her
mouth, in hilarity or horror, and it was a moment before he recognized her.
When he did, he swept the sheet back up so fast that he almost lost his sword
in it.
‘Arianna?’ he gasped.
‘What are you . . . what are you doing – in my
house
?’
She was desperately
trying to hide a smile. It was hilarity then, which was the worse of the two
reactions. ‘You do not bar your windows, Master Maker.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
But she was right of course. He still thought like a Beetle, having just one
entrance to his home, on the ground floor.
‘I . . . I wanted to
speak with you, privately.’
‘Well this is about as
private as I get.’ He clutched the sheet close to him, tried to drape it about
him like a robe, and found it would not stretch. In front of the young
Spider-kinden’s unabashed gaze, he felt acutely aware of all the physical parts
of him that had never been slim to begin with, and that time had only expanded.
‘I would have said
something when you came in, only . . .’ Her shoulders shook a little. ‘Only you
started getting undressed so fast and . . . I didn’t know what to say.’
How old
I feel, at this moment.
‘Would you mind . . . turning your back while I
at least put a tunic on?’ he asked.
Then the door burst open
and Tisamon was there.
The Mantis had his claw
on ready and he saw the intruder at once, bounding across the room towards her.
She shrieked, falling down beside the bed and tugging desperately at a dagger
that was snagged in her belt.
‘Tisamon, wait!’
Stenwold yelled, and the Mantis froze, claw still poised to stab down. Arianna
was now completely hidden behind the bed, but Stenwold could hear her ragged
breathing.
‘What is this?’ the
Mantis demanded.
‘She’s just a . . .
student,’ Stenwold said, feeling the weight of providing some explanation
descend on him. ‘You can . . . let her get up now.’
Tisamon backed off from
her cautiously. ‘She’s Spider-kinden,’ he remarked.
‘I don’t think that’s an
objection you can make any more,’ Stenwold pointed out, reasonably.
Arianna stood up slowly,
one hand nursing the back of her head. The dagger was still caught in the folds
of her robe.