But this thought, with
so much else, was soon blown past her by the incessant wind, and Destrachis was
still grinning at her, so she smiled back at him and allowed herself to enjoy.
Destrachis woke with the
tip of a blade at his throat. For a second he twitched uncontrollably,
instincts yelling at him to do something, anything. He suppressed them, lying
calmly for a moment to gather himself. Then he opened his eyes. There was a
little moonlight slanting across them, and his eyes – and hers, he knew – would
pick out enough from it to see their way.
‘I’m awake,’ he said
quietly. They were in a Wayhouse located not far from Collegium. She had paid
the surprised Way Brothers for a private room, and let Destrachis take a place
on the floor, but now she had apparently had second thoughts.
Felise Mienn studied him
down the length of her sword, and he thought she was trembling slightly in the
faded moonlight.
‘How do I know I can
trust you?’ she demanded.
He allowed himself a
slight smile. He knew from experience that, on his slightly lined face, it
seemed an expression of infinite reassurance. ‘Felise—’
‘You are too
convenient,’ she said. ‘I think . . . I think you may be working for him. For
Thalric – or for his masters. You are here only to stop me. Or else to warn
him.’
She
was
trembling, he saw, but for all that the sword was still. Its tip was close
enough to dimple the skin of his neck, but it drew no blood.
‘Felise, please listen
to me.’ It was long practice that allowed him to lie there, as calm as a
cloudless sky, and speak in such reasoned and measured tones.
‘Why would you leave
your work in Helleron?’ she asked.
‘I am a mercenary at
best, I have no roots—’
‘And why come along with
me, just like that?’
‘You have money, do you
not?’
‘And why—?’
‘But most of all,’ he
said, risking much to cut across her increasingly urgent questioning, ‘we have
had this conversation before.’
Dead silence from her.
He stared into that face, beautiful as it was, and, in that instant, he saw
nothing whatsoever alive behind her eyes. He granted her a long moment, and
then continued.
‘Three days ago, camping
beside the automotive, we had this exact conversation. Remember, it scared the
squits out of those smugglers we were with? You accused me of being a Wasp
agent. You had me pinned like this, almost exactly the same. It was the middle
of the night, just like now. And then we talked, and I explained to you that,
no, I wasn’t a Wasp agent, and that if you wanted me to leave you, then I’d do
it, but I’d rather not. I’m simply a travelling companion who is, for the
moment, heading in the same direction as yourself. And I’m not overly fond of
the Empire, either. And I have watched you fight, and I find you admirable.’
‘Admirable,’ she echoed.
He was not entirely sure she had understood his words.
‘Capable of being
admired,’ he explained lazily. ‘I have lived in a great many places, both
inside and outside the Lowlands, Felise, and I have never met anyone quite like
you.’
She was trembling again,
and he knew that this was the point where the loose string in her head that was
keeping her in check might snap, or not. He fought down his own anxiety and
made himself wait.
‘I . . .’ There was the
look of a lost child on her face, and the ‘I’ she spoke of was someone else,
someone surfacing from long ago to take brief possession of a body long
vacated. ‘Where am I? What is this place?’
‘Just a Wayhouse on the
road. We’ll go to Collegium tomorrow.’
‘What’s . . .
Collegium?’ She seemed dazed.
He wondered what would
happen if he led her deliberately astray now, invented some other purpose for
her. How long would the deception last, and could it be that simple? But, no,
here came her familiar expression once more, ice spreading across her face and
making her cold and hard again.
Abruptly her sword was
back in its scabbard. ‘
He
is there,’ she reminded
herself.
‘Or has been there,’ he
corrected, allowing himself to sit up, gingerly touching his throat but finding
not a mark on it.
‘
He
is there,’ she repeated. ‘And I will fall on him, and all his allies, and leave
not one alive.’
The worrying thing, for
Destrachis, was how this thought seemed not to fire her up but to calm her
down.
Lieutenant Graf perused
the dispatch, keeping his expression carefully blank. Amidst the scars, his one
eye flicked back and forth over the few words it contained, looking for a way
out.
