‘From the …?’ She saw in his expression immediately that she was wrong. He laughed out loud, in fact. ‘They already have a thousand Khanaphir watching you, Bella Cheerwell. They don’t need me to keep an eye on things as well.’
‘Then …’ And who was it who pulled me from the tent of the Fir-eaters – for all the good it did him? And I never stopped to ask what he was doing there so deep in the Marsh Alcaia, so close to me. A terrible bleakness settled on her. ‘Are you taking the Empire’s coin, Trallo?’ she asked.
‘Not a bit of it,’ he told her. ‘Bella Cheerwell, I like you, so I only take coin from those I think have your best interests at heart. That way they’re paying me for something I’d want to do anyway, if I could afford to do it on my own.’ His grin was so guileless, it cut her like a knife. ‘I wouldn’t take Imperial coin, Bella Cheerwell, but I might just take the coin of Sieur Thalric.’
She stared at him. ‘You’ve been spying on me for Thalric,’ she said.
‘I’ve been watching out for you, for Thalric,’ he confirmed, absolutely candid. ‘That’s what he asked, that’s what I’ve done. He doesn’t think you can look after yourself, you see.’
‘Oh, doesn’t he?’ she snapped. ‘Does he not?’ She heard her raised voice echo back from the embassy walls. Trallo waited, still smiling slightly, but not so close that he could not get out of the way if she went for him.
Diplomatic incident, her mind told her. He’s broken the truce by spying on me. Blast the man – just as I was getting somewhere with this city the Empire comes butting in. Another part of her was saying, You should not have asked the question if you did not want to hear the answer – especially as you have known all this, if you had only thought about it, long before.
And, a fragile voice: And he dragged you out of the Fir den, and what if he had not?
‘I want to be angry,’ she complained. ‘Why aren’t I?’
‘Beetle-kinden are a phlegmatic lot,’ suggested Trallo, and then skipped back a step as she glared at him.
‘And Flies are a pragmatic one,’ she shot back. He shrugged at the truth of it.
She glanced back towards the Collegiate embassy, which was where she should now be going. But the Vekken would be there, and she did not feel ready to deal with that problem yet – if it was even capable of being dealt with. Petri Coggen would be there too, another person Che did not want to see just now. She would have accepted the company of Manny Gorget or the others, but they were out doing what they were supposed to be doing. How simple some people’s lives are.
‘Let’s go have a word with Thalric,’ she decided. Trallo raised his eyebrows, and she had the chance to turn his smile back on him. ‘Why not? In this new climate of brutal honesty, I want to ask him why he’s suborning my staff.’
She marched off around the pond towards the Imperial embassy, feeling a mean spark of pride that she had wrong-footed the Fly-kinden for once.
A servant was already opening the door to greet her.
‘Cheerwell Maker, the Collegiate ambassador, here to see her opposite number,’ she announced smartly. The servant ushered her into the hallway, where another was already padding off to deliver the news. Aside from the ubiquitous Khanaphir she saw no one, certainly nobody serving under the Imperial flag.
‘Where are they all?’ she asked.
‘Off watching your lot, I imagine,’ Trallo said. ‘You have to remember the way the Empire thinks. They don’t believe for a moment you’re just here to catch fish and look at stones.’
‘And do you?’ she asked him, because his tone had seemed doubting.
He spread his hands. ‘I don’t need to believe anything.’
As they stood in the hallway, Thalric appeared at the stair-rail above them, his expression suggesting that he had not believed the servant’s message. Behind him there was a Beetle-kinden, a bulky Imperial of about Stenwold’s age and dimensions.
There was a beat, a moment’s pause, before Thalric turned and descended the stairs, saying, ‘Ambassador? Is there a problem?’
‘Possibly.’ Che saw Thalric’s gaze touch on Trallo and then slide off, noticed the quickly suppressed flicker of understanding.
‘Ah, well,’ he said, then turned back to his Beetle companion. ‘We’ll have to break, Corolly. I’ll leave the board set.’
