Or not quite all, and not quite for ever. Che reached out and held the world still, examining the net that linked them all, seeing each thread glitter as though dipped in diamond. Here the line from the dying magician to Seda, a conduit for the last of his power; here from Achaeos to Che and through him to the collapsing Darakyon. Here . . .
I see it now.
Here to Tisamon. Here the Wasps killed him, but his blade had cut into the heart of the Darakyon, and his spirit was now held within the knot. As the forest’s ghosts were drawn away from the world, he went with them – but there was yet one thread that he could use to drag his way back into the world.
Che finally noticed Tynisa in the dead magician’s shadow, chained and bound like a plaything, nothing but a spectator to her father’s death. No thread touched her, though, and Tisamon’s ghost re-entered the world by a more tortuous route by far. But, of course, Che had already known that, for she herself had been linked to the Darakyon, and she saw now, in crystal detail, how Tisamon’s ghost had crept into her own mind: the spectre that had haunted her in Collegium and Khanaphes, and that she had wrongly believed to be Achaeos’s tortured, bitter spirit.
And in Khanaphes the Masters had rid her of her parasitic companion, and thus set Tisamon free to roam the world. And, naturally, he had sought out his daughter, fulfilling his unfinished task: to mould her in his own image, with all the doomed tragedy that must imply.
She could sense Tynisa alongside her, forced to witness again the death of her father and her own inability to save him. Maure was close too, and Che felt the necromancer’s frustration that this tableau had not drawn the ghost out into the open. Che understood it, though, as only a sister could. Despite her determination to be rid of Tisamon’s shade, Tynisa held tight to him still.
A further shock is needed, she firmly resolved, and knew what it should be. She smothered a brief stab of guilt as she reached for Tynisa’s memories once again. With her sister’s mind at her disposal, she knew that she must see one image, one moment, whether it would aid in their efforts against Tisamon or not. I have to know.
The interior of the shack was wretched, walls and ceiling leaning and bulging at odd angles as its slipshod construction surrendered, by degrees, to the constant damp. The room was crowded, some of its occupants on their feet, others strewn across the floor, struck senseless the moment the Shadow Box had been opened. The artefact’s dark, twisting influence was everywhere, like the smell of rotting meat. Che took a deep breath before identifying the players: on the floor lay Tisamon, Tynisa and the Spider girl Sef, while Achaeos, her lover, sat hunched over with the Shadow Box clutched in his hands. She saw now how he had tried to pry into its secrets, but instead it had drawn him into itself, along with all those around him.
Staring down at the bodies were two Wasp-kinden – Thalric and Gaved, both utterly bewildered by what had happened. Their Inapt minds had been ignored by the Shadow Box, leaving them unaffected, and at the same time they could not see the cloaked figure that walked between them. It was another Mosquito-kinden, a pale, cadaverous woman dressed in trailing robes, now stepping invisibly past the Wasps and taking the Shadow Box neatly from Achaeos’s unfeeling hands. Then the shadowy figure had touched Tynisa, and the Spider girl was waking up even as the thief retreated.
Awake but not herself: her face was blank, her eyes staring blindly. The two Wasps started and stared at her, as she stood over Achaeos with her sword in her hand.
Che sensed her sister’s mind kicking away from that moment, and understood that these were memories that Tynisa had never known she had. That moment had always been a blank for her, the Mosquito-kinden’s magic raising a barrier she had not been able to penetrate. Now she saw herself clear as day, in that filthy hut in Jerez, and she waited for the terrible stroke to descend, for the blade to lance Achaeos through.
Abruptly Che realized that she did not want to see this, after all. She knew what the outcome would be: Achaeos would receive a wound that would nearly kill him, and the strain of it would prove the death of him during the Moth-kinden ritual later on. Seeing him fragile and helpless, she tried to pull herself away, but the moment she felt doubt, her control of the vision escaped her, and she was held – as unwilling a witness as Tynisa – watching as the same moment played itself out.
And still Tynisa stood there with sword out, and Gaved and Thalric were questioning her, demanding answers. Her hand was shaking.
