Heirs of the Blade (41 page)

It would not be the first time that Alain had come back with some beggar girl following at his heels, believing . . . what? Believing that the sanctity of princes would make her an exception, Elass supposed. And of course, they had no princes in the Lowlands, no royal blood, nothing but a grubby overclass of merchants, so she understood. The Spider girl would never be a suitable match for Alain, but likewise she would never understand the barriers between them. But she might be useful: a tool to take in hand and turn against the world, for old Lowre Cean was sentimental, and had clearly taken the girl to heart. Where a princess’s pleas might fall on deaf ears, the same words from Maker Tynise could sway him. So long as Elass could control her. So long as Alain had not already overplayed his part.

The nobility of the Commonweal observed complex strata of love-play, tiers and hierarchies, subtle distinctions, all the soft arts and their related games – the degrees of distance and attachment. There were the casual attractions, involving a single meeting and a parting, and no more. There were the soul-mates married and matched and bound together. There were the comrades enjoying a closeness of delicate balance not to be marred by fierce passions but no less a bond of love. The Spider girl hardly merited either of the last two, but Elass could only hope that her son had not already made of Tynisa the former – already had her and had done with her – leaving nothing that Elass could use.

For of course there was another relationship, to be held close and yet not touched: that of the useful servant, the special tool that will only be persuaded by promises.
And let Alain remember his station, what he is and what she is, and not raise her too high nor cast her too far away . . .

‘You are sure she will come here?’ she asked, speaking into the silence that had held sway for more than an hour now, while she reflected.

‘My divination tells me so – and soon. Today most likely,’ Lisan Dea replied.

‘Then you must be ready to greet her,’ Elass instructed, with a gesture of dismissal. Lisan was unhappy about the business, she knew, but it was not her seneschal’s place to comment on the designs of her betters.

‘The girl has changed since she was last here,’ Isendter observed, as the echoes of Lisan’s footsteps faded.

‘In what way?’

The Mantis was silent for a long moment before he spoke. ‘It is hard to tell. She may seem a Spider, but there was always something of my people about her, perhaps granted to her by the badge she bears. Now that part has become greater. I look on her now and my mind says
Mantis,
whatever my eyes tell me.’

‘She has thoughts still for Alain, however she’s changed, I am sure,’ Elass decided. ‘Will she join the fight?’

‘Yes,’ came the immediate and firm response. ‘You may have no fear of that.’

Tynisa had expected a change of weather heralding the spring, but instead the skies had opened up with fresh snow, which lay in foot-thick drifts as far as the horizon. Lowre Cean had told her this was perfectly normal.

‘I understand it is different in your Lowlands,’ he had mused, ‘but here the winter does not let go without a fight.’

And something had twitched with approval inside of her, and she had smiled without meaning to.

‘I must practise now,’ she had told him, and departed for the courtyard where, before an audience of Roach-kinden travellers and a gang of Bee-kinden Auxillian deserters, she had thrown herself through all the paces that her father had ever taught her, every trick of footwork and bladework, as the snow filtered down around her.

She did not recall coming back here after the hunt. Her mind had been so seared by that impossible image of her father standing there before the Mantis icon, gleaming and translucent, holding one spined hand out to her. She remembered nothing else. They told her that she had collapsed.

When she had awoken, the nobles were long gone, but one of their party had remained by her bedside. She had opened her eyes to see the severe features of Isendter Whitehand.

‘It has been two days, almost,’ he had informed her, before she could ask him.

She had stared into his face.
I saw . . .
but what would it mean to him? Instead, what had emerged from her lips was, ‘Alain . . .’

‘Is in Leose by now.’

‘But he asked you to stay with me,’ she had pressed, hoping.

‘I would have stayed of my own will, unless ordered away,’ he had told her but, after a pause in which she felt sour disappointment creeping in, added, ‘You are correct though. Prince Alain wishes to know when you are well again.’

She had swung her legs out of bed, staring at the floor just to hide her smile from him. ‘And now?’