‘Major?’ he began at
last, and Thalric saw that, like so many in his position, he was a man who had
forgotten, until this moment, what really frightened him.
‘Never underestimate the
cowardice of a subject race,’ Thalric said, and Graf studied him cautiously.
‘I had not thought . .
.’ Graf twisted in his chair. It was something Thalric had observed before,
when underlings had sudden sight of the spectre of authority at his shoulder.
Graf was a man who could, perhaps, have bested him, certainly a man who had no
reason to believe he could not. Thalric was his superior, though. Most of all,
Thalric was higher within the ranks of the Rekef. And, although it was
Thalric’s plan as much as Graf’s, it was, here and now, the subordinate’s role
to bear the blame.
‘We neither of us
predicted it, because we are Wasps. This development is merely a result of the
weakness of our enemies,’ said Thalric, growing tired, letting the other man
off the hook. ‘Perhaps we should have foreseen, but the plan seemed sound
enough to me when you first outlined it.’
Graf visibly relaxed
into his seat as Thalric took the paper from him. It was advance word from a
man he kept fee’d in the Amphiophos, where the Assembly met. This man was just
a servant, but he saw everything that went on there.
‘Well, the endgame can
be salvaged, even though we might look like fools for all the rest.’ It had
seemed reasonable, for Stenwold was already no friend of the Assembly. He had
dangerous ideas and he left his post too often to undertake private ventures.
He associated with dangerous and unsavoury types, yet now he wanted to speak to
the Assembly, and they wanted to make him wait, to consider the error of his
ways. Graf and Thalric had wanted to drive a wedge between Stenwold and his
peers, so that the wait might become an eternity, so that his voice might never
be heard.
‘So what happens?’
Thalric asked disgustedly. ‘He is constantly seen, agitating, rousing up the
students of the College, going to dubious places to speak the very words that
have so riled their precious Assembly in the past. And would you not think that
this disgraceful behaviour would sour matters further, that they would cast him
from their ranks and have done with it? If this were a place with any decent
rule of law the man would have been crucified as a troublemaker before now.’ He
crumpled the piece of paper and threw it across the room.
‘Yet now they want to
speak to him,’ he spat. ‘All his rabble-rousing has them quaking in their
sandals. They’re desperate, now, to have him where they can see him, and if
that means they must allow him his hearing then so be it. They’re too feeble or
too frightened to take the beetle by the horns and have the wretch arrested.’
‘But at least they won’t
be well disposed to him, when they meet,’ Graf suggested.
Thalric turned a hard
gaze on him, ‘They won’t meet, Lieutenant. We’re going to see to that. Our
final move is to happen
now.
Get word to Arianna
straight away. Tonight would be best, and let’s hope that word of the
Assembly’s decision won’t even have reached him. Then gather your men. I assume
they’ve been briefed on who lives and who dies?’
‘Death for the Mantis
and his daughter,’ confirmed Graf, ‘but Stenwold lives, if possible.’
‘And dies if not,’
Thalric completed. ‘And when he disappears or dies we’ll put the word around
that the Assembly had him dealt with after all, and then see how badly his
precious students take it.’
Arianna left Stenwold
dozing on his back again, lulled asleep by her latest embrace. The house was
quiet, and she washed and dressed swiftly, and left even as dawn was creeping
up the skirts of the eastern sky.
The stalls of the
markets were in place already, the earliest business of the day commencing.
Arianna wandered through them casually until she was sure she was not being
watched or followed.
Her feet then found the
path into the richer district of the mercantile quarter, close to the white
walls of the College itself. The shopfronts here were just being unshuttered,
for the rich could afford to rise later and with more leisure. Most of those
out on the street already would be servants, waiting for one place or the other
to open its doors for business. She passed on.
On the next street she
paused at the barber’s shop. The Fly-kinden who was giving the floor inside a
final opening sweep was Hofi, of course, but he did not look at her, nor she at
him. Her attention instead wandered over the placards he kept in his window.