The big man nodded. ‘I’ve got paperwork to catch up with.’ He gave Che a vague half-salute, like a man unsure about the formalities, before retreating into one of the upstairs rooms.
Thalric had paused near the foot of the stairs, and stood looking at her with a slight smile on his face. ‘I suppose you should come up then, unless you want to keep this formal.’ He singled out one of the servants. ‘Get us some decent wine or something.’ Then he was trekking back up the stairs, leaving Che to follow him. Trallo had already flitted up to the landing and, judging from his expression, Thalric must have given him a foul look as he passed.
The room she followed him into matched her own across the other side of the Place of Foreigners. She had to force her eyes away from the walls, where ancient hands had inscribed a valedictory epic to a kinden she was not even sure she recognized, but that she imagined were depicted in the tall, hunchbacked effigies that flanked the main embassy doors. To one side there was a low table on which some kind of game had been set up, with two couches facing each other for the players. The two ambassadors took their places on either side of it.
‘How’s … your man, the … injured one?’ She had been about to say ‘the drunk one’, but that might not have been diplomatic enough.
‘Osgan? Fevered,’ Thalric said. ‘Being tended, expected to recover. Getting yourself cut open in a swamp’s a stupid thing to do.’ Thalric shrugged. They had not spoken since the hunt, and she had no idea what he thought of what had happened there, in the village of the Mantis-kinden.
‘Did he … did he say what he saw there?’ she asked tentatively.
‘What Osgan sees is not regarded as reliable testimony,’ he replied shortly. ‘Even at the best of times.’
He did see something then. Had this man become so caught up in Tisamon’s final moments and the death of the Emperor, that he was now able to grasp something of the Inapt world? She knew that she was unlikely ever to find out. ‘Thalric …’ She frowned down at the game board and, in place of chastising him over Trallo, she just said, ‘You’re a really bad chess player. These pieces are all over the place.’
He had been waiting for something serious, and he snorted at that, caught off guard. ‘What it is, is that you Lowlanders have no idea how to play chess,’ he replied.
‘I came third in the College trials, I’ll have you know.’ It had meant a lot to her, at the time. Now, facing his amusement, her sense of pride was dwindling.
‘You play Ant-chess,’ he said. ‘Trudge-trudge-trudge. I couldn’t believe it when I first came to Helleron – all that lining up and slogging. In real chess—’
‘They fly,’ Che finished for him. ‘Of course, if chess is a war, then … war is different for the Wasps.’ Such a simple thing, but it seemed to say a lot about the gap between them.
‘Blame the Commonwealers. It’s their game,’ he said, but his smile was slipping fast. ‘All right, Che, out with it.’ The wine arrived then, a further stay of execution, but he was still braced and waiting when the servants bowed their way out.
‘You have been keeping watch over me,’ she accused. ‘Using Trallo here, who has his kinden’s sense of free business, I think.’
‘And his kinden’s ability to keep his mouth shut, I see,’ Thalric added.
The Fly gave an amused snort and Che turned to him sharply. ‘You’ve got something to say, at this point?’
‘Only that you’re both making a great fuss over nothing,’ he said easily. ‘He wants you looked after, so what? She knows about it, so what? There’s no conflict here, no difference of opinion. Why all the secrecy, eh?’
They were both staring at him in exasperat
ion. Then Che said, ‘Don’t you understand anything?’ and paused, trying to put into words just why the Fly was wrong. ‘Perhaps … you’d better go wait at the embassy while I sort this out,’ she said finally.
Trallo rolled his eyes at that. ‘If you insist on complicating matters, Bella Cheerwell.’ He bowed to them both, before stepping up on to the window ledge and letting the air catch him beyond it. Che could not keep herself from going to the window to make sure that he was not simply still hovering there, eavesdropping.
‘Solarnese Fly-kinden,’ she complained. ‘What can you do with them?’
‘It’s all because their Spider mistresses let them get away with murder,’ Thalric remarked.
She looked over at him, her expression undecided. ‘So you told him it was all for my own good, did you?’
‘Wasn’t it?’ he asked.
