The past was a gnawing
horror to her, and just as she had chased Thalric all across the Lowlands, so
it had been chasing her.
What had been left
unsaid? Destrachis could have spoken more – she could feel the shape of it,
though her mind denied her the details. What else was left to know?
Far better not to know.
If she stepped off here, the water would embrace her like a lover and draw her
down. Her armour would fill with it and, even if her volatile mind changed yet
again, there would be nothing she could do to resist. She would finally have
taken her fate in her own hands. Let Thalric live, because he would not be able
to hurt her any further.
Her reflection was faint
in the water rippling below. She could see the outline of her shoulders, her
draped cloak. Her face, though, was just a dark oval.
She stepped forwards to
let her momentum topple her towards the sea.
Someone caught her cloak
by its trailing edge and hauled her back. For a moment she was suspended
ludicrously, at some bizarre angle, and then she felt rage at him, the wretched
doctor her family had set on her, and her wings exploded from her back and she
turned and stooped on him with claws bared.
She had lashed out at
him three times before she realized this was not Destrachis. Instead it was the
Mantis Tisamon who was dodging backwards, although a shallow line across his
forehead bore witness to her first strike.
She froze instantly, and
Tisamon fell back into a defensive stance, waiting for her. On the periphery of
their attention, a dozen dockworkers were staring at them, unsure whether this
was a fight to the death or just some kind of theatre.
‘Why?’ she demanded, as
though he had done something terrible to her.
‘Because you are worth
more than this,’ he replied.
‘You do not know that.’
‘I know. I have spoken
with the Spider doctor and he has told me many things.’ The knowledge Tisamon
had been given sat heavily on him, for the story Felise had choked out of
Destrachis was but one half of it.
Her golden skin had
turned pale now. ‘No, you cannot . . .’
‘You understand what
that means,’ he insisted, and though he had never stinted at cruelty before, he
winced now. ‘You cannot wash it away with your own death. Nor can you blot out
the knowledge by killing that Spider creature. You cannot even achieve it by
killing Thalric – though that would be a service to everyone.
I
now know, and I would rather I did not, but I
do
know. To take that knowledge from the world you must
kill me, before you cast your own life away.’ Destrachis’s conclusion of the
tale was raw in Tisa-mon’s memory: how Felise, having awakened with the thought
of Thalric’s death obsessive in her mind, had found herself barred up, with her
room in her family’s house made into an asylum to protect her from herself.
And she had killed them,
all the other doctors and, more than that, she had with her own hands made
herself the last of her line. Her aunt, her cousins, all left dead at her
hands, as she strode through her own house in blind fury wielding her husband’s
sword.
He was poised to act,
knowing his clawed gauntlet was his to call on the moment she drew blade.
Instead, she said, ‘I
don’t wish to kill you. I don’t understand you. What is it you feel?’
Her face was all
confusion, and that touched him. ‘I had a love, Felise Mienn, as you have had,
and just as yours was taken, the Wasps took mine from me. We are alike, then,
and so I think I understand you, perhaps even better than your Spider does. If
you seek a purpose, then the Empire still stands and we must fight it. I would
be honoured to fight beside you.’
Her stance softened
noticeably, and at last he allowed himself to relax.
It was good to find a
time and place when messengers were not currently seeking him out, or at least
if they were they were not finding him. Now it was just Stenwold and Arianna
dodging the public acclaim that so many other Assemblers were soaking up
whether they had earned it or not.
But Stenwold was not a
politician by choice. He was a soldier, an agent, a spymaster, all in one, and
he played his own games that had never needed any public approval.
The game was at a halt,
for now, the pieces patiently waiting. The Wasp army had not assaulted Sarn, or
not according to the last messenger’s report. The Fourth was in no position to
assault anything, so Merro and Egel were spared Wasp occupation. Teornis had
sent messengers back to his family and its allies, urging them to strengthen
the border, and with word of the Collegium concessions too, just to sweeten the
pot. He was a likeable man, professionally so, though Stenwold was not sure
whether to like him or not.