She fights the geas imposed on her, Maure’s thought came. She could have killed them all by now.
Then, with a hopeless, graceless motion, Tynisa lashed out with her blade, lancing Achaeos through. But even Che could see that her stroke had gone awry, her blade and her arm conspiring to spoil her aim.
There was more then, Tynisa fighting with the two Wasps, but Che felt a great shudder, and the image was abruptly fragmenting. She became aware of her own body through the pain in her leg, which had been mounting up in her absence.
‘You told me,’ she heard Tynisa gasp, and then opened her eyes. The Spider girl was already on her feet, her blade drawn again, and for a horrible moment Che thought history might repeat itself. It was not Maure or Che that Tynisa was confronting, though.
In the air before her hung a shape pale and indistinct, a spiderweb of lines that resembled something like a man – but a man transfigured, his body writhing with briars, his skin rippling with chitin. Only the face remained untouched by the taint of the Darakyon.
Tisamon.
Tynisa was staring at this tattered spectre, and Che had no word for the expression on the girl’s face.
‘In Jerez, after Achaeos . . . I tried to throw my sword away . . .’ the Spider girl got out. Whatever emotion had hold of her was shaking her with all its force. ‘But you told me then that I had been the victim of magic, and that the sword did its best to stay my hand. You told me that, then, but I had forgotten.’
The ghost made some almost dismissive gesture, but Tynisa’s face was abruptly twisted into a snarl.
‘You told me that, then, and I didn’t believe you, and I thought I must have had some reason to do it, because in Collegium there is no magic and people do not stab their friends without purpose,’ she spat out. ‘But here in the Commonweal, after you came to me, you had me believe that I stabbed him because he was an enemy – that he had earned his death, and that I should rejoice in his blood. All these things you whispered to me, telling me to feel no guilt but to be satisfied at the downfall of a foe. Where is the man who comforted me, and told me I was bewitched, and that even my blade had fought against the deed? Why not tell me that, and lead me away from . . .’ and her voice broke momentarily, ‘from doing it all again!’
Mantis-kinden know no guilt. Che heard the voice as if it was a whisper of leaves.
‘You did!’ Tynisa snapped. ‘It made you human, that regret, but where is it now? Where is the man who was Stenwold’s friend, and who loved my mother?’ Her jaw clenched, and Che thought she had finished, but then she shrieked out, loud enough for everyone among the ruins to hear, ‘Where is my father?’
The movements of the ghost tried to claim that title, but its voice was too faint to hear. Instead, it was Maure who answered her anguished cry.
‘This is but some part of him that has clung on,’ the magician explained sadly. ‘Some handful of shards of him, mere fragments of the man that once was. Ghosts are just broken pieces of us. The hard slivers of him stand before you, with nothing to sheathe their sharp edges. This is the Mantis, not the man.’
A fragile calm touched Tynisa and she let her hands fall to her sides, pointedly no longer resting one on her sword grip. ‘You made me kill Alain, and without you . . . perhaps I would not have been so hasty. I will not say he was a good man, and he was certainly not his brother, but I became a murderer in truth when I shed his blood.’
Tisamon’s shade made an angry gesture, and Che faintly heard, You are above their laws and morality.
‘Stenwold would di
sagree,’ Tynisa replied, and the mention of that name seemed to strike the ghost like a blow, making it ripple and shudder. And then she said, ‘I cast you out.’
There was an utter silence after those words, and the twisted and changing face of the ghost remained still for a moment, then it rushed forward, to within inches of Tynisa’s face. Che heard it cry out, You need me!
‘My true father would tell me I need nobody but myself.’
With my aid, you will never lose a battle, triumph in every fight!
‘You lie, spirit,’ Tynisa snapped. ‘I would triumph in every fight except the last, because you would drive me to some impossible conflict eventually, just to have me die as Mantis-kinden should. I cast you out. I cast you out. I deny you. You are not my father.’
Che held her breath, waiting and still waiting as the spectre shimmered and hung in the air. A disturbance was building up within it, and it writhed and twisted as though strung up on hooks. Her gaze sought out Maure, and found the magician pale and tense, as if awaiting an explosion.