Slowly she returned to her seat. ‘What right do you have—’ but he was smirking at her in that patronizing way he had always done, from the beginning, and she demanded, ‘What?’
‘I had forgotten,’ he said, ‘how you Collegiates aways talk of rights – rights of humanity. This is nothing to do with having a right, according to some obscure philosophy. Che, I look after my comrades, past or present. It’s an Imperial virtue, believe it or not, although one that’s seldom practised these days.’
‘And I can’t look after myself, is that it?’
He looked at her, fighting for a moment to hold in the response, and the laugh that went with it. ‘No,’ he let out, finally. ‘Oh, Che, even when we first met it was after you had gone to great lengths to put yourself straight into the hands of the man most likely to betray you to me. When we were in Myna together you managed so well with the resistance that they were about to execute you as a collaborator. Che, from what should I believe that you will keep yourself safe?’
‘You …!’ As she stood, her indignation was strangling any chance of getting coherent words out. ‘How—! Why you—!’ He still had a faint smile, which maddened her even more, and she slapped the little table, flipping it over entirely and scattering chess pieces to the four quarters of the room. ‘Bah—!’ she got out. Thalric was not looking suitably chastened, instead was plainly fighting not to laugh out loud.
Oh, that does it. She went for him, then, catching him completely by surprise. She was not entirely sure what she intended, save perhaps to strangle the smile from his face, but she knocked him backwards off the couch and landed on him hard enough that she heard the breath whoosh out of him. Shocked at her own success, she dithered, sitting back on his stomach. His recovery was impeded more by his laughter than her weight.
‘Hammer and tongs!’ she exclaimed. ‘What?’
‘You don’t change,’ he choked out at last. ‘You must have been a riot in the debating circles. Do you attack everyone you don’t have an answer for?’
The humour of it got through to her at last. The anger burning but a moment ago, now seemed to have died a death, not even an ember left. She met Thalric’s eyes, feeling his body twist beneath her, testing himself against her weight, and there was a moment when something passed between them. Che felt suddenly uncomfortable and scrabbled backwards, ending up perched on the couch he had just vacated. Thalric picked himself up and dusted himself down, then plucked a chess piece from the floor, where it had been digging into his back.
‘I’ve escaped another mauling from Corolly, then,’ he said vaguely. She knew, from his abruptly subdued tone, that he had felt that fleeting something too.
‘Thalric …’ she began, but did not know where to go next.
‘They suggested I should seduce you,’ he told her, the words ambushing both of them without warning.
She stared at him, agog. ‘What …?’
‘Good Rekef practice.’ Instead of looking at her, he was busy picking up game pieces.
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I’m trying out honesty,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you what they suggested.’
‘I should go,’ she said. He was still hunting chessmen, though, and she did not want to go until he had at least turned to face her. ‘Thalric,’ she said, more urgently, and he looked at her at last. The expression he had been hiding from her left some traces still, on his face. He looked a little uncertain, a little shaken. She tried a smile on him, saw the corner of his mouth twitch in return.
Something crashed downstairs and they heard the servants scream.
Che was out of the room in an instant, reaching for her sword. She saw the Beetle, Corolly, surge out onto the landing, dragging at the string of a crossbow. There were soldiers in dark armour rushing up the stairs already, who reached him before he could cock the weapon. One of them smashed Corolly across the face with the butt of a snapbow, knocking him to the ground. Another put a foot on the Beetle’s chest, levelling a long-barrelled weapon at his face. The rest were surging towards Che.
She brandished her sword, and only then did she recognize them.
‘Totho?’ she faltered. The lead figure was wholly concealed in armour, black metal plates cast into elegant flutes and ridges. She was not even sure that she had identified him correctly until he spoke.
‘Che.’ She could barely recognize the hollow voice from within the helm. ‘You’re coming with us.’
‘You!’ Thalric spat the word out from behind her, and she felt a sudden plummeting in her stomach at what was about to happen.
