The stitches now
inserted in his side pulled alarmingly, and he remembered.
Ah
yes, Daklan. Daklan and his far-distant general, and the Empire.
He could barely even
remember the name of the general who had ordered his death. It hardly mattered,
what with so many generals and so many agendas.
Forcing his eyes open,
he saw that he was not alone. He lay in a room that had been recently looted.
The shutters were torn from the windows, a chest at the foot of his bed had
been smashed open, and the wooden panelling had even been ripped off one wall.
The design was Beetle-kinden, and he guessed that it was some farmhouse within
sight of Collegium that Vekken soldiers had gone over whilst encircling that
city. The man sitting beside the bed was no Beetle but a Spider-kinden with
long greying hair, wearing a Beetle robe that was smeared with blood.
‘Who?’ His voice was a
dismal croak. ‘Who are you?’
The Spider smiled, his
features lined with a weary humour. ‘You have a remarkable constitution, Master
Thalric. I don’t think many people in your position would even be breathing,
let alone talking.’
‘You . . . know my name,
but who are you?’
‘My principal knows your
name, and she’s been most anxious to meet you. However, she wanted me to get
you in a state where you would be fit to meet her.’
‘Curse you!’ With a
supreme effort, Thalric forced himself into a sitting position. He saw a
flicker of surprise in the man’s face. ‘Tell me who you are!’
‘My name is Destrachis,
Master Thalric, but does it mean anything? No? Are you happier now? Or let me
elaborate: I am a traveller, something of an opportunist, a scholar, and a
doctor of medicine, which is why you are even in a position to ask these
questions.’ Destrachis stood. ‘You’ll be leaving soon, when you’re strong
enough to walk. A day or two, who knows? You are remarkably resilient, and I
see from the patchwork you’ve made of your skin that this is hardly the first
time you’ve been wounded, although perhaps the worst.’
Thalric hissed in rage.
‘Tell me,’ he demanded, ‘what is going on.’
Destrachis, pausing at
the door, smiled back at him. ‘She wants you to run, Master Thalric. She wants
to feel her victory over you. She wants you dead, but she wants you to
appreciate just why – and by whose agency – your death will occur. I can’t
claim to understand it myself, but she wants satisfaction, and skewering a sick
man while he’s dying on the ground is not apparently very satisfying. So, after
chasing you all the way across the Lowlands, she ordered me to make you well
enough to run again. Perhaps that makes some sense to an imperial mind?’
‘The Empire and I have
parted company,’ Thalric muttered. ‘But she . . . ?’
‘Her name is Felise
Mienn,’ the Spider informed him. ‘A Dragonfly-kinden noblewoman. I have no idea
why she hates you quite this much.’
Thalric slumped back
heavily in the bed, feeling his strength drain away all at once at the very
sound of that name. She had been hunting him. All this time, she had been
hunting him, and he had never been aware.
The Commonweal during
the Twelve-Year War . . . when the Rekef Outlander agents such as himself were
moving ahead of the army, disrupting any resistance the Dragonfly-kinden could
mount: raids, sabotage, rumours.
And assassination – dark
deeds that he had performed gladly, knowing that the impenetrable shield of the
imperial will kept him safe from guilt or blame.
‘I killed her children,’
he recalled hoarsely. ‘And I made her watch.’
‘Yes, that would do it,’
Destrachis said, quite unmoved by the thought, and left him there to reflect.
‘We’ve been seen,’ Tynisa
said. The black shape in the sky had wheeled back past them and was now darting
off.
‘Some time ago,’ Tisamon
confirmed. ‘Fly-kinden, which tells us little because even the Empire uses them
as scouts sometimes.’
They took refuge in a
hollow that was carpeted with shoulder-high thorny bushes. Out here in the hill
country east of Merro there was little enough cover.
‘Just a local, do you
think?’
‘Any local would be
keeping his head down, with an army on their doorstep,’ Tisamon remarked.
Except, of course, that it wasn’t. By all reason and logic, the Wasp army that
had sacked Tark should already have been all over Egel and Merro, and probably
at the gates of Kes by now, but aside from those possible scouts, there was no
sign of it.