Anyone who wished could pay him a few coins to tell the world whatever they
wanted announced. There were some goods reported for sale, goods similarly
required. Rather more were personal valedictions, anonymous accolades for
lovers, sly insults, even challenges. Her eyes skipped over them until she
found her latest brief: a poem penned in a blocky hand, idolizing some woman
named Marlia, but she recognized the key words in the first line and followed
the stanzas down until she knew her new instructions.
So
soon!
Her heart lurched. She had been keeping the pot boiling so deftly.
She could not think what had happened for Thalric to hasten the pace so
violently.
And tonight?
It just could not be
done.
But of course it could
be done. It would be easy enough. It would, in fact, pose no problems. Her
instant reaction, though, was to kick away from it.
She had now been staring
too long, and Hofi inside would note it. She turned and walked on, but stopped
two shops down, peering through an iron grille at the jewellery behind it, yet
seeing none of the gold or glitter. When she had been standing over Stenwold,
her claws had been out ready to kill him, or at least she had told herself she
was ready. Now her readiness would be put to the test, for now she had direct
orders.
Direct orders and no
luxury of choice. Of course she must do what she was told. She was
Spider-kinden, so betrayal and double-dealing were in her blood. Stenwold Maker
would not be the first to find her loyalty buckle beneath him just as he
trusted his weight to it, nor the last either, no doubt. It was a game she once
had played badly in Everis, but everyone was an expert out that way. In
Collegium, amongst the plain and simple Beetle-kinden, she was superb at what
she did.
She got back to
Stenwold’s townhouse in good time. The smell of new bread was in the air, his
servant making breakfast. Despite all that was on her mind, she felt hungry at
once, passing straight through the hall and into the kitchen.
She stopped abruptly,
for Tisamon was seated at the table, and before him lay her scabbarded dagger.
As his eyes met hers, a
chill went through her. In Everis nobody had worried much about the
Mantis-kinden. They were few, and across the water, and they were savages. Oh,
dangerous enough out there in the wilds, but stout walls and civilized company,
good wine and good conversation, could keep the threat of them at bay.
And here she was, and
here he was, and although they were within Collegium’s walls it was as if he
had brought the wilds inside with him.
Her eyes flicked down to
her weapon, back up to his face. She, who was so skilled a reader of minds and
faces, could see nothing past the shield of his dislike.
‘Good morning, Master
Tisamon,’ she tried, her voice shaking a little.
He blinked, said
nothing.
What
did he know?
And did it matter, for surely he would as easily kill her
without a reason, or for such a reason as bedding his friend, as for the real
one: the real reason that she was in the pay of the Empire, rather than the
general cause that she was an ancient enemy of his blood.
The servant put down a
plate of warm bread and a pot of the nut and honey mixture that Beetles seemed
to favour. The man looked from her to the Mantis, and made a quick exit.
‘I hope Tynisa is well,’
she began conversationally, spreading some honey over a chunk of bread, while
determinedly trying to keep her hands from trembling. Only when she had
finished that did she reach out and reclaim the dagger, pushing it into the
belt of her robe. ‘I had wondered where I left it,’ she said. ‘D-did you find
it somewhere?’ Desperate attempts at normality in the face of that blank
disdain.
At last he spoke. ‘You
should be more careful.’ Was he warning her away from Stenwold? Was he
acknowledging that her association had not harmed his friend? It was impossible
to tell.
‘Thank you,’ she said,
and looked away from him as she began to eat, aware all the time that his eyes
were fixed on her.
Up above she heard the
sound of Stenwold himself stirring. He would be down soon enough, adding one
more layer of awkwardness to their little gathering. Then she would tell him
how there were more students waiting to hear him speak, that they would be
gathering tonight, and that he was eagerly expected.
She would announce it to
him flawlessly. She would play her role without any catch in her voice or a
single moment of doubt, even under the loathing stare of the Mantis. Whatever
she might feel on the inside was quite irrelevant.