Achaeos had awakened at
last, though still very weak. He had been frantic about something, not Che’s
fate but something else, something he would not quite explain to Stenwold. He
had begun asking for Tisamon, instead, but the Mantis was off somewhere on his
own inscrutable errands. Stenwold had his own plans for Tisamon. The Mantis and
his daughter would go with Thalric, to see if they could track down Che.
Stenwold had no genuine trust in Thalric of the Rekef, but Tisamon and Tynisa
would keep him in check if anyone could.
For now there was a
pause, a heartfelt pause, in all that business, and he had brought Arianna to
one of the best-kept secrets of the Amphiophos. Behind the domed building
itself there was a garden, walled so high that it was always in the shade, and
yet the artificer’s art, with glass and lenses, had funnelled the sun there, so
that plants from all across the Lowlands thrived in a wild tangle that the
gardeners daily needed to cut back. Here little pumps made water run as though
a natural stream passed through, and there were statues that had been old when
the Moths fled the city, and stone seats and, by tradition, nobody raised their
voices or quarrelled here.
The rain was spotting
down through the broad gaps between the glass but there was shelter enough amid
the trees, and Stenwold took Arianna to a lichen-dusted seat, where she looked
about her in astonishment.
‘I’d never even heard of
this place,’ she said.
‘The Assembly prefer not
to talk about it overmuch. A little selfishness, I think, that can at least be
understood. I always thought this was the only worthwhile reward of belonging
to their ranks, though I never had the time to appreciate it. And I won’t have
any time again, I’m sure. Tomorrow the war begins anew for me.’
‘For me as well then,’
she said.
‘I wouldn’t ask it of
you.’
‘And you wouldn’t have
to. I’ll fight your war, Sten, even if all that means is being there for you
when you need me.’
He looked at her and,
out of habit, thought,
But can I trust you?
He
realized though, that he did trust her, and the final piece of that had fallen
into place not when she saved his life at the Briskall place, but when Balkus
had accepted her. He decided that Balkus, that big, solid and unimaginative
man, could see more clearly than Stenwold himself on this subject.
‘Stenwold,’ Arianna
said, and when he turned to look at her, her eyes held a warning in them.
‘We’re being watched. I’m sure of it.’
He stood swiftly. ‘Some
other Assembler, no doubt.’ But he did not believe that.
Then a voice came from
amid the tangled undergrowth. ‘I could have put an arrow in your head, old man.
Not that there’s much chance you’d notice.’
Stenwold reached for his
sword and discovered that, yes, he still wore it at his waist, so familiar now
that he donned it automatically. It slid easily from its scabbard. ‘How did you
get in here?’
The sword was not all
that was familiar. He knew the voice too, when it replied, ‘I got in here
because I’m a Fly and your clumsy pack of kinden don’t even understand what
‘fly’ means.’
The speaker emerged: a
bald-headed little man with his ugly face and knowing smile, and Stenwold said,
‘Nero?’ in tones of sheer disbelief.
‘It’s been a while,
Sten. Who’s the lady?’
‘This is Arianna,’ and
the awkward pause as he thought of how to introduce her obviously told Nero all
he needed to know, for the mocking smile was even broader now. ‘And this is,
Nero, the artist,’ Stenwold explained to her awkwardly.
Nero grinned at
Stenwold. ‘You get bigger and fatter every time I see you.’
‘And you’re still ugly.’
Stenwold’s retort came without hesitation from twenty years away. ‘You’ve no
idea how good it is to see you. Why are you here? Are you staying long?’
‘Just a messenger boy,
me,’ Nero explained. ‘With a message from a friend of yours, though, and
there’s a whole cartload of news, so you and your lady better sit back down and
listen.’
In the darkness that she
could now dismiss with a thought it had been remarkably easy to break away from
the Wasp camp. With Totho watching, she had simply tiptoed past the occasional
Wasp sentry, invisible in her uniform to men who saw Auxillians merely as
slaves – ubiquitous and acceptable. When she had got in sight of the camp’s
perimeter she had waited carefully until nobody was looking her way, then
simply taken off, let her wings lift her high, over the ring of torches and
sentries and out into the night.