‘I shall return to his side and report.’ Yet he had made no move, and she glanced up at him. His expression had been measuring, almost wary. ‘You have been . . . touched by something. I am no magician, but I sensed it there, at the shrine.’

‘Yes,’ she had confirmed, giving him no other details.

‘Be wary of such contact, Maker Tynise. The world of the living does not easily walk hand in hand with the world of either spirits or the dead.’

‘I have no fear of it. What else can I trust, if not this?’ she had replied blithely. His troubled expression had remained as he bowed and left her.

While dressing, she had looked about for some sign of her father, but he was not to be seen. Instead she heard an echo within her head, words remembered from long ago.
You must practise. How else will you honour your gifts?

It was true that, since Tisamon’s death, she had not kept to the rigorous training he had prescribed for her. In the depth of her loss that had not seemed important, but now she suddenly felt that she had betrayed his memory by her laxness. She had a duty to the badge she wore, to a thousand years of heritage.

With the thought, she felt a distant surge of approval.

She did not believe in ghosts, but suddenly there was something new for her, a hand on her tiller to steer her course true. She could
not
have seen her father, of course, but even so, she felt him near her.

You must face the world without fear. Life is struggle.

Of course it is,
she told herself. That was the Mantis way, after all: meet the world with a drawn blade, to either conquer or die.

What do you want?
had come the question, the one she asked inside her own head, couched in that cold, far-off voice.

‘Salme Alain,’ she murmured in response, savouring his name.

Then you must stalk him and win him,
she told herself, in that same voice.
And I shall show you how.

Some days later she had left Lowre’s compound, in thick snow, and headed for Leose. The Commonweal weather, which had previously seemed something almost supernatural, was put in its place as just one more way for a Weaponsmaster to test herself.

She did not stop at Gaved and Sef’s hut. A Wasp and a Spider, what were they to her?

On waking up after the hunt, the world had seemed more simple, its colours brighter, the divisions between light and dark that much more clear. The endless round that her mind had kept treading – all those paths of guilt and worry – had fallen away from her. That her father and Salma were dead did not sting: they had died as warriors after all. That Achaeos was dead . . . She explored the thought like touching a rotten tooth.
Regret is for the weak
, came her inner voice.
Do not hide from what your blade has done. If you slew him, then surely he was your enemy.

She had not yet let go of regret, but her grip was loosening. How attractive it would be to rewrite her personal history so that her stabbing of Achaeos became not a crime but a justified exercise of her superiority.

Her trek to Leose was almost completely solitary, with the vast expanse of the frozen Commonweal like a canvas about her: a world picked out in white and grey and dark shadow. She might have been the last living thing in the world.

Each day she would travel until noon, then pause to eat and to train, finding once again her perfect balance with the blade, all the old moves and passes that she had allowed to rust while she indulged her sense of guilt. Each session of bladework cleansed her of another layer of useless distractions, honing her to a point.

She had a purpose now, or rather, the purpose that she had been standing on the brink of for some time had now coalesced.

I want Salme Alain
. And the answer came,
And you shall have him, but you must perfect yourself until he cannot deny you.

So it was that she found herself at the gates of Castle Leose, under the wary eyes of the guards in shimmering armour.

They sent for Lisan Dea, of course, and the Grasshopper seneschal came out, eventually, to regard Tynisa wearily.

‘You have some message from Lowre Cean?’ she asked grimly.

‘You know why I am here,’ Tynisa told her evenly.
Do not make me prove myself to you.
A part of her weighed up the woman and found her wanting. She was nothing but a grand clerk, after all.

The Grasshopper stared at her, stepping close enough for Tynisa to impale her just by drawing her rapier from its scabbard, one fluid motion so swift that the guards would barely see it before it was done. The thought played itself out in her mind, and she had to fight against simply letting her body follow suit.

‘Go home,’ said Lisan Dea softly, giving her another of those hidden looks. ‘Lowlander, go home.’