Then, like an exhalation, it was gone, vanishing into infinite distance, yet without seeming to leave the walls of the decrepit hut they sat in, even as the very sunlight seemed to creep into the shade’s absence.
Maure let out a long, ragged breath. As the only one of them to know the risks intimately, she looked more relieved than Che cared to think about.
‘It’s done,’ she confirmed. ‘The shade is gone.’
‘Gone where?’ Tynisa asked, sounding shaky, but all Maure would say was, ‘Away.’
The Spider girl glanced at Che, tentatively probing her expression. ‘You saw it all? Tisamon? Achaeos?’
Che nodded tiredly. ‘I’ve never held Achaeos against you, Tynisa, nor has Stenwold, nor did Tisamon when he truly lived. The only one who ever did was you yourself. Do you at least accept that you’re not to blame for his death?’
Tynisa nodded. ‘I tried so hard not to believe in magic. I thought it was just a convenient excuse. You came a long way to tell me that, Che.’
‘Well of course I did,’ Che replied, almost offended. ‘We’re sisters, after all, despite everything. And you’ll be needed.’
Tynisa blinked. ‘I’ll . . . what?’
‘As we all will be needed.’
Tynisa and Maure were both staring at her now, but the words just fell from Che’s lips, her face slack and expressionless.
‘Falling leaves, red and brown and black and gold. A rain of burning machines over a city of the Apt. The darkness between trees. The Seal of the Worm is breaking.’
A beat of complete silence followed, as though the world outside their ruined hut had been utterly stilled. Then Che blinked at them and demanded, ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Che, you said . . .’ Tynisa frowned. ‘I don’t understand what you just said.’
‘No?’ Maure asked. ‘The Moths call their magicians seers, and set them to sift the future for visions of what may come. Sometimes the visions arrive unasked. The Seal of the Worm, that’s what you said.’
‘Meaning what?’ Che asked, entirely thrown, but a man’s voice broke in, startling them all, Tynisa snatching for her sword.
‘The Seal of the Worm. That’s a bad old story.’ It was Soul Je, the Grasshopper-kinden brigand, crouching just outside the shattered doorway of their hut. Che guessed he had come to investigate the shouting of just a moment before.
‘Tell us,’ Che instructed him immediately, but the man shook his head.
‘Best not repeated. Old wars, old enemies banished to the depths, and let them long remain there. Besides, who knows the truth these days?’ He shrugged.
Che was frowning, her face screwed up in concentration. Something of the Moth lore . . . In trying to understand Achaeos she had read all that a Beetle might readily acquire, including mouldering histories that no other College hand had touched in centuries. ‘Worms . . . some old war?’ And what had happened at the end of that war? But, of course, Moth histories were opaque, dense with allegory. The Moths had fought off so many challengers in the Inapt world of the Days of Lore: all of them defeated, hunted down, destroyed wherever they could be found, or else . . . banished?
Sealed away . . . came the uncomfortable recollection.
She opened her mouth to question Soul Je again, but he shook his head, discouraging it. A moment later the Wasp Mordrec bundled past him.
‘We’ve spotted their scouts! Time to move!’
Forty-Three
Salme Elass’s tactical problem now was that her entire force, including all the peasant levy and footmen, could not reliably keep up with the fleeing brigands. A large force was always slower, trailing its supplies and its unwilling conscripts. If she mustered her strength in one place, she might never catch her enemies.
She had taken the only step she could, by sending her followers out in detachments at varying speeds, trusting to the fastest to bring her quarry to bay so that the rest of her strength could regroup and finish the business once and for all.
At first the bandits faced only airborne opposition, the fleetest of the Dragonfly-kinden – nobles and their retinues in light armour. They were few in number, for their strength had been spread wide to locate the fugitives, and the wiser of them simply waited high over the chase, signalling by their very presence the whereabouts of the enemy.