Felyal had provided a boat,
a little one-handed skiff that Tisamon had handled ably enough, with the air of
a man for whom old skills came back easily. Mantis-kinden made swift boats,
this one with such a broad sail and so little hull that Tynisa was constantly
clutching at its mast for fear of the water. They had kept close to the coast,
running easterly in good time, creeping past the lights of Kes one dark night
and then beaching in a secluded bay, all the while looking for signs of the
imperial advance.
From then on they had
just been watching and waiting, but it was almost as if the Wasps had simply
decided to head back north after taking Tark.
‘We couldn’t be
behind
their lines, could we?’ Tynisa asked.
‘If so, we’d know it.
Wasp-owned land has a feel to it. And they’d be all over here, taking stock,
taking slaves. No, they’re still ahead, and I can’t understand it.’
They rose from the
hollow and soon put another two hills behind them. Lying flat on the crest of
the second hill, Tisamon squinted into the distance.
‘Is . . . that looks
like a camp. A big one.’
Tynisa joined him,
spotting a dark blot on the horizon. The land was more wooded around here,
patches of cypress and wild olives and locust trees that sketchily followed the
lines of streams, with cicadas half the size of a man screaming like torn metal
at irregular intervals. It seemed to Tynisa that the darkness Tisamon was
pointing to could just be more of the same green, but he seemed convinced that
it was an army.
‘And camped there, in
broad daylight,’ he said. ‘And it’s just a field camp, a temporary pitch-up. No
fortifications, nothing. The army’s just sitting there eating up its rations.
So what is going on?’
‘The scout’s back,’
Tynisa noticed.
Tisamon risked a look
upwards. They were both wearing green and earth tones, camouflaged against the
dusty ground. So had he detected them again? Yes. The scout circled a moment
and then seemed to be coming down.
Instantly, Tisamon’s
claw was in his hand, but Tynisa murmured, ‘Wait.’
The Fly landed twenty
yards away, glancing about cautiously. He was dressed outrageously, they saw,
and certainly no imperial soldier.
‘Is that what they’re
wearing in Merro these days?’ Tisamon wondered. The little man was approaching
them nonchalantly, pretending that he was just meandering and had not seen
them. As he passed by he let a paper drop from the hands clasped behind his
back. He was actually whistling tunelessly as he stared out with apparent
satisfaction across the hillside. Then he took a deep breath, exhaled it, and
was in the air again, darting off eastwards.
‘What in blazes was that
all about?’ Tisamon demanded, but Tynisa had plucked up the discarded message
and was reading it curiously. It was elegantly written in a florid script, and
seemed so familiar from her College days that she wanted to laugh.
‘It’s an invitation,’
she said. ‘Someone wants to speak with us. It says to come down to the big
grove.’ She pointed. ‘They must mean that one way down there.’
Tisamon did not seem
amused. ‘It’s a trap,’ he decided.
‘A long way to go for a
trap.’
He shrugged. ‘Some
people think like that.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘This is Spider-kinden work – the
clothes, the details, I know it.’
‘I suppose we are a bit
close to the border up here,’ Tynisa allowed. ‘Are we going to go down?’
‘We are – but with
weapons drawn,’ he decided. ‘I don’t trust any of this.’
Approaching the grove
they saw there was a sizeable body of people within it, and making no attempt
to hide themselves. There was enough armour visible for them to see that none
of it was in the Empire’s black and gold. They paused at the very edge of the
trees, uncertain whether their stealthy approach had been observed or not.
‘Head west as fast as
you can if this goes badly,’ Tisamon decided. ‘If it goes really badly, get
yourself to Merro and send a messenger to Stenwold.’
‘Assuming Stenwold is in
any position to receive one,’ Tynisa said, remembering the Vekken army.
Tisamon shrugged. ‘We
must make that assumption.’ Then he stood up and walked forward openly, his
claw folded along his arm. Rapier held loosely in her hand, Tynisa followed.
There was an instant
stir amongst the guards on the perimeter, but they obviously knew to expect
visitors. The Ant-kinden there drew a little closer at the sight of Tisamon,
and the Spiders lounging beneath the sideless tent smirked a little, and
murmured barbed comments to one another. But when Tisamon stood proudly before
them, looking down his nose at them all, not one was willing to challenge him.