Tynisa smiled keenly. ‘I have no home in the Lowlands. That is why I’ve come here.’

The seneschal opened her mouth to utter some further dismissal, but then a shifting amongst the guards heralded a new arrival. Without fanfare, the princess herself was with them.

‘I thought I recognized the Lowlander girl from my window,’ she remarked. ‘Tell me, why have you taken it upon yourself to turn away our guests?’

Lisan Dea stood very straight, looking ahead and not daring to glance at her mistress. She made no reply.

‘You are a capable enough servant for peacetime, Lisan, but perhaps not fit to act as my seneschal in war. Return inside and contemplate that,’ the princess ordered. Tynisa expected a glare from the Grasshopper as she obeyed, but instead caught an unguarded expression: she read sadness on the face of Lisan Dea, and not as a response to her mistress’s anger.

‘You seek my son, no doubt,’ the lady of the Salmae observed. ‘I have heard about your actions during the hunt, and the Salmae recognize our debts. Come with me.’ She turned and strode inside.

Elass led the girl to her throne room, never once glancing back but confident that mere curiosity would draw the Lowlander after her.
She should appreciate that I am doing her a great honour.
But these foreigners seemed to have little grasp of propriety, and who could blame them, being bereft of proper rulers, no great familes, no royal blood. They should be congratulated for not declining into utter savagery.

Taking her accustomed seat between the two statues, she saw Tynisa hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

‘Sit,’ she said, the word sounding somewhere between an invitation and an order. Tynisa entered cautiously and Elass saw her eyes flick towards the friezes adorning the walls, all the life-size figures carved in high relief. Noblemen and women of the Commonweal led horses or drew back bowstrings, waged war in elegant mail or played musical instruments. The girl obviously possessed some latent courtesy, Elass decided, for although distracted, she proceeded to the correct position where a petitioner should kneel, and sank to the floor.

For a moment, Elass adopted a stern face, studying this Spider-kinden waif before her.
Whitehand is right: something has changed within her.
There was now an edge to her that had not been evident before, a purpose. Even sitting, the girl exuded a sense of being kept still only under restraint, and that if her leash were slipped she would explode into violence.
And how may I channel that?
Elass let her expression lighten, like storm-clouds dissipating from the sky.

‘I learn that you performed admirably on the hunt,’ she stated. ‘Most importantly, my champion speaks well of you, and his faintest praise is worth the applause of many.’

She saw no flush of pleasure at the words. The girl accepted the praise as Isendter himself would have, impassively.

‘Alain is not here, or doubtless he would have met you at our gates himself,’ Elass began. Just then, and as she saw Alain’s name spark life from the girl’s expression, a servant entered with a pair of scrolls for his mistress. She laid one down and scanned the contents of the other, apparently forgetting Tynisa’s presence. Another servant was suddenly at her elbow, placing bowls for kadith.

‘I understand that you are Maker Tynise of Collegium,’ the princess continued absently.

Tynisa merely nodded.

‘Alain will not have given you my personal name. The boy never was one for proper introductions. I am Salme Elass – although, of course, you should address me as “my Princess” or “my lady.”’ As she mummed reading the scroll she was watching the girl obliquely.

Of course, revealing one’s name was a privileged concession, but Elass was not sure whether the Lowlander knew that. She saw an understanding somewhere in Tynisa’s eyes, though, that names represented power to the Inapt, and so she would think she was being given some great gift.

Elass followed this indulgence with a smile, transforming her face from stone to flesh. ‘My son will need you, in the near future,’ she said.

Again Elass read that curious reaction: the eagerness of the young woman that became the eagerness of the Weaponsmaster to prove her skill. For a moment, Elass found herself disconcerted by the latter, sensing almost a personal danger here.
She is so young, and of such an unusual kinden, that I had forgotten that she must have earned that badge.
For a moment she wondered whether using this tool would be wise, but then she dismissed the doubts.
So, she is a sharper blade than I had thought. No matter, though, as long as I hold the hilt.