The rasher of the scouts, those keen to make a name for themselves, tried to harry the brigands on the ground, stooping on them with spears or loosing arrows as they dived past overhead. They soon found, however, that Dal Arche and Soul Je were both easily capable of hitting a mark whilst still running, twisting back and up to follow the flight of a passing warrior and then letting fly without ever stumbling or slowing. The scouts had minimal armour, the better to fly far and fast, and after the brigands’ shafts had brought several down the rest kept their distance.
The column of scouts, circling like some bizarre localized weather, would serve its purpose, though. Soon enough, Avaris the Spider called out, ‘Riders!’ as the first elements of the Salmae cavalry came in sight, still distant but gaining.
A handful still, but they would be harder to turn away than the scouts. Dal wordlessly changed his direction, striking out against the rise of the land. It was not clear to anyone if he had an actual destination in mind, and so Tynisa exerted herself to fetch up alongside him.
‘We can get under cover before they reach us?’ she got out.
He shook his head, saving his breath. Aware of her exasperated look, he grimaced and rasped, ‘These we kill. The next? Depends how soon, how fast.’
Tynisa nodded, dropping back. ‘Thalric, Mordrec,’ she snapped. ‘Rearguard.’
They both glared at her, neither of them happy to be taking orders from her. Thalric was supporting Che, who was still slowing them all with her injured leg. Wordlessly he passed her to Maure, who did her best to lend some strength to the toiling Beetle girl.
‘I count six,’ Tynisa stated. ‘Your stings, my blade.’
‘They could just go round us,’ Mordrec pointed out, half-breathless.
‘Then the archers must take them,’ Tynisa declared.
‘Let me take the lead,’ Thalric put in. ‘We need a horse kept alive for Che.’
The riders were closing swiftly, thrashing their horses to make up the distance, each one of them wanting to win the favour of Salme Elass. When they saw who awaited them, however, they faltered a little, two reining in and the rest swerving away. They fear us, Tynisa thought with satisfaction, and then she was rushing towards the nearest rider, even as he tried to haul his mount aside. He had ventured too close, though, and Thalric’s sting struck him against his breastplate. The scintillating mail turned most of the heat away, but the blow still sent the rider reeling back in his saddle, and before he could regain control of the reins Tynisa had lunged up, her blade piercing the chitin shell of his armour and running itself to the hilt into his side. She saw the man’s golden skin tur
n suddenly pale, and he toppled from his mount.
‘Maure!’ Thalric shouted. ‘Take the beast!’
The magician rushed forward but the panicking horse shied away from her, and as she stumbled after it, another rider charged her with lance levelled. Her wings lifted her from under the hoofs, but not fast enough to evade the weapon’s point. An arrow flowered in the rider’s neck, though, between pauldron and helm, throwing him sideways, jerking the lance aside. Maure dropped down onto the horse’s neck, kicking and elbowing until the rider fell from the saddle, and then snagging the reins with one hand and dragging the beast back towards Che. She looked around wildly to see Dal Arche fitting another arrow to his bow whilst, beside him, Soul Je aimed upwards, warning off the boldest of the scouts.
Two more of the riders had chosen the same moment to attack, and the Wasps had made them rue it. Whilst the armour of a Dragonfly noble might scatter some of their stingshot, the horses were not so protected. Thalric and Mordrec brought them both down in short order, lashing the wretched animals with both hands until they reared and plunged and fell. One of the cavalrymen kicked himself free and flew, darting in the air to avoid Dal’s next shot, and putting as much distance between himself and the brigands as possible. The other fallen rider had just got to her feet, swaying but reaching for her sword, when Tynisa reached her and finished her with a single straight thrust.
The remaining two horsemen kept their distance, keeping out of arrowshot but no further. There was movement beyond them, which could only be the rest of the Salmae’s forces, or at least a fair proportion of them.
‘Keep moving!’ Dal shouted. ‘There’ll be more cavalry soon.’
Maure had Che perched before the saddle now, although the horse protested at its double load. She kept a steady pace, keeping the animal on a tight rein, well aware that if she outdistanced the bandits, the circling scouts were likely to drop on her.
A glance back confirmed that there were more riders splitting off from the main body of the Salmae force, some making straight for the fugitives, others peeling off to circle round and ahead of them, intending to cut them off.
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