‘I believe someone
wanted our company.’ Tisamon pitched his voice so as to carry to all of them.
Tynisa looked about them, reading their stances, their faces. They were not
expecting a fight, she noted. Not an ambush, then, or not immediately. She
turned to see a richly dressed Spider-kinden stand up from amongst his fellows.
He was a strikingly handsome man, neatly bearded and with a very white smile.
Something about him sent a shiver through her, though, not one of attraction
but of warning. If it was her Mantis blood that governed her battle instincts,
now her Spider blood took over. This was a man to be reckoned with, she knew.
He was Aristoi, therefore political through and through.
When he smiled at her,
though, she liked him despite herself.
‘Won’t you come a little
closer?’ he offered. ‘It would be crass of me to conduct my business at the top
of my voice, but I’m loath to scald myself beneath this wretched sun.’
‘I do not fear you,’
Tisamon informed him, and stepped on until he was just outside the little
pavilion. He left enough room around him for fighting unhampered, Tynisa
noticed. The legendary Mantis dislike of the other man’s entire race was
rigidly evident in every line of his body.
‘My scouts shall be
disciplined,’ the Spider said. ‘They told me two Mantids, but I see only one,
albeit as much a Mantis as one might wish to encounter, and one remarkable
woman. Pray allow me, sweet lady, to have the honour of naming myself.’
He was expecting a
response, but she did not know what to offer, and so she shrugged. He took that
as satisfactory, and made a remarkably fluid and elegant bow while never quite
taking his eyes off her. ‘I present myself as the Lord-Martial Teornis of the
Aldanrael, and I offer you the solemn bond of my hospitality.’ He saw the
twitch in Tisamon’s face and his smile turned rueful. ‘Ah well, I admit that in
certain circles the Aristoi’s iron word bears a trace of rust, but you would
accept wine, surely, if I offered it? And some refreshment. If you will not
trust my open intent, you may rely on my love of indulging my own luxuries.’
Tynisa smiled at him
despite herself. ‘I am Tynisa, and this is Tisamon of Felyal. I will drink and
eat with you, Master Spider, on the condition that you do not ask my companion
to.’
‘A lady of compromise,’
Teornis observed. ‘Delightful.’ With a gesture he caused a cloth to be laid out
on the ground, with silk cushions strewn around, and a low table bearing an
assortment of dishes, most of them not immediately familiar. The other
Spider-kinden had moved back a little to make space, and were now sitting or lying,
watching the two newcomers slyly.
Tynisa knelt at the
table, knowing that Tisamon would stand there like a hostile statue until this
ritual was done, or until something went wrong. She decided it would be best if
she herself spoke for them.
‘This seems an unusual
place, and time, for an Aristos of the Spider-kinden to ride out merely for
pleasure,’ she remarked. A Fly servant put a goblet in her hand and she sipped,
finding wine as rich and potent as any she had ever tasted.
Teornis settled down
facing her across the table. His gaze on her was still admiring, though just as
certainly she knew that it had been donned with as much care as his shirt or
his boots. ‘Pleasure, my lady Tynisa? Why this is a military outing. Surely you
won’t deny we make a fearsome spectacle?’
‘Military? To what end?
Have the Spiderlands been invaded as well?’
‘Because my curiosity is
raging, first please tell me how a Spider-kinden lady comes to be travelling
with one of those who have, all unjustly, declared themselves our mortal
enemies?’
Best
not to put any further weapon in his hand.
‘We are simply old friends,
Tisamon and I.’
‘You are rich in your
choice of friends, obviously,’ Teornis remarked. His fingers hovered over the
spread of food, and he plucked at a mound of candied somethings. ‘Tisamon of
Felyal, you say. Is it Felyal you have now come from? I have an ulterior motive
in asking, as you see. I seek someone to carry word for me. I fear Felyal would
be of little use, since none there would credit a word I have to say.’
‘Surely you have
followers enough to bear a message, Lord-Martial?’
At the sound of his
title, no expression crossed his face, no pride at her using it. ‘Alas, I am
caught in my own nets. These are wicked times, and when word comes from the
Spiderlands, who will accept it at face value? Hence I hoped to convince you of
my pure heart and true motives, and send you back to your home or your employer
with my news, and hopefully your own words to plead my suit for me.’