Totho raised some kind of weapon, levelling it directly over her shoulder, but Thalric was quicker. The flash and flare of his sting warmed her cheek before it struck Totho across the breastplate and pauldron. He reeled back with the impact, the short weapon in his hands snapping a bolt into the ceiling. The seething fire from the Wasp’s Art merely boiled off his armour, leaving it patterned with pale lines but unbroken.
‘Everybody stop!’ Che cried out at the top of her voice. ‘What is going on?’
Totho grabbed her – just reached out, took hold of her tunic and hauled her towards him effortlessly. As her back was pulled hard up against the grooves of his breastplate, she could feel where it was still warm from Thalric’s shot.
Thalric stood in the doorway of his chamber, hand again spitting golden fire. A man beside Totho went down, a fist-sized hole charred through his leather armour. The weapon in Totho’s hand snapped again, striking stone-dust from the lintel and forcing Thalric to duck back. Che was struggling to escape from Totho, but he held her close with a grip she could not break. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded over and over until he roared in her ear, ‘Just shut up for once, Che. You’re coming with me!’ The vehemence shocked her into silence, mouth left open in mid-complaint. The Iron Glove contingent, some dozen men in all, began retreating back down the stairs. She heard Thalric call her name as he ran out onto the balcony, and his hand blazed again. Then a snapbow bolt tore across his arm and another skimmed his ribs, and he fell back.
‘Where in the wastes are the rest of them?’ someone was asking, and she recognized Corcoran’s voice. ‘Setting an ambush?’
Totho paused, and Che could almost feel the workings of his mind, transmitted through the armour that was digging into her back. If the rest of the Imperials were elsewhere, then Totho could accomplish more than simply dragging Che away.
Deliberately she began fighting him again, and she heard his curse echo from inside his helm. Corolly had appeared at the balcony rail again, crossbow loaded now. A snapbow bolt made him duck back. Totho came to his decision.
‘Let’s go. We have what we came for.’
Under the gaze of the aghast servants, the Iron Glove men retreated from the Imperial embassy. They left a dead man on the balcony, irrevocable proof of how they had broken the peace of Khanaphes.
What can he mean to do? Che asked herself helplessly. They will hunt him down for this. The Ministers will set Amnon and the Mantids and everything they have on him. She envisaged being manhandled to the docks, a swift flight through the Estuarine Gat
e before the alarm was raised. Totho was not taking her towards the river, though. As she was marched briskly on, she understood where: the Iron Glove factora. He must be mad. What will he do, holed up in there? ‘Totho, tell me what’s going on,’ she pleaded, but he said nothing, just hustled her on through the streets of Khanaphes, under the increasingly concerned attention of the locals.
She stumbled, as a memory revived within her like a cold knife in her, leaving her suddenly sick with the thought. It is just like before. She pictured a mountainside outside Helleron, and a sudden abduction by a familiar face. It had been her lost Achaeos that had stood before her then, rather than Thalric of the Empire, but the face of her kidnapper had still been Totho’s.
But it was not truly him, not then. That first time, it had been the Spider-kinden shape-changer, Scyla. And now we are come full circle, and this time he really has done it.
Twenty-Six
She had expected Totho to at least sit down and talk to her, after they bustled her into the Iron Glove factora. He seemed to have no time for her, though. She had assumed at first that this was some mad impulse of his, and that he could not know what a nest of hornets he would be stirring. Now she saw that he had planned everything.
They had moved her from room to room within the factora, ahead of a wave of fortification. Allotted such primitive facilities, the Iron Glove were not content to let them lie: the solid stone framework of the factora building was being re-edified even as she watched. She caught brief moments of the process as they moved her deeper inside. They were fixing metal grills over the windows, with apertures large enough to admit a snapbow’s barrel. They had replaced the main door with something iron-bound and reinforced. Iron Glove people were running everywhere, now, strapping on breastplates and buckling on helms, checking the workings of crossbows and snapbows.
He’s making ready for a siege. She could understand the logic. The Khanaphir could not stand by and allow these foreign merchants the run of their city. But they are not merchants. The staff of the factora had transformed their headquarters into a fort, and themselves into soldiers. She had no doubt that they practised regularly with all the different weapons that they sold.
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