Totho watched her leave
and was torn, when she flew, between relief and guilt. His night’s work was not
done, though. He turned and went back to the farmhouse, opened up the hatch and
returned to the cellar with his shuttered lantern. He would replace the bars,
close the tumblers of the locks.
Give them something to
wonder about.
He was just getting down
to the task when a voice intervened: ‘Well now, what have we here?’
He turned, flicking the
lantern shutters wider, but he already knew who he would see: the emotionless
face of Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos, flashing pale and mottled from within
the confines of his cowl.
‘A good artificer makes
his plans carefully in advance,’ Drephos reproached him. ‘He does not need to
come back and finish up, Totho.’
‘How . . . ?’
‘I watched. Perhaps you
forget that for me it is never dark. I watched and saw quite clearly. You came
out with the girl, you let her loose. I watched because I thought it likely you
might do so. Kaszaat warned me that you were acting strangely, and she was
right. And so I came to see what else you might have been up to down here.’ He
raised an enquiring eyebrow and moved closer. ‘So, what else have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ Totho
stammered. Drephos was still advancing on him, but he knew he himself was the
stronger, and the master artificer was not even armed.
‘She . . . she was my
past, and I found I could not cut it loose so easily.’
Drephos laid his
gauntleted hand on Totho’s shoulder. ‘And what else have you done? How else
have you betrayed me?’ His voice was very soft, not angry, not even sad.
‘I swear—’
Drephos gripped him by
the shoulder and Totho cried out in pain as the narrow fingers dug like pincers
into his flesh. His entire arm was instantly locked, so he grasped Drephos’s
wrist with his other hand and tried to pry it free. To his horror there was no
movement at all, only an inexorable tightening of Drephos’s grasp.
‘What else, Totho?’
Drephos asked, as he still struggled and tugged. ‘Is there an explosive,
perhaps? An incendiary planted? Or were you to kill me? Kill the general? Tell
me, Totho. I won’t be angry, I promise.’
Totho was now
whimpering, feeling the bones of his shoulder grind. Unable to shift those
imprisoning fingers he slammed his hand up against Drephos’s elbow as hard as
he could.
He struck metal, as hard
and solid as any armour. With ragged breath he dragged at the sleeve of the
man’s robe, until the shoulder seam gave way and he bared Drephos’s entire arm.
It was metal, all of it,
not just armoured but an arm entirely of metal, and he could only guess at the
delicacy of the mechanisms within that gave it life. Even in the extremity of
his pain, something stirred in him at the sight, the artificer’s instinct in
him that could never quite be denied.
‘It was a savage
accident,’ Drephos explained conversationally. ‘And worse was having to devise
this replacement one-handed. But I see you like it. I’m glad.’
He pushed, and Totho,
all strength gone from him, fell back against the wooden bars. ‘Tell me what
you have done,’ Drephos said. ‘I am a Moth, at least partly, and I can read it
from your face. What is it you have done?’
‘I gave her the plans,’
Totho gasped, all resistance ebbing out of him. ‘The plans for the snapbow.’
Drephos stared at him
for a second. And he laughed. Laughed and laughed and let go his grip so that
Totho slid down the bars to the floor. And still Drephos laughed and laughed as
his apprentice looked up at him, bewildered.
‘Oh that’s good!’
Drephos got out. ‘That’s very good. And I suppose you thought it was young love
that made you do it, or nostalgia, or any of those other things that we’ll soon
breed out of you! My dear boy, you gave her the plans, did you? Why that’s
excellent!’
‘What do you mean?’
Totho demanded. His shoulder was still agony, but at least he could move the
arm. Nothing was broken.
‘Don’t you understand?’
Drephos crouched before him. ‘What will they do with the plans? Why, they’ll
build snapbows of their own. Can you imagine the look on Malkan’s face when he
finds out they have his new secret weapon?’
‘This is just to spite
the generals?’ Totho asked, baffled.
‘But what will the
generals do, Totho, when that comes to pass? Who will they come to, and what
will they ask?’
‘They’ll come to you,’
said Totho slowly, ‘and they’ll ask you to . . .’